Sarcasm | Five Hargreeves

11 | probability maps

Waking up from her refreshing slumber, Y/N was startled to find a trail of bloody footprints leading up to Klaus's room. Her heart pounded as she followed the crimson path, her mind racing with questions.

Was he dead? Tortured? An aftermath of Hazel and Cha-Cha's infiltration?

Her fears were confirmed when she entered Klaus's room. Inside, she found an expressionless Klaus and an enraged Five locked in a heated argument. The object of their dispute was a briefcase that lay between them, radiating an air of ominous importance. Klaus, clearly fed up, stormed out of the room, leaving Five behind. Five stood rigid, fists clenched, his gaze fixed on the wall.

"Klaus!" Y/N called, rattled by the brief display. "What was that all about?"

"Klaus time-traveled using one of the Commission's gadgets," Five replied, his tone clipped and focused. "He was there for a year, enough for the Commission to track him down."

"Oh my God," Y/N gasped, whipping around towards the exit. "Is he okay?"

"More or less," Five dismissed nonchalantly, sitting on Klaus's bed as he grabbed a notepad from the desk. "My question is, how are you?"

He looked up at her with a sly and discreet glance, quickly averting his eyes as she turned back to face him.

"I'm fine," she replied, brushing off his concern. "Did you meet up with that Handler chick yet?"

Five smirked at her words, amused by her comment as a glint of mischief flashed across his eyes. "Not yet, but I think I have a new idea."

~~~

Y/N rubbed her temples roughly as she let out a frustrated groan, climbing down from her stool.

Five's new idea consisted of straining your back standing up on a stool for two hours, slouched over and using your brain full time as you copied down a bunch of hair-pulling equations on his chalkboard wall in his room.

Pleasant.

"Ugh. I haven't done this stuff in ages. Such a pain," Y/N muttered, using the heel of her palm to rub off a mistake she had made while calculating the spatial circumference from Five's time loop portal when he came back versus his everyday jumps. The numbers were dizzying, and her head throbbed slightly from the effort of trying to piece it all together.

"Good for you," Five retorted dryly, not looking up from his own scribbling. "In the apocalypse, I almost fried my brain from all the math and the hot weather from the pollution and heat radiation. Such a pain."

Y/N glanced at him, her irritation momentarily softened by the image of Five struggling alone in a desolate world. She sighed, pushing a lock of hair behind her ear as she refocused on the task at hand. "Yeah, well, misery loves company, right?"

"I think our definitions of misery are a little disparate."

"Whatever. What do you have?" Y/N responded, not wanting to engage in his banter.

"Four suspects," Five said, pulling a worn notepad from his pocket and pointing to the names. "I also got a gun from Dad's room. The one he used to kill... what, a rhinoceros?" He checked the rifle stashed under his bed, briefly aiming it at an action figure before nodding in approval. "I used something similar at work."

Y/N didn't answer immediately, her eyes scanning the names of the four people Five believed needed to be eliminated to prevent the apocalypse. Although she wasn't exactly as much of a  paradox princess as Five was, she found it hard to believe that the fate of the entire world rested on the shoulders of four isolate humans, ranging from a gardener to an accountant. How on earth did Five use math to come to this conclusion?