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Right. So. Room’s still a little bit of a mess. There’s a bed in it now, that’s good. And—and a table. Sort of. And the roof is mostly whole, and the part of it that’s maybe something of a skylight now at least isn’t directly over the bed. He’s done all he could, really. To be fair, it had been sort of a little bit of a shed until about twenty minutes ago.
That’s when Sam had finally, finally got a straight answer out of Janine about which quadrants exactly had room for another body. And then had run off to track down Larima, who was the housing coordinator for the northeast housing block. It was pretty safe to assume that she was usually working on one of those fiddly little metal sculptures of hers out in her bit of yard, but today of course Sam had had to knock on almost all the doors on this side of the township before finding Larima at tea with the Fosters. Didn’t generally like being interrupted when she was at tea, Larima.
Which is possibly why she’d vanished as soon as letting Sam into this place. Leaving him to turn it into someplace where a human being could live, and maybe even sleep, without being crushed by falling debris. And all before Runner Five got back. He isn’t even sure when she would get back, since she’d been so far out when— no, no, don’t think about it. She’s on her way back, she’s fine, it’s all. It’s all fine.
Even if this place is a little. Um. Bleak. Five’s been back to Abel, she knows what it’s like here now, likely knows the state of her old quarters. And not that Sam ever saw her room before. He hadn’t. Of course not. But she didn’t strike him as the type to get too. Umm. Homey. So… maybe she wouldn’t mind it?
“Sam?”
Sam jumps, and jerks around to face the door. “I hope you don’t mind it!” he says. Which, great opener Sam, really smooth. Well done.
It’s Five, of course. Still a little red in the face from her run, the sleeves of her rather vibrantly blue jacket pushed up to her elbows, though she keeps it zipped up to right under her chin. And she looks… well, Five’s come back from runs in all sorts of states. Muddy, soaked, freezing cold, covered in clay or sand or (after one exceptionally memorable run) multicolored craft glitter. And blood, of course. Not hers, usually. Those are the missions where she comes back quieter than usual, stopping to talk to him and Janine for no longer than it takes to drop off her equipment and head for the showers. She’ll linger there usually. It’s not a problem, since it’s not like she could run the water overlong even if she wanted to. But either way, no one bothers her. We all get the need for some privacy, Sam’s thought before. Runners just as much as any of them. Probably more.
Compared to some of the other missions, she looks alright. Like she’s been running and running hard, but with no more dirt or grime than you might get from a regular stroll. She looks like she usually does after a success, actually. Apart from the look in her eyes.
“Do I mind what?” She asks, taking a step into the small room. “Janine sent me out here, and I just ran into Larima.”
“Yes, right, good,” Sam says. “Well. She’s given you… this. It’s not a lot, but it’s a single room and a single bed, which is, you know, like the Abel version of a McMansion. Apart from the hole in the ceiling. Yeah, should’ve mentioned that. There’s a hole in the ceiling.”
Five turns to look. “It’s fine,” she says. “This is for me?”
“Well, you’re back,” Sam says. “You need a proper place of your own.”
Five’s not what you’d call expressive. Really ever. Sam’s seen her sit through a screening of “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” without laughing once. Not once. And she wasn’t sleeping (which is more than could be said for Four). He’d seen her smile a few times. But that was it.
He knows Five. He might not have called her his friend often (and not to her face, after that really embarrassing night when she’d made it back so late, the first time that he’d learned that New Canton couldn’t be trusted to—no, don’t think about it), but he’s pretty sure he knows her as well as anyone. Better than most, maybe. And he’s seen her in some truly tough scrapes, and yeah, those times when she’s come back and not said a word to anyone for hours, even days.
She’s looked rough, then. Jaw tight, eyes flat, Sam could always tell that she was hurting, or angry, or suffering. Feeling, even if she could lock it down better than a lot of the people here.
He’s never seen so much emotion in her face as there is now, so clear and obvious that it almost feels like an invasion just to look at her. But she doesn’t look away, just crosses her arms over her chest. It’s less the defensive, macho kind of gesture and more of a tight hug around her middle. He wonders if that’s who she was, Before. Someone who liked to be held, when she was feeling frightened.
“Thank you, Sam,” she says.
“ ‘Course,” he says. Absolutely not thinking about Five liking to be held, he clears his throat and tries for a smile. “Welcome home.”
He could say more. Five wouldn’t mind it, he thinks. She might even… need it. Need him?
“Yeah,” she says. Still Five, still strong and tough and the fastest runner they’ve got, unflappable and quiet and intense but the kind of intensity that draws you in, not pushes you away. Still all that, but her voice is rough, and raw, and she blinks a few times. “I’m home.”
Sam’s used to watching from a distance. He sees with the runners, riding along in their ears and in their eyes and watching from afar as much as he can. That’s his perspective. That’s his place.
His place is not here, standing directly across from Five and looking into her face.
So he leaves.
~
Sam doesn’t quite remember the first time he saw Five again after the attack on Abel. At that point he’d been up for something like 45 straight hours, and he knows he saw her because he’d scribbled a big “5” on the clipboard he’d been carrying, the one with all the runners in one of two columns. The one with Five on it was longer than the other, at the end. After waking up (Janine had pushed him into his room and threatened to lock him in, he was on his bed and asleep before he could hear her close the door behind him, let alone if she actually turned the key) it had been the first thing he’d noticed. But he didn’t remember seeing her again, really. Knowing he had was comfort enough. And when he saw her after that, in a strategy meeting with New— with the others about how to start turning things around on Van Ark, it seemed. Well, a little late for dramatics.
Since then, they’ve got on well. About as well as normal. It’s been, well, casual.
Look, being the target of an attack like that, it puts some things into perspective, right? Things that, theoretically, one might not have realized before. Because there are near death experiences as witnessed from afar, and then there are near death experiences as experienced when one is sent flying and one’s ears are ringing and there’s a lot of destruction and a lot of blood and all one can think is “Oh God, I’m never going to see her again, am I?”
“Mr. Yao. Whatever I did to give you the impression that I welcomed these confidences, please know that I regret it sincerely.”
Janine is possibly not the best person to have gone to with this.
She prods at where his hip is resting on her desk to get at a stack of papers he’s been half-sitting on.
“Right, thanks,” Sam says sourly.
“But if I did have any sort of advice,” she says, “I’d tell you that it would probably help if ‘one’ stopped avoiding the subject of ‘one’s’ terribly dramatic and romantic revelation,” Janine is glaring at her paperwork now and not looking at Sam, so maybe she misses how his jaw drops open. Or maybe not, since Janine does not in fact miss much of anything.
“Avoiding? Who’s been—“
“You have, Mr. Yao, and it’s embarrassing to watch,” Janine snaps. “You know how ridiculous you look trying to avoid one person in this township? There aren’t nearly enough of us here for that. Why are you avoiding Runner Five anyway?”
“Five? Who said anything about—“
“Please. It’s been nearly two weeks since she transferred back from New Canton, and apart from your scheduled interactions when she’s sent out on a mission, I have multiple reports of you going ridiculously out of your way to avoid her. Though you always got on rather well before.”
“You have reports? Who’s been giving you reports on me?”
Janine levels a look at him. “Not that Mr. Yeun didn’t welcome the pleasant surprise of you leaping into his sheep pen, but you haven’t exactly been subtle.”
Sam scowls. That had been one of his poorer ideas. He’s not fond of sheep at the best of times, but they seem to be quite fond of him.
“Whatever is going on with you and Five, resolve it,” Janine says primly. “For the good of Abel’s livestock, if nothing else. Now, get out of my house.”
Yeah, definitely a mistake to come to Janine with this.
~
With Alice... Alice was different. In all possible ways, Alice was different. From anything else Sam had experienced in his life. From anyone Sam had ever known. He hadn’t expected that, to discover someone like that in this wreck of a world. But there she was. And there they were. And it was— it had been—
Well. It hadn’t ended well, had it? Nothing ended well out here. That bit of fun with Lem and— Sam wasn’t special, alright? Everyone had suffered, everyone had lost someone, that’s what you do when the world is ending. Had ended.
Doesn't mean that he welcomes the chance to lose someone again, that’s all.
~
But then, Alice was brave. Had to be, to do what she did.
Sam wasn’t brave. Not like Alice. Not like the other Runners.
He’s always sort of thought it was something you were born with. But maybe it’s really more like something that can be learned. If it isn’t too late.
~
Five’s sitting cross-legged in bed, reading. Library’s been doing a booming trade since they found the abandoned truck crammed top to bottom with paperbacks. There are a lot of stories that you see the end of, but can never know any more about it. You can’t keep yourself from wondering about what happened, though. Writing the story for yourself, at least a little. And Sam’s wondered a few times how that truck got to be there, who felt the need to pack it full of former best-sellers and classics, and who ended up leaving it all behind.
Anyway, Five is working her way through Jane Eyre. And not liking it, given how she’s frowning. Though that could just be the look she turns on Sam when he knocks on the door. Or. The doorframe, with the bit of sackcloth working as a door. They should really get that fixed; it’s spring, but only just, and the nights have been a bit chilly lately.
“Sam? I’m not scheduled, am I?”
“No, no, you’re fine, you’re good,” Sam says. “Just stopping by to say hello.”
Five’s eyebrows go up, but she closes the book and sets it down on the floor next to the bed.
“It looks nice in here,” Sam says, putting his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and looking anywhere but at Five. “Got a proper chair in here, that’s impressive. And is that… is that one of Larima’s sculptures?”
“Sam.”
“On the wall, you mounted it up there? And wait, that’s one of Jericho’s sketches too, you’ve gone and done artwork in here.”
“Sam.”
“And flowers on the bedside table, with a little cloth over it? Where did you even get the flowers? And the pitcher to keep them in, wouldn’t you use that for something else? Water, carrying things, barter, and you go and use it as a vase?”
Five gets to her feet, which shuts Sam up.
“I like the flowers,” she says, frowning thunderously. “I wanted to make it look nice. Homey.”
“Homey?”
“Yeah, because it’s my home,” Five snaps. “You’re the one who—“ she stops, and shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. What’d you want to talk about?”
“I’m the one who what?” Sam says, not quite answering the question.
Five looks at him narrowly. But she answers, “you’re the one who told me to come back. To come home. That’s… those were your words. ‘Come home.’ “
Sam shifts, but doesn't say anything. He remembers, of course he does.
“I’ve been thinking about it ever since I got back, but you’ve been— Do you know what it means, to hear that?” Five goes on. “To hear that from you? You know how many times you’ve said that to me? To come home?”
Sam shrugs, and half-laughs. “Uh, well, not really.”
“Not often,” she says. “Not that often. But always, always when I needed to hear it. How can you know that, Sam? How can you know when I need to be called home? To be reminded that I have one?”
This… isn’t what Sam was expecting. He swallows. But Five is clearly waiting for an answer. And she’s… this is déjà vu, it’s all something they've done before, standing in this little shack and Five looking at him with more open emotion than he ever sees from her. And it costs her, he’s sure it does, and last time he just ran away from her— and she put flowers in here, a fistful of dandelions and daisies and daffodils, and Sam can’t even remember the last time he saw a daffodil up close like this.
“It’s usually what I need to hear too,” Sam says, before he can overthink it, before he can lose his nerve and run. “It’s usually what I need to remind myself, that—that you can come home. And that you will. And that I just have to wait, and you…”
“And I?” She prompts, when his nerve wavers and he trails off.
“And you’ll be walking through the door again,” Sam says, finishing with a shrug. And maybe it’s the weakness of the gesture, of the total insufficiency of what he’s saying, what he’s been saying for the weeks since Five’s been back, or more what he hasn’t been saying, which is “You almost died.”
Five blinks. “I’ve almost died before. Lots of times.”
“Yeah, but—“ Sam runs his hands through his hair, would turn to pace but the room is too small and Five’s in the way. “This whole… this Nadia thing, this wasn’t just zombies, or Van Ark. This was… this was a human. This was a person, and she wanted to kill you. She would have done it too; she got close. She got too close, Five, alright?”
“I know,” Five says, now looking a little angry herself. “I haven’t forgotten.”
“And I couldn’t do anything about it,” Sam snaps. “I couldn’t stop her, I couldn’t help you, all I could do—“
“What are you talking about? You did stop her,” Five steps a little closer, though she’s still frowning at him. “You saved me, Sam, you—“
“You weren’t meant to be at New Canton at all,” Sam’s almost shouting now, and how… when did that happen, when did he cross the line into near-shouting? “You were meant to be here, not where I can keep you safe or anything, never that since I can’t keep anyone safe, I just look at my monitors and try to at least let you know what’s coming your way even though I can’t do anything about it. But at least I can do that, at least I can cover your blind spots. And she—Nadia took my job, and that was alright, that bothered me but there wasn’t much I could do about it since I thought she’d do a good job, and she didn’t, she tried to kill you.”
This is certainly among the longest conversations they’ve ever had face-to-face, and Five’s looking a little stunned now.
“And you know why she tried to kill you?” Sam says, and the truth is pressing up against the back of his throat but he can’t stop it from coming out now. “Because of me. Because I told her you’d been the one to take Lem’s headset, she tried to kill you. If you’d died, if you’d—“
Five steps close, very close, and it’s either that or how she reaches out and takes both of his hands in hers that shuts him right up. Has she ever touched him before? He can’t remember, but also most of his brain has just been turned offline, all things narrowed down to her hands wrapped around his.
He hadn’t felt cold, but her hands are burning warm in his and he thinks he’ll feel the chill when she lets him go.
“I didn’t die, Sam,” she says. Soothing, low, like you’d talk to a frightened child. Which isn’t far from the truth, Sam has to admit. Her eyes flick over his face, uncertain again, a look he doesn’t often see on Five. “You know why I didn’t?”
Sam doesn’t move, just looks at her. God, she is magnetic, and he’s often thought so, but hasn’t experienced it from quite this close and has to fight the urge to run away from the sheer power of her.
“Because you brought me back,” she says. She swallows, bites her lip, and Sam can’t help it if his eyes fall down to track the motion. “Because you brought me home,” Five says.
“You came home,” Sam says. Repetition, reassurance, a reminder that she is here and alive and… and holding his hands, right.
“I did,” she says. And moves even closer, one hand releasing his, but he only has a second to think ah, shame, before she’s bringing it up to his shoulder. And then, after a searching look into his face, to the side of his neck. “I’m home.”
She kisses him. Five kisses him. Keeps holding on to his hand, the light touch on his neck sliding up and into his hair. Sam puts his free hand on her hip, the small of her back, because this is real and really happening and he needs to touch her, needs to keep proving it to himself. She’s alive and she’s here and she is pulling him closer and kissing him.
They break apart, but don’t go far. Sam tips his head down just far enough to rest his forehead against hers. She closes her eyes, and lets out a deep breath. Huh. So, maybe Sam hasn’t been alone in this, then. He wonders for how long.
“Where did you even find daffodils?” He asks, whispering it in the short distance between them.
Five’s eyes open, and she smiles. Almost laughs, even. Another new thing, wow.
“Daffodils are great. What’s your problem with daffodils?”
“Nothing, no problem,” he says, letting go of her hand only so he can wrap both of his around her, pulling her in close to his chest. “They’re nice. Really brighten up the place.”
“Still a big hole in the roof though, I haven’t got around to patching that,” she says, and he can feel it almost as much as he can hear it.
“Well. Yeah. Apart from that though, it’s really looking quite nice. You know. Comparatively.”
“Homey, even?”
He squeezes her a little tighter, and presses a kiss to the top of her head.
“Yeah. That.”