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It hadn’t been even a year since he arrived in the apocalypse.
Actually, to be precise, it was October 1st, 2019, even if Five was unaware of the exact date. It was his fourteenth birthday, another fact of which Five was unaware, even if he occasionally saw the results of his growth in cracked mirrors, and heard the evidence in his voice.
He saw the newspaper when he first arrived, sure. But he didn’t know for a fact how long that newspaper had been there. He only knew that, when he arrived, it was around the date on the newspaper, or somewhere close?
It was the closest thing Five had to knowing what the date was, anyway. He tried to track how many days had passed, writing tallymarks and lines in journals, even if he couldn’t say what the exact date was.
On this eventful birthday, his first ever in this ashen apocalypse, Five was huddled by a fire, Dolores at his side. It was reasonably cold, colder than it should’ve been for October, but this apocalypse also brought with it extreme temperatures. Summer had been brutally hot, and he was anticipating this winter would be brutally cold.
He’d just spent most of this fourteenth birthday foraging for any food that looked remotely not rancid. He didn’t go for anything that truly did look past its prime, though. He’d learned to not eat moldy things, even if he was starving. A lesson learned the hard way.
There were canned goods laid under a scratched and ripped tarp behind him and Dolores. It wasn’t enough for the winter, but he’d do more tomorrow. He hoped the temperatures, or the wind, wouldn’t kick up before he had the chance to get enough food in, but the temperature and weather would never pay him any mind, of course.
The house him and Dolores were staying in only had two walls still remaining upright. God, he really needed to find something with a roof soon, and make that his base for the winter. Well, one with a roof that didn’t look two seconds from caving in, that is.
There had been a dining table in this house they were staying in. It looked like it used to be a beautiful red oak, but it was already split straight in half when Five found the place. There were little drawings on it, and some etched in carvings, too. They looked like children’s names and little stick figures.
There were far too many dead bodies in the apocalypse. He didn’t know why he found no bodies in this house, as it seemed to be inhabited, but he could guess maybe this family was all out together.
He liked to hope they were enjoying themselves, out in town or something together, and maybe that they died after a nice night together. Maybe.
Five had broken the rest of the table down. He didn’t like desecrating the drawings, but he needed the wood.
They aren’t alive anymore, he had thought, with a twinge of guilt.
He sat cross-legged on the ground with a pan of boiling water that was placed over a shoddy grill atop the fire. Five had to sterilize whatever water he drank by boiling it; he remembered that from some lessons back at the Academy.
Five more thoroughly remembered he had to boil the water, however, after he got deathly ill once after he didn’t boil it.
That mistake didn’t happen twice.
He kept finding coffee grounds in so many kitchen cupboards. Five wasn’t a hundred percent sure how to make coffee, and he’d never drank much coffee before.
He eyed a canister of coffee grounds he’d taken from the cupboard earlier. Five liked to read the labels, if they were still on the containers. It was dumb, yes, and he had books he read – including Vanya’s – but sometimes reading the mundane advertisement on the back of the food or drink, or the ingredient list, was still interesting.
Five moved the pan around a little by the handle, the water gently sloshing around in the pan, but not escaping it.
He pulled the coffee grounds canister a bit closer to him, leaving the pan alone for a moment, and popped the lid off the coffee grounds.
The smell of coffee hit him immediately. It wasn’t incredibly familiar, even though he had smelled coffee and coffee grounds from time to time.
Five poured a little from the canister into the pan, curious. He knew making coffee involved adding it to water, right? Maybe this would work?
He stopped after he’d added just a bit of the grounds, since he really didn’t know how much to add.
Five sloshed the water around in the pan again, mixing the grounds with the boiling water. The water turned darker by the second, turning brown. The roasting smell of the coffee filled Five’s surroundings, and it smelled delightful.
He didn’t know how long he was supposed to… brew the coffee, was that what this was called?
He had a cup he’d cleaned a while ago in a rucksack on the little red wagon, which was situated just beside the tarp covering the cans. Since it took water and soap to clean things, both of which had very little supply of, he didn’t use or clean the cup often. It was only when he felt like having a luxury.
Five got the cup out and poured the coffee into the cup until he could see the grounds starting to creep out of the pan and into the cup. He knew the grounds weren’t supposed to make it into the actual coffee when it was finished and ready to drink, so he stopped there, and set the pan on the wagon behind him.
There was still steam wafting away from the cup, so he set it beside the pan on the wagon to cool for a bit.
He pulled Vanya’s book out, and his pen.
Five continued his equations as the coffee cooled. Shit, there was so much more left to figure out. He wasn’t anywhere near having all of this right to go back.
The pen was starting to print ink a lot lighter. Five knew it was almost time to find another. He really didn’t want to be left without a pen.
He looked over at Dolores. She was in a sequined tank top that he had picked out for her at a ruined, fancier clothing store one day. Five smiled.
Five tucked Vanya’s book safely back into a rucksack on the wagon, putting the pen beside it before zipping the bag back into place. He picked up his cup, and tentatively put it up to his lips, leaning it forward slightly.
It had cooled considerably, and the taste was… something. Five didn’t know if he really liked it right away, to be honest. He liked sweet things, definitely. Coffee was not sweet. Fluffernutters (…there goes his brain thinking about Vanya, and what she said in her book about leaving fluffernutters out for him) and Twinkies were sweet. But those were things that went rancid the quickest in the apocalypse.
Five took a bigger swallow of coffee this time. At least it had a better taste than plain boiled water all the time. He could get used to the bitterness.
He made a face after the second sip.
“Yeah, it is bitter. But it’s nice to drink instead of just the water, you know? I’ll get used to it. I kind of like it… sort of,” he spoke to Dolores. He wished she could drink some, but he would just spill it all over her pretty shirt, Five knew.
In the following years, Five would drink loads of coffee, and come to like it. He wouldn’t like going without it very much, but when he couldn’t find water in the apocalypse, having coffee was the least of his problems.
When he got to the Commission, he didn’t have to make his coffee in a pan anymore. He could use a coffee maker. He could even order coffee, sometimes.
Once, though, when he was back home, back at the Academy, after decades and decades, he boiled some water in a pan, and got out the coffee grounds.
He made a cup of coffee for himself in his old way. And he sat down at the kitchen table, and drank it, with no smell of ash, of smoke. Just the smell of coffee, the smell of home, and the sounds of his family talking right outside the kitchen, and a smile on his face.