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- Denial
It’s not them.
That was the first thought that entered Five’s brain when he found the bodies.
It’s not them.
These people were adults. So, it couldn’t be them. Right?
His siblings were teenagers. Kids. They were young and wild and alive.
It’s not them.
There were only four of them. He had six siblings. That had to mean something.
It’s not them.
It couldn’t be his siblings. His siblings weren’t dead. They weren’t .
It’s not them.
The man at the end –the one in the fur coat– had his wrist upturned.
It’s not them.
An umbrella tattoo stood out against his skin, plain for the world to see.
It’s them.
The Boy fell to his knees and screamed.
- Anger
It had been a week since he’d found them.
Four days since he’d buried their bodies.
He pounded his fists against the crumbled concrete walls of an old carved out donut shop.
The broken stone tore at his skin, leaving his knuckles bloody and raw. Pain shot through his hands, but still he continued to hit the wall, over and over and over.
Because, even though it hurt and stung and made him want to scream, this pain was still better than the other kind he was feeling. The kind that haunted him like a ghost, lingering always. It was as if a veil had fallen over the world, turning it to nothing but gray and ash.
Once, it had been green and bright and great.
Now it was nothing but a wasteland filled with the corpses of the dead, and a corpse who was forced to live on.
He hated himself.
Once, he’d thought himself brilliant, a clever genius who would one day blow the world away with what he could do.
Now he realized he was nothing but a stupid boy who’s so-called brilliance was actually arrogance in disguise, his cockiness masquerading as ambition.
He hated it.
Hated himself.
Hated himself and who he had been.
Hated himself and what he’d been forced to become.
Blood splattered the concrete wall as he pounded his fists against it harder than before.
Maybe if he hadn’t been so stupid he could’ve done something.
Maybe he could’ve stopped this.
Maybe his family would still be alive.
He punched the wall again, feeling something crack this time.
He screamed, sputtering curses. Blood dripped down his wrist, torn skin dangling on his knuckles. Pain screamed within him, and he couldn’t decide where it was coming from; his broken hand, or his broken soul.
Your family is gone, his mind screamed at him.
He punched the wall again.
- Bargaining
Five had never prayed before.
Dad had told them that religion was a waste of time; that it was a stupid coping mechanism to bring comfort to idiotic people who couldn’t accept that the world was out of their control.
Five himself had always been indifferent to religion. It couldn’t exactly be explained with logic, but, then again, neither could his birth, so he wasn’t exactly in the position to be calling bullshit on anything.
Even so, Five had never prayed before. Not before tonight anyway.
So, here he was. Sitting on his knees in a pile of broken glass and shattered fantasies, scattered debris and lost innocence. His hands were clasped in front of him, his head bowed down low.
He opened his mouth to speak, but the words were stuck in his throat, their taste foreign on the back of his tongue. He closed his mouth, forcing himself to breathe.
Talk your time, darling, Delores gently told him. God isn’t going anywhere
It had been her idea to pray. She thought it might bring him the comfort it always seemed to bring her.
In, out.
He steadied himself.
In, out.
He prayed.
“God,” he began. “I don’t know if you’re out there. Or if you’re even real.
“If you are, there are a lot of things I could say to you. I could ask you what the hell I did to be put on your shitlist, or ask why you let this happen in the first place. I could ask you a hundred questions, make a hundred requests, but tonight I’ve decided to ask only one.
“Please bring them back to me. I’m sorry for what I did, and if you let me go back, I promise I’ll stay this time. I promise I’ll fix this. I promise I’ll pray. I’ll read the Bible. Hell, I’ll go to church if I have to. Just please bring them back. Let me go back.
“Please. I promise I’ll make it up to you. I promise, I promise, I promise.”
Five made promises to God everyday for a month.
God never answered.
- Depression
Five thought about dying a lot.
He fantasized about it in the cold, cruel hours of night, when Delores was asleep and there was nothing but him and the darkness.
It would be easy, really. He could just spend the rest of his days lying right here, curled up in Klaus’s old fur coat and Luther’s jacket until hunger or dehydration finally took him.
Or, he could do it quicker. Take one of Diego’s old knives and drag it over his wrists until oblivion finally claimed him.
He came so close to it so many times, the metal heavy in his hands on nights where the pain felt like it was too much. He’d drag the blade over his arms and legs, enjoying the stinging distraction. All he had to do was cut just a bit lower. Then it would all be over.
The only thing that stopped him was knowing what his brother would say if he knew what he was thinking of doing. He could almost hear the stuttering protests, almost see his brother smacking the blade from his scarred hands.
Don’t do this! Older-Diego pleaded.
Five moved the knife lower.
Five! Please! Diego –his Diego– begged. His Diego, who was annoying and sarcastic and bitter. His Diego, who was young and alive and the brother he loved so very, very much.
Five dropped the knife.
A sob stuck in the back of his throat, but he swallowed it, unwilling to waste his water on tears.
But why? His mind hissed. Why the hell do you still give a shit?
Five didn’t have an answer.
Grief ran her claws along his ribs, clutching his heart in her talons. She lived in his gut and fed off of his very soul, slowly drinking the life out of him until he was nothing but a walking corpse of a boy.
She whispered ideas of death in his ears, sowing thoughts of suicide in his head and watering them with tears of tragic things and setting them in the darkness of the world.
She sat heavy in his chest, filling him with emptiness until he finally fell into a dreamless sleep, not caring if he woke up or not.
-
AcceptanceRevenge
It had been nearly three months since Five had found and buried his family.
Three months he had been here. Three months since he had lost everything.
Three months of long nights with a knife held in hand, wondering tonight was the night.
It had been three months, and Five was done wallowing.
His family was gone. But they didn’t have to be.
Five was a time traveler. He could bend the very fabric of the universe to his will, slipping right through it before anyone realized what he was doing. How could he just give up? He could fix this.
He had to fix this.
He wiped away his tears and put the knife away, replacing it with a stick of chalk. He found the nearest wall and began to write.
Equations swirled in his mind, smothering grief and tearing up her thorny bushes. She screamed and clawed, but Five ignored her, locking grief in a tiny box stowed away in the very back of his mind where no one would ever find her again.
He picked himself up from his nest of coats and jackets, brushing away the ashes that decorated his face and shoulders. He took a breath, forcing himself to remember his siblings and their faces. Both sets, the old he’d buried and the young he’d left behind.
You’re doing this for them, he reminded himself. You owe them this. You can’t give up now.
He loaded his wagon and walked through the city he’d grown up in, collecting supplies and rations. He drank water from a puddle of rainwater, making himself gulp it down to rehydrate. He ate half a can of beans, and bandaged the criss-cross of cuts on his arms and legs, taking an antibiotic to ward off the beginnings of any infections.
More numbers and symbols joined the wall, slowly making more and more sense as a new equation formed in his head. He was still too weak to use his powers, but he worked to become stronger everyday, eating and drinking when he could.
Grief screamed from her cage, but he refused to let her out, smothering her screams of protest.
He would get this equation right and get strong enough to use it to get home, before the apocalypse, before his siblings died. He would find out what had caused this and what had murdered his family. He already had a clue. He had the eye Luther was holding.
It wasn’t much, but it was a start.
It was better than sitting around and waiting for death to take him.
He vowed to keep fighting, keep going, keep surviving.
He looked down at the eye in his hand, his brow furrowed and his eyes narrowing, his heart ablaze with new found hope and determination. And with that, he made one last vow.
“I will find out who this eye belongs to,” he promised. “And when I do, I’m going to kill them if it is the last thing I ever do.”