Work Text:
Time moved differently in the subway. It took Five almost two years to notice. Sure, their hair grew and Lila joked about going grey, but his face-- his now seemingly perpetually youthful face-- and hers seemed to almost suspend time. He wondered if this was really purgatory. They could grow dirty and tired and cold, but the substantive stuff never changed, never aged.
He had time to ponder stupid things like aging with their now endless supply of time. Neverending train rides gave him the calm to think. Not just survive. Not like it had been that first apocalypse when time was a prison and he had no one and nothing to keep him company.
At first, Lila was a poor excuse for a companion. She was mad at her own foolhardy plan. She was mad at Five. She was furious that her children were off somewhere growing up without her, or maybe not. He still wasn't sure how this whole doom subway system worked.
They fought. He liked fighting with Lila. It was about the only thing he did like about her. But even that grew stale by the end of the first year when the people topside were clearly very game to kill them, too.
It was not quite friends. Maybe allies.
She had the kind of smile that ate up her whole face. Swallowed it whole. And Five couldn't fathom what the hell she had to smile about.
But the weird thing about purgatory was that eventually, with time, you start to understand. Just because she was smiling didn't mean she was happy. She smiled because she was insane. No. Wait. She smiled because she had hope. And that was the insane part.
She really thought they were going to find their way off this fucking train.
Lila was smart, he could concede that, but if he, the smartest person he knew, couldn't crack the subways, she didn't have much of a chance.
Still. Hope was a funny thing. It was like gonorrhea. It was catching.
By year three, when they started to play chess, she beat him constantly. Lila was an unrepentant cheat. That first day they played he clocked her shameless cheating, and for the first time it occurred to him that it was odd his brother loved her. Diego who was so moral and kind. Five wouldn't have named those attributes for Lila even with a gun to his head.
The thought that she was cunning and silly and so unlike Diego made him smile.
The first time she touched him, really touched him outside of a swift kick to the groin or face or whatever she could reach, was when he got shot in some odd alternate timeline. That topside was funny. It was so close to their world, including the fact that the alternate timeline Lila hated him. When they went searching topside, the alternate Lila shot him, narrowly missing his heart and nicking his shoulder something brutal.
When Lila jumped, Five swore he nearly passed out. But when he came to in the subway, Lila's-- his Lila's-- face was all screwed up with fury. She was bending an old metal paper clip into a needle and grabbing for some spare red thread. She ripped it with her teeth and started to patch him up. He screamed. And she spat, "Good. I hope this hurts, you old fucking shit. It means you're alive."
He was in too much pain to hear her underlying meaning, You can't die.
In their fifth year, she started to challenge him to silly treasure hunts in alternate timelines. They had to find a purple shoe or steal the monocle from that world's Reginald. It made the days go faster.
Hell, she made Five laugh. And every time he laughed, he ignored how she smiled back at him. Like his laughter was something remarkable, hard-earned.
He learned to ignore other things, too. Like how they had the same sense of humor. Or how she was not as smart as him except maybe she was. He desperately tried to not know how soft her hair was when he cut it. And how he was twisted and rotten and the cause of so much pain. How he was not good. How his only redeeming quality was how much he loved his family.
And yet, sometimes, when he looked at Lila, he wondered if he really did. Because if he loved his family, he wouldn't look at Lila too long. Laugh with her whenever the impulse took him. If he loved Diego, he would force himself to shiver at night and not wrap himself up around Lila to keep warm.
He told himself it was to keep warm. Once upon a time, years ago now, that might have been true.
How unlike Diego he knew he was. Kind and moral Diego. Five didn't think those words ever touched him.
But Lila did. God, did she touch him. Small, innocent touches. The kind that reminded him he was alive. And even if he wasn't, if this was purgatory, what a beautiful and horrible thing to experience.
He didn't call it love. Not even when she fell into him, her head dropping to the right, and colliding with his shoulder. He should have snarled and yanked her away. Instead, he pillowed his head on hers and let it take him under.
He stopped fighting it.
He was tired of fighting it.
He knew she was tired, too.
These new feelings that plagued him were his to shoulder, but he could give her some peace. Six years of searching. Even her spirit wasn't that fanatically boundless. Rest. She had more than earned it.
The greenhouse was the Garden of Eden. It was just them two. The world had not yet begun or it was over. Whatever the case. It was a world of one man and one woman. The original sin, he thought sardonically to himself.
It was a happy place, their Eden. And he didn't know how Adam ever let things spiral so out of control. He had a companion, someone made of him. Lila was his exact mirror. The cunning to his calculations. She thought like him. She was ruthless like him. She was so painfully human like him, too.
And in Eden, he didn't fight it. He looked in the mirror head-on and accepted what he saw. All of her broken parts were haunting echoes of his own. It felt insane that two people like them were given a home like Eden. Strawberries grew there.
He was content.
He was restless, really.
He wanted her so much his teeth ached. He wanted to pull her in his arms and kiss her. Dolores was nothing like Lila. She was real. Breathing. Flawed. And he wanted that. For once in his fucking life, he wanted real. He didn't want to pretend or plot and scheme to get what he wanted. He just wanted. And even if she didn't, it was kind of humbling to know he could want still. That there was time left to learn new things.
And so when she tripped into him, he kissed her.
She kissed him back.
And Five let himself fall in love.