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The orange glow of this timeline casts its light down the subway steps. The trip above was a success, in that they got what they needed and only had to duck for cover once. Lila impossibly catches herself missing the tedium of a Target run, back when her life wasn’t on the line to pick up a can of expired shaving cream, rueing the complete 180.
“You really are getting scruffy,” Lila says. She reaches a hand out and brushes her fingertips against Five’s cheek. The motion scratches; his hair surprisingly coarse. “Rakish, even.”
“Yeah, well.” Five’s arms flap around him, gesturing rudely to the universe.
Diego floats to the surface of Lila’s consciousness as he always does when she lathers up Five’s face to shave. It’s a memory on a loop that felt endless even before Lila blinked into this subway station– Lila, sitting on their bed, watching, fuming; Diego, hazy in the bathroom mirror, skimming his cheek with a blue Gillette razor– so different from the emergency dagger untouched and hidden behind the toilet. Diego’s face wan with the crushing monotony of the working day set before him, and Lila tasting blood on her tongue from the swell of resentment she feels when she sees him retreat in real time even further away from her and their children, day after day after day. How doesn’t he realize she shares the entirety of all his ennui and carries her own, too?
Lila wipes her hands on the least grimy towel she can find. Five gingerly sits on a rusty folding chair they scavenged on their twenty-seventh trip above. The fluorescent lights drone as Lila picks up the razor and holds the blade over the fire to warm. The weight of the knife in her hand feels like nothing and everything. She’s held and thrown a thousand knives, a muscle memory of use so strong she doesn’t even think about her grip at all, featherweight, all in the fingertips. Lila appreciates the worn smooth bakelite handle shimmering in the glow. Diego would like this razor. She shivers. She’s loath to move her hand back out of the fire.
Since Lila was four she never got dressed without a knife and vividly remembers a time when she wasn’t dressed and still instinctually threw a knife too, hand to hand. Assassin to assassin. Oh, how she really wanted to dig the edge of the blade into Five’s thigh that day, the absolute prick, but fuck if it wasn’t fun. He gave as good as he got and Lila is damn good. She laughs.
“That’s not comforting,” Five says. His mouth quirks up into a half smile. A dollop of shaving cream falls onto his chest as he sits up straight, his eyes watching her every move, as usual. Lila assumes it’s habit. A knife in her hand could hardly ever be neutral, and certainly not so close to his jugular, even after all this time. But there’s a warmth in his voice that’s been there for weeks now. Five closes his eyes and settles back into the chair, tilting his head and to the left, exposing his neck to her.
Lila’s fingers start to singe and she pulls back from the flame. When Lila took over beard duty, it was purely from a place of logic. Any excess nick could lead to infection that could lead to death in this unyielding hell hole and then they would really be fucked. And Five is nothing if not fastidious about his appearance. Crisp suit, clean shave, even in the liminal, even to no one, just her and her sad Mom Uggs. It must be done, otherwise he gets cranky, so Lila volunteers as tribute.
Lila presses the hot blade firm against Five’s cheek. Five suppresses an almost imperceptible startle. She spots it in the split second his eyes tighten and his jaw feathers but he releases his alarm almost instantly. At the end of the day, it was Five who pulled the trigger, no matter who gave the order to kill her parents. Who could ever forgive what’s been done to her family?
Only, Lila has moved through it. Once so sharp, now just dull. So many years without powers and so many bigger things to care about, like baby formula. Planning the perfect family Halloween costumes. Taco Tuesdays. Lila knows Fives thinks she’s just bluffing, cooperating out of necessity or job security, but he doesn’t know that the bite isn’t there. She lets him believe that. Forgiving is not always forgetting. She could still gut him five ways to Sunday if she wanted to, right here, right now, with this straight razor.
“You’re enjoying this,” Five says. Lila cradles his chin with a steadying hand.
“More if you squirmed,” she says. Lila lightly scrapes his skin in short, sure strokes. She’s in his personal space, eyelash to eyelash, and she can smell his shitty pharmacy pilfered perfume used in place of a much needed shower. She dips the blade into a bowl of rain water and gently forces his chin to the right. “Breathe, weirdo.”
“I am, Todd.” Five cracks open his eyes and fights another smile. The schkk schkk of the knife is loud in Lila’s ears as she finishes up with a careful glide down and over the edge of Five’s Adam’s apple. She hums a little Sondheim. Her fingers feel tingly. She doesn’t want to examine too closely why.
“Done!” Lila drops the razor and smothers Five’s face with the towel, smearing all the leftover shaving cream into his nostrils. Air must be hard to come by so Five grabs for her wrists. His deft hands encircle Lila’s completely, and he holds on to her tight with no hint of give. A giddy rush cracks through her causing the towel to drop from her hands. Shit.
“Who knew four years of railing pull-ups were so effective?” Lila experimentally tugs again at his hold and he does let her go, eventually.
“You would if you didn’t just monkey around in there.”
“I do not monkey around!” Lila gives him a hard shove and moves far away out of his grabbing reach. Five whips his hair away from his face as he shakes his head at her, laughing, another thing she will soon have to take care of for him. Lila doesn’t mind.