Chapter Text
Five is used to surviving.
Used to hauling himself out of the darkest and deepest pits his mind could conjure up. Used to gritting his teeth against the harshness of the universe and continuing to fight despite the way his hands shook.
He spent forty years- four fucking decades- in an apocalyptic hell, where he buried his family and lost his mind. He remembers breathing nothing but ash and decay and aching with a hollow hunger that never really went away.
Along the way, Five’s humanity crumbled until there was nothing left but the ongoing mantra of survive, survive for them, and influx of numbers and desperate calculations running through his broken mind. By the age of nineteen, Five had learnt that he would do anything to keep his heart beating. And by extension, his siblings.
When he joined the Commission, his desire to live, for his siblings to live, was twisted and pointed at innocent people. Five looked at mothers, fathers, children and siblings and pulled the trigger, all in the name of saving his family.
For them, he became a monster.
Lila is so painfully similar to him, that on bad days, Five wants nothing more than to rip her head from her shoulders and on good days, he cannot stand to look at her because of the grief she makes him ache with.
In taking away her family, he pushed directly into the Handler who twisted her love and grief into a weapon. It hurts knowing he condemned a child to his fate. It hurts knowing he would do it again if it meant his siblings stayed breathing.
Six years ago, when they hadn’t found Allison yet and when Luther had not yet given up on searching for Sloane, Five broke into Diego and Lila’s apartment.
In a whirl of panic, his mind full of Diego’s pale face covered in ash and bullet wounds, he had stumbled his way to their bedroom and latched onto Diego’s wrist, looking desperately for a pulse.
It was only then, when he felt the reassuring beat against his fingers, did he notice Lila. Heavily pregnant, hair in disarray, and clutching a knife, she stared up at him, shoulders tense.
The Commission truly never let them go, Five thought in that moment. Here he was frantically assuring himself that his brother was alive and breathing, that he hadn’t been killed when he was not there. And Lila, pregnant with her first child, sleeping safely beside her husband and she still kept a knife close by.
They had stared at each other in silence, Diego sleeping unawares between them.
Five blamed the words he spoke on his fragile state of mind at the time.
“I’m sorry.”
Lila had not broken eye contact for some time, leaving them both still in the dark. Then-
“Diego tells me your fuckwad of a father never let you see Lord of the Rings,”
That’s how Diego had found them both in the morning, on opposite ends of the apartment’s shitty sofa, far away from each other as possible, and watching as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli defended Helm’s Deep against attack.
Over the years, they both mellowed out. Five got a job at the CIA, putting all his Commission training to a good cause (it was an easy way of keeping himself informed and his family safe). Having children forced Lila to become more gentle, less angry. There were times she needed a break and she would call up Five, the night ending up with Five owning less alcohol and having to call Diego to pick Lila up.
The first time Lia was shaken awake and she didn’t lunge for her knife, Five took her and her kids out for ice cream. The first time Five ate an entire plate of food without hoarding some for later, Lila stayed up all night watching movies with him.
Sometime over the six years Lila became family and Five was willing to do anything to keep her alive, to keep her breathing like his siblings.
Which is why, when they had spent the better part of thirty hours wandering around the subway, Five stops Lila.
“You’re giving up?” Lila snarls at him, all her panic apparent on her face, “It barely been two days, Five!”
“Exactly!” Five snaps back. He is a collage of broken pieces that don’t fit right, that have been worn down until there will always be gaps of himself missing. But in his core he will always, always, keep his family alive.
‘Two days, Lila! With no food, barely any water! If we keep this up, we. Will. Die. And then we’ll never make our way back to them.”
Lila glowers at him, her face twisting in anger. He’s right, he knows she knows he’s right. Five has felt what she’s feeling, that insatiable need to keep going, keep trying. But he also knows what it leads to. Nearly dying just three days into the apocalypse.
Not even two days into their nightmare, Five’s apocalypse armour, that had disappeared bit by bit over the years, is back. His bones scream with survive, just survive, and when he looks at Lila, he sees the Handler’s creation staring back at him. In the face of a possible eternity trapped together between time, their guards are back up.
“Fine!” Lila spits as him and Five lets her. As long as she lives.
It’s the first of many arguments between them in the subway.
Just after is Lila’s very first apology to him.