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Five meets Dolores twenty-nine days into the apocalypse.
He’s managing, or at least he tells himself he is. There’s no guide for how to keep going in a wasteland like this. No private training that readied him for surviving the end of the world. All he has is the fading hope that he’ll get the calculations right, eventually, and then he’ll be right back where he’s supposed to be. When he’s supposed to be. He can stop the apocalypse. He won’t ever have to bury his siblings again. He won’t have to see them like that—burnt and buried under the rubble of what used to be home. Five had only recognized them by the umbrellas tattooed upon their wrists.
He couldn’t bury everyone. He tried. Oh, how he tried. Choking over tears as he tried to wipe away the ash on Allison’s face, as he tried to rearrange Klaus into something that looks like sleeping, as he tried to close Diego’s eyes. But Luther’s body was too heavy to lift from under the wreckage. He couldn’t find Vanya. He couldn’t find Ben. He wanted to hope—but what were the chances that they were alive out there? Wandering what was left of the world like Five was?
Five knows they’re gone. He doesn’t want to think about it.
So, he focuses on survival. How to get to the next month, next week, next day. How to survive the next hour when ash rains from the skies and the storms pollute his lungs. He makes do with what he can find, scavenging from storages that hadn’t been completely destroyed. He takes shelter in a store as another ash storm rolls in, with black clouds blotting out the sky like an artificial night. It’s near empty, almost completely hollowed out with destruction, except for her.
She’s standing at the end of an aisle, motionless but...there. She’s staring at him with vacant, plastic eyes, but something in the way she stands, the slight tilt of her head—it feels like she’s watching him. Judging him, maybe. Or just waiting. Five stares back for a long time. He knows that she’s not real. He knows that she’s just a mannequin. But, the longer he looks at her, the harder it is to let that fact settle in.
She’s the first…person…he’s seen in weeks.
She has dark eyes, and a whole body, and she is not a corpse.
And Five has been so alone.
“Hello,” greets Five. It comes out like a croak; his voice is hoarse from the ash he breathes. He makes a mental note to scavenge for a better cloth to cover his face. He offers a slight wave. She doesn’t reply. He coughs, and tries again. “Not much of a talker, are you?”
That’s alright. Five gets it. He understands.
He wouldn’t typically be this enthusiastic to meet people, and if he were back home he would have never imposed himself onto a stranger like this, but it’s been a very harrowing couple of weeks. “Do you—” begins Five, hesitantly. “Do you want to join me?”
She doesn’t protest. Five takes it as agreement.
It makes sense, of course, that they should keep each other company. It’s a dangerous world out there, especially now. Five adjusts his wagon behind him, and she follows along as he continues his search for more food. He finds a couple of cans—dented, but still whole—and adds them to his stash. If he rations it carefully, it might last until he gets to the other side of the city. He might find something out there. Maybe.
It isn’t until they’re hiding out in a library several days later that Five realizes that his newest companion has never shared her name. He feels rather rude for not asking. She doesn’t take offense, too kind to hold a grudge over a slip of the mind. Five introduces himself, and she reveals her own name in turn.
“Dolores,” muses Five. “It suits you.”
Five thinks he can almost see her smiling at the comment.
It’s a nice change from her usual, impassive expression.
She’s much more talkative after introductions are made, which is good, because Five was sorely lacking companionship and Dolores was intelligent. He talks to her about his calculations and she keeps up, catching errors that he missed, that could have been fatal if she hadn’t pointed them out. Even Ben couldn’t do that, even if he did provide insightful comments during the times he did understand.
(Five misses Ben, misses him like a gaping wound, and it only widens when he finds a book in his newest shelter. It has Vanya’s name on the cover and it has a story of Ben’s death within it. He wants to burn it, like turning the story to ash could undo the events that are told in its pages, but he can’t make himself do it. It is his most prized possession. It is the only piece of his family that he has left.)
It makes Dolores his steadiest presence.
He can rely on her throughout everything. He can trust that she won’t leave him. They’re friends, after all. She stays by his side, even as he reminisces and wonders about what is happening in a time before this one. It makes him wish that he could have befriended her back in his proper time, but he supposes that might have been before her years.
Five has to move on from the library after a week. “I’m running out of food,” he mutters, kicking aside debris so the wagon he pulls behind him won’t damage its wheels on uneven paths. “I’m going to have to start hunting rats at this rate. If there’s any even out there.”
He’s seen some roaches around. He hasn’t eaten any. Yet.
He’s almost desperate enough for it.
You’ll figure something out, says Dolores, in that steady voice of hers. It’s a comfort, the way she speaks; always calm, always sure. You always do.
“You’re too optimistic.”
And you are far too pessimistic. Your hunger is making you testy.
Five lets out a small laugh. She’s teasing him. “Yeah?” he returns. “I bet if you had a stomach, you’d be complaining even worse.”
Nuh-uh.
“You would too.”
Would not.
Five huffs. “I’m not doing this.”
Dolores is stubborn. He knows that she could keep this back and forth going until Five passed out from exhaustion, beaten by her sheer will. He’s been more tired lately. He puts it up to the lack of food. He hadn’t jumped in over a month now, unwilling to waste those calories when he could walk. He doesn’t have Vanya, and those peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches she would make for him—tasty and high sugar. His cheeks are hollowing, and his ribs have started to poke past skin. He misses Vanya.
You should rest, Dolores tells him.
“I don’t have time to rest,” Five snaps. His voice is sharp, harsher than he intends. “You think I can just sit around while the days keep slipping away?”
It’s been over a month in this hellscape, and Five doesn’t know what to do. He’d hoped that he could get a few days rest, then get back home, but there is no place to get a proper rest here, no way to be properly fed. He survives, and he does not have the luxury for more than that. It feels like time is slipping through his fingers, and he wants to grab it, yank it taut, and pull himself back to where he belongs. He can’t let himself think about the what ifs. (What if he can’t go back home? What if that’s lost for good?)
“I can’t. I can’t,” he continues. Frustration is clawing its way up his throat. “I don’t have anything! I don’t have food, I don’t have shelter, I don’t have a plan—I don’t even have my family!”
But you have me, Dolores reminds him.
“But I have you,” he echoes softly. He does. He does. Five didn’t mean to yell. Dolores is his best friend. He’s grateful she’s stuck by him. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have…”
It’s okay. I understand.
She always understands. She’s too good to him.
“I just,” Five’s voice cracks, and it is barely a whisper. “I want to go home.”
I know. You will. I promise, you’ll figure this out. But you have to take care of yourself too. You can’t fix anything if you’re dead. Like how Luther and Diego and Allison and Klaus and Ben and Vanya are dead.
They couldn’t stop the apocalypse. And Five had to bury them.
And Five is alone. (He’s so grateful for Dolores.)
“Yeah,” he says, and swipes at the tears. He’s supposed to be stronger than this. He has to be stronger than this. How’s he going to make it through this if he isn’t? How’s he supposed to get back home if he can’t? “I’ve got to keep myself alive to get back to them. And you’ll stay with me until I do?”
Of course! We’re friends, aren’t we? Best friends?
Five nods. “Best friends don’t abandon each other.”
He swallows his next words. Dolores patiently waits for him to try again.
“Could I—” starts Five, haltingly. “Can I have a hug?”
It looks like she’s smiling. Of course you can.
Five is embracing Dolores in a heartbeat. Her arms do not hug back.