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Five slides his thumb gently across the worn cover of Vanya's autobiography. His eyes are so wide they rival the size of golf balls, and he picks up the book with a smile he hasn't sported since he arrived in this apocalypse. He can't believe his luck - in a library almost totally decimated, his sister's book miraculously remained intact, one of very few books that have survived. It's nothing short of miraculous.
He reads the entire thing in one sitting.
He devours the book with a hunger he didn't know he was capable of - after weeks of living alone in this barren hellscape, any iota of information about his family is like a wash of cool water against his drying, cracking skin.
Extra-Ordinary: My Life as Number Seven . The title alone makes his heart skip a beat. Until now, he has had zero information about what became of his timid sister.
However, his excitement quickly turns to ash as he begins to dig into the pages. He doesn't know what he was expecting - perhaps a vivid recount of Vanya's illustrious career as a violinist, paired with a firm criticism of their upbringing - even as a child he could recognize how unnecessarily cruel their father was. What he doesn't expect, from Vanya of all people, is a scathing dive into each of their siblings and their, apparently, many faults.
His breath catches when he gets to the section about himself. "It almost seemed fitting that of all the siblings to leave us, it would be him who I fully trusted, and who fully trusted me."
Five's heart drops into his stomach as he reads. His regret begins to bubble. He cannot bear to think about how lonely Vanya had been after he left. His eyes water as he reads her tender rendition of their friendship. To be described as her "sole confidante in the years before he disappeared," it is a title that feels unearned.
Somehow, reading about his siblings is even more painful.
Every word hurts to absorb; each sentence about his siblings' adulthood is a reminder that he abandoned them. Still, he can't pry his eyes away. As he tears through each chapter, his heart pounds faster and faster, thudding so violently by the end that he forces himself to lay down and manually control his breathing. Its swollen beat remains heavy and quick for several painful minutes.
When it finally dies down, he scrubs at his face with grimy hands and lets out a long-suffering breath.
Then, he cries.
He cries and cries and cries until he's hiccuping and gasping for air. It's the hardest he has cried since his first few days since arriving.
What gets him most is the cruel, unfamiliar tone with which his sister describes his siblings. Vanya, who he has always thought to be the kindest of his siblings, has verbally eviscerated each member of their family.
"In the end, there was nothing really connecting the seven of us. We weren't related. We were nothing alike. We were just seven strangers living under the same roof."
Ouch.
It guts him to think that his family, the only people he has ever known, fell apart so thoroughly in his absence. Of course, reading the book evoked a number of strong emotions - guilt, first and foremost. Anger. Sadness. But most of all, disappointment. Up until now, he has been surviving on pure hope, and the mental image of his family welcoming him back with open arms. He goes to sleep dreaming about group hugs, raucous laughter, and a smooth return to a team that remains strong forever and ever. While absolutely devastating, Five's discovery of his adult siblings' corpses had at least reassured him that, even in the end, they were together. A team.
Now, that illusion is shattered, because apparently every single member had A) Split off and headed on their own path, and B) turned out to be a terrible person. Luther, a soldier stuck in the clutches of their father. Allision, self-absorbed and manipulative. Diego, an imbecile, a fool, a dropout. Klaus, a drug addict.
And Ben, dead.
That revelation had wrung a sob out of his throat that didn't stop throughout the entire chapter. Discovering that Ben had died just a few years after his own disappearance had been gut-wrenching; to think, if he had just stayed for a little longer, he might have prevented his brother's brutal demise.
He might have prevented all of his siblings' deaths.
This thought plagues him as he cries himself to sleep. It's the same thought that has haunted him every waking hour since he discovered their corpses.
How cruel it is that this book, this miracle he thought he discovered, turned so quickly into another element of the apocalypse that hurts him. Everywhere he seeks comfort, he finds only pain. The book is no exception.
A couple weeks later, Five discovers what would become his most vital resource for the next 45 years. A hand, shiny and plastic, sticking out from the rubble of what once was a department store.
He grasps onto it and pulls with the full force of his body, straining against the mass of rock and concrete pinning it down. Finally, the mass relents, and he is sent sprawling back with the torso of a mannequin cradled in his arms. He clutches onto it for dear life and stares at her lifeless blue eyes.
For the first few days, he doesn't do anything but stare at the manequinn. It's nice, he thinks, to have another human face to look at that isn't rotting or melting or pulverized. He side-eyes Delores (yes, he has decided she has a name) as he searches for food or as he sets up a fire at night. Every time he makes a decision, however small, he looks at her for a faux sense of approval.
A week passes before he actually starts talking to her.
At this point, it's been nearly half a year since he found himself trapped in the apocalypse. The starvation, the inhumane conditions, the lack of medicine and water - it all sucks. But above all, loneliness is the real killer. So he cracks, and starts speaking to a manequinn, because he barely remembers what it feels like to talk anymore and he knows he will go insane if he lets go of this last scrap of humanity.
Initially, it's small quips. "Didn't expect that," he mutters under his breath, turning over his blanket to discover a nest of roaches swarming below. He glances at Delores as he says this, and the painted-on sparkle in her eyes makes him feel like she understands.
Eventually, it turns into real conversations.
"East or West, Delores?" he asks, turning to ask his companion. She looks at him with that knowing smile as she leans back in the little red wagon he pulls behind him. She's crowded in with some emergency food-stock, some scrap tools and Vanya's book, which he makes a point to keep but never opens.
"Yeah, I know we've been heading straight for a while now, but I think the East side of the city used to have a big commercial district, so maybe we can snag some new clothes or something if we look hard enough." He pauses to wait for her response and sighs, "Okay okay, good point. I guess we can wait until tomorrow."
As he sets up camp for the night, he feels a prickle of self-consciousness while chatting with Delores - which is ridiculous, of course. Because she is not a real person. But still, all this time, the only thing he seems capable of talking to her about is surviving, surviving, physics, math, and surviving. In the brutal depths of the end of the world, it's difficult to have a personality when all you can do is keep on keeping-on. He feels like he's been stripped bare of all his interests, his traits. He's been boiled down to the rawest parts of himself, which can only afford to think about staying alive.
"I feel like I never tell you anything about myself, huh?" he says, staring at Delores. She stares back. "Maybe we should get to know each other a little better, since we'll be around each other for ... for forever."
He ponders how he should start, and his gaze drifts to the book sitting innocently in his wagon. He hasn't cracked it open since that first devastating read-through, but he also couldn't bear to part with the last written remnants of his family. He pulls it out and dusts off the cover.
"I should probably start with my family, I guess." And so he begins re-reading the book, this time out loud. It hurts a little less the second time, because he has someone who he can look to for reassurance, who can comfort him in silence. His voice cracks as he narrates his sister's painful assessment of each brother, sister and parent, but Delores doesn't mind.
This time, as he reads, he feels lighter rather than heavier. With Delores sitting across from him, he can stop and voice his own thoughts between chapters. He can finally get the guilt and sorrow off his chest.
When he gets to his own chapter, he comments on how much nicer Vanya is towards him, as compared to the rest of his siblings. "Even though I abandoned her, she still speaks about me fondly. Isn't that something?"
Halfway through, he's crying again, but not with the intensity of his first go-through. "I miss them so much. Even if they turned out to be total assholes," he sniffs. Delores just smiles at him, and it gives him the strength to keep going.
For years, it became their routine. Every week, if he still has the energy, Five sits and reads to his partner from whatever book he is able to scavenge. The stories, no matter how boring or how long, are what keeps him from going completely stir-crazy. They are reminders that there was life, once upon a time, on this barren planet. Humanity and civilization were not figments of his imagination, they were real. The thought makes him feel less alone.
Whenever he has no new reading material, they go back to Vanya's autobiography.
As the years passed, the bone-deep hurt the book once inspired slowly ebbed away. After the first few re-reads, the sharp words became rounded by familiarity. Now, Five is older and more mature. He can look past his gut reaction and cherish the book and its contents. At the end of the day, it's still a reminder of his family.
He accepted long ago that they would turn out to be a dysfunctional mess. He has sorted through those feelings a million times. His siblings certainly ended up in strange corners of life, but Five finds a twisted comfort in the knowledge that they, at least, aren't stuck in this hell. However miserable they were, they were free to live by their choosing. They didn't have to worry about the things Five does.
The book has become his safe haven, a place he can return to when he needs to remember a happier time. By now, it's so worn that the ink on the page corners is starting to smudge from how much he has thumbed through it. It doesn't matter, anyhow, since each line has been seared into his memory. If he wanted to, he could rip out every page and still recite the whole thing like poetry.
This fact is what eventually spurs him to begin using it like a notebook. Until now, he has scrawled his equations onto every paper and surface he came across, but refused to deface his sister's precious novel.
Every other book, which he had a significantly smaller emotional-attachment to, was not spared from his frantic writing. However, it's gotten to the point where he cannot afford to keep any more volumes, because his little wagon only has so much space, and he is too frail to lug around so much unnecessary weight. The only solution, he knows, is to consolidate all his findings into one book - one place where he can continue his studies and which he knows he'll keep by his side anyway.
So he relents, and he begins to transfer his most important findings into that invaluable little book. His newest breakthrough is scribbled beside a searing barb at Luther's ego, his list of potential solutions are written next to a description of Klaus's first overdose. Each idea becomes tied to a memory of his loved ones. Five imagines that they fuel his calculations, an invisible source of power bridging his motivations to his actions.
Vanya's autobiography becomes the pathway to getting out of this dusty hell. The contents of this miracle book are invaluable - they contain his reason to keep surviving and the equations which will let him escape.
He is fifty-eight years old and shaking like a wet dog. Clutching his miracle book with both hands, he stares wide eyed at his own handwriting, at the numbers which spell out his freedom. There it is. He has finally, finally cracked the code, and he can go home. After forty-five gruelling years, the answer to his prayers stares up at him from the inside cover of Vanya’s autobiography.
It’s the only thing he has left, at this point. His wagon, his rifles, even Delores - he had to leave them behind when he was sucked out of the apocalypse and deposited in the Commission. It is only this little book that he has left, tucked safely into the inside of his jacket pocket. Within it are all the memories, thoughts and evidence he has left of his old life. This one book has been with him from the very beginning, and it is about to carry him, finally , across the finish line.
He kisses the cover, closes his eyes, and then disappears in a flash of blue, just as a gunshot goes off in the distance.
Suddenly, it is 2019, and six faces gape at him as he smacks onto the wet ground inside his childhood courtyard. He is home.
When the dust has settled and his siblings have hurled all their questions and accusations at him, he finds himself in the living room with Vanya. They stare at the hideous portrait of himself above the fireplace.
There is so much he wants to say, so many feelings he needs to convey. His hands are stuffed in his pockets, and he can feel the reassuring presence of his little miracle book.
This book, which has seen every version of himself, from thirteen to fifty-eight. Now, he is back in his thirteen year old body, before it has accumulated the hundreds of scars the apocalypse carved into him. He is back in the body which first discovered the book and read through it with that violent, sobbing desperation. He can still picture himself, tiny and malnourished and dirty, flicking through the pages with tears in his eyes. It feels like eons ago, it feels like yesterday.
He doesn’t know how he can possibly convey how invaluable this one little book is. But he wants to, because he knows how much it will mean to Vanya.
He turns to face his sister, who is looking at him with those round, doe-eyes. She looks so young . He doesn’t know what to say. But he speaks anyway.
“Read your book, by the way.”
Her mouth opens slightly, as if to defend herself.
“I thought it was pretty good, all things considered.” An understatement of the century.
“Yeah, definitely ballsy, giving up the family secrets.” He looks at her with piercing blue eyes. Blue on brown. He’s the same height as her even at thirteen. “I’m sure that went over well.”
She swallows, looks at her feet, and mumbles out in that tiny voice of hers, “They hate me.”
Her eyes swirl with regret. He can tell she thinks it was a mistake to publish it.
Reassurance sits at the tip of his tongue. The words have already formed in his mind.
It's not a mistake.
That book is precious.
That book is the reason I'm here.
The others might hate you, but that book saved my life.
He wants to tell her about everything. He wants to make her understand how much he has missed her, how much he has gone through to get to this moment. He wants her to see every single time he curled up under a ratty blanket with that book in his pocket, every single time he read it to Delores, every single time he grabbed it for reassurance after another kill for the Commission. He wants her to feel every emotion he felt while reading it.
He thinks about the sullen portrait of her on the back cover of the book. He thinks about his own younger self, looking at that portrait for hours and hours and hours while hunched over in a storm, staring into the only image he has of what his sister looked like all grown up.
He looks at that same face now, alive and breathing right in front of him. She still looks so naive. And he knows, looking at her, that he cannot say what he wants to say.
That little miracle book is his secret, his treasure, his heart and his brain. But to make Vanya understand that, he would have to explain too much, reveal too much of his own suffering. He cannot burden her with all that - not while they still have a world to save.
“Oh, there are worse things that can happen,” he says.
And he leaves it at that.