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If anything could possibly be worse than Lila’s already worsening situation, otherwise known as being stuck on a magical timeline-jumping subway system for 6 months with your incredibly irritating 65-year-old brother-in-law, not knowing when you’ll ever see your family again, it would be the boredom.
Lila restlessly shifted in the cold seats of the train they had just hitched about 15 minutes ago. It was unpredictable how long these rides could take; one time it had taken them 2 hours to get to the next timeline.
‘Things definitely could be worse,’ She thought bitterly.
She slumped down in her seat farther and farther until she was staring at the roof of the train, watching the lights of the tunnel pass by, counting how many would pass before she would forget what she was doing and get bored again. She kicked her feet out to reach the seats opposite to her, where her previously mentioned irritating brother-in-law Five was sitting, analyzing the map they had and writing in his small notepad. At this point in their journey that’s usually what he was doing, just writing and studying, writing and studying.
What an fucking boring life he leads.
At least one of them was putting in some effort, Lila was just too exhausted to be doing any kind of thinking right now. She didn’t really think Five could ever stop thinking, no matter how hard he tried.
Lila groaned loudly and ran her hands down her face, tugging at the skin and feeling the weeks of dirt and grime on her fingers. God what she would do for a hot shower right now.
She peeked out from between her fingers to see if any of her racket had gotten Five’s attention, lo and behold he sat there undisturbed, still writing in his notepad.
She started to kick the bench he was sitting at, which seemed to work ever so slightly as she noticed his hand stop writing for a moment, and his eyes glancing to her boots before continuing what he was doing. She started nudging his leg with her dirty shoe, which he quickly jerked away from, his irritation starting to show on his face before he finally let out a sigh and looked up at her.
“What.”
Lila blew a raspberry at him and smiled.
“I’m bored.”
Five looked at her for a moment through his eyebrows before going back to his task. Lila scoffed and kicked his leg more firmly, knocking the pen out of his hand, which seemed to tip him over the edge. Lila tried to contain her laughter as he growled, literally growled at her. However the laughter in her throat quickly died as he kicked her leg hard, sending her flying off the seat and onto the cold floor of the train.
“Ow! You fucking little shit, what was that for!” She went to smack him, but being on the floor she only reached his thigh, and it didn’t deal much damage.
“You literally kicked me first, you..!”
Five closed his eyes and sighed, trying to contain his irritation before picking up his pen and going back to what he was doing.
Lila stared at him from the floor before laughing again, twisting around and kicking her feet up onto the bench across from him, then pulling herself to look at him upside-down. She reached in her pockets to see what she had to fiddle around with, returning with a stretched out paperclip, a dull pocket-knife and a tab to a soda can.
‘God, I’d kill for a soda right now.’ She thought miserably, as her throat scratched from the sudden reminder of how long it’s been since she’s drank anything.
A lot of the timelines they ended up on were desolate, and destroyed. Much like the apocalypse from Five’s original timeline, which was starting to worry them but it wasn’t exactly the most pressing issue at hand. The bigger problem hat came from that is lack of supplies, most of the time they were running on empty and in the dirty clothes they had arrived in. Lila supposed she was lucky, if she had to be stuck with anyone on earth in a situation like this, she’d much prefer it be the guy who already survived an apocalypse for 45 years completely on his own, and who had a knack for scavenging and rationing. If anyone knew how to survive on limited supplies, it was the old man sitting across from her, and boy was she grateful for that. Lila had very similar, if not the same training he did growing up, from her mother and from the commission. In many ways, her and Five were very similar, although you wouldn’t catch either of them dead admitting it out loud. However, her experience in surviving apocalypses wasn’t fruitful, so when Five was there chastising her on her water intake, or how much of their rations they should be eating in one day, she almost appreciated it.
“Fiiiiiiiiiiiiiive.”
Lila watched his hand clench around his pen, she could almost see him about to pop a blood vessel.
“What.” He grit out through his teeth.
“Five, I’m hungry.
No response, other than the exhausted look on his face.
She groaned and flopped her hands on the ground.
“Seriously, it’s been like a whole day. Don’t we have anything like… super small… won’t notice is missing?”
Five sighed, but she just barely made out the sympathy lining his face.
“Trust me Lila, in a couple days you’ll notice things missing.”
Lila’s face scrunched up in irritation as she silently mocked him, then started to pick at her nails to distract herself. She almost wanted to take back what she thought earlier about being appreciative of his survival skills, if he was less pretentious about it she might be more grateful.
Another 15 minutes pass… At least, she thinks it’s been 15 minutes, and Lila starts to tug at her thinning hair. It was starting to grow longer than she usually liked it to be, but she didn’t know if she was at the stage of cutting it off with a knife. It’s not like they had any scissors or mirrors to give herself a proper haircut, she wasn’t sure if she would trust Five near her head with a pair of scissors.
His hair was also starting to get a bit long, though he hadn’t complained about it yet. It had started to reach his shoulders and he was constantly brushing it out of his eyes, but he also didn’t seem desperate enough to cut it. Both of their hair were falling out in strands due to the consistent lack of… well everything, that it didn't matter either way. They were probably both going to go bald before they got back home. Five had also started to grow some slight stubble on his chin and upper lip, which he usually tried to keep at bay, though it never really grew fast enough to really warrant sitting down every day and shaving. He was physically about 18 at this point, so she had expected some sort of ugly puberty stache to start growing in, but it was almost poetic the way he seemed to develop so late.
Five had one time told her, during a rare vulnerable moment between the two of them, that during his time in the apocalypse he had grown a beard that reached around to his midsection, and hair that went even farther. He admitted he didn’t really like it, that it was itchy and got in his mouth often, but it helped him stay warm during the particularly cold winters. Lila had jokingly asked if it took him all 45 years to grow it and he answered by punching her in the arm and storming off.
“Have you thought about cutting your hair yet?”
Five stopped writing and seemed to think about it for a moment.
“We have bigger issues to deal with.” He settled on.
Lila rolled her eyes, of course that’s what he’d say.
“Okay, but have you thought about it? Even once?” She pushed.
Five, exasperated, put his pen and notepad onto his lap and gave her a look.
“Lila, please, for the love of god, just leave me alone.”
…
“Sure, yea. Whatever. Can you leave me alone now?”
Lila reached her hands over her head to pick at the frayed fabric of his pants.
“Are you sure we don’t have anything to eat?”
Five pointedly ignored her as he stared up at the ceiling in defeat.
“Five.”
…
“Five, I’m hungry.”
“I heard you the first time, Lila.”
She angrily smacked him on the leg, to which he scoffed and rolled his eyes at.
“Come on, you piece of shit! You can’t lie and tell me you aren’t too.”
“I’ve gone longer.”
“Not in this body you haven’t.” Lila countered, smugly.
“I still remember how it feels, I’ve felt worse.” He spat out.
Lila rolled her eyes and groaned. “Oh my god, I get it! You survived an apocalypse, good for you! You’ve gone through worse, we all get it.”
“That is not at all what I mean.”
Lila scoffed and turned her head away, bloody annoyed at this point, even though she was the one to start the argument. Five was one of the worst people to argue with. He fought like he knew he was right, because usually in most situations he was. Lila supposed she wasn’t much better to argue with, she usually was better off arguing with her fists. Her and Five were opposites in that sense, he loved to be right, it was one of his ugliest qualities and even he knew it. Lila just loved to win, she didn’t exactly care if she was right or not. This made the two of them a force to be reckoned with when a fight would break out between them, which usually took only about 20 minutes of being in a room together.
Lila finally kicked her feet up and around to push herself off the dirty floor. She would ask if there was any shit on her back, but she decided she would actually leave Five alone. Not as a gesture of kindness or her actually doing what he asked for once, but because she was particularly irritated at him. It’s not like he would really be able to tell, with how dirty her jacket already was at this point. She dusted herself off and walked up and down the train, studying the posters on the walls. They all looked like nonsense, weird drawings with words in languages she wasn’t exactly sure were even real. Neither her or Five could make sense of them, or the announcements that came over the PA speakers, which seemed like reversed and distorted English. And while they’d love to transcribe what they were saying, they didn’t really have the technology to do so.
She felt at such a loss regarding their situation. Five barely understood what this place was, where it was in time and how it was taking them to other timelines. The math behind his blinking and time travel was difficult, and tedious, but he understood it well. This felt like a whole new type of math that he had to learn from the ground up with no information. He had been stressed enough trying to find an escape to this hellscape, now having the extra stress of that on his plate, it wasn’t looking good. A lot of their progress has just been trial and error, jumping from timeline to timeline, trying to find the right one to get back home. It had only been 6 months and it was taking a toll on Lila mentally. As hard as she tried to keep her composure, it was getting harder and harder each day. It felt as if a giant black hole had opened up in her chest and was growing every day she spent trapped here. She missed her family so much, her children, her husband, her siblings.
There wasn’t a day that went by where Lila didn’t regret how she left things with Diego. She wished it didn’t have to take months trapped in a train station nightmare to finally get an outlook on their relationship. She would recite in her head the things she wished she said to him, slowly losing hope she would ever get the chance to. Nothing like the thought of never seeing your family again to make you realize you might have taken what you had for granted.
Over and over again, her mind played out what she had said to him. She could still see his face now. Back then she had just needed space from the oppressive world that was motherhood, but now she would do anything to see her family again. The guilt ate away at her. Maybe she shouldn’t have done that… or said that… or…
The world around her suddenly turned misty and she realized with the burning of her eyes that she was crying. She wasn’t exactly sure she knew how to do that still. Five had told her once that crying was useless, and that it just wastes precious hydration.
‘God, He’s so fucked up.’ She laughed but it came out more like a sob, which scared her. She quickly scrubbed her eyes when she realized the train had finally started to slow down.
“Finally.” She sighed, turning around to meet Five at the door closest to where he was sitting.
Five eyed her, as he pushed himself up from his position. If he noticed her red-rimmed eyes, he wasn’t going to point it out. Lila appreciated that. He brushed himself off and let out a deep breath he had been holding in, stuffing his notepad and map into his coat pockets. Lila studied his expression as he stared forward, waiting for the train to slow to a stop. As usual, completely unreadable, but she could just barely make out the bags under his eyes from behind his bangs. Though, she decided she’d extend that courtesy and not point that out either.
The train doors finally hissed open and they meandered out, carefully monitoring their surroundings. Nothing dangerous immediately stood out to them, but they still looked around cautiously. Lila was interrupted out of her train of thought by Five’s quiet muttering.
“3 burnt out lights…trashcan… large stain on column…”
Lila watched over his shoulder as he furiously scribbled down in his notepad.
“You think it’d be worth it to scavenge in that filthy trashcan? It looks disgusting.”
Five stopped scribbling to look at said trashcan, it was overflowing with papers and garbage, but seemed to have a layer of gunk and slimy rot over it all. It definitely did look disgusting.
“Your funeral.”
Lila knelt down to rummage through the garbage, the rotten sludge squelching around her hands, but unfortunately came up empty handed.
“Find anything?” He called out, not looking up.
“Nope.” She emphasized the P sound. “Just a bunch of slime and garbage, and now my hands are sticky.”
Five sighed and continued journaling. Lila kicked the trashcan in a fit of rage, which finally broke his attention away from his notes.
“Stupid fucking train station! I fucking hate it here!”
She grabbed a handful of the garbage and threw them around the room before kicking one of the columns, leaving a small crack in the tiles.
“I just wanna fucking go home!” She yelled, tugging at her hair and kicking the trashcan again.
Five watched her, exhausted, as he let her throw her little fit. It reminded him of his earlier days in the apocalypse, or what he usually reflected on as the Anger stage of his grief. When he was just a young child, maybe 15 or 16 at that point, barely having spent 2 years there. When the weight of his situation was just starting to dawn on him, that he may never go home, he may never see his family ever again, all because he thought he was smarter than his stupid father. The days of dehydration and starvation polluting his mind and causing rippling anger throughout his entire body, it usually looked somewhat like what Lila was doing now. Although the difference was, Five was a teenager then, and Lila was almost 40 now, throwing a tantrum. Five would’ve laughed, but he knew better than that. He settled on a sigh and an eye roll as he leaned against the other column as he let her get her anger out, he supposed it was earned.
Finally a minute passed and Lila stood there huffing and scrubbing at her eyes, she threw a look over her shoulder and scowled at Five as he smirked and raised his eyebrows.
“You done?”
“Fuck off. Cunt.”
He scoffed and pushed himself off the column, shaking his head and writing in his notebook. Crack in column tiles near trashcan size of Lila’s boot.
“As much as I’d love to be destroying property and throwing tantrums, we’ve got shit to do.” He gestured ahead to himself, as a way to say you first.
Lila, still slightly out of breath, composed herself and nodded. Shaking her hands and taking a couple deep breaths before strutting off ahead, up the staircase and into the unexplored new world. Five followed close behind, his hand ready to reach for the pistol he still carried around with him before they got stuck here.
When they walked up the steps, the smell of smoke and ash was not ignored by them as they both covered their mouths and noses, already prepared for the world they were going to walk into.
Just like many of the other timelines they came across, a demolished city stood (...although the word “stood” was a bold claim for what they were looking at) before them. This wasn’t Five’s original timeline, though most apocalypses tended to look the same, but from the get-go they seemed to be alone which was a relief to them both.
The two of them stumbled over rubble and burned bodies, looking around to see if any buildings still stood that they could loot. Five felt a growing pit of dread in his stomach as the farther and farther he looked, most of the buildings had collapsed beyond recognition, but he wasn’t exactly one to give up so easily. He did, however, see Lila’s growing frustration and in order to ward off what he assumed may be Tantrum Part Two, he waved her over and tentatively put a hand on her shoulder.
“I’ll search down this way up over there. You search down that way until the broken sign. We’ll meet back here when we’re done.”
He held her gaze with wide eyes, as a way to say ‘Okay?’
“Okay.” She replied, with a shaky exhale.
Lila immediately climbed up a large pile of rubble to get a good look at her surroundings. Not a lot of buildings had any noticeable features to make out what they even had been, so she was just going to have to wing it. She made her way into the first dilapidated building, which seemed to be the remains of an old-fashioned diner. Lila didn’t really worry about any falling debris due to the complete lack of ceiling of the place, but she still tread lightly.
A lot of the tables had been destroyed to hell and back, she could almost make out shattered plates and rotting corpses beneath the wreckage, but any food left behind on the plates had molded beyond any recognition. She uncomfortably wondered if Five would know how safe it was to eat moldy food, and if he ever had before.
Surprisingly, the counter of the diner was still relatively intact. There were shattered coffee mug remains all over the place, with dried coffee stains covering the cracked marble of the countertop. Behind it, the menu was also still intact, showing the specials of the day. Turkey Sandwich on sourdough bread with a side of Cream of Mushroom soup. - $1.50
Lila scoffed at the price. Wherever they were, it wasn’t 2024.
She leaned over the counter to see another corpse, with their skeleton peeking out of the rotted skin. Lila was fairly used to seeing dead bodies at this point, but this one disturbed her particularly. It looked like it was curled up, hiding. The hairs on her arm stood up as she looked away, trying to wipe the image from her mind. She noticed that there was a doorway leading to a backroom, where they hopefully kept their food supply. Her legs trembled as she stepped over the corpse, pretending not to notice when its decomposed arm crunched underneath her boots.
The kitchen was in just as, if not worse shape as the main floor. Her eyes wandered around the room to see if they had any storage, and she felt her heart jump when it landed on a door farthest to the back. The glass on the door had shattered, and through it she could see boxes upon boxes of… what, she didn’t know.
Lila jumped through the door and ripped open the first box to find… shattered plates.
‘Perfect. I was just thinking me and Five needed to start eating our rations on nice plates.’
She ripped open the next box, more plates.
Next box… mugs.
Next box… more plates.
If this next box was more fucking plates… she was really about to do something drastic. What fucking diner needed this many plates? Lila tried to steady her shaking hands as she ripped open the next box, which was noticeably more soft than the other two. Inside of it… Lila almost gagged, but somehow managed to keep her composure. Whatever food they were keeping stored in there was long gone at this point, and completely covered in maggots. She pushed it away, covering her nose at the rancid smell, and turned around fully to try and see if the boxes on the other side of the wall had any better luck.
And after a whopping 10 minutes of ripping over every box in this stupid storage room, all she managed to come up with was one can of beans, and a jar of honey. Everything else had either gone rotten or was completely destroyed, or had been more plates. On the way out, she pulled out one of said plates and threw it at the wall in anger. A shard ricocheted off and hit her in the face, though her mind was so clouded she barely noticed the sharp pain in her cheek. As she made her way down the line of destroyed buildings, she prayed to any type of god Five was having any better luck in his search, wherever he was.
Five was having no luck.
Most of the buildings he had checked out on his path were just piles of rubble, nothing salvageable inside. He had found what seemed to be a bookstore, and checked inside to see if he could maybe find Viktor’s book, any kind of memory of his family. Unfortunately, either he had stumbled into an antique bookstore, or this timeline had ended a very long time ago.
Now, his arms ached as he dug through the debris of the pharmacy he had stumbled across. So far he had come across a lot of pills, but nothing useful to them. He hoped he could maybe find some pain-killers, though he doubted they’d even be in their time of use when he found them. He had also hoped for maybe even some first aid, or possibly some pads or tampons for Lila, but many of the items he found were destroyed beyond use.
During his time in his apocalypse, he had showed up the very day it started, so a lot of the supplies he gathered had not gone bad yet. However his survival skills were not as sharpened as they were today. Back when he was still living at home, despite the physically demanding training and less than ideal father and mother figure in his life, he had all his needs met. 3 meals a day, at the same time every day, and a bed to sleep in at the end of it. Five was used to having food readily available to him, he was used to eating when he was hungry and sleeping when he was tired, and being thrust into a ruined world that had all been taken away from him. He realized very quickly that in order to survive, he needed to adapt.
Which meant his meals were suddenly cut from 3 to 1 or sometimes none a day, and his water intake to about a couple sips every day. He only slept when he had pushed himself to the brink of exhaustion, and every moment awake he spent either scavenging for supplies or calculating a way back home. He had to survive. This also meant he mostly stopped using his powers, blinking took a lot of energy and he did not have enough to spare.
For the first year of his time there, this seemed to work. He was miserable, but alive, and that’s all that mattered to him. Getting out of this hellscape came first, comfort came last. This was something he was having a hard time getting to Lila, though he couldn’t exactly blame her. He supposed he wasn’t exactly ready to tell her (or anyone, for that matter) all of the harrowing near death experiences he had encountered as a child to get his point across.
It had been his first December there, and he had just turned 14 a couple months prior. The summers were scorching but the winters were worse, frigid and unbearable. The cold had been oppressing, with no good clothes or any kind of body fat to keep him warm, he was completely and utterly unprepared. Because of this lack of preparation his supplies had almost run dry, and due to the hazardous snow storms and freezing cold he wasn’t able to go scavenging. He would usually forgo any kind of work at this time, as his sole focus was on keeping alive and staying warm enough so his fingers didn’t actually fall off. Just biding his time until spring.
He should’ve been at home, celebrating Christmas with his siblings.
It was the closest he had ever come to dying during his time there. He didn’t usually like to think back on it.
‘This is pointless’ His mind supplied, as he realized he had been scraping his fingers raw and bloody from the digging. Five sighed, pushing himself off the ground and into a standing position. The world swayed suddenly as he fought off the bout of dizziness from standing too quickly, and supported himself on one of the run-down shelves, which had been sticky with mold. Most of the food in the building were perishable foods, and completely spoiled beyond recognition. Wherever… or whenever this was, it seemed the world had ended long before they showed up. Too little, too late.
“Just our luck.” He mumbled to himself, trying to shove down the rising disappointment he had felt.
As he stumbled out of the building, he saw the ashes falling from the sky and the unmistakable and familiar smell of smoke filled his lungs. He wrenched his eyes shut and tried to contain his breathing and the feeling of panic that had gripped his chest. Five was not about to have some mental break, he needed to compose himself before Dolores saw him like this.
‘Lila. Before Lila sees me like this.’
He exhaled a shaky breath and clenched his fists, effectively tampering down the tight feeling in his lungs and started back to the subway entrance, hoping to god Lila had any more luck than he had.
After an hour or so of searching, Lila started walking back. She saw him leaned up against the entrance to the subway, head down and arms crossed. She flagged him down and almost tripped over a rusty metal pipe while running over to him.
“Any luck?”
He frowned and shook his head. “You?”
“Just a can of uhh… pinto beans and a jar of honey. I also got some tampons from a corner store up a couple buildings ahead.”
His eyes widened.
“Just? That’s a great haul! That could get us through a couple days.”
Now it was Lila’s turn to frown.
“Uh.. us? I found it, it’s mine.”
She knew she wasn’t thinking rationally, and that the hunger was making her more angry than she would normally be, but at this moment she didn’t really care. Five wasn’t touching the shit she rightfully found. Her anger spiked more when Five had just sighed and rolled his eyes, giving her a doubtful look.
“I’m being serious! This shit is mine! Go find your own rations!”
“You need to take your head out of your ass, Lila!” He grit out, starting to get to her level of anger.
“Oh, that’s really rich coming from you, asshole!”
“I’m the asshole? When have I ever kept my rations from you, you selfish piece of shit?”
“You do it all the bloody time! You literally did it earlier on the train!”
“That was very obviously different. If we ate our rations every time we were a little hungry we would be dead at this point.”
“These aren’t our rations. They’re my rations.”
“Lila. Be smart about this. ” He warned.
Lila seethed at him, she was being smart. She was always being smart.
Before she could even comprehend what she did, Five was already stumbling back. Her hand stung and only then she realized she had punched him. His head snapped up and his face contorted in anger as he ran into her, sending them both to the ground. Lila felt a burst of pain in the back of her head, where it had slammed into a piece of broken concrete, and another burst of pain hit her in the face where she had been punched back. For how scrawny he looked, it was always a little surprising to her how hard he could hit.
Five loomed above her, about to get another punch in, before Lila grabbed a fistful of his matted hair and yanked him off of her. He let out a laughably pathetic yelp as she rolled over up on top of him and, with her hand still clenched in his hair, slammed his head back into the same piece of concrete she had slammed into. He wrenched his hands out to grab her face, his dirty nails scratching her cheek hard enough to draw blood, right next to the shard of ceramic that had wedged its way in there earlier. She roughly kneed him in the stomach (Lila pointedly ignored the dribble of blood coming from his mouth), and slammed his head down again.
The two went on like this for, whoever knows how long. They were both trained to fight like little child soldiers, but this was nothing like their training. It was messy and un calculated, their minds both clouded with anger. Eventually they had both tired themselves out like little children, flopping down uncomfortably on the debris, panting and sweating, their aching limbs shaking.
Five slumped over, arm wrapped around his midsection as he gagged onto the rubble, though nothing but blood and spit came up. He blinked away the black spots peppering his vision as he reached behind to the back of his head, his hand coming back slick and red. He laughed at the sight, though not exactly sure what he was laughing at. He turned to look at Lila, who he noticed was also laughing, though it sounded empty.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” He panted.
She shakily raised her arms to cover her eyes.
“I don’t know how you ever did this for 45 years. It’s been 6 months and I want to die. I want to die.”
Five pushed himself into a sitting position, his muscles screaming out in pain, and stared forward. He wasn’t exactly in the mood, or even frame of mind to comfort anyone right now. However if anyone could understand what Lila was going through, it was him. He knew he would’ve wanted this back then too.
“I did it because dying wasn’t an option for me, I guess.” He grimaced.
Lila turned to look at him, the tear tracks on her face were made prominent by the dirt and blood covering the rest of it. She seemed to be silently waiting for him to continue.
“No matter how bad things got… and trust me, it gets really bad. Worse than this. The feeling of wanting to give up, it never goes away. I mean… there were so many points where I really thought that I was never going to see my family again.”
“You’re really doing a good job at cheering me up right now.” Lila snarked.
He huffed, annoyed, and punched her in the leg.
“Don't interrupt me, I’m getting to it.”
The empty sound of silence permeated in the air as Five tried to gather his thoughts. He knew the sound, or lack thereof, all too well. Fuck, his head hurt.
“There’s no point in giving up. It’s a ugly act of selfishness, and the coward’s way out. I know you aren’t a coward, Lila.”
Five turned to her and put a comforting hand on her leg. The most affection he thought he could give without the both of them being uncomfortable. Lila scrunched up her face and wiped the tears away, getting some blood on her hands at the same time. She supposed that was Five’s best attempt at a compliment, without actually having to say anything nice.
The silence stretched on between them for some time. It was almost comforting before Lila, as she usually does with nice things, ruins it.
“Welp, that was stupid as hell. You’re gonna need to help me get this ceramic shard out of my face, by the way.”
A deep frown etches its way on his face as he squints at her and notices the blood trickling from the shard stuck in her cheek. His shoulders fall with a deep sigh.
“How the hell did you get a ceramic shard stuck in your face?”
Lila jumped up to her feet and stretched, her back popping a couple times. She held her hand out and pulled him up to his feet.
She shrugged, “Nunya.” Like that meant anything to him, and walked down to the staircase leading to the subway. “C’mon, hurry up grandpa!”
Five chewed at the inside of his mouth before sighing and following after her.
The two of them stumbled down the stairs, fairly exhausted from their fight earlier. Five winced at the pounding in the back of his head, really hoping all that head-slamming he received back there wouldn’t lead to a concussion. When he hit the bottom of the steps he slammed right into Lila, who had stopped dead in her tracks, staring forward like a deer in headlights.
“Wh-”
“Shh!”
She moved her hand back to smack him, and then pointed at the trashcan she had abused earlier. Five squinted to make out what she was pointing at, and then saw it.
A rat was sniffing around the trashcan, it hadn’t noticed them yet.
Neither of them knew how it got there, it couldn’t have snuck on the last train without either of them seeing it, right? The two of them stood, stone still trying not to scare it off.
Lila stood there, eyes wide, trying to think of what to do next. Then in the corner of her eye, she saw Five reaching for something behind him.
‘His gun.’ She realized.
However by the time she realized, he had already pulled it out and fired a shot, and the rat went completely still. A perfect shot.
“Assassin training coming in clutch right about now.”
Five gave her a less than amused expression before rushing over to the dead animal. It didn’t have a lot of meat on it, it was probably just as starving as they were at that point. Lila followed closely behind and laughed at their victory. At this point in their journey, they hadn’t had the privilege of seeing a lot of meat. Their diets mostly consisted of all the canned foods and non-perishables they could find, Lila found herself missing meat the most.
“Well… it’s not a cheeseburger or anything, but I guess starved rat will have to do it for now.”
“What are you talking about? This is mine.”
Lila laughed before seeing the serious expression on his face.
“Are you serious, Five? I’m sorry for that earlier, and I was the one who saw the rat anyway.”
“Well, I killed it.”
“You said you weren’t even hungry earlier, on the train!”
“I literally never said that.”
She scoffed at him, throwing her hands in the air in defeat.
“You know, for someone who is supposedly not actually 18, you’re acting like a really bratty teenager right now.” Ignoring how hypocritical she sounded.
Five said nothing and continued to inspect the rat for any kind of diseases, or bugs.
“Come on, Five. You’re not being serious, are you?”
He stood up, rat in hand, right as the train started to pull into the station. He gave her a smirk that she didn’t know what to make of, and walked over to the train as it pulled to a stop.
“Wha- Five! You bloody asshole! You better give me some of that rat!”
She ran after him, shouting obscenities as they both boarded. The doors hissed shut and the wheels of the train screeched against the tracks, leaving the train station and timeline as empty as it was when they arrived.