Work Text:
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
It was always the sounds that woke Five up during the late hours of the night. Not the biting cold, or the rats scurrying around him. Not the sharp edges of the shattered world pressing into his skin as he lay on the damp concrete floor. Not the insatiable hunger he often tried to swallow, an empty ache that gnawed at his ribs like a parasite. Not Lila, tossing and turning beside him, her restless movements stirring the thin layer of dirt that clung to everything like a second skin.
It was the sounds.
No doubt thanks to surviving forty-five years alone, fending for himself. He was a survivor, honed by decades lost in a world that had forgotten how to live. His hearing had become sharp - aware of even the tiniest anomaly. Each creak, each scuttle, each distant echo of something moving in the distance breathed awareness into him, and he had only become sharper from his time spent in the subway.
It had been…what? Five years now?
Five years of barely escaping death at every corner. Five years of not only looking out for himself, but for Lila too.
There had been nights they had been attacked - they had both been shot. He could still remember the sharp sting in his side where the bullet tore through him, and Lila’s scream when one of the attackers tried to drag her away. There had been nights when she had fallen ill, when fever gripped her and left her trembling in a cold sweat and Five had to take care of her the best he could.
He had never been one to care much about anything other than survival, but Lila had slowly changed that. In the first year, he had told himself it was just a matter of pragmatism. That having someone else around meant safety, meant strength in numbers. Not to mention that she was his brother’s wife - if anything happened to her, she would leave Diego, and their kids, motherless. Wifeless. The guilt would be suffocating.
But as more time went by, he realised that it was something deeper than guilt, and obligation. She wasn’t just his weight to carry, or family member by extension. She had become the reason he fought so hard, the reason he kept pushing forward, even when every part of him screamed for rest, for escape from the relentless grind of existence. He had been lost in time before and had almost ended things then. He didn’t - thank God - and things had worked out. But now, with the years wearing him down, the exhaustion creeping deeper into his bones, he knew that if she wasn’t there beside him, he might not have had the strength to keep going again.
He often wondered if Lila had started to depend on him the way he had started to depend on her. There were moments, small and fleeting, when their gazes would meet in the dim light of their makeshift campfire, and he would see something in her eyes. Something more than just gratitude. Something like trust, or perhaps even a quiet, unspoken need. But he never asked, never spoke of it aloud. The silence between them had become a language of its own. Every glance, every brush of their hands, every shared breath felt like it spoke volumes, but none of them ever dared to put those feelings into words.
That was probably for the best, he thought.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
The steady rhythm of water, slipping through cracks of the ceiling above him, caused his eyes to bat open. The sound echoed off walls until it settled in the hollow spaces of his chest.
The darkness was alive around him, much like it always was. It breathed, groaned, stretched out skeletal fingers to clutch at the remnants of what once was. Five lay still on the damp piece of cardboard they had been using as a makeshift bed, his eyes trying desperately to adjust to the lack of light. He knew full well that they never would.
His body shivered involuntarily the second he realised Lila’s limbs were not tangled around him they way they normally were throughout the night. He couldn’t feel her, couldn’t hear her breathing. His hand shot out in the dark, groping through the empty space beside him, but his fingers brushed against only the cold, damp bed. Nothing. She wasn’t there.
A knot of panic twisted in his stomach, and he pushed himself up, hand diving blindly to grab the small box of matches he kept handy beside him. It only took his fumbling fingers a second to find it, and the moment he did he pulled out a single match and struck it against the surface with a sharp flick of his wrist. A small flame danced to life, allowing just enough light for Five to see the kerosene lamp that sat by their shoes. As quick as he could, he crawled over to it and carefully brought the match to the wick of the lamp, lighting it.
His breath was shallow, his heartbeat pounding in his ears as the flame caught, casting a weak glow that stretched long shadows across the platform. The darkness seemed to recoil slightly, but it remained around him, lingering at the edges, waiting for his light to burn out so that it could swallow him whole. No train sat at either of the tracks, and their tunnels ran far into the shadows.
Five’s eyes darted around the room, scanning everything from their little makeshift camp, to the tunnels, to the stairs that led up into the surface world.
“Lila!” His voice was tight as he called out to her, clambering to his feet.
There was no answer. She wasn’t there.
She was always there.
But this time she wasn’t.
He looked around again. He could feel his body begin to shake beneath him and he wasn’t quite sure if it was from the cold or from fear. His gaze settled on the stairs again - she wouldn’t have gone up there…. not alone .
Images of their last attacker - a man whose age sat somewhere between his own and Lila’s, a large scar running over one side of his face, and dirty blonde hair that was too greasy and too matted. He had grabbed her, yanked her by the legs, punched her in the head so hard that she fell limp in his grasp. Rendered completely imobile as he pulled at her pants, her underwear.
Five forced his eyes closed, trying to chase away the memory that he wished had never been burned into his mind. Nothing had happened. He had gotten there before it could - breaking the man’s neck in one swift movement and carrying her to safety.
What if she had been taken again?
What if this time, he was too late?
They had arrived in this timeline too late to do any real exploring, so they don't know what was up there. Raiders? Cannibals? Androids? Monster? All cards were on the table.
Gripping the lamp tightly, Five forced himself to move, stumbling slightly in the dim light as he made his way to the stairs.
“LILA! ” he called again, this time even louder. “ This isn’t funny! ”
He ran up the stairs, heading no caution to what might be at the top. It didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was Lila.
Each step became faster as Five began skipping some. He reached the gates of the station and pushed his way through them, wildly looking around as he did so. Still no sign of her.
The station was old. The air smelled stale, thick with the musk of mildew, old stone, and piss. Everywhere Five looked, decay had settled in - broken glass from shattered windows crunched beneath his bare feet, and graffiti covered nearly every inch of the walls. There were a few strange posters under the chaos that depicted a woman who Five didn’t recognise. The words beneath her were written in a language that he also didn’t know, the symbols twisting and curling together in a way that made little sense. Some sort of propaganda, perhaps?
Where the hell were they?
When he made it to the swinging doors that would lead him outside, Five barrelled through them into the night. The cold air hit him like a slap to the face, sharp and biting as it rushed into his lungs. It wasn’t much different than the air in any other timeline they had been to, albeit a bit more smoggy. The low hum of distant machinery rattled across the cracked pavement in front of him - not too far from where he stood, the lights of what appeared to be a large factory made sure to extinguish whatever starlight there would have been. Other than the factory and the long, never-ending road, the land was barren, void of anything - trees, life, other buildings.
Five stood still, desperate eyes trying to catch sight of movement.
“LILA!” he called out for the third time, his voice breathing through the silence, but it was swallowed instantly by the cold air. The wind howled faintly as it swept through the empty space, tugging at his clothes.
Each breath he took puffed out in little clouds of mist. Panic weeded through him, taking root in his belly. He had no idea what to do, where to look. Every single instinct in his body screamed at him to keep moving, to find her, but the vast, empty landscape felt like it was crushing him. Surely his chest was about to explode, ending him right then and there.
She was gone.
She was gone, and he was alone. Again.
From behind him, just around the corner of the station’s building, a crack sounded. Five’s heart skipped a beat and he spun around, eyes wide. Something or someone had stepped on a twig, or a branch. A friend? A foe? Lila?
Five waited, holding his breath, and for a moment, nothing happened. Then, a soft shuffle across the cold dirt. Lila looped around the corner slowly - her clothes were torn and dirtied, her hair a tangled mess that hung over her face. There was a weariness in her posture, a slump to her shoulders. But she didn’t seem hurt.
At first, relief washed over him and he released his breath. But his calm was short-lived.
“Giving up already?” she asked, her voice was a low rumble that reverberated off of the silence and into his ears.
The question confused him, and he continued to stare at her. Blinking.
“Wh-what?”
Lila’s eyes flickered to meet his own, but there was no warmth in them. Only a cold, distant emptiness that he didn’t understand. She took a slow, deliberate step forward, her movements sluggish, like she wasn’t full in control of herself.
“On finding me,” she elaborated dryly. “You looked for all of two seconds and then decided it was too late. Don’t tell me I’m wrong. I know that look.”
Five’s throat tightened, the words she spoke cutting through him in ways he couldn’t explain. He took a step back, his mind racing, trying to piece together what was happening. The way she spoke, the emptiness in her eyes - it wasn’t her. It was like she was someone else entirely.
“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head as if trying to shake the confusion away. “Lila, I would never give up on trying to find you. I just didn’t know…what to do.” He paused for only a second. “Where were you?”
Lila’s lips twisted into a small, almost bitter smile, her eyes challenging him. She moved even closer. “Never give up, eh?” Her voice was almost sing-song as she ignored his question. “You sure about that?”
Five froze, every instinct telling him to take another step back, but his feet felt heavy. His legs had turned to stone. She stopped only inches away from him, her amber eyes staring almost completely through him.
“What’s going on?” he questioned, his voice a strained whisper. He did not like the tone she had, the expression she had. Had she been brainwashed by someone? Was this some sort of spine-chilling doppelganger? “What happened to you? You’re not…you’re not making any sense.”
Lila’s lips parted, pulling tightly over her teeth. They seemed longer than usual, more jagged. Something was very off.
“Stop lying to yourself, Five.” she said, her voice low against the breeze. “All you ever do is give up. You give up on me. You give up on your family. You give up on yourself. I mean look at you,” She brought her arms up, motioning to him, eyes rolling over his body, dissecting him. He felt his chest tighten. She was sewing needles into him, slowly. Pushing them through skin, muscle and bone. “You’re barely holding it together. How long until you decide to turn your back on everything? Run away like you always do.”
“Lila -” he began but her hand shot out, palm pressing against his heart. She leaned her body close to him, breath warm on his face as she tilted her head, her nose brushing against his own.
Five froze. Her proximity, her touch, it was all wrong - too intimate, too cold, too familiar all at once. What the hell was she doing?
“Admit it,” she murmured, lips ghosting over his own, just barely. “You’ve already given up. We’ve been searching for a way home for five years now, how can we still be lost?”
Her hand slid across his chest like a snake, fingers almost electric as she played with the hem of his collar. Nails scraped lightly across the skin of his neck.
“Lila,” her name came out as nothing more than a ragged breath, dragging up his oesophagus like gravel, spilling through his teeth. “Stop.”
Her eyes met his, dark and unyielding, gleaming with something he couldn’t place. Amusement? Sadness? Malice? He couldn’t tell anymore. This wasn’t Lila.
He tried to take a step away from her, but she curled her grip into his shirt, securing him to her. Her scent filled his nostrils - she smelled the same. How could someone so different smell the same?
“You don’t want to go home,” she told him bluntly. “You’re content staying here in this shithole with me forever, aren’t you? Why is that, Five?”
Her tongue jutted out of her mouth, grazing his bottom lip lightly, sending an involuntary shiver to run down his spine. He flinched, jerking his head back as if the touch had burned him.
Her words weren’t true - he did want to go home. He wanted to get them both home. She knew the reason it was taking them so long to find the right way to get back. The subway system was a goddamn labyrinth. If only he could snap his fingers and send them home right now, he would.
“I’m your brother’s wife,” her voice was nothing but sweet poison, oozing from her tongue, wrapping around him in a way that made him dizzy. “But that hasn’t stopped you from looking at me like you do .”
His heart gave one heavy thud against his ribs, and he opened his mouth to respond, but no sound came out. He didn’t know what to say. What could he say? He had been trying desperately - relentlessly - to push whatever feelings he had for her down, to bury them so deep they would never even have the chance to resurface. He knew that he had grown to - dare he say - love her over the last five years. How could he not? Lila was gorgeous. She was brilliant. She was brave and strong. She was perfect in every way - and though Five hadn’t seen all of that at first, it became impossible to ignore as time went by.
But he thought he had been subtle enough with it that Lila hadn’t noticed. He had tried to be, he really had. Every glance, every fleeting touch, every quiet had been carefully controlled, he made sure of it. He didn’t even want to admit it to himself. She was his brother's wife, he knew how wrong it was. There were lines he wouldn’t cross, no matter how much his heart tried to betray him.
There was no way she knew.
“Do you ever think about me in naughty ways, Five?”
He did.
“Do you ever think I’d be better off with you than with Diego?”
He did.
Lila’s lips moved to his ear. “Do you want to fuck me, Five?”
With all of his might, Five grabbed hold of Lila’s arms and pushed her back, though he couldn’t deny how weak he felt in doing so. “Whatever you’re doing, Lila, it stops now.” he demanded.
Lila’s gaze didn’t falter in the slightest. She didn’t show any sign of fear, only the faintest hint of amusement still swimming through her dark orbs, trying to pull him in. She leaned her head to the side, studying him with almost a calculating look.
“Does it?” she purred.
And then, she swooped forward. Her hands roughly grabbed his hair, lips capturing his own in a bruising, consuming kiss. Rough. Hungry.
Five’s mind screamed at him to stop, to push her away, but his body refused to listen. The temptation was overwhelming, a storm that raged inside of him, pulling him under with a force he couldn’t fight. Her grip on him tightened as she bit his lip hard enough to draw blood - his only relief from the pain was to let out a small whine, to which she took full advantage of. Her tongue was in his mouth in a second, and she was pushing him quickly back towards the building. The back of him hit it with such force that his head bounced off of the brick, and he saw stars behind his eyelids.
How long had his eyes been closed? He hadn’t meant to close them.
This wasn’t right. This couldn’t be happening. But it was. And as much as he hated himself - as much as the guilt began to eat away at him like a moth on old clothing - he couldn’t deny the pulse of need that burned through him, pooling painfully in his core. His hands slowly raised to her hips where they found the soft curve of her waist. Lila’s lips moved from his mouth, trailing along his jawline, down his neck where she began to nip at his skin. He sucked a breath back - every nerve in his body was on fire.
“Lila…you…gotta stop…” he panted, trying desperately to will his fingers to let go. To push her away.
“You really want me to?” She bit into the skin of his collarbone, hard. The pain and pleasure blurred together in his mind. Five grit his teeth together.
Yes. He wanted to say, but that was a lie. He didn’t want her to stop, ever. He wanted her to keep going forever - to strip him bare and claim him as her own. He wanted to hear her scream his name, and watch her fall from a high so intense it would leave her trembling. He wanted her to break him the way he knew that she could - that she probably would do, eventually.
He wanted all of it.
But not like this.
Gathering all of his strength, his fingers dug into her hips and he pushed with all his might. Lila stumbled backwards, and although he was expecting her to be hurt or upset, she wasn’t. Instead, she threw her head back and began cackling. Deep, empty laughs.
Five stared at her as he tried to regain his breath.
“You really are a coward,” she sneered, lifting her hand to wipe at her mouth - wiping him from her lips. “Mum was right,”
The Handler was not somebody Five ever wanted to hear about again. That wicked, manipulative woman had filled five years of his life with her venom, and he had thought that was bad enough. But after hearing from Lila about the things that she had done to her growing up, his hatred for her had only grown tenfold.
Lila wasn’t a fan of her “ mother’s ” either. To bring her up like this…well…
It was just another dead give away that this wasn’t the real her.
“You take whatever you want from people, and then you run.” she spat. “Mum and the briefcase, the paycheck. Your family with a safety net. Me! You don’t care about anyone but yourself.”
“That’s not true,” Five countered - almost pleading.
“ Stop… LYING! ” she screamed, words echoing through the night. Her face twisted with fury, tears glistening in her eyes. “You are a selfish, arrogant coward. ”
She ripped a knife out of nowhere - the one she used to skin rabbits with - and lunged towards him. In an instant, he was pressed against the building once more, the blade biting coldly into his throat. Lila’s eyes flashed red and she pressed harder. Five felt the sharp sting as the skin gave way, followed by the warm, sticky trickle of blood running down his neck.
“I should have killed you years ago, it would have done everyone a favour.” she snarled, clenching her teeth. Her voice sounded like it was filled with raw hatred. “All you ever do for anyone is make their life a living hell.”
Five felt his own eyes prickle with something foreign. He blinked, but it didn’t stop the flood of memories from rushing in, crashing over him.
In an instant, he saw his family -his siblings -worrying, arguing, yelling after him when he defied their father and jumped through time. He had left them without answers, without closure. He had disappeared and abandoned them when they needed him most.
He saw Allison’s tear-streaked face as she tried to piece together her life in a timeline that didn’t belong to her, mourning her daughter, Claire, who no longer existed. Gone because Five had pulled her along with him and the rest of the family.
He saw Luther screaming into the night, his grief echoing around him all because Sloane hadn’t made it through the timeline jump. Her absence - a gaping wound that Five had inflicted.
He saw Klaus, his eccentric, loving brother, mourning the loss of a partner he never would have had to lose if Five hadn’t antagonised the Commission. The institution Five had built with his own arrogance, believing he could play God, only to let things spiral out of control. Worlds ending over and over again.
And then, Diego. He saw Diego livid and betrayed because Five had taken his wife away from him for five years and he had fallen in love with her.
Five was selfish.
He was selfish, arrogant, and a coward. All of the things this fake-Lila was saying weren’t just empty insults meant to cause pain; they were truths. And they cut deeper than the blade at his throat.
Five stared at her, his lips trembling as he thought of what he could say. If there was anything at all. He hated himself for the way he was, the way he had always been. Flawed. Selfish. Broken. No matter how hard he tried to control the chaos, it always spiralled out of his grasp - right through his fingers like smoke - leaving nothing but hurt and destruction in its wake.
He had thought for a fleeting moment that Lila was his redemption. That she made him better. Made him want to be better. That she gave him a chance to tether himself to something real and good. He had let himself believe that maybe - just maybe - she could see something in him worth saving. And she had seemed to.
But…had he ever seen it? He wasn’t so sure anymore.
“Lila-” he started, a single tear escaping through his lower lashes, and running down his cheek.
But Lila didn’t allow him to finish.
With a heavy push, she drove the blade deeper into his flesh, as far as it could go. Five felt the searing pain explode through him as blood surged, warm and wet, spilling over his skin. Through his teeth. His nose.
His vision swam as his knees buckled slightly, the world around him quickly fading into a blur of colour and sound that probably didn’t exist. The edges of his sight were being burned away by a blinding white light, creeping inward, swallowing everything in its path. The pain was overwhelming, but it was the cold that truly terrified him. It crept through his limbs, bumping his fingers and toes. Perhaps this was meant to happen. Perhaps this was his memento mori , and had been all along. Dying by the hands of somebody he loved. Somebody he had hurt.
Maybe it was better this way.
Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip.
Five’s eyes opened, much quicker than they normally did when he heard a sound during the night.
He was on his back, the cardboard underneath him doing little to soothe the ache in his bones. His breathing was ragged, shallow, his chest rising and falling frantically. Sweat clung to his skin, dripping down his face, and he reached up instinctively, fingers trembling as he wiped it away. He had to be sure that it wasn’t blood. He touched his neck. Intact. No cut.
He had had nightmares before, many in his lifetime, but none like this. None that made him feel so…vulnerable - in more ways than one.
“Five?” a groggy voice asked in the darkness, and he realised that there was something warm and heavily and alive lying against his chest. Legs tangled with his own.
Lila.
The real Lila.
She was asleep in her usual spot, head resting on him, arm draped over his body, hair tickling his chin.
His arms slid around her and he held her closely, nuzzling his nose into her hair. She whimpered at the tight embrace, air escaping her lungs in a desperate attempt.
“You’kay?” she slurred when he had loosened his grip.
“Yeah. I’m fine.” he said with a nod. He still couldn’t see her. He wished he could see her. “Bad dream. Go back to sleep.”
Lila snuggled closer to him and hummed a response. A moment later her breath had already shallowed, and her body relaxed.
Five stared into the darkness.
In the quiet, he thought of all the things he’d done in his past, all the choices he’d made. He had always been running, always trying to outrun his own flaws, his own mistakes. The nightmare was more than just a reflection of that. It was a reminder. The people he’d hurt, the things he’d broken along the way, the endless spiral of guilt and regret that seemed to follow him no matter where he went. He might have been selfish at one time, but he didn’t want to be anymore. He wanted to do right by the people he loved, to help them, protect them. And he could start with Lila.
He loved her, it was true. He wanted her. But until they had drawn the very last card, until she gave him a sign that she wanted the same, he wasn’t going to risk it. To ruin things. To take from others and run.
It wasn’t the man he wanted to be.
With a deep breath, Five closed his eyes, his body relaxing into his place on their little makeshift bed. He let go of the tension that had built up through the night, letting the quiet warmth of Lila’s presence seep into him.
Maybe tomorrow would bring more chaos. Maybe the weight of his past would come crashing back, as it always did. Maybe he would do something else to fuck everything up. But for now, in the stillness, Five let himself rest.
Just for tonight.