A/N: um. so. this is a dumpster fire. absolute trash. but i'm surprised i could squeeze anything out of my dumb empty brain at all, so i figured i'd post it because writers block can die in a hole but. 58 years is a long ducking time and i feel like anyone would just about lose their minds after the first year alone, if not AT LEAST the first six months. nobody really knows what it would feel like to have the entire planet to yourself. but uhh hopefully this isn't too ooc lol.
takes place a year after Five jumped forward to the apocalypse
spoilers as related to the above lol
rated t for language and somewhat? graphic? descriptions of death? i guess?
lyrics from I Will Follow You Into The Dark - Death Cab for Cutie
000
love of mine, someday you will die
but i'll be close behind and i'll follow you into the dark
no blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
just our hands clasped so tight, waiting for the hint of a spark
000
maybe it would be today.
maybe today would be the day.
the day of what, he's not quite sure, but he finds hope rising in his chest regardless before he can squash it back down in the dirt. that morning, he wakes up rather quickly instead of lying on the rusted box-spring he calls a bed for hours like he's prone to do on days like... well, like every day, after at least the first six months. there's a pep in his step that wasn't there the day before as he makes his way to the broken mirror and digs at the ash and grime covering his skin as best he can, combing quick fingers through his hair before giving it a quick shake to dislodge any loose bits of dust.
there are smears of blood on his knees he can't quite scrub clean, but it'll do.
he knows it's not logical, this... optimism? idealism? this – this wish that today would be different, because make no mistake, he knows this is just a wish, hardly even a hope. he's well aware it's not based on any concretes or circumstance, no math or equations involved as much as he would prefer, but try as he might, the feather-light feeling won't go away.
it makes his stomach twist.
and yet, he hopes.
he is, after all, only turning fourteen years old today. not quite as naive as the day he first left, but nearly so. he's only had three hundred and sixty-five days to learn to be any different.
and so he hopes, and he starts his trek back home by the time the sun is peeking over the foggy horizon, painting the sky in pinks and gold even through all the gray.
he could just jump, but he'd rather walk. enjoy the sunrise.
"beautiful morning, don't you think?" he says, quietly as if to himself, but he glances over his shoulder at the wagon he pulls behind him expectantly. "well, no shit, Dolores. obviously minus all the ash. that's a given, seeing as it never goes away." honestly, he could admit she was the smarter of the two of them, but she could give him at least a little more credit.
no, he doesn't think he'd ever find the ash as anything close to 'beautiful'.
his lungs burn.
"come on. maybe we'll even find some breakfast on the way." an old saying rings somewhere in the back of his head, one Luther would always recite as if it was a sacred script to be held dear; 'the early bird gets the worm'. Five's never really been much of an early bird, at least not since the jump. he prefers the nights, when it's too dark to see all the destruction save the few areas the fires still burn. it's something special when the sun sets, when, if he's lucky, maybe even a few stars will find a way to twinkle down at him through the polluted atmosphere, moon bright and burning in a way that didn't remind him of fire and brimstone. nothing like the sun, hot and blistering and insufferable against the surface of the earth that's already burnt to a crisp.
Dolores says something about cockroaches and he wrinkles he nose in response.
when he gets back, he's never complaining about mom's cooking ever again.
well, maybe. if she still makes brussel sprouts, he'll have to allow exceptions.
the trek is a long one, as he'd set up camp near the outskirts of what's left of the city two months back, but he does, in fact, find breakfast along the way in the form of a handful of crickets in the rubble instead of cockroaches.
"see, Dolores? a good omen," he smirks, holding fast to it as he chews the insects quick enough to bypass the actual taste. the texture still turns his stomach though, even after all this time to get used to barbed legs and hard shells. still, it's preferable to cockroaches. Dolores begs to differ though, insisting cockroaches were bigger and therefore more practically useful as sustenance.
he wants to tell Dolores to piss off and let him enjoy his damn crickets, but she's right. he can't quite disagree, but he relishes in the small change today instead of telling her that. he'll take every small luxury he can get.
he chucks a pebble at her in favor of using actual words like an adult.
not that he's an adult. as much as the apocalypse wanted him to be one. as much as he wanted to be one.
his knees snap, crackle, pop as he rises back to his feet and continues on through the debris. god, what he'd give to have a fucking rice crispie bar. he used to hate those things, too crunchy and sticky for his liking, but compared to bugs? hell yes, he'd eat a fucking rice crispie.
for a moment, his head spins, and he's not sure if it's from standing too fast or from the extra pangs of hunger his wistful thoughts had brought on, but he clings to the nearest thing he can find and hovers there until it passes, brushing off Dolores' mothering with a small wave of his hand.
Dolores would probably love rice crispies.
he tries not to look around too much as they get deeper into what was once the city he grew up in. tries to keep his eyes on the ground, on his feet as they step one in front of the other, but he has to make sure he's going where he wants to go, so he glances up intermittently only when he has to.
it's not like the route wasn't familiar, but it had been a while.
a few fires are still burning here.
it makes the taste of ash all the more sour on his tongue. he stops to cough into his sleeve, grimacing when he pulls away from the filthy fabric. not like it's any better.
eventually, he spots a familiar set of front steps in the distance and it stops him dead in his tracks like a fist squeezing tight around his throat. the threshold still stands tall despite all its cracks and fissures, the actual doorframe if not a little worse for wear, but still standing, and he's not sure why it surprises him. it's not like there's anything but age to knock it down, and it's only been a year, but he still finds himself scanning it with his gaze, lips pulled thin and pressed together.
after he's not sure how long, he finally looks away to Dolores, something like a smile pulling at his mouth.
"welcome home, Dolores."
he pulls his wagon closer, the terrain a little tricky between here and there, but he'll manage. still, to be safe, he tucks Dolores under his arm nice and secure so there's no chance she'll fall and get any more scrapes to match his own. he has enough for the both of them.
the something like hope, a wish, a wash of the good kind of warmth that's nothing like the sun, hot and blistering and insufferable, rises even higher in his chest as he draws closer to the remains of his old home.
his home.
his family.
or... what's left of them.
the something like hope cowers a little at the thought, and he swallows it down further as much as he can.
the graves are just as undisturbed as the house. the logical part of his brain acknowledges that is perhaps a bad thing, as signs of disturbance may have pointed towards scavenging animals he could potentially kill and eat instead of bugs, but he prefers the feeling of relief that comes with knowing his siblings are resting in peace. at least four of them.
no... not four.
three.
stomach swooping low, his gaze instinctively darts around in search of the fourth, memory searching for where it was left, he knows it was left, he left it, left it out in the open for the elements to do with what they pleased, the last one he tried to drag from the rubble with fingers rubbed raw from all the digging, the first, Number One, Luther –
there.
still half-buried in the stone.
still sprawled out and open facing the sky.
he always did love the sky. space. the stars, the moon.
maybe Five did have something in common with the dumb oaf after all.
their leader is nothing but dried-out bones at this point – hardly an oaf anymore, hardly anything.
he bites his lip and makes his way over, carefully, slow, leaving his wagon with the others but keeping Dolores pulled close. empty eye sockets almost appear to track him as he gets closer, and he clutches Dolores a little tighter. the glass eye in his pocket nearly burns. the once-fisted hand is now nothing but scattered bone, bleached by the sun and scorched black in some places.
he ignores the way his eyes sting.
Dolores is strangely silent.
"why did you always have to be so damn heavy?" he bites out, accusatory but jagged and cracking around the edges. he means it though, frustration coursing through his veins just as quickly as the shame, thick and hot and sudden in the back of his throat. he means it, but he also means why wasn't i strong enough, why wasn't i strong enough to at least fucking bury you, why couldn't i do even that, i should have –
Dolores rolls her eyes, not unkindly, but he still bristles at it. his teeth grind together.
"shut up," he hisses, glaring down at her glazed blue eyes.
he turns on his heel before he can think on it, marching back to his wagon with a faux purpose only to come up empty by the time he reaches its side, Dolores hard and cold and motionless at his side.
she doesn't say anything.
a sigh, and he sets her back with his other things, making sure she's sat strong and sturdy before turning to his siblings, the three lumps of dirt in the ground, no grass to make them seem any less like the graves they are, and he tries to ignore the burning in the back of his skull that feels far too much like he's being watched than he likes to admit.
it's nothing.
there's no one.
just Dolores, still – still so quiet.
he glances over at her to soothe the sharp feeling thrashing beneath his ribs. "you remember my siblings, right?" she hadn't been there when he buried them, but he told her plenty of stories and even brought her by once to get them properly introduced. "Number Two – Diego, the one with the knife thing. Diego, Allison, Klaus." he gestures to their respective piles of dirt with jittery hands.
he hadn't even recognized them at first, not until he spotted the tattoo on Klaus's arm. it was easy to figure out who was who from there. a part of him had... hoped in the absence of Six and Seven's bodies, but then he found the latter's book and at least half of that hope was broken off and left between the pages. the other half broke apart more gradually, disintegrating over the days and weeks and months until there was nothing but the bitter tang of loss left behind.
he was hopelessly, undeniably... alone.
no one.
and Dolores won't fucking say anything.
"what?" he snaps, whipping around her face her again. "not even a 'happy birthday' for the happy family? not even a 'happy birthday' for me?"
her blue eyes seem gray.
he returns to her on stiff legs, foot slipping over a loose rock, but he doesn't fight the drop to his knees, content to be eye-level with her for once. careful, slow, he reaches out to her hand and brushes his own against it, fingers light and warm, too warm against her cold, and the next gust of wind blows dust in his eyes.
yes, that's why they burn. he blinks it away.
the something like hope stirs pitifully at the back of his throat.
"Dolores?" he says, barely a whisper, barely a word, her hand stiff and unresponsive. silent. dead. nothing.
alone –
gritting his teeth, he grabs her by the shoulders and shakes, once, twice, still nothing, and curses when her eyes almost taunt him with their dullness, ice, blue, gray, like the ash at his feet, in the air, choking him every second of every day for three hundred and sixty-five days –
"you know what? fuck you, Dolores," he sneers, pulling her up with him as he stands.
she simply stares.
his lip quivers.
"fuck you."
with that, he chucks her at the nearest pile of rubble, up and over and out of sight, and he thinks of Luther, chucking Diego across the room and into the wall after one of their petty spats, Diego on his feet in less than a second to throw a knife just barely between his legs.
huffing to himself, he stomps back over to their graves and drops to the ground cross-legged, hands fisted and shaking and clenched together until his nails bite into his palms.
he sits like that until the sun dips toward the horizon, burning brighter at the new angle but fading fast, though he knows there's just enough fire around to allow him to see.
see what?
the breeze turns chilled and he soon hugs his knees to his chest to hide his shivering, despite the nearby flames keeping the surface of his skin cracked and sore. usually, the heat sticks with him until the early morning twilight hours, taking forever to leave just to come back again with the start of a new day. still, it was better than midday.
he felt safer in the dark, ironically.
not tonight, though. tonight, something heavy and sharp drags up his spine to take hold of the back of his neck, circling 'round his throat and clinging there like a collar, a string of rope, a noose, itching and burning until he coughs into his sleeve again to rid himself of it.
he missed them.
he misses them. he misses their stupid bickering and their stupid faces and their stupid training sessions in the morning. he misses the sound of their voices; Allison and Luther singing off-key in the late afternoon until Diego tells them to shut up despite the fact he'd been humming along a just minute ago, Klaus telling stupid jokes like he's the funniest guy to grace the face of the earth even though he's the only one laughing at them, Vanya and Ben taking turns reading before bed until he dozes off before it's his turn – he misses them so much it hurts. it hurts like the never-ending smog slowly poisoning his lungs, like the cramps of hunger and thirst every day, like cold bed-springs digging in his back at night until morning, like the silence of the day when it finally greets him.
at night, at least he had the crickets.
here, deep in the city where the fires still burn, he finds he can't hear them anymore.
the itch springs in his eyes for some reason.
it's hot, and it burns to his teeth until they're aching down his tongue in the back of his throat, and the sob that bursts from there is all kinds of strangled and watery, not unlike his eyes, itching, burning, dripping tears down his cheeks and off his chin to the tops of his knees.
it doesn't feel better, to finally lose grip of the sound he kept lodged deep in his chest.
it just burns, burns like everything else, and he's just – he's so – angry –
alone.
instead of succumbing to that thought, the tears in his eyes and the cries building quick behind the steel trap of his teeth, the tremors running through his frame like a living thing he can't seem to get a hold of, the nothing, he rocks to his feet and screams –
at the sky, at the ground, at the shallow graves not two feet away from him. he screams because his eyes won't dry up with the rest of his body, because he hasn't eaten anything but bugs and a few canned goods here and there for the past three hundred and sixty-five days, because his head won't stop hurting and his lungs won't stop burning and neither will the fires and he can't stop shaking, he can't stop crying, he can't, he can't –
"please," he gasps out between short breaths, each one catching in his lungs like he's choking on them, fingers digging and twisting back down into the dirt on his hands and knees, and he doesn't know what he's pleading for, who he's pleading to, can't remember the last time he pleaded for anything. the word feels like broken glass in his throat, voice already hoarse, from the screaming or from the dehydration, or maybe both, but it hurts to hear the sound of his own voice getting whisked away with the wind like another particle of ash, of dust, of nothing, there's nothing, no one, he's alone, he's fucking alone.
"i'm sorry," he chokes out, the two words seeming to lurch in his chest and break up the pattern of quick breaths, too quick, in and out, in out, but at least he's not screaming anymore.
Luther's skeleton is as still as he knows it to be when he finally looks back at it again. the graves remain undisturbed, the fires keep burning, the wind still blowing, the sun long set by now. there's nothing, nothing, save the unsteady push and pull of air in his lungs.
he thinks of their faces when he found them, void and empty of what made them them, what made them his siblings, what made them people at all, but almost serene in a way, peaceful, nothing like the broken and bruised world falling apart around them, nothing like the sound of his voice breaking through the night air like a whip, broken and bruised and falling apart around them just so he can hear anything at all.
an old saying rings somewhere in the back of his head, something he thinks Vanya once said to him, a riddle of sorts; 'if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?'
he presses his face into the ground until bits of stone sink into the skin.
if a boy falls apart in a world with no one left to see it, does it make a sound?
does it even really exist?
"Dolores!" he shouts, sharp and unbidden, his head jerking up so fast his neck cracks. "Dolores, i'm – i'm sorry, i – " he scrambles to his feet and climbs over the piles of building and sidewalk and road in the direction he last saw her, threw her, he – "fuck, i'm sorry, Dolores, please – "
and there she is, sprawled out and open facing the sky. his hands and knees are bleeding as he crouches next to her.
he can't feel it.
his fingers are still too warm against hers, still trembling like the leaves that used to blow in the wind before they burned away with everything else, with his house, his home, his family – "Dolores?" he croaks, voice hardly rivaling the breeze that tousles his hair, tousles hers all around her face until he reaches out to brush it aside.
smears of dirt stain her cream skin dark in places, scraped up, broken and bruised and coated in dust, but her eyes are just as bright as ever, blue, gray, enough, more than enough, and he's quick to pull her close to his chest and bury his face in her tangled hair.
"i'm sorry – i'm sorry," he wheezes, his next breath the first inhale that's deep enough in what feels like – three hundred and sixty-five days. "i'm so sorry, Dolores."
she's quiet, but – but she's enough, her cold hand in his is enough, and even if she's quiet, she's still there.
"please forgive me."
he doesn't think he's ever pleaded for anything in his life until today. not that he can remember.
today.
it wasn't today. today wasn't the day.
he doesn't know what he expected, isn't quite sure he really expected anything at all, but the hope of the morning disappeared with the sun and his feet are sore and throbbing and his hands are still washed in ash and grime and his knees are just as bloody as when he woke up, if not more so.
a ton of feathers turned to a ton of bricks, but he'd hoped – naive, stupid and pointless, childish.
though...
he only turned fourteen years old today.
as much as he wanted, wished he looked just as old and aged as his siblings buried shallow beneath the dirt. as much as he wanted to grow old and age with them, in any capacity at all, he wished – something.
anything at all. he'd take anything, and yet there's nothing. nothing but the ash and the heat and the wind.
he's hopelessly, undeniably –
"Dolores," he says, pulling back and carding his fingers through her hair until it's out of her face again, parting haphazardly for her eyes to shine clear despite the dark.
Dolores.
he has Dolores.
he takes another shaking breath, but it grows more steady at the sight of her.
"thank you."
and he means it. means it more than anything he's ever said in his brief fourteen years of life.
and Dolores, broken and bruised and coated in dust, tossed away like a broken toy by him – she smiles.
her eyes sparkle more than the stars ever did, burning brighter than the fires like candles in the dark.
he thinks of mom's birthday cakes, always at least one slice with either peanut butter or marshmallows or both, just for him.
Dolores smiles, and finally, finally –
happy birthday, Five.
today is his birthday.
there aren't any candles to blow out this year, no siblings to blow them out with, just her eyes in the dark, but for the first time in his life, he makes a wish. and because he's only fourteen and naive and childish, he wishes that he wasn't alone. and he thanks whatever being is out there, he thanks Dolores – that he isn't. that he isn't alone.
he's not alone.
000
if heaven and hell decide that they both are satisfied
and illuminate the no's on their vacancy signs
if there's no one beside you when your soul embarks
then i'll follow you into the dark
000
A/N: anyways i would give my left arm for five. we love and appreciate both him and dolores in this household. thank you.
(legit thank you if you got through all that mess, it means a lot, and leave a comment if you a real one pretty please, they're always greatly appreciated)
as always, if you want to reach me elsewhere, you can find me jarchiekinz on tumblr