For April Fool's, I'm uploading another multi-chapter fic I'll take 100 years to finish. (Hold on there, readers of my Diedora fic. An update is coming, I promise.)

This one is... not what it seems. Hope you enjoy!

Huge thanks to my friend Jena (bookworm5546) for being my beta for this, ily!

There's nothing.

Nothing that Five knows of, at least.

The smell hits him first; something's burning, has been burning for a long time, but not enough in order for the fire to have gone out.

He takes a step back. Then another.

The orange flames stroke his eyes next. They're the only thing with color in this desert. There's ash, black, thick ash, on the ground and in the air, and it feels like everything is covered in it. There's rocks, and bricks, and what look like the remainings of the Redchurch and Deli-Grocery buildings that he'd just passed two seconds ago while he was walking down the snowy street of his home—

Home.

He doesn't waste any more time looking around. Five turns around and starts running down the street again, the opposite way where he came from.

Redchurch and Deli-Grocery are down.

There's cars on fire.

The Mexican grill is down.

There are more and more bricks as he goes on.

Chester's.

What remains of the trees along with every single scrap of metal are getting in his way, but he can't stop, not now.

Cameron, Cheung and Chown; Attorneys at Law.

The Academy is—

Down.

He stops in front of the entrance and holds his breath, looking at the remains of his home with his mouth and eyes wide open. He looks at where the dining room is supposed to be, the same place where he and his Dad fought a few minutes ago, but it's not there. There's only fire.

Maybe they got out. They must have.

He looks back, but he can't see a single sign of life for miles.

"Vanya!" he dares to yell as he looks at his home again. He almost climbs up the stairs, but stops himself when he sees the fire again. "Ben!" Nothing. "Dad…!" It can't be. "Anyone!"

He has to get back.

Five focuses on his powers until his hands glow blue and he thrusts forward, and then—

There's something blocking him.

"Come on!" He tries again, but the blue surrounding his hands is pale, and he's still here. "Shit…"

He lets his hands fall to his side and looks around again, until his knees give up too and hit the ashes. His eyes are pinned on the fire that burns inside his home, and soon enough they fill with tears.

There's nothing. There's absolutely nothing.

Lastly, the way this nothingness feels catches up to him. It hits him harder than the smell, harder than the view.

It's cold. There's something inside him that's sinking, and it's really cold. The feeling is spreading fast, and Five doesn't have the energy to fight it anymore. Dad was right. He should have never messed with time. He wasn't ready. He isn't ready.

So that's it. He's stuck in the apocalypse.

He doesn't know how long he spends there. He's not sure he cares.

And yet he stands up. Part of him wants to step inside the Academy, but it's still burning, and he's not quite ready to look at it yet. He should probably try to find something to eat, if there's even anything left.

Five doesn't remember starting to walk, but he manages to drag himself into a part of town that's not burning as much. Probably because there isn't anything left to burn, he thinks.

It's only then that he runs into the first body.

He doesn't realise it is one, at first. It's just a deep shade of black, pure black, in the form of a human, lying on the side of the street. Whoever they were, they probably burnt to death.

He walks past it. He doesn't want to look at it.

There are more and more bodies the further he goes from the Academy. Whatever happened must have started from there. Maybe everyone evacuated before it spread to the rest of town—

He's probably the only person alive on the planet.

"No," he says out loud, as if someone can hear him. "There's gotta be someone else. I'll find them."

It's an empty promise, but it's enough to keep him grounded for now. He makes his way into what he believes is a department store—there's no roof or anything of such—and starts searching for anything salvageable. There's a shopping cart in the corner; a wheel is missing, but it could come in handy.

Everything is either burnt or covered in ashes, but he does manage to find a sealed drawer lying in a corner. Maybe whoever worked there saved themselves a snack. He grabs a piece of metal and slams it on it as hard as he can. It takes a few hits, but the furniture finally gives in, and Five slides the drawer open.

Paperwork, two pens, paperwork, more paperwork… a protein bar. Five finds himself smiling for the first time since he got there.

He should probably get himself a change of clothes too.

He tries to navigate through the other side of the store, but everything's given into the fire. A piece of white fabric sticks out to him, and he moves over to take a look.

There are small, evenly spread out polka dots on it, and somehow it survived the fire. Upon further inspection, he finds out that the person wearing it didn't. Something else has melted into the fabric, a mannequin, perhaps? Five doesn't know. He does tear it apart though. It'll work nicely as a rag to cover himself from the ash.

He wraps it around his neck, throws the protein bar in his cart and pushes it forward. He has more places to check.

Five doesn't know how long he's been walking for—he thinks he must be twenty, maybe thirty, minutes away from the Academy—but the bodies start spreading out again, becoming less and less. He knows better than to think it's a coincidence.

There's no people. Something happened here.

He gives up his cart and rushes to the opposite side of the sidewalk to investigate. He almost trips on a sign with the words Icarus Theater on it, but he manages to regain his balance.

So that's where he is.

He always wanted to come here, him and Ben and Vanya. Their father would never let them, which is why they never brought it up, but it'd been in their future plans. Five would sneak out and get them tickets to a show or a concert and they'd be back before Dad knew it.

He feels as if he doesn't deserve to be standing here. Not when his siblings didn't get to go.

The fire is still burning in the Icarus Theater, but it's not nearly as strong as the fire burning in the Academy. There mustn't be many things left to burn.

Five tries to think. Why would the Icarus Theater be empty?

Maybe everything went down in the morning. There can't be a crowd without a show. But if that were the case, why are there no bodies on every other street surrounding said building either?

Five steps into the theater. His eyes soon find themselves pinned on more than a few bodies that seem to be wearing some sort of hazmat suits. They have guns—of course the guns survived—and kinda look like military.

"Shit…" Five mumbles.

Their heads and limbs are missing, some are cut in half… Five only knows one person that can do that.

He finds himself smiling again. The sinking feeling in his chest is slowly retreating, and maybe, just maybe, there's still hope to find out what happened, to find his family.

And then his eyes fall ahead, on a pile of bodies that's seemingly untouched, covered in only a few rocks, just enough to hide them at first glance. The tilt on Five's lips drops again, and he mindlessly runs to them, praying that he's mistaken.

He doesn't recognise them.

Not at first.

But then he catches a better glimpse of Number One's built, the knife kit around the body of Number Two, Number Three's curls, Number Seven's violin. She's dressed in white, from the bottom to the top, and she looks pale, and she's—

Dead.

They're all dead.

He fights back the urge to cry. They're all holding hands; Luther, Allison, Vanya and Diego, in that order. Vanya must have lost grip of the others, because her hands are lifelessly lying on her body, and Luther's hand looks like it slipped off Diego's, but everyone else? They're holding hands. Somehow, even after death, they're—

It's only then that Five realises that even though Vanya's aren't, Allison and Diego's hands are tangled with someone else's, someone Vanya's body is covering. He holds in his breath as he kneels down, trying to push her off with shaky hands.

He expects to see Number Six. He's the one that tore these bodies apart before, after all.

He doesn't expect to see Number Five.

Five falls back in shock, scooting away from them, trying to make them disappear, but the image of his own dead body is far too engraved in his brain to forget.

"Holy shit. You woke up too."

He holds his breath and turns to the source of the voice sharply, his eyes falling on someone standing up from the ashes, someone walking towards him, someone who is—

Number Four.

"Five?"

Five passes out.

Fun fact! As I was writing this, I realised a lot of the background buildings and stuff are named after people who worked in the show (for example, Cameron, Cheung and Chown: Attorneys at Law are the names of the Art Directors in TUA!) So yes, that's a thing, in case you're a nerd about these things like me.

Anyway, this fic is chaotic. I had no idea I was going to include that plot twist about Klaus before I wrote it. Then I just rolled with it. Trust me though, this isn't your average "Five and Klaus walk through the apocalypse together" fic. It gets way more chaotic than that.

If you liked this, consider checking out my tumblr (evelinaonline) and Ko-fi (evelinaonline)!

Happy Apocalypse Day!