Chapter Text
Three goddamn years, fuck knows how many months, and some ungodly number of days spent trudging from one apocalypse to another with your twenty-something former enemy turned brother-in-law was the sort of cosmic joke that would - under other circumstances - have made Lila piss herself laughing. Now she simply regarded the time with a sort of melancholy exhaustion that weighed her down, making even the simplest acts feel overwhelming. And the pièce de résistance? They were eating motherfucking subway rats for dinner. Again.
Five settled in next to her and the fire and scribbled away on his little makeshift calendar. He never missed a single day. He was meticulous. Mum always said it was one of his finest qualities.
‘Nope,’ she thought, giving her head a little shake, ‘we’re not going down that rabbit hole right now.’ She hadn’t thought about the Handler in years. Not since the birth of the twins when things went sideways, literally, and the doctors started getting frantic and Deigo looked like he was going to start crying and she did start crying and she really, really wanted her mum there to hold her hand and tell her to buck the fuck up and stop being such a damn infant.
It wasn’t until after the Cesarean when the babies were both out of the NICU and she was hooked up to her new best friend, the morphine pump, that she remembered her mum had actually killed her and would be an absolute shit grandmother. That made her a bit weepy, so she’d hit the magic button a few times and drafted away on the most glorious wave of intoxication she’d experienced in ages. All thoughts of her mother and the Commission faded into the distance as she was swept along in a golden haze of dopamine and drugs.
Still, she couldn’t deny the woman had helped make her who she was, for better or worse. She was bound to pop into her thoughts from time to time, especially where Five was concerned. After all, she’d grown up being passive-aggressively compared to him and always, somehow, coming up short.
Lila had grown to hate meticulousness like the goddamn plague. It was slow. It was boring. It made her skin itch and her teeth ache until all she wanted to do was scream and hit something really, really hard. But she supposed it had some uses, in moderation. Sadly, her sole living companion at the moment didn’t exactly excel in moderation.
He glanced up at her and caught her watching him. His green eyes narrowed suspiciously. “What?”
“Nothing.”
“Uh-huh.” He finished his writing and carefully refolded his calendar, slipping into an inner pocket of the bag he’d picked up early in year one. The messenger bag was a bit worse for wear but had come in damn handy, she had to admit. Practical. Sturdy. Reliable. Kind of like Five himself. It suited him. “You’re not getting my rat tonight, I don’t care how hungry you are.”
She snorted and rolled her eyes. “If you can gag it down you’re welcome to mine too.”
His suspicion ticked up several visible notches and he reached over before she could even lean out of the way to touch the back of his hand to her forehead. “Are you coming down with something?”
Lila slapped him away and muttered, “No. I’m just really fucking tired of eating rodents.”
“Beats the hell out of cockroaches,” he replied philosophically with a casual shrug.
Sometimes she loathed how easily he’d re-adapted to their apocalyptic, time-hopping, nomadic lifestyle. She knew he’d spent forty-plus years trapped alone in an apocalypse. She’d read the files, studied her enemy. But it had all been so distant and unreal at the time. He was a legend at the Commission, like some sort of fucked up fairy tale warning kiddies about the dangers of hubris. Living it, being filthy and exhausted and always, always hungry…that was something else entirely.
She hated it. And she hated how much it made her think about his thirteen-year-old self having to face the daily horror of it alone. But what she hated most of all was that it made her want to hug Five for hours on end and rub his back and tell him it was all going to be okay. She much preferred wanting to stab him. It just felt more…natural.
“Well if you’re not sick you need to eat. Gotta keep your energy up. I’m not dragging your dead weight to the next stop.”
“Oh like you’d leave me here.”
One dark eyebrow shot up. “Watch me, Lila. Watch me.”
“Liar.” She sighed and picked up her roasted rat.
***
Lila absolutely did not squeal like an excited schoolgirl when she discovered an intact box of Twinkies on her supply run. Nor did she gleefully shove half of said box into her mouth to form one massive, gooey, artificially flavored mess that left her groaning with unmitigated pleasure. To say that sugar was scarce in the apocalypse was a massive understatement, and like a junkie experiencing their first fix after a long bout of enforced sobriety, she was determined to enjoy every second of her sugar high.
And okay, maybe they weren’t exactly the freshest and tasted a little funky. But it was actual sugar and vanilla-y goodness, and she wasn’t about to let a little thing like a long-ago expiration date come between them.
It took about an hour or so to make her way back to the rendezvous point, stepping over and around cement blocks, downed light poles, and smashed-up cars. Once there, she plunked down near the subway entrance and waited for Five. For once she’d beaten him back, and she was really looking forward to rubbing his nose in the fact. She reached down into the ratty tote bag she’d used to do her 'shopping' and carefully inspected the three cans of black beans she’d discovered in the ruins of a bodega five blocks over. They made her think wistfully of Diego’s enchiladas, dripping with red sauce, cheese, and sour cream. She could almost taste them, fresh out of the oven and roughly the temperature of molten lead. Burning the top of her mouth was a small price to pay for that level of yum.
Five’s footsteps echoed like gunshots as he picked his way toward her through the rubble. It looked as though he’d had some luck as well, including several visible bottles of water, which made her perk up and wave to him with a sunny grin. It was clearly one of their few and far-between good days.
“Five, look what I found!” She thrust the half-empty box of Twinkies at him like a trophy. “And I even saved you some.”
Her grin faltered a little at his expression of horror. “Lila, please tell me you didn’t eat any of those.”
“What?” Frowning, she glanced down at the snacks as if worried they might have changed into a nuclear bomb or something. “Seriously, what? They’re Twinkies.”
“Yes,” he hissed, “I can see that. When did they expire?”
“I dunno’, a few years ago I expect. What the hell is wrong with you? They’re Twinkies, they last forever. That’s just science.”
She watched his jaw visibly clench. “That. Is. Not. SCIENCE!” he bellowed, dropping his own supplies before stomping over to her, grabbing the box, and tossing it as far away as he could.
“Hey! Rude!”
“You fucking moron, I leave you alone for like two hours and you manage to poison yourself. I’ve seen poodles with better self-preservation instincts. What the hell were you thinking?”
“Poison?”
“Clearly Viktor never shared the Twinkie story with you. Christ. All right, all right, shove your finger down your throat right now and just get it over with.”
“What? No! It was just some damn Twinkies!”
“Which do actually go bad and can give you very serious food poisoning when they do. I found that out the hard way.” He advanced angrily on her as she quickly backed away. “Stick your finger down your throat now or I’ll do it for you.”
She did her best to keep some distance between them while holding up a hand placatingly. “I really think you’re overreacting.”
“Overreacting? Do you want to spend the next five or so days doing nothing but non-stop vomiting? You’ll blow through our entire water supply and then what? We don’t have a damn I.V., you idiot, there’s no ambulance to call, no ER to take you to. So you’re going to be a big girl and make yourself vomit right now or I’m going to take matters into my own hands.”
“I…” she sighed and her shoulders slumped, “Fine, I’ll do it. You are not putting those filthy digits of yours anywhere near my mouth, got it?”
“Well get on with it then,” he muttered, pacing a few feet away from her in a frantic little line - back and forth, back and forth.
Taking a deep, steadying breath, she slowly inched her index finger towards her mouth. This was going to suck so very, very much.
“Hurry up.”
“God! Shut up, I’m…I’m working up to it.”
“Lila, I swear to Christ if you don’t…”
Fine. Whatever. It’s not like she hadn’t spent more than her fair share of mornings draped over a toilet due to the drinking, and the drugs, and…well, the pregnancies. She could do this. And before she could give it any more thought, she did.
***
The next three days were unpleasant, to say the least. If she wasn’t pooping or puking her guts out, she was lying on a makeshift bed drenched in her own sweat and shivering. Thank god she’d gotten at least some of the Twinkies out of her stomach relatively quickly or things could’ve been much worse. Well, thank Five anyway.
She was loath to admit that she took more than a little comfort from his incessant hovering. His voice was calm and soothing as he woke her every few hours to try and get some water into her. Not much managed to stay down, but by the fourth day, she’d begun to feel marginally less like the living dead.
Every time her eyes fluttered open there he was, staring at her with that little crease between his eyebrows, expression solemn and maybe just a little lost. She wondered if he’d slept at all since the beginning of the 'Twinkie Incident'. If the dark circles around his eyes were any indication, the answer was no.
She struggled to prop herself up against the pillar, not exactly upright, but enough to make swallowing some water a little easier. He moved closer almost mechanically, holding the bottle to her lips and she greedily swallowed it down. “Feeling better?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“That’s…that’s good.” Five nodded to himself and repeated, “That’s good.”
“Sorry about…I really did think Twinkies lasted damn near forever.”
He only sighed in response before shifting back to the garbage can he’d been leaning against. “Listen, we’re down to our last water bottle and you’re probably not going to be up to moving for a few more days. I…I need to go shopping.”
“Ok.”
“I didn’t want to just leave when you were so sick, but I need to go or we’re going to run out.”
“Yeah, it’s ok, Five, I get it.” And she did, even if she didn’t particularly like it.
“I won’t be gone long. You just…you just need to rest, ok? I promise I’ll be right back.”
“Won’t even notice you’re gone.” Her chin tilted up, of course, she’d be fine.
His lips quirked almost imperceptibly. “All right. Stay where you are. You wander off and I swear to god I’m getting you one of those baby leashes.”
“Kinky.”
Five rolled his eyes and heaved himself up. “Seriously. Don’t fucking move from that spot.”
With a cheeky salute, she took another long swig of water. Once he turned away her smile faltered and her hands shook so badly she nearly dropped the bottle. “Five!” she called, her voice cracking.
He turned and ran back to her side before she could get another word out, pulling her into his arms and squeezing her close. “Don’t ever scare me like that again or I’ll…”
“I won’t,” she promised fervently, “I won’t.”
They stayed like that, clutching each other like frightened children in a storm. “You should probably…”
“Yeah, I know.”
Neither one let go for a very long time.