𝚃𝚘: 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙳𝙴𝚁𝚂
𝙵𝚛𝚘𝚖: 𝙿𝟻𝟷𝟹𝟾𝟸𝟻𝙷
𝙳𝚊𝚝𝚎: 𝟶𝟺𝟷𝟿𝟸𝟶𝟸𝟷

𝙲𝙷𝙰𝙿𝚃𝙴𝚁 𝚃𝙴𝙽: 𝙳𝙴𝙰𝙻𝚂 𝙰𝙽𝙳 𝙲𝙾𝙽𝙳𝙸𝚃𝙸𝙾𝙽𝚂

━━━━━━

"Funny. If I didn't know he was such a prick, I'd say he looked almost adorable in his sleep."

You and the Hargreeves brothers arrived at Diego's place. It was just a small room, a boiler room to be exact. Luther placed Five down on Diego's bed while you sat on a chair with Delores on your side. You glared at the doll before softly pushing her away from you. You looked down at Five who was sleeping peacefully and his hands were balled into fists as if he was a baby.

Diego turned to you and glanced at Five. "Watch out, (Y/n). You might fall in love with that prick's adorable face."

You furrowed your eyebrows at him. "Falling in love is not my priority right now, Diego."

"Ahh. You're a 'study first' kind of girl, huh?"

'Ha! I'm a 'finish a murder' kind of girl, thank you very much.'

Luther looked down at Five. "He'll sober up eventually. Be back to his normal, unpleasant self."

"Yeah, I can't wait that long." Diego shook his head. "I need to find out what his connection is with these lunatics before someone else dies," Diego said as he started walking away and gathered his things.

Luther followed Diego until he looked back at Five again. "All that stuff he was saying before..."

Diego froze for a moment when he heard a noise, ignoring Luther once again. Luther continued on with questions. "What do you think he meant by that?" Luther suddenly closed his mouth when Diego shushed him.

Diego walked up to the door, pulling out his knife, and opened the door. He was ready to throw his knife but completely paused when he heard a voice. "You throw another one of those goddamn knives at me, I'm pressin' charges."

Diego sighed and opened his door wide open. "What do you want, Al?"

An old man walked in. "I ain't your secretary. Some lady called for you, said she needs your help."

"What lady?"

"I dunno. Some, uh, detective. I think she said her name was, uh, Blotch, or somethin'."

Diego stared at Al seriously. "Patch?"

'I'm guessing she did go to the motel. I hope she's fine.'

Al shrugged while Diego smiled a bit, realizing Patch needs his help. "She needs my help."

"She needs you to meet her at that motel, a dump on Calhoun."

Al gave Diego a piece of paper, information on where Patch is. Diego scanned it. "When?"

"About half an hour ago. Uh, said she found your brother." Al walked out of the room.

You furrowed your eyebrows. 'Brother?' Luther and Diego looked at each other confusingly while you looked at Five. You suddenly gasped. "Klaus!" You predicted.

"Go," Luther told Diego who was already out of the room before Luther even said a word. Luther saw you going after him but he stopped you. "Hey, hey, where are you going?"

"I—" You stopped yourself and tilted your head as you wondered. 'Huh. Why did I suddenly want to save a man who I barely even know?'

"It's gonna be alright, (Y/n). Diego can handle it."

You nodded silently and sat back down on the chair. You turned your head to the side and saw Delores still sitting still and looking like an abandoned doll. You rolled your eyes at her as you tapped your foot impatiently.

It took a few minutes or an hour for Five to finally wake up. Five blinked a few times to figure out where he was. He sat up and rubbed his eyes tiredly until he finally saw Luther and you. "You're awake," Luther said.

"Stating the obvious." Five scoffed as he scratched the back of his head. "How drunk was I?"

"Drunk enough to puke behind Luther." You answered with a smirk earning a frown from Luther as he recalled what happened.

Five looked up at you while Luther looking around for a glass of water for Five. "What are you doing here?" Five asked.

"Nice to see you again, lil' gremlin." You sneered as you walked towards him.

"Don't call me that." Five hissed.

"I can call you whatever the hell I want." You grinned as you sat down in front of him. "So, how's your little sleep?"

"Cut the crap." Five said as he lowered his voice down. "You thought I don't know you, huh?"

Your smile slowly faded and tilted your head. "You know nothing of me.

"Please, that red cloak is infamous back at the Commission. You may be great at killing people but you sure as hell are not good with lying and pretending, Red." Five smirked as he rested his elbows on his thighs and leaned a bit closer to you.

You leaned in too and smirk. "You know I could kill you right here and right now."

"Oh, please? Right in front of Luther?"

"Whatever makes the job done, Number Five."

"Are you two flirting? Because I could leave the room right now."

Five twitched a smile at you before leaning back and looked at Luther. "Sit down, Luther. I know you have a lot of questions."

You scoffed and leaned back to your chair, crossing your legs and arms. Luther took a deep breath. "When's it supposed to happen? This... apocalypse."

"I can't give you the exact hour, but... from what I could gather, we have four days left." Five said.

"Why didn't you say something sooner?" Luther asked, his voice getting higher in anger.

"It wouldn't have mattered if I told you."

"Of course it would. We could've banded together and helped you try to stop this thing."

"For the record, you already tried."

Luther leaned back a bit in confusion while you got interested so you continued to listen. "What do you mean?"

Five looked down, looking a bit hurt and it was the first time you see him like that. You always see him being serious, sarcastic, overall a bloody bastard but this one's new. It did break your heart a little and you didn't know why. "I found... all of you." Five said in his soft voice. "Your bodies."

"We... die?"

"Horribly. You were together, trying to stop whoever it was that ends the world." Five continued.

"Wait, how did you know that?"

You saw Five taking out something from his pocket. It was a prosthetic eye. "This was clutched in your dead hand when I found you." Five tossed it to Luther who caught it. "Must've ripped it out of their head right before you went down."

Luther scanned it as he asked a question. "Whose head?"

"As I said, I don't know."

Luther turned the prosthetic eye around and found a serial number. "Well, there's a serial number on the back. Think maybe you could try—"

"No, that's a dead end." Five chuckled painfully. "It's just another hunk of glass." Luther sighed and gave the eye back to Five.

A door suddenly opened causing Five to look up and you to flinch in surprise. You saw Diego marching towards Five angrily. "Piece of shit. Do you have any idea what you just did?"

Luther quickly stood up and blocked Diego's way while you jumped out of your seat. Luther grabbed Diego and prevented him from harming Five. "Nope, let me— get your ape hands off of me!"

You noticed Diego's feet were no longer on the ground. "I can do this as long as it takes you to calm down," Luther told Diego who sighed in defeat and stopped grunting. "Fine."

Luther placed Diego back down to the ground. "Now, wanna tell us what you're talking about?"

"Yeah, before murdering your bastard of a brother?" You added with a hand resting on your hip. Five glared at you.

"Our brother's been pretty busy since he got back," Diego informed. "He was in the middle of that shootout at Griddy's, and then at Gimble Brothers, after the guys in masks attacked the Academy, looking for him."

"Those are none of your concerns." Five told Diego.

"It is now." Diego panted in anger. "They just killed my friend."

Your eyes widened. 'The detective's dead? Oh, shit.'

"Who are they, Five?" Luther asked as he turned around to look at Five.

Five looked down for a bit, giving up. "They work for my former employer. A woman called The Handler. She sent them... to stop me. Then, soon as Diego's friend got in their way, well, fair game."

"And now they're my fair game." Diego hissed. "And I'm gonna see to it they pay."

You shook your head, standing up. "No, you're not going anywhere."

"That would be a mistake, Diego." Five added. "They've killed people far more dangerous than you."

"Yeah, we'll see about that." Diego slammed the door as he got out of his own room.

"Former employer?" Luther questioned Five. "What's this really about, Five? And don't give me any of this 'It's none of your business' crap, all right?"

"Well, it's a long story."

"Well, we have all day." You told him, crossing your arms, and smirking mockingly at him. You knew there was no time to waste even seconds because an apocalypse is coming. But your mission is to kill Five and not care about the upcoming apocalypse.

Five glanced at you, hesitating before sighing and finally told the story of how he got recruited by his former employer, The Handler, who's your adoptive mother. "They turned me into the perfect instrument for the rehabilitation of the time continuum. Or 'corrections', as they called them."

You knew about this already but you decided to listen anyway.

"I wasn't the only one. There are others like me." Five continued. "Beings out of time, fractured, extracted from the lives that they knew. I don't know how they got there. But I do know that none of them were as good as me."

You rolled your eyes which Five noticed. "Well, except maybe for Red."

"Who's Red?" Luther asked.

"Doesn't matter." You hissed causing Luther to look at you confusingly.

Five continued his little story. "They didn't realize it, but I was biding my time, trying to figure out the right equation so I could get back. If I could just get back, I knew I could stop the apocalypse. Save the world. So I broke my contract."

"And got your former employer into trouble and your family too." You pointed out.

"So..." Luther spoke. "You were a hitman?"

"Yes." Five simply answered.

"Uh... I mean, you had a code, right? You didn't kill just anybody." Luther continued.

"No code. We took out anyone who messed with the timeline."

"What about innocent people?"

"Luther, that's what no code means." You told him. "Innocent or not, we— they will kill whoever dares to mess up the timeline." You explained to him, earning a nod from Five. "It's business and protection of timeline, mate."

"But that's murder," Luther complained.

You chuckled darkly before quickly shushing yourself when you noticed Luther's confused look again towards you while Five shook his head.

"Jesus, Luther, grow up." Five rolled his eyes at his brother. "We're not kids anymore. There's no such thing as good guys or bad guys. There are just people, goin' about their lives. But when the world ends, all those people die, including our family. Time changes everything."

But you do admit, your way of killing people is a bit different from Five's way of killing people. He'll kill anyone whoever the Commission's told him while you investigate the people that are assigned to you to kill them before killing them. You knew the targeted people aren't so innocent but you are picky with your targets. You want to kill the ones who deserve to die.

You stood up and were about to walk out the door but Five stood up. "Where are you going?"

"Out." You said simply before leaving the place. Five gave Luther a look before spatial jumping and reappearing right in front of him. You sighed. "What?"

"Just like that you're gonna leave?"

"Well, all those story-telling killed my homicidal mood so I'll kill you later or tomorrow, yeah?"

Five stuffed his hands in his pocket as he scoffed. "Didn't know you have a mood if you want to kill or not."

"Am I not allowed to have a mood?"

"Look, you can kill me whenever you want but for a few days I need you to postpone it."

You cocked an eyebrow before laughing. "You must be mental. You're a mad man, Number Five."

"You need my help and I need yours."

"Whatever for?"

"Your past."

Your smile disappeared before huffing and walking away but Five grabbed your arm, preventing you to go any further. He dragged you back in front of him and slightly pushed you against a wall. You yanked your arm back and pointed your finger at him. "You have no business of knowing my past."

"I feel like we've met."

"We never did even back in the Commission. We just hear each other's names and accomplishments."

"Years ago." Five crossed his arms. "You look exactly like the girl I saved from a bank robber."

"That was years ago. How could you even still remember that—"

"Because I kept seeing her inside the Academy."

You stopped yourself from talking. "So?"

"I just need to make sure that you're not her. You should be looking like a 30-year-old woman but no. Here you are, in your 15-year-old body and looking like her but a bit older." Five tilted his head a bit. "And I'm guessing you don't remember anything about your past at all."

You didn't say anything and looked away from him. You sighed and looked down on the ground. "What the hell do you want?"

"Here's the deal: I'll help you remember your past. The condition is: you have to postpone your mission of killing me."

"That's absurd. Besides, you have your little apocalypse to take care of."

"I can multitask."

"Sure, sure."

"You said you wouldn't hesitate to kill me. But you hesitated twice. You even protected me back at the mall. And even helped my two idiotic brothers to bring me here."

You clenched your fists as you looked at him, head tilting. You clicked your tongue before rolling your eyes. "Fine. You have two days. After those two days, I'm murdering you."

Five smiled. "Then I'm counting on it."

-•-°-•-°-☆

Chapters will be released every Monday and Friday at 6 PM (Philippine Time).

I can see myself killing myself.