Chapter Text
.Hate you.
// Not really //
They probably never had any chance, not really, and from the very beginning.
Lila should have known, after all.
And Five… Damn. Of all the damn people who had ever existed, in any alternate reality, Five should have known.
That is probably why Lila resents him so much. That is probably why Lila is so grateful to him.
For never saying it since the beginning, after all. That they never had any chance anyway.
They’ve argued so much about the map's possible interpretations that they've lost their voices.
Lila ends up screaming, beside herself. It must have been weeks, or even months.
Five is still just trying to argue in what he thinks is a reasonable tone, and Lila feels like she’s about to slap him. Instead, she simply snatches the map from his hands and ignores him, trying to figure it out herself.
She might as well not even try to count on him that much, since, despite his presumption of greater reasonableness, he isn't getting anywhere either.
Five sighs and rolls his eyes, making his usual display of patient, and lets her pick up the path for something like hours, or maybe days.
She’s having the vivid impression that they’re making enormous progress, until they find themselves completely lost, again, or even more so, who can tell at this point?
Lila throws the map at him when he just casts her a glance, and Five carefully lays it back out and sighs again, before accepting his turn to have a go himself.
Lila has decided she’s at least better at finding useful things, like food and clothes and the like, when they start to really need them.
She’s sick of the rolling of the trains beneath them, but she definitely refuses when Five ends up suggesting they stay for the night in a relatively clean and safe stop.
They wouldn't be camping like tramps at the stops. What the hell does Five thinks he’s doing, exactly? Building another sniper post, finding a mannequin, and staying here for the next forty years or so? Lila absolutely has to get home. God, Diego must be out of his mind, not to mention her aunts and uncles, and her children…
Lila swallows, pushing down another wave of anguish, and snatches the map from Five again.
They have a few moments of respite from arguing, but not from practically getting dizzy from wandering around that subway.
Up and down the steps at the stops; Lila lost count.
Up and down the trains; Lila’s so used to feeling the movement of the trains running on the tracks that she feels seasick on land for the entire first night they sleep at a stop, waking up every now and then because the unmovable ground beneath gives her the instinctive illusion they’re reaching a stop where they have to get off the train.
When she gets up, she gives Five a light but angry slap on the back of the head, taking over guard duty so he can have his turn to sleep.
Five doesn't seem to be doing any better either, in terms of actually sleeping.
She tells him it has been a terrible idea, and they go back to dozing as best they can on the seats of the trains.
They argue again, and end up staying silent most of the time, as if it were the only way they’ve left to avoid arguing.
They pass the map back and forth across the corridor, carefully splitting in half any food and water they find. They stretch their muscles on the trains, performing stunts, holding on to poles for support. Their clothes are filthy, as are they.
Lila begins to dream of showers and food, clean towels, and beds with real mattresses.
Five wakes her up, calling her rather politely, and she gets off with him at the stop, blinking her heavy eyelids and wondering whose turn it is this time to try and find the exit.
It had been so terribly easier, that time on the Tokyo subway with her period and a bullet in her thigh, says Lila at some point.
Five looks at her, and she remembers something in particular. She asks him if it had been bearable all things considered, forty years in an apocalypse. She doesn't know why she’s asking.
Five shrugs slightly, saying it had its interesting moments, looking down as if he’s really going back to consulting the map.
Lila snatches it from him and emphasizes that she has no intention of spending forty years on a damn subway with him. In fact, she thinks she's already spent so much, too much time on a subway with him, that she's already have enough of it for at least the next forty lifetimes or so.
Five tells her not to worry because… the feeling is mutual.
Lila throws the map at him again, after almost crumpling it.
Five loses his temper at her treatment of the only one damned map they have.
But she feels satisfied, because he’s finally starting to yell.
They begin to have more heated arguments and deeper, more resentful silences between them.
Lila has the horrible suspicion that lashing out between them is just a way to try to stave off the growing desperation.
She begins to do her worst, throwing more sharp comments, and Five tries to dodge them, making her only even more furious.
Lila ends up almost ripping the map, and Five snatches it from her, giving her the opportunity to almost punch him, even though she doesn't have the strength left. Five simply stops her, still gently, dropping their only map to the ground to hold her. Lila jerks away and starts walking away without looking back.
The map probably isn't any use after all. She could probably find the exit without Five.
He follows her and calls after her, for who knows how long. He yells at her that they shouldn't lost each other too, that it would only make things worse. Five ends up begging her, and Lila stops listening and keeps walking aimlessly. Five stops talking but keeps following her at a distance.
Until Lila boards a train and the doors close behind her, and by the time she realizes it, it’s too late.
She turns on herself, looking in disbelief at the closed doors, and Five slamming into them, fighting tooth and nail to force them open. Lila does the same. Neither of them succeed, and the train begins to move.
Five runs along the platform, desperately shouting something at her.
Lila runs along the train in the opposite direction, trying to hear and understand him, in vain. Trying to tell him she’s sorry, and to do something, for God's sake.
And then she’s alone on a train, and she’s more terrified than she has ever been in her entire life, perhaps, and more regretful than she has ever been, despite everything she has done which in retrospect she hasn't exactly been thrilled about.
She tries not to panic, and to think clearly, or at least try. What has Five been trying to tell her? She hasn't been able to hear him.
She feels the panic trying to swallow her again, and she swallows it down with all her might, shoving it back into place.
She decides to get off at the next stop. The train goes away. She waits for hours for another one to arrive, with Five aboard.
But no other train arrives. For days, no other train arrives, in any direction.
Lila survives on what there’s left inside a vending machine she manages to break into, and sleeps poorly, occasionally sitting on the floor leaning against a column, here and there waking up because she's dreamed of the sound of an approaching train.
She caresses the idea of walking along the tracks inside the tunnel and ends up stocking it aside, or at least postponing it.
She ends up muttering incoherently to herself, to keep herself company in the silence. Mostly insults and encouragements and prayers addressed to Five.
Something like maybe a week later, Lila opens her eyes to the umpteenth time hearing the imaginary sound of an approaching train. And she watches the train stops, thinking with cynical amusement that her hallucinations must be evolving from merely auditory to visual.
And then Five’s standing there, calling her name in a whisper as if he couldn't believe it himself.
A moment later, Lila is standing up, and Five is walking toward her. She throws her arms around him first, perhaps. Five hugs her, still in disbelief, even at his own still uncertain and surprisingly enormous relief.
Lila knows something about more or less the same feelings.
«I'm sorry.» she says softly.
«Okay.» says Five after a moment. «Me too.»
Lila almost laughs and cries at the same time. He’s completely absurd.
It has to be that - after all - it isn’t either of them's fault. Or both of them, actually.
Lila has insisted on going to check it out, and Five hasn't really tried to resist being dragged onto a train. Five has jumped back on a train too quickly to try to get back, and Lila should have just grabbed him and dragged him off because it must have been the wrong train.
It have been easier to be terribly angry and exasperated with each other than to accept the fact that, whatever happened, now they’re hopelessly lost in a subway that seems like an endless maze of mistakes. Anyway, there’s no one else here to blame, except the two of them.
But their arguments have ended up subsiding into more or less patient, cynical bickering here and there, as if to keep in training, the gibes passed between them as is the map, as if it were a newspaper they’re pretending to read during a long, boring ride on a regular subway. As if they still have any idea where the starting point and the ending point were, and how to get home, how to get anywhere.
Their silences have ended up being like agreed moments of pause and rest, to give each other a break. Between themselves, and each of them with themselves. But it’s easier to be at peace with each other than with themselves.
It’s in the silence that Lila’s finally assailed by the ever-growing anguish, by the lack of her children, by the torment of impatience to see them again and hold them close, to see their faces, to hear their laughter.
Lila suddenly burst into tears, after months and months of trying to get out of that damned subway without success.
Five looks at her for a moment, stunned, sorrowful and helpless. Finally, he approaches and tries to carefully place a hand on her shoulder, starting to mutter something. «Hey... Come on...»
She punches him in the shoulder. «You must be doing something wrong! Why the hell can't we find the exit?!»
Five looks at her and seems about to say more, but Lila’s suddenly afraid to know what his prospect is now. So she hugs him and finds herself crying harder.
Five gasps and hesitates. And finally he hugs her back. First decidedly hesitant, certainly suspecting she would hit him again, in any case probably; and then holding her a little tighter.
Lila takes a breath against his shoulder. «I hate you…»
Five begins to whisper encouraging things, or what he thinks should be encouraging. That they would make it. That it just isn’t that easy, but they would make it.
Lila knows he’s lying, but she doesn’t hit him again. She nods, and after a while lets him go, running her hands over her face, her tears mixing with the grime that now perpetually covers them. The crying has finally subsided.
«It’s just that… It’s been too long.» she whispers, almost in confession.
Five tries to smile at her, more like a grimace so sorry yet so empathetic, that Lila decides to accept it anyway. «I know… We just have to hold on a little longer. We’ll find the way out, sooner or later.»
Lila can’t tell if he’ still lying. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. So she simply agrees with him, nodding again. «Okay. What's next?»
Five looks terribly relieved for a moment. Then he suggests getting off at the next stop.
Lila nods again. «Why not? It could be one stop closer to the exit, right?»
Five hesitates only a moment, his uncertain smile wavering a little, even though he’s desperately trying to make it at least a little supportive. Lila can appreciate the attempt, though.
«Exactly.»
A few days later, Lila finds some candies in a vending machine abandoned on the platform of yet another stop.
She hands them to Five, smiling in a way she wouldn’t thought she's able to do anymore, perhaps even before the subway, except when it comes to her children.
Five smiles back in a way she's probably never seen before.
Lila thinks that - okay - whether Five believes it for real or not, whether he’s lying to her or not, they can make it out of there.