Chapter Text
There was never enough time. He should have blinked straight to the parking lot in front of the ballet studio instead of dragging himself across the block, pushing through dizziness and spasms wracking his limbs, but Five had played it safe. Lila was the only one who could detect the subtle disturbances left in the wake of his jumps, and that was a risk he couldn’t afford.
After their last encounter, she might just mimic his ability and vanish before he got a word out. He wasn’t about to let that happen.
The mere thought of failure sent a chill down his spine—though that could just as easily be another aftereffect of the paralytic sludge his now-dead captors had pumped into his system.
Keeping low, he slipped behind a van near the entrance, eyes locked on the glass door. His internal clock ticked away the seconds. She’d better not linger inside. The last thing he needed was to go searching for her in an unfamiliar building. His pulse had already started to climb when Lila finally emerged onto the porch, absentmindedly digging through her bag.
How long had it been since they last saw each other? For her, about three months. For him, over a year.
Five stilled for a heartbeat, mesmerized as the April wind teased the loose fringe of her scarf. Spring wouldn’t last long this year. Now he knew that for certain. And he didn’t have the luxury of hesitating, not when every second counted. No time to brace himself against the moment her expression shifted, her eyes filling with that damnable pity. He remembered it all too well, even though the rest of that day had dissolved into a drunken haze. He must have looked pathetic—just another washed-up mess, barely keeping it together. Five doubted he looked much better now.
He tugged at his sleeves, making sure they covered his wrists. Time to move. He drew in a breath, steadied himself, and stepped forward.
Lila’s head snapped up, confusion flashing in her gaze before vanishing just as quickly.
“Why are you here, Five?” Arms crossed, she leaned against the car. “Figured it’s been too bloody long since you last drove me up the wall?”
The irritation in her voice was unmistakable, but so was the quick, practiced flick of her eyes, scanning him for injuries before she even realized she was doing it.
“Are you drunk again, or…?”
“Or,” he cut in. His throat was dry, his heart hammering too fast. “I need to show you something. It’s important.”
She sighed, running a hand through her hair.
“Listen,” Lila said, staring somewhere past him. “We’ve been through this before. What is it this time? The CIA cafeteria swapped the filling in their pasties, or some bar got a new coat of paint, and now you are spiraling into another paranoid meltdown?”
“Please, Lila.” Five clenched his teeth, forcing his voice to stay steady. “I swear, this is the last time. I won’t bother you again.”
She sighed, then glanced at her watch.
“Gracie’s done in half an hour.”
“That’s plenty,” he lied, extending his hand. He did his best to appear composed, but the slight tremor in his fingers gave him away.
She hesitated. Suspicion still lingered in her eyes, but underneath it—something unreadable. Doubt? Curiosity?
“Last time,” he repeated, hand still out.“I promise.”
“If you pull any shit—”
“I’m not exactly at my best,” he admitted, and it was nothing but the truth. “If I screw this up, just snap my neck and call it a day.”
Lila let out a dry chuckle, shaking her head. Then, after a pause, she reached for his hand.
***
The jump nearly knocked him out cold. If not for Lila, he would’ve gone face-first onto the platform. Made it. Good.
“Oi, you gonna pass out or what?” Lila demanded.
He didn’t answer, gasping for air. Didn’t even need to fake it—he was spent. Which meant she couldn’t copy his jumps anymore. Just had to hold out for another five minutes. Long enough to keep her from getting to the exit before it all went to hell. Blood trickled from his nose.
“I—one sec,” he choked out.
He latched onto her, keeping himself from crumpling to the floor, trying to force his vision to clear.
“You’re not drunk. You’ve bloody wrecked yourself,” she muttered, her voice edged with something dangerously close to concern.
And that was when the explosion hit. It ripped through the station, loud enough to rattle the rails. A heavy crash followed, the sound of destruction rolling through the tunnels like a distant storm.
Lila froze for a split second, eyes blown wide, then bolted for the exit. Five clamped onto her sleeve.
“Where are you going? It’s already over,” he rasped.
“Gracie’s in there!” She yanked at his grip, struggling to break free.
“It’s over,” he repeated, voice hollow.
Lila struck him across the face, hard. He collapsed, dragging her down with him. He didn’t try to talk her down anymore, just curled in on himself, dodging her wild swings, keeping his hands locked around her arm. But he didn’t stand a chance. Within seconds, he was left rolling on the ground, gasping in pain, while Lila ran straight to her death.
And yet, luck was on their side—just this once.
Two corridors led off the platform: one was a short, direct path to the exit; the other twisted and turned before dead-ending at a locked supply room. Fortunately, Lila had picked the wrong one.
By the time Five finally dragged himself to the stairs—breath ragged, cold sweat dripping down his back—the upper steps were already swallowed by lava. It sizzled and boiled, threatening to spill over at any moment. Instinct kicked in, and he jerked back—nearly crashing into Lila as she came barreling out from around the corner.
“What the hell are you standing there for?!” she yelled. “Do something!”
“I did everything I could,” he croaked, slumping against the wall.
Lila’s stare burned with unfiltered rage.
“I hate you,” she spat.
“I know.”
***
For a while, they just stood there, transfixed, watching the molten torrent bubble and froth, creeping down the stairs in violent surges—only to stop short, as if something unseen held it at bay.
They’d seen it before. The upper steps of other stations, streaked with hardened black residue. Above was nothing but a wasteland—a silent graveyard of scorched earth and charred bodies. But this time, they weren’t looking at the aftermath. Now, they were watching it unfold in real time.
“Well? Happy now? This what you wanted?” Lila spat.
She was livid. The only other time he’d seen her like this was when she’d blamed him for her parents’ deaths. And really, was this any different? He’d failed. He hadn’t saved them. Might as well have killed them himself.
“I didn’t want any of this,” Five slurred, nausea rolling over him in waves. His legs barely held him upright.
“You fucking knew! You lured me here on purpose!” She grabbed his collar and shook him like a rag doll.
“What else was I supposed to do? You wouldn’t listen.”
She let go so abruptly that he collapsed onto the filthy tiles. His ears rang, his vision flickered, and he struggled to focus on something—anything to keep himself conscious.
Her boot. Black, military-style, thick-soled.
He braced himself for the inevitable—curled in on himself, arms shielding his face. He deserved it. Screwing up like this—when so many lives had depended on him, wasn’t just failure. It was unforgivable. But the kick never came.
“So that’s why you kept banging on about this being a wrong timeline?” Her voice sounded distant, drained of all its usual sharpness.
“This isn’t our timeline,” he rasped. “In ours, everyone’s alive. They’re getting ready for Christmas.”
“You’re bloody delusional,” Lila snapped. The last thing he registered before the darkness took him was the sound of her footsteps retreating into the distance.
***
Lila paced the empty corridor in frantic strides. She needed to move, to do something—anything—or she’d explode. Right now, she was no better than the fire raging above. Grief and fury twisted inside her, fighting to break free, to drown out everything the lava had spared. She wanted to scream, but her throat was too tight, and all that escaped were ragged, gasping sobs.
Everything that mattered had been wiped out in an instant. And now, at the edges of her vision, loomed a familiar door—the bunker where she buried everything too unbearable to live with. Once, it had been just a tiny hatch, no bigger than a mailbox. It had appeared the day five-year-old Lila was ordered to strangle a hamster as part of her training. She didn’t remember doing it, only the hours she’d spent crying beforehand—and the bucket of ice cream she’d been given as a reward.
As Lila grew, so did the bunker. It was a catch-all space, a dumping ground for everything that wasn’t meant to be remembered. The uglier corpses ended up there first—the ones from Commission assignments—followed by her foster mother, then those she cared for, erased by the Kugelblitz: Stanley, her musician friends in Berlin, even that funny little dog from the Hotel Obsidian lobby. Lila had never been organized, so everything else piled up in a chaotic heap—failed romances, bitter regrets, and, most recently, a creeping discontent and frustration that threatened her children's happiness. And that, more than anything, had to stay buried.
And now she had to expand it once more—to make room for yet another apocalypse, the one that had truly hurt.
Lila didn’t even register the tears until they slid down her chin. Her hand went to her pocket on autopilot, searching for a tissue, but instead, her fingers closed around a set of car keys. She stared at them blankly for a long moment. She didn’t have a car anymore. No one to drive around. Nowhere to go. No reason to go anywhere. That was it. End of the road.
Inside, where all the little daily irritations used to be—annoying but manageable—there was only an endless, gray void. Like a movie theater where the power had suddenly gone out. No familiar, if mediocre, film playing on the screen—just a dull rectangle and the dim glow of an EXIT sign.
Furious, Lila flung the keys at the wall. They hit the tiles with a sharp clang, and only then did she notice—formulas covered the corridor walls, stretching from the entrance all the way to the dead-end ahead. The scribbles ended at a gray, locked door, where a date was written in bold red strokes—today’s date, underlined. Just beside it, the only legible phrase among the sea of numbers and symbols stood out: "Maximum Probability."
Five had known. He had known everything. Calculated it all in advance with his stupid equations. And still, he hadn’t done a damn thing.
***
Stuffing an entire apocalypse into the bunker wasn’t easy. Lila moved without thinking, her feet carrying her forward until something blocked her way—an inflatable mattress, an army blanket crumpled on top. Another dead end. She had wandered straight into Five’s camp, tucked away in the station’s depths: stacks of supply boxes, a camping stove, water jugs lined up neatly against the wall.
"Figures," Lila thought bitterly. "He had time for this. Priorities, huh?"
The irritation grounded her. It was easier to be angry at Five than to let herself grasp the full horror of what had happened.
She took a shaky breath, then forced her mind to shift, to obey the years of training that had kept her sane—not to picture the lava swallowing everyone she loved. Not Gracie, but hazy silhouettes of shrieking little girls in glittery pink tutus. The fire could take her house, but not her mother and aunt standing over a steaming pot of dahl, nor the twins fighting over the remote to their toy train set. Not Diego, gripping the wheel of his car, speeding home with reckless desperation—just the blurred outline of vehicles melting into the blaze. Nothing personal. Nothing real.
Keeping her mind in check took focus. She tuned out again, weaving through stacks of canned goods.
By the time she shook off the intrusive images, she found herself facing rows of hangers, gently swaying in the draft—suits, shirts, jackets in all shades. The storage room had seamlessly blended into what looked more like a wardrobe. Or maybe even a dressing room.
“If there’s a mannequin here, I swear I’m going to puke,” Lila muttered.
But thankfully, nothing even remotely human-shaped was in sight. No sign of Five, either. He was probably sulking in some corner, licking his wounds—or just had the common sense to steer clear of her.
“And that’s probably for the best,” Lila said out loud.
The station’s silence, broken only by the faint crackle of static and the distant hum of a train, was starting to get on her nerves.
The clothes hung neatly on a rail, balanced across two towers of instant soup crates—completely at odds with Five’s usual habits and tastes. He could go years wearing the same suit without a second thought. Off to the side, a standing rack cluttered with wigs and an assortment of hats completed the bizarre setup. A full-length mirror leaned against one of the columns.
Either Five had developed some weird kinks in their time apart, or—more likely—he’d been playing spy games again.
A flicker of red caught her eye, so absurdly out of place that she pushed the hangers apart in confusion. What she found made her stop short—then laughter tore out of her, sharp and a little unhinged.
There, nestled among the dull work shirts and jumpsuits, was a cocktail dress—bold, striking, and unmistakably crimson. Her red. The exact dress she’d worn, once upon a different life, to the Keepers’ gathering.
“Oh, I have to see this,” Lila muttered, rifling through the opaque plastic bag on the same hanger until her fingers closed around a pair of stiletto heels.
That was the last straw. Too much insanity for one day. She needed to deal with it—immediately. And if Five had a stash of booze, which he absolutely did, now was the time to put it to good use.
Determined, she set off deeper into the maze.
***
Behind a low wall of crates, Five’s "office" was centered around a battered bench that seemed to serve as his desk. Books were stacked around it in precarious columns—mostly thick reference guides and encyclopedias, all marked with library stamps. At one end of the bench sat a typewriter and a neatly packed envelope, while the rest of the space was buried under a mess of scrawled notes.
Lila leaned in—and her name leapt out at her.
Dear Lila… Lila, what the hell… Lila, you have to believe me… Lila, only a complete idiot wouldn’t see it… Lila, please… Lila, I know you have every reason to doubt me… Lila, my love, my only one… Lila, we don’t have much time… Lila, you feel it too, don’t you… Lila, you’re not stupid… Lila, I swear I’m telling the truth… Lila, this is our last chance…
Something stuck out from under the bench—a couch cushion. She pulled it free, dropped onto it with a heavy sigh, and, forgetting what she had come for, started reading.
***
They weren’t just letters—they were drafts, endless versions of the same desperate message. Five had tried every tactic he could think of. He begged her to reconsider, to actually look at the evidence. He pleaded, insulted her, shifted between anger and desperation. And somewhere in the mess of words was a passing mention of his own arrest.
Apparently, about a month after they got back—maybe a day or two after he’d shown up at her door, drunk and miserable—he’d been accused of working for the Keepers. His direct superior was involved, and Five had ended up under suspicion as an accomplice.
" Oh, and Lila—another piece of evidence for you. The methods they use to ‘encourage’ cooperation during questioning have been outlawed in our timeline a long time ago."
She flipped through note after note, piecing together the full story.
He hadn’t resisted arrest, thinking the investigation would clear him. But it had been a mistake. The real scandal ran higher than he’d imagined, and they needed a scapegoat. He was the easiest target. When they started pressing him to sign a confession—pinning him with charges of embezzlement and leaking classified intelligence—he did the only thing he could. He ran. Vanished into the subway.
Now it all made sense. That ridiculous collection of disguises— his way of slipping to the surface unnoticed.
***
The letters were like timelines—infinite variations of the same plea. The neatly written ones were detached, almost clinical, laced with dry humor. But the more the handwriting deteriorated, the more lines were scratched out, the more the pain bled through. Some of them carried so much raw longing, so much quiet grief, that she had to look away.
In the margins of one particularly chaotic page—scribbled over with frantic, barely legible scrawls—Lila found her own profile, traced and retraced over and over again.
Her irritation faded, replaced by a dull, dragging ache that she didn’t have a name for. If his letter had come on time, would she have read it? Or would she have thrown it away immediately, refusing to stir up the past, to awaken the most dangerous thing buried deep under cement in the farthest corner of her mental bunker?
For the past few months, she had done nothing but force herself back into a semblance of normal life—no matter how unnatural it felt. She had struggled against her own failings, the ones that kept her from being the wife, the mother, the daughter she was supposed to be—from doing all the things that seemed effortless for others.
Five had been fighting his battle alone, and she had been too exhausted, too tangled in her own mess, to even listen.
Lila exhaled sharply and stretched her legs under the bench. Something rattled and rolled—a bottle, hollow and empty.
"Alright, alright, you got me," Lila muttered. "Let’s see this grand thesis of yours."
***
Where the letters had been disjointed, frantic, the evidence was the exact opposite—lined sheets, carefully formatted tables in two neat columns, each point laid out in crisp, orderly print. Everything about it was clean, structured, meticulous.
The timeline analysis was broken down into strict categories—historical events, geographical changes, cultural shifts, and firsthand accounts. Each section was ranked from major inconsistencies to trivial oddities. A summary and list of sources rounded it all out at the end.
From a quick skim, a few details lodged themselves in her mind: Easter Island didn’t exist on any map, the 2000 Olympics had taken place in Ulaanbaatar, and apparently, Klaus had a peanut allergy. It was an incredibly exacting piece of research, eerily reminiscent of a Commission dossier—something about its structure made it feel strangely credible.
Besides, the life she had once fought to protect from these ridiculous revelations no longer existed. If anything, this scattered heap of paper meant that nothing was lost, that no matter what horrors had befallen this timeline, her family was safe. She would see her children again. Her mother. Everyone.
So Lila decided to believe.
Too much of it lined up. The whole thing made way too much sense to ignore.
And now that everything had fallen into place, she had to face it: her anger at Five had been misplaced. He hadn’t deserved it. Maybe her fury had made sense, but it had also been deeply unfair. And if that was true, then at the very least, she owed him an apology—for the bruises, if nothing else.
***
Five didn’t respond to her calling his name, and Lila picked up speed. What if she had hurt him worse than she thought? She had been seeing red, and he hadn’t even tried to defend himself—only held on, desperate to keep her from dying. Shit. She broke into a sprint.
He was curled up on the dirty floor, exactly where she had left him, completely still. Lila dropped to her knees and shook him. He rasped out something incoherent without opening his eyes, and relief flooded her. Not a coma, not unconscious—just Five, as always, overestimating himself, burning through his last reserves and crashing.
Only now did she notice the raw, bleeding skin on his wrists, as if he had torn himself free from restraints, and the angry red mark from a needle on his left arm. Another piece of the puzzle locked into place. He must have been captured after completing his formula. And judging by his state, they had held him for a long time. Maybe that was why he had never managed to send the letter, why he had missed every deadline.
And yet, somehow, in the end, he had escaped—just barely, just enough to, recklessly as ever, throw himself right back into the fray to rescue what he believed mattered most.
***
There was no way she was dragging him all the way back to camp just to get him off the freezing floor. So instead, Lila brought the camp to him—the mattress, the blanket, and the entire supply of stolen meds, neatly stored in a rolling bag.
Five didn’t so much as twitch when she moved him, when she wiped the dried blood off his face, or even when she ran her hands over his ribs, checking for breaks.
Hours passed before he finally stirred, his eyelids fluttering open. He blinked at the bandages on his wrists, at the old issues of National Geographic scattered across the blanket. No one but Lila would have caught the way the corners of his lips barely lifted.
"Are you no longer angry?" he asked hoarsely.
"And what gave you that idea?" Lila snorted.
"I am still alive."
"I read your bloody notes," she admitted.
She could hardly say outright that she had been blind, too wrapped up in self-delusion and her own petty problems to hear him before. Just as she could not admit that she had been too afraid of shattering her hard-won normal life to even entertain the thought that he had been right. Lila dropped her gaze.
"I told you I had proof," Five said. There was no smugness in his voice, only exhaustion.
"That is irrelevant," she waved him off. "What really got me was the poetry in Italian."
A faint flush spread over Five’s face. He pretended to study the cover of a magazine featuring a two-tailed leopard.
"I was drunk," he muttered.
"I don't doubt it," Lila sighed. "And I don't doubt you anymore."
"I regret that I did not manage to save anyone else."
"You did everything you could."
Five sucked in a breath, unsteady and shallow. His eyes shone, too bright.
"Oh, no. No, you are not about to start crying, are you? " Lila said, panic creeping into her voice. "I already feel like a right piece of shit."
He shook his head, almost violently, and ducked behind his fringe.
Before she could second-guess herself, Lila moved closer and, as gently as she could, wrapped her arms around him, careful not to cause any pain. He did not speak—simply buried his face against her shoulder, his breath gradually evening out. And with every second that passed, something in her unlocked—like surfacing from a fever dream, stepping back into something real, like reclaiming a world where she did not have to be anything more than herself.
She had spent these months not thinking about him, forcing herself not to. Because she knew—if she did, she would never be able to hold on to the life she had fought to carve out for herself. But now that the distance between them was gone, everything had fallen back into place.
"I missed you," she breathed. "God, I missed you so much."