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The world ends, this is a love story. Both of these things are true, eventually.
NULLA
At the end of the world, there’s a girl hiding in her bathtub. In fourth grade, they had a class on earthquake safety, and the firefighter had said that you should go to the bathtub, or maybe he had said to not go to the bathtub. Either way, her door was crushed under rubble so in the bathtub, the girl stayed waiting for the aftershocks. There weren’t any. Just the one big ‘boom’ hours ago that shook the world and sent a chunk of rubble hurling at her bathroom door.
It takes seventeen hours for the girl to find the courage to leave her bathtub.
It takes three days for her to realise there’s no one else left.
It takes eight more days for her to accept it.
It takes twenty-one days for the smog to clear.
It takes thirty-two days for her to realise that the moon is gone.
It takes forty-six days for the canned food from the convenience store down the block to run out, forcing her to crawl through more of the rubble that once was called a city.
It takes fifty-one days for the girl to meet The Boy.
She hears the crunch of shifting gravel and debris underfoot and accepts that she has started to go crazy. Fifty-one days isn’t bad, she supposes. Most people wouldn’t have lasted a fortnight before losing it. Before the malnutrition even really kicked in, most would probably have lost it by the eighth corpse of a neighbour, or first insect. Fifty-one days before a single auditory hallucination is actually quite impressive she decides.
Of course, as soon as she decides this a boy appears. He’s not someone she recognises on sight, which is strange. You’d think her subconscious would pull from the people she missed to taunt her, not some random private schoolboy she must have seen on the way to work once. His uniform is torn, and stained sepia the same way everything is, covered by a layer of grime and dust. Most of his face is covered by a scarf, and behind him, he drags a red wagon. He abides by absolutely none of the guidelines she has learned about hallucinations, he’s not a loved one, not anyone she remembers seeing, not in danger, not a rotted corpse. If she wasn’t more sensible she’d think he was real, however, she is sensible, which is why it took 51 days for her to lose her mind. So she continues toward the subconscious break of a boy because there’s a grocery store behind him, through him, whatever.
He calls out, she ignores it. He continues to call out, and defy the expectations of a hallucination. Not even calling out her name, just different versions of ‘Hey you!’ and ‘Stop!’. It’s honestly a little disappointing, if she was going crazy at least she could’ve gone properly crazy.
She continues to ignore the hallucination until he grabs her sleeve. Not a tug on the fabric, or a light brush on her wrist. But a hand wrapped around her lower arm and gripping so tightly she can feel a pulse from the hallucinated fingertips.
Now, this is properly crazy.
She turns to look at the mirage boy and is met by striking green eyes, green like the pines from the lake they used to visit in the summer, green as rolling hills peppered with wildflowers, green as the world before April first, green and alive . Green, alive, and staring at her desperately. It takes a few seconds for her to register that he’s even saying something, utterly transfixed by his green eyes. If one has to lose their mind, he’s not bad to lose it to she decides.
“Are you real?” He asks again, voice shaking.
“I am, and I know you’re not. I’m not that far gone yet.” She replies, her voice creaks after months of silence but Mr. Phantasmagoria stumbles back as if her words were the notes of a herald's angel song.
He’s holding her hand now, she can feel the calluses and creases on his palm. She does squeeze his hand because that would be pathetic, but tightens her grip to see how intricate this boy phantom is.
He squeezes her hand back twice in quick succession, as rapid as a heartbeat.
“I’m real too.” He stresses.
She doesn’t believe him. She shouldn’t believe him. It’s been fifty-one days since the world ended and she has only made it this far by being sensible. Talking to the mirage is not sensible. He squeezes her hand once more.
She knows he’s not real, but she can pretend.
“Okay. You can be real for now. Why not.” She tells the boy. His eyebrows crinkle but he’s still grinning, sharp and bright. It’s not the type of grin that belongs in the ruins of the world, but she basks in it anyway. She must be grinning too, because she can feel the ache of her cheeks and the sharp bite of dust on her tongue but is only half aware of it. She hasn’t grinned, or smiled at all since March.
“I’m Five.” He tells her. It’s such an odd name, she’s almost convinced he’s real after all, even in her apocalyptic mania that’s not the name she’d give her hallucination. But then he smiles at her again, not his blinding grin, but a bashful smirk, apologising for the name as if he knows it's ridiculous. And she knows he’s a mirage again because it’s textbook crazy for her mind to make up a boy with a smile that makes her heart swoop.
She keeps pretending, just because.
“I’m Delores.” She offers in return. It’s not the truth, not anymore. She hasn’t been Delores since the moon left the sky.
“Delores.” He repeats, testing the word on his tongue. And just for a second, it feels like she could be Delores again, maybe, if he was real.
“Five.” She says, it sounds like a prayer, she didn’t intend it to.
Fifty-one days after the world ends The Boy (Five) finds the girl (Delores) while wandering the ruined rubble of what used to be a mall. He sees her silhouette through the smoke, clutches her hand, and desperately asks if she’s real. In most, she’s not. In most, he abandons sanity for comfort, and a plastic mannequin settles in the back of his wagon. In this world, due to a complicated chain of events, some call the butterfly effect and some call fate which is really just the whims of a petulant girl on a tricycle, it’s different.
Five offers the girl a weary broken smile like in every world, and in this world, she smiles back.
LIII
It takes two days after he meets Delores for Five to realise that the only other person left (he thinks) doesn’t think he’s real. It’s less upsetting than it should be.
“Hey, phantom boy, can you make a phantom fire? It’s freezing.” Delores jokes. It’s only after he’s rummaged through his wagon for the matches that he even thinks to ask.
“Delores, why do you call me a phantom?” She looks up at that and tilts her head to the side slightly, a smile dancing on her lips.
“To remember. I can pretend you’re real as long as I like if I don’t forget I’m pretending.” She says it casually, turning her gaze to the sky. The smoke is finally almost gone and they’ve spent the past few hours staring at the sky for the novelty of it, making out shapes in the clouds.
“That one looks like a ballerina.”
He sits back down next to her and takes her hand, she laces her fingers between his, nonplussed that a supposed phantom was tracing spirals onto her palm.
“I’m real.” He insists. She hums absentmindedly.
“Okay, if you say so.”
She nudges his arm with her forehead and he complies, laying down so she can rest her head on his shoulder.
He can’t blame her really, Five showed up a couple of days into the apocalypse with everything already gone. She must have watched it all happen. He found his siblings, older with faces he didn’t recognise. She found everyone she knew, her entire world transformed into rubble and dust. He still has no clue how she survived, and she doesn’t seem to either.
From her perspective, Five admits it makes more sense for him to be a sign of some mental break than a survivor.
But if she thinks he’s a mirage, why is she talking to him?
“That cloud looks like a hippopotamus.” He whispers. She snorts.
“You’re awful at this, it’s clearly an elephant, look at the ears!”
“A hippopotamus with a really floppy hat!” He counters.
“Sure, on Mars maybe.” She doesn’t think he’s real, but she prods him with her elbow and laughs at his apparent lack of cloud animal spotting.
She doesn’t think he’s real but grabs his hand anyway.
Five knows that they’ll have to discuss it eventually, it’ll probably be a fight too. But it’s been two days since he thought about taking the short path to join his siblings, two days since he threw rocks at shadows that seemed ‘threatening’, and two days since he was alone.
Fifty-three days into the apocalypse Five lets the only other survivor think she made him up. She falls asleep on his shoulders and for the first time since he ran from the dining room table he can see the stars.
LXII
Sixty-two days into the apocalypse, eleven days after she lost her mind Delores wakes up to a coughing fit that isn’t her own. Five’s doubled over nearly hacking out a lung and she’s terrified in a way she hasn’t been since the first week After. With shaking hands she unscrews the cap of the water bottle hanging by her waist and hands it to the boy. He takes a few desperate gulps before flashing her a grateful smile. Terror lessens its grip on her heart.
She doesn’t remember that he’s not real until a few hours after, and curses her waste of water.
There’s no sign of the spilt water later that night, which she refuses to think about, knowing that any thinking about whether or not Five’s truly a hallucination does her no good.
She still unclips the water bottle from her belt while he stomps out the fire. Places it between their makeshift sleeping pads and refuses to meet his eyes.
“Don’t choke to death on your own stupidity again.” Her voice wavers, but she ignores it. A hallucination can’t die, and it’s silly to be worried about him.
“I’ll try my best.” He promises. And she doesn’t find any comfort in his words, because he’s not real.
If his hand finds hers sometime through the night it doesn’t matter because it’s all her own delusional mind.
It’s the best she’s slept since March but that doesn’t matter either.
LXXI
Five’s started to lose count of the days when he found Viktor’s book. Well, he doesn’t find it. Delores does. She calls out to him from across what must have been a bookstore, he’s been searching for a first aid kit behind the front desk.
She still doesn’t believe that he’s real, he thinks. It’s unclear. She’ll call out to him, hand him things, fall over laughing at his jokes, hold his hand under the cover of night. But then she’ll call him a phantasmagoria with a musical laugh, and Five will be back to staring at her dumbly, unsure of where they stand.
He’d never had a best friend, he had his siblings but he’s pretty sure that they’re different things. He’s not sure if you can have a best friend if you’re also the last two people on earth, or if she doesn’t believe you exist. But Delores is his best friend if she’s allowed to be.
She runs over to him in the bookstore eyes shining.
“Five! I found it!” She’s holding up a book with the cover half ripped off like it’s gold (or medical supplies).
“Found… what?” He starts, not wanting her to stop smiling like she is right now.
“Oh yeah, I didn’t want to get your hopes up. Your brother wrote a book, Viktor. It’s not… the nicest from what I remember but I know you wanted to know what happened to all of them in the in-between so I thought-” Five cuts her off by pulling her into his shoulder.
It’s an awkward hug. Five was odd about physical touch before the apocalypse. But Delores falls into it, her hair tickles his nose.
“Thank you.” He whispers into her ear. He can feel her cheeks quirk up into a smile in response.
He stays up all night reading, Delores pretends to not notice he’s been crying when she wakes up. He slips out sometime in the afternoon and walks halfway across the city, back to the academy. He sits by the makeshift graves of his siblings while the sun sets, as it rises again, and when it sets once more.
When he stumbles back to the campsite (that his mind traitorously began to call home) Delores runs to him, nearly crying.
“What the fuck Five, I turn around and you’re gone and you just stay gone. Do you know how fucking terrifying that was? I thought you were dead for Christ's sake-”
“How can I be dead if I’m not real?” He interrupts her. He’s delirious (and a little bit drunk) which is the only reason he says it. But he says it nonetheless.
“Oh fuck off Five!” She spits and her anger burns. He has an apology on his tongue almost instantly, but she’s already turned away. So he swallows it instead and reacquaints himself with the silence.
LXXIV
Five hasn’t spoken to her in eight days, although she’s not counting. She hasn’t spoken to him in eight days either, but she said the last word, which means the next one was his job (her last words were ‘fuck off’ which makes the next words her job, an apology, her mind whispers. She ignores it and continues to sit next to him in silence and stare at the fire).
It’s been 74 days since the world ended and she had nearly stopped counting. Instead counting the 23 days since she hadn’t been alone, the 31 hours she thought she was alone again, and the 8 days she’s not alone, but still lonely. Her mind traitorously whispers how the last 8 days and those 31 hours were more unbearable than any of the days before it. But her mind also made him up and is now making him not talk to her, so her mind can shut up and go fuck itself.
But… she knows her mind didn’t make him up. It was easier to believe that. A mirage can’t die. So she made up making him up, so she didn’t have to spend every second in perpetual terror that he would get sick, hurt, that he would die and she’d be left alone again. But he’s a mirage and she’s still scared to lose him so, there doesn’t seem to be a point in the charade.
“I know you’re real.” She whispers into the embers, refusing to look at the boy sitting next to her, even though she can feel his shoulders move with his every breath.
“I know I scared you.” He whispers in return.
It’s not an apology. But she hadn’t apologised either.
She rests her head on his shoulder and the fire keeps burning.
CXVIII
There comes a day (118) when Five no longer wants to jump back to the day he left. He still wants to go home. He still misses his siblings terribly, and anything would be better than the wasteland he’s in now. But… Delores wasn’t born until 2007. And he’s not sure how time travel works, especially for people who aren’t him. He’s read all of the books, back to front and front to back under the cover of night to not get her hopes up. And in some books, they can travel anywhere, but sometimes there are limitations. Where the soul travels, not the body, where you can only go sometime you’ve been before. And none of the books really know anything, but he doesn’t want to risk it, can’t risk it, won’t risk her.
So his dreams of jumping back right after lunch, missing nothing more than a few hours are abandoned. Instead, he dreams of jumping to a time with siblings he won’t know, but not jumping alone.
This day comes after the day she kissed him. Smile shy and hands shaking. She had been injured badly the week before and only just recovered enough that Five could breathe again. She kissed him briefly and then ran away immediately after. Leaving him to follow her into the rubble, the echo of her lips still lingering on his own.
She hadn’t wanted to die without her first kiss, Delores confesses stubbornly refusing to look away from her own shoelaces. It had absolutely nothing to do with him, it was just a convenience thing, really.
He repeats her arguments after her in a drawl, her cheeks turn red and she punches his arm lightly, he kisses her again and discovers that it’s his new favourite way to win an argument.
CLXXXIV
One hundred and eighty-four days after the end of the world Five has his first birthday alone.
He’s not alone, of course. Delores refuses to leave his side and has apparently been hoarding rations for weeks to put together a meagre spread.
They don’t talk about it, they don’t talk at all. Five eat’s silently, staring into the campfire.
Mom had always made the most elaborate cakes, this is the first birthday Five went to bed feeling full.
CCXII
Two hundred and twelve days into the apocalypse Five brings up what Delores had wanted him to since they met.
“I think if I work on the equations, I might be able to blink us out of here. Out of the apocalypse. Maybe, I still don’t quite understand it.”
She nods, knowing that Five’s a lot more sure than he lets on, he wouldn’t have told her about a pipe dream. But she also knows that if this is how uncertain Five needs to be about time travel right now this is how uncertain they will be.
She doesn’t set out to learn the math. Quite the opposite actually. Math had never been her strong suit so ‘math about time travel that has never been figured out yet’ didn’t seem like something she should touch with a ten-foot pole. But Five doesn’t know his left from his right if he doesn’t talk about it, so she found herself listening absent-mindedly as he babbled on about the squared log of root mass or whatever the fuck.
She hadn’t realised she had learned it until he drops a negative sign, when she brings it up she can tell at first he doesn’t believe her. But going back through the equations (the pages and pages and pages of equations, if this works she is going to find a way to never take another math class this has been enough numbers for the rest of her life) she’s right, he had dropped a negative sign.
It sends Five spiralling.
“The math can’t be trusted, I can’t be trusted. Who knows what would’ve happened to us if I hadn’t caught that.” He stresses, pacing back and forth over the rubble.
(It would’ve sent a beacon straight to the commission while keeping them trapped and desperate in the ruins of the world, but they don’t know that).
“But we caught it, didn’t we?” She rebuts for the thousandth time. “It’s going to be a risk, we know it’s going to be a risk. But it’s not like we have unlimited time out here anyway Five. Either we die sitting on our asses or we die at least trying to do something.”
They argue for three more weeks, until the rubble shifts while they’re asleep, and they wake up to her leg pinned under the concrete. After managing to get her free, the choice is made for them. A wound like that is a countdown out here.
CCXXXIII
Two hundred and thirty days into the apocalypse they take a risk. Five hasn’t slept in days and when he closes his eyes he sees his equations. But that’s good, it means his body knows them as well as he does. He’s not sure a corpse could understand the calculations but sends out a desperate plea to anything in the universe, let him grant her safe passage home, if nothing else.
They’re holding hands so tight her nails nearly draw blood and for a second, and infinity, the don’t breathe.
The entire universe is in a boy, all of space and time rushing through his bloodstream. Aeons before humanity’s first whisper, and long after the echo of its last breath.
Five Hargreeves is thrust into everything that has ever been and ever will be. He is still holding her hand.
IIIΛ
Eight days before the world ends what remains of the Umbrella Academy stands outside in the rain.
It is just them and then it isn’t, there is a boy, and a girl.
They are still holding hands, this is all that matters.
I had promised this would be a love story.