Chapter Text
Somewhere beyond where Five stood, not far but not within arm’s reach, Simon was moving around. He was uncannily quiet. The kind of cat-quiet, where you only know for sure something has made a noise at all because you can feel it rather than hear it.
When did he get so stealthy? Five wondered, then reconsidered. She knew when. And why. I guess the real question is the ‘how’. He’s lost some weight but he’s still the size of a modest building.
When he began to hum Five had to bite the inside of her cheek to stop a surprised hiss of breath. He had suddenly been closer than she had thought. Barely a foot from her. He moved away, and Five could now track him around the space as he rummaged.
That had been either to put her at ease, or to fuck with her. Five was sure it was one of those options but had no idea which. It could have been both.
“You’ll have to forgive my poor hospitality, Five,” Simon said, his voice coming from a little ways ahead and to the left. “Ah, here’s where I left it. It’s hard to keep a happy hearth when you live in a destitute hole in the ground. But I make it work!”
As Simon announced this he struck a match and his profile, smoothed by the mask, was thrown into sharp relief by the flame. In a moment, he had lit several candles on his desk-dining table, lighting up the room to improve the ambience from ‘buried alive’ to ‘Neolithic cave’. He glanced back over at her, or Five thought he did, and he waved her over.
“I’ll be wanting your help with this bit, Five.”
This sparked an instinctive squirm of trepidation in Five’s gut, but where Simon crouched was only a cold fireplace. He was stacking up logs and kindling briskly and Five considered for a moment how much he might be feeling the cold. Feeling everything. Van Ark’s treatment didn’t save him from the pain of the zombie hoard and if the briskness of his movements were anything to go by he, too, was very aware of how is was no warmer in the shack than it was out in the woods.
“It’s a little awkward for me to do this part, but you’re a handy person, Five. Get it? Handy?”
Deciding that wasn’t worth a response, Five held out her hand and Simon dropped the matchbox into it. He did so from several inches away, and as soon as he had he stood to take a step back.
Perhaps this was wasting valuable time, but Five knew it would be easier to communicate with more light in the room. She would also like to be warm again before she died. Because, stuff it, one bit of selfishness wouldn’t end the world. She had done as much as she could. She deserved to die with the feeling back in her toes.
Fire starting, luckily, had always come easily to Five. Perhaps it wasn’t a skill that got her far in the time before, it had even got her in trouble once, but in this place and time it was welcome. Soon despite being stiff from the cold she had the kindling burning bright and the bark of the logs catching.
The heat was almost too much, the flames almost too bright. Pins and needles prickled Five’s fingertips as they thawed.
“So,” Simon’s voice cut short the pleasant distraction of the fire. “While a good host would wait and actually put the kettle on, I’m pretty curious, Five. What brings you all the way out here, huh? What could you possibly need from me? I’ve already given you everything I found in Van Ark’s base. Not here for my blood now, I hope.”
Five levered herself onto her feet, one hand steadying herself against the wall. Now, between the candles and the growing fire, she could see the flash of Simon’s eyes behind the mask and she focused on them.
“I have a final request.”
“A what?”
“A final request- I need you to do something very important.”
Simon’s head was tilted down, focus fixed on her hands, but the pause told Five he wasn’t getting it.
“You’re going to have to spell it out for me, Five.” He reached across the table and searched through the various papers he had strewn about until he found something he deemed unimportant or blank enough to be written on. He held out a pen to her, dangling from his fingertips. Five scowled. “Here. Better than me trying to figure it out, right?” There was something in his voice not quite like a smile and not at all apologetic.
Turning her nose up at how thoroughly chewed the end of it was, Five took the pen. It was obvious Simon had spent long hours at this desk, scrawling and decoding and doing whatever it was insane outcasts did when they weren’t kidnapping upstanding Township runners.
As she began to write out what she wanted to say, a thought came unbidden. One of the kind Five had been keeping at bay.
This would be so much easier with Sam.
He always understood her. They even had a code for when her hands were busy. Sam also looked her in the face, not the hands, when he talked to her. There was no one quite like him left. Sam was warm and reassuring and soft yet he had threatened to kill people to protect her. Several people, actually. Even people he had known, for her. Kind, precious Sam who kept her safe and brought her home.
The knot that tangled in her ribcage and wrapped around her throat to choke her was expected but stung regardless. Tears pricked at her eyes, hot and nearly painful, and Five blinked furiously. She willed them not to fall onto the paper. If she hadn’t broken down before now she wasn’t about to do it in front of Simon of all people.
When she punctuated her message Five punched a small hole right through the paper. She pushed it across the work surface towards Simon who shifted his body slightly to maintain the distance between his side and her hand. It was a surprise to Runner Five that she still had the energy to be exasperated as Simon began to read her words aloud in a lilting, high voice. Meant to imitate hers, presumably, despite the fact he’d never heard it.
“I haven’t got much time left- I need you to get something into Abel for me, get it to Janine,” here Simon faltered a little, and Five felt his eyes cut from the page to her face. “Put it in her farmhouse or something. You don’t need to talk to her but it needs to get to her. No one else can see it.”
In the silence that followed, Five’s heart jumped about in her chest. If he said no, or decided he wanted some additional revenge, she was fucked. Abel was fucked.
“See, I appreciate the melodramatics, Five, I really do, but correct me if I’m wrong. You’re not going to be shot on sight for approaching the gates. You can go back to Abel any time. You can go see Janine whenever. Why are you asking me to do this?”
Five reached over and tapped the pen against the part of her message that said she had little time left.
“Will you help?” She signed slow, mouthing the words.
“But why, Five?” Simon asked, leaning his hip on the table and spreading his arms overly wide. “I hope you’re not trying something underhanded against a poor vagrant with nothing left. Why me?”
“No one else.”
“But why?” Five felt like screaming and stamping her foot. Throwing a tantrum. She didn’t want to have to say it. She felt sick thinking it. But Simon never made anything easy.
“I’m dying.”
“What?”
“I’m bit!”
Five thrust out her arm, stepping forward to invade Simon’s personal space, and when he went to step back there was only wall. Her joints still sluggish from the chill, Five scrabbled at her bandage. Not heeding what damage she might do herself, she plucked one layer free then found where it was loosest and tugged and tugged until it restricted and then came free.
“Five, what-”
Not letting him say any more, Five threw the bloodied and soaked bandage towards the fire and waved her arm under Simon’s face with the bite angled towards him.
“Five!” Simon’s voice was hard, it had lost the airy, flippant tone he had used up until that point. He caught her arm with his single hand and for a brief moment Five felt a flash of fear as she remembered how strong Simon was despite his missing parts. How strong and how much bigger than her he was, and how he had definitely, definitely lost his mind.
Fear bled to confusion as Simon studied her wounded arm intently for an uncomfortably long minute, holding her up so she was almost balancing on tip-toes. Then, he slowly released his grip and Five snatched her arm back, cradling it. Her glare bore into the scuffed mask.
“I think you ought to take a fresh look at your arm, Five.” Simon prompted, his voice oddly flat.
Five sneered and glared, and Simon remained silent. Watching and waiting for her to look at her death sentence. He could be attempting to make some kind of joke, Five considered. Or equally likely, not, and this was a symptom of whatever psychotic state he permanently inhabited these days. Either way, it seemed, Simon was not backing down.
Still so bloody stubborn.
That was the last coherent thought Five managed for a time, for when she dragged her eyes away from Simon to inspect her arm what she found was not a fresh wound of hours previous but rather a bitemark a week or so old. Open gore had given way to scabs, beneath which there was a thin layer of skin growing.
New, healed, pink skin. Somewhere, outside the static buzz of Five’s mind, Simon was laughing.