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He calls her Alice by accident halfway through a regular supply run, and doesn’t even know he’s done it until there’s nothing but silence from both Five and Four’s headsets.
It’s too late, then. There’s no way to explain that he lost Alice in this glade and Five’s wearing the same shirt and just for a second, just for a tiny second, his world swirled and reformed, one figure replacing another and it was just a slip of the tongue, it didn’t mean anything –
When they get back, Jody’s the one that brings both their headsets for charging, and if he didn’t already know, her face would tell him exactly how much he’s stuffed up.
*
Sam’s used to the runners being a little bit weird around him. He’s their voice home, the one that they have to rely on so completely that it’s normal for them to go through a three-week period where they can’t stop looking at him, and then a three-week period where they don’t actually look at him at all, and then things generally simmer down to normal.
He learnt the hard way not to get involved.
Except for Alice, but that was different.
Five doesn’t do any of those things. That’s different too.
*
She’s sitting in their customary spot, legs hanging over the edge, hood up against the evening breeze and she doesn’t look at him when he sits down next to her.
“Can we please talk?” he says finally.
Five shrugs slightly. “It’s okay, Sam. You don’t have to say anything.”
“No, I do,” he says. “I do. I’m sorry.”
She smiles, but there’s something bleak in it. “Why? It’s not your fault that you’re not over her. And I - I can’t be a - a replacement.”
Sam swallows and tries to piece together something to say because it’s both true and it’s not. He’ll never be over Alice, exactly; she was light and warmth and sun on a summer’s day. Five is strength and loyalty and selflessness, the phoenix of Abel, the symbol of hope. They aren’t comparable.
“Five - you’re not,” he starts, falters, but she’s already getting to her feet, wrapping her arms around herself.
“It’s okay,” she says, and smiles, but he’d have to be stupid not to notice the way her chin is trembling. “I guess I just thought for once maybe I wasn’t just a number.”
It’s a really devastating exit line, as far as they go.
*
The first time she appears wearing Alice’s hoodie he actually loses it. It’s an ordinary Wednesday, and she sits down opposite him with her plate of food wearing the same red faded jumper and for a second his vision goes dark.
“You can’t – where did you – “ he starts, and leans over and grabs her forearm. “Who gave that to you?”
“It was in my clothing allocation,” Five stutters, tries to twist her arm a little and he lets go like she’s burnt him. “Sam? What’s wrong?”
Of course they did. Abel has limited resources. They are the same build.
They probably sleep in the same bed.
“You can’t wear that,” he gets out, and there are tears pressed against the back of his eyelids and he feels Eugene put a hand on his arm.
“I’m sorry,” Five says, and now her face is scarlet and she won’t look at him. “It’s just cold and I didn’t have – I didn’t know.” She’s already stripping it off, her shoulders pale and there is a livid red scratch across the top of her right arm. “Here. Take it,” she says, shoves it into his arms and flees.
The material is soft and smells fractionally of Alice, and just like that, Sam feels his anger recede, leaving nothing but a deep aching sadness. He feels a hand land on top of his, and when he looks up, Jack is staring at him with sympathy warm in his eyes.
“You okay?” Eugene says carefully, and Sam sees the look that passes between them, the understanding. He’s not the only one to have lost someone.
Sam waits until he is sure that his voice will be steady. “Not really. I - I don’t think I handled that well.”
“Not really, no,” Jack says, but his smile is kinder than his words.“Do you want me to go find her?”
Sam shakes his head. “No. I’ll go.”
He finds Five on the roof of the ammunition hut, and she looks wary when he climbs up next to her, but shuffles over to make space for him all the same.
“I’m sorry,” he says, once he’s settled next to her. “I over-reacted.”
“It’s okay,” Five says, shrugging. Her skin is mottled from cold. “I should have known.”
“You couldn’t have,” he says, and after a second’s hesitation, he presses Alice’s hoodie into her hands. “Wear it,” he says, with more confidence than he feels. “Somebody needs to. And I’m glad it’s you.”
“Tell me about her?” Five says softly, and he swallows, stares out over Abel and does.
*
Of course, the next mission that she runs goes to complete shit.
The med kits they were supposed to pick up had either been intercepted or found by scavengers and she and Four pick up a horde on their way back to Abel. Four’s fast but still nursing a bad ankle and so the only way to get them both home is to split up, Five running interference, and since Jody’s sense of direction is rubbish, it’s obvious which one he needs to focus on getting home.
And that’s his job, right? Make decisions that can cost people their lives.
He’s too busy guiding Four out of the forest to notice the moment that Five runs into trouble, and so it feels like his heart stops in his chest when he glances casually at her feed and sees rotting hands reaching for her out of the darkness. “Fuck,” he says. “Fuck. Five! Talk to me!”
“What?” Jody says, and then her voice gets higher. “Oh God. Sam, what’s going on?”
Five’s feed is fragments of grainy images; a decaying mouth too close to her shin, her feet as she jumps, a tree branch, the sky, the explosion of brain matter as she crushes a crawler’s head under her heels, the world spinning up and over like a kaleidoscope.
He can hear her, though - every inhale and exhale, a hiss of pain as a tree branch whips into the camera – and she doesn’t say a word, doesn’t scream or plead or whimper and after a terrible few minute, there is nothing but trees and branches on the feed, and then finally all he can hear is slow jagged breathing, her head cam showing her hands braced on her knees, blood spattered up both legs.
It’s with a shock that Sam realises that he’s begging, begging her to say anything and he couldn’t stop if he wanted to.
“Five, do you read me? Five, are you okay? Oh God, Five, please.”
“I’m fine,” she says finally, clipped short. “I’m fine, Sam.” A beat. “Thanks for the warning.”
Sucker punch, and he didn’t even see it coming.
“I’m sorry, Five,” he says, because it’s all he has, but he knows it’s not enough.
“Just - get Four home,” she says.
*
The first time he knows, really knows he is in trouble is when he finds her at the gym late one night, lying on one of Abel’s filthy mats doing slow hip raises that make him think things that he definitely shouldn’t, makes his skin prickly with a heavy, rich feeling that he hasn’t felt since – since -
Sam puts his water bottle down against the wall, deliberately loud and when he straightens, Five is sitting up, leaning over her knees. The gym is too dimly lit for him to see the look in her eyes.
“Hey,” he says, and she is wearing nothing but a sports bra and shorts, all bare feet and glistening skin, and Sam keeps his eyes rigidly on her face. “Um. Sorry. Didn’t mean to interrupt.”
“No, I’m done,” she says, gathering her scrap of towel and her water bottle. “All yours.”
She eases past him into the night, and she smells like sweat and sour metal and that shouldn’t be attractive but it’s the end of the world and nothing is normal and why should this be any different?
*
That night, she has a streak of blood from a cut across one cheekbone and it’s all he can see.
*
The first time he kisses her, it’s for no reason at all; Five drops in to get her headset recalibrated to the new frequency, and after he finishes tweaking it, she is leaning against the wall of his shack, staring out the window, the afternoon light catching her cheekbones and throwing her face in stark relief, so deep in thought that when he goes to put her headset back on her, she flinches and reels backwards, cracks her head into the wall and Sam catches her shoulder and pulls her back upright, and in between the her laughing and him apologising he just somehow just … leans in the two inches of gap and presses his mouth to hers.
When he goes to pull away in panic, she follows; kisses him back, slow and sure and just like that, everything has changed.
*
Two weeks pass and in his dreams, his runners are screaming, screaming for help, screaming at him, their faces accusing, all of them, even Alice, and then they change and Sam wakes up with a sheet wrapped tight around his body and buries his face in his pillow and tries not to make a sound.
*
The first time they sleep together, it’s a day where a fuel run had ended in a mad run for Abel; not close enough to be really potentially deadly, but close enough to be dramatic. Close enough for Simon to be generally insufferable with stories of heroic bravery over dinner, and for Sara to beat the punching bag half off its mount. He doesn’t blame them much; he’s heard a few stories of what happens in the runners’ hut after tough missions.
Adrenaline overload is a bitch.
Sam’s just exiting his shack when someone coming the other way ploughs into him, hard enough to knock the oxygen from his lungs.
“Oh, hey, Five,” he says, when his eyes have adjusted enough to work out who he’s quite intimately connected to, and he tries to shrug off how the contact makes him feel.
She doesn’t answer.
“Five? What are you - “
The rest of his sentence judders to a stop because she’s just, she’s just staring at him, cheeks flushed and chest heaving and oh god, nobody has ever looked at him like that ever.
“Five?” he gets out, and something in his face must look like permission because she’s leaning in, crushing her mouth against his and their teeth click and it’s instantaneous, the way his body floods with heat, the way his hands rise to pull her closer, closer. Five pushes him back into the dark comms hut, and he kicks the door shut, turns and presses her into the wall until their hips are tight together and Five is arching against him, one foot hooked around his thighs and time slides past in skin and pressure and sweat and when he finally presses into her, feels her nails dig into his shoulders, the way his name spills from her lips sounds like a benediction.
*
Five throws a look over her shoulder, and Sam’s got a camera close enough to see her face and when she looks back there’s actual fear mixed with a resignation that makes his stomach drop out.
She’s done miles today, miles yesterday for Runner Four, and this was supposed to be easy, practically a walk in the park and it once again turned into a special hell full of fast zombs and barbed wire. Sam watches runners for a job (watches Five more than anyone), and he can tell from her breathing alone that she is shattered, running on adrenaline and very little else. Janine is looking over his shoulder, and he can tell from her stillness that this is going to be very close; too close; maybe impossible, even for Five.
There is half a mile between Five and Abel but it may as well be ten; only six or so zombs on her tail but they are fast, and too close to be shot down without risk of taking down the one person they are trying to get home safe.
His brain is sparking with panic. Half a mile. At a reasonable speed, that’s would be about three and a half, maybe four minutes but Five is going to have to make it in a lot less than that, on legs that have been run into the ground over three days (three weeks) (three months) out on mission after mission.
Five looks back, nearly stumbles, and Sam swears.“Run,” he says, “Run straight, don’t look back. Five, don’t look back. I’ve got you.”
“Sam,” she says on an exhale but he’s heard that tone before and it means don’t let me dieand that’s not something he’s always been able to manage.
Quarter mile to go.
“You can do it,” he says. “You can. You have to. Abel needs you,” but what he means is I need you and somehow that slips out as well and she’s speeding up.
There’s a crack and the zombie closest collapses. Five doesn’t look around; Sam can see that her eyes are fixed on Abel with intensity, her jaw locked and Sam’s heart is in his chest, and all he can hear are Five’s sharp inhales and exhales becoming more and more irregular, getting faster and faster, tiny ragged hisses of effort that turn into his name.
“Not far,” he says, because that’s true, and “you’re going to make it” because he wants that to be true, but she’s slowing down; bit by bit the zombs are catching her, and then he’s desperate. “You’ve giving up,” he spits out, “I thought you were stronger than that,” and it works, somehow, gives her a bit more fight for the next twenty seconds or, and Abel’s gate start rising, ever so slightly.
So close. So close.
The gates are hovering a foot and a half off the ground, and it comes down to heartbeats and exhales, another gun shot and Janine’s hand so tight on his shoulder it hurts. Then Five’s falling, rolling, the gates come crashing down in puffs of dust and the zombs hit it with enough force that Sam hears it both through Five’s headset and in real time, boom boom-boom boom, the gates shake, and then there’s silence.
Five’s still not moving, her body sprawled awkwardly, and Sam’s heart is thudding so hard it hurts. Please, he thinks. Please.
Then Five sort of pushes herself up to her knees, her chest convulses and she’s throwing up nothing but stringy water and then not even that and Sam takes a huge, shuddering breath and feels tears prickle at his eyes. Janine rubs his shoulder.
“She made it,” she says, and there is world’s relief in her voice. “She made it.”
Sam puts his head down on the desk and tries to breathe.
Down at the gates, Sara has hauled Five to her feet.
“Come on,” Sara says. “Walk it off, walk it off.”
Five’s legs are shaking, her shoulder and face covered in dirt but she does as she’s told.
Another escape.
Just another day at Abel.
*
The second time, though, there’s no catalyst.
*
She’s something of a hero at the mess hall that night, but she’s obviously so tired that people give her space - except for Jack and Eugene, who sit down next to her and then manage to have a small but quite hilarious domestic that Sam bets they actually scripted.
It works; by the end of Eugene’s huff and Jack’s hair toss, there’s the starting of a smile on Five’s face.
He watches, jealous and miserable, stomach still twisting in pieces from three tables over.
*
It’s still new, waking up with Five in his bed, and on few times that they’ve done this, Five’s been up and dressed for training, pressing a kiss on his forehead and slipping out into the dark before Sam has had time to process even the concept of getting up.
This morning though, he’s woken up first, and he carefully extricates his arm, and pulls back enough just to study her, the curve of her shoulder into neck; her shoulder blades, sharp like wings; the deep purple bruise low on her rib cage from last week’s collision with something in a dark warehouse; three more angry red scars that he thinks might be from barbed wire.
It’s a catalogue of the risks she takes every day and despite what everyone seems to think, she is so very, very human and he flattens his fingers against her skin and feels the warmth of it; tries not to think about her skin going grey and fails.
“What are you doing?” Five murmurs, still sounding half asleep.
“Nothing.”
“Sam…” She rolls over, and there is too much understanding in her eyes. “Everything okay?”
“Yeah,” he says, but he can’t help stroking his thumb along a long raised scar that wraps around her neck. “I just - worry.”
“Don’t,” Five says, leans in a bit. “I’m tough. Besides, I’ve got you to get me home.”
He smiles, lets her kiss him and pull him back down. Can’t quite stifle the fluttering of panic that one day, one day he won’t.
*
This time, she’s the one who finds him; same place, same night sky, the two of them on this stupid rooftop, the silence between them gaping and as cold as the air around them.
He scrambles to his feet and tries not to look at the bruises on her face.
She breaks the silence first.
“I just wanted to say thanks,” she says, quietly, and it’s so unexpected that he thinks he’s misheard her.
“I – I beg your pardon?”
Five smiles just a fraction before she looks down, shoves her hands in her pockets. “I wouldn’t have made it today without you," and her voice catches, splinters. "You got me home."
There is a press of words at his throat, you can’t die I need you you have to keep making it home to me I’m so so sorry but he can’t seem to extricate any of them, has to clench his hands into fists to not touch her, but he’s stepping closer anyway and she moves closer too, until they are toe to toe and he can see the the way she’s shaking.
“Five,” he gets out, can't get his tongue around anything more.
“I know,” she says, “me too,” and there’s something bright and sharp on her face, and he can’t help it, he kisses her and it’s hard and messy and full of desperation and Five’s hands rise and clutch at his shoulders, pull him closer.
*
“Come home,” he says, and she smiles, and she does.
*