Five Hargreeves: One shots, Imagines, Miniseries.

Fear Of The Water

awfully sad, reader dies, five mourns. 

"i love you, sweetheart. be home by 9! x"

There was this odd feeling. It was muted and cold, like someone was holding back the entirety of it and allowing only bits of it to seep through.

It was unforgivingly numbing, and Five couldn't feel anything.

His vision became blurry and he crushed the little pink slip of paper in his fist until he couldn't feel it anymore. Just like he wanted to do with his feelings. Almost a second later, Five uncrumpled it, horrified at what he had done to the only tangible remains of her.

He couldn't even say her name.

It felt like a curse.

She was gone.

'Gone' didn't mean anything. She was gone all the time. She went to the store, she went to the library.

She was dead.

The thought knocked the wind out of Five. It was brutal.

He wanted to scream, to kill the person responsible.

But it was a car crash. No one to blame, just the wrong place, wrong time. She had put up a fight for a few hours, and then, just like that, she was gone.

All while he was on a mission. Grace was the one to break the news to him.

Grace had been crying her eyes out into her dainty little handkerchief. Because everyone loved Five's girl. The kind of person that would talk you to for hours, the kind that would make you a cup of tea when you couldn't sleep.

Nothing mattered anymore. Five hated every single goddamn thing you had touched. Including himself.

***

Two weeks later, nothing had changed.

Five was still drowning his late nights in margaritas and she was still gone.

Somewhere, in the back of his mind, he hoped you'd burst through the door, smiling that endearing smile of yours, chiding everyone for falling for your silly prank.

He knew it was a lost cause; childish to hope for something like that.

Tonight, he planned on drinking even more. This morning, he had found another one of those pretty pink pieces of paper on his desk. It wasn't surprising he hadn't noticed, he hadn't been noticing much since that day.

"You're like a fine wine. The more of you I drink in, the better I feel ;)"

If this was before, Five would have laughed, shook his head at her antics.

Now it was all he had left.

He downed his drink, only slightly wincing at the burn.

***

Five couldn't stand it anymore.

Everything existed only to taunt him: he hadn't slept in days, having spent every night drinking his sorrows away. Allison wasn't letting him drink unless he went to bed, so he had wandered into the kitchen to get some cold water.

One of your favorite songs was playing on the old radio you had managed to fix up. You always knew what to do.

He opened the freezer, looking for ice. And there it was, the goddamn ice cream.

As suddenly as the blast of freezer air hit him, the smell of chocolate, her perfume, Sunday afternoons spent in her loving arms–

It was too much. Way too much at once.

***

-Five and Y/N's (mostly mine) bucket list-

go to Paris.

get married in an old cottage in the French countryside

visit India

get a cat (i've been begging Five forever, but he's worried it'll be too much work)

grow old together and sing love songs on the stoop when we're eighty–

Five shoved the piece of paper back into the drawer. He couldn't take much more.

Because, goddamn it, if he had known that this was how it was supposed to end, he would have taken her to Paris. He would've have gotten her that cat, he would've taken her to India, he would've married her in a cottage by the countryside.

Now, though, all he could do was watch as the one person that made every other bad day seem better left. The worst part was, there was nothing Five could do about it.