𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐏𝐄𝐓𝐄𝐑 𝐏𝐀𝐍 𝐄𝐅𝐅𝐄𝐂𝐓 ━ five hargreeves³

III│INTERLUDE III: WHEN FIVE HELPED ALEXA

The boy let out a incredulous scoff. "You believed Klaus?"

"Well. . . I was pretty desperate."

"I could've helped you, Lexa," he pointed out rather indignantly. "Even if I don't know your powers as well as I do mine I can learn things very quickly, in case you haven't noticed."

"I've noticed," she reassured him and squeezed his hand. "That's why I'm asking for your help now. Um. . ." She did her best to summarize the events of the day, mostly skipping over Klaus' training since they were in a time crunch. "And when I ran so far I kind of. . . fell into my powers, I guess. It was so. . . I don't know, it's hard to describe. But I could feel everything."

"Feel everything?"

"Yeah. I could feel my heart beating, hear my blood flowing through my veins and I could see my lungs breathing. It was like. . . I'd been lost this whole time and only now could I see the whole of myself."

Five shook his head. "None of those things are possible, Lexa. Maybe you-you were dreaming, or something. I can accept a lot of impossible things but what you're describing is scientifically unfeasible."

She huffed. "Okay, so the fact that I literally can't grow up like I'm some freaking Peter Pan— which makes you Tinkerbell, by the way— isn't beyond your grasp but this is?"

"Why am I Tinkerbell?"

The blonde gave him an unimpressed look for that being the thing he protested against. "Because you're small and can only have one emotion at a time."

He returned her answer with an expression that said 'really?' but because this was Lexa, he let her get away with it. "Okay, moving on. So, let's say what you experienced today was real. What do you want me to do about it?"

"Well, it's like this. . ." She went on to explain her heart-versus-mind theory about her powers and wrapped up with: "so, whenever I give one of you some of my power, I can. . . feel your energy, like a type of fingerprint— except it becomes the same as mine. I think that I can combine both aspects of my power and. . . do something with it. I don't know what to expect but I at least want to try."

The boy studied her for a moment. "And you think that doing this will help the difficulties you've been having with your shields?"

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to," Alexa spoke quickly, misinterpreting his excess amount of questions as reluctance. "Like I said, I don't know what's gonna happen— if anything. It could have detrimental effects or—"

"Lexa," Five cut across her gently. "I'll always be here to help you. That's not why I'm asking. I'm just trying to understand."

"Oh," she said softly. "Um, yeah. I think that maybe the trouble I've been having might be repaired but I dunno if I can do it by myself."

"Alright," he agreed. "How do we start?"

Her eyes flicked up to meet his and she gave him a small, grateful smile at his easy acceptance. The appreciation swept through her, prompting her to lean forward to press a chaste kiss lightly to his lips. She pulled away before he could deepen it and her smile became brighter at the sight of his quickly reddening ears.

☂︎ ☂︎ ☂︎

Shortly after that, they were sitting in the middle of the bed instead of at the foot of it. Alexa sat cross-legged with perfectly straight posture while the boy did his best to mirror her; they sat so closely to each other that their bent knees were touching. She reached out across the gap of their legs to grasp both of his hands in hers.