milliways_bar | (no subject)

(no subject)

It's late afternoon when someone who really looks like he doesn't belong here saunters in from the front door. (It's probably the uniform.) There's surprise on his face at first - who isn't surprised when a bar you've never been to before shows up where your closet should be? - but the expression is soon replaced with a big smile.

There's a blue flash and he's at the bar ordering a cup of coffee, black, and then another flash and he's seated in one of the comfy armchairs by the window. Legs crossed ankle over knee, he sits back and watches the display with an odd curiosity.

This has to be it. The place the workers at the Commission only whisper about.

Number Five has finally arrived at Milliways.

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"You said yourself, even being there will fuck something up. Butterfly effect, and all that."

Even if Wilford could go forward, he'd never want to. Entirely too much burden.

"What's this apocalypse of yours look like, then?"

Since it's clearly not aliens, viruses, or demons.

Five shakes his head. "It felt like I was supposed to be there." Even if he was half scared out of his mind the whole time.

"But I'm stopping this apocalypse. I'd rather see how things turn out if there isn't an end of the world."

This is fascinating. Usually the apocalypse is like, an unpleasant couple of weeks, and then everyone gets over it. It's never really worth stopping unless you already know how.

"And just how do you propose to do something like that?" he asks.

He's still not convinced that the kid isn't the one who causes it.

"I have an eye." Five pulls it out of his pocket and shows it to Wilford at a distance. It's a prosthetic eye.

"I found it in my brother's hands when I arrived. I think it belongs to the person who's responsible for it all."

"Stop!" Wilford says, snapping his fingers loudly. "What's that?"

Not the eye. He's pointing at Five's wrist.

Five looks at him for a minute. Is this guy an idiot, too?

"It's a tattoo."

The eye can wait for now. He'll get back to why that's weird in a moment.

"Why that tattoo?" he asks.

Never mind that it's on a child. He's well familiar with cults and trafficking and all the nefarious reasons a kid would be branded like that.

"It's an umbrella." It kind of matches the umbrella on his jacket badge. "Dad made us all get one."

Well, isn't that odd. He's begun collecting this man's strange children, it seems.

"Huh. You only do that zipping about shit?" he asks. "Nothing else?"

He reaches forward, motioning for Five to hand him the eye. He already doesn't like it, but he wants to get a closer look at it.

Don't be taking his eye! Five takes his hand back, protecting it from strangers' hands.

"Spatial jumping. That and I time travel." Sometimes. "We were also trained in combat and martial arts."

"Why is it round?" Wilford asks, since he doesn't get to have a closer look.

Glass eyes aren't round.

"What am I, the prosthetics police? How the fuck should I know?" All he knows is that it's his and he's going to find out who it belongs to.

"It's not a prosthetic," Wilford says. "If you wore that, it would roll around in your head like you were some kind of possessed demon. Whoever it belongs to is lying about something.

"Prosthetic eyes are triangle."

Fuck.

"Well, thanks for being a peach and telling me that. I'll get an explanation from the company that made it." Now he's curious, but he really only wants the person at the other end, not the eye itself.

Now, Wilford has a question of his own.

"So what's the age range between all of you? The other one was about twice your age."

Five tilts his head slowly. "The other one?"

"The junkie that washes my dishes," Wilford says, without a single hint of irony. "Brother of yours, I assume. He has the same ink."

"Klaus." This is said lowly, mostly to himself. "You know him? Where is he?"

Wilford shrugs. "I don't know. He washes my dishes; I'm not his babysitter. If he shows up he gets paid. If not, tough shit."

"You know him from here?" Five is just going to ignore the rest of it. Washing dishes.

"Initially," Wilford says. "But I didn't hire him here."

He hired him in one of the most disliked worlds Milliways has ever seen.

"You took him to your world." Timeline. Universe. Whatever. He'll figure it out when the world isn't ending.

"People do it all the time. No rule against it."

Well. There might be now, after some of the shit Wilford's pulled. He hasn't bothered to check though.

"Right." He takes in a deep breath and straightens his shoulders. "Well, he's an adult. He can make his own decisions." Stupid as they may be.

"He's a good kid," Wilford says, completely genuine. "A little fucked up, but who isn't?"

"You should ask him to show you around some time."

Wilford would offer, but there's the whole... actual child thing. Which is just icky for so many reasons.