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❛ ᴡᴀsᴛᴇʟᴀɴᴅs ᴏғ ᴛɪᴍᴇ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐖𝐎 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ x ᴅᴀʏs ᴜɴᴛɪʟ
ᴀᴘᴏᴄᴀʟʏᴘsᴇ ɪɪɪ ꒱


❝ WHAT THE HELL
DID WE DO NOW? ❞

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November 25th, 1963

Like his siblings, Five Hargreeves landed in the alley on Commerce and Knox. He stood quickly and squinted into the blue light. Raising his voice above the whipping wind, he cried out the name of the one person that had to have come through with him: "Dolly! DOLLY!"

The silence that followed was answer enough: he was completely, utterly alone. His heart plummeted in his chest. How could she not have followed him? The last time he'd seen her she'd been standing right next to him while she'd held his hand.

Then, other sounds registered. Gunshots in the distance caught his attention and caused him to turn towards the sound. Stumbling out of the alleyway, he appeared on the scene of a battlefield: tanks, soldiers and bullets were everywhere he looked.

Racing towards the only clue he could see, the boy crouched to read the words on the paper. "Soviets Attack U.S.?" He stood and moved towards the middle of the street. "No, this can't be right."

Cries of "medic! Medic!" rang throughout the streets as men were wounded. One soldier noticed his presence and issued a warning: "hey, kid, get down!"

The boy looked around in dismay. "What the hell did we do now?"

Next to him, a tank released the missile, launching it directly towards. . . Vanya. Except, it wasn't his sister as he remembered her. Instead, her skin had taken on the ivory glow it had had in the theater and her eyes shone eerily in her face as she held her hands up. A white barrier formed in front of her as the tip of the missile touched her power. At the contact, the warhead exploded and disintegrated into tiny pieces. A wave of fire and smoke blew backwards as her defense disappeared.

When it cleared, he saw Klaus on the ground. With little effort, he summoned an army of ghosts that ran towards the oncoming soldiers. They ran as the blue phantoms overtook them and fell to their knees. Luther landed in front of his brother just in time to protect him from bullets that intended him to be the target. Instead, they detonated against Luther's thick skin as he yelled out at the impact. Klaus nodded to him gratefully.

Five's gaze was drawn upward where Ben was clearly visible. His long, blue tentacles swung around as they lifted enemy soldiers and flung them about. One of the bodies landed in front of a trio of army men, causing them to pause in confusion. That gave Allison time to distract them. "Hey!" They turned but before they could shoot, she lifted her hands and spoke: "I heard a rumor that I blew your minds."

As their brains followed her command, more fighters ran towards Diego, who was standing on top of an overturned car. He waited fearlessly for them to approach. As they fired their weapons at him, he leapt off his perch in a spinning jump and manipulated the bullets around in their air to change their courses to land on the shooters instead of him. When he landed on the ground, Diego noticed his brother. "Five! You sick son of a bitch, where have you been?"

Five ignored him as he was still looking frantically around for his wife. Where the hell could she be? Surely she'd ended up with his siblings, right?

The longer he went without seeing her the more dread and guilt ate at him. She wasn't equipped to survive on her own! She barely knew how to defend herself and if something terrible had happened to her, it would all his fault. He'd promised her that he was bringing her to safety, yet it seemed like he'd only brought her to further harm.

He started to run forward, both to help his siblings and to find his wife when a flash of blue appeared next to him. A wrapped hand landed on his shoulder. The boy stopped and turned to look up at Hazel. "If you wanna live, come with me."

"Hazel, what the hell's going on here?"

"There's no time to explain," he said solemnly. He pointed to the sky. "Those are nukes, old-timer."

"What about my family?"

"You can't save 'em if you're dead."

Without another thought, he extended his hand out to his ex-coworker and together, they escaped from the eminent destruction.

✧✧✧

They reappeared on a much more livable street. "Okay, what they hell was that?"

"The end of the world, November 25th, 1963."

"'63?" Five repeated. "You know, Hazel, I'm no history buff but I don't recall there being a nuclear holocaust."

"No shit."

"What about my family?"

"Dead, like everyone else."

"What about Dolores? I didn't see her." The thought gave him hope. If she hadn't been with his family then maybe she'd been able to save herself from this catastrophe.

Instead, Hazel's eyes widened. "Dolores wasn't there?"

". . .No," Five answered slowly. "She survived, didn't she?" He didn't know if he'd be able to handle it if she hadn't.

"Oh hell," Hazel groaned. "Can you never get your equations right?" Before the boy could reply, the man was already fiddling with his briefcase. "Don't move, I'll be right back." He disappeared again and left Five to stand in the middle of the sidewalk. In what seemed like only moments later, the man returned. "Now everything's in place."

"In place? Hazel, what's that supposed to mean?" he demanded. "Where did Dolly land?"

"You're in Dallas, same street, ten days earlier," Hazel said, ignoring his questions. He made his way over to a nearby bench and the boy followed him. "Plenty of time to restore the timeline and save them."

"So where do we start?" Five questioned him, eager to begin. If Hazel wasn't going to answer his inquiries about his wife, his best option was to begin as soon as possible to find her.

"We? You're on your own, pal. I'm just here to keep a promise to Agnes."

Noting the tone of his voice, Five's own softened slightly. "Is she—"

"Dead?" At the boy's confirmation, he nodded. "Cancer. Took her quick but we had twenty good years together. I guess forever just wasn't in the cards."

"I'm sorry, Hazel," the boy said quietly, unable to even imagine what he'd do if Dolores went before him. "What about The Commission?"

"I quit those assholes, remember? I don't owe them the fuzz off my peaches."

Five watched as a trio of platinum-haired men walked purposefully towards them, their faces set with grim determination. "Well then who the hell are those guys?"

As they raised their guns, Hazel leaned towards the boy and slid a square, yellow box into his pocket before he shoved the briefcase at him. "Run!"

✧✧✧

July 4th, 1975
[0 hours]

The second time she fell through the portal, Dolores did her best not to scream.

She landed with a heavy thud and laid there, too exhausted to do anything else. The blue light snapped shut above her head and she closed her eyes. The silence of her new surroundings was a balm after the hectic last few moments in 2019. The other Hargreeves were probably around her somewhere, figuring out their next move. She figured a little nap couldn't hurt; Five would wake her once they had a plan.

✧✧✧

[2 hours]

When she next woke, it was from a natural slumber which was followed by a jolt of sudden awareness that something was terribly, horribly wrong. Despite the urgent feeling that immediately swept through her, though, she opened her eyes slowly and stretched, as if drawing out the process of becoming fully aware would make the feeling go away— it didn't.

Sitting up, she rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and grimaced immediately. The stench was awful— and she'd lived with Five during the apocalypse. Shuddering slightly, the brunette rose to her feet and took in the crumbled walls on either side of her in what was once an alley. Frowning, she looked across the street and saw the buildings in similar— or worse— condition.

"Five, where are we?" she asked as she turned to look at the boy. Her frown deepened when she'd done a complete circle without laying eyes on her husband. "Five?"

There was no response but that didn't necessarily mean anything. She figured the Hargreeves had gone down the street, though it seemed odd that Five would just leave her there. Dolores went to the entrance of the alley and looked both ways. The destruction surrounding her was a strong reminder of the first apocalypse and yet— somehow— entirely different.

She shivered, and not just from the memory. Now that she was fully awake, the chill was starting to bother her. The brunette grasped the opening of Five's jacket that she still wore and tucked her hands against her sides to close the front against the cold. Looking up, she saw ashy gray clouds covering the sky and a very faint, pale disk that indicated the sun shone behind them but offered no warmth.

Dolores turned her gaze back to the street and observed the flattened landscape that had once been a relatively busy city. Had Five sent them back to the original apocalypse? It hadn't exactly looked like this, though, as where she was now looked as if someone had scraped the entire surface of the earth to be level, save for some of the stronger buildings. Again, she tried to get an answer from her missing husband and raised her voice slightly: "Five?"

Her question disappeared into the air as if she'd never spoken. A creeping sensation told her that she was alone. The brunette chose to ignore it and instead she stepped out onto the sidewalk to begin her exploration. Perhaps she was still dreaming; this could be one of the flashbacks she and Five sometimes had and her husband would soon pull her from her thoughts to bring her back to the present.

In the meantime, the important thing was to not panic.

✧✧✧

[4 hours]

After discovering some very real, very disturbing corpses, Dolores came to the conclusion that this was not a flashback. (She had made sure in the first apocalypse to skim the rubble and pass over whatever else she found.) The next explanation was that this was a nightmare and she was sleeping. After all, her first instinct had been to take a nap so perhaps this was part of a terrible dream. If that was the case— and it was, she told herself— then it was very realistic. The bodies she had found had apparently been dead for years and most had been little more than piles of bones in vaguely human shapes.

If it wasn't a dream (it was) then she had to take precautions. She elected to live in one of the barely-standing buildings that surrounded the alley she had landed in as it was one of the few shelter options available. She also acquired a face covering by ripping the arm of her shirt to tie it around her mouth to protect her lungs from the residual ash that had fallen occasionally during her first hours of arrival.

The brunette decided that her next best course of action was to take shelter in her chosen building and fall asleep. Perhaps then she'd wake up in real life and be able to forget that she'd ever relived this very vivid reminder.

The important thing was to not panic.

✧✧✧

[10 hours]

Dolores' sleep had been fitful and restless, though she made herself keep her eyes closed for as long as possible. When she couldn't lay still any longer, she opened her eyes and hoped against hope that Five would be next to her, impatiently waiting for her to wake so they could get going.

Unfortunately, that wasn't what happened.

The partial building still surrounded her with its pale beige walls that stretched unevenly upwards. Something cold and heavy settled in her stomach as she lay on the ground, staring up at the gray sky.

Don't panic.

✧✧✧

[12 hours]

Two hours later— though Dolores herself was unable to count the passing of time since her internal measure had been thrown off by her immediate rest upon her arrival— she had come to the conclusion that this wasn't a dream. A myriad of crescent moon marks on her arm proved this, since pinching herself to wake up wasn't working and she'd felt the pain every time.

Her next thought was that this was, perhaps, a simulation. A virtual reality that she'd somehow gotten herself into— the details weren't important— and it was some sort of game. Maybe the goal was to find the other Hargreeves?

If that was the case, finding them would be easy since she was able to see for miles without many obstacles blocking her sight.

✧✧✧

[15 hours]

Finding the Hargreeves was not her mission. Dolores had walked for as long as she could into the night but had found no one. As far as she could tell, she was the last person in the area (specifically not Earth.)

She knew by this time she should eat something, though she'd gone longer than this without food. It was still important to start looking since she didn't want to have nothing when she really needed it.

Like the first apocalypse, there wasn't much else she could do at night. The world was pitch black and she'd had to be careful not to stumble over anything and break her ankle— or something worse. Unlike the first apocalypse, she was alone— entirely.

Dolores tried very hard not to think about what was lying under the piles of collapsed— and in some cases disintegrated— buildings or the thick blackness that surrounded her (she hoped the juggling monkey would stay away.) Instead, she closed her eyes and felt her way through the street. If she couldn't see anything, she could pretend it was day.

✧✧✧

[24 hours]

At the end of her first day, Dolores concluded that this was, in fact, very real.

Her emotion— which ranged from numb to paranoid to stressed— were all as genuine as if she were actually feeling them, which indicated that this was not a simulation. She could also feel hungry, which wouldn't be the case in a virtual world. There wasn't much in the way of food, though she was sure she'd heard the familiar scratching of rats.

For the most part, Five had been the one to provide the survival necessities, which had included creating a fire and finding any live food. She could now see that that had been a mistake.

✧✧✧

[27 hours]

Dolores had been sitting very still for what felt like a long time with her gaze fixed on the corner of the half-standing building. She'd seen a flash of brown some time ago and had frozen as she became intent on waiting the animal out.

✧✧✧

[30 hours]

In her opinion, there was nothing more important at the current time than to catch her unsolicited roommate. Even though her limbs ached to move, her attention was unerringly trained on the spot where the rat had first appeared. Her patience paid off and the brown, slightly scrawny creature emerged from its hole.

Dolores tensed and the animal froze.

The rat was fast but the brunette was faster. She pushed herself across the floor and skidded on her front towards the creature, covering Five's jacket with pale ash as her hands clasped around the squirming rodent. Its tiny claws scratched at her hands as it thrashed in her grasp while she held its wriggling body tightly, not daring to get up from her stomach-down position on the floor in fear of her grip loosening.

This was her next obstacle: actually killing it.

Five had been vigilant about her never having to take a life, even an animal's. She'd seen him kill their food before and had always grimaced immediately after at the sound of cracking bones. Steeling herself, the brunette tightened the grip of her left hand as she placed her right closer to its throat. She squeezed her eyes shut as she twisted her hand.

✧✧✧

[34 hours]

Dolores had been sitting with a dead rat in her hands for four hours. It had come to her attention that she didn't know how to cook it and she certainly wasn't going to eat it raw. She also didn't want to let her prize go in case someone— or something stole it from her. (This was completely irrational, of course, as there was no one and nothing around to do so.)

She elected to stand with animal in hand and begin her search for firewood which surprisingly wasn't too hard to find. Even with the entire area almost completely flattened, some wooden boards from buildings had survived. After gathering as much as she could carry, she returned to her shelter and let the wood tumble from her arms in a loud clatter that made her jump.

✧✧✧

[37 hours]

Starting a fire was harder than it looked.

She'd set up the wood in what resembled a teepee with small sticks and a handful of sawdust in the bottom, remembering how Five had constructed it in the first apocalypse. She then used two sticks— one a bit tall and the other thinner— to rub together. Her attention became hyper focused on the back-and-forth action her hands were doing.

Twenty minutes later saw her first smoke and the sawdust lit quickly after. She frowned when she realized she couldn't remember what to do next. She shrugged anyway and chose to skewer her meal onto one of her sticks.

✧✧✧

[48 hours]

With the exception of a few accidental noises, Dolores had been in complete silence for two days. Unlike the first apocalypse when she had forced herself to speak aloud, it was just easier not to. It seemed as if the silence was too sacred to break and it was better to just not speak— in fact, it was incredibly important to her that the silence persisted.

✧✧✧

[75 hours]

Surprisingly, Dolores had thought very little of the absent Hargreeves, even her own husband. It wasn't that she didn't think about them— whenever her emotions would suddenly overwhelm her, her hand would immediately go to the ring that rested on the stolen chain from Allison's room around her neck— she just turned off the emotions that came with doing so.

Since landing in this time, though, her mind had been entirely focused on the now and hadn't wandered. With how much she loved Five, one would think that she missed him an inordinate amount or that she would be furiously angry with him for landing her here. She didn't— and wasn't. Instead, she had remained curiously numb; there wasn't even a hint of a possible panic that had been present in the first apocalypse.

✧✧✧

[120 hours]

Dolores spent most days (and nights) in her shelter. She barely left it except for necessities such as firewood or to hunt for small animals. Instead, she had found great interest in sitting with her back against one wall, her legs stretched out before her and her hands resting in her lap or occasionally sliding her ring back and forth across the chain. Her gaze would be fixed on the opposite wall as she stared at it unblinkingly for hours on end.

✧✧✧

[350 hours]

The first real emotion Dolores showed was nearly two weeks later when the clasp holding her necklace snapped. She was lucky that she'd been sitting down when it had happened and not moving about so that she could catch the silver chain as it slid from her neck into her lap.

The brunette stared at it unblinkingly for a moment as the suddenness of the event startled her after so many days of nothing. Then, her eyes squeezed shut against the rapid welling up of tears. With a sob, she threw the necklace across the room where it hit the wall and landed with a faint clink! At the sound, she blinked away the emotion and scrambled over to it on her hands and knees to scoop up the jewelry. She cradled it in her cupped hands as she ignored the glass shards that lay scattered in her path or the trickles of blood that appeared on her palms in response.

✧✧✧

[4,772 hours]

If she'd been in her right state of mind, Dolores might have been impressed with herself for how long she'd survived on her own. Instead, she had been living as robotically as possible. If she'd chosen any other way, the panic she'd struggled to keep at bay would have overwhelmed her and the most important thing was to survive. So, she chose to shut down. If she pretended like she wasn't living in an apocalypse again— alone— there might be some way to escape with most of her sanity intact.

The key word here is most.

A flash of blue lit up the wall in front of her and Dolores stared blankly at it before the color registered. She shot to her feet and scrambled to the door as sudden hope surged in her chest. The pounding of her heart echoed the word that chanted in her head: FiveFiveFiveFiveFiveFive—

She stumbled out on unsteady legs— both from the lack of use and exhaustion— only to freeze at the sight of a large, bearded man that was certainly not the boy she was hoping for. Hazel turned at the sound of shifting rubble and his expression became half-impatient, half-relieved— as one might look after searching for a lost dog for hours only to realize it had been hiding behind the couch this whole time. His tone matched the look. "There you are."

The girl— who had already been skinny when he'd last seen her in 2019— was mostly arms and legs, her grimy clothes hanging loosely off her frame. Her blue eyes were hollowed and surrounded by dark circles as well as slightly red-rimmed from dust. Her dark hair was scraggly and limply framed her dirty face, resembling more of a rat's nest than anything else.

If Hazel hadn't worked for The Commission his entire life, he might've felt sorry for her. As it was, though, he remained extremely businesslike despite her wide-eyed, mistrustful expression. He approached her and held out his hand. "It's time to go."

Dolores didn't move. Instead, she chose to eye him warily as she spoke for the first time, her voice rasping painfully in her throat: "w-where?"

"Does it matter?" the older man asked briskly. He offered his hand a second time. She supposed it didn't, so she tentatively stretched out her own hand and put it in his.

In an instant, they were sent hurtling through the blue portal of space-time only to land on a busy, brightly colored street moments later. The brunette screwed up her eyes against the brilliant light of the sun (it was actually cloudy out but after living in the tail end of a nuclear winter, any light appeared brighter than it was.)

The sudden wave of sound from passing cars and people on the street made her clamp her hands over her ears. With a great effort, Dolores blinked several times to at least get Hazel into focus despite her watering eyes. The man bent slightly over the briefcase in his hands as he adjusted the settings next to the latches.

"W-where—" the brunette asked again. She winced at the effort of trying to raise her voice.

"Dallas, Texas, seventeen years earlier," he replied promptly, only looking up from his task once the proper date was set. "Good luck."

Before she could ask any other questions— not that any came to mind— Hazel disappeared in another flash of blue.