Did I mean for my silly crack fic to turn into a fix-it/Fives Lives/AU? No. Is that what ended up happening? Yes. Am I mad about it? Absolutely not! I’ve been having a kriffing BLAST with this fic. It’s been such a fun style to write in, and so out of my comfort zone…but it’s been so fun!!
Here’s an excerpt from Chapter Six of my fic Of Scene Breaks and Plot Twists:
Fives’s eyes snap back to mine. “What did you say?”
My mouth feels like it’s full of sawdust. Why did I say that? Why did I say that? WHY DID I SAY THAT? My mouth works like a dying fish out of water.
“Echo is dead,” Fives continues when my own voice refuses to cooperate. “Echo has been dead for a long time. And I’d sure as kriffing hells know if he knew someone who was absolutely karking insane!” He is nearly shouting and Omega stirs.
Fives and I go still until the girl falls asleep again, her breathing steady and deep.
“You have every right not to trust me,” I tell Fives, keeping my voice low. “There’s a lot I can’t just tell you. Not yet. Not without…”
Without potentially changing the course of history in a direction I cannot control.
“Echo isn’t dead,” I say instead of whatever I was about to spill. Fives opens his mouth to protest, but I put up a hand to silence him. “He’s a prisoner of the Techno Union.”
Fives shakes his head, his expression a furious storm.
“I would not lie to you, not about this,” I tell him, pouring every bit of certainty and honesty into my voice as I can muster up. “Never about this. I’m not–”
Yes, I am both of those things. Or I was.
Fives’s throat bobs, and he glares in a different direction so that he isn’t facing me. “You’re saying we left him? At the Citadel? All this time?” His voice is flat but not emotionless. Restrained. Painfully restrained.
I hesitate, but the truth is there whether I voice it or not. “Yes.”
Fives sniffs, scrubs his hand roughly over his face, and looks back at me. “If you’re lying to me–”
Fives’s eyes gleam in the dim lighting as he watches me for a moment, as if trying to assess on visual alone if I’m to be trusted. Weighing the risk of putting fragile, shattered hope in my hands. I would understand if he refused to believe me, I would. But it’ll hurt when the blow comes.
“Okay,” Fives says at last with a sharp nod. “What do we do now?”
My breath whooshes out of my lungs, and I almost burst into tears at the sheer relief. But if Fives can maintain his composure, so can I. “We find Clone Force 99.”
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
