Chapter 1: Allison
Summary:
Allison figured out at a young age that the only way anyone would ever pay attention to her was to use her looks to her advantage. After all, the world didn’t value stupid and useless girls, unless they were pretty enough to make up for it.
Chapter Text
She was late to breakfast, not that anyone had cared enough to wait for her. Allison pulled out her own chair and looked over at Luther, just to see if he’d notice her now. Nothing, just like normal. So she grabbed a yogurt and an apple and began to eat, scowling ever so slightly when she watched Vanya grab a pancake and drench it in syrup. A woman’s figure was important, she recited to herself, no one likes fat, unimportant girls.
“Children, you have three minutes left before training commences,” Reginald’s powerful voice echoed through the silent dining hall.
Klaus let out a loud groan, but Luther shut him up with a stern glare. Allison smiled to herself when she caught Klaus and Ben rolling their eyes as soon as Luther looked back at his food.
They left the table together, moving as a well practiced unit. Allison stayed behind and began to gather the plates. Mother smiled at her while she did it, holding out her arm for Allison to put them in. She did so, watching enviously as the rest of them filed out of the room together.
Mother put a hand on her shoulder, “Jealousy doesn't suit beautiful girls.”
Allison snapped out of it, “Of course, Mother” she replied, sticking on a pretty smile and continuing through the motions, as Mother talked excitedly about baking a pie in the afternoon.
Allison stood next to Mother, watching dutifully as she wrapped a bandage around Luther’s arm. He’d gotten grazed by a bullet during the last mission, nothing too bad but he would be out of commission for the next week. She hated it when someone got hurt, especially since she’d only find out about it when the wrong number of siblings came through the door. It was often up left to guesswork to figure out exactly what had gone wrong, pestering the others until they told her what happened or by helping Mother with the injured and seeing it firsthand.
Luther hissed as Mother applied the bandage, “Ow.”
Mother smile apologetically, “Sorry, Sweetie.”
“Can I try?” Allison offered impulsively.
Both of them looked surprised. Luther frowned at her, as if he hadn’t noticed her standing there this whole time.
Mother, after a minute of silence, nodded her head, “If you want to, Number Three. Be delicate.”
Allison took the spot Mother had been sitting on before, suddenly aware of just how close she was to Luther. If she moved just a bit closer to him, their legs would be touching. She grabbed the rest of the bandage and continued to wrap, doing her best to imitate what she had seen Mother do earlier.
Luther was silent now, staring at her intensely. She could feel his arm flinch away ever so slightly after one tight wrap.
“Sorry, Luther,” she said, trying to contain her nerves. Why had Mother allowed her to even do this? As soon as Pogo or Reginald walked in, she’d be thrown away from Luther and kept in her room for the rest of the day.
Luther didn’t reply, but his gaze switched, looking down at his legs. Allison tensed, she’d moved a little closer to him without even noticing, not realising that her legs were now brushing against his. Allison could barely hide her groan, as if this awful moment couldn’t get worse, but to her surprise, Luther didn’t do anything about it, staying quiet and still until she finished.
“Beautiful job, Allison,” Mother congratulated her, as she looked over her bandaging.
Allison smiled a little, “Thanks Mom.”
Luther gave her a stiff nod, before he slid off the bed and quickly made his way out of the infirmary. Allison was suddenly aware of his absence, her leg feeling cold now that it wasn’t touching his. She took a deep breath, steadied her breathing, before following him out and heading to her own room.
Mother had lied, because Allison was growing up to be both jealous and beautiful. She saw it in the way boys on the streets looked at her, how they’d wink and she’s smile back. Not that anything ever came out of it — she knew who she was waiting for. She could tell Luther knew that she was beautiful too from the way his eyes lingered on her when they stood in a room together, how he never flinched away when she pressed slightly closer to him than she needed to. And Luther had certainly paid attention to how high her skirt rose after she’d hemmed it.
Vanya had noticed too, but she’d only raised an eyebrow and muttered something about Allison under her breath, before turning towards Diego and whispering something into his ear. Diego had laughed and Allison wondered for the first time whether being paid attention to always a good thing.
But she couldn’t deny that it felt good to be paid attention to, to be seen as more than just the ordinary girl. And she’d managed to get Luther’s attention, the great Number One liked her and there was nothing Father could do about it. The rest of her siblings’ attitudes didn’t matter, neither did the way Luther hardly said more than a few words to her when the rest of them were around. In private, the pair of them could talk for as long as they wanted to.
She had her first kiss on the worst day of her life. She and Luther had talked for hours, each slowly getting closer to each other until he finally kissed her as the sun dawned outside. Alarm bells sounded seconds after, alerting them to another mission. Allison was left breathless, as Luther stood up and ran towards his room. For once, she was okay with being left behind. Her lips were still warm and she was smiling.
Her good mood lasted all day, until they finally came back, covered in blood. Allison tensed, looking for injuries and wondering what had gone wrong this time. But then she noticed at the tears on Diego’s face, the way that Klaus had collapsed on the floor and the blank look in Luther’s eyes. Someone was wrong. Ben was dead.
“Luther,” Allison knocked on his bedroom door, a week later. Luther hadn’t met her eyes since the kiss and Ben’s death.
“What?” he opened the door, guardedly.
Allison was taken aback at his hostile tone, “I just, I thought we should talk.”
Luther took a deep breath, “Look, Allison, I can’t do this. You’re a distraction.”
“A distraction?”
“Exactly. I need to focus on training and leading the others,” he shook his head, “Not on stupid things that don’t matter.”
Luther shut his bedroom door on her and Allison flinched as the door slammed shut. He said that she’d just been a stupid thing. That’s all she’d ever be to him, a distraction, something to pass the time with. She was hyperventilating, did she even matter? She was just the stupid, ordinary girl who kept herself occupied with lipsticks while her siblings were training and risking their lives.
The bedroom door on the opposite side of the hallway opened up.
“What are you crying for?” Vanya demanded, staring at her impassively. Her only other sister had always scared her a little. Vanya had always been the most powerful of them, as well as the coldest. She and Allison had stopped talking to each other outside of mealtimes a long time ago, when Vanya began taking her training seriously and Allison had retreated into her makeup.
Allison shook her head, “Nothing. It doesn’t matter, I guess.”
Vanya didn’t look convinced, “Fine then,” she answered, sharply, before closing her bedroom door.
Allison dove into her own bedroom, closing the door behind her as fast as she could. She caught her reflection in the mirror and winced. Her face was flushed and her makeup was looking worse for wear.
She faced herself in the mirror, glaring at her reflection. “Why can’t you do anything!” She hissed at herself, “You’re stupid and useless!” She seethed at her own reflection, before wiping her eye with her sleeve, the make up staining it.
Allison had forgotten how lonely her life was before Luther had started paying attention to her. She only saw her siblings during mealtimes, but no one had been in a mood to talk with Ben’s empty chair still noticeably absent. She heard brief flashes of laughter and fights around the house between her siblings and occasionally she got pulled in to mediate, but she tended to keep to herself.
Luther avoided her as often as he could, while the others hardly even paid any attention to her. Even Klaus, with whom she’d bonded a little bit with by reading fashion magazines and the only other person in the house who seemed to talk to her, was spending most of his time high or drunk. She wandered around the house, wondering if they’d even notice if she’d disappear too.
No one noticed as she moved her food around her plate, saying she was finished after only eating a few bites. Her clothes started fitting too loosely as well and Allison took it upon herself to hem and sew them to fit tighter. She might be stupid and useless, but she could make sure she stayed pretty.
The real world, as it turns out, was better than she could have ever imagined. Leaving the Umbrella Academy had been difficult. Ben and Five were already long gone, but Klaus was hardly ever at the Academy and Diego had left a few days earlier after an epic argument that had sounded all over the house. Allison had doubts, if she left it would just be Luther, Vanya and Dad in that big house, but then again, she wasn’t sure they’d even notice if she left.
She’d managed to get Dad’s blessing — aka a few thousand dollars worth of antiques that she’d pawned off. Klaus stole at least that much on a weekly basis, so she was sure that if Dad even found out about all this valuables going missing, it’d be pinned on him, not her. Sometimes, there were advantages to being overlooked.
The advertisement had caught her eye: Auditions here! Looking for prospective actors, models and more!
Allison jotted down the address and the time. Growing up, she'd idolised the girls in the fashion magazines, the ones who were pretty and bold enough to capture the attention of everyone around them. Maybe she’d try to do the same, make her mark on the world, let all her siblings know that she was special, that people did notice her.
The morning of the audition, she applied her makeup, making sure she looked perfect. Her hair was perfectly curled and she’d even dyed sections of it blond the other day to ensure she stood out from the crowd.
Three people sat behind a table, looking at her with unreadable expressions. She smiled prettily, handing them a few headshots of herself, “Hi, my name is Allison Hargreeves.”
They looked at her and murmured amongst themselves, while Allison stood in the centre of the room. They were all staring directly at her, but she felt the same way she had during so many times before, feeling utterly overlooked.
“Alright, doll,” one of them said, “You can go for now.”
“Are you going to call me back?” She asked eagerly.
The guy sighed, “You’re new at this, aren’t you?”
“I’m just as good as the rest,” she assured him.
The guy just shook his head, “Look, you seem like a nice kid. But you just don’t have the star quality we’re looking for.”
Allison stared at them, “So what am I supposed to do?”
“What am I, your life coach?” He replied, rolling his eyes, “I don’t care. Go home, keep auditioning, loose a few pounds, doesn’t matter to me.”
Allison hurried out of the building. Ordinary, untalented and useless. And she wasn’t even pretty enough to make up the difference. She wiped a tear off of her face, trying her best to look composed.
“Did those assholes reject you too?” A girl leaning on the brick building, smoking a cigarette asked.
Allison frowned, “Yeah.”
“Well what are you going to do about it?” She asked.
“Go home I guess? This was all a stupid mistake. I should have known better.”
The girl sighed, “Well if thats what you really want to do, go ahead.”
Allison stared at her, confused, “Why do you even care?”
She rolled her eyes, “I don’t.”
“Then why are you asking?”
“You’re going about it the wrong way,” the girl instructed, “Look at you, you’re a nobody. There’s plenty of pretty nobodies in this city, why would they care about you?”
Allison glared at her, “Don’t call me a nobody.”
The girl smiled, “Then do something about it.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Allison demanded.
The girl shrugged, “That’s up to you. How far are you willing to go to become somebody?”
Allison hesitated. She’d spent eighteen years being ordinary and blending into the background. She didn’t want to spend the rest of her life that way, “I’ll do anything.”
The party was in full swing and Allison was loving every second of it. She’d heard about it through a friend of a friend and had spent all week deciding what to wear. It was her first Hollywood party, the host was some third rate actor that had been famous ten years ago, and she was determined to make an impression. Eventually, she’d settled on a tight fitting blue dress that showed off her figure, paired with dark lipstick to make sure she’d be noticed. The music and lights had practically been a beacon and she’d followed and ended up inside the house, dancing to a song she’d never heard before, surrounded by perfect stranger.
Two hands grabbed her waist and she came face to face with a guy in his thirties, “You’re the sexiest girl here, did you know that?”
Allison stiffened, automatically stepping away from him, “Don’t touch me.” She could smell the alcohol on his breath and the feeling of his hands on her waist were sending off alarm bells.
The man chuckled, “Don’t be like that, baby. You can’t be mean to the guy hosting the party.”
Allison froze. She’d been told that the host was some actor who was barely scraping by with the tabloids, hardly a catch. But then again, he was staring at her, noticing her. And he was more successful in Hollywood than she was. So Allison smiled, grabbing his hands and pressing them back to her waists, “Is there a way I can make it up to you?”
The host’s eyes lit up, “You already are.”
Out of the corner of her eye, Allison could see someone holding up a camera. Why would someone be taking a photo of her and the host at a party? Paparazzi, she realised. And with a smile, she leaned in and kissed the host, as the flash of the camera went off.
Later that week, she’d scoured an entire newsstand full of tabloids for the photo of her and the host taken at the party. It had taken her nearly an hour to find it, a small photo near the back in one of the less popular tabloids. Allison smiled to herself as she looked at the photo, the caption labeled: Which Hollywood Newcomer has Attracted Gorden Howitt’s Attention? A start, she decided, soon enough she’d be known everywhere.
Collin McCormack slammed the tabloid on the table, “I just don’t understand, Allison. How did they figure out where we were?”
Allison pulled the tabloid towards her. Right on the page was a photo of her and Collin holding hands as they walked through one of the many city streets. The headline over the photo read: Moving on Too Quickly? Collin McCormack Rumoured to be Dating the Infamous Ex-Girlfriend of Guitarist Mark Brown.
She carefully kept her expression blank, “Its crazy. And that reporter just called me Mark Brown’s Ex-girlfriend. I do have a name.”
Collin looked at her, incredulously, “That’s what you’re concerned about? You’re lucky that reporter didn’t catch your name or else you’d be hounded by them.”
Allison scowled, “A little attention goes a long way.”
Collin frowned, looking suspiciously from the tabloid photo to Allison, “Ally, you didn’t call them yourself, did you?”
“Are you crazy?” She lied, “Why would I want reporters breathing down my neck. I can’t believe you’d think I’d do anything like that.” That was a barefaced lie, Allison had sent an anonymous tip regarding her and Collin’s relationship, as well as the exact location they’d been planning on meeting at for their date.
“Sorry, you’re right,” Collin apologised, “I’m just paranoid, sometimes.”
Allison laughed. In the three years since she’d first been in the tabloids, she’d worked hard to stay there, flitting from relationship to relationship, letting herself get caught dating a new guy whenever the tabloids stopped paying attention to her current relationship. It was a hard dance to pull off, but she’d gotten the hang of it after a few months of practice.
Allison smiled for the camera. It was a little strange, after years of playing coy with the camera and pretending not to notice it, looking straight into it felt off. She could feel the hot lights of the studio directly on her, making her feel dizzy. In front of her, stood a small crowd, including a cameraman, director and half a dozen assorted crew members, all watching her.
“One gummy at breakfast time and the pounds just melt away,” she recited the line, the little bear shaped gummy sitting in her palm.
“Cut!” The directed shouted, “We’ll do a few more takes. Take five, everyone.”
Gordon, her current boyfriend, grinned, “You’re brilliant, babe.”
She kissed him, “Well, not everyone can advertise weight loss gummies.”
He chuckled, “You’re one of a kind, don’t know why I ever doubted you.”
Allison smiled. She could still remember when she auditioned for the weight loss gummies gig, only to see that the casting directed was the same asshole from all those years ago that had told her she lacked star power. His expression when she walked in had been priceless — she didn’t doubt for a second that all those years she spent ensuring she stayed in the tabloids had paid off. All it took after that was a date and suddenly, she had her first paid acting job, “You know better now.”
Gordon chuckled, “I sure do. And, as long as you drop a few extra pounds, I’m sure I’ll get them to hire you again.”
Allison’s good mood vanished, “Sorry?”
Gordon shook his head, “Come on, babe. You aren’t eighteen anymore and I can only pull so much weight. If those directors come asking for skinnier girls, there won’t be anything I can do.”
Her heartbeat sped up, as she tried her hardest to make sure that Gordon didn’t notice. It’s not like she hasn’t noticed — the other actresses she competes with for jobs are getting younger and more beautiful than she is. She’s dumb and useless, but she’s always been pretty. Being pretty had gotten her noticed, first by Luther, then by the third rate celebrities and finally, it seemed, by Hollywood. She promised herself a long time ago that she’d do anything to make sure people notice her. It was time she lived up to that.
Occasionally, she just wanted to go to bed and cry. Normally, she could distract herself on days like that, either with a party or sneaking out to a spa. But today was a raining Wednesday afternoon and she was in no mood to face the photographers, not after she’d passed a newsstand on the way to get a cup of coffee and the headline on one paper read: Model Alicia Veite Caught in the Act! Spotted Kissing the Casting Director for Upcoming Campaign!
Alicia Veite was an up and coming model, one Allison had spotted around Hollywood parties a few times in the last year. A bright young thing with pouty lips and big eyes. She and Gordon had met her once, but Allison hadn’t thought anything of it. But staring at a photo of them kissing with is hands up her shirt, she probably should have.
She was so stupid, just like she’d always been since she was a little kid. Stupid and useless, too dumb and naive to think that other people were playing the same Hollywood games that she did. She didn’t doubt that it would only take another day at most for her name to get thrown into the ring, the tabloids would key on on the fact that Gordon was supposed to have a girlfriend at the moment and Allison had finally risen high enough through the ranks of fame to ensure that anyone who was anyone would know she’d been cheated on.
Allison stared at her reflection, wincing at the girl she saw. Her makeup was running and she’d managed to make eyeshadow look like a black eye. What had she done wrong? Her ribs poked out a little and her cheekbones looked sharp. While she normally looked good, today she just looked pathetic and tired.
At least Gordon had made himself the villain the tabloids. Good press was hard to get and Allison’s reputation had taken a nosedive after more than one past boyfriend accused her of cheating — even though she’d never done it. She straightened up, positive free press was nothing to be upset about.
Allison signed the divorce papers with a steady hand. Just like that, she was officially single again. The marriage had only lasted six months, during half of which she and Matthew, a former child star turned reality TV host, had been living in different houses. Their whirlwind relationship had caught the tabloids and Allison had spent months promoting products and posing for photos while carefully ensuring that the paparazzi had front row tickets to every important moment in their relationship.
She peered at her reflection through the glass door, reapplying her lipstick and making sure that her hair was nicely styled. Her clothes had also been specifically chosen to show that she wasn’t a mess or upset, instead she looked sexy and ready for her next adventure. Perfect.
Allison gave the papers to her lawyer, before pushing open the heavy door that led to the streets. As expected, a small crowd of reporters were facing her.
“Allison, Allison!”
“Miss, over here!”
“Why did you divorce him, Allison?”
She smiled at all the cameras, relishing in the spotlight.
“Allison, can you comment on your family?”
Allison turned towards that reporter. Why did he care about her family? Her ties to the Umbrella Academy were well hidden, by both her and her father, “Sorry?”
“The death, do you have a comment?”
“Will you be going to the funeral?”
Allison stared at the reporters, utterly horrified, “No comment.” It was her go to whenever she was unclear about anything.
“Reginald Hargreeves’ funeral will be in a week, will you be going?” The same nosy reporter demanded.
Allison stared at the camera. Her father was dead? And there was a funeral? The news didn’t fully resonate her. She purposefully hadn’t thought about her family in so long, much less considered what would happen if they died.
A flash of the camera jolted her out of her thoughts and Allison began pushing through the crowd, “Move, I need to go!” She yelled, until she finally managed to make them disperse. She fled through the city, sprinting away from the paparazzi following her.
The Umbrella Academy stared down at her. Allison shivered in its shadow. She didn’t even know why she’d come back, it wasn’t like Dad had cared about her while he was alive, why should she care about him now that he was dead? But like it or not, she was on the other side of the country, with a suitcase in one hand and clothes that were meant for Californian weather, not New York autumns. She took a deep breath, feeling almost like a little kid again as she pushed the heavy doors open.
The inside of the house was just as unwelcoming as the outside. Allison tried to stand straight, she wasn’t a stupid little kid anymore, she was a celebrity now. Someone important, someone who mattered. She and the rest of her siblings were all adults now and adults didn’t get intimidated by their childhood homes.
“Hello?” She called out, but she got no response.
Instead, she could hear a scuffle happening in the living room. She had half a mind to go back outside, the memories of listening to her siblings messing around together while she sat on the other side of a door replaying in her head. But she pushed the door open anyways.
Inside the living room, Diego was in the middle of tackling Klaus onto the floor, looking only seconds away from stabbing him with one of his knives, while Vanya glared at the pair of them.
“Stop!” Allison cried out.
Everyone turned towards her.
“Oh, great,” Diego rolled his eyes, “Allison’s back.”
Klaus sent her a little wave from his position on the floor, while Vanya didn’t even pretend to notice her.
“Why are you fighting?” Allison asked.
“He’s a thief!”
“Liar, liar pants on fire,” Klaus chanted back, sticking his tongue out.
Before either of them could say anything, Vanya stomped her foot and the sound wave forced Diego off Klaus and sent him flying into the sofa, “Vanya!”
“Whoops,” she replied, a small smile on her face, “My bad.”
Klaus giggled, “Thanks, sis!” He sat up, taking a deep breath, “As fun as this reunion has been, I’ve got things to do, rooms to search and antiques to…borrow.”
“Wait,” Allison said, trying to project as much power into her voice as she could, “Wait!”
Diego and Vanya didn’t even acknowledge her, while Klaus only stumbled to his feet, “What?”
Well, at least one person seemed to listen to her, “Is Luther back?”
Klaus shrugged, “He’s around,” he replied, before grabbing something out of his belt and throwing it back into his mouth, swallowing it. At least she now knew that Klaus was still a druggie. It was nice to know that some things never changed.
Allison followed him upstairs, turning towards the corridor where their bedrooms were all located. She passed by Luther’s door and hesitated for a second. She could hear him on the other side and considered knocking, before losing her nerve and backing away to her own room.
Allison shut the door, facing herself in the mirror. Ten minutes back in the Umbrella Academy and she already felt as ignored and powerless as she had when she was twelve. She knew her makeup was well done, but she’d never gotten any attention for being pretty back home.
Whether it was habit or her old personality shining through, Allison found herself repeating the same things she did as a child. She kept quiet, for the most part while her sibling talked. She’d tried to add to the conversation once or twice, but she’d been drowned out by her louder siblings both times.
Luther finally appeared a few hours later and Allison gasped when she saw him. He was huge, his entire upper body looked at least double the size it had been last time she’d seen him. His eyes widened when he saw her, “Oh, hi Allison.” She didn’t miss the way his gaze lingered on her longer than it did on the rest of their siblings. Years of playing around with guys meant that she didn’t second guess anything. Was it bad that all these years later she could still remember how his lips had felt against hers?
“Congratulations on the marriage, by the way,” Luther said, awkwardly.
“No need,” she replied, cooly, “I’m divorced, since last week.”
Diego chuckled, “Yeah, we heard.” He chucked a tabloid towards her, a big photo of her in her wedding dress with a big red X over it, “Real classy. Between your six month long marriage and cycle of boyfriends of which you’ve cheated at least a fifth of them—”
“Quarter,” Vanya interrupted, “If we’re betting, that is.”
“Oh a bet?” Klaus chimed in, “I’ll say a quarter and a half.”
Luther slammed his fist on the table, “Can we move on? There are more important things that Allison’s weird love life.”
Vanya nodded, “Why did you even come back anyways? Seemed like you couldn’t leave the Academy fast enough. Why bother coming back?”
Allison struggled to form an answers — she didn’t really know herself, “He was my Dad too, why shouldn’t I go to the funeral?”
Diego looked unimpressed, “Whatever, should we expect the paparazzi to join you?”
Allison flushed, “I can’t help that I’m a celebrity, Diego. It’s what happens to famous people.”
Diego just stared at her, incredulously, “Celebrity? What are you talking about, celebrity? You’re a trashy tabloid star, Allison, that’s it!”
Allison flinched away, “I’m an actress!”
“Advertising weight loss gummy bears don’t count,” Vanya giggled coldly.
“Shut up,” Luther shouted, “Dad might have been murdered and all you care about are stupid things that don’t matter?”
Allison stared at him, eyes wide. All those years, all her work into becoming someone who mattered and to him she was just the same stupid, ordinary girl who kept herself occupied with lipsticks while her siblings were training and risking their lives. She turned away from her siblings, sprinting up the stairs away from them.
Someone was knocking at her door. Allison hesitated, her siblings had never knocked on her door very often. It must be important then, she decided, “Come in.”
The door opened and Luther stepped inside, ducking under the doorframe to avoid it hitting his head, “Hey, Allison.”
“Luther,” she greeted, unenthusiastically.
“How are you doing?” He sounded stiff and awkward, it was nothing like ease she’d felt around him when they were younger, back when she’d been desperate for attention and he’d been the only one to give her any.
“Fine.”
“Really?” He replied, doubtfully.
Allison bristled at his answer, “Is that a problem?”
“No, no,” he backtracked, “You just don’t look it.”
“Excuse me?” Allison glared at him.
“That’s not what I meant!” Luther back peddled even further, “You — just — ugh. You look really thin, is all.”
Allison straightened up, “So? Why do you care?” Was he coming onto her?
Luther groaned, “I’m just being stupid. But, are you eating alright?”
“What does that mean?”
“You’ve always been weird about eating,” he continued, “You were always crazy skinny growing up. And you look even skinnier ten years later.”
Allison narrowed her eyes. Since when had anyone noticed the way she ate? “What’s wrong with watching my figure?” She challenged.
“Come on, Allison,” Luther dragged a finger through his hair, stressed, “We used to spend time together, it was more than just ‘watching your figure’.”
Allison glared at him, “You don’t get to bring up our past, not after you were the one to break it off.”
At that very moment, the earth began to shake. Luther grabbed the doorway to steady himself.
“There’s something happening outside!” Diego’s yell carried through the house.
Luther took a step out of her room, but hesitated, looking at Allison guiltily.
Allison narrowed her eyes, “Go ahead, I don’t want to distract you from your mission.”
Luther winced, “We’ll talk later, I promise!” He shouted, before he sprinted down the stairs towards where Diego had been yelling.
Allison waited until the ground stopped shaking and the yelling stopped before she made her way downstairs. She was in no mood to talk to Luther or any of her other siblings, but she did want to know what all that noise and shaking had been about.
Seeing a young Five in front of her, looking no different from the day he’d disappeared, was not something she expected. He was stomping away from Vanya, Diego, Klaus and Luther, mumbling under his breath. He stopped when he saw Allison, blinking a few times, before scowling.
“Is that Five?” Allison asked, looking at her other siblings for confirmation. Klaus nodded in return.
She stared at her brother, who she hadn’t seen in years and had presumed dead this entire time. He looked healthy and alive, “You’re alive.”
“Give her a prize,” Vanya muttered.
Klaus laughed a little in response.
Five sighed, before he looked at Allison, “Do you want to get supper?”
“Sweet,” Klaus grinned, “Family dinner, how fun!”
“Not you guys,” Five scowled, “Just you.”
Allison frowned, “You want me to come with you?”
“It’s not like I can stand the rest of these morons, can I?” He said, smiling darkly.
Allison smiled. She couldn’t remember Five paying her much attention when they were younger, but he’d disappeared a long time ago. Maybe he’d grown to miss all of them, even her during the apocalypse, “Sure. Why not?”
“Great, I’m driving,” he said quickly walking away from her towards the front door.
Allison moved to follow him, but felt Luther catch her wrist.
“What?”
“I’m sorry, about what I said before,” he let go apologetically, “Just make sure you eat, alright?”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” she glared at him, “I thought I was just a stupid thing that didn’t matter.”
Five sighed dramatically, yelling across the room, “Hurry up! I want coffee!”
Luther flinched in response to her dig against him, “We can talk later.”
“We’ll see.”
“Promise me you’ll eat though, alright?” He pressed.
Allison hesitates, but she’s never really been able to stand up to Luther, so she nods, “I’ll eat.”
He smiled, “Thanks.”
Five grasps her arm, literally dragging her through the house, “Let’s go!”
Allison giggled as he did so, before finally opening the car door and watching, suddenly scared for her life, as Five climbed into the driver’s seat.
One death defying car ride later, Allison has a breakfast special with a side of scrambled eggs in front of her, while Five sips his coffee. She can remember being jealous of her siblings when they went out to Giddy’s Diner without her, but this time its just her and Five.
“I’m glad you’re back,” She told him, interrupting the silence, “I know we weren’t close as kids, but its nice knowing you never died.”
“Vanya never thought I died,” Five replied, taking a long sip.
Allison frowned, “She didn’t?” They were talking about the same cold and unfeeling Vanya, right?
“She left me marshmallow and peanut butter sandwiches every night,” he replied, “But enough about me, what’s your life like?”
Allison can’t remember any of her siblings ever asking her about her own life. She grinned, “It’s fun. Everyone knows who I am, people pay attention to me, for the first time. And Diego thinks its just sleazy tabloid stuff, and some of it is, but its just nice to know what people care about me—”
“Shh!” Five cut her off, before cursing under his breath, staring at the parking lot.
Allison followed his gaze, seeing five people dressed in black approaching the diner. Living in Los Angeles for ten years, she knows that that’s never a good sign, “Five?”
He sighed, “It was really great to see you again, Allison.”
Allison frowned, “Why do you sound like you’re saying goodbye?”
Five squeezed her hand, took one long drink of his coffee, “That’s my cue, I’m afraid.”
“Five?”
And a second later, Five disappears in a blue portal. Allison whips around, trying to figure out where Five reappeared. She can’t see him anywhere in the restaurant, “Five? Five!”
Outside, the five men in black spread out across the windows. Allison watched as they seemed to fiddle with something. She squinted, trying her best to make out what they were doing. Maybe Five had gone outside to take care of them?
Then, she gasps as she realises exactly what they’re doing. A second later, five guns are pressed against the window. Allison froze, “Five!”
Then, the loudest noise she’s ever head, before she feels her skin being ripped apart, the force pushing her off her chair. She lands on the floor sprawled uncomfortably on the ground. She’s in pain, more pain that she’s ever felt before. Her stomach and chest feel like someone stabbed her. Allison managed to press a hand against her chest, staring at the blood that was now coating it. Gunshot wounds, she realises, dimly. She stays on the cold floor, red blood staining her cloths and hair as her eyes closed for good. A minute later, Allison Hargreeves’ heart stopped.
Five scowled at the wreck that was once a diner. He’s managed to kill the five assassins — definitely sent from the Commission. He'd been 90% sure that they'd been tracking him, but the confirmation didn't exactly feel satisfying with his sister dying at their hands.
Allison’s dead body stared at him from the floor, her brown eyes looking blankly at the ceiling. Five crouched by her, brushed a stray strand of hair out of her face, “I’m sorry.” He hadn’t wanted to kill her. Really, she was his sister after all. But it wasn’t like he had a choice in the matter.
Five had been more than a little shocked when he time travelled for the first time and ended up in some apocalyptic future. He’d been even more surprised to learn that, somehow, it had been Allison who’d caused the horrible future. She’d torn the world apart in a matter of days after finding their father’s notebook about them. She could force anyone to do anything she wanted and something had set her off and made her snap. Five never figured out what it was — Allison hadn’t exactly left any survivors alive to tell the story. He’d gotten there only three days after her rampage had begun, but by that point it had practically ended already.
He could remember seeing her, in the ruins of a city ripped apart by a riot. All she had was a mirror in her hands.
“Five?” Her voice was hoarse, as if she’d been yelling nonstop, “You…?”
“What happened? Where am I? Who are you?” Five demanded.
“It’s me, Allison,” she replied.
He could only stare, wondering exactly how far in the future he’d managed to travel to. This Allison certainly didn’t look like the quiet girl he’d left behind, “When am I?”
Allison’s eyes lit up, “You time travelled? All those years ago when you disappeared, you came here?”
Five stared at her in confusion, since when was Allison thirty? He’d hardly ever talked to her, “This is the future then? It’s shit.”
Allison didn’t seem to even be listening to him, “You can go back though, can’t you?”
“I got here, didn’t I?” He retorted. He hadn’t actually tried going back yet, but he wasn’t going to tell Allison that, especially not when she looked half insane.
“I’m sorry,” she rasped, before saying, “I heard a rumour that you kill Allison Hargreeves after you time travel back to the past!” She said.
Five felt power coursing through the air as she spoke. He stared at Allison in horror — since when did she have powers? And judging by how hoarse her voice was, she was using it nonstop.
But before he could ask her anything else, Allison picked up the mirror and looked at her reflection, “I didn’t meant to do it, Five. But people were finally listening to me, and after Luther…” she trailed off, before shaking her head, “I shouldn’t be talking anymore…”
Five stared at her in confusion, “Wait, you did this?” He looked at his surroundings, the dead bodies on the streets, the smoke in the air and the ruins all around them.
She smiled a little, as if he’d made a joke, “I can make people do whatever I want them to.” Then, she raised the mirror and looked at herself, “I heard a rumour you stopped breathing.”
Five watched in horror as Allison’s breathing stopped. Her hands shot to her throat and her eyes bulged as her mouth opened and closed.
“Stop it!” He yelled, “Breath, dammit!”
But his words didn’t stop anything. Allison fell to the ground, heaving for breath, before her eyes closed and her body finally stilled.
Five recoiled from her body. She’d rumoured herself to stop breathing. She’d rumoured him to kill a younger version of herself. And he doubted he’d be able to stop himself from doing it if he tried.
Five grabbed a knife that had fallen on the floor and cut his forearm open, managing to dig out a tracking chip. He snapped it neatly in half, before sitting back and leaning on the counter. He’d need to leave soon, before any more assassins or the police showed up. It had taken all his willpower to not stab Allison as soon as he'd seen her in the past, but he'd managed to drag it out long enough that the Commission's assassins did it for him. He stood up, his small victory feeling hollow. Apocalypse averted and he'd won the first of many fights with the Commission, but his sister's body at his feet didn't make him feel good about it.
Chapter 2: Diego
Summary:
Diego knew that he wanted to help people and save lives since he was little — it figured that he grew up in a family where he was the only one not allowed to do so.
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Diego glared at the television. On the screen, he watched as people came filing out of a bank, a lot of them scared and crying, quickly followed by robber getting tossed out of a window. He skidded across the sidewalk and didn’t stand back up.
Mom sighed happily, “Oh, they are doing so well, aren’t they?”
Diego scowled in response, “This is so unfair,” They kept watching as gunshots were fired inside, the camera zoomed into a window, where he could see flashes of someone, probably Vanya, sending criminals crashing against the marble walls of the bank without even touching them, “Can you please ask Dad if I—”
Mom clapped a little as they emerged from the bank, all their uniforms looking as tidy as they had before they left, with the exception of Ben, covered in blood, “Shh, your father is about to speak.”
Dad faced the cameras, gesturing to his brothers and sisters, “The Umbrella Academy will use their extraordinary powers to keep the citizens of this city safe from harm,” he declared. The crowds cheered and he watched as Allison stood a little straighter and even Vanya smiled a little.
Diego glowered at the scene. He could be there, he should be fighting with them, standing in between Luther and Allison. He could have saved people’s lives, but instead he was grounded to the house with nothing to do but watch them on the news, “I hate being normal! It’s not like Klaus can actually do anything useful, why can he go on missions and not me?”
Mom tutted a little, “Don’t be mean to your brother. Klaus’ abilities are just as useful as Vanya’s.”
“But not on missions,” Diego pointed out, “All he can do is talk to the dead sometimes and he doesn’t even like doing it! How is that supposed to help during missions when there are guns being fired?”
“We’ve had this discussion before, Diego,” Mom reminded him, “Your father has good reason to keep you off of missions.”
“Because I’m ordinary,” Diego rattled off without any effort. Dad made sure to remind him about that daily. Never mind that he actually trained for missions, did push ups and ran in his free time to be stronger, while Klaus just sat around and whined about having powers.
Mom smiled like he’d just answered a difficult math question, “Exactly. I’m so happy you understand.”
Diego stomped off to his room. He wasn’t in the mood to smile and clap when his siblings returned as heroes.
He came to a stop in front of the front doors of the Umbrella Academy. Diego was panting as he checked him watch. Ten kilometres in forty three minutes. Not bad, but not nearly as good he as should be. He was sweating in the cold autumn morning and Diego fought off the urge to just sit down on the cold stone steps. His siblings weren’t given breaks during their training sessions, so why would he?
After gulping down a bunch of water, Diego took a deep breath and took off running again. It was a shorter route, but he was doing his best to run at a faster than he had earlier. As he felt himself beginning to slow down, his legs tiring out and his lungs burning, Diego pushed himself harder. If he didn’t get back to the Academy fast enough, he’d miss breakfast and make Dad angry, two things that he hated.
Maybe he didn’t have any natural powers like the others, but he knew that as long as he kept training, Dad would have to let him on the team eventually. It was frustrating sometimes, struggling to lift weights that Luther could pick up with his pinkie finger and sprinting distances that Five could just jump in milliseconds. But Diego was determined and since things didn’t come naturally to him, he worked his harder than anyone else to accomplish everything he could.
So he kept pushing himself, running a little further every morning. Sure, he’d miss breakfast occasionally, but that was just motivation to go faster the next day. And sometimes he’d injure himself, but he didn’t break for any longer than he needed to. A few pain pills and some tape and he was off again.
Diego did not like being Number Two. He hated being called referred to as a number for one (Mom had given him a real name, thank you very much), but his bigger annoyance was that Luther was number One. Diego didn’t care about the whole ‘team leader’ shtick or about the reasoning behind how they were ordered, he just hated having to stand next to Luther all the time. Sitting next to him at mealtimes and being stuck next to him when they were being tutored was hard enough already (He had broken one arm too many due to Luther accidentally body checking him out of his chair when they were younger and he had still been learning his strength), but it was used to tolerable. And then Allison had come along.
Allison was his newest annoyance about being Number Two. Diego used to count Allison in the category of ‘less annoying siblings’, along with Ben and Vanya, but ever since they’d turned twelve, she had managed to skyrocket up the list and become his second most annoying sibling, only succeeded by Luther as first. The pair had some weird crush on each other and were making googley eyes at each other all day, as well as exchanging whispered conversations. And who was the bastard stuck between Number One and Three? Lucky Number Two.
“Can you stop?” He finally broke during one of their tutoring sessions. Allison had tried to play footsie with Luther, only to kicked Diego in the shins.
“Stop what?” Allison smiled innocently.
Diego rolled his eyes, “We get it — you like the Pirate—”
“Don’t call him that!” Allison cut him off angrily, standing up and crossing her arms across her chest.
Luther stiffened at the nickname, bringing his hand up and scratching his face, not very subtly preventing Diego from seeing his eye. He’d gotten hurt a long time ago, a training accident, according to Dad. Something had gone very, very wrong and Luther had lost his right eye. For a year, Luther had worn a black eye patch, just like a pirate, before Dad managed to get him a prosthetic glass eye.
Five jumped in front of them, “No one cares about your eye, Luther. Now you two stop annoying all of us by having your ‘secret love’ moments, we’ve all noticed, you guys aren’t nearly as subtle as you think and—”
“I didn’t notice,” Klaus called out from the back.
Five glowered at him, before continuing as if Klaus hadn’t said anything, “Those of us with two whole brain cells noticed. Diego will stop going on about your Pirate thing. Then, we’ll all be happy, got it?”
Diego narrowed his eyes, “No I won’t,” he challenged Five.
“Then neither will we,” Allison declared, purposefully kicking Diego in the shins again, “Oopsies.”
Five clenched his fists, “I swear you all belong in kindergarten,” he hissed.
Diego stuck his tongue out at Five in a very not childish way, before subtly tapping on Luther to get his attention and holding a hand in front of his right eye, “Ahoy there, matey.”
And yeah, maybe he did deserve Luther body checking him off his chair and onto the ground for that.
Diego managed to climb the (admittedly low) fence and sneak into the throngs of people on the street. He had warmed up on the way over and had made his way to the front of the crowd, away from the New Years resolution joggers to where the real runners were lining up.
“Should you even be this far up, kiddo?” A fit looking woman with a long blond ponytail tapped him on the shoulder. On her bib, the name Poppy was printed in big, bold letters. Diego crossed his arms over his chest to hide the fact that he didn’t have one.
Diego narrowed his eyes. Who did this lady think she was? “As long as I’m fast, my age doesn’t matter.”
Poppy looked amused, “I like your spunk. How old are you anyways?”
“Twelve,” he replied, puffing out his chest a little.
She looked mildly impressed “Not bad. Are you running with your Dad or something?”
Diego scowled, “No, I’m not running with any of them.” He hadn’t even bothered to ask his father if he could go — he would have said no either way. And there was no chance his siblings would come. All of them, with the exception of Luther, weren’t exactly fans of physical training and the idea of spending forty two kilometres with Luther was physically painful.
“Too fast for them?”
“Exactly,” he replied.
Poppy chuckled, “That’s fair. It’s your first marathon then, right?”
“I’ve ran longer than forty two kilometres before,” Diego said, defensively, “I’m not just a dumb kid, I’ve trained for this.”
“I never said you hadn’t,” Poppy laughed, “I was just going to say that it’s a long race to run by yourself. If you want, we could do it together?”
Diego frowned. She was right — a marathon was a few hours long of running and while he liked running, it could get dull. So he nodded, “Fine, but I’m not going to slow down for you.”
“As long as you don’t expect to do that either,” she agreed with a wide smile.
They ended up running the majority together. Occasionally, he’d push forward, but Poppy always ended up catching him a few kilometres later, “You can’t lose me that easily.” Diego tried to run even faster.
Just before the finish line, Poppy had winked at him, “I promised I wouldn’t slow down for you, kiddo.”
She sprinted the last few hundred metres and crossed the finish line, but let Diego catch up with her a minute later, wheezing and gasping for breath. Poppy looked utterly exhausted, her face flushed and her steps were slightly shaky. Diego didn’t doubt for a moment that he looked just as bad.
“So, where’s your family?” Poppy asked, looking around the crowd at the finishing area.
“Training,” Diego answered.
Poppy frowned, “They aren’t here to meet you?”
“No,” Diego frowned, “Mom said she might, but I’m pretty sure she’s busy with the real training.”
“Real training?” Poppy repeated dumbly, “You just ran a marathon, what in the world does your family consider ‘real training’ to be.”
Diego brushed it aside, “It’s, uh, complicated.” He didn’t like telling strangers he was part of the Umbrella Academy because of the inevitable accusations that he was lying because everyone knew there there were only six kids and none of them were hispanic.
Poppy nodded, “Seems that way. And how are you supposed to be getting home? If your mother couldn’t make it?”
Diego shrugged, “I’ll just walk.” That was how he’d gotten to the marathon starting line, hadn’t it? The Academy wasn’t too far away.
Poppy looked confused for a moment. Diego didn’t care. The Umbrella Academy had been no stranger to ‘concerned’ parents criticising their father for training them to be heroes. They just didn’t understand that they needed to be trained to that extent, so that they could save people’s lives. And it might sound a little cruel to outsiders, but it was worth it.
She finally nodded, still looking a little concerned, but plastered on a small smile, “Tell you what. I’m actually a gym teacher at a high school nearby. I coach a ‘run club’ a few morning during the week and you’re a little young, but I think in a few years, I could pull some strings and let you join once you’re a few years older.”
Diego frowned, “Thanks, but I’ll probably be in real training by then.”
Poppy looked even more confused, “It’s just an offer. You’re a talented runner and a team environment could push you to get even better.”
Diego shrugged, “We’ll see.”
His day had started off like normal. He woke up before everyone else, grabbed a few granola bars to eat, before pulling on his runners and heading onto the streets. He was hoping for a new distance record today and had groaned in frustration when he looked at how much distance he still needed to run and how close it was to breakfast time. Yeah, he was going to miss it for sure.
So, Diego ran the last block to the Academy, already planning on how much faster he was going to have to be the next time.
And then, Five burst through the gates, running like a dog through hell.
Diego stumbled, “Five?”
Five looked up, “I’ll see you in a minute, Diego!”
“What do you mean?” Diego demanded, watching as Five raced towards him. The air around him was glowing blue and it seemed to be getting darker with every step he took. Was Five going to jump? And why during breakfast of all times? Since when was he even able to function in the early hours of the morning?
Five grinned, like it was some inside joke, “You’ll see!” He promised, before vanishing into a flash of blue.
Well, Diego decided as he neared the entrance to the Academy, that was weird.
And then, as if his morning hadn’t been odd enough, Vanya sprinted out onto the streets after him, “Five? Five!” She yelled.
“Vanya?”
Vanya turned towards him and Diego took a step back. She looked wild and terrified, “Have you seen Five?”
Diego nodded, “He jumped a few seconds ago.”
Vanya balled her fists, “And you just let him!”
“Woah, woah,” Diego backed away a little. Vanya was the most powerful out of them and he still had a scar on his arm to prove it, “He just jumped? What’s the big deal?”
Vanya was shaking, “You should have stopped him!” She yelled. Diego saw it a second before it hit him — a sudden force emanating from Vanya, causing the trash can in front of him to fly off to the side. Then a second later, he felt himself getting tossed through the air, landing roughly against a car, before hitting the hard pavement.
Diego groaned, closing his eyes for a few seconds. Nothing felt broken, at least, but he felt sore all over.
“Diego?” Vanya sounded suddenly quiet, “Diego?”
“Ouch.”
He heard Vanya let out a relieved sigh, before she grabbed him, “You can’t tell Dad, okay? You can’t!”
He squinted his eyes — since when was Vanya scared of anything? Against his better judgement, he nodded, “Yeah, whatever. Now what’s going on with Five?”
Vanya stood up straighter, “He’ll be fine,” she said decisively, nothing like the panic he’d heard seconds ago, “He just time travelled.”
Diego’s jaw dropped. He’d heard Five whining and theorising about time travel for at least a year, but Dad had shut it down so fast every time that Diego had just assumed it would never happen. But he frowned, “Then shouldn’t Five have reappeared by now?”
“He’ll be back soon,” Vanya declared firmly. The ground shook slightly, so Diego wasn’t going to even try disagreeing with her.
The speech he’d written was in his hands. Diego had read and reread it dozens of times, practising each individual word to make sure that he pronounced them all perfectly. He felt jittery, as if he’d chugged five cups of coffee in a row. But this was it, everything he’d trained for was going to come down to this. He couldn’t back down, he had to show Dad that he was good enough.
Diego opened the door to Dad’s office and faltered. Rather than just his Dad like he’d intended, all his siblings (minus Five, of course) were standing around Dad’s desk.
“Number Two?” Dad didn’t sound happy to see him, “What is the meaning of this intrusion?”
Keep calm, he instructed himself, Dad couldn’t have any doubts about him, “I had a proposition, but if you’re busy then I could come back…?”
Dad raised an eyebrow, “If you think it was important enough to be addressed without even knocking, then I assume it’s urgent.”
“W- well—”
“Spit it out, Number Two.”
Deep breath, “It isn’t urgent, but it is important.”
“Then what are you waiting for?” Dad demanded, leaning back in his chair, “We don’t have all night.”
His siblings were looking at him expectantly. Well, Luther and Allison both just looked annoyed, while Klaus looked slightly drunk, but Ben and Vanya were definitely looking at him expectantly.
Diego crumbled the piece of paper with his speech on it, he couldn’t read it while reciting it or else they would think that he wasn’t brave enough. One more deep breath and—
“We’re waiting, Number Two.”
“Right. Sorry,” he swallowed nervously, “Father, I’m sure you have noticed that I’ve been training. Running, weightlifting and other ways to make sure that I’m physically able to a su — superhuman extent.”
Ben averted his eyes, chasing to look down at his feet while Vanya narrowed her eyes, as if she was warning him against continuing.
Diego took another deep breath, “Since Five…disappeared, I was thinking t- that I could be a good re-replacement.”
And Diego held his breath as the room exploded.
“Excuse me?” Allison demanded, “A replacement?”
Luther was shaking his head, “That’s disgusting, Diego.”
The room glass of water closest to Vanya had ripples on its surface and she was facing him with an angry state.
“Settle down, children,” Dad ordered, his voice harsh and cold, “Number Two, do you believe that you could be an asset?”
“Yes.”
“And as a replacement for Number Five? Quite cold, Number Two. Perhaps I underestimated you. But how fast exactly, can you run a mile?”
“My fastest was 5:48,” Diego replied quickly. He’d gotten that time only two weeks ago, reaching a new personal best had driven him actually ask Dad to join the team.
“And do you know how fast Number Five could travel a mile?”
Diego felt a pit forming in the bottom of his stomach, “Uh l-less?”
“In 0.05 milliseconds to be exact,” Dad replied coldly, “So tell me again, do you think you could be an adequate replacement for Number Five?”
Diego shook his head, “N-no.”
“And that is my answer,” Dad finished, “Stop living in a fantasy, you are ordinary, nothing more and you never will be. You are dismissed, Number Two.”
Diego could feel himself shaking slightly, the crumbled piece of paper in his fingers felt damp with sweat. He could still feel his siblings staring at him. Diego couldn’t meet their eyes as he walked out and closed the door behind him.
The next morning, Diego didn’t wake up early to go running. He stayed in bed, only dragging himself out once he heard his siblings all leave to go to breakfast. He managed to throw on some clothes before groggily making his way down to the dining room for breakfast.
The normally quiet breakfast time mood was full of tension this time. Diego hadn’t felt anything like before, even at the breakfast the day after Five had disappeared. He grabbed his chair between Allison and Luther, feeling distinctly like he was squeezing himself between two angry wrestlers. Klaus, at least, looked too hung over to notice much, while Vanya spent the meal scowling openly at him.
Ben’s reaction was the most hurtful though. While he and Diego had never been especially close, he’d always liked Ben. Out of all of them, Ben was probably the only one they all liked, he just kept to himself, mediated arguments and gave sarcastic remarks when he was pushed. And now Ben wouldn’t even look at him.
For the first time, he was more than happy to be separated from his siblings as they went to training and he sat down with a tutor. Diego spent the day staring out of the window, looking at birds.
He kept his new routine for a few months. As the weeks wore on, the open glares from his siblings faded (aside from Luther’s), but he could still feel the tension. The way that the conversation halted every time he stepped into a room, how Vanya’s lip curled the slightest bit whenever she saw him or how Ben still couldn’t look him in the eyes.
Diego retreated back to Mom. He had always liked talking to her and he hardly ever stuttered anymore. And Mom liked him when they hung around together, until of course she was required to help with training and Diego was once again, left on his own.
Diego frowned when he noticed a box of granola bars in the trash, “Mom? Why are you throwing these out? They haven’t gone bad, have they?”
Mom shook her head, “No one is eating them and they take up enough space. There’s no point keeping useless things around, is there?”
Diego hesitated, before he grabbed the box and put it back on the counter, grabbing two of them, “No, no. I’ll eat them.”
Mom frowned, “Only if you’re sure, Diego. But I would rather make you a nutritious breakfast than have you eat those instead.”
“It’s fine, I’ve always eaten them to give me some energy before running,” he replied.
Mom nodded, “Perfect then, Diego.”
He smiled at Mom, before walking out of the kitchen. His runners were still in the hallway, perfectly put away. He hadn’t touched them in months. Diego changed into a tank top and shorts, throwing the shoes on. Maybe he could get back into running again.
Running officially sucked. Diego couldn’t remember a time when he hated running. Sure, there had been days when his legs were burning and the thought of running another step was painful, but he never stopped. Today, he couldn’t seem to get started, running half a block before crawling to a stop.
He decided to keep walking, least he go back to soon and Mom makes a big fuss about it. He ends up at the library, a big building that he remembers Five dragging them all to when they were younger. Diego goes inside, gravitating towards the computers. He’s not sure what he’s expecting, but he googles Poppy, high school and gym teacher.
Thank god Poppy is an uncommon enough name, because a high school pops up immediately. Diego looks at the list of teachers and sure enough, Poppy Newman is listed. She had told him the high school was a local one, but Diego hadn’t realised exactly how local. It was literally a kilometre away from the Umbrella Academy.
It took him another week of waking up early, putting on his runners and stopping before he reaches the front door before he actually begins his jog to Poppy’s high school. It felt better than it felt last time he ran, but it just feels so useless.
He peered through a chain link fence. There’s about two dozen kids running around a track, with a familiar blond woman standing in the centre, yelling and whistling. Before Diego can double think anything, he climbed the fence.
“Hey! Kid, what do you think you’re doing?” Poppy’s voice is familiar, but she sounded angry, “Why did you not go through the door?”
“Uh, sorry?” Diego stammered.
Poppy’s head cocked to the side, “Wait, Marathon kid?”
“Diego, actually,” he replied, “And I’m not a kid anymore.”
Poppy smiled, “Sure you aren’t, kiddo. You’re still a runner then?”
Diego shrugged “It’s complicated.”
“Is isn’t that ‘real training’ thing you were talking about, is it?”
Diego scowled, “No. It’s not that.”
“That’s fine, here we consider running itself to be real training.”
“I’m not really a runner anymore,” He admitted.
“Do you want to be?”
“Yes,” he answered, immediately.
Poppy gestured towards the track, where a few of the kids have begun looking over to them, “Then go. Eight hundred metres as a warm up and we’ll begin the training after that.”
Diego sighed, “There just isn’t any point to it. I screwed up — it got made clear to me that I’ll never get good enough to join the real training, so why bother running and the rest of it?”
“I’ll make one thing clear to you, Diego. In run club, we don’t disparage running. If you want to do that, join the swim team,” Poppy said, “And as for your running, you can’t just keep thinking of it as a tool to get something better. Running to run is as valid a reason as any, don’t let anyone tell you other wise.”
Running for running’s sake? It sounded easier, clearer. So he nodded, “Alright. Running for running’s sake.”
Poppy grinned, before she gestured to the track again, “Great, now give me an eight hundred as a warm up.”
Diego wordlessly made his way to the track and began running. He might not be running to get fast enough to join the Umbrella Academy, but running to get better is as good a reason to push himself as any other.
Mom tutted as she put Luther’s arm in a sling, “Does that feel any better?”
Luther winced as he moved slightly, jarring it a little, “Not really.” Allison laid a hand on his shoulder in support.
Mom wrapped an arm around him, “It will. Alright Diego, your turn.”
Allison and Luther sent a piercing glare towards him as he took Luther’s spot in the infirmary. His ribs were aching and he knew that he’d be bruised all over for the next few weeks, but he managed to stop himself from whimpering as he sat.
“And move your shirt,” Mom directed.
This time, Diego did flinch as his hand brushed his ribcage. His skin was looking red and painful, but the bruising itself hadn’t really begun yet.
“Hm,” Mom laid her hands on his ribs, “No broken ribs, just bruised it seems. I’ll wrap them, just in case.”
Diego scowled. The idea of tight bandages on his bruised ribs really wasn’t an appealing one, but he nodded anyways, “Thanks, Mom.”
She started wrapping, “This wouldn’t have happened if you two hadn’t fought.”
Luther seethed, “That wasn’t a fight.”
“Well, the two of you got hurt either way.”
“Diego ambushed me, if it had been a real fight he have been the only one in the infirmary,” Luther said bitterly.
Diego rolled his eyes, “You’re being really dramatic for a guy who fell down a flight of stairs.”
Luther’s eyes flashed angrily, “That’s not what happened! You pushed me!”
“Well what do you expect me to do when I see a fist flying towards me?”
“Children, settle down,” Mom said sternly, pulling tight on the wrap and making Diego wince.
Allison rolled her eyes, “He isn’t worth it, Luther. He’ll never fight fair because he knows that you’d always win.”
Diego glared at her, “It was perfectly fair. It’s not my fault that Pirate over here can’t see anything!”
“Don’t call me that!” Luther yelled, “I can see perfectly well!” His hand came near his glass eye like it always did when they talked about it.
Diego raised an eyebrow and pointed to the sling, “And is that supposed to be proof?”
Luther narrowed his eyes. Allison looked between the pair of them, while Mom sighed, “Boys.”
Diego clenched his fist and looked away from Luther. He hadn’t meant to start a fight, as Mom was calling it. Luther had been getting on his nerves all day, so Diego saw nothing wrong with whacking his arm ‘accidentally’ so that he’d drop his textbooks all over the hallway.
He hadn’t counted on Luther, with his glass eye, not seeing anything in his peripheral vision and after feeling a sharp pain on his arm, react instinctively and throw Diego against the bookcases lining the hallways.
Luther hadn’t counted on Diego pushing back, luck and momentum on his side as he managed to snag himself on Luther’s upper body. Years of bitterness coursed through his body and Diego just pushed as hard as he could.
Neither of them had counted on the staircase right next to them, or how narrow the hallway was. Diego pushed, Luther lost his balance and fell down the flight of stairs, while Diego hit his chest against the bookshelves lining the hallway.
“Should Dad even be letting you on missions if you can’t see, Pirate?” Diego said snarked.
“What, so are you offering to be a replacement for him like you tried for Five?” Allison demanded coldly, “Even Klaus is on the team and you aren’t, how does that feel, huh?”
Diego scowled, “Fuck off, Allison!” He stormed out of the infirmary, giving up on making it to his bedroom as his ribs were killing him with each step. Diego gingerly lied down on one of the living room couches instead.
Ben was there as well, curled up on one of the armchairs with a book, “You and Luther again?”
“Fuck off,” Diego was not in the mood for this today.
Ben returned to his book.
Diego’s jaw dropped as he watched the winner of the girl’s two hundred metre sprint. It was a small competition, just between theirs and a few other school’s run clubs.
Darren, a guy in his run club, just glared at the winner, “She’s such as asshole.”
“That girl just beat everyone by fifteen whole seconds!” Diego stared incredulously as the girl slowed down while he competitors were still pushing themselves to reach second place.
Darren rolled his eyes, “That’s Maia Fletcher, we used to train together until she left unexpectedly.”
“Why?”
Darren let his voice drop, “Rumour was that she started using steroids.”
Diego stared at her with new interest. Maia barely looked winded, already joining her coach and having a conversation with him while her competitors were still catching their breaths, “She looks too good,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” Darren replied bitterly, “I don’t know how she hasn’t been caught yet. She’s basically superhuman on those.”
Diego perked up, studying her with a newfound intensity. He hated cheating in sports — what was the point of working hard if competitors were going to pull ahead by cheating? But maybe if he could just get fast enough, Dad would reconsider…No, he shook himself out of it. That was ridiculous.
But he couldn’t stop himself from cornering her as she left the change room, “Maia Fletcher?”
She looked over at him, like she was analysing him, “Hargreeves, right? I saw your four hundred metre, nice win.”
Diego shrugged, “It was nothing compared to your two hundred metre win. It was almost…superhuman.”
Maia stiffened ever so slightly, “Thanks? I need to head off though, so I’m going to go.”
“I don’t think so, not unless you want me running and telling everyone your little secret to success,” he threatened.
Maia rolled her eyes, “Half of the people already know, but they can’t catch me. Why would I be scared of you?”
Diego took a deep breath, “You know my last name, right, Hargreeves? My father is very, very influential.”
Maia faltered slightly, “You don’t mean the billionaire, do you? No, there’s only six kids in his weird school and none of them would be part of some high school run club.”
“Yeah well, they lied,” Diego muttered, wishing that he’d gotten the stupid umbrella tattoo so that he could shove it in her face, “But Hargreeves isn’t a common last name, is it? And I’m the right age. So do you really want to take the chance?”
Maia hesitated, “Fine, what do you want?”
“Your steroids,” he replied immediately.
Maia cocked her head to the side, “You didn’t strike me as the type, Hargreeves. But fine, I’ll give you the ones in my car. It won’t be enough for that long though, you’ll have to find your own supply.”
Diego shrugged, “I’ll only need for a few weeks.” After Dad saw what he’d be able to do, he was sure that Dad would provide him afterwards.
Maia looked confused, but shrugged it off, “Whatever. Just don’t throw me under the bus, got it Hargreeves?”
“No problem,” Diego replied.
Ben’s death had been the thing to make him take the steroids for the first time. He’d thrown them in his room months ago and had resisted the urge ever since. He doubted Dad would just change on a whim, no, he needed something big to happen before Dad would even entertain the notion.
And then Ben had actually died. It felt different to when Five disappeared. This time, there was no distant hope of seeing him again, no long, drawn out period of acceptance, no Vanya nearly killing him with her powers. Instead, it was like night and day. Klaus, who hadn’t been sober in ages, disappeared for three nights in a row, only reappearing with a black eye and needle marks on his arm. Even Luther and Allison began fighting, while Vanya kept living as though nothing had changed.
So Diego took the first pill. Now that Ben was gone, the team was weaker. He wasn’t going to let any of them get killed along with him, he needed to get better so that Dad would let him join. And once he’d joined, he could make sure that no one died like Ben again.
A few weeks after he’d started taking them, Poppy tapped him on the shoulder, “The hell was that, Diego?”
Diego grinned, “Just a good training. I’ve been feeling more energetic recently. Did I get another personal best?”
Poppy’s eyes were hard, “You didn’t just beat it, Diego, you trampled it. Funny how that in three years of training and steady, but incremental improvements you managed to set a personal best that held for four months and then in just three weeks, you managed to beat it five times, by huge amounts of time.”
Diego’s grin dropped off his face, “Uh…”
“I’m not an idiot, Diego. I know steroids use when I see it,” she glared at him.
“I didn’t do it to cheat,” he said, “It’s bigger than that, bigger than sports and competitions.”
Poppy just shook her head, “As big as the Umbrella Academy?”
Diego faltered, “Y- you knew?”
“Like I said, I’m not an idiot. Hargreeves isn’t a common name and if there was one man insane enough to raise a twelve year old who wanted to run a marathon, it would be him,” she said, “And I’m guessing that this has to do with your brother’s death?”
Diego balled his fists, “If Dad had let me on the team, Ben wouldn’t have died. I need to show him that I can do it.”
“Do you really think you would have made a difference?”
“That’s why I need to take the steroids, so that I can make a difference!” He yelled, “And once Dad sees that I can, he’ll let me join real training and then I won’t need stupid run club anymore!”
Poppy sighed, “Fine. If taking them means you can join ‘real training’, then you can leave my run club.”
“Wait—”
“I don’t let my athletes disparage running, Diego. Not through words and not by hurting the sport with steroids. So I’ll give you one chance to tell me that you’ll never take them, ever again and to stop thinking of running as a warm up for ‘real training’ and if you can, then you can take a two month suspension from run club.”
“And if I can’t?”
“Then get off my track for good.”
Diego shuddered. Poppy looked at him expectantly. Diego sighed, “I- I can’t.”
Poppy’s expression hardened, “If that’s what you think. Now get out.”
Diego nodded, quickly leaving the run club.
This time, there was no prepared speech. That didn’t work last time and Diego wasn’t going to embarrass himself by bothering to do it again. He was going to speak during supper, so that this time he would expect all his (remaining) siblings, as well as Dad to be there. He wouldn’t let himself be caught off guard like he’d been when he was thirteen.
Klaus’s eyes were glossy all of supper time, Luther and Allison weren’t talking to one another and Vanya was stabbing her food with a lot of force. Dad, like always, was sipping from a glass of red wine. At least someone had finally moved Five and Ben’s chairs, so that Vanya wasn’t sitting all the way at the end of table by herself.
Diego had been trying to think of ways to put Ben’s death into the conversation, but someone else did it for him.
“Klaus,” Vanya spoke up, ignoring Luther and Dad’s annoyed glances.
Klaus looked towards her, but Diego was more than certain that he didn’t have a clue about what was going on, “Sister dearest?”
“Any luck talking to Ben?”
Klaus giggled, “No, he’s dead, remember?”
Luther slammed his fork on the table, “Cut it out, Klaus. Use your damn powers for once so that we can see him?”
“Maybe if you wanted to see him so badly, you shouldn’t have let him die,” Diego muttered.
Immediately, he felt all the eyes in the room on him.
“Let him die?” Luther repeated, “You think I let him die?”
“Well you’re the team leader aren’t you? Isn’t that your whole job, Pirate?”
Luther stood up, “Right, because you could have done any different.”
“Well, maybe I could have!” Diego yelled back.
Dad slammed a fist on the table, “Number Two! Drop the knife!”
Diego frowned, looking at his hand. Without even noticing, he’d wrapped his hand around the knife. He dropped it onto the table, “Whoops, don’t want to risk you stabbing your other eye out.”
Luther narrowed his eyes, “Is that your big plan then? Use a butter knife to save Ben’s life?”
“Your approach obviously didn’t work!” Diego fired back, “And if I were on the team, maybe that could have made the difference!”
Vanya stood up, “That’s what this is, isn’t it? Just you trying to beg your way onto the team again? It didn’t work when Five disappear, it’s not going to work this time either.”
Diego scowled, “I’m being practical! Klaus is still on the team and he’s never been useful! He just gets high and overdoses! I care, I could actually help.”
“You are ordinary—”
“Not anymore!” Diego interrupted Dad, “I’m faster than so many people!”
Dad chuckled coldly, “Right, your little drug routine.”
“You’re using drugs too?” Allison demanded, outraged, “So now there are two drug addicts in the house, just great. This whole family is fucked!” She stormed out of the room.
“They aren’t drugs!” Diego protested, “It’s not like that, it’s just to help me get stronger!”
Dad sighed, “Your attempts to artificially make yourself a member of the Umbrella Academy only serve to highlight how unfit you are for it. Not only are you ordinary, but you lack the decency to accept that.”
“Screw this!” Diego shouted at them, “Screw you Dad, for not letting me join, screw you, you fucking Pirate for being an asshole, Klaus — whatever. And Vanya, screw you for just being a bitch!” He glared at all of them, “I’m leaving, fuck you all and fuck the Umbrella Academy!”
He sprinted through the house, running up to his room and grabbing a bag, stuffing clothes and a few belongings inside. He surveyed his room, wondering if he was missing anything. He’d left his uniforms, only taking the athletic clothes he’d bought himself when he got into running. He looked at the little medals and ribbons he’d won at the track meets, as well as the little capsule of steroids. Diego left it all behind, closing zipping his bag shut and throwing on his runners.
He opened the room of his door, only to hear sobs coming from the room next to his. Allison’s. Diego hesitated, but he nudged it open.
Allison was sitting on her bed, crying her eyes out. She looked up, “Go away, Diego.”
Well, what had he really expected?
“Wait,” She called back, “Why do you have a bag?”
Diego scowled, “I’m leaving.”
“For real?”
“Forever,” he agreed.
Allison looked horrified, “Y- you can’t leave, we’ve already lost Five and Ben…”
“You can’t stop me,” he said.
“Yes I can,” she replied immediately.
Diego froze. She was right, with just a few words she could trap him here forever. “And then what? The only way out of here is death or running away. How much longer do you think it’ll be before someone else dies?”
Allison blinked, staring at Diego with new eyes, “But—”
“You should get out of here too,” Diego finished, “While you still can.”
He didn’t give Allison a chance to respond, running down the hallways. He sprinted down the staircase, his hand was on the door handle.
“Are you going for a run?” Mom’s voice sounded from behind him.
Diego turned back, “Uh, yes. A long one.”
She smiled at him, “Lucky that I remembered to grab some of these from the kitchen,” she held out a few granola bars.
Diego took them, his hands shaking ever so slightly. He grabbed Mom and hugged her tightly.
Mom patted him on the back, “Is everything okay?”
Diego didn’t know how to answer. Nothing was okay, he was running away from home, all his brothers and sisters were either dead or hated him and he didn’t even have run club anymore. But he didn’t want Mom to worry, “I’ll be fine. I love you.”
She smiled widely, “I love you too, Diego. Why don’t I cook your favourite for supper tonight?”
“You don’t need to,” he replied.
Mom winked at him, “You can’t stop me.”
No, he really couldn’t. So he pulled her into one last hug, before he opened the front door and stepped out onto the streets.
Stumbling to run club the next morning felt like a punch to the face. He hadn’t realised just how chilly the nights could be. Even though it was springtime, he’d been shivering all night. Maybe he should have taken one of his uniforms with him — a nice warm vest and blazer sounded very appealing, but then again he was pretty sure that he’d rather die than wear one of those again.
His granola bars didn’t last very long either and Diego wondered how he’d had the foresight to grab his toothbrush, but no money. So he didn’t get any sleep. As the sun rose, he wondered if he should just accept that he was a screw up and go back to the Academy. Going back after running away sounded awful, but at least he’d be with Mom again, warm and full. But the thought of seeing Dad again, hearing him say ‘I told you so’ made him feel sick to his stomach.
So he ended up doing the same he always did in the early hours of the morning, stumbling to run club. He could feel people staring as he came in — he was sure the news of he and Poppy’s fight the day before was still fresh in everyone’s memory.
Poppy approached him, “Diego, I told you yesterday, you’re off my track for good.”
Diego bit his lip, “I can’t go home anymore.”
Poppy frowned, “Is everything alright?”
“No.”
She sighed, before she grabbed a five dollar bill out of her pocket, “Take this, go buy yourself some breakfast, alright?”
“W- wait,” Diego called out, “Wait! I know that I screwed up and you said I couldn’t come back, but I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m not kicking you off,” Poppy replied, “You look hungry and I won’t let anyone run on an empty stomach. So get some breakfast, come back and then we’ll talk.”
Darren turned towards him, “First day back, excited?”
Diego nodded, “Can’t wait.”
To call the last two months rough would be an understatement, but it was finally turning out alright. When he’d arrived at the track the first day, he’d been expecting Poppy to turn him away. Instead, she’d taken him in, explaining that she couldn’t let a seventeen year old live on the streets. She’d forced him to enrol in the high school she taught in (never mind that the school year had only been three months away from ending and that his tutoring had made sure he had learnt everything years ago), which meant that he came in early with her every morning that she coached run club and left when she had finished after school ended.
Some part of Diego had desperately hoped that Poppy would just let him rejoin the team like the whole steroids thing hadn’t happened. She’d snorted when he asked her that, telling him that he was lucky she was only enforcing the two month suspension from earlier. It was the first time he’d taken a break in years.
But Diego was definitely eager for it to be over, he’d been stuck on the bleachers for almost two months now and he’d been eyeing the track the entire time. He had wondered why he was so excited at first — it wasn’t like he was training for anything anymore? But Diego didn’t ponder it for very long, running for the sake of running was good enough for him.
Diego woke up at the crack of dawn and stretched.
“Diego?” Laura murmured, “Is that you?”
He kissed her on the cheek, “Morning, babe. I’m just heading to work, go back to bed.”
Laura turned away from him and after a few minutes, all he could hear was quiet snores.
He threw on his runners, happy that he hadn’t brought anything back from work the day earlier, he always preferred to run to work instead of taking the bus like he had to do when he had stuff.
The cool morning air felt good and Diego sped through the city blocks, enjoying the feeling of legs getting tired as he shook off the morning grogginess. He turned into the school yard, taking a deep breath as he walked into the school.
“Hi Mr. Hargreeves,” one of his students greeted him.
“Morning,” he replied, “Why are you all sitting down? This is training, not class.” One or two students groaned, but the group moved quickly, standing up and beginning to run around the school yard.
“Warm up for five minutes,” he called out, “Then we’ll start training.”
He could remember when Poppy sat him down and demanded that he decide what he wanted to do with his life. Diego had automatically replied with police officer, the same way he had ever since Mom had started asking when he was four years old. He knew he wanted to help people since he was little, but his answer of police officer sounded stale, even to him.
Instead, he’d decided on teacher’s college. Saving lives and helping people wasn’t just about law enforcement, he had realised, after all, he had seen firsthand exactly how much shitty childhood environments could shape people. And if he could help kids who weer dealing with similar things to him, that was worth it. From there, he’d gravitated towards physical education — it suited him way more than lecturing about boring subjects.
He hadn’t kept track of his siblings over the years. Sure, he knew little details — Allison was now a famous actress and Luther had ended up on the Moon somehow, but he wasn’t worried about it. He was living how own life now and he wasn’t going to let his stupid childhood ghosts haunt him forever.
“Billionaire Reginald Hargreeves has been found dead.”
Diego just turned the whole radio off.
His girlfriend was staring at him, “Shit, Diego. Isn’t that you Dad?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you’ll go to the funeral?”
“I’d rather stab my own eye out.”
Diego locked up his office. The school day had finally ended and he was glad to be heading home.
“Excuse me, we’re looking for Mr. Hargreeves?” It sounded like one of the younger kids.
“I just saw him locking up,” one of the janitors replied, “Take a left here and you’ll see him.”
And then, Five himself jumped out, looking exactly the same as he had all those years ago.
“Holy shit, Five?” Diego stammered.
“Diego,” Five greeted.
And then Vanya and Luther stepped into the corridor. Luther had exploded in size, looking way too big for the overcoat he was wearing, while Vanya looked much the same.
Diego groaned, “Seriously? You brought them?”
“I needed them,” Five answered curtly.
Diego rolled his eyes, before he looked over to Vanya and Luther, “Get out of my school, would you? Five can stay, you two, leave.”
“Since when did you try to order us around?” Luther demanded.
“Since I grew up and stopped giving a shit about Dad’s stupid number stuff,” Diego replied.
Luther scowled, “Oh yeah, murdering Dad just screams how much you’ve stopped caring about him.”
Diego frowned, “Murdered Dad? You’ve got to be joking.”
“Things didn’t add up,” Vanya interrupted, “And we all know that you have the biggest grudge against him.”
“He was an asshole,” Diego yelled back, “We all should have grudges against him!”
Five raised an eyebrow, “Look, I don’t care if you did kill Dad, we need to stay on topic.”
Diego looked at the three of them cautiously, “So the three of you think I killed Dad? I haven’t thought about Dad since I ran away. Besides, I’ve been keeping far away from him, I have an alibi.”
Five scowled, “This isn’t about Dad’s death!”
“Yes it is!” Luther yelled, “We all know that Dad was trying to stop the apocalypse, so Diego killed him to make sure it happened.”
Diego stared incredulously at Luther, “Apocalypse? Wrong sibling, moron. I’m the ordinary one, remember? Even Ben is more likely to start the apocalypse and he’s dead.”
“I remember how bitter you were about it, always trying to get on the team, doing anything you could!”
“Can you blame me?” Diego fired back, “I wanted to help people and Dad wouldn’t let me — of course I wanted to do anything I could to get on it, I was a kid!”
“Stay on topic!” Five ordered, “Diego — you killed Dad and started the apocalypse. I need to stop that from happening.”
“Woah, what?” Diego sputtered, “You’re insane. And don’t you need proof? How am I supposed to have started it?”
Luther fished something out of his pocket, “Here, proof.”
Diego looked at it, it looked like a glass eye, “A glass eye? So did Pirate over here start it?”
Five narrowed his eyes, “When I disappeared all those years ago, I time travelled into the future, but it was an apocalypse. And I found you all dead, with you, Diego, holding Luther’s eye.”
“So why was it me and not him that caused it?” Diego continued.
“Because I was fighting you to stop to apocalypse!” Luther yelled, “You tried to fight me, managed to grab my eye and then when you couldn’t kill me, you started the apocalypse.”
Diego just blinked, incredulously, “This is stupid. We all know that Luther is a meathead, but Five, Vanya, you two at least have a brain. Mind using it?”
“Luther’s right,” Vanya said, coldly, “Looking at past behaviour, it's clear that you were the one to start it.”
“Past behaviour?”
“Homicidal tendencies,” Five cut in.
“Homicidal what now?” Diego demanded, “When have I murdered someone?”
“Well, Dad to begin.”
“I didn’t murder Dad.”
“Sure. Moving on, history of not caring about the lives of the people close to you—”
“Excuse me? I cared about you all.”
“After Five and Ben’s deaths, you just tried to take advantage to get on the team. You never actually cared about them, you just wanted to get on the team.”
“I still cared about them—”
“And I’m just looking at the facts,” Five replied, “And the whole you trying to kill Luther multiple times thing doesn’t help.”
Diego just laughed, “Are you all being serious right now? Kill Luther? Me versus the guy with super strength?”
“You pushed me down a staircase when we were teenagers.”
“That’s because you were being a dick.”
“And you stabbed me when we were little!”
“I never stabbed you!”
“Well,” Luther pointed to his glass eye, “How did I get this then?”
“A training accident, remember? You probably used super strength when you poked yourself in the eye and then you became a pirate.”
Vanya shook her head, “We saw it in Dad’s journal about us. You used a knife to stab him in the eye.”
“That’s crazy.”
“It’s true,” Luther looked angry, “You were always jealous of me so you stabbed me in the eye. You hated Dad, so you killed him.”
Diego looked at Five, helplessly, “This is ridiculous. I don’t want to start any apocalypse.”
Five shrugged, “It’s a balance of probabilities. Sure, there’s a chance that it really was Luther, but looking at this, I really doubt it. And the apocalypse is something I’d really like to avoid no matter what, so I’m sorry, Diego, but we need to take you out.”
Diego took a step back, the air was suddenly a lot colder than it had been before. He could feel the ground shaking slightly as Vanya’s expression hardened. Five reached for something — was that a gun? While Luther took a step closer. Holy shit, he realised, his siblings were actually trying to murder him.
Diego tightened his hold on the keys he’d been holding to lock up. Not quite equivalent to a gun, but he might as well go down fighting. Making spontaneous plans really wasn’t his strong suit, which is why Diego could only think of one advantage he had over his three homicidal and super powered siblings: the element of surprise.
He leapt at Luther, slashing his keys on his face. Luther yelled as the keys broke his skin. Diego swiped again, this time managing to slash across his face. He wanted to gag as Luther’s glass eye got stuck on his key.
Luther stumbled, holding his face, but he kept approaching.
“Wait, wait!” Five yelled, “Wait!”
But Luther was too far gone. He came at Diego, rage in his eyes. There was no way he’d be getting out of this alive, Diego realised. So he aimed and threw his keys, aiming for Luther’s other eye. Like magic, the keys straightened in mid air and just before they were about to hit him, Five jumped in front.
Diego watched as his brother appeared in mid air, right where the keys used to be. Diego waited to hear them clatter to the ground, or Luther’s yell of pain. Instead, Five immediately collapsed onto the ground.
“Five?” Vanya ran over to him, “Five!”
Diego couldn’t see the keys. And then he realised with horror that Five had not jumped in front of them, he’d jumped through them. The keys were in his brain, he’d managed to stop them from killing Luther by instead stopping them with his own body. He gagged, suddenly having the urge to throw up.
“Five!” Vanya’s voice rumbled with power.
Luther clenched his fists, moving towards Diego. Diego clenched his own fists around the only thing he had left: Luther’s glass eye. Before he could throw it, the world exploded.
Diego had been thrown by Vanya’s powers once before, the first time Five had disappeared. He’d thought denting a car was bad, but this time he felt himself crashing through bricks. Diego groaned. The school building around them looked like it had collapsed and he could still hear Vanya sobbing inside.
And — well, that odd. Diego was ninety nine percent sure that it was a sunny day with blue skies, so why was there about a hundred white streaks in the air? He must have a concussion, because the white streaks were getting much bigger and the big, white hunk of rock in the sky definitely looked like it was aiming right at them.
Five knew something was terribly wrong as soon as he time travelled. A second ago, he’d seen Diego coming back from his morning run (the idiot must have been too slow and missed breakfast) and now he was…well, he didn’t exactly know where. All he could see were ruins everywhere.
He’d found his siblings a few days later. Half of them had been in the Umbrella Academy, but Luther, Diego and Vanya were all missing. It turns out that, for some reason, they were at a school. He could see Vanya’s corpse lying in the rubble, overtop of something. Five averted his gaze quickly, he didn’t want to look at his dead sister for a moment longer.
Luther and Diego weren’t too far away and Five stared in horror at Luther’s face, which was all cut up. Even his glass eye was missing. Whatever Luther had been fighting must have been determined and a threat if he’d managed to scratch up Luther like that.
And Five had flinched when he saw Diego’s body. In his bloody hands, he clutched Luther’s glass eye.
“Jeez, Diego?” Five murmured, “What did you do?”
He grabbed the glass eye out of Diego’s hand, pocketing it, before heading away. He’d do anything to stop this future, even kill Diego if necessary.
Notes:
Just for clarification, the reason Diego grew up thinking he was ordinary was because he sent a knife into Luther's eye when they was little, which prompted Reginald to view him and his powers as risky to the others.
Thanks for reading, feel free to give feedback or just who you want the next chapter to cover
And just a general note from what I saw on the comments, there won't be an apocalypse every time - sometimes things might work out for the better.
Chapter 3: Five
Summary:
Five decided a long time ago that he didn’t give a shit about his family. He didn't need a robot nanny, a glorified military commander for a father or fake siblings who could blow up the world a hundred times over
Notes:
(See the end of the chapter for notes.)
Chapter Text
Five glared at the wall of his room. He could hear his brothers on either side of him, Ben snoring and Klaus muttering to himself. Would it kill them to be quiet and leave him in peace? He’s been rereading the same page of his book for ages now, getting distracted whenever one of them makes a noise.
Just as he started reading it again, Klaus screamed a little. Five snapped the book closed, grabbed a flashlight and put his slippers on. They weren’t allowed to wander at night, with bedtime being a strict rule put in place by Dad, Mom and Pogo, but Five wasn’t planning on causing havoc, only on settling down with an armchair with his book.
He made it to the living room easily enough, climbed into an armchair and relaxed, shining his flashlight on the pages of the books.
“Grace? Come here,” Dad yelled from the hallway.
Five tensed, immediately shutting off his flashlight. There’s no way that Dad knew he’d snuck downstairs, was there?
“Oh, Reginald. How are you?” Mom answered, her high heels tapping against the floor as she walked.
Five peaked over the head of the armchair, he could see Mom’s reflection in a mirror in the hallway. All he had to do was wait for them to leave and then he could sneak back upstairs and they’d never know that he’d been down there.
“Initiate Walkie Talkie Protocol,” Dad replied.
Mom’s reflection changed immediately, her friendly smile vanishing and she straightened up perfect. There was no expression on her face, she could almost pass for a store front manikin. Maybe he was repairing something?
“At attention. Would you like an oral or written report?” Her voice sent shivers down his spine — there was no emotion in it, she sounded nothing like the woman who’d read them bedtime stories or scolded them for fighting.
“Oral,” Dad answered.
“Commencing daily report for June 13th, 1998. Estimated time of completion: seven minutes and twelve seconds. At 9:15 am, Number One broke a plate. 11:23 am, Number One reported feeling stressed about an upcoming geography test. 2:12 pm, Number One chose Number Three as a partner. 7:24 pm, Number One gave an order to the others, Number Three, Four, Six and Seven proceeded. Number Two and Five did not.”
“Pause,” Dad interjected, “Hmm. Number Two is still displaying a hostility to Number One’s leadership then?”
“Yes.”
“Good, good. They’ll both improve if competing against each other.”
Five’s eyes widened, hardly able to believe his own ears. It felt wrong, for the person who cooked them breakfast and cleaned up after them to be acting like nothing more than a robot. And a spying robot, it sounded. How many times had he confined in Mom only for her to tell Dad everything as soon as he’d gone to bed?
Five listened as they continued, overhearing how Diego’s stuttering was getting better, how Klaus was terrified of the ghosts he saw — to which Dad only sounded annoyed and how Vanya’s powers continuing to escalate.
“End Walkie Talkie Protocol,” Dad ordered once Vanya’s report was completed.
Immediately, Mom changed, smiling again, “Oh, Reginald. Do you need help with anything.”
“Quite alright, Grace. Go recharge,” Dad replied, before they both walked away.
Five just stared as the hallway light clicked off again. Mom wasn’t their mother, he realised. She was just another one of Dad’s tools to keep an eye on them. A robot with a friendly face, who reported all their little secrets to him. Dad was smart, Five hated how much he almost respected it. What better way to keep track of his children than by convincing them that they had a confidant who would always support and help them no matter what, only to be nothing more than a monitoring device.
“How about you?” Mom smiled at him, the same creepy, parallel smile she gave all of them, “What about Arthur?” He hated how she pretended that she cared about them, as if naming them meant that she won’t just report every single thing they said to Dad as soon as they go to bed.
So Five barely glanced up, “I’ll just stick with Five.”
The rest of his siblings stared at him in confusion. Five raised an eyebrow at their stares. He didn’t need to justify himself to them — his name is Five, it’s as simple as that.
Diego muttered something under his breath.
“Sorry, what was that again, Two?” Five demanded.
“My name is Diego now,” he replied, “Not Two anymore.”
Five rolled his eyes, “Sure it is, Two.”
“Hey!” Three cut in, “Stop being mean, Arthur.”
Five grimaced. Arthur? Really? “Isn’t deluding yourself just as mean?” Five leaned back in his chair. He’d only learnt what the word deluding meant a few days ago and from the slightly confused looks on his siblings’ faces, he was pretty sure none of them knew what it meant.
“Fine then,” Three crossed her arms, “See how you like it for yourself then, Five.” She spat out his name like it was dirty, as the rest of their siblings gave him dirty looks.
Five pressed his ear to the library door. He could hear someone inside, crying. He sighed — they all had their own rooms, why couldn’t whoever it was just be upset in there? Libraries were for studying and reading, not crying. He was half tempted to just ignore the whole thing and head back to his room since not dealing with an upset sibling — especially when half of them had fairly destructive powers, it tended to be the better choice. But then again, Five had been dying to get his hands on the next volume.
Making up his mind, Five threw open the doors of the library. If someone wanted to cry in a public area, they had to deal with the consequences of that. The sobbing was coming from the back of the room, a good thing since the books of science were near the front. He wouldn’t even have to cross paths with his crying sibling.
“Vanya, is that you?” Six’s teary voice came from the back.
Five rolled his eyes. Six was always upset about something, whether it was his powers or something that had happened during training. He began searching for the book, scanning the shelves.
“Klaus?” Six called out.
Okay, now he was annoyed. If Six was trying to get on his nerves, he’d succeeded. He should have counted himself lucky that it was Five hearing this, not Dad or Pogo. A small smile curled onto Five’s lips, maybe it was a lesson Six needed to learn, “Number Six!” He yelled in his best Dad imitation, “Crying in the library is unacceptable. You will be assigned special training!”
Six’s crying stopped immediately.
Five grinned at the silence.
And then he heard footsteps sprinting towards him at top speed, “Dad, no, please. I’ll do better, I promise. I’ll do anything else!” Six begged, “I’m sorry!”
Five froze as Six came into view, looking panicked.
“Dad, please — oh, Five?” Six frowned, “Where did Dad go? I need to — I need to ask him something?”
Five averted his eyes a little, “He, uh, left.”
“No, no,” Six sniffled and wiped his eyes, “He has to still be here, I didn’t hear the door open and close.” He felt Six’s gaze land on him, and Five looked away, concentrating on the books. It didn’t fool Six at all, “Was that you? Were you pretending to be Dad?”
Five hesitated for just a second, before he turned to look at Six, “It was just a joke. You didn’t have to be a cry baby about it.”
Six stared at him like he was a stranger, his face flushing red. Five shifted, feeling oddly uncomfortable. Without another word, Six ran away from him, pushing the doors of the library and running into the hallway.
Five ran after him — the last thing he needed was for Six’s stupid crying to attract everyone’s attention. He really, really didn’t want another lecture from Mom on the importance of family bonds. He chased Six through the corridors, until they got to where the bedrooms were. By the time he reached Six’s room, he’d already slammed the door shut.
“Come on, Six,” Five banged on the door, “It was just a joke.”
Six sounded like he was still crying inside his room.
Five rolled his eyes — why were his siblings all so dramatic? “Look, I’ll even say I’m sorry. Happy?”
“Go away,” Six called back.
This was going to take the big guns, wasn’t it? Five glared at the door, “Fine, I’ll say it properly,” he took a deep breath, “Six — Ben, I’m sorry.”
Light footsteps padded to the door. Five frowned, had that actually worked? Jeez — why did his siblings care so much about a stupid name? Six opened his door a few inches. He looked like a mess, with two dark patches on his sleeves and his face flushed, “Do you mean it?”
“Sure I do, Six.”
Six pursed his lips, “Okay. Thanks, Arthur.”
Five bristled, “My name is Five.” He’d thought he’d made it perfectly clear what his name was.
“And mine is Ben.”
Five managed to stop himself from glaring at him. Reluctantly, he nodded, “Fine. And neither of us are telling Dad about this, got it Ben?”
Ben nodded, looking suddenly a lot less upset, “Yeah. Now go away.” The door closed again and Five rolled his eyes. A whole damn family of drama queen. And now he had to go all the way back to the library to get his books.
The next week was one of the worst of his life, with suddenly every single one of his siblings calling him ‘Arthur’ and making a point of asking him questions and mentioning him as much as possible, as if they hadn’t been pseudo ignoring him for their entire lives.
Five hated it and he hated himself even more for reacting to it. At first, he thought that maybe, just maybe it was a mistake and that Allison was going through a phase, like she tended to do every year or so, of trying to make them ‘normal’ by calling him Arthur. And then he saw Ben grin cheekily at him only moments later and it all becomes clear.
So he spent the next few days keeping to himself as much as possible and not reacting when they call him Arthur. It’s just a name, he reminded himself, but it grated and he clenched his fists. He needed to stay rational, but there was something about them not even calling him by his name, that was driving him insane. Five didn’t want to consider the reasons why.
And so he started calling them by their names instead. If they wanted to pretend like they were normal by having fake names, who was he to stop them? Allison smiled, Luther just looks arrogant and even Vanya lifted her chin a little.
“Go away, Vanya,” Five ordered.
Vanya only narrowed her eyes, “Why?”
Neither of them liked spending time with their siblings, so occasionally she’d hang around him. It was annoying — for some reason, Vanya thought she wasn’t included in the category of ‘siblings he didn’t like spending time with’, somehow believing that since they didn’t like the others, that they were supposed to be friends instead. “Because I’m busy,” he answered holding up his papers, “Aren’t you meant to be training?”
Seven made a face, “Klaus is doing special training with Dad.”
Ugh. Of course he was, “So go hang out with Ben or something.”
She was silent for a moment, “Ben’s mad at me.”
“Ben is mad at you?” That was actually impressive — as far as he knew, he was the only in the family Ben could actually get upset at.
“I threw him against a wall in training. Mom said he might have a concussion, so Dad ended training early and gave Klaus spacial training instead.”
Typical Vanya. Her powers had always been destructive and if they’d increased in power since they were kids, well, Ben was probably lucky that he only had a concussion. Her temper tantrums as children had been legendary — Five had even had his arm broken after she’d made an entire bookcase crash into him when they were toddlers.
Five rolled his eyes. He should have nipped this dumb friendship thing in the bud a long time ago, “Look, Vanya. We aren’t friends, alright? I’ve got more important things to do than pretend to be a happy family.”
Vanya looked taken aback, “I’m not pretending to be a happy family.”
“You sure about that?” Five bite back.
Vanya hesitated and Five smirked. They both knew that if Five hadn’t already been the dedicated outsider of the family, Vanya could probably have taken that mantel from him fairly easily. Sometime between being toddlers and preteens, they’d all realised how easily Vanya could hurt them. Play fighting and late night gossip with someone who could accidentally kill you wasn’t an exciting possibility. So Vanya had distanced herself from them, while they’d done the same to her.
But Five wasn’t in the mood to provide emotional support to his nuclear bomb of a sister, “So now that you know the truth, accept who you are and get on with your life.”
Vanya still looked a little shaken, “That’s how you’ve always thought of us, isn’t it? That we aren’t really a family?”
It was almost a little pathetic how much she seemed to care, “What do you think?”
Vanya averted her gaze, “That we’re really just Dad’s soldiers,” she said, softly.
Five snorted, “Good job, Vanya. Only took you a dozen years to figure that one out.”
Vanya scowled at him, before turning on her heels and leaving him alone. Five just shook his head — at least Vanya was out of his hair, before be turned back to his notes.
“I don’t want to be Vanya anymore,” Seven spoke up at supper, “I’d rather be called Seven.”
Five peered at her, confused. He didn't know why he’s annoyed, whether it's because she was copying him or because he couldn't think of why she would want to switch back after years of going by Vanya.
“Why?” Diego asked.
Seven pressed her lips together, “It suits me,” she finally said.
Five catches a hint of a smirk on Dad’s face, but it vanishes just as fast.
Mom caught him writing on the walls of his room. Five froze as she stepped in, her eyes searching the room.
“It’s erasable,” he lied, quickly hoping that she wouldn't open the closet door and see the mountain of posters he’s bought to conceal the sections of his room covered by his writing, “They’re just equations.”
Mom blinked, before she sighed, “Five, I thought we talked about this before. No drawing on the walls, okay? If you need a colouring book, I can get you one.”
Five frowned — what old program had he accidentally triggered? Probably one from when they were all four and Klaus had discovered glitter glue for the first time. Still, he stuck on a sheepish smile, “Sorry.”
Mom smiled, “Apology accepted.”
Well, that had been suitably creepy. As soon as she left, Five grabbed another poster out of his closet and stuck it to the wall — he didn’t want to risk her blabbing to Dad or Pogo and then getting yelled at for it.
The next day, Pogo interrupted their class and asked Five to come for ‘special instruction’ Everyone watched as he left. While it was fairly common for one of them to be taken out of classes for private training, he’s never done it before.
Pogo brought Five to another, smaller room. Inside was an elderly looking woman with glasses that make her eyes look twice as big.
“Five, meet your new tutor,” Pogo introduced them, “She is to teach you mathematics, you can call her Ms. Eastman.”
“Doctor,” she corrected him, her voice is stern, “I did not work for a PhD to be referred to as Ms.”
Five grinned — this might work out for him.
“It’s not fair!” Luther’s loud voice echoed through the library.
“I know,” Allison replied.
Five groaned. The last thing he wanted to do was listen to Luther and Allison together. They started dating or something in the last few months — really taking the whole ‘playing family’ to another, much weirder, level in his opinion.
“How am I supposed to fight someone who can smack me into a wall before I can even touch her!”
Five perked up. He almost never hears about what goes on with training, especially since he started doing half his classes with a tutor. Now, he only sees them at mealtimes, meaning that the small hints he got during classes were far and few between.
“Dad is being ridiculous,” Allison agreed, “He knows that it’s rigged in her favour.”
“Maybe Dad is right. If I’m not the strongest, then maybe it should be Seven in charge.”
“Dad has forgotten just how easily she can be a risk — do you remember that mission we went to when we were ten and she destroyed that farm?”
“The last time she did anything like that was ages ago,” Luther replied sullenly.
There was a small moment of silence, before Allison talks again, “Dad won’t replace you.”
“I know,” Luther answered. Five thought he must have been imagining it, but he could have sworn that he could hear doubt in his response.
Five practically tore the letter from Pogo’s hand.
“Number Five!” He cried out, indignantly.
Five didn’t pay him any attention, just tore the whole envelope apart. A few white pages land on the floor and Five almost broke his knees as he dropped to the ground, until finally, he sees the words he’s been hoping for: Accepted.
“Dad?” Five spoke up at supper time, “Could we speak in your office this evening?”
Dad raised an eyebrow, “Is this regarding funding your university experience?”
And Five can feel every single one of his siblings staring at him. All of them look stunned, aside from Seven who keeps eating her meal.
“University?” Klaus repeated, “But we’re like sixteen?”
“Just because you’re an idiot doesn’t mean I am,” Five replied, “Some of us actually apply themselves to things other than drugs.”
Dad’s voice quietened everyone else’s, “And why would you assume that I would fund you?”
Five knows the answer that Dad is expecting: that it's his fatherly duty to pay. But Five isn’t stupid, it didn’t matter that Dad was a billionaire and a few thousand dollars was spare change for him, he had never considered any of them to be his children. But that was fine, Five never considered him to be his father either and besides, it was always better to appeal to him with logic and reason. “It’s a prestigious university,” Five answered, “Many of its graduates have gone on to win academic prizes and bring prestige back to the university and themselves. Even more, the research I do will help people. Wouldn’t you like to claim that all seven of the children in the Umbrella Academy did extraordinary things, including the ordinary one?” Five met Dad’s eyes, challenging him to say no.
To his credit, he nodded, “Those are acceptable terms. But Number Five, if you slack off or in any way bring negative attention to yourself of the Umbrella Academy, you will be on your own.”
Five nodded, “I’ll agree to that.” It’s not like he’d expected anything else.
Seven was the only one to not tell him goodbye. Five was surprised to find that he actually cared. Allison gave him the big hug, which he only went along with because she’d threatened to rumour him into doing it anyways if he’d refused. Ben had given him a few books as a good bye gift (he didn’t really care for fiction, but he could appreciate the gesture). Luther gave him a tight smile and wished him luck. Diego told him that had to visit at Christmas and even Klaus managed to show up only slightly hung over. Mom had helped him pack, had kissed and hugged him goodbye, while Pogo and Dad told him to do well in his studies.
Five didn’t care for any of it. They were family in the barest of terms, but they were acting as though he was a beloved brother leaving for war or something. It was a sham, pure and simple. Ben hadn’t even realised that he hated fiction books.
But Seven hadn’t even come down from her room. Grudgingly, Five had to respect that. At least she knew the reality, that he was a pseudo stranger, only living under the same roof because he happened to have been born at a certain time. So Five didn't blame her for not seeing him off, but even he couldn't deny the hint of hurt he felt.
“So we’re roommates then?”
“What do you think?”
“Cool, I’m Mitchell, most people just call me Mitch, or Mitchy, you can call me Mickey, even—”
Five cut him off, “I’m Five.”
“Five? Like the number? Or is that a family name? My sister is call Delores and she hates it, but its a family name so…”
Five sighed. He really hadn’t given Dad enough credit for giving them separate rooms.
“What do you mean you aren’t going home for Christmas?” Mitchell repeated.
Five raised an eyebrow, “I think my statement was perfectly clear.”
Mitchell grinned, “This is so great. I was going to go home too, but well, money was kind of tight — my family isn’t poor or anything, but my Dad can be stingy with it and he told me to get a job, but I didn’t really want to, so I was going to hitch hike, or maybe beg my sister, Delores — I know, she hates her name, but I…”
Even after living with Mitchell for three months, Five still hadn’t figured out how to make him get to his point and shut up, “So you’re going home for Christmas then? Great.” He would like having the small dorm room to himself. It would give him time to study and think.
“Not anymore!” Mitchell exclaimed, triumphantly, “Since you’re staying here, it means that I won’t be alone if I don’t go home, so I’ll stay with you!”
And there goes his perfect Christmas, “Great.”
Michell nodded enthusiastically, “Why aren’t you going home? Does your family not celebrate Christmas? Or is it a money thing — oops, forget I asked, that’s personal—”
Five cut him off, “My family and I aren’t close. I don’t want to be around them as much as they don’t want to be around me.”
Mitchell blanched at his cold tone, “Right, right. That’s fair, totally fair. But we can be each other’s family this holiday, right? This works out so well for both of us.”
Five hung up the phone. He felt slightly numb and slightly nauseous.
“What’s with the long face, bro?” Mitchell came bounding in the room, “Shitty assignment? I wanted in one ages ago and I got it back last week and I was literally destroyed—”
“My brother’s dead.”
Mitchell fell quiet. They stayed that was for a few minutes, Five staring at the phone, while Mitchell sat on his bed.
Five hadn’t been to a funeral before, he was pretty sure that he could safely say that it was probably one of the worst ones ever. Dad’s horrific eulogy had made everyone except him and Vanya cry, Diego and Luther had almost fought and he’d watched Klaus sneak away with a flask.
It was odd to be one of six. There was a copious absence now, a place that ought to be filled but wasn’t. An empty chair at meals, a large spot between him and Seven. He found himself staring at the place next to him where Ben would always stand. Seven looked back at him instead, her eyes hard, before she took one step and filled it in. Five wasn’t sure which was worse: an empty space that had never been empty before or Seven filling it up.
After a few days, he couldn’t stand it anymore. He had a new life now, he needed to keep studying or else he’d risk falling behind. He’d worked for so many years to escape the Umbrella Academy, he wasn’t about to let it claim him again.
So Five announced it after supper that night. His siblings had taken up the habit of coming together inside Allison’s room since Ben’s death. Five turned the door handle, “Hi.”
Allison patted the bed next to her, “Finally joining us?”
Five shook his head, “No, I need to pack,” a total lie, he’d never unpacked in the first place, “I’m leaving tomorrow to go back to university.”
Klaus laughed, “Go, be free.”
Allison didn’t look nearly as amused, “That’s it then? Ben died and its fine?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you meant it, didn’t you?” She challenged, “You’ve always been saying that. We aren’t a family, we’re just soldiers, we shouldn’t really care about each other.
“Is that what you think?”
“You aren’t denying it,” Luther replied, “Even Dad cared.”
“Dad is the person who killed Ben!” Five fired back, “I can’t believe you all, you’re just deluded morons. What is it going to take for you to accept the reality: Dad doesn’t give a shit about any of us!”
“Yes, he does,” Luther stood up, “He can be harsh about it, but he does.”
“Luther’s right,” Allison echoed, “If anyone in this family didn’t care about the rest of us, it was you.”
Even Klaus was nodding, “Dad is a shit, but…” he trailed off, apparently distracted by something in the corner.
Five rolled his eyes — of all the times for his siblings to group together in the name of family unity, did it really have to be right now? “I never pretended that I was part of the family. Dad did. He’s the one who made us call him Dad, who called us all his children, made us think we were brothers and sisters—”
“We are brothers and sisters,” Diego cut in, “You’re the one who never even tried. Even when we were kids, we would be nice to you and you wouldn’t even call us by our real names half the time. Always Number Two or Number Four, it’s Diego, asshole!”
“At least I never deluded myself into thinking I was something I wasn’t,” Five yelled back, “I know exactly who I am, while the rest of you managed to make yourselves believe that you were normal kids.”
“We were normal kids,” Allison glared at him, “We did training and we weren’t raised the same way as other kids, but we were always just kids.”
“No, you renamed yourselves. Called the robot nanny ‘Mom’, convinced yourselves that you were all brothers and sisters in this house,” Five spat, “I never tried to delude myself into being anything but who I am.”
“You’re the delusional one!” Diego yelled back, “Mom is our mother! Dad is a jerk sometimes, but he’s still our Dad. You didn’t just grow up here surrounded by strangers, we’re family, like it or not.”
“Five is right,” Seven chimed in from the doorway. She must have heard the noise and wandered over, “We’re just Dad’s soldiers.”
“What, one day you’re Dad’s favourite and the next you’re just his ‘soldier’,” Luther butted in.
Seven smirked nastily, “That’s why I’m Dad’s favourite.”
Five looked between the two — he had obviously missed something in the last few months. Between how the rest of them glanced around, he was pretty sure that he was the only one that didn’t know. Well, he had always been out of the loop before, this didn’t make that much of a difference.
Diego scowled, “Right, right Vanya. Oh wait, I’m sorry, Seven. Because apparently giving up on being normal and letting yourself be completely defined by Dad is the right thing to do.”
Seven raised an eyebrow, “I’ve known what I am so a long time, Two. We’re not kids anymore, grow up.”
“This is fucking stupid,” Klaus stood up, wavering slightly, “Ben is dead and none of you give a single shit.” He stormed towards the door, “Even Ben is disappointed!”
Five didn’t fall asleep that night. He waited in his bed for the noises his siblings made to fade away. The silence on either sides of his room were conspicuous. Klaus was off who knows where, having snuck out after they got into the fight in Allison’s room, while Ben’s room on the other side was empty. It was a far cry from the nights he’d spend cursing Klaus for never shutting up, even in his sleep while Ben had snored on the other side.
He waited until Allison’s sobbing subsisted and Luther’s awkward attempts to comfort her quietened. Diego and Seven never made much noise, so sneaking out would be a risk, especially if Diego figured out what he was doing. But by two in the morning, Five figured that it had to be safe.
He crept through the hallways, cringing whenever his footsteps made the floorboards creek. It didn’t take him long to reach the kitchen. Five took a deep breath before walking inside.
Mom was standing straight up, her back almost flat against the wall. Her eyes were closed, but Five didn’t doubt that the hardware inside her was as awake as always. There was a thick black cable connecting her wrist to the wall, her changing cord. Her hair was done up, her makeup looking fresh and her dress in perfect condition.
As soon as he stepped into the kitchen, Mom opened her eyes. Noise activated, he reminded himself.
She smiled widely, “Oh, hello there Five. How are you? Do you want breakfast?”
Five clenched his fists, “Initiate Walkie Talkie Protocol.” Half of him hoped that Mom would keep smiling and ask him again what he wanted to breakfast, but he knew better.
Immediately, Mom straightened up her friendly smile vanishing and a neutral expression replacing it. It was just the way he remembered seeing her as a kid, as unfeeling and emotionless, a robot with a friendly face stitched onto it, “At attention. Would you like an oral or written report?” Even her voice was emotionless.
“Written,” he replied. He didn’t like the idea of taking more time than he needed, but it was still the early hours of the morning and he doubted Dad or Pogo would find him. If he was going to do this, he needed to do it correctly. He’d only have one shot, but maybe if he could prove to all his siblings that Dad didn’t give a shit about them or that they weren’t really a family, they’d leave the stupid Umbrella Academy for good.
Mom nodded, “Estimated time of completion: four minutes, fifty three seconds.” She grabbed a pad of paper and pen and began to write, her hand flying across the paper faster than Five had ever seen. He frowned when he saw her handwriting. It wasn’t the same neat and tidy script he’d grown up with, instead he realised that her writing resembled the font he’d see in files that Dad had printed off of a computer.
“Task completed,” she said, standing up and holding the paper.
Five grabbed it. If he hadn’t seen her write in out in front of him, he would have assumed that it had been printed from a computer. Daily Report, January 17th 2006. Below, he could see numbers 1-7 printed out, each with a paragraph and a set of numbers accompanying it. The spot next to 6 was blank.
“At attention,” Mom said again, “Do you require further assistance?”
Five tucked the paper into his pocket, “Can you shut down?”
“Unable to complete task.”
Shit. Had Dad even programmed her to turn off? “Can you go to sleep?”
“Unable to complete task.”
Five eyed the knives, it looked like he’d have to go old school. He grabbed one, gripping the handle and turning towards Mom. She was staring blankly past him, unmoving. The knife was shaking slightly in his hands. She wasn’t real, he reminded himself, she was only a robot with a smiling face. Every single one of her actions were programmed by Dad or Pogo, she was just a glorified computer. Still, he hesitated, “You can’t feel pain, right?”
“Would you like me to turn off negative reactions to external stimuli?”
So she couldn’t feel pain then. Every time she had scolded Luther for gripping her hand too tightly or had winced when hot oil had hit her hand, it was all just another part of the programming, a little piece designed to make them think she was human, that she could care for them and could feel pain. So Five took a deep breath, “Yes, turn it off.”
“Task complete.”
The knife wasn’t shaking anymore. Five cut through her wrist first, the thick layer of fake skin loosening up surprisingly easily. Even though he knew that logically, there would be wires and metal beneath the layer of fake skin, Five had half expected blood to start pouring out instead. Mom didn’t even react while he did so.
By the time he had finished, Mom hardly looked like herself. He’d left the majority of her alone, apart from one arm and her head. Instead of the familiar woman who’d he spent the majority of his life seeing, a robot was staring back at him. A mess of gears, wires, and other metal technology that he’d never even seen before. But this was who Mom really was — a computer with a human face. Maybe now that his siblings could see the reality for themselves, they might stop deluding themselves about Dad and who they really were.
Five quickly snuck back upstairs as quietly as he could, he really didn’t want anyone — especially not Diego — discovering him with Mom’s robot body on full display. He was nearly back when he heard a tremendous noise.
Five stared in horror as he watched someone tumbled from the window into the hallway. Klaus was lying on his back, shivering violently with blue lips. Five rushed to the window, slamming it shut.
“Klaus?”
Klaus looked up, his pupils were blown wide and he had a wide smile on his face. Five breathed a sigh of relief — it was probably the first time Klaus being high on drugs had worked out in his favour. He wouldn’t remember any of this in the morning.
Five walked away from him and went inside his room. He lied back in his bed and shut his eyes.
“Who the hell murdered Mom?”
Five stood around Mom’s body. It was just like he left it last night, with her entire arm and head stripped of the skin and the mechanical parts in plain sight. He saw everyone look towards him.
“Murder is a strong word,” Five said, “She’s a robot.”
“You literally skinned her you asshole!” Diego turned on him.
“She’s still operational,” Five replied, “This is what she really is. The rest was just an image.”
“That’s not true,” Diego replied, “You cut her up.”
“That’s fucked up,” Klaus continued, “Dude, you skinned Mom. Who does that?”
“She’s a computer,” Five crossed his arms, “And she’s still working just fine. Look, Initiate Walkie Talkie Protocol.”
Mom straightened up, “At attention. Would you like an oral or written report?”
Diego flinched back, “Mom? Are you okay?”
“Would you like an oral or written report?”
“See? She’s just a computer, Diego.”
“Wait, what report?” Allison stepped in, looking cautiously at Mom.
“Here,” Five dug out the written report he’d gotten last night, “I had her fill it out last night. Give it a read.”
Allison grabbed it, her face paling, “9:23 am, Number One continues to react negatively to the death of Number Six. 2:13 pm, Number One and Number Three fought. 4:52 pm, Number One revealed that he and Number Three were no longer…” Allison trailed off, before looking at Luther with betrayal in her eyes.
“That was private!” Luther grabbed the paper from her, his eyes widening as he read it, “I just told Mom that we weren’t, you know, together anymore.”
“See? Just a machine,” Five grabbed the paper back from him, “She’s been doing this every day since we were little.”
“But why?” Luther murmured, “Why would Mom care enough about all of this to want a report?”
“Use your two brain cells for once. Mom is a computer. Dad is the one who wanted a report.”
Allison stared at Mom with newfound distrust, “She was a spy?”
Seven sighed, “She wasn’t anything, Allison. Not a spy, not our mother. Just a machine doing what she was built to do.”
“That a lie,” Diego shook his head, “So Mom was recording a few things — whatever. She’s still our mother, even if Dad was making her do stuff.”
“Its the truth and you know it,” Five replied.
Diego scowled at him and Seven, “Just because you two are weird, unfeeling monsters doesn’t meant the rest of us are. Mom was Mom — and you just skinned her! And Seven, why the hell are you agreeing with it?”
“What is the meaning of this?” Dad’s stern command echoed around the room. He was standing with Luther behind him, staring at Mom with a disgusted look on his face.
Five scowled, before grabbing the daily report from Allison and shoving it in Dad’s hands, “I’m showing them what Mom really is.”
Dad raised an eyebrow, “I wasn’t aware you were under the delusion that your mother was a real person.”
Five was gearing up to yell, but Allison got there first, “Mom was recording everything we said, wasn’t she, so that you could monitor us?”
Dad looked over at her. His expression wasn’t changing, but Five could tell he was debating about telling them the truth or not. They both knew that Mom had been nothing but a glorified camera for him to observe them, but the others still might be convinced if he spun it the right way, “That was one of her secondary functions.”
“Oh, stop lying,” Five growled, “That was her primary function, we both know that. You did everything so that we’d trust her, so that you could learn the stuff that we kept private from you.” He turned towards his siblings, who were all looking various expressions of betrayal, “All of it, the whole ‘we’re a family’ thing was just so that he could get you guys to cooperate and trust him and Mom to have our best interests at heart while making you do crazy missions that could kill you. And it did.”
A tense silence fell over the living room. Dad, for the first time, didn’t seem able to answer. Luther eyed him warily, while Klaus was looking between Five and Dad as if watching a tennis match. Seven remained, while Allison stepped back.
“He’s right, isn’t he, Dad?” Allison asked, breaking the silence, “We weren’t a real family.”
Dad stiffened, “You are old enough, Number Three, to act like a mature, young woman and not as an upset child.”
Her eyes flashed dangerously, “Don’t tell me off. You have no right — not after making us grow up to be your soldiers,” she shook her head, stepping away, “You aren’t my father.”
“Allison,” Luther pleaded, “Come on, it’s Five, he has to be lying, right?”
Allison eyed his warily, “I think he was the only one to ever tell us the truth. We were just morons who thought we could have a normal life. I’m leaving. I want to real life and I can’t have one with any of you in it.”
“Same here,” Diego agreed, “Screw this. Ben’s dead because of Dad, Mom is, was, just some bullshit machine. I’m out of here.”
Klaus laughed loudly, “I packed my bag last night. Guess I beat the rush, huh?”
“Seven,” Luther took a step towards their last sibling who had barely reacted to any of it, “Don’t leave.
And Seven just raised an eyebrow, “Please, Luther. I’ve known exactly what I am for a long time. We’re soldiers and I’m perfectly fine with that. I haven’t tricked myself into thinking I was anything else for years.”
Luther frowned at her answer. He looked unsure — it was a strange expression on his face, Five had never really seen himself doubt before. “Dad, do you want me to stay?”
Dad sighed as if the question itself was an annoyance to answer, “Your usefulness, Number One, is in direct proportion to your ability to lead your teammates.”
“Don’t bother, Luther,” Seven cut in, “I don’t want to be slowed down.”
He faltered, “But Vanya—”
Her eyes darkened and her skin paled. Five took a step backwards, carefully positioning himself with a couch in between them. If Seven was going to lose her temper, he didn’t want to be the one caught in it.
“That is not my name,” she hissed, raising her arms threateningly.
“Number Seven,” Dad barked, “Keep your emotions in check!”
She sighed, but almost immediately her powers receded, “Happy, Dad?”
“Acceptable.”
His siblings exchanged glances between each other.
Klaus interrupted it with a clap of his hands, “So, that’s handled? We’re all leaving, Seven is staying and Mom is a computer?”
There was a murmuring of agreements.
Dad scowled, “Weaklings, all of you.”
Luther looked like he was about to reply, but Allison stopped him, “Don’t.” They made their way upstairs, followed quickly by Diego and Klaus.
“Come, Seven,” Dad lead her towards the hallway, “We ought to begin training.”
She followed wordlessly, not even giving a second glance towards Mom.
Five stood by himself. He should feel satisfied, that after years of them dismissing him as rude and cold, to be proven right. That they were never a real family and that acting as one only helped Dad. But it didn’t feel nearly as good as he’d expected.
Five threw himself back into his studies. Pogo had unceremoniously informed him that Dad would no longer be funding his education, meaning that between his new job, going to classes and studying, he had hardly any time to himself.
Mitchell had been hovering around for a few weeks now, dropping hints that he needed a roommate for next year. Five really should have nipped that one in the bud as soon as it came up, but he’d gotten distracted and really good at ignoring Mitchell, so he hadn’t gotten around to it.
“Any thoughts on yes or no?” Mitchell asked again, “It’s a great location, right next to the river, you know, in between two bus stops as well. The heating doesn’t really work, but that’s fine, we’ll just wear sweaters…”
Five glanced at the piles of work around his desk. He’d need a roommate next year if he had any hope of getting good marks and earning enough to pay for it. He’d survived Mitchell for one year, what was the harm of another, “Fine.”
“Really?”
“Yeah.”
“Sweet! We’re going to have such an awesome year, Five. Best roommates, best friends, this is so great. You know, your family cutting you off? It’s chill because you can just join my family instead. Not like my real family, duh, they’re super far away and my Dad can be really, really snooty sometimes, but if we’re going to be living in a house together, with a few others, it’ll be practically the same thing and…”
Five kept scratching down his notes, half heartedly listening to Mitchell go on and on about the house they’d be renting next year. At least there wouldn’t be any computer nanny taking care of them there.
Occasionally, he’d spot Seven on the news. It was weird, expecting to see six people, but instead only one appearing. He watched as the police thanked her for her work in getting a suspected child kidnapper to reveal where he’d hidden the kid. Apparently, as soon as he saw who was coming to interrogate him, he’d confessed immediately.
Five did a double take. There were two people standing in the alleyway opposite his bus stop. He was dead certain that it had been empty before. They were both wearing suits with a briefcase in hand and he watched as they made their way over to him. Five tensed, but kept his eyes fixed on the road in front of him. If they didn’t think anyone had noticed him, he didn’t want to be the one that alerted them.
They stood a little ways apart from him. Both were wearing business suits, one a middle aged man with a slightly scraggly looking beard and a pretty bad looking black eye and the other a younger, darker skinned woman. He could feel their eyes on him as he waited. Were they kidnappers? Had Dad sent them to get revenge? Or maybe he was just being paranoid. Five tightened his grip on his bag anyways.
The bus pulled up and Five made his way towards it, eager to get home and get out of their way.
“Excuse me, young man?” The man spoke up, “Could you help us for a minute?”
Five smiled apologetically, “I would, but my bus just got here.” He stepped closer to the bus and the people in suits followed him.
“Why are we wasting our time asking?” The woman hissed.
“Shh!” The guy replied, before throwing on a friendly smile, “It’s just a little thing.”
“I’m in a rush,” Five lied. The last person in line for the bus had just walked in, he needed to get in now or else he’d be stuck at the stop for another half hour with the two creeps.
Just before he was able to step on, he felt a weight land on him, knocking his legs out from under him. Five fell onto the ground, scraping his elbows. He tried to stand up again, but the bus was already pulling away. Angrily, he faced the woman who’d fallen on him, “The hell? Why did you do that?”
“Whoops, I tripped,” The woman said unconvincingly, elbowing him as she jumped off of him.
Five scurried to his feet, ready to fight them off. He might not be as strong or as trained as his siblings, but he’d picked up a few things at the Umbrella Academy.
“Nice save, Cha-Cha,” The man murmured, before the pair of them mumbled apologies and walked away from the bus stop.
Five scowled at them as they left. Assholes.
It wasn’t until hours later, watching the news when he saw the headline: fatal bus crash kills twelve that Five thought about those assholes again. He frowned, looking at the time of the accident. It couldn’t be the bus he’d been about to get on, could it? He thought back to the two strangers who’d stopped him from getting on. That had to have just been a coincidence, right?
Five nearly choked on his beer.
“Whoa, you okay?” Mitchell slapped him on the back, laughing “Is this your first time drinking or something?” He laughed.
Five glared at him — He’d only turned twenty one a few weeks ago and Mitchell, who was twenty three like everyone else in their year of university, never let a chance to remind him slip away, “Fuck off.” Mitchell had had to practically drag him away from his work — apparently, graduating was worth taking a night off. Five disagreed, but Mitchell had threatened to bring the party back to their house, so he’d relented.
Mitchell grinned, before following Five’s gaze towards a television in the corner of the bar. Allison was on the screen in a beautiful dress, smiling for the cameras as she stood on the red carpet. She was the only one of his siblings that he actually saw sometimes and it was only because her movies and advertisements were everywhere.
But Five wasn’t looking at Allison, instead staring at the two people wearing suits standing in the crowd. They looked oddly familiar — one was middle aged with a bad black eye and the second was a younger, dark skinned woman. It hit him, they were the same people who’d knocked him over at the bus station a few years ago.
“Allison Hargreeves, huh?” Mitchell chuckled, “She’s hot, isn’t she?”
And this time, Five really did choke. He spluttered and gasped for breath, as Mitchell laughed.
“What’s the matter, dude? It’s the truth,” Mitchell laughed, “Delores is coming up for the ceremony, any chance you’ve got family coming up as well?”
Five rolled his eyes, “I don’t have a family.”
He met Delores the next day, hungover and in a bad mood. Mitchell’s whole family insisted on meeting him — apparently being someone’s roommate for four years meant that he had to meet everyone. He probably would have been able to pull off avoiding them, if not for the fact that no one from his own family had showed up — not that he was surprised. They weren’t really family after all.
“Sorry about all of them,” Delores pulled him away, “Mitch didn’t have many friends growing up, I’m pretty sure my Mom thought that you were secretly dating or something this whole time.”
Five nodded, “He’s talkative,” he said, diplomatically.
Delores laughed, “You’re telling me? I grew up with him. I think I’d know better than you do.”
“Is that a challenge?” Five replied.
They kept talking the whole night, the conversation switching from Mitchell towards what they were studying and philosophical questions that Five thought were a huge waste of time, but that Delores loved to ponder. He gave her his number and she called him the next day.
Five gingerly picked up the telephone. He never got calls, not unless it was from the university administration or clueless students who thought that calling professors was appropriate, “Professor Hargreeves.”
“Professor?” Diego’s demanded, “Who the hell made you professor?”
“Diego?” Five sighed, “What do you want?”
He heard a sigh on the other end of the line, “Remember a few years ago when you had asked if I’d seen a pair in business suits, one with a black eye?”
Five perked up. He’d gotten in touch with all his siblings (well, the ones he could aka everyone but Klaus and Seven) to ask if they’d seen the pair that had knocked him down and had been around Allison. None of them had, “And?”
“Well, I was chasing down a perp and two freaks in costumes just appeared out of thin air, shot the guy and ran away,” Diego continued.
“And the black eye?”
“Yeah, it was there. The guy’s dog mask fell off and I saw it. Looked pretty bad,” he hesitated, “But you told me about that years ago, shouldn’t it have healed by now?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Five replied, “It’s just a theory.”
“The last time you said that, the family fell apart.” Diego paused for a minute, before he said, “Have you seen what Seven’s been up to?”
“I don’t want to do small talk.”
“I’m serious,” Diego replied, “She nearly levelled a building the other day.”
“So? Dad has her handled. Why should I care?”
Diego hesitated, “Well, Allison and I’ve been talking—”
“You kept in touch?”
“Me, Allison and Luther did. Klaus drops in occasionally.”
Damn, everyone but him. And he’d assumed they’ll all cut ties when they left — turns out he was the only one. That didn’t sting at all, “Why do you care what I think? I’m the ordinary one, remember?”
“Stop being a dick, Five,” Diego grumbled, “It’s just — you don’t think Seven’s getting too powerful, do you?”
Five rolled his eyes, even though Diego couldn’t see it through the phone, “I have other things to worry about.” Like why the same pair of strangers kept showing up, seemingly without ageing, “Ask Luther if he’s seen that pair of strangers. Klaus too if you see him.” He wasn’t sure why, but he said, “I’m getting married.”
“Wait — actually?”
“Yeah.” He didn’t blame him for being surprised. He’d never pegged himself as the marrying type either.
“Wow,” Diego sounded suitably impressed, “Nice going then. When’s the wedding.”
“You aren’t invited,” Five continued, “Delores wants it to be small, family only, you get it, right.”
“Loud and clear,” Diego replied, his voice colder than earlier. He hung up right afterwards, leaving Five with the phone.
Delores sat next to him, arms crossed. She fiddled with the ring on her finger, the newspaper laid out in front of them. On the cover was Seven, with the headline: Saviour or Danger? The latest on the bridge collapse that saved thousands at the expense of hundreds.
Five averted his gaze. He’s made a stupid mistake, telling Delores in passing how Seven had a history of collapsing structures, even when she was little.
“So are we going to talk about this?”
“What’s there to talk about?”
“You’re kidding, right? We’re getting married in a month and I just found out — by accident, that you’ve been hiding your entire life from me,” she replied.
Five shrugged, “You know now.”
“That isn’t good enough,” Delores replied, “You can’t just expect me to be alright with the fact that you lied about your past and about not having a family. I’ve never lied to you, not once.”
Five scowled, “It’s my own business, alright? We’re barely a family, it doesn’t even count.”
Delores looked away from him, “Barely a family, huh?” She took the ring off her finger, “Glad to know exactly where I stand.”
“Delores, that isn’t what I meant—”
She pressed the ring into his hand, “I need some time, okay?”
Five knew he should say something. Stop her, somehow. But instead he watched as she walked away from him, hailed a cab and drove off. He scowled, staring at the engagement ring in his palm. What had he really been expecting? It wasn’t like he’d ever needed a family, or anyone. All he had was himself and that was all he needed.
It only took a second for Five to decide not to go to his father’s funeral. Really, it had taken less time than that — he’d decided a long time ago that he wouldn’t be going to the funeral of the man who meant less than nothing to him.
“Professor Hargreeves, glad to catch you,” A coworker grabbed him, “I’ve got good news?”
“Oh?”
“A spot just opened for the New York conference this weekend,” she told him, “The university wants you to go.”
Five frowned — he’d wanted that spot, but someone else had got it due to seniority, “What happened to the person who had the spot?”
She shrugged, “He died apparently, just last night.”
“Huh.”
“Yeah, it’s crazy. He’d been shot in his bed.”
“Murdered?” Since when did university professors get shot in their sleep? “Was it a robbery?”
“No. From what I’ve heard, two people busted into the house, shot him and then disappeared,” she revealed, “Even weirder, they were wearing these animals masks, apparently. Probably something weird to do with furries.”
Five stiffened. Two people shooting a random professor with animals masks? It sounded exactly like the like the people Diego had described seeing a few years ago. And if his hunch was right, that it was the same pair that had knocked him on the ground at the bus stop and had stalked Allison for a bit, he doubted they cared about his co worker. But the weekend of the conference was the same weekend of Reginald’s funeral. He was willing to bet that most of his siblings would be in the same place, at the same time. And now that the spot in the conference had opened up, so would he. So Five nodded at his co worker, “I’ll take the spot then. Sure.”
Even though it had been nearly fifteen years since he’d seen the Umbrella Academy, it felt like nothing had changed. Five stepped inside, the house feeling smaller than it had growing up.
Everyone aside from Seven were in the living room.
“Five? Thought you weren’t coming,” Luther called him out.
“What happened to ‘we were never family’?” Allison continued, crossing her arms across her chest.
Some things never changed, did they? “We’ve got bigger things to talk about,” he said, sitting down, “Look, something made us go to New York all at the same time.”
“Dad’s funeral?” Diego tossed in.
“Yes — well, no, that’s part of it,” Five frowned, “But I wasn’t supposed to come.”
“But you’re here,” Allison pointed out, “For the funeral.”
Five glared at her, “No, I’m here because two freaks in matching pantsuits keep screwing with our lives.”
They all looked at him blankly.
“Nah,” Klaus cut in, “I’m pretty sure we’re here for the funeral.”
Five groaned. Yeah, some things never changed with his family.
“Anyways,” Diego looked over at Luther and Allison, “We’ve got things to…discuss.”
“Things?”
Allison elbowed him, “Things.”
“Right, things,” Luther nodded, “Right.”
Five stared at them, did they think he was an idiot or something? “What are you morons planning now?”
“Nothing,” Luther claimed, “Just things.”
Of all the times for something like this, “Listen, I am trying to tell you that there are two strangers making sure we all meet at Dad’s funeral, got it? Something involving all of us is happening this weekend.”
Diego frowned, “Those weird animal headed people?”
“Exactly,” Five nodded, “And—”
“Sorry, Five,” Luther interrupted, looking just a smidge too smug for his liking, “But we have more important things to talk about.”
Five clenched his fists. Of course they did. Useless assholes, “Fine, fine. Just remember that last time you ignored me, Mom turned out to be a computer.” He stood up and stormed out of the house.
Ah, Griddy’s. The one part of his childhood that he hadn’t hated. He stepped inside, sat at the counter and waited for the waitress to take his order. He smiled when he realised it was the same woman from all those years ago.
“Coffee, black,” he ordered.
“Same here,” the man besides him said, “And throw on a chocolate doughnut.”
And then Five froze. The man beside him was a middle aged man with a scraggly beard and a black eye. The last time he’d seen him was almost ten years ago, when his partner had stopped him from getting on a bus.
“Hey asshole,” Five muttered quietly, “Any chance you like dressing up as a dog for fun?”
The man turned, his eyed widening as he looked at him, “Shit.”
“That’s right,” Five nodded, “Now, why the hell are you stalking my siblings and I.”
“Shit, shit, shit,” The man muttered, “Ah, which one are you? The knife one? I know you’re one of the powerful ones.”
Five scowled, “Wrong sibling. I’m the ordinary one.”
“No, no, I’m pretty sure you aren’t—”
“I think I can attest to that myself,” Five replied, “Now, answer my question.”
The man sighed, “Look, I really shouldn’t be talking to you—”
“You saved my life when you stopped me from getting on that bus,” Five replied, “I think you owe me an explanation.”
The man scowled, “Look, uh, you aren’t Seven, are you?”
“Why does Seven matter?”
“Shit. Look, normally I’d just kill people who know too much, but—”
“But you saved my life, so I’m guessing that you need me alive for whatever is going to go down this weekend. You also showed up around Diego and Allison -- so you need as many Hargreeves alive as possible?”
His eyes were wide, “I’m just going to leave.”
“I don’t think so.”
The man raised an eyebrow, before grabbing Five’s mug of steaming hot coffee and throwing it over him. Five shrieked in pain, the boiling hot coffee burning his skin. The man ran away from the restaurant as Five grabbed about two dozen napkins. He hissed in pain as he wiped away what he could. He needed to get back to his siblings and get them to take him seriously.
“Hey! Get downstairs!” Five yelled, “We need to talk!”
No one came running down the stairs. Five clenched his fists — typical. Now he’d have to go hunting up and down the whole house to find them. It figured, he was trying to save their lives and they couldn’t give a shit.
“Why are you yelling?” Seven walked into the hallway. Five flinched when he saw her — her skin was pale and her eyes were white. It was the way she always looked when she was about to use her powers.
“Keeping the vampire look full time?” He asked.
A small smile appeared on her face, “It suits me. I didn’t think you’d come back for the funeral.”
“I’m not back for the funeral.”
“I’m not surprised. Why are you really back then?”
“Any chance you’ve seen two people in animals masks?”
Seven looked mildly amused, “Can’t say I have.”
Five scowled.
“Five?” He could hear someone walking towards them, “Five, was that you yelling?” Allison appeared at the top of the stairs.
“Yeah, we need to talk.”
Allison nodded, “So do we.”
Seven looked between them, “Trying to get Five into your family bonding session?”
Five scowled — that was something he wanted no business in, but Allison nodded, “We just have a few things to go over. We wanted to make sure he’s doing alright.”
“I’m fine.”
“We just want to make sure.”
Seven looked away, “I’ll leave you to it.”
Five glared at Allison, “Really? Family bonding? I thought I made it clear—”
“Just come on, we need to talk.”
The worst part was that she didn’t even have to rumour him into doing it. What kind of person did that make him? The kind that grew up in the Umbrella Academy, he supposed. Five squeezed half the bottle of honey into the tea. At least he could make it taste good. His heart was beating rapidly.
Seven walked in only a few seconds later, “Mom said you wanted to talk to me?”
So she was still calling the robot Mom? Interesting. Five held the mug of tea, “Here.”
She took it, “Did you put honey in it?”
“You always put in a bunch when we were kids.”
Seven nodded at him, “I’m surprised you remembered.”
“Me too.” Should he stop her from drinking it? He was tempted, but Diego’s words rang in his head. She was too dangerous, able to level a building with a look and the bring a city to the ground. The pair of suit wearing animal headed people had lead them all to being in the same city at the same time but had only ensured that him, Allison and Diego stayed alive. They’d been waiting for them to put her down, like a vicious dog that would bite anyone if no one did anything.
Seven took a long sip, smiling a little at the taste, “Not enough honey.”
“I put in half the bottle.” He should leave, but his feet were stuck to the floor. She shrugged, “It tastes a little bitter.”
So much for tasteless, Five supposed. Still, he kept a nice smile on his face, “So, hows life going to be now that Dad has kicked the bucket.”
Seven shrugged, “He told me to keep the world safe. I’ll keep doing that.”
“But now that he’s gone, you can leave.”
Seven fixed him with a strange expression, “I don’t mind it here. I’ve known for a long time what this place really was. You’re the one who made it clear to me.” Her face contorted slightly, as she coughed a little.
“You alright?”
“Fine,” she waved him off, “Just…” she coughed again, “There’s something caught in my throat.”
Five nodded, drumming his fingers on the counter. Allison had told him that he was the only one who could offer something to Seven without her being suspicious. Apparently, she thought Seven trusted him. She’d been right.
Seven began wheezing slightly, as she touched her throat, “Five,” she said between coughs, “Get Mom.”
Five stayed stubbornly still.
“Five, go!”
Five didn’t move.
Seven watched him angrily, before her eyes widened in realisation. She looked at the mug of tea and back to him. The room started shaking ever so slightly, “You…it was Allison, wasn’t it. Did she rumour you?”
Five shook his head, “I’m sorry.”
She yelled and her powers erupted, kitchen utensils and a few chairs flying past him, hitting the walls. Five touched his cheek, feeling wet blood from a knife that was now lying on the floor. She was clinging onto the counter to support herself as her breathing became more and more erratic. Her lips were shaking just a little, reminding Five of when they were kids and Seven, Vanya back then, would get annoyed when he told her to go away. She smiled coldly, “Should have known,” she said through gasps, “No loyalty, just soldiers.”
Five looked away. She was right, it was stupid of her not to suspect him of anything. They were all soldiers, barely a family. He was just doing his duty and saving the world from her inevitable temper tantrum. So why was he feeling so guilty about it?
Her lips were blue as her strength began leaving her. She fell to the floor, with Five barely managing to stop her from crashing onto the ground. He watched as she gasped for breath, her shuddering powers lessening in strength as she gasped.
Five leaned closer, putting an arm around her shoulders, “I’m sorry,” he murmured. He was supposed to be dispassionate, Allison had told him to leave right after he saw her drink from the mug, but he hadn’t been able to.
Seven’s eyes closed as her breathing got slower and slower. Five grabbed her hand and squeezed it. He stayed like that for another few minutes until he was sure that her breathing had stopped. He raised a hand to her wrist to check her pulse, but he couldn’t feel one. Five brushed his cheek, feeling the blood quickly drying.
Allison’s hand rested on his arm, “You did good, Five.”
“I killed my sister.”
Allison’s eyes flashed, “She was just Dad’s soldier. Too dangerous and too powerful.”
Five shook his head, pulling her hand off of him, “Just…stay away from me, alright? Forever. I’m done with all of you.”
“Why are you mad at me? We did the right thing, you’re the one who said we were soldiers since we were little. She would have blown up the world eventually.”
He knew that Allison was right. Logically, it made sense. He’d been the one to say it and had given her the poison as well, but he’d been the one holding her hand when she died. So Five shook his head, “I don’t care. Our sister is dead and the rest of this family is screwed. I’m done.”
Five dialled the phone number. It was still etched in his mind, all these years later. It rung a few times and he wondered whether he should just hang up. Maybe she’d moved away?
“Hello?” She sounded tired — he didn’t blame her. It was late at night.
“Delores?”
“Five? Is that you? Why are you calling?”
Five hesitated, “I — I don’t really know.”
She sighed, “It’s one in the morning.”
“My sister is dead.”
She took a deep breath, “I’m sorry.”
Five nodded, before realising that she couldn’t see it over the phone, “It was shitty to you, lying about who I really was. I get that now — my real family, they’re screwed up in more ways than I ever realised. I didn’t want you to know that about me, I didn’t even want to think that I might be as screwed up as they are, but I was wrong. And so I lied and I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. I’m done with fake families. With thinking you that you can stop yourself from caring, I want something real.”
“Just stop it. Why are you calling?”
Five hesitated, “I want us to try again.”
“Five…”
“Wait, just hear me out. I’ll do it properly, this time. No more secrets, we can be a real family,” he knew he was rambling, but he couldn’t stop himself.
“Stop talking,” Delores interrupted, “Please.”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I.”
So he’d screwed up for good this time. Finally decided he might not want to be alone and now no one wanted him around, “Okay. If that’s what you want.”
Delores sighed on the other side of the phone, “Let’s just meet for lunch first. We can catch up and see how we feel. Maybe we both need a second chance.”
Five smiled, “I’ll see you soon.” He hung up the phone and walked out of the Umbrella Academy. He’d get the first flight out of New York and build something real or die trying.
Notes:
Alright so, that's that.
Thanks for sticking around, sorry for the slow update. This chapter was harder to write than I'd thought it would be -- but at least I got like 3/4 of the next chapter written while flailing around with this one. It's like 11,500 words, which is honestly ridiculous for me, I tend to be more of a 2 - 3 k words per chapter kind of person - when I wrote Allison's chapter at 6-7000, I thought that that was excessive.
I know there's not been much of Ben or Klaus - that'll be fixed next chapter, don't worry.
Thanks for reading, feedback is always exciting and thanks to everyone whose given it to me in the last few chapters.
Chapter 4: Klaus
Summary:
Klaus knew he was delusional and uncooperative at the best of time, but at least he was sure that the things he saw and heard weren’t real.
Chapter Text
He’d barely noticed when the screaming had begun — in fact, he couldn’t really remember a time when he hadn’t heard screaming. He hadn’t realised that no one else could hear it at first. He shrieked and yelled all the time, certain that no one could hear him above all the noise he heard at all times. The first phrase he’d learnt was, “Number Four! No screaming.”
So Four had learnt to shut up and speak so quietly that he could barely hear the words coming out of own his mouth. He had a hard time hearing others as well. Their words and the never ending shrieks of the ghosts blended together. He managed it by becoming halfway decent at lip reading and watching the others for cues on how to react to stuff, but generally he just settled for being confused a lot.
Number Four fidgeted as he sat in the hardback chair, swinging his legs backwards and forwards. He never liked sitting down for very long. He wasn’t like Six, who could do it for hours, or even Two who hated it as much as he did, but would always manage it to win against One. Four had never even been part of that game they played, getting distracted and wandering around the room whenever he wanted.
That was why their tutor, Mrs. Kiel sent him out of the classroom. Four hadn’t even pretended to be upset, instead running out the door as fast as he could. He hated Mrs. Kiel and her dumb class, why did he have to learn how to read? Mom always read books to them, so why did he have to learn to read them too?
“Number Four! Eyes up!” Dad slapped the desk.
Four lifted his head, “Whoops.” Dad’s eyes hardened. Four shifted uncomfortably, he didn’t like making Dad mad, none of them did, “Sorry.”
“If you did not make mistakes, you would not have to apologise for them,” Dad said sternly.
Four sighed a little, “Sorry,” he repeated himself. He was always making mistakes. Out of the seven of them, he was always the one messing things up.
Dad’s expression didn’t change, “Your tutor reported that you were refusing to read.”
Four shrugged, “Its so boring.”
“Unacceptable,” Dad replied, “Your power may not have appeared yet, but that does not mean you are not being held to the same standards as your siblings.”
Four looked down at the desk. He was the only one to not figure out what his powers were. One, Five, Six and Seven had known since he could remember. Two had figured it out when they were really little (his first memory was Two throwing a carrot off his plate and it managed to stick in the ceiling). He and Three had been the last two, but she’d figured hers out a few months ago so now it was just him, “Sorry.”
“That is not good enough, Four,” Dad said, sternly, “I expect progress, but you chose to be lazy instead…”
Four saw a movement in the reflection off the glass windows behind Dad’s desk. He cocked his head to the side and peered at it. He could see the reflection of the hallway in it, but nothing looked wrong.
“Four, eyes up!” Dad commanded.
“Sorry,” Four looked back at Dad, grinning sheepishly.
“This is exactly the sort of behaviour I am talking about, Number Four,” Dad continued.
Another flash of movement in the reflection caught his eyes. Four watched as he saw something appear in the hallway. It was a girl who looked the same age as him, but it wasn’t Three or Seven. Instead, she was wearing a long dress that touched the floor and she was incredibly pale. She waved to him though the reflection.
Four grinned at her through the reflected and gave her a little wave back.
Dad’s fist slammed against the desk, before he stood up and shut the curtains to the window, “I will not have you distracted by birds.”
Four sighed unhappily, the reflection of the girl in the hallway vanishing as the room darkened, “It wasn’t a bird!”
That was the wrong thing to say. Dad’s face somehow got sterner, “If you bring up your imaginary friend—”
“She isn’t imaginary!” Four cried out, “She was right there!”
“All your siblings have outgrown ridiculous childish fantasies except for you, Number Four. I cannot understand why you lag behind the rest of them when you have all the resources in the world dedicated to you,” Dad said, angrily, “From now on, you will not mention your imaginary friends nor seek them out and you will sit still in class, is that understood?”
Four scowled, but nodded, “Yes,” he mumbled.
“Yes?”
“Yes Sir,” he said a little louder.
Dad didn’t look very happy, but he nodded, “Good. Return to class. If Mrs. Kiel has any more negative remarks about your behaviour, there will be consequences, understood?”
“Yes Sir,” Four nodded, before quickly leaving Dad’s office.
He looked around the hallway, trying to see where the girl in the long dress had gone, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. He’d seen her around the house a few times before and he liked her more than the other people he saw sometimes. A lot of them looked scary, wearing raggedy clothes or had weird things sticking out of their heads, but the little girl only laughed and smiled at him. He sighed, Dad would be mad if he didn’t go to class and he really didn’t want to make him angry twice in one day.
Four saw the little girl again a few weeks later. He was lying in bed, covering his ears with his pillow. He could hear screaming tonight, coming from outside his room. He hated night time, the screaming was always loudest then and no one ever believed him. Two had made fun of him for being scared of the dark, so Four had stopped complaining about it.
He screamed himself a second later when he felt the barest sensation against his skin. Four backed away to the edge of his bed, clumsily punching the air in front of him like he’d been taught to in their fighting class.
He only heard a light giggle in response, “What are you doing?” Four moved the covers out of his face, frowning. The girl in the long dress was in his room, standing right next to her, smiling cheekily, “Did I scare you?”
This is why he liked the little girl so much, she was one of the only imaginary people who never screamed. But Dad had said she was just imaginary and he wasn’t supposed to have imaginary friends anymore, so Four turned away from her and faced the wall.
“Hello?” She called out, “I’m bored, come with me and we can play!”
Four closed his eyes. Training had been tiring today and Mom had told them all to get a good night sleep so that they’re be awake tomorrow. She wasn’t real, anyways, just a dumb thing he’d made up.
“Listen to me!” She shouted, her voice increasing in volume. Four tried taking deep breaths, like Mom always told him to do when he was scared. She wasn’t real, he reminded himself.
The girl huffed angrily, “Stop playing a dumb joke, it isn’t funny! I know you can hear me!”
Four pressed his hands against his ear. She isn’t real, he repeated to himself, she’s just imaginary.
The girl began shrieking, her screams blending in with the ever present background noises he always heard. Four stayed with his hands over his ears, Not real, not real, he kept repeating to himself. She didn’t stop screaming for hours, shrieking and crying, begging him to pay attention to her. Four just kept his eyes screwed shut and did his best to block out the sounds.
He didn’t know how late it was when he finally went to bed, but when he woke up, the little girl wasn’t there anymore. He could still hear the screaming and Four took a few more deep breaths. It was all imaginary, he reminded himself. And it was time that he grew up.
Everything had changed the day after they’d turned seven. Mom had baked them a birthday cake the night before and Dad had even let them spend the afternoon playing outside instead of sitting in a boring classroom. But everything had changed the next morning.
Dad faced them after breakfast, just like he always did, “Children, proceed to training. We’ll be introducing a new type of training today: working with your powers in a group setting.”
His siblings all looked excited, aside from Ben who looked like he’d rather do anything else.
“So we’re going to start fighting each other with our powers? Can I finally throw knives at Five and see whether they can follow him even when he teleports?” Diego asked excitedly.
Five snorted, “You can’t catch me.”
“I can!”
“Not before I appear behind you and stab you myself!”
Diego scowled, reaching for a left over butter knife, “I can!” He aimed the knife as Five crouched, ready to disappear.
“Children, settle down,” Grace reminded them, plucking the butter knife from Diego’s hand, “Now go, follow your father.”
Five stuck out his tongue at Diego, who narrowed his eyes in return, but the pair moved to follow Dad. Klaus sighed, but turned to follow them as well. He wasn’t really in the mood for training, the screaming had kept him up all of last night and he really, really wanted to go back to bed.
“Number Four, where are you going?” Dad demanded sharply.
Klaus froze, “To training?” All his siblings turned back to stared at him, wondering what he’d managed to do this time to make Dad angry. Was it because he hadn’t done well at math again? Or maybe Dad had figured out that he was still seeing the imaginary people?
“I made myself clear, we’ll be training powers today,” Dad said.
Klaus tried to meet his siblings’ eyes, but they all were looking anywhere but at him, “…Well, maybe they’ll appear today?” he said, lamely.
Dad didn’t look impressed, “With your laziness and lack of ambition, I doubt they will appear at all. In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that you lack powers.”
Klaus stared at him, “I—” he faltered, “What?”
“Speak properly, it’s bad enough with Number Two, I will not have two children unable to form words,” he said.
Klaus shook his head, “Dad, I have powers. We all have powers.”
Reginald raised an eyebrow, “But in seven years, you have not demonstrated the slightest hint that you are special, aside from your inability to sit still and proclivity for yelling. Either your powers are too weak to be noticeable, or more likely, you are just ordinary.”
Klaus just stared at him in confusion. He had powers, he knew that he had to have powers. He couldn’t be ordinary, could he? He shifted uncomfortably, what if he was right? Even Allison, the last of them aside from him, had managed to figure out powers three whole years ago.
“Exactly,” Dad continued after a moment of silence, “I’ll have a new tutor hired so that they can try to catch you up to the academic level your siblings have reached.”
“But what about training?”
Dad’s eyes flashed, “Are you even listening to me, Number Four? I have no use for an ordinary person on missions. You will only act as a burden on your other siblings. It’ll be a better use of everyone’s time if you put effort towards academics, like other ordinary children do.”
Klaus just stared, his mind spinning. He didn’t say a word as his siblings followed their father out of the dining room, even as Ben tried his best to send him a reassuring grin. He was ordinary, nothing special. The secret worry that had been festering in him ever since Allison had managed to rumour someone for the first time had come true.
Ben picked at his scab, “It’s really not fun at all,” he complained, “You aren’t missing much.”
Klaus strained to hear him, practically staring directly at his lips to try to figure out the words he was saying. The screaming was loud today that he could barely hear Ben over the sounds of it, “Sure I’m not.”
Ben jolted, “Jeez, Klaus. Inside voice, you’re yelling.”
Klaus tried his best to judge how much he needed to drop his voice, “Whoops?”
Ben chuckled, so Klaus must have gotten it right, “It’s fine. Do you remember when he were little and you just screamed all the time?”
Klaus shrugged, “Did I ever stop?”
Ben laughed and Klaus smiled a little.
Klaus didn’t pay any attention to the people in his room. There were three of them: two older women as well as a middle aged guy. Both women looked alright, but there was a not very subtle ax in the head of the guy. Gross, he decided, but he made sure not to look at them.
They were just his imagination, like Dad used to tell him. They weren’t real, just fake people his brain made up. They tried to talk to him, but he ignored them, just like he’d done for ages. Sure they looked scary and their shrieking wasn’t any fun to listen to, but they weren’t real.
He sighed and looked at the homework on his desk. Everyone else had been carted off for training, leaving him all alone with a pile of worksheets to get through.
Dinner was, like always, a tense affair. Klaus tried to keep his head down, focus on his supper and ignore the tension in the room. The screaming in the background was louder than usual and it certainly helped to distract him from the little arguments One and Two kept exchanging, as he picked at his chicken.
Suddenly, he felt someone elbow him sharply, “Ow!” Klaus turned to glare at Ben, who was sitting next to him, “What was that for?”
Ben rolled his eyes and Klaus tried to read his lips, but he couldn’t make out anything over the pair of twins standing on either side of him, yelling into his ear. Ben frowned, obviously waiting for an answer.
“Sorry, what?” Klaus tried his best to regulate his voice — he really couldn’t hear anything over the screams.
Based on how fast Ben flinched away, Klaus was willing to bet that he hadn’t gotten quieter enough. Ben said something again, but Klaus still couldn’t hear a word.
“A little louder?” He asked, dropping his voice into a whisper.
Ben looked confused, “I said — and with — before Diego.”
Without thinking, Klaus scowled and faced one of the twins, “Can you shut up!”
The twin looked taken aback and Klaus noticed there was a distinct and total lack of noise. Minus the screaming in the background of course, that was a given, but no one else was talking.
Ben was frowning at him, “Sorry?”
Klaus frowned, “What for?” It was much better without that stupid twin yelling — he could hear now.
Five snorted from across the table, “You just told the air to shut up, even though you were literally yelling just a second ago.”
Uh oh. Klaus could feel all his siblings staring at him, but there was only one person in the room who he was worried about.
Dad was staring at him, his eyes cold, “Who were you talking to, Number Four?”
“No one,” he said quickly, “Just the, uh, air.”
Dad narrowed his eyes, “Number Three?”
Allison sighed, “Dad…”
“Now.”
“Sorry,” she murmured, “I heard a rumour that Klaus admitted who he was talking to.”
Her words forced his mouth open, “The twins,” he answered, immediately. His siblings looked confused.
Ben looked worried, “What twins?”
Klaus swallowed nervously. Dad raised an eyebrow, clearly telling him to confess or else he’d make Allison rumour it out of him. He bit his lip, if there was one thing he wanted to make sure his siblings didn’t know about him, it was his weird imaginary people that never went after. But he didn’t exactly have much of a choice, did he. So Klaus sighed, “The ones standing behind me.”
“Is he joking or something?” Luther loudly whispered to Allison.
Klaus flushed as his siblings began eyeing him.
“There’s no one there,” Vanya told him, looking a little amused, “Is he crazy?”
Dad did not look nearly so amused, “Number Four, you’ll be joining me in my study immediately.”
Klaus groaned, avoiding the eyes of his siblings. The twins in the corner decided to start screaming as well. Even Ben shifted away from him, not moving his eyes away from his plate. He stood up, following Dad out of the room. This was not going to end well for him.
Two weeks later and Klaus would have given anything to be back to being labelled ordinary. He glared at the vial of pills Dad handed to him: Antipsychotics. Great, now he was officially the insane one of the family. Just great.
“You will take these twice a day,” Dad instructed sternly, “I trust that we will not have a repeat of how you acted at supper two weeks ago?”
“No Sir,” Klaus replied, holding one of the pills up to his face. He sighed, maybe the pills would at least mean that he stopped seeing imagery people — well, visual hallucinations, as Mom described it. Either way, they weren’t real, but it might be nice if the screaming stopped.
So, Klaus popped the pill into his mouth and swallowed it with a healthy chug of water.
He spent the next week the closest he’d ever been to hell. His head felt like it was stuffed with cotton, he didn’t struggle with sitting still for the first time in his life, but he couldn’t muster up the energy to do anything. He just sat around, unmotivated and bored. It was like the world was passing him by and he was stuck in a haze.
Ever since he’d had the episode at dinner, his siblings had been avoiding him. Klaus had been a little hurt at the time, but at least Ben had tried to talk to him like normal. And then he’d started taking the pills and even Ben had begun pulling away from him too. They were supposed to be bros, the only people Dad really, really didn’t like. Klaus was the disappointment and Ben was the reluctant one. And then he started watching as Ben began hanging out with Diego and Five. The worse bit was that he couldn’t even react properly, instead just watching it occur and being stuck in his haze.
The most insulting part was that it didn’t even do anything about the hallucinations. The screaming was still all around him, while he could see the imaginary people everywhere, yelling at him, begging him to listen to them. Klaus had reread the prescription, had googled the chemical itself and had double checked. It was for people suffering from visual and auditory hallucinations, with side effects that included sleepiness and slowness. Well, he’d certainly gotten the side effects but the hallucinations were just as present as they always were.
But he’d managed to hide it for years without anyone noticing. He wasn’t sure exactly what mental illness Dad had tried to diagnose him with, but his money was on schizophrenia. Klaus wasn’t entirely stupid — he googled the medicine and quickly realised that they were only prescribed to people with schizophrenia. Klaus sighed, while he used to be full of energy, it he just felt tired all the time.
Klaus woke up with a shudder, the barest sensation across his arm and shouting in his ear.
“Help me, you’ve got to help me, please!” A woman shouted.
Klaus rubbed the sleep out his eyes, “Can you just fuck off?” While he normally did his best to his ignore the hallucinations, he was tired and pissed off. Yelling at them didn’t often do much, but at least he got some of his anger out.
“My husband — he grabbed a knife, he’s coming to get me, you need to help me!” The woman shrieked.
Klaus eyed the bloody gashes on her chest. It’s a bit late for that he thought, before lying back in his bed and closed his eyes, her yelling and pleading keeping him awake for hours. Stupid hallucinations, it figured that his screwed up brain was conjuring up weird domestic assault murders.
It was only a few weeks later that he looked over at the newspaper Dad had been reading during breakfast that he nearly choked on his oatmeal. The headline read: Husband Found Guilty in Domestic Assault Case. But what got his attention was the photo underneath, labelled: Victim, Mariah Cain. The woman in it looked exactly like the one who’d woken him up all those nights ago.
For a moment, Klaus wondered if maybe, just maybe, it had something to do with it. The next moment, he dismissed the thought entirely. He’d probably seen her photo in a newspaper right after the murder had happened and his screwed up mind had managed to base a hallucination off of her. Still, it sent a shiver up his spine.
“You don’t match the symptoms for schizophrenia,” Five declared as he sat down opposite to Klaus.
Klaus, who’d been busy chewing on a pencil while he tried to work through some dumb English assignment, looked up, “Huh?”
Five narrowed his eyes, staring him down like he was one of the complicated equations he can spend days fixated on, “Never mind, I’ll solve it,” he muttered, before standing up and jumping away in a flash of blue light.
Klaus smiled a little. Five always had little projects that he fixate on for a few days at a time. Normally they were math related, occasionally training related and rarely about anything else. So while he knew that Five was wrong, he wouldn’t stop him from focusing on little old Klaus for a while.
Over the next few days, Five scowled at him and kept jotting things down in his little blue notebook. Since Five was paying attention to him, he caught Vanya on more than one side eyeing him, while none of the others seemed to notice anything. Klaus shrugged it off, it wasn’t doing Five any harm to just entertain his little project, did it? Besides, he’s forget about it soon anyways.
A week later, Five ran away during breakfast, yelling about time travel. Klaus just ate another bite of scrambled eggs. There was a small pit in his stomach that formed when they all began to realise that Five wasn’t coming back. He wondered if he should go hunting through Five’s room for the little blue notebook he’d been writing in all week, before dismissing it. Five’s crackpot theory about him not having schizophrenia was wrong and he already had enough delusions ruining his life without adding another one on voluntarily
“What are you doing in my room?”
Klaus froze, “Uh, hi Allison. Favourite sister, how are you?”
Allison stared at him, looking between the red blouse he was holding and the open closet behind him, “Are you trying on my clothes?”
“No?”
Allison narrowed her eyes, “Are you the one whose been stealing my magazines?”
“Of course not,” he laughed nervously.
Allison crossed her arms, “You’re a bad liar, Klaus.”
“Liar? What?”
“And red isn’t even your colour,” she grabbed the blouse away from him, “It just washes out your complexion. Go with pastels,” she continued, handing him a skirt, “They’ll suit you.”
Klaus blinked, the skirt feeling heavy in his hands, “Thanks?”
“Whatever,” she dismissed it, “They’re too small for me anyways. I’ll never be scrawny enough to fit these old things like I used to be.”
Scrawny? Rude. But whatever — he got a perfectly good skirt out of the whole thing.
Ben tapped him on the shoulder.
Klaus took his headphones off, "Yeah?"
“Are you reading a book?” Ben stared at Klaus, looking completely startled.
Klaus raised an eyebrow, “No, I just love staring at black and white pages for hours on end.”
Ben smiled a little — a good thing, considering that Ben never seemed to smile very often these days. He’d been badly shaken by a mission a few weeks ago, apparently he’d almost died, but Diego had managed to save him just in time. Klaus hadn’t been told the details, but after seeing them return from the lecture they’d received from Dad that same evening, he was happy that he didn’t know. Ever since that night, the team had been on edge. The rest of their siblings seemed to have doubled down on training, while Ben seemed to be doing everything he could to avoid it.
“Since when did you read?” Ben sat down next to him.
Klaus shrugged, “Ouch, did you think I was a idiot?”
Ben shot him a dirty look, “You know what I meant.”
“Of course,” Klaus let a hint of bitterness colour his words, “How could the crazy, hallucinogenic one of the family who barely reached grade four math skills possibly read a book?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“I know,” Klaus replied, cheekily, “I’ve just been able to concentrate a lot better recently.” It was insane how much having the screams in your head yelling a little quieter made it easier to sit down and actually do things. It wasn’t perfect, but paired with his music, he could almost pretend like the screams and the hallucinations weren’t there.
Ben sighed, “Okay. Sorry. I’ll just head off then, leave you with your book.”
Klaus nodded and put his headphones back on. If Ben wanted to ditch him for Diego so badly that he’d avoid the library just because Klaus was in it, that was fine.
Klaus hadn’t thought that one of the worst days of his life could really get worse. His worst fears had already come true, until he developed a new worst fear only a few hours later. He’d heard a few noises behind Ben’s door and worrying that a rat might get to his stuff, he’d opened it.
He stared, half terrified and half horrified, at the figure crouched in Ben’s room. It looked like Ben, it was wearing Ben’s clothes and it was muttering to itself in the same way that Ben always did when he thought he was alone. But Klaus had seen Ben’s coffin being lowered into the ground an hour ago.
He’d stood at the funeral, alongside his other siblings, as Dad gave the worst eulogy of all time. By the end of it, even Vanya had been reduced to tears. It was one of the only times where Dad was mad at everyone but him and Klaus couldn’t stand it. Ben was dead, Dad was mad and his siblings were the ones to blame.
So seeing something that looked exactly like Ben an hour after his corpse was buried, looking very much alive, made Klaus groan, “I am so fucked.” His stupid, screwed up brain wasn’t happy just making him see random, creepy hallucinations, now it had managed to make his dead brother appear. What kind of screwed up was he?
But the hallucination turned towards him and Klaus flinched back.
“Klaus?” It called out, “Can you see me?”
And Klaus turned on his heels, walking straight into his room and closing the door. He grabbed a pill and swallowed it immediately. Maybe he’d forgotten to take one this morning and that was why he was hallucinating his dead brother.
“Number Four,” Dad demanded, “Where do you think you’re going?”
Klaus froze, confused. His siblings were staring at him as well, all wondering what he could have done wrong today, right before the ceremony to erect Ben’s statue. He’d taken his place right between Allison and Vanya, right where he always stood when they were on their way to something important (well, he was really supposed to be between Allison and Five, then Allison and Ben and now Allison and Vanya. He really hoped that he didn’t end up being the last person in line next). Even the hallucination of Ben, standing against the far wall, looked confused. “The ceremony?” He guessed.
Dad tutted, “I thought I had made it clear, Number Four. This is an Umbrella Academy ceremony.”
Klaus blanched. He wasn’t being serious, was he?
“Dad, come on,” Diego said in disbelief, “It’s Ben’s ceremony.”
Dad just sighed, impassively, “He attended the funeral, did he not? This is a public affair, commemorating a fallen member of the Umbrella Academy, of which Number Four does not belong to.”
“D — don’t be like that,” Diego stammered, “Not today. You know how close they were—”
“This is not a negotiation, Number Two,” Dad said sharply.
“But—”
“Stop it, Diego. You heard what Dad said,” Luther interrupted.
Diego clenched his fists, but Allison reacted quickly, laying a hand on his shoulder, “If we don’t leave soon, we’ll be late. Besides, I doubt Klaus wants to stand in the rain and have photos taken of him for hours.”
Diego looked at Klaus helplessly.
Klaus just shook his head, “Fine.” At least Diego had tried.
“Fine?” The hallucination of Ben spoke up, “That’s not fine! Dad can’t do that! Don’t give up, Diego!”
Klaus carefully didn’t look at the hallucination as stepped out of line. Allison squeezed his shoulder and sent him an apologetic smile. Klaus didn’t return it and her expression faltered. He watched as they marched out the door, towards the small hoard of reporters and the tall, shape still covered in a white fabric, concealing it from the world.
He leaned against the windowsill, staring out to the ceremony. Dad took his place at a microphone, with Luther and Diego on one side of him and Allison and Vanya on the other. There was an uncomfortably large gap between Allison and Vanya, the place where Ben normally stood. Vanya took a small step closer to Allison to solve it.
“And then there were four,” Klaus murmured under his breath.
“There’s still five of you left,” The hallucination of Ben was suddenly next to him.
Klaus managed to hide his flinch. He could see the hallucination’s reflection in the glass window, looking just as solid and visible as his own. It was terrifying just how much like Ben he looked.
Dad was speaking into the microphone, probably the beginning of an hour long speech. At least he wasn’t being subjected to that.
“Dad always treated you badly, Klaus. Maybe I should have actually tried to help when I was still breathing,” the hallucination chuckled to itself, “Too late now I guess.”
Klaus just kept staring outside impassively.
The hallucination sighed, “Who am I even talking to? It’s not like anyone can hear me.” The hallucination sounded so similar to the way that Ben used to talk to himself that it sent shivers down Klaus’ spine. “Maybe I’ll go listen to what Dad is saying about me,” he laughed a little again, “Only took my own funeral to actually want to listen to him.”
And with that, the hallucination walked away, literally walking through the door and outside to the ceremony. Klaus sighed as soon as he left — how pathetic did his life have to get for his own hallucinations to ditch him?
Klaus winced when the statue was finally unveiled. Jeez, Dad really didn’t understand subtlety did he? It was gigantic, with a massive stone Ben standing on top of a pedestal and his fist outstretched like his was mid punch. It almost made him laugh. Ben, who preferred standing back and keeping to quiet conversations, forever immortalised as a larger than life statue punching someone.
“Well,” the hallucination of Ben was back by his side, “That statue is shit.”
And Klaus snorted. He didn’t know why it was that little comment that made him break — maybe it was because he’d never heard Ben swear before and it figured that of course, his hallucination of him would swear when the real one never would.
He only realised his mistake a second later when he glanced up and saw Ben staring directly at him. Klaus looked away as fast as he could, dropping his half faded smile immediately, but the damage was already done.
The hallucination stared at him, wide eyed, “You heard me, didn’t you?”
Klaus looked straight ahead and kept walking.
This time, the hallucination followed him, “Klaus! Klaus! You can see me, I know you can see me!”
Klaus shuddered and kept walking. It wasn’t real, he reminded himself. It was just a hallucination that his stupid, screwed up brain had created. He couldn’t dishonour Ben’s memory by feeding a delusion.
And the hallucination ran in front of him, “Klaus, it’s me!” He yelled, “You need to talk to me, I don’t know why you can see me, but I know you can. Stop ignoring me!”
Klaus closed his eyes and kept walking straight, shivering as he felt the strange temperature dip as he walked through his hallucination.
“Klaus?” It begged, “I’m here. Just, please, I need somebody.”
Klaus put his hands up to his ears, the same way he used to do when he was a little kid, Not real, it’s not real, he muttered to himself, repeating the mantra he used to say as he fell asleep.
While the hallucination of Ben used to be content to just wander around and Klaus had only seen him occasionally at mealtimes or glimpsing him around the corridors, he was now a constant at Klaus’ side. Every day, he’d he waving his arms in front of Klaus’ face, talking to him, doing anything he could to get his attention.
So Klaus had turned the music up louder. He kept his headphones in his ears all the time, the volume on full blast. It was loud enough to drown out the hallucination. He religiously took his pills, even once popping three of them in his mouth at once is see if they’d actually help (big fat no). He tried to ignore the hallucination, but it had dug its claws deep into his mind.
Ben started yelling during the night to wake him up, so Klaus started keeping his headphone in his ears while he slept, drifting asleep with the sounds of heavy metal in his ears.
He tried to wear them once to mealtime, but that had only resulted in Dad getting angry and threatening to get rid of them completely if he did not ‘take that infernal noise making machine out of his ears’. So he’d done so. Unfortunately, it meant that the hallucination had taken it upon himself to get a day’s worth of yelling and pleading into three half hour periods. But that had been fine, Klaus had managed mealtimes with screaming hallucinations for his entire life. What wasn’t fine, however, was the crazy things the Ben hallucination began saying.
“I’ve figured it out,” he said one breakfast, “You do have powers, Klaus. You can see me, that’s your power!”
Great. Now his hallucination was using his childhood insecurities against him. That was a low blow, even for his own mind.
The hallucination wasn’t put off, “I’ve got it all worked out. I’m dead and you can still see me, so you must have been able to see dead people your whole life!”
Klaus only stuffed a fork full of scrambled eggs in his mouth.
“And the hallucinations you got, all those imaginary people you see, they’re real, Klaus! That’s why the drugs never worked properly, it’s because they aren’t imaginary!” The hallucination of Ben shouted.
Klaus was really in no mood for his own delusions to be feeding him crazy ideas. Wasn’t paranoia a symptom of schizophrenia? He put his earbuds back in his ear the moment they were excused from the table, turned the music as loud as it could go, finally able to relax as his hallucination finally shut up.
As the months went by, Klaus began noticing that the screams were receding. It was weird, for the first time, they weren’t overwhelming him and his thoughts like they normally did. He could actually think for once, as the screams muted a little. Klaus didn’t question it — why did he care about the hallucinations shutting up? All that mattered is that they were.
He didn’t think much of it for another few weeks. Dad was telling him off more and more often for speaking too loudly he kept having to ask people to repeat themselves, but the hallucinations were finally quieting down.
“Sorry Luther, what?” Klaus yelled as loud as he could, pointing to the ear buds in his ears, “My music is really loud — can you speak up?”
Luther glowered at him, his mouth moving and his arms waving around to emphasise what ever he was saying. Klaus didn’t even bother to try to read his lips — Luther was angry, probably about something he hadn’t managed to hear earlier.
So Klaus just shrugged and shrieked at the top of his lungs, “Really sorry, Luther. What was that?” He didn’t bother waiting for Luther’s reply, instead closing his eyes and listening to the soothing sounds of Metallica. It lasted all of ten minutes, right when he was feeling like he could fall asleep until he felt a hard poke to his ribs.
“—Even listening?” Allison was yelling now, too, “Klaus?”
“Sorry?” he looked up, rubbing his side.
Allison rolled her eyes and plucked his headphones out of his ears, “Are you deaf or something? We were talking about what to get Pogo for his birthday.”
They had? Shit. “Well, talk louder,” he snarked, grabbing them back from her, “Say something interesting, see if that helps.”
“Hey!” Luther interrupted, snatching the headphones away from him, “Maybe listen to her instead of getting mad when you were the one ignoring her in the first place.”
Klaus rolled his eyes, “Whatever.” He wasn’t in the mood for this, wasn’t in the mood to see Allison and Luther pseudo cuddling on the couch while he was stuck watching the hallucination of Ben roll his eyes at the pair of them like he always would back when he was alive.
Luther narrowed his eyes and closed his fist around the earbuds, crushing them in his grip.
“You ass!” Klaus yelled, kicking Luther’s shin, “You goddam asshole!”
Luther just raised an eyebrow, “Maybe you should listen to people when they talk to you.”
“You dick!” Klaus shouted. Luther smiled at him, before walking away. Klaus seethed — that shitty iPod has cost him a year’s worth of allowance and dickhead Luther had destroyed it for fun. He stormed away from the living room, hearing Ben’s hallucination chuckling behind him.
It wasn’t until a month later that he started wondering why he wasn’t being woken up in the middle of then night anymore by Ben’s shouting. He smiled the first time he had a good nights sleep without his headphones — since Luther hadn’t exactly offered to give him a new pair, he was stuck saving up for a few months at least.
And then four weeks later without waking up, he began wondering if something had changed. And then he realised that it wasn’t just the auditory hallucinations he heard in his sleep that were getting quieter. Everything was getting quieter.
Klaus eyes went wide. That didn’t make any sense. The whole damaged his hearing thing? Yeah, that part made sense. He’d been listening non-stop to music at the highest volume during all hours of the day, really he probably should have seen that one coming. But the yelling in his ear and the voices he hallucinated were just that: hallucinations. Aka, all in his head. So why had they gotten quieter as well? Especially since he hadn’t even realised that he’d been damaging his hearing, there was no way that his own mind had started lowering the volume of his imaginary delusions months ago.
The only reason that everything had gotten quieter was if everything was real. Klaus balked. None of it could be real, he knew that for a fact. He was the crazy sibling with the hallucinations who’d spent his whole life listening to imaginary people. He fidgeted, pressing his nails into his palms. They couldn’t be real, right?
Klaus felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise. He could feel the softest sensation, like a wave of cool wind, brushing against him. He froze. He got those sensations all the time, the tiniest hint that something else was standing behind him in an empty room. Klaus doesn’t dare look behind him, clenching his hands tighter and just hoping it would vanish and he could dismiss it as nothing like he used to do.
He’d never used to care about the sensations or the hallucinations, but that was before he’d realised that it might all be real. That all the shrivelled, burnt, bloody hallucinations that stared him down while he slept could be real. The yelling, the mindless screaming, that everything he heard and saw for his entire life was really there.
Seeing Ben was worse than the others. At least the others were strangers, just creeps that looked like extras from a horror movie. Even if they were actual ghosts, they were just the same creepy figured he’d seen his whole life. If he tried, he could pretend that they were just hallucinations and that nothing had changed. But with Ben, there was no pretending.
He’d gotten steadily quieter along with the other ghosts. His occasional comments had gotten nastier. His body would flash — most of the time, he looked like Ben as he knew him, but if Klaus looked at him out of the the corner of his eye, he’d see the mutilated body that Ben had left behind.
While he’d never seen the Horror in action, he’d heard enough accounts from his siblings to put the pieces together. He’d even seen a few ghosts that Ben had ripped apart and that had given him more than enough reason to never want to witness it. No one had told him what Ben had looked like after he’d been killed. Klaus hadn’t asked. Now, however, he knew.
His face, at least, looked somewhat the same, if he ignored how his head would teeter dangerously close to falling off, as well as the unnatural angel his neck seemed to be permanently fixed at. But the further down he looked, the worse it got. One of his arms hung limp, only attached by the barest strip of flesh. His chest had a hole in it, his organs on full display, the gooey and black mess that was left of them, at least. On of his feet was missing, leaving a bloody stump in its place, so he was always leaning on a wall or standing on an angle. Across his skin, tight bruises wrapped themselves around various limbs, so dark they were almost black. Dad had told them that Ben had been ripped apart by the Horror itself. Klaus believed him.
But if he looked directly at him instead of peering out of the corner of his eye, Ben would look like everyday, normal Ben again. Klaus didn’t like it either way. No human should look like that. Even compared to the deformed murder victims he’d see on a regular basis, it set something off in him that made him puke his guts out for hours afterwards. At least when Ben had been nothing more than a hallucination, he could have imagined him being somewhere better. Now, he had no such delusions.
Klaus chucked the last few belongings he owned into Five’s old schoolbag. He’d destroyed his own years ago with wear and tear, as well as one disastrous attempt at designing a jacket after he’d watched some Project Runway with Allison. Five probably wouldn’t mind — its not like he’d be able to even find out.
Diego and Luther’s argument greeted him as he slunk down the stairs. Since Allison had left a few weeks ago, Luther’s bad mood had been felt by everyone and Diego had taken it as a personal affront. Leaving wasn’t a hard choice — living with the dead screaming into his ear was one thing, dealing with both the living and the dead doing that? Nope, he was out.
Vanya cocked her head in his direction. She was sitting on the bottom step, the same way they used to do when they’d been little. Klaus tried to smile. She didn’t buy it.
“Hey, Van.”
“You’re leaving too?”
Klaus shrugged, step siding her, “What can I say? Allison inspired me.”
Vanya laid her head against the banister, letting her long hair drag on the step. She looked lazily towards the closed door behind which Luther and Diego were still fighting and bit her lip, “I guess I’ll be standing next to Diego in lineups from now on.”
Klaus looked over to the door, flinching as he heard the sound of something shattering in the distance. He’d noticed over the years, first with Five and then Ben, that he and Vanya had slowly creeped together because suddenly Four and Seven were the closest numbers to each other. He’d never thought about how Vanya saw it — number Seven slowly creeping towards the front of the line, “By the sounds of this argument, you’ll be next to Luther soon.”
He meant it as a joke, but he can see the way that Vanya tensed up, scrunched in a little more into herself. Before he knew what he was doing, Klaus said, “You can come, you know. If you want.” He didn’t know why he offered. It wasn’t like they were friends. But he guessed they were linked. She’d lost Five and then he’d lost Ben. Maybe they could help each other out instead, “Jump out of the line completely.”
“I don’t want to be your babysitter,” she replied, her voice cold.
Klaus was taken a little aback at her tone. Classic Vanya was back. So he shrugged, “Thanks, sis,” he replied, dryly, “Stay safe.” He turned on his heels and made his way towards the front door.
Ben’s ghost still hasn’t left him. Klaus can feel his eyes on his back as he wonders around, glimpses him around the city, often standing in the shadows, a dark look in his eyes. It’s a look he’s seen many times in the faces of many ghosts. It’s never a good sign, so Klaus just keeps walking and hopes that Ben might stop following him.
Alcohol slows him down. Klaus made that little discovery when he got drunk at a seedy bar, eight shots in and the world spinning ever so slightly around him. He didn’t let himself get drunk for a while — the first and only time he’d tried while on the anti-psychotics was scarring enough to keep him far, far away from anything stronger than orange juice for years. He collapses in a cool alley, resting on the cement as he feels like he’s floating away.
“Help me! Help me!”
He could hear Ben yelling, but his voice sounded quiet, as if he’d been yelling from a mile away. Klaus managed to open his eyes, the world above him churning. Ben hadn’t spoken in ages — a notable improvement since he’d left the Umbrella Academy.
“Klaus? Are you there? Please!”
Klaus dragged himself behind a garbage can. It was hardly a cover, but with the darkness and the alley walls on either side of him, it would have to do. He couldn’t see Ben, but his unmistakable shadow crosses the alleyway. Klaus eyed the way his neck was at the wrong angle, how one of his legs ended in a stump and how one of her arms was only attached by a few centimetres. He curled in closer to himself.
“Klaus!” Soon enough, Ben’s yells turned into screams, merging in with the constant yells of the other ghosts.
Klaus stayed hidden as he heard Ben get further and further away.
Who’d have known the the USA so flat? Klaus watched as the scenery zipped past him, his forehead against the cool glass. The train had left New York probably a few hours ago, but the drugs have screwed with his perception of time. It felt like it had been days even though his train ticket said he only left three hours ago. It didn’t really matter very much — as long as he was out of New York, he didn’t really care.
He’d taken a ton of pills earlier that morning, whatever he could grab that he was marginally sure wouldn’t kill him. He’d needed to shake off Ben — or at least, shake off the ghost that used to be Ben and drugs were the best way to do that. It was a stupid hope, that maybe he’d be able to sneak away and leave Ben behind. It’s never worked before — Ben had always managed to reappear after a week or so, but this time he was going to the opposite side of the country.
So Klaus fell asleep for the remainder of the journey, floating in and out of consciousness, finally feeling free of everything that had surrounded him his entire life.
“Holy shit, Klaus?”
Klaus didn’t turn around. Los Angeles was just as full of ghosts as New York had been and he didn’t want to encourage them to get any closer to him.
“Klaus!”
He walked a little faster.
“I heard a rumour that you turned around,” Allison’s clear voice rang out.
He felt himself pivot, his body freezing like he had no control over it as Allison came out from the crowd. She looked a little older and a little more confident, with her hair dyed and her makeup screaming ‘Hollywood star’. She was wearing the kind of outfit they’d spent hours ogling in magazines together.
“Allison…hey?” Klaus threw on a smile, “Nice ring.”
She smiled back, waving her ring finger, which had a expensive looking engagement ring on it, looking a little unsure, “Thanks, I’m getting married a few months. I had no idea you were in L.A. When did you get here?”
“Yesterday,” he lied. Technically, he’d arrived in Los Angeles two years ago, before heading over to Washington for a while, mucking around in Hawaii for a bit longer before finally returning.
“What are you doing here?” She continued.
Klaus shrugged, “Little bit of this, little bit of that.” Or, hiding from his ghost brother that he had just ditched in Hawaii, “Or just visiting my celebrity sister?”
Allison laughed — just as he was hoping, “Let’s catch up,” she offered, “It’s been years since I’ve seen anyone else from home.”
Klaus wishes he could say the same, but he nods, “As long as you’re paying.” It’s not like he and Allison had been close growing up and from what he’d heard about her through talk shows and magazines, she didn’t like talking about the Umbrella Academy at all. Maybe she was being nice to him because he was the ordinary one.
Allison laughs off his joke with a small wink, before leading him to one of her favourite spots. He watches in amazement as the waiter tells her that their food is on the house. Allison only smiles prettily when he said that, before signing a few autographs and then whispering under her breath, “See that? I don’t even need to rumour anyone anymore.”
He laughed as if she’d said some funny joke, all the while eyeing the ghost standing behind her with hair curlers and a massive burn that looked suspiciously like an iron. He’d definitely got shafted on the whole ‘powers’ thing, hadn’t he? She got free food, he got free nightmares.
“What’s that?” Dave murmured, threading his fingers though Klaus’ hand and grazing the corner of a little piece of paper.
“Nothing,” Klaus dismissed, moving to push it into his pocket.
But Dave had been too quick, “Oh, a secret? You in the mood for twenty one questions, babe?”
“Nope,” Klaus replied, popping the p, shoving it deeper into his pockets, “Not really.”
Then, he realised that Dave’s gaze had dropped to the ground. Klaus followed it, seeing the piece of paper he’d been trying to hide away face up on the ugly carpet. He moved dish and though his pockets and — fuck, there was a massive hole in it.
“What the hell?” Dave bent over and picked it up, “A plane ticket?”
“Shh!” Klaus put a hand over his mouth, “Shh!” There was no way that he wouldn’t hear.
Dave slapped his hand away, “It’s for tomorrow. To — why the hell would you want to go to Chicago?”
Shit, shit. He was totally screwed. There goes six hundred dollars down the drain. “Never mind,” Klaus grabbed the ticket away from him.
“Don’t never mind me,” Dave protested, “We’ve been dating for almost seven moths. I think that you should tell me if you’re planning on visiting Chicago.”
“It’s just a business trip,” Klaus replied, his voice shaking ever so slightly. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Ben’s deformed ghost, little grunts and pained mutterings making their way out of him. He’d appeared a little over a week ago and Klaus bought his plane ticket the same day.
“…You’re a bartender.”
Why the hell was he such a bad liar, “I have family there.”
Dave stepped back, crossing his arms, “What’s going on?” All the playfulness had left his voice, “A business trip, now a family visit. And why didn’t you want me to know?”
Klaus slumped onto the bed, his head spinning. In the eight months he’d lived there, it had easily been some of the best times of his entire life. It had sucked at first, of course. The climate was too hot, the people too rude and the accents too strong. But then he’d met Dave and everything had gotten better. And now he was about to lose him. So Klaus sighed — he owed him this, didn’t he? “I’m moving,” he muttered.
“Moving?”
“Yeah.”
“As in permanently relocating to Chicago tomorrow? Forever?”
“…Yep.”
“And you didn’t tell me this until today?”
“Yeah.”
“The fuck?” Dave’s voice quivered, “Are — are you breaking up me with?”
“No! No!” Klaus shook his head.
“But why…”
“It’s complicated,” Klaus tried to explain, “It’s — I just can’t explain. But I love you.”
“Then stay,” Dave begged.
“I can’t.”
Dave took a deep breath, before he kneeled down, “Then marry me,” Dave asked, “Marry me if that’ll convince you to stay.”
Klaus gasped, staring at Dave. He’d been dreaming about this for months, dismissing it as nothing more than a stupid dream. But here it was, happening. Klaus eyed Ben’s ghost out of the corner of his eye, before nodding and pulling Dave up with a kiss, “I will! I will!”
“And you won’t leave?”
“Never,” Klaus promised, “I’m here for good.” He took the plane ticket and ripped it in half.
He made it three weeks before he snuck out of bed, threw a few belongings into his suitcase and hailed a taxi to the nearest bus depot. He bought a bunch of tequila bottles and drowned it in a few minutes, before throwing them to the side. Ben’s ghost appeared shortly after, yelling and screaming, black goo falling out of his organs, but Klaus managed to get on the bus right before Ben could catch him.
He watched Dallas disappear behind him. As texts lit up his phone, some from his job, others from his coworkers and half a dozen from Dave, Klaus threw the whole thing out of the window. He fiddled with the shitty ring Dave had gotten him from a dollar store that was originally supposed to be a place holder until they got a real one. For a moment, he wondered whether he ought to take it off, but he couldn’t and instead just left it on his finger, rubbing it absentminded as the bus drove further and further west.
After a while, Ben just stopped showing up. Klaus hadn’t noticed it at first, too preoccupied with making a scarce living to care about why it had been two years without moving. Normally, Ben had a six month schedule after he made a cross country move — nine months when he moved from Texas to Alaska, but that had been far too cold for him to dare repeat that one.
The other ghosts were still around, generally being annoying and bothering him. He still hated the way that the hair on the back of his neck stood up when they were around or how he still had to jam the headphones into his ears at night to even hope at getting some sleep.
He’d felt a tug of guilt as soon as he’d realised that maybe Ben had finally given up. Guilty for driving his ghost brother to that point, but more for taking two years to notice. He tried to shake it off, it wasn’t like Ben was really Ben anymore, not with the way he screeched at all time, his wailing fading into the rest of the ghosts or his now permanently mangled appearance.
So Klaus tried to move on. He could still a weight in his stomach, but he decided to just ignore it. Ben was dead and people were supposed to mourn and move on. His other siblings had a head start on him, but he’d catch up eventually, he was sure.
Klaus stared at the drink in his hands. He could feel bass beating through him as the music pounded through the club, people brushing past him and the smoke filled air around him. He’d dragged himself out of bed that morning — spending his birthday in a cheap motel room without air conditioning and a few too many suspicious stains wasn’t really his idea of a fun birthday. Besides, he liked crowded clubs — the loud music drowned out everyone else, included the ghosts and the dim lighting meant that it was hard to see whether someone had thick makeup on of had a bloody wound.
He took the shot, making a face as the vodka hit the back of his throat. Klaus set the glass back on the counter and pulled out some cash to pay for it.
Then, he felt a hand on his arm, “Don’t worry, I got this,” someone next to him spoke, “Two more shots, thanks. One for me and the other for Mr. Tall, dark and handsome over here.”
Klaus smiled a little — maybe this birthday would turn around. But he showed the stranger the ring of his finger, “Sorry. I’m taken.” It might have been years since he’d ditched Dave back in Dallas, but he still hadn’t taken it off.
The stranger sighed, “Damn. Sorry.”
“No need,” Klaus grinned, “It’s my birthday, today. So, this can just be a birthday gift.”
The stranger frowned, “Why are you drinking in a shitty bar on your birthday? Shouldn’t the person who gave you that ring be with you?”
“…It’s complicated right now.”
“Ah. That’s fair,” The stranger nodded, “Cheers to relationships that don’t make any sense.”
Klaus grinned and gave him a cheers, “What about you, what are you doing here?”
The man rolled his eyes, “Just a shit day at work. I’m a reporter, right and I had to cover the most boring story.”
“Really?” Wow, this was going to be a fun conversation.
“Yeah. Do you remember that weird super hero school that was famous like, ten years ago? The Umbrella Academy?”
Klaus chocked, nearly throwing up the shot he’d just taken, “Umbrella Academy?”
“Yeah, them. Well, guess who got assigned to cover the funeral for one of them?”
Klaus felt himself tense — was Allison okay? Had Diego kicked the bucket? He scanned the club. Ben’s ghost still hadn’t appeared, but he hadn’t noticed any other sibling haunting him,
“Which one?”
“That old man. The billionaire, Reginald Hargreeves.”
And Klaus let out a laugh, “Him? Thank god.”
“Cold, dude,” The reporter frowned, “It’s bad luck to talk bad of the dead.”
“He’s my Dad, I’m allowed.”
The reporter stared at him, as if he was wondering whether or not to believe him, “Shit. Really?”
“We weren’t close,” Klaus assured him, “Trust me — this is the best birthday present I could have gotten.”
Then again, if Dad started haunting him like Ben did, Klaus doubted he’d make it another year. What would be worse? Dad as a dead, screaming ghost with no mind left or Dad as the jerky asshole he’d known him as before.
“Another shot?” Klaus asked the bartender. Dad being a jerky asshole would probably be the best solution. At least he’d have the smallest satisfaction from Dad actually realising he’d been wrong — that he’d never been ordinary.
Last time someone at the Academy had died, Klaus had spent the ceremony stuck inside while crowds mourned. This time, he was stuck in the rain, with a measly little umbrella in his hands and shivering slightly in the cool, autumn air. Ben’s statue still stood there, tall and proud with a fist in the air like he was about to punch someone.
Ben’s ghost stood right in front of it, his decaying and grotesque form staring at Klaus. It had been years since he’d actually talked, but seeing him like that was almost worst.
He felt an elbow jolt him and he looked around to see Allison grinning at his hurt expression, “Oh come on, it’s not like you ever paid attention if I just spoke to you.”
Klaus nodded, carefully looking away from Ben’s ghost. He smiled at Allison, “Morning, favourite sister.”
Allison laughed, pointedly gesturing towards Vanya, who had definitely heard what he just said, “Whoa, inside voice, Klaus.”
“It’s not like Vanya will care,” Klaus pointed out — Allison cared about popularity. Vanya cared about nothing at all. Besides, he was a bad liar.
Allison rolled her eyes, “It’s just about being polite and-- what is that?” She grabbed his hand, smoothing a finger over his ring, “Whose the lucky man?”
Klaus snatched it back.
Allison looked a little hurt, “Never mind then.”
“No, no, it’s fine. Sorry,” Klaus sighed.
“It’s complicated, right?” Allison murmured, rubbing her own ring finger, “I get complicated.”
Klaus could remember the big, expensive engagement ring she’d been wearing when he saw her in Los Angeles. It was gone, with only a faint tan line remaining, “Yeah. Complicated.”
Klaus tried his best to fall asleep. Since Vanya knocked down the wall between their rooms and Five has returned from not being dead apparently, there were only two free bedrooms in the house: Dad’s and Ben’s. He almost chose Ben’s, but Luther caught him on the way and Klaus couldn’t lie himself out of that one, so he just tucked his tail and pretended that he just got lost.
Ben’s room was surprisingly clean. A pile of clean clothes sat on his desk and there’s a book on it as well, with a bookmark stuck halfway through. There were dozens of posters on the wall with positive messages like: Life get’s better! There’s a pot of gold at the end of every rainbow!
He sighed and sat on the bed. There’s a flask in his coat that he brought for just this reason. Klaus drank it all, until Ben’s shadow that he can see standing in the doorway, blurs a little.
But he can’t fall asleep. Staring at the positive posters that Ben has taped to the ceiling, he just can’t will himself to go to bed. Maybe this was a bad idea — surely, he had enough money for a hotel room for the night? It was two in the morning anyways, maybe he could just go for a walk for a few hours and then drink a literal ton of coffee when the sun came up.
He climbed out of bed, mindfully avoiding Ben’s ghost. He must have sobered up, based on his pounding head and dry tongue. Klaus glances out the window — he felt like a teenager again, sneaking out of the house.
Behind him, he could see a glimpse of Ben moving with him. Klaus sighed — he’d already drunk his flask, there was no way to get Ben off his trail and alcohol stores tended to close at midnight at the latest.
Klaus groaned, as another cold burst of wind crept up on him. He looked back in the room, his gaze settling on the book sitting on Ben’s desk. Klaus hesitated, looking between the window and the book, before he makes up his mind.
Grabbing the book, Klaus sat on the bed, very conscious of the slight breeze he can feel as Ben approached him. He shivers as goosebumps creep on him. Not real, not real, he repeated his old mantra.
Klaus took the bookmark out, “As he walked through the tall grass towards the ruins of the castle, Lucas tightened his grip on his sword…” he continued reading, carefully keeping his eyes on the page and not on Ben’s ghost. As he kept going, he relaxed a little, feeling his eyes get a little more tired, until he was practically lying against the wall, struggling to keep himself awake.
And then he felt it. A cold, hard and very human hand, grasping his shoulder. Nothing like the slight breezes he’d felt before. Klaus gasped, shooting away from the hand and hitting his back against the wall. Ben’s ghost stood there, his organs oozing out of his body, his hand in the air. It was glowing the slightest shade of blue. The reflection shone in Ben’s eyes, in fact, his whole body was shimmering slightly.
Ben turned to look at Klaus, his eyes still empty and dark.
Klaus ran away, bursting through the hallways and not stopping until he had ran far, far away from the house.
Klaus just stared when Five announced that the Apocalypse was coming. First the kid appeared out of thin air, claiming to be from the future — a real shit show apparently, then four days later and he was suddenly announcing that the Apocalypse is coming.
“Yo— going to visit—, right?” Allison asked.
Klaus tried to listen, but the screams that were always so loud at the Academy haven’t gotten quieter in the years since he’s been gone, “Sorry?”
Luther rolled his eyes, “She— if— husband.”
He’s piecing the pieces together — are they asking if he’s going to visit his husband? When he feels a cold, moist thing wrapping itself about his arm. Klaus shrieked, jumping forward, pivoting to stare at what had touched him. Ben’s ghost stands there, the Horror’s slimy tentacles reaching out towards him. He steps backwards, hitting the bar on the other side of him.
“Klaus?” Five claps a few times to get his attention, “What— you doing?”
Klaus can’t do anything aside from shake. He’s seen what those tentacles have done to others, he can see what they did to Ben — he doesn’t want the same thing to happen to him.
“He’s crazy, remember?” Vanya kindly points out, “Klaus— pills?”
One of the tentacles reaches towards him, wrapping itself around his wrist so tightly that Klaus is sure his wrist is going to break.
“Hey!” Five jumps in front of him, landing in between Ben and Klaus. The tentacle looses feeling immediately, leaving behind goosebumps and the faintest sensation of wind, “Did you take those pills?”
Klaus nodded, still staring at the Horror. Ben has the faintest smile on his face.
“Maybe Mom should up the dosage?” Allison mutters.
“A psychotic hospital?” Vanya buts in.
Five scowls, his eyes narrowing, “He never did fit the diagnosis.”
Klaus couldn’t take it anymore. He turns on his heels and finds the closest bar he can and drowns shot after shot. He’d move countries after this, go somewhere so remote it would take years for Ben to track him down.
He hightailed it to the nearest bar and ordered himself ten shots. The bartender stared at him like he’s crazy, but Klaus didn't care one bit. Once his throat is burning, he looked around the bar but there was no Ben in sight. There was however, a Diego standing in the doorway.
Klaus groaned — when would the alcohol hit him? He’d managed to build up an annoying large tolerance over the years.
“Should you really be drinking right now?” Diego demanded, crossing his arms and standing next to him, “It might fuck with the medication.”
“I’m off the medication,” Klaus spat back, finally feeling a warmth spreading throughout his body.
“Jesus, really?” Diego sighed, “No wonder you’re going off the deep end. Come on, let’s go home.”
“No,” Klaus couldn’t stop his voice from shaking just a bit, “Not there.”
“Are you having an episode right now? Should I call the hospital?”
“I — it’s not an episode,” Klaus replied, “I’m not mentally ill. Never was.”
“…Okay, sure you aren’t. Let’s just get you home and then Mom can get a look at you…” Diego threw on a nice, fake little smile.
“No,” Klaus repeated, “I’m not going home.”
“Let’s go,” Diego rolled his eyes, clearly out of patience and grabbed Klaus’ wrist.
Klaus yelped in pain, practically yanking his arm away and cradling it against his chest. He yanked his sleeve up, his eyes going wide as he stared at the dark bruise wrapped around his wrist. It looked exactly like the bruises on Ben’s ghost. Dark, with perfectly formed circles in it. Tentacles.
“What was that?” Diego demanded, peering at it, “Did someone hurt you?”
Klaus shook his head. Ben wasn’t supposed to be able to do that. He could dismiss a few more substantial grips, but not an entire bruise. And if Diego saw it too, it was clearly very, very real.
Diego looked at it even closer, “That looks just like when Ben would….” He trailed off, “But that’s impossible.” He crouched down closer to Klaus’ eye level, “Please tell me you got into a fight with an octopus.”
Klaus snorted, the alcohol burning slightly, “Do you remember when we were little,” his words were slurring slightly, but he pressed on, “And I’d talk to people that didn’t exist.”
“Hallucinations, you mean,” Diego corrected him, “Where are you going with this?”
“They were ghosts,” his voice is wavering softly, “Dead people. And only I could see them.”
“That’s crazy,” Diego forced out a laugh, as if this whole that was a some joke, “Come on, Klaus. Think rationally. You’re schizophrenic, they’re hallucinations. All you’ve done is convince yourself that your schizophrenia is just another hallucination.”
“Then why do I have this?” Klaus thrusted his sleeve towards Diego, “We both know the only person in the world who could have done this.”
“Ben’s dead,” Diego stared at Klaus’ bruise, “Holy shit. Ben — Ben did this to you?
“Ghosts aren’t really people. They just scream.”
Diego orders himself a few shots as well, after that, his eyes never leaving Klaus’ bruise for very long.
Allison touches his shoulder and sits next to him, “So, was that Ben?”
Out of everyone, she was taking the whole ‘Klaus hasn’t been hallucinating’ thing the best. They’d all met in a coffee shop, far away from the Academy. Klaus hoped that Ben wouldn’t have enough time to track him down. Even with Diego’s support, no one had believed him until Klaus showed the bruise, “Yeah.”
She shivered, “It doesn’t seem like something he’d do.”
“Nope.”
“Are all the ghosts like him?”
Klaus hesitates. He can still remember the years of Ben pleading with him, the begging that slowly turned into non sensical rants, before the screaming really begun. But if Allison knew, she’d hate him. Hell, he hated himself. So Klaus nods, “Yeah. They’re all like that. Just…screaming.”
Allison sniffs, “I was the one that told Mom to get that stupid engraving for the statue. May the darkness within you find peace in the light” She tilts her head onto his shoulder, her body shuddering against him, “I think Ben killed himself.”
Klaus looked at her. As they got older, Ben pulled away. Klaus had been sure that Ben was hanging out with Diego and Vanya more, but now that he thought about it, he didn’t really remember Ben hanging out with anyone much. And back when he was convinced that Ben was just a hallucination. How he pleaded and begged for Klaus to help him, while Klaus had just ignored him and pretended not to notice.
Allison put her head against his shoulder, “I hoped he’d gone somewhere better.” She brushed the bruise on his wrist, wincing at it.
Klaus had had enough hangovers to recognise the signs easily enough. His head was pounding and he felt tired and achy, but something felt off. It felt more like someone had pounded him over the head with a bottle rather than his own drinking. Klaus opened his eyes and suddenly, it all became clear.
His hands and feet were tied down and right across from him, he could see a bloody crow bar.
“Hey, good afternoon,” a cheerful guy with a weird bear mask greeted him.
“Ugh,” Klaus groaned. Ghosts were getting weirder and weirder everyday, “Who? What?”
“Number Four,” A sharp voice cut across, “Glad you’re finally awake.”
Klaus groaned, “You’re the ones after Five, right?”
The dog masked one growled slightly — had he touched a nerve? “Not anymore.”
The bear masked one shook his head in agreement, “They didn’t warn us about half the stuff he was able to do and then they dock our pay. Is that fair?”
“No?”
“Exactly.”
“Moving on!” The dog masked one said, “We have a new mission. And we need you for it, Number Four.”
“Well, you got the wrong sibling,” Klaus chuckled, “You grabbed the ordinary one. Nice job.”
The bear masked one shrugged, “So? Why would that matter?”
Klaus faltered, “Uh, because you shove have grabbed Vanya? Or Allison? Or Five, oh wait, you failed, right?”
“Shut up,” The dog masked one snapped, “Listen, Four. The instructors were very simple. All we need to do is cause you some pain.”
“Pain?”
“You heard me.”
Shit. That wasn’t good then.
“What is wrong with this guy?” Hazel groaned, “This is ridiculous.”
Cha Cha glared at Klaus, “Who drinks when he’s getting water boarded?”
Klaus shrugged, “It was refreshing.”
“Asshole,” Cha Cha muttered, “Come on, lets talk in the bathroom.”
Klaus watched them go, relaxing slightly in the chair. He’d been in the same hotel room for what felt like days, hungry, tired and not in a good mood. Still waiting for his siblings to come for him, though he was beginning to doubt that that would even happen. Worse, Hazel and Cha Cha had no shortage of annoyed ghosts following them around, so he had to listen to the lovely screams and wails as he got water boarded.
And then, he noticed a familiar ghost in the corner of the room. Ben’s ghost, slowly emerging from the wall, his empty eyes fixed on Klaus.
“Hey!” Klaus yelled, “Hey! Some help?”
No movement from the bathroom. Klaus watched as Ben and his tentacles got closer, as he tried shuffle his chair away, “Get away from me!” One of the tentacles began reaching out and Klaus leaned back in the chair, tipping it over and crashing on the ground.
“Keep it quiet over there!” Hazel yelled.
“Help me!” Klaus begged, “I’ll do anything, help me!”
Cha Cha stuck her head out, staring at him bewildered, “He just fell off his chair. Whatever.”
“No! Get me out of here!” Klaus pleaded, “You need to let me out!”
Hazel took a step out of the bathroom, “Delayed reaction maybe? Whatever we did, it’s working now.”
Klaus grimaced as he felt one of Ben’s slimy tentacles brush across his face. He shrieked and a blue light flashed for just a second. Ben’s form was lit in the blue, as well as about twenty other ghosts who’d accumulated in the room.
“What was that?” Hazel demanded, as the light receded, “Did you see that?”
“I…” Cha Cha seemed at a lost, “What?”
“Let me out!” Klaus begged, “Please! Help me!” Ben was getting closer and closer, another tentacle was reaching out to grant his leg. He yelled, as another blue light emitted from him, bathing the entire room in blue.
“He’s supposed to be ordinary!” Cha Cha yelled, “The hell is this?”
“Who cares? He’s clearly not!” Hazel replied, “Holy shit, is that Zoya Popova?”
Klaus looked away for a moment and watched as the twenty ghosts who murmured and hissed Cha Cha and Hazel’s names turned on them. Hazel and Cha Cha try to fight them, but they were already dead. There was only so much they can do. Their fight was over in seconds and Klaus watched as new ghosts formed, Cha Cha and Hazel rising from their old bodies.
“Klaus? Klaus!” Diego yelled, throwing the hotel room door open. His siblings are all following him, but Klaus is slightly preoccupied by the tentacles crawling all over his body.
“Ben?” Vanya whispered.
Ben’s ghost turns slightly towards them, giving Klaus just enough time to back away into a corner. But his distraction only lasts for a moment, before he’s moving towards Klaus again.
“Control your powers, Klaus!” Five screamed, struggling to be heard over the screams, “There are ghosts all over the city, you need to stop them before they destroy everything.”
But Klaus could only focus on Ben and the tentacles. They wrapped themselves around his legs and he could feel his bones crack, “Help!” He shouted, helplessly. He knew that Vanya was doing her best to fight Ben off, but the rest were busy with the other twenty ghosts rapidly multiplying around them.
“They can’t die,” Luther yelled, “We can’t do anything!”
“Klaus, focus!” Allison commanded, “You can stop this!”
But he couldn’t. Because Ben has been coming after him for years and this time, there was no getting away from him. His empty eyes stared straight into Klaus’. Notice me, talk to me, he seemed to chant.
“There’s one thing that might work!” Five yelled, “We go back in time.”
“To before Dad’s death?” Vanya asked.
“Before Ben’s,” Five corrected, “Any earlier and it will be for nothing. But if Ben doesn’t die, we can control him and stop him from ending up like this.”
Klaus moaned in pain as Ben twisted towards him, his organs spilling out and his head flapping to the side as he got closer and closer. He barely noticed the warmth of Five’s hand on his and then a second later everything is blue.
Klaus didn’t stop screaming. The others didn’t either, not until Five stomped his feet and told them that if they didn’t stop, Mom would come check on them. It’s only then that Klaus realised something is very different. He’s younger, probably thirteen years old. So are the rest, aside from Five who looks practically the same as he did before.
And even more, by his feet laid Ben, curled up on himself. He was alive, warm and visible. No head flapping around, no arm almost torn off or missing leg. He was just Ben, looking like Klaus had always remembered him. Just like what he looked like in the statue.
Ben took a shuddering breath and opened his eyes. Everyone stared at Ben, waiting for him to talk or something. Instead, he curled up into a ball and began rocking himself back and forth.
“Ben?” Luther approached him, cautiously, “You alright?”
Ben doesn’t respond.
“What’s wrong with him?” Vanya asked, her voice is softer than he’s ever heard it before, “He’s just shaking. Why won’t he stop?”
Klaus rubbed his arm — his tentacle bruise was gone, “He’s been like that for years. Just screaming and that sort of thing.”
“Years?” Diego echoed, “But…shouldn’t he be better now that he’s alive again?”
Klaus shook his head. Ben stared at him for just a second and it confirmed everything. Ben’s eyes were still empty. He might be living and breathing, but he was dead inside.
“Well, we can fix it, can’t we?” Allison bit her lip, looking less sure than she ever had before, “Help him, stop him from dying and, you know, make him Ben again.”
Everyone else nodded and smiled. Klaus just couldn’t look away from Ben’s empty eyes.
They can’t fix it, no matter how much they try. Time travel is thrown on that table a dozen of times as the years go by, but its so unstable and risky that Five wasn’t sure if he’d be able to do it at all, much less successfully. Allison rumoured Ben hundreds of times, changing the wording and doing whatever she could to make him sane again.
They managed to hide it from Dad for about twenty minutes, but it’s too late and too hard to hide. They all stammered out a lie as to why he’s like this. Five ended up claiming that he tried to jump with Ben, only for Ben to end up shaking. Five disappeared for a week, only to come back covered in sunburns, bruises and animal bites and he fell asleep for four days straight. Klaus couldn't sleep very well when he can hear Five moaning in pain as he slept, with Ben’s occasional wails on the other side of the wall.
Klaus managed to keep the ghosts hidden for about half a year, before he screwed up and well — he'd never been a very good liar, had he? And suddenly, he was in the Umbrella Academy, while Ben stayed in a medically induced coma, strapped to his own bed. He fiddled with his wrist, still red from the black umbrella tattoo he’d been given only a day earlier. He could remember being little, hearing the word schizophrenic for the first time and wishing that he could be ordinary instead of insane. Now, he was part of the Umbrella Academy while Ben was the crazy one. It didn’t feel very good.
Five didn’t leave this time. It was kind of nice. He’s still there at the breakfast table and he didn’t move until the meal is finished. Vanya, while still terrifying, relaxed a little as the years went by. Luther even backed away from their father, while Diego managed to run into Eudora Patch nearly a decade too early. The family knitted itself together, while Ben laid in a coma, the Horror at rest.
The ghosts still followed Klaus around. He stole stuff from Dad and managed to buy some expensive sound proof headphones. Loud enough to cancel out the ghosts and annoying siblings, but quiet enough that he won’t deafen himself this time around.
Eudora announced her pregnancy at Allison’s wedding, and Klaus is pretty sure he’d never seen his sister so angry in his entire life. Later that day, he watched Diego and Eudora perform the chicken dance during a slow song in front of the entire wedding, while Allison smirked. Dave, his hand wrapped around Klaus’ back just watched with wide eyes.
While his siblings move away from New York, Klaus stayed. He moved away from the Umbrella Academy itself, sure, but when Luther is finally ready to leave the house — some weird drive to find his biological mother, apparently, Klaus and Dave move into the Academy. Reginald is a nuisance only for about a week, before he died. Klaus had a sneaking suspicion that Five had something to do with it, but he claimed ignorance.
Ben was still lying in his childhood bed. Klaus, Mom and Dave took good care of him, often reading his favourite books out loud or playing the music he loved. Occasionally, they’d bring him out of the medically induced coma, but within hours the Horror went crazy and Ben was back to groaning and shaking.
When Luther died in another twenty years, Klaus made sure to talk to his ghost. Luther was surprisingly upbeat about his own death, though a little annoyed that he was the first to go. When Klaus looked at him out of the corner of his eye, he could still see the gunshot wound in his forehead, so Klaus tried his best to look him in the eye. Luther decided to pass on about a week later and Klaus was thankful.
Klaus wasn’t too surprised that he was next to go. He knew Diego is relieved. After Luther’s death, they were all a little worried that their order in life would be their order in death and Diego wanted to watch his first grandchild grow up. He paid Ben one last visit and all their siblings gathered as the life support was finally taken away. Without Klaus there to make his spirit dangerous, Ben could finally have the chance to die properly and be at rest permanently. Within minutes, his breathing slowed and then he was gone.
Ben’s ghost stood in the corner of the room, staring directly at Klaus. He’s older this time, not deformed, but his eyes are still empty and he can see the tentacles moving under his skin. So he crawled into bed, feeling Dave’s old wrinkled hand in his own and falls asleep hours later, never waking up again.
Notes:
Explanations: Hey all, so I’m just including this super long explanations bit to provide some clarity — feel free to skip it.
So why this chapter was so late is because writing this one was really hard. The whole “Klaus thinks he is normal and just has a mental illness” thing had been done a ton of times and by really talented people that pulled it off way better than I could. So I kept getting stuck around 3/5 of the way through, because it felt like I was just telling a worse version of the same story. It was only after I took a break for a few days and reconsidered everything that I realised that the only way this take would work would be for the whole Ben thing to happen. I’d written like a good few pages of a happier version where Klaus and Ben teamed up and became like ghost detectives (???) but that really felt disingenuous and kind of dumb in context with the rest of the chapters. Also, there was literally no where to go with that, like all the conflict got wrapped up with a nice little bow by the time they were like 18. So instead there’s this. Three weeks late, but its fine. Whose counting?
Just to address a few others things that people pointed out in the last few chapters. I’m trying to leave a lot of stuff open ended since the pov character only knows their own perspective of things. So there might be hints or reasons as to why a character did something, but more often than not its left to your own opinions. For example, why Reginald hid their various powers is kind of hinted at in a lot of the chapters, but its not really openly stated because the characters didn’t know they even had powers for the vast majority of the chapter. If you have questions about anything in specific and want that clarification, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.
On another note, this chapter is once again stupidly long — I think it hit around 14500 words this time? I’m not normally a long form writer, but I think it fits this story. Props to everyone who can make it though such a long chapter though.
Finishing up this ridiculously long thing, thanks for reading! Hopefully the next chapter won’t as long to finish. I love hearing the opinions and thoughts people had about my take on the characters and their chapters, so feel free to leave a comment.
Pages Navigation
Anxious_Introvert on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 02:44AM UTC
Comment Actions
escape_thefuture on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 02:56AM UTC
Last Edited Wed 05 Aug 2020 02:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
Anemone_Minus on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 03:01AM UTC
Comment Actions
Dr.strange (Guest) on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 03:10AM UTC
Comment Actions
GlitterFairy_21225 on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 03:41AM UTC
Comment Actions
tonkshamsandwich on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 07:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
Marstars232 on Chapter 1 Wed 05 Aug 2020 04:02PM UTC
Comment Actions
GunpowderGelatin on Chapter 1 Fri 07 Aug 2020 01:14AM UTC
Comment Actions
tereziserkets on Chapter 1 Sun 09 Aug 2020 02:05AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 1 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:40PM UTC
Comment Actions
no1fandom_no1life on Chapter 1 Mon 10 Aug 2020 03:09AM UTC
Comment Actions
noodlerdoodler on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 01:22AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:51PM UTC
Comment Actions
The avengers (Guest) on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 01:51AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:50PM UTC
Comment Actions
Nucci on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 03:58AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
tonkshamsandwich on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 07:37AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
KTapering on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 07:52AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:47PM UTC
Comment Actions
LoveDamonSalvatore on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 02:51PM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:46PM UTC
Comment Actions
Angie_Is_Alive on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 11:03PM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:45PM UTC
Comment Actions
yogurtluver12 on Chapter 2 Sat 08 Aug 2020 11:21PM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:42PM UTC
Comment Actions
GunpowderGelatin on Chapter 2 Mon 10 Aug 2020 02:08AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:40PM UTC
Comment Actions
no1fandom_no1life on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 02:55AM UTC
Comment Actions
sharpiedoodler on Chapter 2 Tue 11 Aug 2020 06:36PM UTC
Comment Actions
Pages Navigation