Chapter Text
NUMBER EIGHT DIDN'T WANT TO BE A HERO. She wholly rejected the mission Reginald Hargreeves proclaimed for them; not because she had different morals, not because she feared becoming a child soldier, but simply because it was a guarantee that there would never be anyone who would protect them.
All doubts start with a single question, and the question that haunts her was simple enough and yet irrefutable until this day:
If they were expected to save the world, who would be left to save them?
Because alongside the curse of being extraordinary, the 43 Children did not have the luxury and comfort of what it was like to be a normal person. Because alongside being part of the Umbrella Academy, the renowned superheroes were expected to save everyone but themselves.
A hero is many things, and Eight Hargreeves knows that being self-serving isn’t one of them. They’re stripped of their desires and driven by sheer duty.
It’s why, even in fiction, heroes were never destined for a true happy ending.
The hero is always bound to pay the price; the one forced to live with the consequences the world has to offer.
These thoughts are the same thoughts that gnawed on 12-year-old Eight Hargreeves as she grew up; the same thoughts that even Number Five had been incapable of disputing.
It is the same question that eventually prompts Eight to become that person. She takes it upon herself to protect her family from the world, even if it means waging a war and having it go up in flames.
Even if it means having to play the villain.
The Iliad tells the story of the Trojan War, and along with it, the tale of Achilles and Patroclus. It was a piece of literature written by Homer that the nine members of the academy were all required to learn, in the original Greek no less. Number Five was the only one capable of reciting it word per word, but that didn’t mean Eight didn’t try to understand it.
She always sought meaning in the simple little things that questioning the content in a book was second nature at this point.
And in the end, she couldn’t help but question the same teachings of the epic; can’t help but notice the futility in its tale.
“Wasn’t Achilles the antithesis of strength?”
In the haven of their secret fort, that dusty old closet no one but Five had ever bothered to venture, Number Eight hugged her knees as she stared at the thick book laying on the floor and the notes scattered about.
Five looked up from the copy of his book, only to hear her ramble absentmindedly.
“For coining the title of the strongest warrior that ever lived, it was one thing to die by an arrow to his heel, but to fail to save his beloved… It means he was never as strong as he was made out to be.”
“Are you talking about Briseis?” He asked with furrowed eyebrows. And yet, he knows this was typical Number Eight behavior, to obsess about the irrelevant details.
“Not her,” Eight smiled when she noticed that they weren’t on the same page, “You didn’t miss it did you?”
“Sorry, I was busy memorizing it in Greek and transcribing it for a certain someone,” he snapped back, as sarcastic as ever, and yet she knew there was a lack of edge to his tone. He had gone through painstaking efforts to help her study after all.
And besides, it was only ever Five who had never given up trying to comprehend the complexity of her thoughts.
“Patroclus was the only one he loved more than life itself. The only one he considered an equal,” Eight pointed out like it were a fact, as if she were speaking beyond the characters of a book. “Achilles went mad when he died... No amount of vengeance will bring back the dead, and everything he did postmortem proved just how futile it was. And yet, he did it anyway and died doing so.”
“He’s a fool,” Five agreed. Nevertheless, he always had a counterargument in store for her. “But he wasn’t entirely weak.”
Eight frowned, raising an eyebrow and daring him to continue.
“Strength and weakness are two sides of the same coin. No one is invincible. It just so happened that strength was his defining characteristic,” he told her simply. “But there are different kinds of strength. What he had in physicality, he lacked elsewhere. Wasn’t that the entire point of his story?”
“Then, what does that make us?” Eight muttered under her breath, and his eyes were drawn to her in realization.
She was alluding to herself, it dawned on him.
“You're far from Achilles,” Number Five snorted. “You’re smarter than him, for one.”
“You think I’m smart?” she teased, attempting to mask her emotions with their usual banter.
“I think you wouldn’t be stupid enough to wage a war that would only get you killed,” he scoffed.
The maiden shrugged, feigning innocence with a warm smile, “You never know, I might prove you wrong.”
“Have you ever?” Five sassed back.
After years of experience, she’d have had plenty of evidence to be able to say that 'Yes, Five. It's why you should listen to me more often,' for she had done so in more than a couple occasions. But back then, they were just twelve. Five was still ruled by his hubris, and Eight was still prone to that self-deprecation. And he had yet to leave.
With a roll of her eyes, the twelve-year-old girl resumed to look through the notes the boy had scribbled along her book. For a moment, she thought that their debate was over. She continued to mull over her thoughts, but she doesn’t say more, knowing better than to start an argument over hypotheticals.
But just as she dwelled on such, Five broke the silence, always knowing what to say to make her feel better before she was even driven down that spiral.
“Achilles' mistake was letting Patroclus go off on his own and shirking off on his duty to fight in the war. You wouldn’t let that happen. You’re too much of a busybody to let the world fend for themselves. You’d fight with us, and you’d give your all to protect us,” the boy said. “You wouldn’t die a meaningless death.”
“Five, you wouldn’t know what it’s like because you’ve always been strong enough to—” she wanted to retort, but he cut her off, blatantly admitting and catching her off guard.
“You don’t have to be Achilles. You have your own strengths…” Five let out an exasperated sigh. “And besides, you really shouldn’t be comparing yourself to fictional characters.”
‘If I were Patroclus,’ he didn’t say out loud, and didn't mean for her to hear. ‘I won't let myself get killed just to have you go insane. In the first place, I’d find a way to stop it.’
“Fine, you’re right,” she smiled wryly, finally conceding, but it was only due to what she overheard from the voice of his mind.
‘Figures,’ Eight thought to herself in return. ‘You’ve always been the braver one between the two of us.’
The real hero.
It was Number Five who never gave up, who found ways— and paved them, if there weren’t any. He did the impossible and managed to do so with sheer will and brilliance. Who would ever dream to catch up to that?
At one point during their early adulthood, Number Eight didn’t really have any hope left to hold onto. She had given up long before she had even left the academy, the moment that Number Six and Number Nine died in vain. Through every twist and turn, she had always found comfort in the fact that death was the end. Number Eight was so damn tired, and at that point she had grown to question whether all this was even worth it.
But she, however, always had faith in him.
That much, she can assure, was true.
After all, although the Umbrella Academy gave Five a lot of grief for running off on his own that day, the real runaway had always been her.
Or so Number Eight believed.
Because while Five was off looking for solutions, Eight had been the one in search of an exit, whether it be an alternate point in time, or the gates of the mortal world itself.
But seeing him in the apocalypse, a few years since then, she knows now that she can’t afford to give up her life, especially when he’s trying twice as hard to ensure they both survive.
THE MOMENT THEY ESCAPE the utopia that they built in their unconscious minds, they break through glass and find themselves in a hall of mirrors adjacent to each other, built of what were once picture frames hanging from familiar walls.
Number Five thinks that perhaps it was a good thing that time worked different in the mind. For one, he was glad he didn’t spend as long as they had in the fantasy realm, otherwise he’d probably lose his mind in the process. It was hard enough leaving as it was.
On another note, although they left at different times, they arrive in this new realm in unison, stuck in their childhood bodies.
It saved him some time, not having to try to look for them all over again.
His siblings were staring at each other as if they hadn't recovered from the aftermath of their last conversation with the Eight from that realm. They had, what he could only assume to be, the same expressions plastered from their faces as he had when he had last spoken to the maiden.
Diego and Allison were still a tad enraged, as evident in the way they both exclaimed in unison. Klaus and Luther looked dumbfounded. Ben and Eliza were silent; brooding. While Vanya, who had left with more fortunate means like he did, only seemed to be relieved to realize that Eight had let them out.
“Eight!” the second and third Hargreeves screamed in both fury and defeat.
Only, everyone simply looked at each other at the realization that the said Hargreeves was not present to hear their voice.
“Where is she?” Diego hissed, frustration evident from the way his eye twitched.
“Eight!” Allison continued to shout until her throat had gone hoarse.
“We were just talking,” Luther muttered dumbly.
“Christ,” Five cursed under his breath. In the first place, he wouldn’t have been racking his brain trying to figure out Eight’s location if he already knew the answer. So he says, with as much patience he can muster, albeit the usual scowl on his face, “Calm down, you idiots. If she weren’t stuck, we wouldn’t be looking in the first place.”
“But…” Klaus pointed out as they looked around in the all familiar place they landed. They’re greeted by familiar blue walls and wooden floors in the room their robot mother usually admired at paintings. “Aren’t we back already?”
“We’re at the academy,” Vanya stated the obvious, turning to Five as if he had the answers, having known that he stayed behind just as she left.
Eliza blinked twice, looking around, before Ben beat her into saying. He runs his hand along one of the mirrors they came from, watching it revert to an old painting. “It’s an illusion… or, is it a memory this time?”
“Right…” Five agrees absentmindedly as the cogs in his mind turned. He put two and two together, recalling Eight’s ominous words, and that cheeky knowing grin.
“You’ll find me where you always do.”
“I…” the boy trailed on, facing the younger twin as he recalled a story of the past, the words of a conversation they shared by Eight’s bedside a handful of decades ago. “I know where she is.”
Eliza’s expression brightens when she realizes what he meant, and puts in words that everyone else would understand, reminding them of their childhood shenanigans.
“Scavenger hunt?”
SHE’S EIGHTEEN WHEN Lila Pitts reminded her of the stakes, of the gamble she took and the price she had to pay. She’s eighteen, when they laid awake in her room at the Temps Commission dormitory, wide awake from the whiplash that was their most recently finished mission.
Number Eight was staring at the ceiling, unable to comprehend how Lila used to wait for the day when she’d officially go on jobs as a member of the Commission.
The Handler had raised the girl into believing that this was her calling, no different from how the children in the Umbrella Academy were carved into the shape of a hero by none other than Reginald Hargreeves.
Witnessing Eight’s recent breakdown, however, sent Lila’s mind reeling. Witnessing Eight get that shrapnel wound and watching her in a hospital bed not so long ago, made Lila Pitts realize that for once she’s terrified for someone else; terrified to lose the one friend she gained in a span of years.
But Eight could be so damn stupid, unable to recognize the value she held for those around her.
And she knows, more than anyone else, what was probably running in her mind right then.
“You…” Lila broke the silence from the other end of the room, lying on the empty bed adjacent to Eight’s. “You don’t actually think you’re going to get out of here, do you? Your contract is pretty intensive, and you’re only racking up more debt by offering to do my mother’s bidding.”
Sometimes, Lila liked to believe that maybe questioning Eight’s life decisions was bound to knock some sense into her.
But then again, it wasn’t like Eight wasn’t self-aware. If anything, the fact that she knew what she was getting into only made it all the more infuriating.
Case in point:
“You’re right,” Eight agreed, nonplussed. She acts as if she hadn’t been bleeding out earlier that day, and it irks Lila to her core. “Now that I think of it, you actually do know me pretty well, huh?”
“Because I’m the only one capable of reading your mind, genius,” Lila scoffed in derision.
“Touché.”
“I can also tell when you’re changing the subject,” Lila huffed irritably, earning a soft laugh from Eight.
The maiden responded, voice soft and solemn, “To be fair, I did say you were right.”
“My point is, if you knew, then why are you doing this to yourself?” Lila hurled a pillow across the room in an attempt to hit her in the face.
Eight dodged in time, capturing the pillow before it landed, though she can’t really blame Lila for her frustration.
It’s unlike Lila, she thought, to be acting so serious, to not have that shit-eating grin on her face, to lose that glint of mischief always present in her eyes. If anything, it only prompts Eight to be honest.
And so she admitted, thinking of the academy as she spoke. “Because I’d rather die trying than die in vain.”
It takes a beat before she adds, shutting her eyes at the memory as she heaved a pained sigh, “Even Five is out there doing everything he can to survive and come back to us… I can’t fail them, Lī.”
“Or you’re just trying to justify your death by saying it's for their sake,” Lila sat up and looked her in the eye with a scowl plastered on her face. “If you weren’t his only way out of that apocalypse, you wouldn’t have any intention to actually come back to them alive, would you?”
“Ah,” Eight murmured. Caught red-handed, she could only smile sheepishly against the accusation. “Can’t they both be true?”
“You’re an idiot.”
“That I am…” Eight conceded. Her voice sounded hollow despite the sincerity in her words, as if she had long decided to throw it all away, and she was simply seeing that decision through. “But if I die for my family, at least I could trick myself into thinking that maybe I’m not that selfish after all.”
“Humans are inherently selfish. It’s how you’re supposed to ensure your survival. You’re just... I don't know, weird!” Lila said as if it was a fact. It’s no wonder her mother always believed there was something she lacked, her voice betrayed her too easily, heavy with emotion when she spoke harshly.
Eight didn’t bother pointing it out, allowing Lila to rant as she wished. After all, there was no point in lying if she could easily be proven wrong the moment the maiden mimicked her telepathic abilities.
“And the fact that you’re still trying to play pretend hero, after all this time?” She seethed. “Fucking infuriating.”
And with her words, Eight is reminded of the days when she was just a kid running around with a mask, masquerading as a hero.
“What can I say?” the eighth Hargreeves laughed mirthlessly at the ironic thought of how she probably took as many lives as she saved. “I was raised to be a hero, not to be a good one.”
“You’re a fucking idiot,” Lila repeated, grumbling in annoyance. It was like arguing with a brick wall.
Eight knew it only proves how concerned she truly was. How much Lila actually cared.
But they’re friends.
She didn’t need to state the obvious, so instead she simply countered back, “That’s the second time you’ve said that. You should come up with better insults, Lī.”
Lila grabbed the pillow from her hands and hit her with the it, for sure this time. But even so, it did manage to elicit something out of her.
“Someday…” Eight broke the silence, as she turned to Lila, because in truth, Number Five aside, there was no one else she trusted more than the maiden. “If I finally find a reason to live for myself, would you help me?”
“Obviously, dumbass!” Lila spat, with full conviction. “You’d do the same for me.”
“Even if it's crazy or stupid?”
“Even then, Eejit.”
“You know, we always did manage to pull off some of the best schemes,” Eight laughs at the thought, reminded of the chaos they unleashed whenever they’re together, and the resulting headache they were always glad to give to Nahshon. She could only wonder about what insane thing they can do next.
Lila hums in agreement, “We should do something big next time.”
“And how big is that exactly?”
‘Enough to leave our mark in this world,’ Lila doesn’t say. Instead, she grins, “Something monumental.”
“More like monumentally stupid,” Eight snorts.
“What can I say? That has you written all over.”
NUMBER EIGHT never thought there would come a day, she’d want to escape the haven she made for herself amidst her childhood, but then, here she was, in a realm manifested by her mind, slamming her fists against the closet door that showed no signs of budging.
The door remains shut, reminiscent of some of the many minds she had transgressed in this lifetime. No matter how much twisted the knob or pounded on the wood, it stood there like a wall made concrete.
Funny how she can't even even breach the doors of her own mind.
Number Eight felt many things, more than she can carry anyway. Often, she suppressed them in the back of her mind. Other times, when she can’t bear to, she runs away and waits it out on her own.
The members of the Umbrella Academy were no different.
Their father had fucked them up so much that they turned into a group of emotionally stunted adults, incapable of processing through such in normal means. They’re so fucked up that even their empath can’t help them.
But that’s fine, or so she thought. Because they weren’t any different from each other.
And yet, they managed to take a glimpse of the skeletons she’d been hiding in her closet anyway.
Having the rest of the Umbrella Academy witness some of her demons, felt as if she were stripped of her will. She feels bare more than she had ever felt before. And she remembers why the others had always been wary of her powers since they were children.
Well, she didn’t like it any more than they did.
She doesn’t understand how they got here in the first place. And she’s not quite certain of the reason why she’s trapped in her mind. In truth, there are a lot of things she’s not aware of, having never tapped on her potential as much as Five had, but she knows for a fact that as the telepath, who was partly responsible for this realm, they wouldn’t be able to leave this realm without her.
It would have been better if she remained stuck in the perfect reality she dreamed of.
Instead, here she was, the person who had always sought freedom, and yet never obtained such, trapped once again.
Just as she felt when Six and Nine died. Just as she felt when she was slaving away at the Temps Commission. Just as she felt in the apocalypse.
Whether it be the misfortune she came across in her life, or the duty and obligation she bore for their so called ‘family,’ Number Eight will forever be trapped.
It was one thing to drag them out of the depths of their shared mind, but it was another to do the same for herself, for it was a matter of belief. And Number Eight never truly believed that she was capable of being saved (most especially, from herself.)
Nonetheless, the other eight members of the Umbrella Academy had tried to do so anyway.
(Unbeknownst to them, The Oracle can only hope they’ll continue to do so in the future.)
Time passes like this, until a familiar voice breaks through the silence, snapping her out of her reverie.
“Eight?”
She knows that voice better than she knows herself, and so, a flicker of hope flutters in her chest, as she called back.
“Five?”
“Stand back.”
His words were but a whisper from the other side of the door. She feels like she’s underwater, unable to tell whether the muffled voices coming from the surface were real or a mere manifestation created by her imagination.
But it was waters like these that Number Five had always dragged her out of.
And just as she thinks so, she watches light envelop the room as the wooden door in front of her was hacked into pieces.
The boy stood at the other side of the door frame, the rest of their family behind him, as he held a Pulaski in his hands, relieved to catch sight of her.
She looks at him, bewildered.
Eight blinks dumbly, but speaks as if it was a normal day out of their extraordinary lives, “Where did you even get an ax?”
“Imagination, or shit... Our powers couldn’t break through the door, but apparently if you think hard enough you can conjure things,” he explained himself rather simply, waving the tool around and ultimately dropping it on the floor in favor of approaching her with free arms.
“I know that… That’s how I opened the gates, but…” Eight muttered. It takes a beat before the notion registers.
Five’s eyes soften as they meet hers, fully aware that in spite of the likely futility, the maiden probably never even tried.
“Huh…” she releases a breath she wasn’t aware she was holding, gazing towards the ground. “You’re right… I didn’t even think of that—” Because she’s only ever desperate to protect them. Who cares about what happens to her?
The line between the shit the universe had to offer and the self-inflicted misery she brought on herself was beginning to blur, and…
It’s scary sometimes —Five refused to admit out loud— how easily she loses sight of herself so long as they were around.
Because the more the mirror breaks, the more fragments there are to reflect every single one of them, and yet there are not enough to help her see herself.
And right at that moment, as the seconds passed with them standing in front of each other, acting as if nothing was amiss, Five wants nothing else but to take Eight in his arms…
But Eliza manages to beat him to it.
“Eightie!”
“Oomph—”
“For fuck’s sake,” he cursed under his breath as the younger twin slipped past him to tackle her sister in a tight embrace.
Eight let out a genuine laugh, choked up and yet full of affection, as she hugged her sister back and looked fondly at everyone else present in the room.
She reaches an arm out for him, and he decides to screw it anyway, allowing her to drag him into their embrace. He holds unto her just as tightly, despite the menace that attached herself to the maiden before he even had the chance too.
To make matters worse, all of their siblings join in eventually, and it takes everything in Five not to groan in exasperation.
He can feel her chest reverberate from soft chuckles as they all squeeze together, to the point it becomes suffocating. Feeling them around him —their family finally complete— makes his chest constrict; makes him think it’s all worth it. Forty-five years stuck in that wasteland be damned, he’d do it all again for his wife, for their family.
But Five can only take so much sap, so in the next few seconds, he takes her hand in his to blink them away. He jumps a good amount of distance away from the others with Eight in tow, earning complaints and whines from the others.
“Booo!”
“Fiiive!”
“Don’t hog her!”
“So much for a group hug.”
“You always know how to ruin the moment.”
“Stop running away from your feelings and let us hug you, you big baby!”
Their groans interspersed with bouts of laughter, for it was during moments like these that despite their respective issues, despite how fucked up their family tended to become, they were all still equally precious to each other. They care, no matter how bad they were at showing it.
“Let’s go home,” the corners of Eight's lips quirk up to form a smile as she squeezed his hand in assurance. And Five thinks that maybe for once, everything is alright.
But there's an intrusive thought blaring at the back of his mind, reminding him of the chilling sensation of the apocalypse.
Bad habits are hard to break.
She tells him she’s living for him nowadays —to be with them— but there’s a lingering doubt weighing on his mind, telling him it's only a matter of time.
He wonders if this was how she felt when she had once called him an Icarus. Wonders if this was what it was like for something not to go according to his plans.
With the way Number Eight fought even herself, with the way he had just caught a glimpse of the deeper truths behind her, there’s an unsettling feeling brewing in his gut as he fears the lengths she would go through for them.
Five knows that at this point, it's beyond obligation.
Number Five lives because it’s natural. It's only human to yearn for survival. He lives because he finds purpose and things to keep his life going. An impossible problem to keep solving. He lives because there was no reason not to, but also because if he doesn’t do what he’s capable of, no one else will.
Number Five lives for their family, that one constant that allowed him to make it through the apocalypse.
But Eight, he knows for sure, only knew how to die for them, because it’s the only thing she believes that she’s capable of doing.
She lives like a dead man walking, as if she would follow them to the depths of hell if something were to happen to them, as if she would die because they did. She holds onto them like a lifeline; so much so that it borderlines on obsession.
She lives only because they live.
So what then when they don’t?
⊹⊱ A HYPOTHESIS ⊰⊹
Number Eight doesn’t have what it takes to be a hero.
She is, undoubtedly, a martyr; the girl will never fail to sacrifice herself for the people she loves. It has been proven time and time again, that Number Eight will not hesitate to throw her life no matter how many times it takes, no matter what the consequences. Even when she is constantly forced to play the role of survivor.
That same loss, however, is all it takes to shatter a person’s world.
In the same way Achilles went mad after the demise of Patroclus, the girl will undoubtedly befall the same fate if such were to happen to her. The moment she loses her beloved, she is bound to lose her way. After all…
It is oh-so-easy to cross the line between reckless and desperate.
A person who has nothing left to lose makes one that will do whatever it takes to get what they want. While some play god, others aren’t far from monsters; for there is no creature more desperate than one on the verge of loss.
(Then again, perhaps the same can be said for him.)
This is why Number Eight does not have what it takes to be a hero.
But that’s fine...
Because the tales of heroes always end in tragedies.
Number Eight will be damned if she let it end the same way for them.