Chapter Text
Veronica had always regretted giving her child up. She didn’t feel guilt, she understand at the time there was no way she could have a child, especially not one she had no knowledge would even exist that morning. No, Veronica wasn’t guilty but she still regretted it.
She wished she could take the child. She’d gotten herself through college and suddenly all she wanted was the baby. She’d always told herself that as soon as she could look after the baby she’d take him back.
She hadn’t been able to, the man who’d adopted him had left false details. Veronica had no idea where her baby was.
She was distraught.
Then, around 13 years after her baby was born, superheroes came onto the scene.
Veronica recognised the man and for a second was filled with rage. He’d taken her son and raised him to fight crimes at an age where all he should care about was middle school.
She didn’t even know which one was hers. Sure, she could rule out three of the siblings, after all they weren’t the right gender or race for her baby. But that still left three boys. She assumed the tall one with blond hair wasn’t hers, but even that was a guess and not a definite and even then she still had two boys that could be her baby.
Veronica had started a plea. She’d started contacting news agencies, independent journalists, anyone she could get to listen.
The search for her baby and the demand for his return started to circulate. Two months after she started her campaign, a protest of over two hundred people made the news (most of whom were mothers who had lost their child before and didn’t want others going through that) demanding that the Umbrella Academy was disbanded and the children not being forced to fight crime.
Nothing came of it.
Eight months after the campaign had begun it ended, with no action being taken. It didn’t help that Number Five, one of the possible children that could have been Veronica’s, was missing.
People had protested a lot after that was announced but quickly lost interest.
Veronica accepted the fact that she’d likely never see her baby again.
However, nearly 30 years after that fateful day in 1989 the news was released that Sir Reginald Hargreeves was dead. Veronica wasted very little time, packing up her bags and buying the first available ticket almost immediately. She would have gotten there earlier but she’d had to explain to her work where she was going and use her personal days (which had taken a lot of arguing with her boss to get him to accept it).
Finally Veronica reached the house of the Umbrella Academy, knocking on the front door, part of her was terrified. After all, it’s not like her child knew her. She’d just be some crazy lady, with no real proof that she was even related to him.
She was no one to him.
Suddenly she wanted to turn around, run away, never visit this place ever again. She hadn’t felt this sick, this afraid since JD killed Heather, and then Kurt and Ram and then nearly the entire school and then himself.
And wasn’t that fucked up?
That she could even compare this situation to that one but it was the truth.
However, she faced that one head on, she can do the same with this one. So she did. She stood there at the door, waiting for someone to answer.
By the time she decided there probably wasn’t anyone home and she should come back another time, the door swung open.
In front of her were five people. A crazy tall and huge man who definitely didn’t get that way naturally, a movie star she’d seen on the tv so many times she honestly forgot she was an Umbrella kid first, a Latino man dressed in leather with knives strapped to his chest.
And then the two who she’d always considered most likely to be her son. The boy who went missing who was apparently back but looked identical to that day nearly 17 years ago, and a man.
The man wore an army green coloured vest with no shirt and leather pants, with dog tags hanging on his skinny neck. He looked sweaty and sick. Veronica felt herself begin to worry for him, even if he wasn’t her son he looked truly miserable.
“Um, hi, I’m sorry to interrupt, I know you have no clue who I am but my name is-“
“Veronica Sawyer.”
The man had cut her off. And as she looked into his eyes, she was certain.
She’d found her son.