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Where the hell was she?
One minute she’s driving with Sissy and Harlan, then she’s being questioned, interrogated, and drugged by the FBI, then she was getting shocked half to death, and now she’s here.
Wherever here is.
The building. House. Something told her she was in a house. Her house? No. It was too big to be her house. Did she have a house? Vanya couldn’t remember having a house, but something smaller .
Her head hurt.
She was in a room, a very small room. With barely enough space for a bed and a dresser. Who could live like this? Was this, did this used to be her room?
Vanya walked out of the small bedroom, and as she walked into the hallway there was a flash of blue light in the corner of her eye. Didn’t one of her brothers do that? The younger one. With the uniform. Five! When she tried to find him, expecting to see Five near where the blue light had come from, and turned up nothing.
Her eyes must’ve just been playing tricks on her.
Or perhaps Five had seen her, and left. He must be mad at her. She’s very late for the meeting he’d wanted her for, the way for their family to leave Dallas, and go home. He should be angry at her. Vanya forced herself to push away the thoughts of her siblings, of Five, and she walked through the hall until her feet lead her to some stairs.
And as she approached them, she could hear something downstairs, it sounded like someone talking. But, she couldn’t recognize the voice. Her foot barely touched the first step of the stairs before there was another flash of blue. Two this time, in quick succession. And when Vanya looked around again, hoping to see the source, to see Five, to see anyone, her search, again, turned up nothing.
Once again, shaking her head, as if that would be enough to deter any more thoughts of her siblings, or of Five, Vanya resumed her descent down the stairs. As she reached the bottom of the rather large staircase, with no further signs of flashes of blue light, Vanya instead wandered into what must’ve been their dining room, following the sounds of talking. The voice still unrecognizable to her.
“Number Seven,” that voice, she knew, Reginald Hargreeves, their adoptive father, “you’re late. Take your seat.” She’d barely crossed the threshold into the room with her father, mother, and siblings, and she was already feeling inadequate, despised, and out of place, in her own home. Vanya, who evidently was also called Number Seven, swiftly and silently moved into the only empty chair at the rather large table meant for eight.
As she settled into her seat, their mother placed a plate with a yellowed brain on it in front of her. Vanya’s eyes flicked up from the brain on her plate to look at the others’ plates, only to find similar brains on theirs. Their father told them, commanded them, to eat as if they were dogs and not people. And while Vanya looked on in confusion, the rest of her siblings dug into their brains, undeterred from the disgusting ‘meal’ and ate without a word.
Again, Reginald hissed out, “Number Seven, eat your dinner.” In an instant, Vanya felt the weight of eight pairs of eyes set on her. Reginald, Mom, Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Five, and Ben? (Why was Ben an adult now? He should still be a kid) They were all watching her, waiting for her to do as she was told. But, she didn’t want to.
“I’m not hungry.” Vanya said, pushing the plate in front of her away. For a moment, she thought she wouldn’t have to eat the brain, her siblings would stop staring at her, Reginald would stop glaring at her.
“Eat your dinner Number Seven.” Reginald ordered.
Vanya looked between her six siblings, hoping for one to be understanding, on her side. Instead, Luther, Diego, and Allison looked annoyed. Klaus and, who she believed to be, Ben seemed to be looking at her with pity and worry. And Five, the one she’d felt closest and safest with, he just looked angry.
That’s not right.
The look on Five’s face, and it being directed at her, it felt wrong . He hadn’t been that angry with her when she’d argued with him, the many, many times , or when she ignored him and his wishes returning to the farm.
All of, most of, the looks on her siblings' faces felt wrong. At first, Vanya felt like she deserved their annoyance, pity, and anger as if her mere presence was enough to upset her siblings. But as she looked between the looks, Vanya grew annoyed herself, something deep inside her yelling that she didn’t deserve their anger or pity or annoyance. It screamed that she should be able to exist in a room with her siblings without them hating her mere presence. It screeched inside her that she deserves to be treated like a person, rather than the dirt on their shoes.
Where had this anger come from?
“Vanya,” Five said, there was a crack in his glare, he’d softened for a moment, looking more like the Five she knew. But the crack sealed back up in an instant, and he glared at her again as he continued, “why don’t you ever listen?” What? “It’s all your fault Vanya.” Stop it Five. “You’re just ordinary , and insignificant.” No.
“You’re lying.” Vanya hissed, keeping her gaze firmly on the table in front of her. The glint of the knife near her right hand pulling her attention.
The silverware in Five’s hands clattered to the table. Everyone else utterly still. “I’m a liar, Vanya?” Five asked.
Vanya told him, keeping her eyes on the knife rather than Five’s face, “I didn’t say you were a liar Five. I said you were lying. There’s a difference.” There something annoyingly familiar about the knife. Something nagging in her mind about the knife, the table, Five, and an argument.
There was a flash of something, a memory? Five stabbing the table with a knife, and he was arguing with…. with…. who Five had been arguing with was lost to her. But he hadn’t been looking at her.
“Would you stop it Vanya?” Allison was yelling at her now, looking more annoyed than she had before, “ Some of us are trying to eat our dinner without making a spectacle out of it.” When Vanya pulled her eyes from her knife to her sister, she then noticed the table’s centerpiece garland and pineapple? (When had that gotten there?) had been floating a foot off the table. And came down with a clatter.
Once it dropped, Allison’s attention, along with everyone else’s including Five’s, returned to their brains. And that annoyed Vanya more than anything.
It felt like anger filled her every being. She doesn’t deserve to be ignored or berated all the time by her own family. Rather than try to push down her anger like she at first wanted to, rather she felt herself minisculely shake in her fury. The air around her shook. Then spread to the table, then the room, the house, the world. There were several voices yelling at her, about her, ordering her around, ordering her to stop. They were swimming and fighting each other on the way to her ears. It was too much. Too loud. And it kept building, and building, and building, until it exploded.
Literally.
The pineapple that had appeared on the table exploded as it had at the last family dinner Vanya had been to with the Hargreeves. And everything silenced for a moment. That is until Vanya’s eyes looked back to Allison, who’s throat was cut and bleeding out. Allison with Vanya in a cabin, strong winds blowing around them, Allison nearly rumoring Vanya, Vanya slashing with her bow to top her sister, Allison bleeding out, Vanya getting dragged out by….. by….. by Leonard. Vanya practically tumbled out of her chair, clattering to the floor in shock.
“Number Seven!” Reginald hissed, standing from his chair while her siblings sat in their chairs watching her again, “You will stop this insolent behavior immediately and follow orders! You will sit in your chair, silently, eat your dinner, and take your medication as instructed.” Vanya ignored their father and stayed on the floor, curling into a ball, holding her head.
Her head was hurting again. Worse now. Her eyes were screwed shut.
The floodgates were opening.
Memories began trickling in one by one, rainy days reading with Five and Ben , Klaus braiding her hair with shaking hands (only when Allison was busy) , then a stream of other memories, recent memories, Reginald’s funeral , Five falling from the sky , waking up locked away in the cage in the basement , and in an instant a rush of memories, from her birth, somehow, to their fucked up childhood, and into an extraordinarily lonely adulthood.
“Vanya?” A voice, another one she could recognize, but it’s been a long time since she’d heard it, “Vanya, can you hear me?” it sounded a lot like, “It’s Ben, your brother.” Ben.
When Vanya opened her eyes, she was alone. The table was fixed, reset. The room was cleaned of her mess. The brains were gone. “Ben?” Vanya called into the emptiness, sincerely hoping she hadn’t completely lost it and her mind was playing tricks on her, “Ben?”
She wandered back towards the stairs, hoping for some sign of her possibly-alive-now dead brother. A silhouette standing in front of the large windows, “Ben?”
“Vanya!” The silhouette, Ben, said, before practically running down the stairs and crashing into Vanya with a hug. Without a second thought, Vanya hugged her brother back. After a few minutes of hugging, Ben pulled away, taking a hold of Vanya’s shoulders as he asked, “Are you okay?”
She gave him a quick nod and asked, “How do we get out of here?” Vanya looked around the foyer, hoping to find some new exit sign, and finding nothing. When she looked back at Ben, he was slowly becoming covered in blue, with a sad smile on his face, “What’s happening Ben?”
“It’s okay.” Ben told her, “I came to help you after all. Everything’s okay.”
“How, how can you say that? It’s, it’s not okay! Ben!” Vanya cried, “There, there has to be a way that, that, that we can both leave.”
Ben tried, again, to convince her that it was okay, “Vanya, it’s okay. This is how it’s supposed to happen.”
(If Vanya had been paying attention to Ben, rather than scrunching her eyes closed again and trying to force herself and Ben out of whatever hellscape she’d gotten them stuck in, she would’ve seen that the blue flecks of light coming off Ben, had reversed their course. Ben was no longer dying for a second time, but rather, coming back to life.)
Vanya gasped back into the real world, still bound to the chair in the FBI’s interrogation room. The bonds on her wrists and ankles had been undone, somehow, and she ripped the helmet they’d shoved onto her head off, before pushing out of her chair and finding Diego, Allison, and Klaus at the end of the hallway. Once she made sure they were okay, and they made sure she was okay, the four of them walked out of the FBI building together, intending to meet back at Elliot’s with Luther and Five. But before they did, there was a figure waiting for them just outside the building.
“Ben?” Diego asked, while Allison, Klaus, and Vanya each had surprised looks on their faces, but for somewhat different reasons. Allison was the first to launch herself into a hug with Ben, Klaus joining next, and Diego shortly after, while Vanya watched from a bit away. For the second Vanya stopped paying attention (Thoughts not thinking about what Klaus had wondered about Five before. They weren’t!) someone’s hand pulled her into their little group hug. After another long hug, none of them wanting to pull away first, they wandered back to their base, and when Luther and Five saw Ben, alive, there was another group hug of the seven Hargreeves siblings.
Five, who’d returned with his fixed equation for time travel, had them stand in a circle, Luther, Allison, Vanya, Five, Diego, Ben, and Klaus, and built a ring of blue power around them, opening a wormhole type of portal, and when they crossed through the other side, together, they were home.
They were home, whole, and safe again.
Then they met The Sparrow Academy.