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The girl was sitting on the examining table looking at her bandaged hand.
Her brother had crushed it accidentally when they were separating the children.
Four agents had tried to pull him away and yet it was his sister’s pain that got him to let go in the end.
Thompson had seen her scream and hit around and try to get them to let her go as she was pulled away from her brother who had been too horrified by himself it seemed to defend himself anymore.
Most of the people who came in contact with her, the doctors taking care of her hand, the other agents explaining the situation to her and the CPS agent who registered all of the children had worn noise cancelling headphones so she couldn’t use her powers on them.
Exactly the reason why she was assigned to Agent Thompson.
Gwen Thompson knew that people made dumb jokes about a deaf FBI agent, that she and her position was taken as proof for just how far inclusion programs could take you.
The girl looked up at her now and noticed that Gwen isn’t wearing any protection against her powers.
She opened her mouth.
“That won’t bring you far,” Gwen told her, knowing that the way she spoke might already tell her charge everything she needed to know. “I’m the agent tasked with taking care of you for the time being. I’ll pretend to be your mother. I’ve heard you have a fleeting knowledge of ASL?”
The girl nodded silently.
“You’ll have to study it a little more if we want people to think we’re actually family,” Gwen said.
Now the girl looked up with fiery anger in her eyes. “I don’t want that though,” Gwen read from her lips.
“Well, deciding these things is no longer in your hands,” Gwen told her. “Get ready now. They’re bringing us to our new home soon. You need to be ready.”
They had worked on taking the Umbrella Academy into custody for a long time.
It was obvious for many, many people (people with a lot of power) that Hargreeves hadn’t only taken them, trained them and shaped them into a team of superheroes with the fate of the world in mind but as a sort of protection from having all his crimes and games catch up on him.
The interview idea had been simple yet genius, taking over a news station and pretending to interview the children about their last mission.
It was a solid plan and it worked. Two boys had to be sedated, Number Five to not have him teleport away and Number One the one who ran through the studio trying to find his siblings and in the end breaking his sister’s hand.
The others while angry and scared and lashing out had been easier to overwhelm, as long as agents kept their earplugs in, separated Number Two from any and all objects he could have thrown around and made sure not to upset the monster in Number Six’s stomach too much they were fine.
They were just children after all. Special children, children trained in combat but still children.
In the meantime other agents settled to break into Hargreeves’ mansion.
They found everything they thought they’d find: documents on his experiments with the children, detailed papers on involvement with multiple governments and more, and they found things they hadn’t expected at all: a talking ape, a robot and another child.
Number Seven seemed normal, docile and not dangerous so for the time being she was placed with a foster family until the FBI went through all their collected data while her siblings were placed in homes on the country with individual agents tasked with looking after ant to act as their parents.
Gwen wished there was another deaf agent with a similar complexion to Number Three’s (Allison, her name was Allison and she couldn’t understand why the bureau didn’t at least try calling them by their given names instead of the numbers Hargreeves chose for them) she wasn’t good with children.
Children, she reminded herself as she settled into her new undescriptive room in the small house the two of them would live in until things were less dangerous for the girl, were as much citizens in need of protection as anybody else.
She turned around and saw the girl standing in front of her.
“Did you look at your room, yet?” she asked and signed at the same time. It would be easier if the girl learned she thought.
Allison nodded her head.
“Good,” Gwen said and looked at her charge. “Dinner?”
Allison shook her head. “Not hungry,” she said.
Anytime Allison spoke her lips went and did a little pout expressing the anger towards the agent and Gwen was sure if she could have been able to hear her she’d think of the way she spoke as incredibly bratty.
“Alright,” Gwen said. “We’re not supposed to leave the area for now but you can go in the garden to play or in your room.”
Allison rolled her eyes at the word play and Gwen had to keep herself from smiling. Apparently even pre-teens with superpowers were just pre-teens at the end of the day.
News in the village they had been settled down in travelled slow, not many had heard of a team of children run by a rich man taking out bad guys and the ones who had hear of them didn’t really care. Still they decided it would be best if the girl was homeschooled and they got their groceries delivered for now. The villagers were told that mother and daughter were settling down after some troubled times and Gwen was sure that they were making up their own stories about them and she didn’t mind as long as they didn’t find out the truth and endangered the girl who still had many enemies left. Not that she behaved like it.
In the first night after moving in Gwen woke up to the girl going through her things.
She felt the shift on the ground as the girl walked on tiptoes to her closet and started going through it.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked.
The girl jerked away startled and looked at Gwen with big eyes. Her mouth opened but Gwen didn’t even bother reading the blubbering that came from the kid’s lips.
“You’re supposed to sleep,” Gwen said.
Allison looked at her. The girl’s eyes were red and she looked like she was about to cry but instead she shook her head.
“You’re not my mother and you never will be!” she said finally.
“I’m just here for your protection,” Gwen told her. “For as long as you need that you’ll have to pretend that I am.”
“Where are my siblings? You can’t keep them away from me!”
“I am not doing anything. We decided that this is what’s be best for you.”
“You don’t know what’s best for us!”
“We certainly know it better than some spoiled children and an old man who was involved in quiet a lot of criminal activity.”
Allison shook her head and wiped at her eyes clearly frustrated then to words followed. “Fuck you!” before she ran back to her room.
How was Gwen supposed to deal with this child?
She had no idea how to deal with an unruly teenager who didn’t want her to look after her, nor wanted her help and Allison was right, she wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t anybody’s mother and she had no intention of changing that but a job was a job, mission was a mission.
The week following the removal of the children Allison stayed away from her as much as possible.
After breakfast and receiving her school work for the day she walked back to her room giving her worksheets back filled out. Then she sat in her room doing whatever it is she does until it was time for dinner. She didn’t eat much and Gwen asked herself if she needed to talk with her about that. If there was anything she might have to do about that. She usually went into the garden after that sitting on the swing and starring at the sky until it was time for supper.
Gwen was in over her head, the girl wasn’t adjusting and she didn’t know how to help. She didn’t think she could and so after a week she decided to contact her superiors. Ask for someone else, someone with actual experience with children to take this mission on but before she was done with the greeting Allison walked in.
She had cried again and she was looking at her.
Slowly the girl raised her right hand and started to spell out her name.
G – W – E – N
And then she made a fist the thumb out and rotated it over her chest.
Sorry.
She kept going and Gwen watched her. She wanted to say something interrupt Allison’s on going sorry and tell her she had nothing to apologize for, things were awful she didn’t know what was going on and adults she didn’t know were making decisions for her and an agent who had no idea how to care for a girl her age who had been chosen only because her disability meant the girl couldn’t use her power to manipulate her.
What was happening to them, all of them wasn’t fair, wasn’t right. Gwen knew that.
But what had happened to them before, taken by a rich asshole who wasn’t concerned about them at all hadn’t been fair either.
“Allison,” she said. “I’m sorry too.”
The girl looked at her and for the first time she cried in front of Gwen.
Gwen put her arms around her despite herself and pulled her onto the couch rubbing her back.
She didn’t tell her that it was alright, because it wasn’t and she didn’t tell her that things would be alright.
But for now she could hold her.
Maybe, she thought, that’s all a parent can really do at the end of the day.