Chapter Text
Allison had walked away from Umbrella Academy at the tender age of eighteen. She had with her a rolling luggage with some pants and a singular shirt, one of Diego’s knives, seventy-two dollars and some Tupperware full of pasta that Grace had made her.
Pogo was the one who handed her the call out sheet.
“I believe you will find this of some interest, Miss Allison,” he had murmured to her with that enigmatic twitch of the lips that might have frightened others, but to her it was one of the only safeties she had ever known.
“We’ll be right here if you ever need us, Allison,” Grace had assured her, with a wide smile and eyes that in certain lights, could have been proud and a bit misty. Maybe Allison was an idiot for thinking so, but whenever she thought of the woman who had raised them, she always immortalized Grace in that one moment.
It was how Allison wanted to look when Claire left for college, or to travel the world or win the Nobel prize or whatever it was that her beautiful daughter would choose.
No one else had said goodbye to her before she walked out of the door. She would remember that with bitterness years later, but now she understood that this hadn’t been some masochistic power-move or a sign of malice on the part of her remaining family.
Klaus had been so out of it with drugs he probably hadn’t noticed until she’d been gone a week. Diego had yelled “good riddance!” when she tapped on his door, and she had kicked it hard enough to leave a dent at the bottom. “Good luck out there,” Victor- Vanya, then – had whispered before quickly pivoting on a heel so her back was to Allison and continued to play her violin.
“You disappoint me number three,” dad had sighed, all without looking at her or taking a moment to stop scribbling in his stupid notebook.
“Oh, ok,” Luther had gasped, eyes full of hurt tears. “I- I hope you find what you’re looking for. Will you come visit us sometimes?”
She had said she didn’t know and left.
The call sheet was an acting opportunity. A background role. A waitress at a diner who serves the protagonist coffee and asks him how his day went. She might have eight lines in total. She might not even make it to the final cut.
By the age of eighteen. Allison had seen a woman’s head blown away by a bullet. She had rumored a man into strangling himself at her father’s behest. She had stitched her brother’s oozing wounds quietly. She thought she was ready for the world, and in many ways, she had been.
Allison had always been interested in theatre and the arts. She loved fashion and the freedom of switching into someone else’s body, leaving her dismal existence behind to become someone else. Something else.
She had neither a resume nor a job nor a place to stay. She took the 21-hour greyhound trip from New York to Chicago for the audition. She had smelled terrible; and looked even worse when she quickly tried to brush her teeth with a finger in a bathroom mirror. She’d had purpled rings under her eyes and her hair looked as if a bird had made, then quickly abandoned, a nest in there.
She arrived to the auditions without being invited. She did not speak until her turn came around. She did not act out the monologue she had been practicing on the bus for the past 21 hours. No. The moment she stepped in front of the casting director and his intern, shaking with fear and smelling of garbage and tearful from exhaustion, she had done only one thing.
“I heard a rumor,” she announced. “That you hired me for this role.”
That was how her acting career began.
Years later, after stopping not one, but two fucking Apocalypses of her own family’s damn design, and landing in 2019 with only minor changes, it had seemed only logical to return to her large house in LA and her acting career. But the only thing in LA she wanted was Claire.
The rest of it was… A reminder of that sad, smelly, stupid little girl who had waltzed out of the Academy and abused her powers to start an acting career with only limited credentials.
She’d had a great acting career. She had been a good actress. She had enjoyed the attention and the spotlight and the praise while it lasted, but months spent saving the world tended to shift priorities. She had been a Civil Rights leader in Dallas. She had felt what it really meant to be part of something greater than oneself, to serve and be served by people who believed fiercely in freedom.
It rang in her chest now.
Besides, by the time she returned Patrick had taken a job working as a lawyer in DC. She had two goals. The first, find Claire and raise her in love and passion and tell her everyday about the people who had bled and died so she could be great. The second was to be the person Ray had seen when he looked at her, not an Umbrella Academy hero or a freak or even a perfect angel, but a freedom fighter.
She landed a role in the NAACP as a receptionist at first. It was all her credentials had given her, but her passion and creativity slowly elevated her until she was a community organizer.
She did not realize how much she loved it, how dearly she loved herself when she was doing it, until Claire attended one of her neighborhood townhalls one night and watched Allison give a speech about the importance of speaking up and out.
“Mama,” Claire told her in a low voice on the drive home. “I want… I want to be…” She had frowned, tiny brows pinched in consternation at her grand, great thoughts. “I want to be like you when I grow up!” She finally blurted with an expression of achievement.
Allison didn’t shy away from speaking anymore. It no longer held the taint of what she could do with her powers. But in that moment, the lump in her throat had been too large for her to say a thing.
Claire was four when Allison left for her father’s dumbass funeral. She was six when Allison returned and won partial custody.
She was seven and a half the day Patrick called Allison on a Wednesday.
A freakin’ Wednesday.
Allison shared a distant, wary, partially spiteful relationship with her ex-husband. Upon her return, Patrick had laid into her because he assumed she had abandoned their daughter and her responsibilities for two years.
His words had haunted her for a long time.
“I don’t know why or what the hell you’ve been doing, but you don’t get to leave and come back anytime you want! Claire needs stability!”
Fuck it, he was right, but Allison had laid into him because she hadn’t been in Cancun sipping martinis! She had been lost in time, thanks a whole lot, and had scars to prove it, but he refused to believe a single word of what she said.
They had managed to keep a civil face for Claire’s sake, but Patrick still eyed her as if she were a caged lion with a mysteriously thin chain. She still glared at him with all the rage a time-traveling superhero with trauma could possess.
She had saved the world, found a therapist, changed her ways -apologized even, against the recommendation of her entire family save Victor- and he still couldn’t find it in his heart to forgive her or even hear her out.
Allison didn’t hate Patrick, but she didn’t like him enough to have a “friendly Wednesday afternoon” chat.
She answered it anyway, because he had Claire Monday through Thursday. It could be that her daughter had left some schoolwork in Allison’s apartment, or he wanted to demand money or Allison’s head.
She hoped it was the former; but could also handle the latter. Diego and Five kept offering to assassinate him for her. “Hey Patrick!” She greeted; voice so high it made her throat ache. It didn’t even sound real to her own ears. Allison briefly spared a hope that he heard the fakeness too and made whatever demand he had quick. Very quick.
She continued to rummage around in her car’s glove box. She knew she had some hand wipes somewhere around here. She chucked aside crumpled up receipts and empty gum packages and soda cans. “What’s up?”
“Allison,” Patrick’s voice was uncharacteristically breathy, as if he had just run a marathon which wasn’t possible because he was a lazy self-absorbed desk lawyer who hated physical exertion. “She’s gone. Do you have her?”
The alarm in his voice made her sit up in her seat, hand wipes forgotten. There was only one she they both cared about. “W-What do you mean? Where’s Claire?”
“She went to dance practice this afternoon after school. She called me before she started class. She was there, at the studio but now she’s gone! The dance instructor just called me. Claire went to the bathroom to change into her dance gear and never came out. She never joined the class. Please, please tell me you have her,” he was pleading.
Allison’s chest seized. She slumped against the steering wheel as icy terror paralyzed her spine. “N-no, no! I’ve been at work all day. She... She isn’t…”
“Are your brothers in town? Could they have surprised her or something?”
What a surprise it would have been, too! Ever since meeting her uncles in person, Claire had been utterly smitten by them all. Allison had lost count of the videos she had of Claire riding on Luther’s shoulders or having an imaginary tea party with Klaus or doing math problems with Five or riding go-carts in Diego’s lap or practicing piano with Victor.
She loved her uncles, adored them, insisted on calling each at least once a week so she could relate the burning topics of her day. When Diego and Lila’s son Antonio had been born, Claire delivered hand-picked weeds (she thought they were flowers) and tried to teach him to play barbie and was very patient even when the baby gnawed their heads off.
“No,” she breathed. “No, they aren’t here, and they wouldn’t take Claire without telling me…”
Not unless there was an emergency, but if there was any such earth-shattering disaster, she probably would have smelled the smoke from DC.
So far, The Umbrella Academy remained separate but unified. Allison’s brothers still lived in New York. It was a four- hour drive. All of them had jobs and shit to do during the week. They had family dinner at least twice a month, more since Antonio had been born, but they wouldn’t… Allison desperately switched to speaker phone and fumbled with shaking hands to check her text messages.
There were some from her friend Rhonda about lunch tomorrow.
A few from her boss about the employee mandated lunch in a week.
Klaus had sent her pictures of his newest outfit.
One from the phone company about a new special.
Victor asked whether lemon juice could help get a stain out of the carpet.
Diego kept sending her videos of Antonio, toddling about on one and half year-old legs.
“She texted me four hours ago,” Allison related breathlessly. “She asked whether I could bring her barbie back-pack to your house.”
“Damn it,” Patrick hissed. “I already called the police, but they said they can’t open a missing person’s case unless it’s been twenty-four hours…”
Undoubtedly, he had called the police on her, but Allison decided now was not the time to get into it. As she stared, the ticking communication bubble thingy popped up on screen from Claire’s phone number. Eyes wide, fingers trembling, Allison skimmed the brief message.
When it was over, she slapped a hand over her mouth to muffle a cry of despair. “Allison?! What? What is it!” Patrick yelled.
This can’t be happening… This can’t be happening…
She couldn’t speak. For the first time in years, she couldn’t speak. The long-healed injury around her neck squeezed as the muscles of her throat grew heavy. She flung the phone away and lurched to the side as hot vomit slithered up her closed throat.
WE HAVE YOUR DAUGHTER
WE WANT 200,000 DOLLARS CASH
WAIT FOR FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS
IF YOU INVOLVE THE POLICE, IF YOU DO NOT FOLLOW OUR DIRECTIONS
YOUR DAUGHTER WILL DIE