Archive of Our Own

She was entirely and completely alone at the beginning.

In the first few weeks, nobody knew what to do with her screams and her infant temper. Passed around between nurses and frantic, hurried hands until she landed in his. He who took her away; he who gave her siblings, the number Three and something heavy to shoulder. 

She was never alone after that. Not for seventeen years.

They were 1 when their father’s gaze fell upon them for the first time.

Opting to surrender his adopted children to hosts of nannies and a young butler named Pogo for the first months of their lives, Reginald Hargreeves spent all his time alone and disinterested in their babbling gurgles. It was a habit that would follow him into the children’s later life, remaining locked away from their outstretched hands - monitoring them only in training, at mealtimes and on cameras.

It was Three that first caught his attention. Quite literally. He was used to the sounds of babies crying by this point, it hardly bothered him, and so he had instructed his staff to leave them if they had already been changed and fed. They had frowned but ultimately would agree to anything Hargreeves laid out.

Only the young butler, whose back was much straighter and fur much softer then, seemed to keep forgetting the agreement - tending to Number Three’s every cry. 

“I’m sorry, sir. She seems to just call to me, and the next thing I know she’s rocked to sleep in my arms.”

“Fascinating.” Was all Hargreeves had said.

A camera was installed in the nursery the very next day. 

They were 6 when Seven started to disappear. Until they barely noticed him anymore.

Not physically, Three had still been pretty sure he was there. Somewhere. When she’d actually stopped to consider that one of their number was missing. 

A ghost at mealtimes, haunting them with his absence. Too focused on their own survival to realise he was becoming dust, melting into nothing. 

She spent most of her time with Four. Four who didn’t often train the same way the others did, who was usually free when she convinced her father she didn’t have to either. Sitting side by side on the bench at the edge of the courtyard, short legs never reaching the floor as they watched their father call out to their siblings. Block, disarm, gouge. There was nobody to tell them that wasn’t normal.

“Why doesn’t Dad make you train like them?” Three asked as training dummies were torn apart by tentacles, scraps falling like snow.

“I do other things sometimes.”

“Like what?” 

Four shrugged, staring transfixed as their little brother yelled in agony as his eldritch companion tore from his stomach and lashed out. Six had only recently managed to make the Horror come out when he asked it to. Three was quite sure Six would rather have it stay inside forever.

Three pouted at Four’s non-answer. “Why won’t you tell me!” she whined.

“It’s a secret,” he said whimsically in his small voice, Three frowned, unsatisfied, as another cry resounded across the courtyard. “I’m going to be more powerful than all of you.” He grinned at her, one of his front teeth missing and half-grown in.

“You’re not.”

“I am! Ask Dad, he said I had potential.” Four wrapped his voice around the bigger word proudly, each sound enunciated carefully. Dad had never said Three had potential.

“I heard a rumour you said I was the most powerful!”

Watching as her brother’s eyes blanched over, his smile fading from his lips, filled her with a certain sense of righteousness. “You’re the most powerful.” he said, monotone. 

“Thank you!” she kicked her legs, eyes glittering mischievously. 

Four blinked a couple times, his personality settling back onto his features, as his brow furrowed. “Wait! That’s not fair!”

“What? I didn’t do anything!” 

Four narrowed his eyes at her for a moment, before he softened and laughed. “Maybe we can be the most powerful together?”

She smiled, young and wide. “I’d like that.” she said as she reached to take his hand.

They were 8 when Three received her very first gift. The 1996 Winter edition of the American Girl Magazine.

Mom had gotten it for her, smiling as Three’s eyes sparkled.  It wasn’t in excellent condition, nor was it even the most recent addition but Three’s eyes devoured it as if it were gold.  

She couldn’t imagine how Mom had gotten a hold of it, let alone gotten it past their father. If it wasn’t strictly educational, he considered most things to be a waste of their valuable time. And yet, to Three, every minute she spent poring over the pages was infinitely more valuable than anything her dad had to teach her about overpowering an enemy stronger than oneself.

The cover girl was called Allison Hogan and Three was devoted to her. Idolised her. Found friendship in the girl's front-cover, smiling features. Three vowed to become just like her someday. Promised herself she too would become glossy and shiny, plastered onto a front page.

Soon enough she’d learned the pages by heart. Infinitely fascinated by the friends the girls in the magazine talked about. Girls who were unsure of themselves when they spoke, girls who struggled to fit in, girls who couldn’t quite figure out their place in the world. She felt such a kinship to them all - these other kids living their lives out there so many miles away. Wondered if any of them knew how to send a fully grown man to the floor in one action and if they might show her how to do her makeup.

There was even a section on rumours. Three had come to associate that word solely with her power, another limb to her own body in a way, but for some reason these girls she admired so much hated them. Rumours. They ruined their lives and tormented them for years. A part of her knew they didn’t mean the same type of rumours, but it still left a burbling apprehension in her stomach. 

Perhaps she shouldn’t be reckless with this power. Not if she wanted to be one of the girls in the magazine.

They were 11.

Three sat, jaw set and hardened, fighting the tears that pushed at the back of her eyes. Fighting the needle that kept pushing into her young skin. In and out. In and out. She stared at it. Couldn’t draw her eyes from it. The tears fell quietly to her lap at last.

Four had gone first, though she suspected he hadn’t wanted to. Once the chair sat empty and the room felt cold with silence, nobody wanted to fill the gap in the seat. And yet before long Four had been seated, eyes scrambling around the room as though he were searching for safe purchase.

She turned her attention away from him - seeing his fear would only bolster her own - but she hadn’t missed the flash of eye contact between Four and their father before he was seated. Hadn’t missed their father’s satisfied nod and Four’s tightened fists.

And then it was her turn. She hadn’t even registered that Four was finished, pressed against a wall alone. Leaving the chair open. For her.

Two was next, all bravado until he was seated, where his face crumpled - boyish again. Refusing his mother's hand. Then ever-brave One had gone after. He hadn’t so much as flinched. Confident smile cemented to his face. She wished she could be like him. Collected, poised like a mannequin. There was something else in his eyes, though. Maybe it was fear, maybe it was stubborn resilience. She wondered if anyone else could see it.

Then One just kept smiling. Beaming at her as he finished, while she cried quietly in front of her whole family, Four’s arms around her. In front of this stranger their father had welcomed into their home with more grace than he had ever shown them. It made her angry. How One could be so doting of their father’s every idea, even when he never once given anything back. How One would always dismiss her when she told him to cut it out. How the rest of her siblings turned on him like a target standing dutifully in front of their father, taking his every wrongdoing to his young chest.

“It feels better after a little while, I promise.” Four whispered into her hair as she pressed into him, pushing past the own break in his voice. “It’s okay, you got it over with, right?”

He wasn’t crying anymore - she wasn’t sure if he even had been in the first place - but he didn’t loosen the gentle hands around her. 

They were 13 when they were brandished before the world. Mounted on spokes of fame.

Adolescents suddenly thrust into battle, cameras aimed at their faces and their names screamed in the street. Codenames. Aliases. It wasn’t ever personal, beautifully carved chess pieces to serve a greater purpose. Or at least that’s what Dad said they were doing.

But while her siblings squinted at the light, Three relished in it. One too, to an extent, but she secretly suspected it was just to please Dad - it usually was. 

They called her The Rumor. It was the closest thing to an identity she’d ever received.

Suddenly, people seemed to be interested in her, asking questions about the mundane as though she hadn’t just stepped out of a mall, human blood on her conscience. As though she hadn’t just rumoured a man into killing his friends and colleagues. As though the most pressing and most important thing in the world really was whether or not she had a boyfriend. 

It wasn’t until she received a copy of a magazine, her dazzling its cover, that she realised she was more famous than Allison Hogan had ever been.

She smiled for the cameras, posed for the photo shoots and dreamed. Dreamed of a time when she might have this without the killing. Without the burden of her family who cowered from it all.

And then Five disappeared. The questions changed. 

Do you miss him? What happened? Is he coming back?

It wasn’t personal anymore. She was just another member of the Umbrella Academy. People clamoured for inside scoops on her family, on her father and suddenly Three didn’t matter anymore. One of six. Incomplete on her own.

They were 14.

“Klaus? Klaus!” 

Her breath hissed under his door as she tapped it lightly. Mechanically. A stone wedged at the pit of her stomach urging her not to bother.

Shuffling sounded from behind the door. Clattering and then a small crash, before the door opened halfway and her brother beams out, leant up against the door-frame. “Allison! What a nice surprise!”

“Shouldn’t be.” 

She shoulders passed him, throwing the door open wide and stepping into his room, ignoring his petulant whining that hey- wait- you can’t just-

“You promised,” Allison said, dumping her makeup bag adorned with pink and red flowers onto his bed. She looked back at him, eyes challenging.

He was still floundering in the doorway, eyes darting between her and the space underneath his bed. She had seen what he had hidden under there, but she pretended she didn’t. She patted the space beside her on the bed.

“I forgot,” he said quietly, his head hung as he came to sit beside her.

“I know.”

She wondered if she should mention that she’d been here at midnight like they’d agreed, bright-eyed and hopeful. That her heart had knotted up and sunk to her stomach when the room had been dark and empty. But where would be the use in telling him? She didn’t have to mention how she’d sat staring at the neon number on her pink alarm clock as the hours ticked by. Didn’t need to tell him how she stayed there cross-legged, that same flowery bag in her lap until she heard footsteps on metal and a window opening; how she’d waited at the end of the corridor until Klaus had slipped back into his room and lights had flicked on inside.

“Hand,” she demanded instead. He blinked at her for a moment, cornered, uncertain and guilty before he complied, smiling at her nervously. She unscrewed the lid of the nail varnish. Purple like a bruise.

This wasn’t fun for either of them, she knew that. But it was a matter of principle. He’d promised and so he was going to follow through. This was their thing, laughing into pillows to stop Dad from catching them over some stupid joke the early morning had made funnier than it needed to be. Talking about boys and girls and boys. Making fun of their siblings - their father and Pogo too if they felt brave enough. Decorating each other's nails and faces until the sun started filtering in through Klaus’s windows. It was everything and nothing all at once. 

There was never a time she felt more normal. Like the other girls from her magazines, with their easy pearlescent smiles.

“I’m sorry, Ally,” Klaus said after a moment, watching her paint neatly within the lines of his cuticles, “Won’t happen again.”

She paused and looked up from his hands to his eyes, heavy-lidded but sweet. And sickeningly sorry. They could use some glitter.

Loosing a breath from her chest she smiled at him - a real one - and started rummaging in her bag for what she needed. He smiled back, loosening his own shoulders and leaning back. Grinning when she retrieved her face glitter and brandished it before him before she set it down on the bed and took his hands once more, painting bitten nails with glossy colour.

And he watched with delighted focus throughout.

She didn’t ask him where he'd been this late at night. She never would. So long as she didn’t know, she could pretend pretend pretend that he was her same silly little brother. The cookie-cutter relationship she only knew through words on polished paper.

They were 15.

It did happen again. And again. And again. Until Allison gave up entirely.

She stopped waiting for him to come home at their agreed time, staring at that clock in her pyjamas. Sometimes he didn’t even show up at all. For hours. Days.

A week.

Klaus had been away from the Academy for 6 days now and nobody seemed to care but Allison. Life just continued on with the vague outline of a brother that had once been there.

At least with Five, their father had hung up that giant portrait she thought Five would have hated. But with Klaus, not even her siblings had so much as mentioned his name.

It wasn’t like Klaus hadn’t been away this long before. His individual training could take this long or longer sometimes - but she didn’t think he even did that anymore. Not since he started throwing his life away. But that had always been explained by Dad’s counterpart absence, and this time there was no one she could ask.

Unless…

Within seconds, she was at her brother's door. “Diego,” she turned the handle and stepped inside to see him polishing one of his new knives gently with a cloth. Startled he dropped the knife to his lap, looking at her with wide eyes. The corners of her mouth twitched, but she didn’t say anything; she needed him on her side. 

“Fucking knock next time?”

Allison took his scandalised expression as a cue to continue. “You and Klaus are all buddy-buddy, right?”

Diego’s face dropped to a blank and he blinked at her stupidly, “Erm-”

“You don’t happen to know where he is do you?”

“No.” Diego sheathed the knife in his lap into that new stupid utility sling he’d decided to add to his outfits. 

“Oh, bullshit!” her temper flared, “You must at least be a little worried?” If no one else, she thought she could at least count on Diego to look out for their brothers.

Diego stared her down, before speaking robotically. “It’s not even been a week, Allison. He had the same training as you. He can handle himself.”

Allison’s eyes narrowed and jabbed a finger in his direction. “You do know where he is!”

“No…”

“You looked like you were reading off a piece of paper wedged in front of your nose - he told you to say that?” Diego threw his hands in the air in defeat and nodded. 

Leaning against the door frame, she folded her arms. “Well?”

“What?!”

“Where is he?!”

Diego mumbled something unintelligible, head hung. Either embarrassed to have been caught so quickly, or ashamed at not having been able to keep the secret better.

“What was that?” 

“Juvie… He’s in juvie.” Diego was absolutely not meeting her eyes now.

“He’s what?” Allison demanded, as though if she became angry enough at the concept, Diego’s words would simply go away. Or change into something more favourable. “Does Dad know?”

“No!” Diego looked up at her now, absolutely horrified, “Fuck no, of course not… you won’t tell him… Right?”

Something of the sandstorm that battered her arms and face and eyes with gritty truth dispersed and she felt something soften inside her for a moment. “You’re protecting him…”

Diego bit his lip and nodded. She should’ve known better than to doubt him; Diego had always had Klaus’ best interests at heart - in his own way. 

“I won’t tell Dad.” She said firmly, treasuring the small smile that crept onto her brother’s face. “And um, what did Klaus-?” The question faded off her tongue. Blanked out by some unknown editor.

He shook his head. “I dunno. He wouldn’t tell me. Just gave me that line to say and told me to promise not to tell Dad - or anyone actually… Said he had it handled and he’d be back soon…” He looked up at her, his eyes a question. She shook her head. I won’t tell him you told me. 

In truth, Allison didn’t mind not having to address it ever. Didn’t mind living a life where she had never known in the first place.

They were 16.

Somehow Klaus had convinced her to sneak out with him. ‘Like the old days,’ he had said. The days when they had all fled the mansion in the early hours of the morning, eating Griddy’s donuts until they snuck back, stomachs churning. Nostalgia, the urge to play pretend with her brother one more time, got the better of her.

Funnily enough, she didn’t remember the old days including tearing down city streets slick with rainwater at night, her voice hoarse and screaming for the driver to stop, please stop.

They were going to die. Nobody cared enough to listen. Or maybe they couldn’t hear her over the engine and car horns blaring and blood pounding in her ears. They were going to die. Wind whipped her hair into her face and mouth, plastering the back of her throat. Battering her face. They were going to die.

I heard a rumour you stopped.

The words were out of her mouth before she even thought them. Everything stopped. Slowed. The world turned white. Tires shrieked against the asphalt. Allison lurched forward, seatbelt crushing her lungs. Silence.

Car horns blared around them. Allison’s ears rang. “What the fuck?” came a lazy voice from the driver’s seat. “Klaus, you said she was your coolest sibling. She fucking- did that freaky power shit on me… What the fuck.” 

Fury boiled beneath her skin, bile clogging her throat. She opened her mouth to yell at him, and vomited on the back of the front seat, a little hitting him right at the back of his neck. There was a little vindication in that at least, she thought with a half-satisfied smirk before her vision went dark.

Allison woke up to Klaus mumbling something at his shoes. Part of her was almost scared of how badly she wanted to throttle him while he was distracted.

“I fucking hate your friends.” was all she said, none of her rage seeping into her voice. Instead, it was small and weak; that only made her angrier. Her mouth tasted like vomit.

“Allison!” Klaus beamed, “Kind of a disaster, huh?”

Some strangled choking noise escaped from the back of her throat before all emotion blended into a singular static. Nothing and everything all at once. “Kind of a disaster.” She repeated, eyes trained on his, cold and stony.

“Oh. You’re mad.” Klaus looked to the space beside him nervously.

“Real astute observation. You just tricked me into getting into a car with a bunch of crazy people, talking shit about ‘old times’ like it wasn’t you that took that from us? From me? I fucking tried to keep being your big sister, I waited for you to come back and then you never… you never did. And then what? You try to kill me in a car wreck?”

“I didn’t-”

“No. You never mean to, do you?”

“No. I mean, yes?” Klaus wrung his hands, brow furrowed, “I don’t think I know how to answer that.”

Drinking in a deep breath of the early morning air, Allison said nothing. Her jaw tensed. It was crisp and bracing. Her mouth still tasted like vomit. 

Allison tried to stand, but her legs wobbled slightly beneath her. She could feel his eyes watching her. Could tell they were sad. “Fuck.” she sighed, sliding back down into sitting, knees bent on the wet sidewalk, head spinning and eyes brimming. “Fuck.”

“I’m sorry.” 

She didn’t look at him. Knees pressed into her eye sockets until stars dotted her eyelids, unshed tears soaking into her pants. “I know. I know… You really live like this? This is what you want?”

It was eerily silent beside her, her heart listed in her ribcage. She tore her eyes from her knees and looked at him, and found he was just staring at her with listless eyes. She bit her lip. “Well? Is it?”

“I shrugged!”

“I couldn’t fucking see, I- Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Allison smiled at him, a single tear tracing her cheek with the reflection of murky starlight. She didn’t really know what else she could do other than stagger to her feet, extending a hand to her little brother. “We should just head back.”

“Oh. Um… No.” He was drawing circles in the wet puddle of something in front of where he was sitting, not meeting her eyes. Or taking her hand.

“What do you mean no?” 

“I can’t- I need to go find the guys.”

“From the car?” Her voice was shrill. Incredulous.

He nodded.

“What could you possibly need from them?” Klaus looked at her now, eyebrow cocked, his quiet gaze daggers to her chest. “Oh.” 

There was a silence that resounded like thunder, echoes after fire. For someone who knew nothing but words, Allison didn’t know what to say. It was pointless to rumour him to come with her, he’d disappear before daybreak. And to rumour him sober could prove to be so much worse. To delve into someone’s chest and mould it like clay would change so much more than she intended.

Her rumours could affect immediacy. I heard a rumour you shot your friend in the foot, she could say, and his arm would obey - synapses firing on their own. But, I heard a rumour you hated your friend enough to kill him was not only ineffective and unnecessarily complex, but it could have any number of consequences. She would be changing his worldview - any experiences he had with that man would be rendered meaningless, tainted somehow or entirely rewritten. Of course, with a bank robber or any other criminal their father pointed them at like guns, Allison wouldn’t have given that consequence a second thought. But this was Klaus. Her little brother. She couldn’t risk that.

Allison had no idea why Klaus was where he was now, but if she started transforming even the smallest facet of him, she had no idea the branches it would sever. The new branches that would form. There was no telling who she would turn her brother into; at least for now he was still in there. Somewhere. 

She couldn’t bear to lose him any further.

“So what,” Allison said, voice a void, “I just go back alone? Spend every day worrying about you, now I know that this is how you live?”

“Go back, yes. But you don’t need to worry about it, Ally. I can handle it.” Klaus smiled, standing all on his own, discounting the hand that Allison still held limply out in front of her. Forgotten about. “I’ll see you.”

And so she didn’t worry. She let her fear disappear into the sludge of that night. Let it cling to his back as he walked away into the early morning haze. 

Allison turned and made her way back to the mansion, her anger numbed at the edges. His name fading from her tongue. 

They were 17 and Ben was dead.

He’d been gone less than 48 hours, she realised as she rolled over in bed, eyes swollen and exhausted. Body wracked with her grief and her rage. 

None of them knew if he was even getting a funeral. Their father didn’t even mention his name. Or his number. Like he’d never existed in the first place.

There was something empty inside Allison. But also ugly and violent. The jagged gaping wound in the side of a cliff face, some aching angry abyss that led only to darkness.

She wanted someone to hurt the way she did; the way the world had hurt him. Dad was top of the list, but she felt brittle enough to shatter at any given moment. Send sharp shards soaring at whoever was in range.

But she kept herself in check.

Luther and Diego were at each other's throats - even by their standards. Blame cycling through thrown fists and cutting remarks. She wanted to scream at them to stop, wanted to make everything stop because while they were fighting and yelling and crying, Ben was still dead and never coming back. 

But she did none of those things. Nothing stopped. Everything continued moving forward as it always did. Time didn’t care her brother was dead. Time didn’t give a shit.

And she was still their big sister.

So she offered watery smiles as though they wouldn’t erode into nothing, and hand-squeezes as though the lightest touch wouldn’t make her crumble like sand.

She never thought she’d have to know something as terrible as Five’s disappearance again. And yet this was somehow worse. The knowing for certain. Knowing he would never come home. That he would never gift her a book with his scrawled musings over every page again. Would never shoot her that knowing, gentle smirk when Luther and Diego were butting heads. She would never hold him in her arms again, as the tentacles roiled beneath his stomach, feeling his breath against her neck.

He wanted to be an artist.

She could be angry at night. Her pillow had taken more punches in the last day than any of her father’s enemies. Curling into herself, balling up in a mass of blanket and grief, her fist tightened and tightened. Until her nails dug into her palm and drew blood.

She gasped at the sudden pain and drew her nails back, where blood was already pooling, spreading and consuming. Her nails were still painted perfectly somehow. That felt so cruel. So absurd. Something akin to a laugh escaped from behind her teeth, but it was disjointed. Far too high-pitched. Something had cracked inside her.

She couldn’t stay in here. This room where everything was so normal. Even the posters of her own smiling face - one of the only things that normally brought her so much comfort - felt mocking. Her photographed smiles contorting into sneers. 

It was so wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. She ripped them from the walls.

Poster paper fell to the floor in tatters. Including a picture of the six of them. Five too, from before he disappeared. Domino masks and blanched grins pasted to a magazine cover, now fettered and spattered with her own blood at her feet.

The last thing proving Ben was real. That he’d been here and she’d loved him. She loved him. She loves him.

And she’d torn it to pieces.

If there was anything left of her, she might’ve screamed. But instead, she ran.

Fled her room in its ruin. Blinded by the sudden bright light of the hallways, back and palms pressed against wooden panelling as the door closed behind her. As though that could somehow ground her. As though her breath wasn’t hitching and biting at her throat, her chest ready to burst.

Luther’s door was open. Gentle whispering and a gasping, choking noise coming from within. Mom and Luther.

She knew her brother was soft at his core, knew it better than any of them, but she had never seen Luther cry. She couldn't bear to watch that now. She pressed on through the hallways, nothing guiding her but a desire to escape.

Allison didn’t know what her siblings were doing behind their closed bedroom doors as she passed, her head a swirling red storm.

She didn’t know that Diego wasn’t there, instead curled into the seams of Ben’s bed upstairs, jaw set and eyes unblinking. She didn’t know Viktor was gripping the fabric of his skirt hard enough for his knuckles to whiten; blaming himself. Wishing he’d gotten the chance to be there, or at least say goodbye to the only sibling who still saw him. 

And she didn’t know that Klaus was overdosing for the first time of many as she passed by. She didn’t know he would die there in that room on his own, only to wake two hours later completely sober with the ghost of Ben hanging over him, crying tears that wouldn’t flow. She wouldn’t believe Klaus when he told her the day after the funeral. Nobody would.

None of them stayed at the academy much longer. Viktor went first, Diego close behind. Then Allison. Negotiated enough money from her father before she left, booked a plane to L.A. and never looked back.

She didn’t know how long Klaus stayed; in some ways, he hadn’t lived there for years. Not really.

She supposed they had all fractured long before Ben died. Severance was long overdue. 

At 17, Allison was entirely and completely alone for the second time.

She was 22 and officially more famous than she’d ever been at the academy. 

She had not heard from her family in years. Not even Luther. Most days she was able to forget them, and it seemed that was the public consensus too.

Nobody really cared about them after they fell apart. The thrill fell away maybe, their relevance fading when they weren’t doing exactly what it was they were known for. Melted into nostalgia and vague memory in the span of a few years. Maybe they’d never been that relevant to begin with. 

Maybe it was just too awkward to ask what happened.

Whatever happened to those umbrella kids? they might say, and there was really only one way they could answer. 

One of them died.

Allison supposed it didn’t matter either way. It suited her fine. Her family’s fame may be a relic of the past, but hers was only just beginning.

She was 23 when she got married.

His name was Patrick. She hadn’t known him long but it was enough to say yes. 

They’d met on-set on one of her romcoms. He was quiet for a director, never raising his voice and giving notes in a low mumble. He arranged for the entire cast and crew to get their coffee orders each morning, taking special care to hand-deliver Allison’s right to her trailer door. He liked the Allison she had laid in front of him - really liked her. But he would never ask her out, she knew that; the veil of glitter she’d used to construct her future had pushed a little too far. Made her intimidating, almost unapproachable. So she gave him a little boost of confidence. Enough courage to awkwardly bumble his way into asking her to accompany him to that very same coffee shop. She’d agreed.

Like every little girl she had dreamed of this day her whole life; remembered reading articles from other child celebrities outlining their dream weddings - with unicorns and princesses and other elements of impractical, girlish whimsy. Allison distinctly remembered scoffing at them, knowing her wedding would be spectacular and mature and absolute perfection. Even though it was made over a decade ago, she had every intention to uphold that promise.

Her planning was perfect. A string of dominoes curated to the minutiae, each working like a cog in a grand golden machine. The press couldn’t ruin this for her. Nothing could. 

It was a beautiful day in mid-August. The manor house glittered gold and white in the chandelier light and the garden was adorned with lines and lines of rose bouquets, in a range of pinks and whites and blues. She’d invited as many big names as she could muster, personally ensuring that each of them would make it.

What she hadn’t counted on, however, was the small entourage of Hargreeves that showed up outside the venue as she was seeing that the garden held enough seats for all her guests. Just a couple of her bodyguards were outside with her as some beat-up old car pulled up in the gravel. A car that looked like it can’t have been held together by more than tape and its owner’s pure strength of will.

The passenger door flew open immediately, bouncing dangerously on its hinge, as a very tall, scrawny figure stumbled out. His eyes lit up as they locked onto Allison, waving enthusiastically from the bottom of the hill. She could do nothing but stare as he bridged the distance, her bodyguards deftly moving in to stand between her and this man. 

“Hey, what?” he said, looking scandalised through muscled shoulders at Allison, “I’m VIP! Brother of the bride? Tell them, Allison!”

 “…Klaus?” Was all she could muster.

“Yeah! Yeah, see? She knows me it’s all good, you guys can just-” Klaus put his hands on each of the bodyguards’ shoulders, trying to push between them. They didn’t budge. “Woah, you guys are strong…” Momentarily distracted, he began to pat their biceps; Allison couldn’t tell if he was mocking them or genuinely impressed. Maybe both.

“He’s fine.” Allison heard herself say, her mind numb. The bodyguards moved to stand on either side of her, maintaining careful eyes on Klaus. Allison’s brother - her little brother she hadn’t seen, or even thought about, in almost 6 years - smiled at her broadly. As though they were simply catching up for weekly brunch.

Klaus was wearing a shirt of cropped mesh netting underneath a gaudy tee with the words ‘After the Bell’ plastered onto it, his eyes smudged with eyeliner that didn’t look like it had been refreshed in days - maybe weeks. He looked… different? Exactly the same?

Her brother shifted on his feet. “So…”

“Are you wearing my merch?” Allison interrupted. It was rude, she knew that, but she had to say something. Klaus didn’t seem fazed.

“Oh! Yes!” he grinned at her, his entire face lighting up in a way that she wished she didn’t know so dearly. “I’ve kept up with your whole career you know! It’s crazy how far away from us you managed to get!”

Allison’s stomach lurched. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t invite-”

“What? No… No! You mistake me, sister mine. I’m complimenting you.”

“Oh. Okay” She fumbled for a moment, confused. Why wasn’t he angry? She would be. She was angry. At him. Still, after all these years, her disappointment in the way Klaus’s life had faltered and slipped out from under him hurt. At the way he’d left them - left her. She hadn’t forgotten the last real conversation they’d ever had.

“One of us had to make something of the shit Dad dealt us. Fuck knows it’s not me.” He laughed but that somehow only hurt too. “I just wondered… You know, since we came all this way, can we just get a little invite? Pretty please?”

Allison hesitated, her breath catching in her throat. “We?” 

As if to answer her question, both Luther and Diego came up the hill, matching each other's pace exactly - 10 feet apart. Icy silence splintered the space between them. Nothing new there.

Klaus gestured out to their brothers as they stood at either side of his shoulders, as though he himself had summoned them. “Just three teeny tiny invites…?”

Allison looked from Luther and his big hopeful eyes to Diego, frozen in what looked like an eternal shrug. “I don’t know… I’d have to make a lot of changes to the seating and-” She didn’t have the heart to finish; she knew full well if she set her mind to it she could have everything adjusted to accommodate them in three phone calls. 

Luther could tell she was making excuses. He could always tell. “We did come a long way, Allison. Diego almost killed us several times in that horrible, old car…”

“Oh yeah? At least I have a car! Unless you wanted to walk?” Diego’s hand reached for a dagger on his chest. Fuck knows why he decided bringing weapons to a wedding was going to persuade Allison to let them in.

“You guys promised to be civil!” Klaus whined. Diego’s arm fell limp.

“Right. Sorry.” Luther said. Diego just nodded, still glowering in Luther’s direction.

Allison writhed in her skin, mind whirling with the collision of her two lives. This scene was so familiar, transposed onto something she had crafted as her utopia. Jarring and riddled with affection. Her love for her brothers hadn’t faltered it seemed - she could feel it now, tearing at her chest, something vicious and pleading. As much as she had tried to wrap them neatly into a prison tied with a bow, it didn’t work. The love was there. It would always be there. 

She couldn’t help but feel awfully and hideously exposed, standing out here in the daylight with three shadows of her past asking to be invited inside her new life. Her life she had devoted anything and everything she had to make perfect. She had to protect it from them.

“Sooo?” Klaus’s eyes twinkled, as he pushed back to the forefront of her attention.

“I really don’t know…” Allison said, the words slimy on her tongue. Klaus and Luther sagged under the weight of her hesitation. Diego tensed, looked at the ground. Her heart tore like glass. “I guess I could try.”

As if pulled back by marionette strings, Klaus sprung back to life. A wick thought to have burned out, reigniting on its own. “No way? You’re serious?” He turned to Luther and Diego, “You see? I told you Allison wouldn’t just send us away!” Shrugging, Diego smiled at Klaus, but Luther’s eyes were big and round and staring at her in disbelief. 

She turned away from them, hiding the tears that threatened to spill from her eyes if she faced them any longer. “Admission is in four hours. You’d better be wearing something nicer.”

“Oh, I’ll get us all shipshape, don’t even worry about it!” Klaus’s retreating voice called from behind her.

Heart leaden with love, Allison brushed her hands down the side of her skirt, shamefully human as they shook. She knew she had made a terrible mistake allowing them back inside the heart she had locked them out of for so many years. She should have thrown away the key.

She was 24 and somewhere in Kyoto, holed up in a public restroom attached to a 7-Eleven. 

It used to excite her - travelling the world for work - back when it was a hypothetical dream. Something to strive for. Travelling not in the way she used to with the academy, in missions and violence, but being paid to see everywhere. Anything. That’s the stuff people dream of, right? A sign she had made it?

And yet… nothing. She didn’t know what was wrong with her. This was what she’d worked for her entire life. She’d been laying out marble tiles in front of her feet long before she’d even gotten her first period. Why was it that every time she flew overseas, for press or some new project she was working on, some part of her twinged and tugged for… something. Something that wasn’t where she was going.

She hardly knew what she wanted anymore. Wasn’t sure she’d ever known.

Her team had decided to visit a temple on one of their off-days. She’d spent some time marvelling at all the right moments, pointing out all the right things to garner enthusiastic head nods from her colleagues before her stomach had churned. Roiled that same way it had been all week. 

For the most part, she’d passed it off as those nerves she had when flying; that sinking feeling that pulled her elsewhere that nestled at the pit of her stomach. But now she was beginning to get the sense it was something much bigger than that.

Besides, her period was late.

Allison patted her hair in the mirror as she waited for the test result. She looked as perfect as she normally did, even as she waited in a public restroom for a pregnancy test to come through. That thought alone bolstered her a little; her control hadn’t slipped away from her yet.

Seeing the two lines fading into view as she looked back, her heart flipped in her chest.

But she wasn’t afraid. Far from it. Instead, she couldn't help but feel a smile blossoming from the corner of her lips to the soft pink of her cheekbones.

Pregnant. She looked down at her stomach, imagining it swelling with the life she had apparently sowed into existence.

Maybe this was it, Allison thought. Maybe this was the missing puzzle piece, that feeling she was searching for - the piece that refused to let her be content. Family. Stability.

With Patrick? some cruel part of her mind whispered, and for the briefest of moments she faltered. Something defensive flashed over her skin, a protective shell. Why not Patrick?

He had liked her before the rumours, which wasn’t something she could say of a lot of people. Sure, maybe he could be a little boring, but to her everyone was. How can you compare to a childhood like hers? He was sweet and kind. And safe. The public seemed to like him a lot too. 

And most importantly, she knew him well enough to know he’d be overjoyed at the news. A family with Patrick was not an idea she hated in the slightest.

“Mrs Hargreeves, is everything okay?” her bodyguard called from behind the door, his voice sounding much further than 5 feet. 

“Yes! Yes, coming.” Allison said, her hand shoving the positive test back in her handbag, crushing its packaging beneath. She smiled glamorously at her bodyguard as she exited the restroom.

She needed to find a payphone to tell her husband the good news.

She was 25 when Viktor wrote his book. 25 when her daughter was born.

She had no idea how to grapple with the two events in such quick succession. Melding past and present in a way that crushed her in between. Claire was supposed to grow up without any of that. Without them. 

It wasn’t fair. Why did he wait this long for her to mount herself upon society as an individual, no deadweight sagging at the hem of her sparkling dresses, only to turn around and wrench it from her grasp? The reporters couldn’t get enough of this new violated version of her childhood self - no amount of effort from her publicists or ‘no comments’ from her own mouth would stop their torrent of questions.

She was thirteen again, finally feeling the beams of her own spotlight dappling her skin until her family brought it crashing to the floor around her. She’d wanted to sever the thread for years. Cursed herself for never being able to go through with it.

And Viktor’s book hurt. It hurt her more than she cared to admit - she thought she’d left herself in the past, but reading his exposé filtered in through whatever cracks she had left unpatched. His words wriggling into crevices she herself had forgotten - elected to forget and bury - bringing everything to the surface, a sheen cocooning her skin as she stepped back into the public eye, daughter now nestled to her chest. 

Claire was the best thing that had ever happened to her. All big eyes and a lopsided, gummy grin. As much as her head spun as the paparazzi leeched onto their brand new scoop, cameras flickering like gunfire, her home was warm and sweet with infancy. 

Family. Not like she’d known it before, with its laughter, messy and violent, and its quiet bleating out a countdown in an ever-present tinny whisper. This was gentle and beautiful, the family she had deserved. The family she wanted Claire to know she deserved. There was no threat she couldn’t shield her daughter from with her back, no impossible burden she couldn’t carry for her. Patrick loved Claire too.

Her home - the one she built all on her own - was peaceful. Quiet on the outside. Quiet on the inside. She and her family were tended to, but not in the way of ape butlers and robot mothers, in the way that was comfortable. Undisturbed.

“Baby? Allison, honey - someone on the phone for you!”

She looked up from where her eyes were sprawled across the mostly unread pages of a book - Claire sleeping in a rocker beside her. Messages didn’t get to her home phone number, not unless she wanted them to. “Who is it?”

There was a silence from the other room. “Um… he says he’s your brother,” Patrick called back, voice a waver. 

“He says he’s what.” 

Allison got up immediately, shoving the book into the sofa cushion and joining her husband in the next room, who was currently holding the phone out away from his body like a wild snake. She snatched it from his hands and held it to her ear. There was a faint whispering from the other end of the line, imperceptible but hurried. Two people, then. She cleared her throat loudly.

“Allison?” came the voice from the other end. Drawling and delighted, as though there was something amusing just in her name alone. Words strung together like a paper chain.

“Klaus.” She said plainly, refusing to hide the eye-roll in her voice, “How did you get this number?”

“Long story, that. Okay, remember your wedding?”

She gritted her teeth. “The one you ruined? Yeah, I might recall.”

“I did not ruin it! You kicked me out if I remember.”

“Yeah, before you ruined it.”

“But I didn’t actually ruin it. Technically.”

She didn’t answer. Patrick was hovering beside her, unsure where he should put his hands. On her shoulder to comfort her? Offering to take the phone back to save her? She jerked her head back towards the room she came, motioning for him to go be with Claire. He looked at her gratefully and ducked out of the room.

“Anyway. That wedding. Yeah, I might’ve swiped the number from one of your very fancy, very famous friends.” She wasn’t sure if he was slurring, or whether it was his usual ambling tone. It was always hard to tell with Klaus. It was one of those things she noted but never commented on. She’d learned better.

“And how the fuck did you do that.”

“I’m charming!”

“Not that charming.” Allison hadn’t heard from a lot of those guests since the wedding pleasantries, she hoped to god Klaus hadn’t bothered them. Or either of her other last-minute invitees for that matter.

“I’m beguiling as fuck. Diego, tell her I’m beguiling.” There was a monosyllabic grunt from somewhere beyond Klaus’s voice. “He said I’m beguiling.” 

“Diego’s there?”

“Diego? Oh yes, yes, Diego’s here! This is his house actually. He’s letting me stay with him for a bit which is really very nice of him, he’s very sweet and cuddly even with all that leather.”

Allison choked, stifled a laugh. She was supposed to be angry with him. She was angry with him. “I’m sorry, leather?”

“Oh my god, you have to see it - it’s an absolute spectacle. Head to toe, I tell you. I bet he’s even got leather underpants under- Ow! Hey!” There was some clattering from the other end of the line, shuffling furniture and footfall. Some more crashing and then a pause.

“Hi, Allison.” Diego’s gruff murmur drifted into her ears.

“Hi, Di. What happened to Klaus?”

“Put a sock in his mouth.”

Allison smiled slightly, she was glad they couldn’t see her. There was a noise indistinguishable, a spluttering thump of a noise. “Fucking gross, man. You cannot have washed that! Also, put Allison on speaker if you’re going to hold it, pretty please.”

An assenting growl accompanied the setting change. “Klaus escaped,” Diego said the way he might have reported a mission to Dad. And then, quieter: “Also, I did not wash it.” 

There was an all-too-familiar smirk in his voice that almost made Allison lose herself. Then a yelp of disgust that let Allison know he was not quite quiet enough. She steeled herself against her beating heart. “So what? Why are you calling me now? The wedding was two years ago.”

“Yeah, well. I don’t have a phone because I don't have a house. And Diego was mad at me because I promised I’d be cool at the wedding, and Luther well- Oh my god, wait, did you know Luther’s on the moon now? Isn’t that insane? The old man has actually lost it.” Allison had heard. It was probably the last scrap of notoriety the Umbrella Academy would ever have, and it meant sacrificing Luther to space. She hoped he was okay up there - he always did love the moon. And space. But she couldn’t imagine he’d want to live up there alone.

Then again, the last time she’d known him was as a boy. She couldn’t claim to know anything about him now. 

“Couldn’t you have used a phone box?”

“Sure, if it took more than just coins.”

“Also he was in jail.”

“Diego!”

“You were what?” Allison didn’t mean to sound like his mother. She had never meant to mother any of them, but somehow she’d fallen into it.

“Diego was not supposed to say that.”

“Is it true?” A silence. “Klaus?”

“Yeah… but it’s whatever, okay. I was going to save the number for a special occasion anyway.” 

“Klaus…” Her chest ached like she couldn’t breathe, and yet the breaths kept coming. This was exactly why she didn’t think about it. She couldn’t do anything over a phone call, couldn’t ever do anything - so she just forgot. It worked for her. And yet here she was face to face with the stain of her past. A stain she apparently could never scrub out.

“Look what you did, Diego! You ruined the whole mood.” Diego said something just beyond her hearing she couldn’t quite make out. A protest. Klaus sighed. “Ally, listen. I’m done with all of that now, okay? Don’t worry, I won’t go to jail again. We just wanted to call to congratulate you!” He switched gear so quickly, from sombre to singsong in half a second. She clocked the ‘again’ too, but locked it away in her heart; she couldn’t bear to dwell on that now.

“On what?” Allison said, stupidly.

“Your- your b- your Claire! A whole entire human child! That’s amazing.”

“My Claire…” Allison said softly, her mind wandering to the child - her child - dozing in her crib only a few feet from where she stood. Suddenly the world felt less cruel.

“I can’t wait to meet her someday,” Klaus said. Allison’s heart lurched, terrified. She wanted to scream ‘no!’ down the telephone line, slam the phone down and never see them again. Claire could not be branded by Allison’s past - she was too small, too innocent to ever have to do what Allison had to.  

Instead, she drew a deep breath. Let herself breathe for a moment in the way she’d been teaching herself to whenever Claire was being a difficult sleeper. “Maybe when you’re sober, okay?” It could be an incentive, she thought. It could help.

“I am!” A slapping noise. “What? I am! Fresh out of rehab and everything.” Another slap. “Okay, I will be starting tomorrow. Promise.”

He wasn’t going to be, Allison knew that.  And as long as he wasn’t, she wasn’t going to let him meet Claire in person. Wasn’t going to let herself become obsessed with saving him again; saving all of them again. It hurt too much. She had too much to lose.

Besides, Diego seemed to be looking out for him now, maybe things were heading in the right direction. Maybe she would really introduce her siblings to Claire one day. Even Viktor. Viktor and his resentment. 

She set the phone down, leaving Klaus and Diego to bicker alone on the other side of the country.

For now, maybe she would introduce them to Claire in stories. Fractions of embellished myth - the way she remembered them. The way she constructed them in her memory. 

She was 29 as she lay against Luther’s chest, darkness spotting her vision.

It was stupid. She’d thought she could have a family again after losing Claire. Losing everything. Thought it might be different this time. With work. 

Viktor had killed her. Tried to kill her? She had only wanted to help. Save him. From Leonard. Harold. Leonard. He didn’t believe her. She’d hurt him so long ago; he knew it was her fault. 

It was her fault. She built her life around falsehoods. Viktor’s fine on his own. Klaus would be fine if she didn’t think about it. Claire would listen. Patrick would love her forever. But rumours didn’t hold up. Pillars of salt.

Streetlights slick with starlight slid past as Five pushed harder on the gas pedal, their father’s car racing through the night. 

She was going to die.

Couldn’t see anything but noise. Couldn’t hear anything but her slowly darkening vision, Luther’s panicked, choking sobs and Klaus’ affirmations. It’s going to be okay. Hold on.

Until nothing but the sound of her slowing heartbeat remained. Everything fell away until she did too.

She was 31 when Klaus showed up at her door unannounced, drunk and rambling. On a night her heart was already viced between her ribs.

She slept fitfully without Raymond. And tonight, after the second time she woke with the air dragged out of her by some cruel fist plunged down her throat, she got up. Usually, Ray would be beside her. Would rub her back, humming to her until she settled. And despite the residual ache that always lingered, it was the safest she had ever felt. Probably would ever feel.

And now he was gone. She’d fucked it.

She’d wandered around the house, dressing gown hugged to her waist. It was desperately and palpably cold here without him. Without realising it, she found herself standing watching her brother sleep. It was stupid, watching him like this hurt her too, but it was better than the crushing numbness that her lonely house brought. A thousand paper cuts torn from leaflets of her past seemed better right now. It was familiar. A comfortable kind of suffering.

And she had missed him. So much.

By morning, they were side-by-side against her fridge, hollowed out but together. And that somehow felt right to her. Something she had been missing for twenty years, give or take. Her love for him the only tangible lifeline, so she clung to it and everything that it entailed.

Her head felt so light when she got out of the chair she’d been drinking in, reminiscing with Klaus over their fondest memories, so she sat back down immediately. Klaus noticed, laughed at her. 

“I feel like I haven’t spoken to you in so long.”

Klaus’s brow furrowed. “Yesterday?”

“No, no, I mean before that. And like, properly spoke to you. Like dad’s funeral and trying - failing - to save the world kind of… took up any time to catch up.”

“Catch up?” Klaus laughed. “On what, pray tell? Your life was plastered everywhere and mine was just same-old same-old. Bender, jail, rehab, bender…” He counted on his fingers lazily, as though he were coming up with a shopping list.

“Shut up, there’s more than that.” She snapped, sadness growing teeth.

Klaus stopped in his tracks, stared at her. “You said you were in love?” she prompted, gentler. Her brother’s body sagged.

“Yeah. I am- was. I don’t know. Complicated, I guess. Time travel, am I right?”

“You- wait what?”

“Oh, shit right… Okay so back in 2019, these two freaks stole me in my panties - okay not even my panties, I was in a fully-grown birthday suit - and they locked me up in this shitty motel and tortured me and I sort of took their briefcase and I thought maybe it had cash or, I don’t know something I could pawn and… voila. 1968.”

Allison’s mouth hung open, a small choking noise at the back of her throat. 

“Vietnam, baby!” Klaus said, with a weak cheer.

“1968.” Allison breathed, stunned. “Viet- Wait. That’s when-”

“Clever girl. Just my luck, right? Falling in love for the first time with a soldier doomed to die there?” He laughed an empty laugh. It was brittle and broke in the air, falling to pieces on the table in front of her.

“Klaus…” It was all she could say.

“I tried to save his life yesterday. Told him not to sign up, you know? Thought maybe I could convince him, but his uncle... Fucking Brian.” 

Her brain spun, eyes stinging with tears she didn’t know were falling. Klaus looked morosely down at his hands, and in an instant, she was there. Her own two hands flung across the table towards him, grabbing his in her own. He looked up at her, smiled palely, and she locked eyes with him. “I love you.”

“And I you my darling.” 

She wiped her eyes with one hand, and squeezed his with her other. 

“I missed you. So much.” She said out loud, dimly aware she wasn’t supposed to be telling him that. Klaus cocked his head towards her, as though that surprised him.

“You did?”

“More than anything.” 

Klaus hummed, sinking into the hand she wasn't holding as he propped his head up on the table. He watched her carefully, and she squirmed in her seat.

“What?” she demanded.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“Nothing!”

“Klaus…” she said, her voice morphing into a familiar lecturing tone.

“I dunno. Guess I sort of figured you didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. We all did.” 

Allison opened her mouth to protest but then shut it again. Shrugged. “It wasn’t you guys. Just… You know.”

Klaus nodded sagely. “I know.”

She and Klaus were 31 and 34 when the world was ending. Again. When they were rifling through empty hotel rooms for any semblance of wedding-appropriate attire.

This would be her first, and last, wedding since her own. The one her brothers had shown up at unannounced, and subsequently almost completely sabotaged. Mostly Klaus. She used to be so angry about it, but there was no part of her that even cared about that life anymore. The time before Claire. It felt so hopelessly far away. Then, so did Claire. Her daughter was further from her arms with every passing day, and it was so heavy. It was so fucking heavy.

It seemed ridiculous, that Luther and Sloane would choose now to get married. Even though the weight in her chest told her she would have done the same. For Ray. Love was enough sometimes. Until it was ripped from between your lungs.

“Holy shit, Allison!” She glanced towards her brother, who was beaming and brandishing two green velvet outfits. Matching. A younger Allison could have only dreamed of matching with Klaus in this fashion, but now she only felt empty. Klaus’s grin felt so cruel in the face of her pain, even though she knew he was definitely just excited about the costumes. “I bet Luther is going to go with just a black suit and bow tie… Hey, what’s the etiquette on being sexier than the groom in an end-of-the-world wedding?”

She wished he wouldn’t say that like it meant nothing. Like the ending of their lives and the world and any impact anything they ever did meant nothing to him. Like it was a joke. He was like that, she knew that, but it was so fucking sickening. Did he not care? Was this was immortality did to a person? And why was he being so nice to her?

“Ally?”

Her family hated her, she could feel it. After what she’d done, what she’d said to Viktor, if they didn’t hate her, they were at least writing her off. Taking Viktor’s side. She hated herself, but she hated Viktor more. Pretending to help her while he harboured the person who had done this to them, protected him over coming clean and telling the truth. Why did Viktor get to make all the calls and why did Allison always just have to sit and take them?

“Ally?”

Klaus wasn’t there, but he knew. Knew what she’d done and what she’d said and he was still here in this room with her, with the air of a child as he tossed the place looking for something they could wear together.

“Allison?” There was a creak in the bed beside her, and she turned to see Klaus now sat watching her. Not with any kind of emotion, just watching. Seeing her. “What’re you thinking about, babe?”

“Why are you being so nice to me?” It came out aggressive, grating her tongue as she spoke.

Klaus only laughed. “You think I should stop?”Allison shrugged, pulling her knees into her chest. She didn’t see him as he frowned, inching closer to her. “Look, Ally. We’re all human-”

“Oh, fuck off. I thought you at least were more creative than that. I am tired of being placated and fucking driven down, Klaus! I tried being nice, I tried being perfect, I tried using my powers, not using my powers and all the moral bullshit that comes with it and I still lost everything. Everyone.” She didn’t cry, her voice was just strained and hollow. Stretching out into the space like it was endless. Like it was never going to end. “I cannot keep letting people tell me to have hope or faith because where has that ever gotten me? I trusted Five’s plans over and over again and it just got worse for me every time. I lost my daughter, Klaus. Forever. I’m never going to see her again - do you understand that? I didn’t even-” Her breath hitched, the endless string of words finally snapping. “I couldn’t even say goodbye to her in my voice.”

Because of Viktor. Viktor who slit her throat as she tried to help him. Viktor who took everything from her. When all she had tried to do was save him, help him, be the big sister she thought he wanted. What a waste.

Klaus raised his hands in surrender, but while the gesture was jovial it didn’t seem mocking. That was just Klaus’s way, she supposed. He shuffled closer to her. Close enough to feel his warmth. 

“I can’t imagine, Allison, I really am sorry but you didn’t let me finish.” Allison bristled. He was just brushing her off, like everyone else. After that outburst, he was still just looking at her with that same contemplative gaze, but she didn’t interrupt him. She couldn’t explain why, but something about that look felt different. Like he was with her. Hearing and not just listening.

“You’re human,” Klaus said again, pausing. Checking to see if she would interrupt him again. “And being angry is part of that. It’s like- you and me, we’re not used to it. We prefer to keep it tucked away... Unlike Diego who just sits and stews in it until it’s just a companion to him. Which is also bad, but that’s something else… But us - and tell me if I’m off-base - it’s foreign. Or kept at arm's length. It’s probably the most you’ve ever felt. Like a cascade just slapped onto your shoulders all at once. Like- like- you just don’t know where to hide it away anymore.”

She laughed bitterly. “Sure. Something like that.” 

“Point is…” Klaus put an arm around her, leaning in. He smelled like alcohol, but then, so did she. “You’re allowed to be angry, Allison. At Viktor, at me, at this whole fucking mess of a world! It’s shit!” He threw his arms wide, wobbling on the bed but remaining upright. “But that doesn’t mean you have to get shit-slapped alone.” 

“At you?”

He paused. Face contorted in confusion.

“You’re telling me you’ve never been angry at me? After everything I’ve done to you. For so long?” He went quiet for a moment, sitting with that in his own time. “I really am so sorry, by the way. I don’t think I ever told you that.”

“Right.” Something burned inside her, ice and fire mingling somehow, but it wasn’t soothing. Just ineffective. It just burned twice. Hurt worse. She stared at her hands.

“You know two people who love each other can hurt each other, and it not have anything to do with the love?” Klaus said, quite plainly.

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

“You and Viktor. I’ve been thinking about it.”

“Why?”

“I’m just saying,” he says, too nonchalantly for Allison’s taste, “It’s not as black and white as you feel... Look, I get that’s definitely the last thing you want to hear, I get that, I really do but…” Allison sucked in her teeth, gaze hardening. Felt herself shutting down, shutting him out. “That love you guys had? That’ll stick around. Whether he forgives you or not. Or, you know…” Allison glares at him as he turns back, looking at her pointedly, “If you forgive him.”

Something catches in her chest. Like sand falling out from beneath her. She nods, trying to ignore the way Klaus is watching her. Like he can hear the ringing in her ears.

“Sorry. I’m not going to make you talk about shit. Not if you don’t want. I’m just trying to say sorry and- I get it. A tiny bit. Not like you but-”

“Your soldier?” 

He smiled sadly, nodding. “Dave. Angriest I’ve ever been.” Allison didn’t think she’d ever seen Klaus angry, wasn’t sure he could be. “Angry in the way that you don’t think is real until you feel it. I’m glad, at least, the feeling was clean… Like, it felt real. It kept him alive for a little bit, I think. Better that than to let the grief consume you, you know?” 

Klaus’s eyes were shining, but his attention was still fully on her. Something was searing through her, a blazing blade to her insides, tearing through her. But she felt safe here somehow. For the first time in a long time.

Klaus was that safety - that solace - for such a large part of her childhood. Back then, he was never part of the Academy in her eyes; he was just her brother. And the most normal part of her life. She didn’t realise how much she’d held onto to it before it was taken from her, and how much it hurt when her skin was left clinging to the cliff edge. She never thought she’d find her way back here.

“Thanks, Klaus. Really. And sorry.”

“Sorry,” he echoed, smiling as though he had tasted the word for the first time. He stood, offering her a hand. She took it and his fingers weaved through hers as though they had never left her side. 

Giving her hand a squeeze, Klaus picked up his energy from where it had scattered across the hotel room floor and grinned at her. “C’mon - we have got to try this shit on. We’re going to be the sexiest people there, I’m telling you.”

They were all there when it ended. Or didn’t.

And then she was alone. Outside her home. And then in her husband’s arms, her daughter in her own. 

She didn’t miss the rest of them. Not as she held Claire and let herself be held by Ray. Not for a while, her mind arrested in a giddy haze every time she looked over and saw Ray holding her daughter - their daughter - in his arms. Her cheeks hurt from smiling, and she was sick with it. Sick with residual grief and disbelief, awash in the honeyed glow of their presence. Their being there. Tangible. Able to be held - to hold her back. 

She doesn’t remember much of that part either. Just images of Ray and Claire and the joy. The relief. Her surging tidal wave of emotions trickling out in tears. Ray held her then too. The way he used to. The way he would continue to, for the rest of their lives.

Allison didn’t ask what they knew, what they remembered of their shared pasts. If they remembered anything at all. She told him she was fine when she sobbed into his arms after Claire went to bed. I’m just so happy, baby.

Why? He had asked, and in that moment she could have sworn he knew what she’d done. Some ghost traipsed behind his eyes. A headstone flashed into her vision - a date she had memorised by accident. Ray’s death. Except he wasn’t dead. He was here. Alive. They were all alive. She only wept harder.

She couldn’t shake the fantasy - the dreamlike state she felt herself in. She was happy. She had to be happy, this was all she ever wanted and yet as the weeks passed by it still didn’t feel real. Sometimes her body didn’t feel her own like her hands were floating of their own accord making packed lunches for her daughter before school. Like the lips she used to kiss her husband belonged to a fictional character, a desperate woman’s creation to hold her grief when her arms gave out. 

This life, everything she wanted, she couldn’t believe it. And not in the way it had started. Not in the tearful solace of her family’s embrace. Not in the kind of disbelief that leaves a person smiling in spite of themselves in their quiet moments. The kind of disbelief that made her false. Untethered. The irony of that was not lost on her.

She had sat in her grief too long, her desperation had turned to daggers primed above her chest and now that she’d done the impossible they had just melted into her. Metal in her bloodstream and she felt so, so heavy. So heavy she might float away. 

She knew what it was to live in a falsehood. That had been her life. Almost all of it. But this was different - there was no control here. Not that she wanted there to be she just… She wanted to be sure of it. Her guard was up when it shouldn’t be. She should be happy. Why wasn’t she blissfully happy?

And then came the guilt. It surged sometimes when Claire was at school and Ray was at work - she still hadn’t asked what he did. How could she not know something like that? About the man she loved more than anyone in the world? She thought about Viktor. He trusted her in the end. Came around when she had never deserved it less. And yet, he was the only one she could talk to about all this. She needed to know it was real. Then maybe she could feel something when Claire talked about her school friends and that girl she shared her lunch with - the one whose Mom packed her an entire tube of Pringles for sharing. Only her siblings could tell her she wasn’t going crazy. That these weren’t the delusions of a widow and grieving mother. 

But she didn’t even know if they were here. Whether they made it. Whether they even existed. The longer she spent in her own fantasy, the more she began to doubt her family’s existence too. It was so sterile here, beautiful and magical but normal in every possible way. The way she remembered her life was anything but normal. She had powers, she was a superhero. She’d saved the world from extinction. Twice. Nobody would believe her if she told them. She didn’t know if she believed herself.

She had to find them.

She couldn’t be entirely and completely alone at the end.