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abbatoirablaze · 5 months

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Tortured Souls, Klaus Hargreeves

Word Count: 793

“WHY CAN’T YOU JUST CONFORM TO THE TESTS, NUMBER EIGHT?”

Reginald reached into his vest pocket and pulled out a small box with a button in the middle. Pressing it, they screamed and fell to their knees. A moment later it felt like all of their breath was leaving their body and they clung to their neck, hoping that would force their lungs to take in some oxygen.

“STOP!” Klaus wailed, “STOP PLEASE! YOU’RE KILLING THEM!”

“SAY IT CORRECTLY, NUMBER FOUR. I’M KILLING HIM!” Reginald said in a monotone voice, “he needs to learn that he cannot dictate the terms of being here.”

“LEAVE THEM ALONE!”

Dull eyes looked up at Klaus.

He sighed.

The electro-shocks had forced your personalities to withdraw. You were just a shell of yourself as you laid in his arms.

He didn’t know who you were.

“Klaus…”

His eyes snapped to yours. His heart felt like it was aching as he stared into them. You were in your flannel with a punk shirt over top of it, and a flowy skirt with jeans under it.

“It hurts them when you pull them back…”

The white glow lightened up your body for a moment, and your lips parted in a wordless sigh.

“NUMBER EIGHT IS A BOY AND HE WILL BE TREATED AS SUCH!” Klaus raced towards his father, but Reginald only looked to Allison, “number three!”

Allison whimpered and shook her head, “no.. they-“

“DO IT OR I PRESS THE BUTTON AGAIN!”

“I heard a rumor,” her voice echoed. Klaus stopped and looked back at her, begging her not to finish it, “that everyone let dad finish testing number eight!”

All of the siblings stopped moving. Luthor’s arms went slack against her, and she looked from her siblings, all of whom had a complacent look on their faces.

Even number eight, who had been grasping at their throat lay slack on the ground.

“Dad…are they-“

“He!” Reginald growled, glaring at number three, “he is fine. You remember when we met that girl who was like him…all those personalities from the trauma…each with their own power. Well eight is refusing to let me see them. He-“

“Dad-“

Reginald’s eyes shot to Allison, “if you want to keep doing what you’re doing in Hollywood, you’ll let this happen.”

She felt her stomach drop as she looked at Klaus, her brother unable to move. But she noticed the tears that fell down his cheeks as she turned away.

Her father pressed the button yet again.

“Go away, Ben…” Klaus grumbled as the vision of eight started to fade, “they don’t want to be around you. They just want to be with me right now…like every time after dad-”

“They are in pain, you idiot…you can’t drag someone up that moved on without it causing pain.”

“I see you all the time…”

“You convinced me never to move on!” Ben reminded him.

“I couldn’t convince them...”

Ben didn’t speak.

Number eight had passed the day that they turned fourteen.

Their father caught them wearing one of Allison’s skirts and when they told him that they weren’t a male or female, their father became enraged.

He thought it was a new personality that hadn’t been researched.

He accused them of hiding more personalities away, and continued to torture them while all of the siblings were forced to watch.

The group liked to say that they split up because of everyone wanting to move on…but really, it was because that was the day that all of them saw the complete and utter disregard their father had for one of their own.

They saw just how much of a monster he really was for the sake of his research.

“They miss you…you know.”

“Hmm?” Klaus asked, his eyes rising up to that of his brothers. Ben gave him a sad look, “what did you say, Ben?”

“Eight…they-they love you…”

“I know…” he said sadly, “I-I wish I could see them more though…wish I didn’t have to pull them from wherever it is that they ended up…”

“They’re waiting on you…”Ben said simply as he sat down on the edge of his brother’s bed. Ben’s eyes looked at the heroin that his brother had sitting out on the nightstand, “Klaus…not like this…”

“I just want to see them again….re-really see them…”

“You can…just-not like this Klaus…” Ben sighed, “they want you to get clean and live your life…then come to them…”

Klaus looked down at them.

There was a sadness in their eyes that he hadn’t noticed before they faded away. Ben watched his brother’s humanity fading away with them before he reached over towards his kit.

“Klaus…”

“Go away, you dick.” Klaus sniffled as one hand reached for the other and the other the spoon.

#the umbrella academy #tua #darkhorse comics #dark horse comics #klaus hargreeves #number 4 #the seance #tortured souls #ben hargreeves #reginald hargreeves #25 days of christmas #angst

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abbatoirablaze · 11 months

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The Understudies, Season 2, Chapter 6

Word Count: 1.6k

Warnings: angst, manipulation, coercion, MAJOR TW: character death/suicide, mentions of blood.

“Why did you do that?”

Dani glared at Luthor and the eldest of the Hargreeves shrunk under her knowing gaze, “oh don’t say that you’re still hooked on her.”

“You went after her for no reason,” Luthor argued, trying to stand up for her, “she was there, with dad, helping us.”

“No she wasn’t!”

“Well she was trying to,” he responded, “And you went in with a metaphorical knife and stabbed her in the stomach and then twisted the blade.”

“Not cool!” Klaus agreed lazily from the floor.

Dani rolled her eyes at him, “get up and say that to my face if you want it to have any weight behind it, druggie.”

“They’re right, Dani. There wasn’t any reason for how you treated her,” Allison said from her corner, “she was trying to help us, and convince dad that we were on the right side of things.”

“No, she wasn’t,” she argued, “she wasn’t helping any of us. She was helping herself. She made us all look bad.”

“No…we did that on our own!” Five disagreed, “with Luthor over there having too many daddy issues and all of you acting like a bunch of jackals.”

Dani turned to focus her rage on him, “no. Brianna has more power than you give her credit. She was the one that got to dad and managed to convince him to hold onto her. None of us were able to do that. She’s been that way ever since we were kids. He always liked her the best.”

“Maybe that’s because she’s not a royal bitch!” Diego spat.

“Or maybe you’re all still into her,” she hissed, “Klaus is wrapped around anything that gives them attention, just like you. And she was always dad’s favorite, so having her give you attention was just as good as dad giving you the attention himself. And Luthor…do we even have to begin with the daddy issues he has? They started dating once he was on the moon…all the way until the time of the accident. And he’s never gotten over Allison, so we all know that he just dated Brianna because that put him one step closer to dad!”

“You seem to know an awful lot about your sister’s dating history,” Five began, “Jealous much?”

“Yeah right,” she scoffed, “there’s nothing to be jealous of that little slut. She’s slept with almost all of you. I mean, she even fucked Ben and gave birth to a bastard. I just don’t understand why all of you like her so much that you’re willing to give up saving the world for her.”

“Hey…no one said that we’re giving up!” Five growled, “and not all of us have been romantic with Brianna. So your little theory doesn’t work.”

“She didn’t need to get to you,” Dani smirked, “Dot got to you the first day you saw her.”

Five’s jaw tensed, “you don’t get to speak about Dot…”

“I just don’t get how all of you are so wrapped up in my sisters,” she growled, “I’m the special one. Not them. But yet, none of you want to acknowledge me. None of you ever wanted to acknowledge the fact that I could be an asset to you assholes.”

“Because you just like to put a wedge between people!” Luthor said solemnly, “you’re not an asset if all you do is tear people apart. That makes you a villain.”

“Okay daddy issues!” she scoffed as the elevator came to a stop at the ground floor, “you know…that’s why none of you will figure this out. You put all of your faith into the fact that Brianna will help, and dad will magically be on our side, but guess what, she didn’t. We’re on our own. And just like Five said, days ago, we’ve brought the apocalypse back with us. The only difference is that this time around, there’s no way of stopping it.”

“You don’t know that, Dani!”

But Dani had already turned her attention away from him, choosing to focus on Allison, “you already lost your family once. Do you really want to go through another apocalypse without saying goodbye?”

“Brianna, would you like to discuss why you ran out of there so quickly?” Reginald asked slowly. Brianna’s gaze went up to his and another tear slid down her cheek, “I was discussing things with the one that called himself number five when you burst through like a bat out of hell.”

“I-I would not.”

“You know that it would be for the best,” he offered gently, “we should discuss why you had such a visceral reaction to whatever happened in there…in all of our time together, I’ve never even so much as seen you crack, and you’ve seen the real me.”

“I-it’s all of them,” she admitted, breaking down again. Reginald sighed, placing his book beside himself on the seat before sliding over to the side where Brianna was sitting. There, he carefully wrapped his arms around her. She sobbed against his chest, allowing herself to feel all of the emotions, “I-I just-I had to hide who I was for so long with them. When I was a c-child, Dani made me feel like I couldn’t show anyone my powers. She squirrelled me away until everyone started to believe it. They treated me like I was nothing all this time, and they made me believe it…the only one that ever saw me…the only one that ever made me truly better was Ben…and they let him die because they were jealous of our love.”

“Did I ever believe that, little one?”

She looked up at the man that she viewed as a father. He reached up, swiping away her tears, and she shook her head, “n-no…you never let me think I was anything less than special. You saw the same things that Ben did…and neither one of you ever let me think I was less than that.”

“Then the problem is them,” he said simply, “it’s a problem we will rectify little one, don’t you worry about that.”

“Wh-what?”

“You and I have accomplished so much in the short amount of time that we’ve been together, Brianna,” he admitted, “you’ve helped me get far beyond the boundaries that I thought were possible. If these people…these men and women you claimed as siblings have put you in some kind of box that limits your capabilities…I want none of it. I want nothing of the Umbrella Academy…”

She shot up, staring at him wholeheartedly, “but the apocalypse…the-“

“We will find a way, little one,” he said simply, “and then we will make a plan…a plan to usurp what they believe as reality and create our own. A better one.”

“A better Umbrella Academy?”

“No, little one…an adapted version…The Sparrow Academy!”

The Sparrow Academy.

Her heart ached at the thought that was planted in her father’s head that night.

No more Klaus. Or Luthor. Or Allison. Diego. Five.

It’s not that she didn’t like them. She loved her siblings. And she’d tried to convince her father to reverse his feelings over it, but to no avail.

She had done more damage than good.

She felt the tears coming up to her eyes once more. Her chest began to constrict, feeling tighter than it had all day. She looked to the tub and sighed. Walking over quickly, she turned the knob, stopping the flow. Running her fingers through it, she agreed that it was warm enough.

Stripping down, she stepped in, needing the clarity of the warm tub to clear her mind.

“It’s my fault!” she sighed, bracing her back against the edge, letting her body slide along the back until her bottom met the tub’s depths and her neck rested at the lip, “I was the one who made the Umbrella Academy weak. He couldn’t focus on them because he worried about me…”

She sniffled into the open air.

The bathroom was filling with the warm fog, the air rising up out of the tub. She lightly splashed at the water, hoping that she would feel something other than sadness.

Nothing.

She closed her eyes and sobbed, feeling the emotions that she’d put away once she and Reginald had discussed the start of the Sparrow Academy.

None of the siblings would be chosen. He’d known where he’d gotten each of them.

Luthor and Five from a couple in England.

Diego from Cuba.

Allison from Georgia

Klaus from Pennsylvania.

And Vanya from Russia.

And herself, Dani, and Dot from England as well.

Her heart raced at the thought that her father wouldn’t pick any of them.

“All my fault.” she repeated, picking up the razor from beside the tub. She leaned back and held the cool metal to her lips. When she felt the metal’s sweet kiss, she leaned into it, and pulled hard before she could regret the decision.

The warmth that erupted from her throat felt different than the warmth in the tub. The porcelain underneath her disappeared. It’s sickening white glow turning a light pink to a deep scarlet as the blood trailed down her chest.

She tried to take a breath but couldn’t.

Her heart raced even more as her hands reached up to her neck.

The skin was more than split.

Her fingers danced over the damaged flesh, slipping on the blood.

It felt like she was drowning.

The doorknob jostled, “Brianna…”

She looked worriedly at the door as her body began slumping down into the tub. She didn’t have the energy any longer to hold herself up. Her fingers stopped working to try to stop the bleeding that had now also slowed.

She sank.

The water, mixed with blood, was too hard to see through. Her lips parted and it made its way into her body.

A crash.

The door was slamming open just a few feet from her.

But it was too little, too late as Reginald rushed into the bathroom.

Brianna was gone.

Chapter 7

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