#somehow THIS is the timeline where they do manage to prevent the apocalypse | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

jasmine-jules · 3 years

Text

Escaping to Chaos

Sylvie & Loki & Mobius

1500+ words

Warnings: Fairly general. Little depiction of violence, mild language

A/N: Hey all! I can’t believe I wrote this piece only two days after getting the prompt. I mean I can, but it all has to do with the fact that I saw this theory on TikTok the other day about Sylvie’s relationship with the TVA and why Mobius is so invested in Loki variants. And then because the episode airs tomorrow, I didn’t want my cute and sweet theory destroyed by whatever painful thing we get. So yeah :)

Here’s my submission for the ever so lovely, @startrekkingaroundasgard 6k writing challenge: A picture is worth a thousand words. My picture prompt was the darkened, rainy street view in the writing challenge post, I couldn’t get it to paste in well Here

Hope you enjoy! Leave me a comment or a heart if you do, and feel free to check out my Masterlist if you want to see others like it!

~~~~~~~~~

Sylvie feels the time winds bluster past her as she steps through the door, and the air around her falls silent. The chaos of Lamentis 1 fades as the door slams shut, leaving her in quiet and safety. For now.

How? She’s actually not hundred percent sure yet, all she knows is that she saw a door; she saw a chance to live. And she couldn’t not take it.

She’s spent this long surviving, this long fighting for the freedom of herself and everyone else around her—if anything, wishing for life to be the exact sort of chaos she just ran from. The TVA stole her from her home, they destroyed her family and everything she knew before she even got a chance to know it. She will not give up that easily.

“So, where do you think we ended up this time?” Loki’s lilting voice breaks through the peaceful din of the rainy, empty street they stand on.

“Damn,” she mutters under her breath as she hears the one voice she hasn’t been able to shake yet.

“You think I would know? I don’t even know who was responsible for the stupid time door.” She whirls around, exasperated. Why is he still here, the only reason they stuck together was to get away from that doomed moon, and it wasn’t long before she couldn’t hold back from voicing those same thoughts,

“Why are you still following me around like a homesick puppy? I was only resisting my urge to kill you to get off that planet, and guess what? My reason is-” she snaps her fingers, “gone. So now you should be too.” After all, he’s just another person for the TVA to steal away from her, so it’s better that he leaves before he turns into anything more than a nuisance.

“You need me.” Loki jabs towards her chest, “You wouldn’t be alive right now if it weren’t for me, and I you. So,” he crosses his arms indignantly, “fortunately for you, you’re stuck with me now.”

She resists the urge to smack him across that knowing grin he flashes her, he’s won and he knows it, “Fine. But we need to move, we still don’t know who opened that door and I’m not eager to meet them.”

“Lead the way, my Lady.” He gestures his arms towards the open sidewalk in front of him.

Sylvie rolls her eyes and walks in the opposite direction of his arm, crashing her shoulder intentionally into his as she passes by.

As they walk, she fights to push away the ease the comes with being in Loki’s presence. The sense of family. Of belonging. Of having someone by your side that knows you, understands what makes you tick and why you fight. She has no idea when it did turn from a very real urge to kill him, to this.

She knows that Loki feels it too, but his fondness based more on a memory of a brother that she herself never had a chance to know. His pull to be near any Asgardian kinship stronger than the instinctual distrust of a stranger. She feels it every time he drops a hushed truth about himself, and every time he pushes her out of the way of a meteor. He can’t help but think of family either.

Sylvie hasn’t felt this in years. Decades even... she stops in her tracks.

“Sylvie?”

But she barely hears Loki’s question through the hurricane of thoughts stampeding through her mind, whizzing past her faster than time. She hardly registers his presence even as he hesitantly steps towards her like trying not to spook an animal.

“I know who opened the time door for us,” She manages to get the words past her choked throat, “And I think you do too.”

She can see the dots piecing together behind Loki’s eyes—his face falling as the realization dawns on him.

“Do we run?” He asks, but she knows it’s a fruitless, rhetorical question. They both know the answer.

“Ahhh, you two finally figured it out?”

Sylvie would recognize that soft, drawled out voice anywhere, even considering the centuries that’s passed since she last heard it in any meaningful conversation. She doesn’t turn to look at him just yet, but instead pleads silently to Loki’s eyes, begging him to take the lead. She can’t bear to talk to Mobius, not this time at least.

It takes hardly any time at all for Loki to catch on, and she almost doesn’t comprehend the tiny, imperceptible nod he aims her way, the flood of white noise drowning out any constructive thought. All she can manage to do is to move in harmony with Loki as he makes his way towards Mobius.

Instead of following any charming word or thrown slight that falls from Loki’s mouth, she’s overtaken with memories of when she first stepped into the dingy, perpetual grayness of the TVA.

Fingers wrapped too tightly around her little arm. Her long black hair stinging her scalp as the Agent pulls her along too roughly down the endless wall of windows, showing her the expansive city of lights, and space too large for her small mind to even grasp at.

She hears the high pitched drone of Miss Minutes explaining to the younger version of herself, barely just figuring out her identity and the path she wants to take in her life, the crime that she had committed. That she broke the sacred timeline and varied away from her pre-destined road, and must pay the price.

She doesn't hear a word spoken in that vast courtroom. The gavel rings loudly on the dark wood of the judges bench as her sentence is decided, and she’s herded out of the court room. But this time, the arm that leads her doesn’t pinch too tight, doesn’t pull at her hair. This time the hand rests gently on her shoulder, and it’s not a cold voice, one hardened like steel in war-like conditions, but it’s almost goofy. His vowels twang and his words always have a soft uptick to them, like he’s always questioning what he’s saying.

They get to a different chamber, this time with a round table and a couple of chairs, so they can talk face to face instead of one looming over the other.

He introduces himself at Agent Mobius, and he’s in charge of the variants that aren’t meant to be reset yet, but rather help them carry out tasks that the other agents haven’t succeeded at yet. Although, that’s not what she is here for either,

“No, my sweet Loki, you’re here because you broke the timeline, but it’s still not your time. You deserve a chance to live.”

So she grows up beside Mobius. He raises her like Odin never did, he’s kind and he teaches her to fight, he tells her stories of the worlds that he’s seen, promising her more than she can even dream of. At night, Loki steals away precious moments under her covers or in the quiet of her closet to practice magic. The kind that the fading memory of her mother always talked about, and slowly she becomes not a Loki variant, but Sylvie, the Enchantress.

Soon her need to learn expands wider than the scope of the TVA, she gets too curious, starts asking the wrong questions.

The TVA is too ordered, everything works the ways it’s supposed to and never strays from what the Timekeepers declare. It’s too perfect to be good, the universe tends towards disorder. And they’re doing everything in their power to prevent that.

She begs Mobius to tell her the truth. He never does, his stoic face never breaking no matter how many times she asks in every different way she can think of.

He never breaks, and eventually, decades after coming to the timeless place, she’s dragged away to yet another room, this time to be quieted down for good. So Sylvie fights, she kills anyone that gets in her path, she does anything necessary in order to escape.

She slits the last throat of the agent in her way and pockets her dagger. Her still bloody fingers manipulate the time clock, trying to program it the way she’s practiced a thousand times before. As she steps through the door, she feels eyes burning into her now blonde, short hair. She can’t help but look back and hold Mobius’ eyes.

“I have to do this.” Sylvie whispers, her own eyes burning as the time winds rush her into the first of the never ending line of apocalypses.

She has to bring chaos back to the world, with or without Mobius.

But now he’s here, and somehow he’s caught her off guard, practically making every evasive maneuver she’s done up to now completely useless. Loki still dances through his words, him and Mobius bantering like they’re an old married couple. And honestly, she now understands the drunken ramblings of Loki on the train.

Love is a dagger. It cuts and it slips through your fingers before you can even realize. And as the rain starts to fall lightly on her face, she captures both men’s attention,

“Just shut up, please.” Loki starts to protest, but she cuts him off, “You can squabble with your prince later. For now, Mobius? If you truly are here to help, then help. Because we need to keep moving.”

#i still can't believe i wrote this the way I did #it was so fun #nicolasfam #picture1000wordswc #loki series #lokius #sylvie #marvel #loki #but obviously I had to squeeze in a line about loki's prince #it's just too amazing of a piece of canon to ignore

7 notes · View notes

currentfandomkick · 4 years

Text

Marinette did not sign up for this pt2

forgot to post this before i passed out last night. part one here ao3 here

It was almost four years into being Ladybug when the Justice League made contact.

In that time, she and Chat had built the miraculous team and they both knew each members identities, but swore them all to not seek out one another’s identity. (Though Alya was Alya and had Carapaced figured out on his first outing… convincing her not to reveal that to him took a bit. The girl was determined, but Marinette follows Fu’s rules to the letter (as much as she can) and that meant Secrets Stay Secret damnit.)

Not contacting the JL themselves was partially due to some fallout the Mayor and Parisian government with a (dissolved) Justice League’s branch. It was well before her team’s time. Something about collateral damage and if her miraculous could fix damage dealt by JL members or not playing some role in that too.

She decided it was a good thing when two years later she found a fucking dagger with a large bouquet on her balcony. It became a regular occurrence for special occasions—birthday, winter holidays and on Easter (she didn’t even know why on that one. Her parents aren’t Catholic. Maybe Murder Robin was, or thought she was?). She would just find some weapon with flowers somewhere in her room. She had no fucking clue what Murder Robin (Alya found articles where the ‘new’ Robin was cited as likely having killed multiple people in Gotham and just, yikes) or his friends or even her father (Fucking Batman, the Ghost of Gotham) might have meant by leaving it, but it was clear they had her address, knew which room was hers, and could do a lot of damage if she toed the line. She wasn’t testing any of those ‘no contact rules’ after that.

Hiding a dagger and various other weapons (so many knives and throwing stars) from Maman by giving it to Fu and later passing it off as an eccentric gift from him to her for always helping him out was… an adventure when Fu was still Master Fu. She hopes Murder Robin doesn’t find out about that bit. She has no clue how he or his family (not hers, hers are in Paris with her. Hers at least tried to talk to her, tried to listen and did make time for her. His family? Complete strangers she may share DNA with.)

She (logically) should be terrified that Murder Robin knows her alias and secret identity are the same person; if he’s really one of the world’s greatest detectives’ kids, why wouldn’t he know? Batman must have known for years—why else would Murder Robin be able to find her? the DNA scan was in a closed match system to just Paris. And she knew there was no way Goddamn Batman, Ghost of Gotham, would hang around Paris long enough to get dragged into the system for him to have a ping.

He just did not want anything to do with her or her city’s trouble since it wasn’t his. She wasn’t his. Wasn’t wanted by him. That was fine—he has enough to worry about in his hell city.

Sending Murder Robin out to do his dirty work?

Not fine.

Her team and her were… managing the Hawkmoth situation. Keeping it from spilling out of Paris since Startrain. Goo-guy managed to give them a break—people can grab akuma that aren’t meant for them and become much weaker akuma than if the akuma reached its target. Same with the few that could grab an akuma in the air. It meant when akuma went out, some citizens were willing to bear Hawkmoth’s wrath for a bit—even groups taking turns sometimes—to prevent someone from getting akumatized until Ladybug could purify the akuma or Chat Noir could destroy it.

And for akuma battles, well, she has more than just her and Chat, Luck (Creation) and Destruction. Viperion gave them multiple chances to change costly choices in battle. Bunnix fixed the ones that Viperion couldn’t. All oversized opponents fell to Ryuko and her mastery of the elements, even if she can’t always make it thanks to different schools and tight schedules. Miss Sting was chosen by Marinette—Aurore was easy to lean on for news team reports and media appearances that Ladybug and Chat Noir don’t have the time or energy for. Plus, Aurored needed the anger management, so win-win. Don’t even get her started on Pegasus or King Monkey always being ready at a moment’s notice and how they both started joining Nino and Alya’s parkour dates that have morphed into group hangouts in last two years. Seriously—if she knew where she needed to be, Max was ready to answer her call. If she knew more chaos would work as a distraction, long live King Monkey, the Great Distractor.

Then there’s her emotional support in the field (besides her chaton), Carapace. He’s a great shield in battle, good with civilians and quick to defend. He’s also big on mental health (something their team sorely needed). How Nino managed to get turtle headphones, Marinette doesn’t know. She does know she nicks them from him regularly as Ladybug for team hangouts and when she needs to clam down on patrol.

Then there is her civilian bestie, the one who convinced her to stay as Ladybug, Alya Cesaire, aka Rena Rogue and the Ladyblogger. Rena Rouge is by and far one of her favorites to talk about potential Hawkmoths with, and work out akuma prevention techniques with. In the battlefield she was one of the first to strike (even if that’s not how she should be using the flute, Marinette has no room for judgment given how she uses all of her Lucky Charms.) Alya always posted and circulated anti-akuma tips and altered the Ladyblog to have each icon for known miraculous mean something.

Marinette was nothing but supportive of her friend, even if the blog is a behemoth to maintain and resulted in Alya retiring as her Deputy (Rose took over gleefully as Deputy). She liked that the Ladybug was for news, and the Cat for if an attack is ongoing. The Butterfly tracks akuma sightings before an attack, and was a bit on the nose in her opinion, but it’s effectively mapped out areas where Hawkmoth’s lair is or has an opening, giving them an area to investigate and patrol more heavily. The Turtle offered guided meditation videos and yoga sessions (somehow always on-going), while the Fox was for group chats and various akuma-related support groups. The Peacock offered mental health resources, and was constantly growing. The Bee was for self defense videos and sat next to Dragon for akuma survival tips. The Snake was one of her personal favorites, advice on calming down with guided breathing if someone feels close to being akumatized, and she’d used it herself more than once. The Horse was the one she’s the least familiar with, for shelter routes that she never used. The Monkey held a number of fun distractions, videos and memes uploaded by her followers with art and songs, and was overall very light hearted.

Marinette is proud of her team.

Though it doesn’t mean there aren’t days she’s waiting for it all to unravel, or for an Older Bunnix to appear again and tell her they have to undo the day Marinette’s identities were compromised. But that is a always an apocalypse event option only. Chat Blanc still haunts Marinette’s nightmares, and Alix’s too. the Princess Justice timeline haunts Alix since she lived it in real time, but it’s Adiren’s nightmare come to life in multiple other akuma attacks. Apparently if Marinette is akumatized, she brings about a second Reign of Terror so encompassing, it made Robespierre’s look like a child’s drawing of what a reign

It was during another Syren event when things went from workable to a slow boiling unbearable. All but Alix were transformed and fighting minions to clear a path for Ladybug to get to the main akuma.

Imagine her frustration when Aquaman and Aqualad appeared behind her while she was scouting on the outskirts, and both refused to make any eye contact, practically kneeling in water to her and making themselves a target. When they should be able to read the room and see that the battlefield isn’t the place for this.

“Oh Great Paschalítsa” Aquaman began, “I understand your hesitance in this matter, given the Miraculous and Atlantis’ history,” Aquaman continued as she dodged yet another minion further ahead and kept working her way to where the akuma was, ignoring his speech. “But I ask that you do not sink—”

Marinette gave up on her current task to ensure there wasn’t some international incident of Ladybug letting Aquaman be captured by akumas or something. She’d never head the end of it if she didn’t.

But now they were surrounded. Aqualad at least kept his attention on the task at hand (re: keeping minions from spotting her) as they all worked out a way to escape, even if he wasn’t looking anywhere near her. Apparently Aquaman got the message (finally) and did the same as his sidekick(?) after Aqualad made a few gestures she wasn’t paying attention to. She does have an akuma item to break and akuma to catch and purify.

The pair did manage to act as decent bodyguards and distractions while she worked out the kid’s item and how it connected to their fixation—no swimming until their grades up meant all of their gear but a whistle was taken away. One Lucky Charm and convoluted plot that merged fighting in 3-D, a pair of scissors and a lot off kicking off underwater buildings later, and Paris was back to normal.

She managed it without talking to Aquaman once. She could give quick directions to Aqualad without toeing the line—he wasn’t part of the Justice League and was known to operate in the ocean alone when Aquaman wasn’t there.

“Great Paschalítsa,” Aquaman began and Marinette wanted him to go off and leave her alone. Him and Aqualad. “As king of Atalntis, I humbly offer my aide in whatever has caused you and the great Mávri Gáta to show yourselves to the world.”

What was with all this formal speech? Marinette thought they knew French, or well, Alya mentioned it said they did in their bio, but it clearly wasn’t the kind her class used for projects. And Marinette was exhausted, frustrated, and now did not have a good and convenient target for her rage (re: akuma that drowned Paris) and well…

Well, she blew up. A bit. But can you blame her?

They wouldn’t take the hint. (Silence means Fuck Off).

“Look,” Marinette whirled on them, ignoring her team’s shock and not even going in for the celebratory ‘Pound it’. “I told Murder Robin—“ the pair winces at the that wording. Good. They knew who she meant then.

“—that I won’t get involved with anything involving our dad.”

She didn’t miss the sharp intakes from her team. Chat knew, only due to a freak out over being left a freaking sword one time and she panicked, okay?

“And I meant it. Just because Batman felt guilty or something,” She doubted it. Ghost of Gotham doesn’t feel anything and can apparently take out entire buildings on occasion. (Even if she was pretty sure that was someone filling in for him, she wouldn’t discount it either.) “That Doesn’t mean I’m going to change my mind on the matter—My team has got this. And we don’t need a handout four years too late.”

They had to. Fu was gone (For three months now. Three months Marinette held the weight of being The Guardian on her shoulders alone. She had to have this. She wouldn’t trust random elements sent by Mr. ‘I accept my murderous son and ignore the one in constant peril that blew herself up twice to save Paris.’

“Bug out.”

She knew her team would have questions, but Chat could answer them for now and Miss Sting would be able to handle any questions if any the media tried anything. Bright side of having the main Miraculous Team journalist as Rena with a determined hacker Pegasus; if it was personal to the team, the pair made sure it was never there.

Later at JL HQ

Aquaman walked up to Batman once the meeting was over. Batman knew the man had something on his mind and that it was related to himself—why else would he keep looking at him during the meeting? Whatever was troubling the Atlantian, Bruce could only hope it wasn’t emotions. That was really, really not his department… Jonn was much better with issues like that.

“Batman, may I have a word?”

Batman nodded, quick to follow the other out into a more private room.

“It has come to my attention that your daughter and you have a, uh, tricky relationship.”

Batman raised an eyebrow, as his relationship with Cass was doing well… he thought. Maybe he should visit her more? She was doing fine on her own and was always warm to him when he visited her in China on her missions against the Triad. Perhaps he should see if she was open to working with him on a case on that, or see if she wanted to come to Gotham again.

“And I don’t mean to judge here,” Aqua man continued, obviously nervous. “But uh, apparently your current Robin is well aware of her existence.”

Batman raised an eyebrow under the cowl. “Black Bat and Robin are close.”

The way Aquaman’s face contorted indicated nothing good. “Your other daughter.” The man paused, waiting for Batman to understand. “Ladybug.”

Bruce… Bruce froze. “I don’t have another daughter.” Not to his knowledge.

Aquaman ran a hand through his hair. “Well apparently ‘Murder Robin’ has met her,” Aquaman said with air quotes of all things. “Years ago.”

Bruce felt his heart stop. Damian’s… adjustment into the family had not been easy. And a few years ago Damian was much more… willing to do things against the Batcode, things that had him thriving in the League of Assassins. Things that changed a person. Things he’d need to ask this Ladybug—his daughter, another surprise child—about.

“And given that a Ladybug being active has always been a sign of a potential apocalypse—“

Batman’s red flags began flashing. Hard. His child was in danger and fighting a potential apocalypse event. Without his help. Without Batman’s resources.

“I assume Ladybug is a mantel.” Bruce hoped she had a mentor, someone to ease her into hero-work.

“Yes.” Aquaman looked… hesitant then. “Were it not for one Ladybug’s mercy, my people would have died when Atlantis was sunk by her equal, the Black Cat’s user. It seems this time they’re allies this time, against the Butterfly—I, Batman, are you alright?”

Bruce was not okay, at all. There is an ongoing apocalypse event, a daughter he never met stopping it (how old was she? Was she Damian’s age or older? Younger? He didn’t want her to have to live with this life, but she was and was doing so without him, without his help, without someone he knew she could lean on for support) and apparently his youngest son was well aware of this and did nothing to help. Did not even tell him.

He was going to have words with Damian.

“Excuse me.” Batman turned to leave. He has a son to interrogate, research to do, and a daughter to find (beg forgiveness for not getting to her sooner, and help her) on top of the usual workload. A Bat’s work is never done.

Wonder Woman who stopped him while he was reeling with this information, her grip too solid on his arm, and unlikely to break.

“It is not wise to rush in.” She began, appealing to reason in the hopes of keeping a panicked “Batdad” from making the situation worse. “From what Aquaman has told us, she does not welcome your involvement,” she said slowly, hoping it would sink in. “The Ladybug Miraculous has always been an agent of creation, of healing.” Diana hoped that would set her friend’s mind at ease. Ladybugs were notorious for their battle prowess and strategies, yes, but first and foremost their duty was to undo damage. “Ladybug herself will have much on her shoulders if her role is anything like my mother’s when she was among the Chosen, and adding yourself to the equation before her adversary is defeated will only serve to distract her from her goal.”

Batman remained tense, but didn’t struggle against Wonder Woman’s grasp. Good.

Green Lantern was the next to approach, as planned. “So why don’t you focus on your family in Gotham before rushing into meeting this kid,” Green Lantern—no, Hal suggested. “We’ll work on finding out what’s causing this possible apocalypse. You get your house in order.”

Bruce heard the words that weren’t said. Find out what your ex-assassin son did your demi-god daughter and make sure he doesn’t screw up anything further.

“That is not—“

“Batman.” Wonder Woman squeezed his arm. “This is not a suggestion.”

Cold curled in Bruce's stomach. His daughter was in danger, fighting against a potential apocalypse, and he was told to sit this one out. When it was personal. (His daughter who he needed to meet, to learn about, to see what made her tick and work out how to help her wherever she might need it. His daughter who he had lost years with.)

(They were ordering him to lose more time with her.)

“You are benched from League activities until this is sorted out.” Wonder Woman continued, as though she hadn’t just gutted Bruce. “I will take lead on Ladybug’s case. My people have much experience with her and the Black Cat as allies.” It was Diana that was smiling then. “Perhaps Mother’s connection will convince her to allow our aide.”

Green Lantern nodded along. “And when I’m not with you guys, well, GL core is in charge of keeping things not-apocalypse-y across the universe and keeping it from spiraling. And Miraculous tend to like the whole Balance thing, so it shouldn’t be too much for me to help out every now and then with them too.”

Bruce twitched where he was. He wasn’t going to win this. Not by a long shot.

But they were taking Aquaman and a Green Lantern. Granted, at least it wasn’t Guy. But a Lantern. Over him. When it involves his family.

He had to get his house in order quickly.

Damian would say he was quite pleased with himself that day. He managed to decide the type of weapon that would help his sister defend herself against others best, given her profession as a seamstress, he was annoyed he hadn’t thought of it sooner. Selecting the type of needle to give her, and to ensure they could be used for fabrics to give her a reason to carry them on her person, was crucial however.

She had rejected his other offerings thus far, though he could hardly blame her. This would be his seventh attempt. He did hear it was a lucky number from somewhere… and he had gotten better since his last attempts at understanding the type of person she showed herself to be and the type of person she wished to be seen as.

The Swiss dagger on his first attempt was too bulky and not hidden enough for a style of fighting she should strive to cultivate. His second attempt was an ear dagger which were easier to use and she could add additional force with her thumb. He thought it was better protection for her, and it was small enough this time to be kept in her purse. Much better than his first attempt. Only from her pictures he knew it wasn’t ever in her purse.

He had failed to find her an acceptable apology gift that offered her the protection she needed. The third was when he moved to a larger blade, hoping the thin rapier could be hidden well enough as decorative or as a fancier fencing tool than standard. It wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility given her closeness to an Olympic level fencer and this ‘Adrien Agreste’ who often partnered with Tsurugi. He was glad she had taken to displaying it at the least, though Adrien claiming to have given it to her left a bad taste in his mouth.

His sister wished to not have it known she had her own weapons then, he could handle that. His fourth attempt was going to be a butterfly knife but given legal restrictions that he had come to realize she would follow (as idiotic as they were) he changed it to a classic Swiss knife. He did see this carried on her person on occasion, but not often. He looked into more easily concealed knives and gifted her a ballpoint pen knife—it looked like a pen and he made sure to customize it to resemble the pens in her room (he took a sample for reference) and did see her often carrying that one, though by active attempt or chance he couldn’t gather. He decided she would need a long range item next, and gifted her a small variety of throwing stars (and a knife or two, she seemed to favor possible close combat weapons of those he gave her). He noticed that none of these were carried on her person (he may have bugged them with trackers to figure out her preference) and they rarely left her room.

That was why he concluded that this time needles that she could use for sewing or battle were his best bet. Finding a way to walk that line was proving challenging.

Father came in while he was making his selection. He did find it odd Father hadn’t mentioned her to the rest of the family, but it could be that he wished her a more peaceful life. Damian would not disrespect his father’s wishes by bringing her up.

“Damian, we need to talk.”

Damian furrowed his brow, running over what could warrant that tone. He came up empty.

Father did move closer and see he was looking at needles this time. And showed surprised.

“For Okhti Al Kobra,” Damian stated, hoping his father wouldn’t be upset at him recognizing her. He knew now it was better for her to be apart from them, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t do what he could to help her protect herself. His older sister deserved better.

Father did freeze at that.

Had Damian displeased him? (He wouldn’t… wouldn’t send him to back. Damian knew that. But that look… it brought back the boy that wondered when he’d be tossed aside by the Great Batman for no longer being a good solider.)

“Father? I know you don’t like to speak of her but.”

“You, you’re getting her needles?” it was a question. He didn’t get why.

“Yes, my last presents seemed inadequate. She has taken to the penknife, but only sometimes. She keeps the Swiss on her sometimes too—haven’t you been keeping an eye on her social media? She posts a disgusting amount. I figured given the boutique it wouldn’t be unacceptable for her to carry needles on her as a weapon and tool in the future, should anyone else discover our connection.”

Bruce stared Damian, waiting for him to finish.

“She does keep the flowers I left her, though she does react oddly. The first time she was very pale.” Looking back, it was likely fear. She was a civilian after all… “However I believe she has come to accept that even with distance, she is still a Bat by blood and as such, should remain vigilant.” Damian hoped his report was adequate.

“She… how old is she?” Father’s tone was softer then. but the question didn’t make any sense.

“Father, you should know how old she is.” Damian waited for the man to respond.

He didn’t.

Damian furrowed his brow. “Father, you do know who she is, right?”

“Ladybug.”

Damian blinked at that. He had no idea who that was, but he knew an alias when he heard one. “She’s a civilian—when did she—”

“Damian.” He stilled at that. “How old is she?”

Damian straightened then. “She was twelve and a half when we first met. She will be sixteen in two weeks.” Damian glanced at his abandoned screen. “She enjoys design.”

“Her, her name.” His father looked… lost.

“I, we don’t revel secret identities?” Damian was a bit lost. Father should know of his sister. They were only two years apart. She was from before his father’s training became serious. He should know of her, at least. And if he didn’t, wasn’t it a betrayal to her if he revealed who she was without her permission? Whenever he tried to visit, she was always elsewhere, and he couldn’t very well show up as Damian Wayne. That would reveal the family and she didn’t need to know that. Didn’t need that burden.

“She knows she’s my daughter.” Father sounded…desperate.

“She knows she is Batman’s. I didn’t reveal your identity, or the family’s.”

“I…”

Damian took a deep breath. He didn’t want to betray his family. Or further hurt his older sister. “I believe that we should speak to her before discussing her identity. It… it should be her choice.”

Father looked pained at that.

“I assume you don’t…” No, father would not know how the first meeting went… right?

Father said nothing before leaving.

Damian wondered if he should visit her sooner. He eyed his cart and got her a set of weaponry needles, knitting, and a set made for seamstresses with small hands. He hoped these were to her liking. Perhaps he should add white heather (Protection) and purple hyacinth (I’m sorry) in addition to the zinnias…. Or just give her two with the zinnias mixed between them, as Damian reasoned the heather and hyacinth wouldn’t looks the best together. Yellow (daily remembrance) and scarlet (constancy) zinnias with heather (protection) and some greenery should be fine, and purple hyacinth (I’m sorry) mixed with magenta (lasting affection) white (goodness) and perhaps a white daffodil (stay as sweet as you are) with a filler of some sort would work well. She accepted his apologies (albeit in flowers) before, and he hoped he had proven he was paying enough attention to her for her to see that he meant it.

He was glad he hadn’t killed her that day.

Now he had research to do to help his sister.

He missed Brown as she slipped out. And completely missed finding out she was messaging Todd, Drake and Cassandra the news: there was a missing Bat into design, goes by Ladybug, and Bruce has no clue what her identity is.

Cass didn’t send anything in response.

Jason stated he would find her before Tim.

Stephanie was just excited for another girl in the group. Little sister in need of help? Count her in—being Spoiler versus being Batgirl was a world of difference. Having a team made it easier, and it shouldn’t be too hard to convince the girl to give it a shot, right?

Thanks for waiting. part three here

tags: @heldtogetherbysafetypins @laurcad123 @raisuke06

debating which bat will find her first (in person), so feel free to state any preferences, and thanks for the comments and kudos--it really does help with working this idea out.

#maribat #my writing #my fic #marinette did not sign up for this #how do i tag #long post #bio!dad bruce #sugar not salt #angst #misunderstanding time

131 notes · View notes

not-oscar-wilde · 3 years

Text

Revived

The apocalypse has been averted, the timeline fixed, and the Hargreeves siblings returned to 2019. Herb decides to do them one more favour and save the life of one Dave Katz.

I wrote a new fic! read it below the cut or on AO3.

The pain in Dave’s chest was unbearable. Klaus was above him and he was speaking, but he couldn’t make out what he was saying. He wanted to comfort him, to stop him from panicking and tell him he loved him, but he couldn’t get the words out. He could only try and keep his eyes open, to keep his eyes on Klaus and try to psychically tell him everything he needed him to know, before the pain won out and everything turned black.

And then he woke up.

Though the room around him smelled sterile, it wasn’t like any hospital or medical tent he had ever been in before. He was lying in a crisp, white bed, with a myriad of wires attached to his body. Some of them he recognised, the IV drips were standard, but the majority were completely alien to him, from those puncturing his skin to those seemingly just stuck to it.

“Good afternoon, Mr Katz,” a smooth, female voice said in an accent that reminded him vaguely of movie stars. But when Dave looked around the room, he was completely alone, accompanied only by strangely flat screens he couldn’t see properly from his position on the bed. “Please remain calm. I have notified our Medical Team that you are awake and someone will be with you shortly.” There was something wrong about that voice, some kind indescribable, minute wrongness that unsettled him.

“Where am I?” he asked.

“You are in the Intensive Care Unit of the Temps Commission Infirmary, Room 9,” the voice said.

The Temps Commission Infirmary? He’d never heard of that hospital, and it definitely didn’t look American or Vietnamese. “The what? What happened? And who are you?”

“The Temps Commission Infirmary, attached to the headquarters of the Temps Commission. You were shot through the chest in A Shau Valley, Vietnam, February 21, 1968. I am VINA, your Virtual Infirmary Nursing Assistant.”

He’d been shot. He remembered it, remembered the pain, remembered the way Klaus had screamed and held him and how he hadn’t managed to say anything before the world had gone dark. What had happened to Klaus? To everyone? “How long have I been here?”

“You have been in the TCICU for three days, six hours, and thirty seven minutes.”

But when he brought his hand up to his chest, there were no dressings, just bare, unmarked skin. If he had been there for six days, if he’d been shot… He should be dead, or at the very least, heavily bandaged. Before he could think too much about that, a door slid open like something out of a sci-fi movie, and a tall, dark skinned woman with a serious face walked in. “Good afternoon, Mr Katz. My name is Doctor Onyeka Nwoye. How are you feeling?” she asked as she approached his bed, examining the screens. If there hadn’t been much stranger things going on, he would have been mildly surprised by a black lady doctor being sent in to treat him. He forgot, sometimes, that not everywhere was like Texas. But he was immensely glad of that fact, particularly if she’d been the one to fix him up.

“I’m good,” he said, and as confusing as it was, that was true. He shouldn’t be feeling good. He’d been shot, and he felt fine. That shouldn’t be happening.

“Any pain?”

“No, ma’am.”

“Good, that’s good. VINA, anything to report?”

“Mr Katz has not experienced any physical complications during the healing process. His body has responded well to the treatment and brain scans indicate that no neurological damage has occurred,” the disembodied voice said. The voice that didn’t belong to a person at all, if Dave had understood correctly. VINA had to be some kind of automaton, a computer that could speak. He didn’t much like that.

Doctor Nwoye nodded, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “A complete success, then. I would like to keep you under supervision for another twenty-four hours, but if I have no concerns at the end of this period, I see no need to keep you here any longer.” With that, she set about detaching the various wires from his body.

“Where is here? I know we’re in some kinda hospital, the… Commission?”

“Yes. We are an organisation dedicated to fixing, monitoring, and eliminating timeline anomalies,” she said, as if that made any kind of sense. “And, in exceptional circumstances, minimising potential disruptions.”

Dave frowned, trying to translate her words into something close to regular English. He knew he wasn’t that stupid, but he sure felt it. “So I’m a- what was it? A timeline anomaly?”

“I am a doctor, not an analyst. I cannot tell you who or what the timeline anomalies are.”

“Were you there, when I got shot?” he asked instead.

Dr Nwoye laughed and shook her head. “Oh Lord, no. I do not have the disposition for time travel, and I think my wife would have my head if I were ever to set foot in the field. I work solely from inside the TCI.”

“Your wife ?” he repeated, his heart leaping. This was a woman with a wife. A woman in a world where she could not only love another woman, but marry her and be able to mention it so casually to a complete stranger?

“Do you have a problem with the fact your life was saved by a lesbian, Mr Katz?” she asked calmly, and his stomach sank.

“No, ma’am! I just… Where I come from, people can’t… I didn’t know there was anywhere you could have that kinda marriage.” Was this the future? The place that Klaus had talked about, had said he couldn’t ever go back to? Had Dave somehow ended up there in his place, leaving Klaus in the middle of a war he’d never even signed up for? But that world was ending. Klaus had told him that. So how was he here? “I was just surprised is all. I’m… you know, the same typa way.”

The slight smile returned to the doctor’s face, and Dave relaxed. “It was 1968 you came from, yes?” So that pretty much confirmed his ‘future’ theory. Dave nodded mutely. “I cannot say I know why your survival matters so much yet your injury could not have been prevented, negating the need to bring you here at all, but I will say I am glad you are more… progressive than some of your contemporaries. It does make my job easier.”

“Doctor Nwoye, you are needed urgently in Room 14,” the disembodied voice said before Dave could formulate an answer, and the doctor sighed.

“I am on my way. Mr Katz, if you need anything, just ask VINA.” And with that, the bizarre door slid open again and Dr Nwoye was striding away.

The room was silent for a few minutes as Dave thought about this whole situation. He’d think it a fever dream, but he wasn’t sure he was creative enough to come up with all of this. “VINA?” he said eventually, feeling more than a little silly speaking to an empty room.

But the disembodied voice responded immediately. “Do you require assistance, Mr Katz?”

“I…What the hell is going on?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know what you mean. Please elaborate or rephrase to receive appropriate support.”

“I got shot . But I don’t even have a scar.”

“You are correct. Do you have any questions about your treatment?”

Dave exhaled shakily and touched his chest again. Even that should have hurt, and though he was incredibly grateful that it didn’t, that fact was in itself unsettling. “What kinda doctor can just make a bullet wound… vanish?”

“Dr Nwoye is an expert in bioregeneration and biotemporal manipulation.”

“Bio… Jeez.” He could guess at what those words meant, but truthfully, he had no idea. It may as well have been another language. Was this the world Klaus had come from? This strange world filled with people and words he didn’t know, where gunshots through the chest were not just survivable but left no mark, where unseen people watched and spoke with you, where a black woman with a wife could be a white man’s doctor. It wasn’t a bad world. It was simply so far from the one he knew.

Some things would always be the same, though: hospitals were boring. Dave was half out of his mind with it, staring up at the ceiling and wishing he had something to do. Talking to VINA was just a little too weird, with her uncannily smooth voice and questionable existence. So he got out of bed, deciding to explore. There were no windows, only artificial lights built into the ceiling. He couldn’t even tell what time of day it was. The room was neither warm nor cold, despite the fact he was wearing only white cotton shorts.

The door that the doctor had come in through didn’t have a handle. Instead, he found a panel of buttons on the wall beside it and pushed one hopefully. With a hydraulic hiss, the door opened and he stepped out into the hallway. “Please remain in your room. If you require assistance, this can be provided. If you are searching for the bathroom, this can be located through the other door within your room.”

It was strange, being scolded by someone - or something - he couldn’t see, and in such a calm manner. But Dave obeyed and stepped back inside the confines of his room. He may as well check out the bathroom if he wasn’t allowed anywhere else.

There were clothes folded up on top of a cabinet next to the shower, accompanied by a ziplock bag of toiletries and a towel. He figured those must be for him. He was about to strip off, out of the plain white shorts he’d been left in, when a wave of self-consciousness overtook him. “VINA?” he said hesitantly.

“Do you need assistance, Mr Katz?”

“I, uh… Are you watching me in here?”

“I am tasked with monitoring all rooms of the Temps Commission Infirmary.”

He’d spent enough time in the military to be comfortable enough getting undressed in front of other men. But in front of a woman? Even if she might be a machine and not a real woman, it still felt wrong, somehow. “Could I get a little privacy?”

“To ensure your safety and the safety of other patients, I am required to observe at all times. Surveillance footage is wiped from my systems after two weeks and is not accessible without appropriate justification from Temps Commission staff.”

That still wasn’t exactly reassuring. Dave couldn’t even see where VINA was watching from, couldn’t work out where to position himself to turn his back. He’d been changed out of his fatigues, so someone had surely seen his naked body here before and there was no guarantee that they were all male, but the irrationality of his desire for modesty didn’t change anything.

She’s seen it all before , he told himself. There must’ve been hundreds of naked people in this hospital. And maybe this is just how things are in the future .

His shoulders dropped under the warmth and the strength of the water. It had been so long since he’d had a really good shower. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had one so good. Perhaps Klaus had had a point, waxing lyrical about the joys of a hot bath.

But then he touched his chest, touched the unblemished skin, and the touch stole the air from his lungs. He could feel it, feel himself being torn apart by the most agonising pain he had ever felt. What was the difference between warm water and hot blood? It all felt the same, running down his skin. Hands shaking, he switched the shower off and sank down to sit on the floor, his knees pulled up to his chest as if they could shield him somehow. He wanted his mom. He wanted Klaus. He wanted to be held and told that it was okay, that he was safe.

Eventually, he slowed his breathing enough to realise he was getting cold, the water having cooled on his naked body. He got shakily to his feet and dried himself off before busying himself with getting redressed. He could do this. It was systematic, routine, a way to feel just a fraction more normal, even if the clothes weren’t quite right either.

It wasn’t that he was ungrateful, but he did feel slightly strange in them. The pants seemed too fitted around the legs and a little too short, with rips across both knees. He supposed even in the future, free clothes couldn’t always be new or in best condition. But he’d be able to fix them up easily enough. He’d never been as well-taught as his sister, but he’d been so eager to copy her in whatever she was doing that his mother had decided it was easier to just teach them both.

He wondered what had happened to Marie. How long ago had it been for her since they’d last seen each other?

“Mr Katz, you have a visitor.” VINA’s voice was still startling, with no clear source and no warning.

“A visitor?” he repeated. Who was here, visiting him? Who even knew he was here?

“Would you like to allow them access to your room?”

Dave looked himself over in the mirror. His hair was still damp and the clothes may be strange, but at least he looked decent. He looked normal. He didn’t look like a man who had just been shot.

But he pushed those feelings down, squared his shoulders and kept his head high as he stepped out of the bathroom and back into the bare room. “Yeah, let ‘em in,” he agreed.

He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this. A very short man in a suit and a pair of glasses stepped into the room with an air of someone who didn’t feel quite certain how much space they were able or willing to take up.

“Hi, Mr Katz, right? I’m Herb, I’m, uh, Acting Chair here at the Commission,” the small man said with an awkward wave. “It’s good to see you up and about! And- and the timeline should be safe from any, uh, any attempts at rescue, so that’s a big bonus.”

Dave had resigned himself to the fact that everyone here was crazy. But there was something warm about Herb, something he liked. “Can you explain what’s going on? The doctor, she said something about anomalies?”

“Ah, well, in this case, we’re, uh, preventing a potential anomaly. I’ve seen firsthand what a determined Hargreeves can do, and I figured if we make sure none of them have a reason to go messing up a timeline again, it makes our jobs here easier!”

Dave’s breath caught in his throat. “You know Klaus?”

Herb giggled. “Do I know Klaus? Everyone here knows Klaus, he’s a Hargreeves . But I met him! I mean, I’m basically friends with his brother Diego, so you could say I know him better than most people here.”

Dave could barely hear what Herb was saying. His mind was racing faster than his heart, the use of ‘know’ rather than ‘knew’ enough to sustain him. He was still alive. And even if he was old now, stuck on the slow path through time, Dave knew he would still love him. He would love him until the end of the Earth. That had been a silent promise, as unspeakable as everything that they were, but as real and constant as the sun rising every morning. Forever was too much to vow in a war zone, but the intent had always been there. “Can I see him?”

“Well, that’s the plan!” Herb said brightly. “If you’re willing, we drop you off with him in 2019, there’s no need for any more time travelling shenanigans from the Hargreeveses, and we can all get back to normal!”

Fifty one years had passed. Would Klaus even still love him, after all that time? He almost couldn’t picture Klaus as an old man, not when he was full of so much energy, when he was so childlike sometimes. Was he an old man? Or had he somehow found a way back home before he had the chance to grow old? Back home... “People back home, my family… What happens to them?” he asked.

“Ah. Well, they think you’re dead. And unfortunately, they kind of had to. I’m afraid even if you turn down our offer to join Mr Hargreeves, you can’t go back to 1968. We made sure of that. And ooh, boy, that was a tricky one, but you’re not our first faked death and you sure won’t be our last!” Herb laughed, as if this was normal. As if this was simply how the world worked. And maybe it was. Maybe the world was bigger and stranger than anything Dave had ever seen. Anything but Klaus, of course. He was the maddest, strangest, most beautiful world all of his own.

In his mind, it had been just over a day since he’d seen him. But he missed him as if it had been weeks, months even. Maybe years. Did the ache dull over time? Would Klaus still be missing him as badly as he missed Klaus?

“If you’re, uh, amenable, we’ll drop you off in 2019 as soon as you’re discharged.”

It was a leap of faith into an unknown future, a new world. “I am.”

#also working on a chapter two so stay tuned for that #klave #klaus hargreeves #dave katz #tua #my content #my writing

24 notes · View notes

tomeandflickcorner · 4 years

Text

Umbrella Academy Recap 2x01

1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10

Season 2 is finally here. And I’ve decided to continue on with my viewing of this series, with a new episode recap being posted each Sunday (unless RL stuff gets in the way, of course.)

Of course, we start off with a reminder of how, on April 1st, 2019, Vanya’s uncontrolled power burst out of her and collided with the moon, causing it to break apart. The large chunks of moon debris then rained down towards the earth, which resulted in a planet-wide conflagration that quickly incinerated everyone in its path. However, the Hargeeeves Siblings, who pretty much all played a role in causing the apocalypse to occur in the first place, attempted to go back in time with Number 5′s ability to time jump in the hopes that they could figure out how to prevent this disaster from happening.

But somehow, during the time jump, the Hargreeves Siblings all got separated. While they all ended up in the same alleyway in Dallas, Texas, they got dropped off in completely different times. Klaus and Ben end up in 1960. Allison comes out in 1961, and is met by a less than warm welcome as she tries to enter a ‘Whites Only’ diner. (Because racial segregation was commonplace in 1961). Luther emerges in 1962, and he briefly has to deal with some homeless guy latching onto him, with the homeless guy joining in when Luther tries to call out to his missing siblings. Diego and Vanya both arrive in 1963, but on completely different dates Diego arrives on September 1st (where he immediately comes to the defense of a woman getting mugged before witnessing a television broadcast of President Kennedy’s famous ‘ask not what your country can do for you’ speech), and Vanya appears on October 12, where she ends up stumbling out into traffic and gets hit by a car a la Marty McFly in Back to the Future. It’s also important to note that some mysterious man had managed to observe each arrival, as he secretly takes pictures of the Hargreeves Siblings from the shadows.

Finally, Number 5 arrives on November 25, 1963. However, he isn’t greeted by the same peacefully idealistic street that his brothers and sisters witnessed when they emerged from the time vortex. Instead, it’s a completely war-torn area with tanks rolling down the street and a group of soldiers all speaking Russian. After a moment, Number 5 catches a glimpse of a discarded newspaper, with the headline announcing that the Soviet army have invaded the United States. Number 5 looks around in shock as U.S. troops arrive to try and fight the Soviets, and he verbally wonders what they’ve done now, realizing that the staggered arrival of the Hargreeves Siblings in the 1960s must have somehow caused this to happen.

No sooner does he ask this, the other Hargreeves Siblings appear on the scene, joining the fight against the Soviet army. And it seems that, during their separation, they’ve all managed to further develop their individual powers. For instance, Vanya is able to stop and destroy a missile fired from a Soviet tank in midair. Klaus has managed to master his new ability to make ghosts solid by summoning up a small group of dead soldiers (and a few civilians) to attack the Soviet soldiers, with Ghost Ben also joining the fight by taking out a few more Soviets with his power. And Allison, who clearly got her voice back, uses her power to cause three enemy soldiers’ heads to explode. Luther and Diego are also there, but they don’t really do much, as Luther is only shown protecting Klaus from getting shot by blocking the projectiles with his own body and Diego manages to dodge a bunch of flying bullets. Upon seeing Number 5 standing there, Diego yells at him, asking where he’s been. Before Number 5 could respond, however, someone else suddenly appears on the scene. It’s Hazel! Only he’s now an old man. The now elderly Hazel tells Number 5 that he can’t explain what happened now, as they have to get out of that time quickly. To emphasize his point, Hazel points overhead at a group of missile smoke trails in the sky. Hazel tells Number 5 that the smoke trails are from nuclear warheads, which will go off in a few moments. Number 5 hesitates out of concern for his family, as they’ll all surely die in the imminent explosion. To this, Hazel states ‘you can’t help them if you’re dead.’ At this logic, Number 5 accepts Hazel’s hand, and they teleport off to some other time, leaving the other Hargreeves Siblings behind to watch as the nuclear explosion overtakes them and the mushroom cloud begins to form.

Hazel brings Number 5 back in time to November 15, 1963, stating that 10 days should give them plenty of time to restore the timeline and prevent this other apocalypse from taking place. Number 5 asks what they’re supposed to do, though Hazel informs him that he’s on his own. After all, he’d quit The Commission. Hazel states he only came back to give Number 5 a hand this one time, out of respect for Agnes. Here, we’re sadly informed that Hazel’s life with her was tragically brief as Agnes ended up dying from cancer. (Well, that’s a huge kick in the teeth! At least they had a good 20 years together.. Suppose we should be grateful for that, at least.)

Unfortunately, Hazel’s conversation with Number 5 doesn’t get much further than that. As they were talking, three white-haired men, all wearing trench coats and backpacks, emerged from a bus parked across the street. The moment Number 5 notices them walking towards them, the three men pull out machine guns from beneath their coats. Hazel quickly shoves his time-traveling briefcase into Number 5′s hands and pushes him out of the way, instructing him to run. At the same time, Hazel also discretely shoves an object into Number 5′s pocket. Number 5, heeding Hazel’s final instruction, teleports away to safety as Hazel is unceremoniously gunned down by the white-haired men. Number 5 manages to get away, but he has to abandon the briefcase, as it got pelted by the gunfire. The time-traveling briefcases aren’t bulletproof, it seems.

Interestingly, as the white-haired men walk off, one of them makes eye contact with a milkman who just happened to be passing by. Wasn’t sure what that was about at first, but it’ll be important later on.

As Number 5 makes good his escape by leaving the scene down an alleyway, he notices the curtains in a nearby window moving, as if someone had just closed them in a hurry. This, along with the sight of a camera tripod set up on the roof of the building (among other things), arouses Number 5′s attention and he immediately decides to investigate. This leads to him encountering a man called Elliot, who freaks out a bit when Number 5 teleports himself directly into Elliot’s apartment. Elliot seems like a bit of a conspiracy nut as he doesn’t hesitate to ask Number 5 if he’s from the Pentagon or the CIA. Number 5 doesn’t acknowledge these questions, simply helping himself to Elliot’s coffee. (Because as the show has well established, Number 5 is a coffee addict.)

As their interactions continue, it’s made pretty clear that Elliot believes Number 5 is an extraterrestrial alien. Number 5 doesn’t contradict this and decides to simply go along with it. Which leads to Elliot revealing that he was that mysterious cameraman who took pictures of the other Hargreeves Siblings appearing in that Dallas alleyway throughout the past few years. With this information, Number 5 is able to confirm his brothers and sisters are all alive, but realizes that he pretty much stranded them there, however unintentional that was. He turns to Elliot demanding his help in finding them, as he only has 10 days to reunite with the Hargreeves Siblings and prevent the turn of events that would lead to the nuclear holocaust he’d previously witnessed. So Elliot gives Number 5 an excerpt from a newspaper, which features Diego’s mugshot. Because Diego went and got himself arrested. (Typical.)

With the information he got from Elliot, Number 5 is able to track Diego down to a mental hospital. He wound up there because he was trying to prevent the Kennedy Assassination, which was scheduled to occur pretty soon. Naturally, nobody believed his declarations. He finally got locked up when he got caught trying to break into Lee Harvey Oswald’s house in order to kill him before he got the chance to assassinate President Kennedy. When Number 5 meets with Diego, he informs him of this new apocalypse that is set to occur in 10 days. At first, Diego seems to be on board with Number 5, but he really has a one track mind, believing that he absolutely has to prevent the Kennedy Assassination, and that succeeding in that would save the world. Diego admits he is also thinking about going back in time to kill Hitler as well. As you might expect, Number 5 is not impressed with Diego’s intentions, informing his brother that he has a hero complex. He then decides to leave Diego where he was, also informing the mental hospital orderlies nearby of Diego’s plan to escape by cutting through the bars on his cell window. With that, Number 5 leaves Diego behind as the nurses sedate him.

As Number 5 leaves the mental hospital, whispering to Diego that he’ll be back for him later, we see where the other Hargreeves Siblings are. Vanya now has amnesia and has been living on a farm with a small nuclear family that consists of a businessman named Carl, his wife, Sissy, and their son, Harlan. Harlan, it seems, doesn’t talk. I think the implication is that he has some form of autism, but I could be wrong. As he leaves to go back to the office, Carl tells Vanya that he placed another missing person notice in the paper, stating someone must be missing her enough to come looking for her.

Klaus, it seems, has been living in San Francisco for the past three years, but has now decided to return to Dallas. Ben isn’t happy about this as he wants to go back to San Francisco. Ben eventually admits he has some unfinished business he wanted to take care of back in California and he asks Klaus if he really expects him to continue following him everywhere. An argument breaks out between them, with Klaus pointing out that Ben doesn’t even have a physical body without him. Therefore, Klaus clams that, while he doesn’t need Ben, Ben needs him. To this, Ben states nobody needs Klaus’ crap, and that is why he’s always alone. Immediately, the two brothers began a physical fight. (Which leads to an amusing moment when some random guy drives by and sees Klaus seemingly wrestling with nobody.) Eventually, they tire themselves out and proceed to start walking, as their car engine overheated and therefore had to be abandoned on the side of the road. An undetermined amount of time later, they make it to this roadside bar. Klaus asks when the next bus to Dallas will arrive, with the bartender telling him it’ll come tomorrow at 3:00 sharp. While he settles down to wait, Klaus gets invited by some other bar patrons to join in a game of poker. Of course, Klaus believes he has the advantage as Ben could let him know when someone is bluffing, and he therefore coerces one of the men to use the keys to his pickup truck as a gambling chip. But it turns out Ben was deliberately lying so Klaus would lose the game. (He was still angry at Klaus for earlier and wanted to prove a point to him.) Klaus, however, tries to make off with the keys to the pickup truck anyway, but failed to be sneaky enough as the pickup truck’s owner noticed. But in the end, Klaus is able to make a getaway in the stolen pickup truck. (Though the police end up catching up to Klaus en route to Dallas and arrest him.)

Meanwhile, Allison has ended up getting married to a Black man named Raymond, who is clearly excited about President Kennedy’s plans to make a stand for the rights of Blacks in America. Allison is unable to completely join in with his excitement, knowing that President Kennedy will be assassinated in a few days time, though she obviously can’t tell Raymond what she knows. We can see she also is feeling a bit melancholy when her husband gives her a pre-anniversary gift- a copy of Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. Which obviously reminds Allison of Luther.

And speaking of Luther, he’s now working in some sort of underground boxing ring. You know, the type where the winner of the fight gets prize money. Although, most of his proceeds from winning the fight end up going to a man that I guess is supposed to be Luther’s manager, Mr. Ruby. Anyway, they seem to have set up this whole ploy where Luther pretends to be losing his fights, only to turn things around at the right moment. Not sure how Luther got involved with this, but it makes sense given his obvious amount of brute strength.

Anyway, as the episode continues, we see Allison and Raymond are involved with a group of other Black people who are fighting against segregation and racism, with them holding their meetings at a hair salon that Allison now runs. At present, their group is planning a sit-in five days before President Kennedy is to arrive in Dallas. Although, the leader of their group makes it clear that it is imperative that nobody behave violently in any way during the sit-in. Whatever happens, they all must maintain dignity and honor. Otherwise, the media will have an excuse to dismiss them as a group of thugs. Of course, the meeting is interrupted when some racist jerk called Mr. Mason pokes his nose into their business, interrogating them on what they’re all doing there after hours. Allison and Raymond are initially able to handle things as civilly as possible. Until Raymond moves to shut the door. Mr. Mason, seemingly deliberately, moves his foot into the way. Which gives him the excuse he needs to accuse Raymond of assault. But when Mr. Mason makes a threatening move towards him, Allison steps in, utilizing the fighting skills she’d developed during her time in the Umbrella Academy in defense of her husband. Mr. Mason then slinks off with his tail between his legs, but you’re left with the feeling that he’s not going to just let this go.

Back at the farmhouse, Vanya can’t sleep and ends up heading down to the kitchen, where she catches Sissy smoking. However, she doesn’t seem bothered by this in the slightest, and Sissy asks her if she wants a cigarette as well. They then head out to the barn to smoke. Which doesn’t seem like the smartest place to smoke, especially with all the hay lying around. As they sit and talk, Sissy confides in Vanya that she has a secret stash of money hidden in a coffee can that Carl doesn’t know about. It seems that, while Sissy thinks Carl is a good man, she knows he’ll eventually leave or die. And when that happens, she’ll need to be able to fend for herself. Sissy also confesses that, before she married Carl, she wanted to work as a counter girl at some big department store, as she always had viewed those counter girls as the height of elegance and she’d wanted to be that elegant, too. Vanya responds by telling Sissy that she’s plenty elegant. Which is a rather sweet thing for Vanya to say to her new friend.

Elsewhere, Diego has woken up from being sedated and finds himself trapped in a padded room. However, he manages to get out of his straitjacket and picks the lock with a pen the orderlies had neglected to confiscate from him. However, his escape attempt his interrupted when those white-haired men show up in a milk truck. Apparently the same one the hapless milkman we saw earlier had been driving. It seems that there WAS some significance to the milkman and one of the white-haired men meeting each other’s eyes in that earlier scene. The white-haired men must have killed the milkman and stole his uniform, like in The Terminator. The white-haired men, who we can now conclude were sent by The Commission, proceed to make their way through the mental hospital, killing the hospital’s administrator and two security guards in the process. They manage to locate Diego as he’s trying to escape with the help of Lila, another patient at the mental hospital that he’d interacted with a few times. After a prolonged chase scene, Diego and Lila manage to escape and give the white-haired men the slip.

We then wrap the episode up with Luther, who is at some nightclub. He’s now filling the role of Mr. Ruby’s bodyguard, I guess. While there, he strikes up a conversation with some cigarette girl called Autumn. Through this conversation, Luther learns that Number 5 was also at the nightclub, having tracked down Luther there somehow. So Luther heads over to where Number 5 was sitting, not hesitating to voice his anger at his brother, as he was stuck in time for a year and had believed everyone else was dead. At this point, Luther notices that it looks as if somebody is going to start something with Mr. Ruby, so he starts to head over to fulfill his duty as Mr. Ruby’s bodyguard. Number 5 stops him, telling him that he understands how hard it is to be stuck in time, not knowing if they’d ever see the people they loved again. Which makes sense, as we know that’s the situation Number 5 was in for a number of years. But right now, Number 5 says they have to focus on finding the others, as another apocalypse is coming. Unfortunately, Luther isn’t swayed, stating that he doesn’t care. He then walks off, leaving Number 5 sitting there.

Closing thoughts/questions:

I wonder if we’ll see Elliot again. Is he going to play a larger role in this season?

Same with Lila. She’s clearly nuts, but is still sane enough to possibly be an ally. Also, I kinda like the dynamic she has with Diego

I wonder what Ben had been up to in San Francisco to make him want to stay.

Vanya seems a lot happier with Carl and Sissy’s family than she did before. I can’t help wondering if it would be kinder to her for her to remain with them.

Does Harlan have autism? If so, I hope they present it in a respectful way.

I feel so bad for Hazel! He deserved so much better than he got! I guess it’s good that he’s with Agnes again, but still!

Luther’s still a little snot. Guess that hasn’t changed much.

Diego is kinda dumb. I realize his intentions are good. But come on! Did it occur to him that stopping Kennedy's assassination might lead to a lot of negative consequences he’d never be able to predict? Maybe he should watch some Doctor Who sometime.

Which reminds me, nice Star Wars reference from Diego. Too bad nobody will get it for a while yet, as the original movie won’t come out for another 14 years, and would be another 3 years before moviegoers will learn who Darth Vader is.

I’m really interested in what Allison’s going to do. Obviously, she can’t stay with Raymond as she’ll have to go back to her own time. Especially since she has Claire to think about. But she seems to have something good going on with him. And if it gets her away from her incestuous relationship with Luther, I’m 100% for it!

#umbrella acedmy #umbrella academy 2x01 #tua

2 notes · View notes

gay4klaus · 5 years

Text

Ben the Backbone

Because @bloodymaryninikizi couldn’t read it on AO3, I’m putting it here! :)

Alternatively, you can read it on AO3 here. [protective ben hargreeves, ben x klaus, ben is tired of the hargreeves’ shit]

The Commission’s raison d'être proved true to its bone as the Hargreeves swallowed themselves into a blue light emanating from Number Five’s powers, collecting pieces of the past so Five could throw them all into it. There was no stopping the destruction of a world meant to die by Vanya’s unknowing strength. By now, the earth would have been vaporized, no corner left untouched by the wrath of its intensity.

When the noise subsided, the Hargreeves got up slowly from the rubble. Klaus was the first to look up, counting his siblings one by one to ensure they all made it through. Surrounding them were streaks of morning light and primary-colored bars meant for people smaller than him.

“Is everybody okay?” he asked the crowd just now moving their limbs and sitting up.

Five was the last to awaken, which was unlike him. The others worried he put his body under too much stress taking everyone with him to an unknown time so they could have enough of it to “fix” Vanya, as he had mentioned earlier, and still somehow prevent what was meant to be.

When Five came to, Diego helped him up on his feet, Klaus dusting off the dirt and dust that accumulated on his suit when they travelled. “What time are we in?” he asked, looking at everyone as if he’d been drugged the night before.

“We’re not sure yet.” It was Luther who replied, eyes on Vanya and wide awake. His cautiousness around her was unwarranted, but understandable. She was still resting in Allison’s arms and ruminating on the damage that she’d done. She wasn’t ready to dive into anything significant yet, still holding the weight of her inevitable responsibility. Luther’s weariness was unfazed.

“We might be in the nineties,” Allison said, looking around and realized they were in a playground she recognized a few blocks from the Academy. Her hands continued to massage Vanya’s shoulder, hovering over her protectively.

“It’s exactly how I remember it.”

The Hargreeves turned to the owner of the voice, all but Klaus imbued with utter shock to hear such a distinct, familiar voice, but one which they hadn’t heard in years. It was like opening a box of memories after forgetting it existed. Ben.

Klaus looked at Ben, who looked at everyone else. His face also sported a look of bewilderment, and then he looked at Klaus for verification, as if asking, Did they hear me, too?

Klaus walked up to his brother slowly, trying to look through him to see if it was possible. He didn’t want to get his hopes up but couldn’t help the excitement that was churning inside of him. He reached out his hand, inching closer to Ben’s jawline. Before he could touch him, he looked at his other siblings, asking, “Do you guys see him, too?”

The Hargreeves nodded in synchronicity, even Five wide-eyed and full of wonder. They all seemed to be holding their breath, waiting to see what Klaus would do.

He turned back to Ben, who was just as still as everyone else. If he had a heartbeat, he thought, it would be beating right out of his chest. Klaus continued his hand motion, and as he was about to touch Ben’s jaw, he felt goosebumps go down his spine.

His fingertips stopped, feeling the texture of Ben’s shaven skin. The Hargreeves gasped in unison.

Klaus clasped Ben’s jaws with both his hands, relief and joy spilling over his eyes as Ben started to panic, but in a good and powerful and ecstatic way. Klaus closed in on him, embracing him for the first time since they were 17.

“Oh my god,” Klaus rejoiced.

“I’m really here,” Ben said under his breath, still trying to piece everything together in his analytical mind. “I’m back.”

Even Vanya had risen off the ground, amazed to be seeing their brother in front of her. Somehow, this seemed to make her causing the world to vanish a mere dent in her past. If that was what had to happen to ensure Ben came back to them, alive and breathing, then maybe it would be enough to justify what she did, even as selfish as it was.

Klaus turned around, relieving Ben of the tight hug he had been given. “You guys, Ben’s here. He’s alive. He’s not just in my head anymore,” he cheered in happiness.

Immediately, the whole clan moved in to welcome him back to the living, some smiling so big that tears pooled in their eyes, but they didn’t let them drop. The excitement of the moment even put Five in high spirits.

“This must mean we’re doing the right thing—we’re in the right timeline to save the world.” Five looked at his family, at the people who’ve allowed him to experience a home after decades of time-travelling and no time to think about how it felt to be loved in years. “If Ben is alive now, that means we’re in the past where he is still alive, and now we have the full force of the Umbrella Academy to band together again and stop the apocalypse from happening.”

His speech was celebrated by more cheers. Even tough-guy Diego squeezed Ben’s shoulder tight after listening to Five talk about uniting to save the world, still confused at how all of this would turn out to resolve what they know will come, but managing to look positively at the outcome with all of his siblings by his side. He couldn’t help but have Mom on his mind, his recent memory of her a dark and painful wave of emotion he couldn’t bear to think about. He could save her through all of this, too.

Ben, accustomed to years of being alone save for Klaus being the only one who could interact with him, was overwhelmed with the show of affection towards his return. He had fantasized of this moment, of someone, anyone, acknowledging him—but he worried that it wouldn’t last. He worried this may just be part of Klaus’s developing powers, that at any moment, he would turn to dust and become only visible to Klaus again.

So, he needed to take this opportunity now, before it was too late. He owed it to Klaus, to the one person who allowed him to stay in the living world, even if it meant he would be wandering it in silence.

“I’m really glad I’m here. I don’t even know how this is happening, but,” Ben started, looking into the eyes of each of his siblings, “I need to make sure things are right this time around, if we’re going to save the world.”

Ben’s eyes lowered to the ground, finding the words, then back up with resolution in his expression. “I have been with Klaus from the beginning—not that I could choose—” his eyes glazed over at Klaus “—but I know one thing’s for sure watching everyone from a close distance and not being able to interfere or help Klaus explain. His autonomy has been stripped away and none of you have noticed. You belittle him and take him for granted when he’s been through everything and more than you’ll ever experience, or want to experience, for the rest of your lives.”

His tone sounded accusatory and his siblings were taken aback by it. Vanya looked at Klaus and saw the same shock that was on their faces.

“Did you even realize that Klaus had been kidnapped for days before he came back to the Academy? No one came looking for him. No one except for that detective friend of yours,” he said, looking right at Diego and seeing his jaw clench at the mention of Eudora. “He’d been abused, and to top it all off, he’d been neglected, by all of you. Seriously. Hazel and Cha-Cha had been torturing him for hours before he was saved. They took his drugs, and you all know very well how it gets for Klaus when he’s in withdrawal. You know the kinds of things he sees and hears when he’s not self-medicating. I would’ve been just like you, thinking Klaus was just being Klaus and running off to do some despicable stuff, but have you ever thought about what it might be like for him, having these powers and not being able to find himself through it all? But I was there. I saw him endure immense pain. I saw him at his worst.”

Klaus trembled. The words Ben was saying, defending him being the first thing he wanted to express to their siblings the first chance he got; it broke his heart but filled him up with so much warmth, he didn’t know what to say. His heart pounded faster with each word.

“And did any of you realize how much he’d changed since he got back? If you took the time to notice him, to talk to him and let him speak his mind without giving him shit for it, just because he’s said the wildest things before—it doesn’t make him any less human in need of validation. You didn’t give him an ounce of a chance to express what he’s been through in the past week.”

“Klaus—what’s Ben talking about?” Luther asked.

“He travelled into the past.” Five looked down, ruminating on Ben’s words. He was right, after all. He had been so consumed with the apocalypse that he didn’t bother to ask Klaus what had happened in his ten months of disappearance. He did seem more melancholic than usual, but Five didn’t think he would have the time to hear about it. Or the patience.

Diego looked somber, only now realizing Klaus’s actions and finding meaning behind it—the veteran’s bar scene, the sudden love interest, the different ways Klaus would behave. He didn’t understand it, but it made sense now, and he was disappointed in himself how much of it he didn’t piece together.

“He fought in the front lines of the Vietnam war and came back after losing a loved one, and you—” Ben pointed at Luther, his head shaking in frustration. “He needed someone to talk to and you went around looking for an outlet when Klaus needed you. I told him that if it were him in the situation you were in, looking for trouble on the streets so you could forget what Dad had put you through, you would have done everything in your power to come looking for him. But I might have been wrong.”

He huffed, so much more to say, but feeling like a detention supervisor yelling at kids who were just now learning there were consequences to their actions and inactions. “What I’m saying is, I’m not going to tolerate the dismissal of Klaus anymore. I’ve been in his shadow now. I see where we fail as a family, and we need to do better, for each and every one of us. We’re not going to save anybody if we can’t help each other face our personal demons.”

After all was said and done, it was Vanya who stepped forward, her eyes on Klaus and filled with regret. There was so much to apologize for, so many words dripping from her tongue, but she couldn’t form the right sentences, so all she said was, “I didn’t know. Klaus, I’m so sorry.”

Klaus shook his head. “I’m so glad you’re okay, Vanya.” He looked back at everyone who had unknowingly revealed the same type of chagrin on their faces that their sister had. “It’s been a hard couple of days for me, but I’m so glad I get to spend this moment with you. With everyone.” He smiled and winked at Ben.

Ben winked back. “I got you, buddy,” he mouthed.

From then on, Klaus believed it. Seeing everyone surrounding him, supporting him—it was something he’d been urging to feel that he never realized he needed before. This was the moment that all of the Hargreeves promised to put their family first above anything else.

#fic request #the umbrella academy #klaus hargreeves #ben hargreeves #number five #diego hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #allison hargreeves #luther hargreeves #fanfiction #tua fanfiction #archive of our own #ao3 #umbrella academy fanfiction

121 notes · View notes

fives-coffee · 5 years

Text

Coming Home

Summary: Vanya meets an old man one lonely night and offers him a sandwich. If only she knew how much it meant to him.

Warnings: Mild language and sad times

Word Count: 2.8k

A/N: I may have made this TUA sideblog just so I could post this, so yeah. I hope you like it!

---

Five was rarely given assignments during this time period. The time between when he ran away and the day the world ends.

It was smart, he supposed.

He had never expressed any feelings of compassion or indicated that he missed his family in any way. But he never expressed anything but general contempt and, occasionally, specific hatred towards those at the Commission—the only people he had interacted with in over thirty years—so it wasn’t all that odd.

The Commission knew nothing about him other than his abilities and his long history of being the only man on the planet, but that only meant that they had to be extra cautious. Just because he had never mentioned his family or openly voiced any desire to see them, didn’t mean that he wouldn’t seize an opportunity to interfere with their timelines.

So he was kept away from them as much as possible. It was a rule that went unsaid but understood. And it was a good rule, one Five would enforce himself, were their roles reversed.

But Five was a smart man—a genius, if he wasn’t being humble (which he rarely was). And he had underestimated just how much he would risk to catch a glimpse of his family if ever given the opportunity.

That opportunity came on a mission in 2004. He was supposed to be in Bulgaria, thousands of miles away from his family and theoretically safe from interfering with the timeline.

But as previously noted, Five was a smart man. And, as it turns out, he was also a desperate one.

It was a quick trip—it wouldn’t take long for the Commission to notice his absence and that just wouldn’t do if he wanted to prevent the Apocalypse at some point in the future. So he teleported as much as he could, onto a plane or a bus or a train, just so long as it was headed in the right direction.

Home.

It took him fourteen hours to get there from Bulgaria. But it felt like a lot longer than that. Possibly because it had actually been forty-two years, three months, and seven days since he had laid eyes on the academy.

Since he had seen his family.

He didn’t know what he expected to find, but somehow the fully erect and functioning school that had been his home for thirteen years surprised him.

No decimated building. No rubble, no fire, no buried memories. No corpses belonging to his family.

In fact, he supposed they were all inside at this very moment, sleeping peacefully as night had fallen in the hours it had taken him to find his way here.

He supposed it was for the best, knowing that if he saw Vanya or Ben or the others, he would want to say something. To do something.

He was supposing a lot because he wasn’t sure what else to do other than stare up at the building and think about what he would do if he could. What he could do if only he would be willing to try.

Five had never been weak, but he had been alone. So he knew that was why tears spilled down his wrinkled and weathered cheeks as he took in everything he had lost and was so close to having back.

Weakness wasn’t acceptable, but loneliness was an old friend. Five thought that maybe he had never actually felt this alone before. When he was traveling around after the Apocalypse, he had had Delores and a few fond memories of his family. Then he had no hope of ever seeing them again, and he had made peace with that.

Now he was ten feet away from them and still unable to reach them. To warn them. To protect them. To save them.

The tears fell harder and Five just stood there, watching and wondering if his time with the Commission was worth it. Could he really prevent the Apocalypse? Could he really make a difference? Or was it all just a waste of time? The dreams of an old man who had too little and too much all at the same time?

Perhaps it would be easier if he gave up now. No more killing done for the sake of humanity. No more dreams of a future where he could walk through that door again. No more—

“Who are you?”

The question was soft, drifting quietly to him in the silence of the night, but it still surprised him.

Humiliating, really. When was the last time he had allowed himself to be caught off guard?

As his tired gaze moved down to the stoop in front of him, he felt his heart freeze in his chest before it began pounding in earnest.

Vanya.

She was still young, though two years older than the last time he had seen her. It was unsettling, to say the least. Seeing his sister who had always been growing along with him still so small. Still so young and— Jesus was that hope in her eyes?

“Who are you?” he mimicked, voice managing to come out clear despite his tears and more callous than he meant it to. But what else was he supposed to do?

He wasn’t sure what he had been hoping to do when he came here, but it wasn’t this. Talking to his fifteen-year-old sister who looked more than a little heartbroken as she stared up at him like he was just some strangerand not her favorite brother.

“I…” she hesitated, voice meek and unsure before she seemed to find her courage. She lifted her chin, meeting his eyes with a forced confidence that made his heart clinch painfully. She was so, so young and still so scarred. “My name is Vanya. This is my house.”

“Is it?” Five asked, discreetly wiping his eyes before shoving his hands into his pockets. “Then why are you out here so late, Vanya. It’s late. You should be in bed.”

Her name felt strange in his mouth—not because he wasn’t used to its sound anymore. He said all of his siblings names every night before he slept, an odd ritual that still stuck with him after all of these years. And he often talked about them to Delores when he still had her. It was the strangeness of speaking it to her that had his throat closing and the burning sensation returning to his eyes.

Still, he fought to maintain his cool demeanor even if all he wanted to do was pick up his sister and hold her to him and never leave her again.

He told himself it was necessary, but he wasn’t so sure if that was true or if he just couldn’t fathom a reality where it was possible anymore.

“I’m… waiting for someone,” she answered, eyes lowering to the ground as she shuffled from foot to foot. Always so guilty, always so afraid to take up more space than she was allowed. Five’s brow furrowed.

“Who? Is your family not inside?” He wasn’t sure why he asked—if he was mad that they had possibly left her behind or worried that she was waiting for someone else. Someone who could hurt her. The thought made him sick even though he knew for a fact that she would be dead along with the rest of humanity in fifteen years anyway.

“Well… they are. Just not all of them. One of my brothers is… missing,” she said the word like she knew she meant something else, and Five felt his blood run cold. “He’s been gone for a while now, but sometimes I feel like he’s still around. Just waiting for me to come find him. But… the others think it’s silly.”

Five opened and closed his mouth, watching his sister watching the ground with an ashamed look on her face as he fought to find an appropriate response. One that wasn’t I’m right here Vanya or I love you. I’m so sorry I kept you waiting. What he ended up saying was, “What’s his name?” Maybe because he wanted to confirm that it was him she was talking about and they hadn’t lost another sibling or maybe just because it had been so long since he had heard her—or anyone of importance—say his name.

“Five,” she said, his name catching in her throat in a way that made him think it had been a while since she had said it too. When he didn’t say anything, she sniffled and drew back, raising wide, apologetic eyes to his. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to bother you, sir. I just—I thought maybe—I’m sorry. I’ll just… go.”

She turned to go, seeming embarrassed and heart broken and defeated, and Five’s frantically grasped at something else to say. Something to make her stay just a little longer. Something to dispel the sad expression on her face and thaw the ice that had settled around his heart, if only just for a second.

“What’s that in your hand?” he asked, just now noticing that she was holding something. She appeared to have forgotten about it as well based on the way she blinked down at it in surprise.

“It’s… it’s nothing. It’s just silly,” she said, turning back around to face him with a bashful expression.

“Oh, I doubt that,” Five reassured her. And for the first time in decadeshe smiled. A genuine, real smile that felt a bit like coming home. Vanya smiled back, and he thought that made it worth the ache in his chest that accompanied it.

“It’s a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich,” she explained, looking down at the plate with a fondness that took Five’s breath away. “It was his favorite,” she elaborated when he said nothing. As if he didn’t know. As if that’s not why he found himself suddenly incapable of speech.

“So… you made it for him? For your brother?”

Vanya nodded hesitantly, still hiding behind her bangs the way she always did. It seemed some things never changed. Or maybe it was just him that did. “I know it’s stupid—everyone tells me so. But I can’t stand the thought that maybe he’ll come back, and he’ll be hungry and alone and…”

“And?” Five urged when she stopped, crouching down so that he could meet her eyes.

“And then he’ll leave again,” she admitted in a whisper, as though if she said it too loudly, she would make it a reality.

Five cleared his suddenly dry throat, offering her a less genuine smile as he fought to suppress his tears. He had dreamed of meeting his family again, but he had never imagined it going like this. For it to be so painful and for him to feel so useless.

“I’m sure that your brother would love that,” he said, and he was because he did. “And I know that when he comes back to you, he will do everything he can to stay with you.”

“Do you really think so?” Vanya asked, hope and pain clear in her timid voice.

“Yes.” Five spoke firmly, reassuringly, hoping it was enough to convey what he couldn’t say. “I think that one day, your brother will find you and he will never let go.”

“Then why hasn’t he already?”

The question caught him off guard, though he supposed it shouldn’t have. Vanya was fifteen and upset and talking to a complete stranger about the brother that deserted them. It was natural that she would wonder why he hadn’t come back already.

It still stung though.

His immediate thought was to say that he couldn’t yet, that he wasn’t able to, but he knew that was a lie. He could now—he had the briefcase and the knowledge of how to use it. Hell, he was actually there right now. But not in any way that mattered. Not in any way that would last beyond the next fifteen years.

What good was coming back just to watch his family die in the Apocalypse?

All good excuses, he told himself. He just wasn’t sure how to explain that to a fifteen-year-old who was his sister and who was mourning him when he was unable to simply tell herthat.

“Sometimes… Sometimes we have to do unpleasant things before we can do what we really want. Maybe he has something important to do before he can come home.” He spoke earnestly, in a way that he never had even before he left this place. He just needed her to believe him, for her sake or his, he wasn’t sure.

Luckily, she seemed to understand.

She nodded, hesitant at first but then surer, punctuated with a small, relieved smile on her face. “Thank you. I… I hope you’re right.”

“I am,” Five assured her, smiling at her one last time before rising from his crouch. “Goodnight, Vanya. I hope you see your brother again soon.”

He was half way down the block, footsteps fast and sure as he rushed to put as much space between himself and his home before he did something stupid, when he heard her voice again.

“Wait! Please, wait!”

Briefly, he considered picking up his pace or just teleporting away, if only that wouldn’t give him away. But ultimately, it was the desperation in her voice that broke him.

He stopped walking and waited for her to catch up.

“You never told me your name,” she said, voice still quiet and unsure despite the edge of accusation she tried to display.

“I didn’t,” he agreed easily, hands still carefully stuffed in his pockets as he looked down at where his sister was standing in front of him.

She blinked up at him, seeming to accept that he wouldn’t be answering her without surprise. He thought that was to be the end of their conversation, so he offered her one last nod before moving to step around her—only to be met with a plate being thrust at his chest.

He blinked down at the plate and the sandwich that it held, surprised and uncomprehending. “What are you…?”

“Take it,” she said, voice firmer than it had been all night. Probably firmer than it had been in years. “If my brother isn’t going to eat it, well… you might as well.”

“I…” Five started, a refusal on his lips before he could think better of it. Before he could give in to the desire for this little slice of normalcy and nostalgia that was literally being offered to him on a silver platter.

How long had it been since someone had made food for him? How long had it been since he had eaten his favorite sandwich? How long had it been since he had seen Vanya—sweet, innocent, ordinary, Vanya—smile at him like they were sharing a secret?

Too long, he knew. So he reasoned that this small act of weakness could be excused.

“Thank you,” he said, reaching out to take the plate from her small hand. “This is actually my favorite.”

Vanya’s smile only grew at his confession, and she seemed immensely satisfied with herself. “Good. Consider it a thank you, for listening to me. For giving me hope.”

Guilt weighed on Five’s shoulders as he thought back on the book he still had tucked away with his things. A book that hadn’t been written yet but would bring to light years of slights and cold-shoulders and loneliness that he had never noticed before.

He saw it now, on her pale, hopeful face. How much this one kind conversation impacted her. Like his mere presence and willingness to listen was the best thing to happen to her in a long time.

It made him sick.

He took a large bite of the sandwich anyway, both to see her smile again and fill the sudden void in his stomach. “No need to thank me, Vanya. It was my pleasure.”

He handed her back the plate without another word, sandwich still in hand as he turned his back on her and left. It was easier this way—he couldn’t bear sticking around long enough to actually say goodbye.

Besides, he thought with a smile, I’ll see her again soon.

And he would. No more dragging his feet or fucking around for the Commission. He was going to find a way back to his family, one that would be permanent. He would find a way to stop the Apocalypse before it even began.

He would save them all, and one day he would be able to tell Vanya that he was right, as he always was.

There would be no time for sweet reunions or tearful confessions, of course. He was a soldier now, and he wouldn’t rest until the world—and his family—were saved. But he would savor this, at least. A peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich and a few words shared with his favorite sibling. A smile and a promise. Hope.

It would have to be enough. For now.

#the umbrella academy #five hargreeves #vanya hargreeves #tua #tua fanfic #sibling bonding #I just really wish they had a better childhood alright #they all deserved better #but especially Vanya and Five

109 notes · View notes

thegizka · 5 years

Text

The Silver Lining

Inspired by this post where a time traveler and an immortal are friends and keep meeting.

Written for Writer’s Month 2019 Day 9: Time Travel.

Please do not steal my work.

For the record, time travel sucks.

I was first pulled when I was eight years old. One minute I’m making mud pies in my family’s garden and the next I’m floating in the aftermath of the world’s destruction with some transcendent being pretending it’s doing me a favor when it tells me I’ve been chosen to prevent the apocalypse. Before letting me process that or ask questions, I was magically back in the garden playing in the mud. I promptly threw up.

See, time travel isn’t a pleasant experience. Maybe if you have a time machine built to withstand the wibbly-wobblies of moving beyond natural chronology, you wouldn’t feel like your body was being torn apart and patched back together with cheap double-sided tape. That’s not even mentioning the whiplash your mind feels when you go from processing the input of five senses to experiencing nothing to the sensations of a totally new environment. It really messes with you.

Honestly, I thought that first pull was the result of weird compost fumes until my next time travel adventure. When I was fourteen, I was pulled back to the Scottish Highlands in 1166. Talk about culture shock! I wasn’t particularly concerned with personal hygiene (remember the mud pies?), but within twenty-four hours, I was longing for a proper shower. It was miserable. Everyone spoke strangely, I had no idea if anything was safe, and I was somehow supposed to prevent an unknown event whose repercussions would lead to the end of the world. No pressure.

Not only was this the first trip that I was expected to alter history, it was also the first time I met her.

Cassandra stood out almost as much as I did. With thick and wavy black hair, olive skin, and an air of superiority, she was nothing like the rough and unrefined clansmen around us. Lucky for me, she decided to help me out, getting me proper attire and explaining the customs and politics of the time. It was a little unnerving because I got the sense that she knew more about me and my mission than she said, but I was glad to have the help. I needed it. Without her, I don’t think I would have managed to stop a political marriage between two clans which would create a power imbalance and pave the way for war. Unfortunately, I was pulled back to my own time before I could help Cassandra mop up the mess this created.

It’s unnerving to spend weeks or months in another time and place only to return to the exact moment you’d left your own life. It’s disorienting if not psychologically scarring. Since no one else knows about my cosmic destiny, I must somehow maintain a job and social engagements on top of everything else.

At first it wasn’t too difficult because getting pulled happened infrequently. I even tried dating and managed to have a long-term romantic relationship without revealing I’m a nutcase. But as soon as I entered my thirties (though age is so hard to track when the timeline is flexible), the pulling has happened in earnest. Sometimes I’ll be dragged to two or three eras in a row before returning to my own, which really does a number on your sense of self and chronology. I can’t reliably keep my houseplants alive, let alone my social life.

The one consistency in this crazy existence is Cassandra. You can imagine my surprise when the third pull deposited me in 1913 Brazil and she was there looking just as she had when we’d met in Scotland. At first I thought my mind had given up and I truly was crazy. (I’m still not convinced I’m sane.) Then I wondered if somehow her descendant had turned out to be her body double. I even entertained the concept of cloning. But when she pulled me aside and recounted in excruciating detail one of the most embarrassing moments of my life (how was I, an innocent teenager, supposed to know how to “properly” wear a kilt?), I accepted that it was truly her.

It turns out she’s also been selected by some transcendent being to save the world, but instead of being pulled through time, she has to live through it all. Initially immortality hadn’t seemed like such a bad thing, but for her, time passes in steady and excruciatingly slow chronology. She has to live through all of the mundane bits while I experience the highlight reel. We’ve often debated which curse is worse.

It can be a bit unnerving to run into someone you know whose personal timeline is different from yours. Sometimes Cassandra or I will try to reference a shared experience only for the other to be totally lost because they haven’t reached that moment in their life. But it is also convenient and somewhat comforting to have someone who understands your circumstances. I like to think we’ve helped each other quite a lot over the years, her with her knowledge of current events and me with my understanding of the future timeline. Somehow we always end up in the right place at the same time.

I’m not at all surprised then when I’m pulled far into the future and see her. I am a bit put off by the fact that it’s a holographic tribute, much like statues of famous people from my own era. Though she does her best to keep a low profile, Cassandra’s involvement in our missions and their aftermath sometimes gives her notoriety.

I approach the tribute, not particularly concerned about my out-of-place attire (future fashion has a convenient niche for throwbacks and weirdos). I examine the description.

Cassandra Theodoris, savior of humanity.

I’m sure she got a kick out of that when they put it up. Though ours is a cosmic mission, it rarely feels so. Sometimes the crisis is as simple as preventing someone from drinking sour milk. I’ll have to ask her what she did this time to earn such a title.

“Ah, Jonas. I was wondering when you’d show up.”

We always meet like this, casually spotting each other within an hour of my arrival. Cassandra has dyed her hair bright blue and used makeup to change the perceived contours of her face so she isn’t immediately recognizable as the woman in the hologram.

“I’ve been taking in some local attractions,” I grin, gesturing to the hologram. “What was it this time?”

“Oh, you’ll find out in a year or two.” She waves her hand dismissively. “Come on. My shuttle’s not far, and we need to get you some new clothes. When are those from, the 1990’s? They’re very ganhi.”

“And what does ganhi mean?”

She gave me a pointed look.

“You don’t want to know, other than it’s something you want to avoid.”

“Okay, what do I want to know then?”

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to being pulled through time. I don’t know that my mind will recover from pinballing throughout human history. I have no idea whether anything I do will really prevent the apocalypse. But as long as I’m being forced on these crazy adventures, I’ll be glad to have Cassandra there with me.

#writersmonth2019 #gizka #my words #oc #original work #time travel #immortal #super unrefined and a lot of telling instead of showing #but it was a fun prompt

3 notes · View notes

pippa-frost · 5 years

Text

Seven, not Six - a TUA fanfic!

Hello! So, i’m new to the fandom and reaally needed to get this of my mind. I did so in the middle of studying so it was pretty rushed, and now i finally had the time to really work on it!

It was going to be a sort of list but it just kept growing longer and out of hand so i’m afraid it’ll be more than one chapter! Anyways, i hope you like it and tell me what you think!

I just loved this show so fucking much i can’t even. SECOND SEASON HERE WE COMEEEE!!!!!!!

---

Number One

---

So, they go back in time. It’s all a messy, long and hard process. There are tears, yelling, accusations and apologies, goals and regrets. But they get through it, together. Finally.

They talk, for once, place all the cards on the table, information is their only weapon, Five stresses.

So they learn about everything that happened to each of them, they learn about Diego and mom and Patch; about Allison and her little girl and her sin; about Five and his math and the destruction he got shot for, about Vanya and her pills and her music; about Klaus and Ben, about the drugs, the ghosts, the War, Them, the truth - by which point they get to Luther. They all have things to feel guilty about, things they regret, mistakes they wish they hadn’t made. But the truth, as Ben calls it, a dark look on his face, is worse than all that. Because the truth is that which Klaus almost gets to bury, but Ben won’t have it. So he tells them about the ghosts (cold, screams, misery, madness), the drugs (silence, peace, warmth, numb, numb, num-), the withdrawal (hot, pain, need, panic, want, want, want, need, need, nee-), and the death. Ben has punched Luther twice by the time Diego is ready to get a go at Number One.

But. They get through it. Kinda.

They hardly ever sleep alone, always one of them next to another. All seven of them more often than not. Because Five is paranoid and (quote) he’s the only one who stands a chance if people come for them; they don’t mention that they know he’s counting heads at all times, it’s not like they’re not guilty of doing the same. Luther would stay with Allison, but she won’t let go of Vanya, who isn’t Luther’s biggest fan. But she’s not the only one. While Diego might eventually forgive, he never forgets, and he’s not about to engage in either of those after learning that not only had Number One trapped Vanya by tricking her with a hug, but that he had choked Klaus and then left him for dead a few hours later. Actually dead. It’s all he can do not to cut his throat every few minutes.

Five isn’t one to snuggle so he stays close but never touching.

And even if this wasn’t the new arrangement, no one could separate Ben and Klaus if they tried. Klaus has no problem with Luther, and while Ben doesn’t share Diego’s aggressiveness, there’s something in the way he stares at him whenever he gets too close to Klaus.

And so they end up in Allison’s room, mattresses on the floor, bed sheets and blankets and pillows all around them, maybe not all close enough to touch, but together in one room all the same.

Reginald had not been amused, but with Five’s lead and Allison’s voice, the midnight surveillance had been taken care of.

They soon realize that it’s not enough, however, because Pogo can tell something’s up. By then, any remorse any of them could have felt is long gone, after days of training that their brains had somehow been able to downplay in tragedy. Their memories hadn’t been this bad, training hadn’t been this bad. But then again, they didn’t have the perspective they do now, didn’t have anything to compare their activities to fully comprehend how horrible it was.

They had never blamed Pogo for anything.

They do now.

Vanya doesn’t take her pills. They won’t go as far as to suddenly make Reginald stop being a bastard and get some sense all of the sudden, but they’re easy enough to hide and get rid of, much easier than making sure to train their sister into not showing her powers along with every emotion. But they make do, they can’t afford not to.

They keep training because they know they’ll need it, but not all of it follows Reginald’s plan. And little by little, they get time of their own. Both for training and just being together, this time with Vanya and with one another, the way they wish they had known was the normal sibling way. It’s little, maybe one or two hours a day, but it’s all they can afford, all they can risk.

They go on missions, they protect each other. Vanya starts learning first care with their mom, and is there every time they step back into the house after a mission.

Reginald doesn’t like it. He knows they’re stronger together and more than once he realizes what’s happening, just as Pogo does. Those are days they all panic, and find it hard to breathe afterwards. However, Mom is theirs. One of the first things they do is rumor Pogo into fixing Grace, they know the only one who could have brought her back last time was him, and they were right. So they make it so that she’s no longer trapped by Reginald’s goals in her creation, and that not Pogo nor Reginald can ever change it back.

They still suffer, it’s still all messed up. To call it abuse doesn’t begin to truly describe what they are forced to go through for a second time. But it’s not as hard to handle as a group. They still have to endure a lot of things. A lot of... experiments. But it’s better than last time, and they make sure to draw a line.

Klaus is not forced into mausoleums again even if that doesn’t erase the times he was locked in before. Five is not forced to continue jumping after passing out more than once. Ben is not forced to bathe in animals’ blood (so much). Diego is not forced to aim at their mom or their siblings, or animals (so much). Allison is no longer made to play with people’s minds until her throat is raw and thoughts a mess. Luther is no longer forced to work until he can’t even scream anymore and his muscles feel like tearing apart. There’re no more days without food.

They are still forced to do a lot of things. And a lot of nights are spent with tears of fear, frustration and anger, nightmares and flashbacks. They’re adults, they already escaped this hell once, they don’t have to put up with this. But they are also children, and the fear and so many other emotions that come with it are almost unbearable. And yet there’s nothing they can do and this is the best they’re gonna get.

They can’t mess up with the timeline.

They discuss about it a lot. How can they prevent the apocalypse and expect not to change the timeline too much?

Reginald is not too hard, the public never knew much about him, not really, so all they have to do is keep him from tormenting them too much. As long as the world knows he’s still there until the moment he takes his life.

It’s hard to get the point across to Diego and Ben, the latter being a surprise for them all.

Ben dying is not an option. And even still, it was never something they went out of their way to tell the world.

They’ll stay together until the time most of them left to live alone, only this time, they’ll leave together. Luther did stay, however, so they know they will have to do some missions even after leaving, but they try not to think about that.

Of all this, they are certain. Anything else, they’ll figure it out along the way.

Only, if it were easy, everyone would do it. There’s a reason why things happen the way they do, and the existence of the Commission is not the main one.

Five doesn’t leave, and PTSD and touch are things they become experts in; Ben doesn’t die, they all help him with his fear of Them, just as they help Klaus with the screams of death and war, being there before any drugs can get him. Vanya and Ben are the experts, both of them know and admit they are all messed up and know there are ways to work through it, Ben with his books, Vanya with her experience with therapy. And they work hard to get Allison and Luther to understand how abuse was every bit of a scar on their minds as it was for the rest of them, especially to Luther.

But knowing how the future plays out makes them all the more vulnerable to unexpected things, to unconsidered variables.

Later, tense with rage stronger than his hatred towards the Handler, Five is the first to admit they somehow managed to underestimate their bastard of a father, even having a whole timeline of experience over him.

They have plenty of close calls, plenty of scary moments, where they’d stay awake wondering if they saved one sibling just to lose another.

There’s Allison getting shot, Luther getting stabbed, and Five-

Well. Five doesn’t get to get hurt after Klaus acted as a shield.

Is in this last case that Reginald finally gets proof that powers are one more thing the children are hiding from him. He’s known for months, but can never truly grasp it, and he knows he must have only for it to be taken from him with a few childish words.

But he sees. He sees useless, weak Number Four. He sees his fists glow, might even see a few ghosts, but most importantly, he sees him die. And he sees him come back.

The kids by now know that there’s something about Klaus and death, something mysterious and similar and even familiar, a connection of sorts, one that scares them like little ever has, no matter how apparently okay Klaus is with the whole concept, how sure he is of its existence as an unconditional backup, as an absolute truth, how ready he is to take it for granted. They’re not about to put the veracity of this supposedly safety net to the test; and so they do all they can to avoid the matter all together.

That is their downfall.

Reginald has been taking notes all his life. The rumors don’t change that. In fact, they only make him more careful. So while he might not remember, he knows enough. And he knows that while the children might have a way to keep him off their backs, there’s a reason why they still keep up with most of the training, which means they are not as in control as they would like to be.

And everyone knows that to take control, you start with the weakest link, which so happens to be the subject of his interest. It’s perfect.

So when training time comes for Number Four, he takes him to an old, far away part of the mansion instead of the graves, without anyone knowing.

“Where are we?“ Klaus asks, a sick feeling settling in his stomach. He’s gotten better at dealing with ghosts, a few of them acting more like Ben used to do, silent companions, always there. Nothing compared to what Ben had been of course, but a hell of a lot better that the others. He was getting better at making them corporeal, especially with Ben’s input from his own experience, and he knows now that he can apparently move things with his mind, tho he hasn’t really been able to do it other than by accident.

“Did you know, Number Four” the man suddenly starts “that out of all of you, your powers are the least threatening? The weakest, truly“

Klaus did know that.

“Number One could crush my head with one single hand“ he says conversationally, his back to Klaus inside the big slightly dark room. Luther is still pretty much a Daddy’s boy, even if he can see now how wrong he’s been about everything, and it’s hard for him to accept the way they screw with Reginald’s mind, his hero complex unable to come to terms with all he’s known and believed in being turned upside down. So, no. Luther couldn’t do that.

“Number two” he continues “one flick of his hand and a knife would be deep between my eyes” he laughs. Klaus feels cold and scared, glancing every so often at the woman who he’s gotten used to seen in the corners. She doesn’t look back. Also, Klaus knows that’s exactly what Diego would love to do, but he isn’t sure if his brother would actually go through with it.

“Number three... Well, she could make me kill myself in lots of ways“

Allison would never do that. How could he even think that?!

“Number Five... he could kill me in my sleep and make it seem like an accident“

Well... yeah. That is true.

“And Number Six...“ he hums, turning around to look down on him and letting out a scoff “He’s a monster!“ and Klaus feels rage he hasn’t felt in a very long time, years of numbness and forced obliviousness as coping mechanisms leaving him unprepared for strong emotions for his already pretty mellow personality, and he has to fight everything he has not to let his fists turn blue. The fucker can’t know about his powers.

“He could kill us all in one night“ he says, pulling out his pocket watch and then giving Klaus a look that makes his limbs go rigid “So, you see, Number Four, it would be simple madness for me not to be prepared for such potential situations. You are all supposed to save the world, yes, and just as it’s my duty to prepare you for that, it is also my duty to do everything in my power so that you can’t do the exact opposite“

Klaus gulps, cold settling in the room. He doesn’t know where the asshole is getting with this, but it doesn’t sound good. It almost sounds like he knew about Vanya and the apocalypse and her powers, but that couldn’t be. It just couldn’t. Besides, it was exactly his fear of Vanya’s power what actually led to the end of the world

“I know you all have been playing with me” and Klaus stops breathing, his heartbeats loud inside his head, he dares a look to the side, were the closed (locked, the key on the man’s pocket) door blocks him from escape “And I have let it go because you have gotten better at both missions and training. However” he turns around again, opening the suitcase he had placed on the table behind him and starting to pull things out of it “My patience runs short, and your abilities run predictable. So imagine my surprise“ he sits on the chair behind the table, as if ready to give a lecture to a one-child class “when i saw you actually have been improving your abilities!“

Klaus feels his knees go weak, the woman is watching him curiously now, and he knows, he knows, so maybe it wouldn’t matter if he made her corporaal now? And begged her to help him? To go get Ben somehow, or Five, anyone!

How did he screw this up? How did he let Reginald see? How did he screw everything up again?! And he can only think of Five, of Diego, of Ben, where are they? Help! His mind screaming for him to run run run run!

“How did you do it, Number Four?” the man ignores his reaction “How did you die?”

And every sound banging inside his skull makes a sudden stop. He must have heard wrong. There’s no way he’s talking abo-

“How did you come back?” the man’s voice sentences like a jury of hell.

“I- I don’t know what you’re talking about“ he manages, just as his panic makes his fists glow and more dead people appear around him, still invisible to the man in front of him somehow. Reginald lifts and eyebrow.

“I saw you. I know what a fatal blow is. I saw the tapes as well. Number Five lowering your body down, the whole lot of you screaming like toddlers. I know you died. And I know your brothers know that too. I also know that they must have known about this beforehand, no? It’d make sense of the way they’ve all been behaving during missions. There’s a reason why you all tried to cover it up, which is all I need as proof of the veracity of the fact“

“I- I didn’t die! You’re crazy!“

“Oh, but you did, Number Four. And then you came back“

“That’s im-“

“It is impossible“ he nods, before lifting his shin “For your siblings at least“

And Klaus freezes. There are at least ten ghosts around the room now, all looking at the man before him, and yet, right now, not one of them scares him more than said man. There’s a whisper of a ringing noise between his ears, and maybe he’s imagining it just as he’s imagining his hot breath against the now cold, cold room. His hands are covered in blue fire, but it doesn’t burn at all, unlike the burning caused by the knot inside his throat. The ghost aren’t corporeal yet, and while he’s been trying his best not to show them so far, he’s now stuck, because letting Reginald see them seems like a better choice than keep this conversation going, especially with the look his father is giving him, a gaze colder than those of the dead, scarier than the sights of gore that always follow his step.

He glances at the door again before he can stop himself, his whole body trembling in terror.

“Ah, don’t waste your time, Number Four” the man scoffs, fumbling with the briefcase still “You won’t leave”

“Why is that” he asks after gulping, trying desperately to keep the fear out of his voice. He’s not a kid anymore, he’s an adult, he’s been tortured, he’s been a soldier, this isn’t as scary as he thinks it is. It can’t be.

“Hmm, so I see your newly developed powers didn’t come with higher thinking capabilities” he stands up, now a knife between his fingers, unimpressed expression firmly in place “I told you, I have ways to get rid of every single one of you, of keeping you in your place, of making sure you never get to play this silly game again. Maybe they won’t work on you, at least not until we make some tests, but they will definitely work on your siblings. Up until now I hadn’t had a reason to use them, but with all your little games recently, well. You’re getting dangerous, and I’m running out of patience. However, balance can always be achieved”

“You wouldn’t” he manages brokenly “You need us” and Five had said so himself, so it couldn’t not be true. The bastard is now a few steps before him, and laughs.

“Number Four. There’re dozens of you out there. I managed to get you seven once. I can get a few others again. And yes, you could try to stop me with your silly little game, but believe me when I say, there would only be six of you by the time you managed to do so” the man finishes, his tone unbothered, as if shrugging through his words.

And that’s it. The man moves around and Klaus is distantly aware of being pushed backwards to sit on a chair, his Father somewhere above him. Everything else is silent. Klaus, ironically, feels a kind of numbness surrounding him, so different from the kinds he’s used to, and yet so similar. There’s no longer ringing on his ears, panic’s whispers; instead, there’s silence, but not empty silence. The air feels heavy around him as if surrounded by an invisible fog, cotton around and inside his head, blocking thoughts and emotions alike.

Because it’s true, isn’t it? There’s absolutely nothing he can do. No option for him to choose, no actions for him to take. There’s nothing he can do to stop their dad. Who would stop him? Who could stop him? Who knows what things he has to get rid of them? It was easy enough for him to do as such to Vanya, what else couldn’t he do? His siblings, they’re all human, they’re all vulnerable. They can all be killed. They can all die. They already had in one timeline. Hell, they all had in several timelines.

There was absolutely nothing he could do. He could try to escape, but would he dare? Would he be able to run fast enough towards his siblings before any of them being killed somehow? They weren’t even close to their usual part of the mansion. He wouldn’t make it. He couldn’t make it. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t do anything.

He’s frozen, barely there, hopelessness numbing everything, a void inside his chest, something broken, something inside his chest he had almost managed to forget, taking everything away. He’s trapped. They were supposed to be better this time around. And now because of him he might lose everything again. He can’t. He can’t leave. He can’t let him do that, not to any of them. They are all he has left. They are everythi-

He flinches and reality rushes to him.

Reginald has just made a cut on his wrist. His vision is blurry from silent tears he hadn’t felt falling, blood feels warm against his skin as it runs through his hand. His Father takes a few steps back to lean on the table, now full of equipment he hadn’t seen before.

He’s trapped again. He actually doesn’t feel the need for drugs right now, and what a funny thing that is. Somewhere in his mind, a little Klaus actually acknowledges that fact, but it’s almost drowned by the numbness stuffing everything like cotton, his mind, his eyes, his ears.

He’s trapped again, and for the first time that isn’t the problem. All the times before, it was all about how long he’d be locked for, how long he’d be forced to endure the screams and the agony and the hatred and the desperation of lives cut short. Getting out eventually had never been the issue.

Now? Now there’re ghosts looking at the scene with blank faces yet curious eyes, but he can’t hear them; there are broken souls around him, yet they don’t go near him; there’s a Monster just like before, yet now he isn’t the one throwing him to the wolves, instead the Monster is now the sole torturer.

He’s trapped again, and now he knows there’s no getting out at all.

8 notes · View notes

republictrooper · 5 years

Text

Star Trek Discovery Season 2 Finale Thoughts.

Ok, so like. I finally got to watch the last episode since I was on Vaycay last Thursday.

I like the ending. It was 90% explosions and 10% plot, but I liked it, a lot, some reservations aside.

I mean, I always felt like we needed a new Trek series set in the future instead of all these prequels (one reason I’m not on the “Pike Miniseries” train), but sending the prequel series into the future to BE that series was... actually a pretty smooth move.

On one hand, it’s a little ingenious how many holes it plugs up from the timeline perspective - Spock never talks about his sister because it’s a matter of temporal security, the Spore Drive never sees wide use because both ships that used it met a grisly,grisly end, Cornwall never showed up in TOS because she was KIA in a battle that was at least partially classified, etc.

On the other hand, I found that most of the people concerned about that stuff were of the whiny fanboy brigade angry that the SJWs were taking over their beloved trek, and honestly, screw those guys. Retcons are a standard of most longrunning series, so just retcon that Michael took her wife Tilly to the Enterprise for regular visits with Spock and constantly teased him about how he was obviously smitten with Jim, and that Hugh and Bones constantly traded tips about how to be gay doctors in space and the Red Lizard alien bridge crew member actually always existed on the bridge even during the TOS era and was Uhura’s beloved wife and helped Spock spirit Pike away to Talos after his injury and etc, etc, etc... Cuz retcons can be ok in a lot of cases and the fanboys could learn some humility.

So it’s comme-ci, comme-ca, I guess. Overall, I do think releasing the series from the shackles of being a lore-friendly prequel was a GOOD thing for sure.

Other thoughts:

We finally got the promised Paul/Hugh reconciliation and it was everything I hoped for and more.

Jet Reno has seen the future, and says she has “at least” 5 lives left?

Did she see herself almost die 5 more times?

Did she see herself DIE?

Or was she just using a colloquialism and I’m reading too much into it?

Nhan definitely likes ladies, I’m pretty much convinced of it given how she and Phillipa were basically flirting while they pursued Leland. Hopefully she gets with a nice girl who’s not a backstabbing evil bisexual empress from an alternate dimension, though, tbqh. I could see her and Jett or even her and Michael making a great team, tbqh. I’m pretty sure she survived the fight with Leland, at least.

Speaking of the fight with Leland, the fact that he WAS Control in the end (enough such that his fleet couldn’t keep fighting once he was magnetized) makes me a little nervous that he went to the future with everyone else. I don’t trust those magnets to completely stop him. Or even if they did, what if he reconstitutes in the future and keeps the apocalypse going? Frick, I hope they manage to completely erase and dispose of EVERY SINGLE NANITE. Or do future nanites get their data erased by magnets like old school floppies?

On the other hand, maybe Zora evolves in part because she IS the remnants of control. Which uh. might explain why she was abandoned. Control starts reconstituting again, gets full sapience via the sphere data on Discovery’s computers, so they have to leave her in a space storm in the past in hopes it prevents her from going full Borg again?

Man, I really hope Control isn’t somehow the protoBorg. THE BORG ARE ALWAYS AT THEIR BEST WHEN THEY’RE MYSTERIOUS DAMMIT.

I like to think that shot of Detmer getting back to her chair after Leland left the bridge was because she was making sure her girlfriend was alright. I am glad Owosekun looks alright, when she got hit I was bracing for the worst.

Still not sure I get the whole Ash Tyler situation. This is one of the biggest weaknesses of prequels, at least for me, and one of the few loose ends they didn’t actually tie up with the time jump, oddly enough. You can talk about Ash reforming Section 31 into something better and more transparent, but we already KNOW he fails. At some point in the future, Section 31 will be the horrific secret police of the DS9 era, even grimmer, more nihilistic, and less transparent than pre-Control Leland. I was never an Ashburn fan, and I’m still a little sore at him for killing Hugh, so I’m not especially mourning the fact he stayed in the past, but frick, at least let him go back to Earth and sail boats for the rest of his days. He deserves that more than vainly struggling to reform an organization we already know will fail to live up to the goals he has.

Anyway, Section 31 was a mistake and Ash Tyler was too good of a character to waste on that. Given they sent Phillipa into the future, I was hopeful they had cancelled the S31 series in favor of keeping her on the main series cast and the concept of S31 as anything other than the clear villains could die a quiet, peaceful death, but I GUESS NOT.

Also, still a little weird that the Klingons are gonna be cold war enemies for the next few decades/centuries. I guess at some point L’Rell is no longer able to hold the Chancellorship solely on strength of threatening the other clans with blowing up Quo’noS and/or doing the whole “Mother knows best” thing? Or then again, they never quite established how or why she gave up the whole Klingon supremacy movement, so maybe she just goes ahead and gets back on that now that most of the Starfleet-aligned people keeping her in check on that are either dead or 900+ years in the future.

Anyway, the biggest question is, what happens in the future?

Do we have a weird Voyager-like situation in which they are so far in the beta quadrant and in time they have to work with limited primitive resources and/or try to make it to federation space despite a travel time of multiple decades, whether because Paul can’t jump anymore due to his injuries, or Phillipa fried the spore drive when she killed Leland?

Or are we gonna have a full on Federation that’s spread between Quadrants, and if so, how does Discovery slot into that? Do they just get reintroduced and get the Discovery retrofitted to full futurosity? Does Tilly get to fulfill her dreams of captaincy in the future Federation, or does she just have to hope Saru or Michael passes the captaincy on to her when they die or retire? Or does she give it up because everything’s gone sideways and instead stays on the Discovery (possibly as chief science officer, while her wife moves up to 1st Officer)?

I mean, I have always loved Trek for its optimistic view of the future, so I hope the Federation is around and basically a forward-looking, peaceful organization, but given the brief glimpse we got from Calypso was of a warn-torn future, I’m a little iffy. S2 was great in part because it dared pull away from the overly darkness-filled S1, I hope we don’t plunged back into a grimdark future. I guess there could also be a plot twist with Zora and Craft. Maybe the Alcor IV folk are human separatists and the V’draysh are the peace-loving forwarding thinking Federation.

The spirk nod was amazing and gdi, I would pay like a million bucks for a retcon somewhere down the line that establishes Kirk and Spock got married at some point and settled down somewhere, where Kirk died peacefully of old age (and not on some dusty distant planet after being swallowed by the metaphysical concept of heaven then spit back out to get unceremoniously bodied by Malcolm McDowell) sorry Generations) before Spock went back to being an ambassador and doing all the stuff in the TNG-era shows/movies/novels/etc.

I don’t even necessarily ship Spirk that hard, Spock is just undeniably queer as hell and we deserve that reading of him finally being canonized.

Anyway, I liked Season 2 overall. I look forward to season 3!

#star trek discovery #star trek discovery spoilers #spoilers

3 notes · View notes

lil-nest · 6 years

Link

For BatfamWeek 2018, day 5: Time Travel

Summary: In a world where Bruce's decision to get Damian's body back from Apokolips has apocalypse-sized consequences, Tim and Damian engineer a plan to go back in time and prevent it. Left alone after Tim's death, Damian must decide how far exactly he is willing to go - not just in time.

Warnings: Major character death, referenced rape (Damian’s conception), referenced child abuse (Damian’s childhood), dubious time-travel grammar

Notes: The quote at the end is from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s followed by “ The major problem is quite simply one of grammar” which describes my feelings about his. A second chapter about Damian’s adventures in the past might or might not happen, depending on inspiration, but this can stand alone.

“One does not simply walk out of Apokolips”

Damian had been livid the first time Drake had said it. The world had been turning into ashes because his father had thought he could go to Apokolips and come back without consequences, so the moment had seemed inappropriate for inane quotes. However, as time had passed and the situation had worsened, he had seen how those memes and pop culture references had helped group cohesion, how the right quote at the right time had made the whole group laugh despite their impending doom. So he had swallowed his pride and asked Drake to explain this phenomenon.

And so Timothy had taught him. About social media and movies and books and bands. All the entertainment that had burned with the rest of organized society, leaving only fond memories in the minds of the last survivors. Damian had asked him about his favorites, and had been regaled with stories about Hobbits and magic rings, spaceships and robots, and something about fish and towels. They hadn't had any books, but Timothy had known an impressive number of quotes.

Now Damian was not angry. Instead the quote managed to get a wet laugh out of him. Of course those would be Tim's last words. It was fitting. Yet, as he held his brother's body in his arms, he knew there was more to it. He could understand the encouragement behind it. Frodo had walked into Mordor, even though Boromir and so many other had died. Damian would walk out of the Apokolips-apocalypse, even without Tim. Their plan was almost ready. He only needed to reach the machine and choose a date.

One turned out to be surprisingly more difficult than the other. He pondered his choices as he sat in their makeshift hangar. The obvious choice would have been just before Father and the other went to Apokolips. He could warn them about the dangers, and maybe his presence would help them come to terms with not resurrecting him. Yet, he somehow doubted his father would be willing to listen to reason, even – especially – if it came from his dead son.

Then again, maybe his father didn't have to know the boy he'd see would not be the son he was trying to bring back. If he calculated the time and place correctly, he could pretend he had been resurrected by his grandfather and then had broken out of his clutches to go home. He could even use the Pit Rage as an excuse for any potential apocalypse-related PTSD.

That sounded like a good plan, but... If he had his dates right, then Richard would already be dead. Not to mention the fact that he'd find a version of Timothy he did not get along with. Of course, he knew his brother already loved him enough back then to go along with his father's plan, but between his previous murder attempts and what they had witnessed of Jason's Pit Rage, he would be justified in being doubly suspicious of Damian.

He knew jeopardizing their only plan to prevent the apocalypse for something like personal feelings was disgraceful, but the more he thought about it, the worse the prospect seemed. Maybe he could find another time...

What if he prevented his death? Maybe Nightwing would survive the ordeals that had killed him in this timeline if he wasn't consumed by grief. But then only the younger him would get his eldest brother back and a chance to bond with Timothy. Damian would have to spend his life hiding in order to prevent uncomfortable questions – not to mention the possibility that his mother would keep trying to kill him until it worked.

Maybe go back to when his mother introduced him to his father and take his younger self's place? He could start over with all of them, then. Befriend Tim, earn his father's trust, maybe even prevent his father's “death” and create a plan to integrate Jason back in the family. But what of his younger self? Would he kill him? Hide him somewhere? Leave him for his mother to raise? He couldn't do that to him. Younger him may have been a brat, but he deserved better.

Better than what Damian had just been thinking of doing to him, and certainly better than what his mother had done to him.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he could go back to his birth, kidnap his baby self and go seek shelter in Gotham. His father would certainly agree to protect a boy who claimed to have escaped the League, especially if he came with a baby. Then he'd get to be Grayson's equal and Tim and Jason's big brother, and younger him would grow up happy and loved, and never would have to take a life.

But what if his mother decided to fight for her baby? What if she created a plan to destroy Gotham to take younger him back? Or what if she just made another clone, and made an evil Damian that wouldn't be introduced to Batman and his philosophy?

The only way for Damian to prevent his mother from making an evil clone would be to prevent her from having any genetic material at all. If he just prevented his parents from procreating at all, then there wouldn't be any younger him to take into account, his father wouldn't have to live with having been raped, and if he made himself a place close to his father, he could ensure the rest of his sibling found their way into the family. After all, who said that Father had to kick Grayson out in order to adopt Todd, or that Todd had to die for Timothy to make himself known?

Decision made, Damian started to adjust the device.

A part of him was surprised he wasn't more bothered at the idea of preventing his own conception or changing the course of time. Then again, Timothy had taught him a very insightful quote about such things.

As the time machine started to power up, Damian recited the words.

“One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broadminded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with.”

He hoped that also applied to preventing one's own birth.

“There is also no problem about changing the course of history – the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end.”

A glowing portal opened before him.

Well, he was just about to find out if that part was true.

He stepped in.

#batfamweek2018 #day 5: time travel #damian wayne #tim drake #major character death #implied/referenced rape #implied/referenced child abuse

7 notes · View notes

inhumansforever · 7 years

Photo

Hey, let’s get to know The Dark Riders!

Although primarily X-Men foes, the membership of the Dark Riders in modern times has been composed predominantly of Inhumans; and surely it is only a matter of time before these villains face off against fellow Inhuman adversaries, either in the pages of Secret Warriors, The Royals, or some other Inhuman tale down the line. With that in mind, lets get to know this cunning collection cut-throating cads. Check out the full details following the jump...

The Dark Riders were originally known as ‘The Riders of The Dark’ or ‘Riders of The Storm,’ and were a group of fearsome warriors and assassins gathered by the Mutant tyrant, Apocalypse at some point during the 15th century. Apocalypse had gathered this army of murderous rogues to forward his agenda of the strongest of the fittest. They roamed the lands, pillaging villages and kingdoms and leaving nothing but carnage in their wake.

The Riders of The Storm were completely faithful to Apocalypse and they dedicated themselves to watching over their lord during the long periods in which he remained in his stasis chamber, asleep and regenerating his powers. The heroes, Cable and Deadpool, traveled back in time to try to prevent Apocalypse from reawakening and ending the threat he posed while he was in a vulnerable state. The two were unable to destroy Apocalypse, but they did manage to take out the entirety of his forces and The Riders of The Storm were all killed.

Apocalypse returned centuries later, fully restored from his slumber. He was pleased to see that Mutants had so proliferated, but it renewed his conviction that only the strongest of the Mutants had the right to survive.

To this end, Apocalypse decided to recruit a new army of riders. He attacked the Inhuman home of Attilan when it was located on The Moon, conquering a portion of the city. During his siege of Attilan, Apocalypse recruited several Inhumans whom he conducted experiments on to augment their powers. He indoctrinated them to his views of social Darwinism and survival of the fittest, leaving them entirely loyal to his case

These Inhumans included Medusa’s cousin, the telepath, Psynapse, as well as Foxbat, Gauntlet, Barrage, Tusk, and HardDrive. Together they became Apocalypse’s new Riders of The Storm, whom he renamed ‘The Dark Riders.’

Apocalypse sent his Dark Riders to Earth where they were tasked with neutralizing the threat that Cable posed to Apocalypse. At the time, Cable was still a newborn baby, born to Cyclops (Scott Summers) and Madelyne Pryor (a genetic clone of Jean Grey). The Riders infected the infant, Nathan Summers, with the techno-organic virus. This ultimately forced Scott Summers and Jean Grey to send their son into a distant future timeline.

Cyclops and his team, X-Factor, traveled to Attilan and combined forces with the Inhuman Royal Family to defeat Apocalypse. They succeeded and Apocalypse was seemingly killed. The Dark Riders escaped, taking Apocalypse’s body with them so that it may be placed in its restorative chamber.

A fully restored Apocalypse rose from his chamber some time later and The Riders were there to once again assist him. Apocalypse came into conflict with the Mutant known as Stryfe (who was actually a clone of Nathan Summers who psychic abilities were unencumbered by the techno-organic virus). Stryfe ultimately defeated Apocalypse, forcing him to flee. In the aftermath, The Riders saw Stryfe as proving himself as the strongest, the most fit, and they pledged their services to him.

Stryfe and his team of Dark Riders sought out Apocalypse, to finish him off. Apocalypse temporarily allied himself with The X-Men, joining forces with the Mutant heroes to battle the superordinate threat that Stryfe posed.

In the ensuing battle, The X-Men fought Stryfe while Apocalypse faced off against his former agents, the Dark Riders. The Riders proved too much for Apocalypse and he was seemingly killed. Meanwhile, Stryfe himself appeared to perishing in his battle with Cable. Now leaderless, the Riders fled to places unknown.

The Dark Riders resurfaced some time later, now led by one of their own, Foxbat. The Riders remained committed to the central tenets of survival of the fittest and they set out to ‘test’ various Mutants so to strengthen the Mutant bloodline and ensure that only the strongest survived.

The Riders tested and murdered numerous Mutants before taking on Cyclops. Cyclops endured an intense battle with The Riders, they may have killed him had it not been for the intervention of Mr. Sinister (who had his own plans for Cyclops). Although severely injured, Cyclops survived and was informed by The Riders that he had been the first mutant to pass their ‘test.’

Some time later, The Riders came under the control of the Mutant villain known as Genesis (the son of Stryfe who had traveled back to the present from the future). Genesis gained leadership over The Riders by proving his superiority, that he was the most fit of them all. This resulted in The Rider’s former leader, Foxbat, being killed. Genesis added to The Dark Riders’ ranks, recruiting the Mutant villains known as Spyne, Lifeforce, Hurricane, and Deadbolt.

Under Genesis’ leadership, the Dark Riders continued to hunt Mutants and cull those deemed unworthy. They targeted the Mutant known as Caliban, but were thwarted in their efforts by the combined forces of the X-Men, Cable, Domino and Storm. These X-Men were then lured into a Trap by Tusk that resulted in Cable facing off against Genesis. Although the son of Stryfe, Genesis convinced Cable that he was actually his own son. Cable was torn, wanting to defeat these vicious killers while also desperate to save and somehow reform his son. The battle ended in a draw with Genesis and The Dark Riders escaping.

The Dark Riders were next seen in a battle against Mr. Sinister. Genesis had the riders abduct, Faye Livingstone, the one person Mr Sinister had ever loved. Sinister recruited the X-Men in his efforts to combat the Riders and save Livingstone. The Riders were ultimately defeated, but sadly Faye Livingstone died int he ensuing battle. The Riders teleported away before they could be apprehended.

Disappointed by The Dark Riders’ poor showing against The X-Men, Genesis decided it essential that he recruit Wolverine to his cause. At the time, Wolverine (Logan) had been stripped of his adamantium following a terrible encounter with Magneto. Genesis planned on both re-bonding adamantium to Wolverine’s skeleton and brainwashing him… in so doing gaining a formidable chief lieutenant for his Dark Riders. To this end, The Riders facilitated the escape of the villain known as Cyber. Cyber thought he was being recruited by Genesis, but it turned out that Genesis was only interested in Cyber’s adamantium shell and he used a hoard of flesh-eating beetles to devour Cyber, leaving only the adamantium behind. Gauntlet then lured Wolverine into a trap and Genesis subjected him to a process meant to restore Wolverine’s adamantium bonding. The process did not succeed and instead Wolverine was reverted to a primitive, beastly version of himself.

This beast-like version of Wolverine broke free and went berserk; in his murderous rampage, he killed a number of the Dark Riders, including Lifeforce, Hurricane, Spyne, Deadbolt and finally Genesis himself.

The remaining Riders escaped and remained in hiding for many months. They finally resurfaced, once more under the leadership of a newly resurrected Stryfe. This time Stryfe tasked the Riders with hunting down and eliminating all telepaths on the planet. The team did not fare well in this assignment. They attacked Jean Grey, but she was assisted by Madelyne Pryor. Barrage and HardDrive were both seemingly killed and Gauntlet was just able to escape. Meanwhile, the other Riders attacked Nate Grey. Once more the team was defeated and Psynapse perished int he battle. Stryfe was ultimately defeated by Cable and X-Force and what was left of The Dark Riders were left without a master.

Gauntlet later resurfaced, this time acting as a mercenary for hire. The Mutant known as Blaqusmith hired Gauntle to track down Scott Summers after he had become possessed by Apocalypse.

Many months later, The Dark Riders returned, this time with many of their members mysteriously resurrected from the dead. How exactly these villains returned to life has not been revealed, but it is possible that they had gained access to the restorative technology utilized by their former master, Apocalypse.

Once more dedicated to their agenda of survival of the fittest, The Dark Riders began hunting and killing any Mutant who possesses healing powers. In their view, such powers were an effrontery to their values and interferes with the process of refining the metahuman bloodline so that only the strongest remain.

Magneto’s new team of Uncanny X-Men became aware of The Rider’s new campaign and set out to save those Mutants the Rider’s were targeting. The X-Men failed to save several such Mutants, including the former X-Man, Elixir. They then used the new X-Man, Triage, as bait to lure the Dark Riders into a trap.

Triage was left seemingly defenseless in the ruins of Geonosha. The Riders converged on him only to be ambushed by The X-Men. The Riders were defeated, with many killed and those that remained left bound in the ruins. To ensure the Riders would not escape to further trouble Mutantkind, Magneto set off a series of explosions that consumed the ruins. The Dark Riders all apparently perished in the explosion. Yet it is not the first time that they have seemingly died and it is quite likely that they will resurface once more in the not too distant future.

The original Dark Riders were composed of the following Inhumans:

Foxbat - An Inhuman with nocturnal vision, enhanced strength, speed and reflexes. He additionally had a pair of large, horn-like protrusions that he wielded like swords in combat. Foxbat was the original leader of the Dark Riders, answering only to Apocalypse. After control of the team was taken over by Genesis, Foxbat was deemed as unworthy and he was killed by Genesis’ new recruit, the mutant known as Lifeforce. This was the last The Foxbat was seen from and he was never subsequently resurrected with many of the other Dark Riders.

Psynapse - The cousin of Medusa and Crystal who possesses formidable psychic/telepathic abilities. Psynapse was initially killed by his fellow Riders after he failed in his efforts to take out the Mutant known as Mesmiro. It turned out that this was a ruse and Psynapse had used his psychic powers to only make it look as though he died. He later rejoined the Riders and was again seemingly killed when attempted to manipulate the mind of Nate Grey. The process acted to reactivate Grey’s omega-level psychic abilities and the feedback caused Psynapse to experience a fatal aneurysm. Seemingly resurrected once again, Psynapse returned as a part of The Riders’ campaign to hunt any Mutants with healing powers; where upon he was again apparently killed when Magneto set directed a torrent of metal debris that cut through his body. In some appearances, Psynapse is portrayed as having a very diminutive form, only about one meter in height. In other apparances, however, Psynapse is shown as being the same height as the other member of the team. This matter has never been explained, but adds credence to the idea that the Dark Riders who have been so often resurrected from the dead may all be clones created by an individual yet to be revealed.

Gauntlet - An Inhuman with slightly reptilian features and shared fangs. He possesses enhanced strength, speed, agility, and healing; and has been additionally outfitted with several cybernetic enhancements that augment his skills as a fighter and tracker. Gauntlet acted as the field leader for The Riders on most missions. He also acted as a mercenary for hire on several occasions. He appeared to be the leader of the Riders during their campaign to kill those Mutants who possess healing powers. He was seemingly killed in the destruction of Geonosha; yet with his healing powers Gauntlet may be the most likely of the group to have survived.

Barrage - An Inhuman who possessed the ability collect ambient energy within himself and fire it out in a conclusive blasts. The cybernetic augmentations provided by Apocalypse enabled Barrage to transform his hands and forearms into cannons that fired the blasts in a more powerful and precise fashion. During The Riders’ hunt for Mutants with healing powers, Barrage attempted to take out the X-Man, Xorn, firing a blast at his head point blank. Xorn caused the blast to be redirected back at the Rider at a greatly amplified level, completely obliterating Barrage.

Tusk - A hulking behemoth of an Inhuman who had two large tusks that protrude out of his shoulders. He possesses superhuman strength and durability, as well as the ability to manifest smaller duplicates of himself that do his bidding. Tusk usually keeps three of these duplicates about him and they refer to their master as ‘Tusk Prime.’ During his encounter with The Dark Riders, Nate Grey discovered that Tusk Prime was himself a dupe and that the real ‘Tusk’ is actually a diminutive worm-like creature that lives deep inside of Tusk Prime’s body. Tusk was seemingly killed in the explosions that destroyed the ruins of Geonosha. It is possible that Tusk’s true worm-like form survived the explosion.

HardDrive - An Inhuman who had the ability to mentally control sophisticated machinery. He additionally possessed the ability to teleport. Following his being recruited by Apocalypse, HardDrive was fashioned with cybernetic prosthetics transforming him into a cyborg. HardDrive was among the Riders most dedicated to their former master, Apocalypse. In their final battle, upon seeing the X-Man, Archangel, HardDrive became convinced that his former master had returned to them. Distracted, HardDrive was taken out and seemingly killed by Psylocke.

Once leadership over The Dark Riders was obtained by Genesis, he added a number of Mutant villains to their ranks. Many of these Mutants were killed by Wolverine, but those who survived remained with The Riders and were part of the team that hunted those Mutants who possess healing powers. These newer Dark Riders included the following Mutants.

Lifeforce - A Mutant who possessed the ability to absorb and drain the life essence from others. Doing so revitalized her own body and she could use the excess energy to manifest force bolts that she could fire from her hands. Lifeforce was killed by adamantium shrapnel that resulted from the explosion in the device that was meant to re-bond the metal to Wolverine’s skeleton. Life-force was one of the few members of the Dark Riders never to be resurrected and her death appears to be final.

Spyne - a monstrous mutant with a body somewhat similar to a large, crimson-skinned velociraptor. He possessed enhanced strength and durability, as well as sharpened claws, fangs and a long tail that he could wield like a whip. Spyne was originally killed by Wolverine, but was later resurrected by Selene with the use of the Transmode Virus. He returned once more as part of the Dark Riders team hunting Mutant healers and was seemingly killed by Magneto.

Hurricane - a mutant with the power to summon and direct gale-force winds. In an encounter with The X-Men, Hurricane was eager to take on Storm, confident that his control over wind was much more powerful than her own. He was very much mistaken and Storm beat him back with ease. Gauntlet nearly killed Hurricane over his embarrassing failure, but Genesis steadied his hand, stating their was still use for the Mutant. Hurricane was later killed when the process to re-bond adamantium to Wolverine’s skeleton failed. The bonding device exploded, hurdling forth spikes of adamantium. Hurricane was empaled by several of these spikes and died instantly. He was later resurrected by Selene using the Transmode Virus. He then perished and was seemingly resurrect once again when he showed up as part of the Dark Rider team that were hunting down Mutant healers. He was killed by Archangel, who swooped down and used his razor wings to severe Hurricane in half. …yet this was by no means the first time the Mutant had died.

Deadbolt - A Mutant who appeared to be a living skeleton encased in a pulsing electrified form. He had the ability to remove one or more of his bones from his body and utilize them as weapons. Deadbolt was originally killed by Wolverine, who decapitated him while in a savage rage. Deadbolt was later resurrected by Selene with the use of the Transmode Virus. He returned once more as part of the Dark Riders team hunting Mutant healers and was killed by Sabertooth, who literally tore him apart.

Dirtnap - a mysterious mutant with the ability to absorb living beings and take on their forms. Most frequently Dirtnap maintains the form of a large rat. The Mutant left The Dark Riders following Genesis’ demise. He later encountered the young group of heroes known as Generation X and helped them in a battle against their foe, Emplate. Dirtnap was able to defeat Emplate, but at the expense of his own life; though ostensively he died a hero.

What the future holds in store for The Dark Riders remains to be seen. Perhaps their run-in with Magneto’s X-Men team will prove their final battle. Although it is more likely that they will return again to either once more bedevil the X-Men or possibly as adversaries of The Inhumans. Time will tell.

#Inhumans #The Dark Riders #X-Men #Uncanny X-Men #Wolverine

15 notes · View notes

tomeandflickcorner · 4 years

Text

Umbrella Academy Recap 2x03

1x01 1x02 1x03 1x04 1x05 1x06 1x07 1x08 1x09 1x10

2x01 2x02

The Hargreeves Siblings are still more-or-less scattered in 1963 Dallas, but they’re slowly starting to come together. Number 5 and Diego are now teamed up, with a new ally named Lila. While Luther has been contacted by Number 5, he’s currently adamant against joining his brother in restoring the timeline and preventing an apocalypse from occurring. Vanya’s current location has also been discovered by Luther, but he has seemingly decided to leave her be in light of her amnesia (although her memories seem to be starting to come back). As for Allison and Klaus, while they’re currently still on their own, last episode showed Allison learning of Klaus’ whereabouts, so a reunion between them seems imminent.

But first, a flashback of what Klaus got up to after he and Ben wound up in 1960. After getting thrown out of a diner for not being able to pay for his meal, he immediately gets taken in by a wealthy old woman who felt pity for him. In time, this somehow results in him gaining a cult following. It’s not exactly clear how this happened, though. However, we see that Klaus would sometimes wow the old woman’s social circle by forming parlor tricks and seemingly levitating himself off the ground when he was actually being lifted up by Ben (whom nobody else could see on account of him being a ghost). We then see Klaus in the company of a group of hippies. Not sure how he went from rubbing elbows with rich old ladies to hanging around with hippies, though. I guess we’re supposed to conclude that they started to believe Klaus was the next messiah or something because of his supposed ability to levitate himself. Of course, Klaus eventually got a bit sick of being glommed onto by his legion of followers, as he managed to give them the slip one day, leaving them behind in a field somewhere while he and Ben made a getaway in a nearby car. Which probably brings us full circle to where we found him in 2x01.

We then jump into where the last episode left off. It turns out Lila had secretly followed Diego and Number 5 when they went off to meet up with the Reginald Hargreeves of 1963, a meeting that didn’t go well as it resulted in 1963 Reginald stabbing Diego and leaving him to bleed to death. Upon discovering the injured Diego, Lila dragged him back to Elliot's apartment and managed to cauterize his wound with a curling iron, thereby saving his life. Which was rather resourceful, though I’m not sure how sanitary that would be. Number 5 eventually returns as well, nursing the less-severe wound he got from Baby Pogo. And poor Elliot is still tied up.

Elsewhere, Vanya is driving along aimlessly, having left the farmhouse when she was unable to sleep due to her memories starting to resurface again. Unfortunately for her, this gives the three white-haired temporal assassins from The Commission the opportunity to corner her. Because it seems The Commission sent them orders to take her out. In an effort to evade them, Vanya runs out into a nearby corn field and the temporal assassins pursue her. But when one of them catches up to her and attempts to shoot her, Vanya’s powers emerge, disintegrating the bullet in midair and throwing the assassin backwards. Vanya, not pausing to react to this, takes the opportunity to escape.

Of course, this doesn’t go unnoticed. Back at Elliot’s place, Elliot has finally been untied and is now helping Number 5 in monitoring a bunch of machines he’s set up. When one of them, the atmospheric radar, starts going off, Number 5 is pleased, as he’d been using the atmospheric radar to track sound waves. He naturally concludes that Vanya had been the one to set off the atmospheric radar, and he teleports off to investigate. Number 5 eventually makes it to the cornfield where Vanya has been hiding out all night and quickly locates her. He tells her that she’d better come with him unless she wants the white-haired temporal assassins to find her. Vanya is understandably confused as her memories haven’t completely returned, but she nevertheless consents to follow Number 5, who comments that it’s nice to see her powers are still intact. And as he says this, they make their way through a crop circle that Vanya unwittingly made.

Meanwhile, Allison, having followed the lead she got from Keechie, makes it to the mansion where Klaus is staying. When she gets no answer after ringing the front doorbell, she decides to look around herself. As such, she finds Klaus lounging around in the pool out back. They are visibly excited to see each other again and take the time to catch up on what they’ve been doing the past few years. In the process, Klaus learns that the man he briefly met in jail was Allison’s husband, Raymond. Allison vents to Klaus how Raymond was arrested on a jumped up charge. He asks her why she didn’t simply rumor him out, and Allison states she hadn’t used her powers since that disastrous moment when her attempts to use them to calm an enraged Vanya down resulted in her vocal cords getting damaged. It took her a year before her vocal cords had healed enough for her to speak, but in that time, she’d built a life for herself. And Allison likes the feeling that comes with knowing she’s actually earned the things she has now.

As for Luther, we catch up to him while he’s out for an early morning run. Which is something he seems to do regularly, as a group of little boys seem excited to see him. Of course, Luther is thrown for a loop when he just happens to jog by a woman he briefly mistakes for Allison. Of course, it’s not actually her, so he sheepishly continues on his way. Although he’s still a bit shaken when he returns to Mr. Ruby’s place. Mr. Ruby is quick to take notice of Luther’s mood, so, not wanting his prize fighter to wander around like a sad puppy, he offers to use his connections to locate Allison for Luther. Mr. Ruby eventually does manage to locate Allison in South Dallas, passing Luther her address during dinner.

Oh, and The Handler is also lurking around. Not sure how she managed to travel to 1963 as she’s now supposed to be working a desk job at The Commission, but I’m sure that will be explained eventually. Anyway, we see her interacting with a little boy in a pet store. When he refuses to stop tapping on fish tanks despite The Handler telling him not to, she whispers something in his ear that frightens him enough to wet himself, and he runs off.

Since Raymond is still in jail, the Black community of Dallas is questioning what to do in regards to the planned sit-in. It seems Raymond was one of the prominent leaders of their group, so many of the people in the civil rights organisation feel it wouldn’t be right to hold the sit-in without him, and that it might be best to postpone it. Allison, however, disagrees with this, stating that President Kennedy is to arrive in 5 days, so it’s imperative that they not wait. She suggests putting the matter up to a vote. However, some of the members of the movement insist that they can’t vote on this, as that’s not how this works. But one of the women, whose name is apparently Odessea, overrules this sentiment, asking them if they’re really going to decide how things work in the beauty parlor that she runs. In the end, thanks to a passionate speech from Allison, the vote is held in favor of holding the sit-in as planned, with or without Raymond.

Of course, it looks as if Raymond might be able to make the sit-in after all. Now that Klaus knows that man he met in jail was Allison’s husband, he manages to convince Ben to help get him out of prison. To accomplish this, Ben takes advantage of his status as a ghost to frighten the desk into letting Raymond out with typical haunted house shenanigans. Upon being released, Raymond is greeted by Klaus, who takes credit for getting him out by reminding him that he’d previously claimed to have friends in high places. Klaus then reveals that they’re brothers-in-law. Raymond, as you might expect, responds to this news with realistic bemusement.

We then return to Number 5 and Vanya, who have convened to a diner somewhere. There, Number 5, realizing that Vanya really doesn’t remember anything before she landed in that Dallas alleyway a year ago, gives her an abridged version of her own history, about how she was bought by an eccentric billionaire as a baby and was raised alongside six other siblings, each with extraordinarily powers. Until the year 2019, when they jumped into a time vortex to prevent the apocalypse but got scattered throughout the 1960s. Vanya takes this surprisingly well. She doesn’t even remark on how crazy this sounds. She does, however, ask what caused the apocalypse. To this, Number 5 simply tells her it was an asteroid impact, deciding to gloss over the part Vanya played in the whole matter. Though he does tell Vanya that the apocalypse ended up following them through time, and that in 8 days, the world will end in a nuclear doomsday. Upon learning of this, Vanya panics and immediately heads over to a nearby payphone to call the farmhouse, where Harlan is having a particularly bad meltdown because of a record player breaking. Sissy, in spite of her need to try and calm her son, manages to reach the phone in time. Vanya tries to explain that she’s sorry she took Sissy’s car, but that she found her younger brother and will be back to help take care of Harlan as soon as she can. But the phone call is brought to an abrupt end when Number 5 shoves the phone cradle down, much to Vanya’s annoyance. Ignoring her irritation, Number 5 tells her that there’s no time for her to worry about her friend, as the men who attacked her in the corn field are still coming after them. He goes on to say that, whoever it is that Vanya was talking to, they can’t be more important than stopping the end of the world. After a brief hesitation, Vanya relents and hangs up the phone.

Back at Elliot’s place, Diego is trying to head back out to go after 1963 Reginald again, convinced that he has something to do with President Kennedy’s upcoming assassination, which Diego still wants to prevent. However, Lila stops him by jabbing his bandaged injury with a broom handle, demonstrating that he’s in no condition to do anything right now. They then seem to have a moment, with Lila admitting that when she found Diego lying injured, it made her remember how she also found her parents dead in their living room when she was four. It turns out that Lila’s parents were the victims of a home invasion. Lila then asks if it’s okay if she doesn’t hate Diego the way she hates most people. Diego insists it’s okay with him. But then, when he moves in for a kiss, Lila slaps him across the face. However, they then proceed to make out with each other anyway before progressing to having sex, while Elliot works at garnishing his tuna mold in the other room.

Elsewhere, Luther has made his way over to the address he’d gotten from Mr. Ruby. But instead of seeing Allison, he meets with Raymond, who is just arriving home after being released from jail. Luther is shocked to learn that Raymond is married to Allison. Immediately, they cut to the kitchen, where Luther and Raymond continue to interact. Raymond says that Allison never mentioned having a brother. Especially not a brother who looked like him. Of course, Raymond has to head out at this point to join the others at the sit-in, but he asks Luther if he wants to pass on a message to Allison. Luther simply states that he wants to talk to Allison, and Ray agrees to let her know. We then see the sit-in taking place, with Allison and the other members of the civil rights movement entering a ‘Whites-Only’ diner and insisting on being served. Needless to say, their presence is not appreciated by the staff and patrons, but they refuse to leave.

Across town, Klaus makes his way into a hardware store. While his reasons for doing so aren’t clear right away, it becomes obvious when it’s revealed that Dave, the man he fell in love with during the Vietnam War, works there. Klaus is visibly elated to see him. Ben, on the other hand, makes it clear that he doesn’t approve of this, telling Klaus that this is his dumbest idea yet. Which isn’t exactly unwarranted, considering this is pre-Vietnam War Dave. And while it is sweet that Klaus still is deeply in love with Dave, it’s arguably creepy that Klaus is seeking out someone who hasn’t met him yet. Still, Klaus, trying to come up with a reasonable excuse as to why he came into the hardware store (because telling Dave that they met and fell in love in the middle of a war that hasn’t even happened yet probably wouldn’t go very well), claims he’s redoing his bathroom and is looking for some paint. When Dave activates the paint mixing machine, Klaus has a flashback to how Dave will die in the war. (I suppose they put this flashback in as a reminder to the viewers who may have forgotten about who Dave was to Klaus.) To his credit, Klaus is able to hold it together until he’s able to return to his car. Immediately after he does so, however, Ben doesn’t hesitate to lay into him. He tells Klaus that he’s being selfish in seeking out Dave in 1963, and that he’ll only end up confusing him. In response to this, Klaus tells Ben that, while they were on leave in Saigon, Dave had told him that he’d enlisted in the army on the same day President Kennedy was assassinated. Klaus is hoping that he can convince Dave to not sign up for the Vietnam War. Because if Dave doesn’t go off to war, then he won’t die on the battlefield and his life would be spared. Upon hearing Klaus’ motivation, Ben eases up on him. He asks Klaus to promise him that he can handle this. Klaus insists he can.

At that moment, however, he and Ben spot police cars going by, their sirens wailing. Immediately, Klaus realizes they’re responding to Allison's sit-in. As you might imagine, it’s getting quite the response from the angry White patrons. But the protesters take everything in stride, especially when Ray finally is able to join them. As the protest continues, Allison notices that Ray seems distracted by something. When she asks him about it, he tells her about his encounters with Klaus and Luther, who both claimed to be Allison’s brother. Allison is shocked by Ray’s description of Luther, realizing for the first time that he’s also around. Unfortunately, while she’s distracted, one of the staff at the diner takes the opportunity to dump a cup of hot coffee onto Allison’s lap. Allison reacts by reflexively jumping up, which gives one of the cops the opportunity to grab her. And this sets off a chain reaction that results in the cops dragging off the dozens of Black protesters in handcuffs. Amidst the confusion, Ray is dragged out of the diner and a cop proceeds to violently beat him. A frantic Allison runs out after her husband and, after a suspenseful moment, she grabs onto the cop’s arm. When he turns to face her, Allison declares ‘I heard a rumor that you walked away.’ So the cop proceeds to head off with a dazed look on his face, much to Ray’s confusion. His confusion quickly gives way to fear. Because no White cop would simply walk away just because a Black woman told him to. Allison tries to tell him that she’ll explain everything later once they’ve gotten out of there, but Ray is too shaken up and backs away from her in fear. Before Allison can even try to smooth things over, Klaus appears on the scene, dragging her away from the turmoil that’s still raging. (Well, you sure took your time to get here, Klaus! It was still sunny out when you saw the police cars driving past, and now it’s nighttime.)

Meanwhile, Luther is in the middle of his underground fight, which Number 5 and Vanya have snuck in to watch. But his concentration is broken when he remembers how Allison got married to Raymond. This leads to him giving up and throwing the fight, allowing himself to get beaten up, much to Mr. Ruby’s annoyance. The implication is that he wanted his physical pain to match his internal pain, I guess. Before long, Luther is lying beaten on the ground. But he seems happy about it as his vantage point allows him a clear view of the moon.

As the episode wraps up, Lila slips out of the bed where she and Diego had sex, leaving Diego sleeping. She makes her way to the same pet store we saw earlier in the episode. As she looks around, she reaches into a fish tank and pulls out one of those bubble treasure chests. Inside, she finds a motel room key that she makes off with. With this key in hand, she makes her way to the motel in question, using it to enter Room 217. As she enters, she announces she knows she’s late and proceeds to make herself at home. After a few moments, The Handler emerges from the bathroom. And Lila addresses her as ‘Mum.’

Closing thoughts/questions:

Wait, what? Lila is The Handler’s daughter? Does that mean she’s actually an enemy of the Hargreeves Siblings? And was that story about her parents dying in the middle of a home invasion made up?

If she is an enemy, that stinks big-time for Diego. And I was actually starting to like their dynamic. I’d be very upset for him if she was playing him the whole time.

Speaking of which, I guess Diego is completely over Detective Patch now. Granted they weren’t together for a while, but it was clear Diego still cared for her. Of course, I guess it’s possible the fact that he allowed Cha-Cha to live was him moving on from her.

Well, that’s rather unfortunate that Ray reacted like that upon seeing Allison’s power in action for the first time. Still, I can’t really blame him. He was already in an emotional turmoil over the revelation that the woman he’d been married to for almost a year suddenly had two White brothers she’d never even mentioned, which suggested there might have been other things she’d kept from him. Now all of a sudden, she’s somehow able to make a White cop stand down in the middle of a racially charged situation? It’s only natural that he’d respond poorly. I’m sure that, once he’s had a chance to collect himself, he’ll be wiling to hear Allison out.

I personally think this might have marked a breakthrough for Allison in regards to her powers. While it was admirable that she was refraining from using them and actually earning the things she wanted the right way instead of obtaining them through manipulative ways, it doesn’t mean she had to completely bury away that part of herself. And the situation that arose in this episode was a good example of how her powers could be used for good. Because it’s very possible that Ray might have been beaten to death if she hadn’t used her powers on that cop.

On the other hand, Luther continues to frustrate me. Oh, boo-hoo-hoo. Allison went and married someone else. Get over it! Sorry, not sorry. Luther should not be having any sort of romantic feelings for Allison. She’s his sister, for crying out loud! Did he react like this when she married Patrick, too?

While it might seem like a strange thing to focus on, I rather liked how Number 5 and Vanya are grouped together now. While it’s been a while since we were last reminded of this, I do remember it was implied that Number 5 and Vanya had been particularly close as children.

I’m once again getting the impression that Harlan is meant to be autistic. While it’s great that they’re including an autistic character, there’s also a part of me that’s wondering if the way they’re handling him is a good representation of actual autistic people. Because autism can display itself in various ways. And I’m wondering if it might actually be damaging to have the autistic character be portrayed in a potentially stereotyped manner.

Klaus’ mission of trying to keep Dave alive is also interesting. While there are some similarities to Diego’s quest at preventing the assassination of President Kennedy, their motives are as different as night and day. Diego is motivated by an obvious hero complex while Klaus simply doesn’t want the man he loves to die so violently. And while it could be said that Klaus and Dave would probably never meet if Dave never enlisted and fought in the Vietnam War, perhaps Klaus already knows that. If so, it suggests he’d be fine with never actually meeting Dave, as long as he’s alive and safe. If that’s the case, then that’s very noble of Klaus. Still, the question of whether or not he can pull this off remains to be seen.

#umbrella acedmy #umbrella academy 2x03 #tua

0 notes