ZERO! the umbrella academy

cinquante-trois

THE SEVEN STAGES

FIVE HAD BURIED ALL of them, but it was Lee's grave he stayed on top of for what felt like days afterwards, balling his eyes out. The dirt felt cold beneath his hands and knees, and his muscles ached from hours of long work.

Night never seemed to come in the apocalypse. The sky was always a shade of smoky orange, like the color of a campfire or a burning forest, except the smoke never seemed to clear. The thick stench of blood and death hung in the air.

Eventually, he dried his eyes with the sleeve of his blazer and stood up.

For the first time, he lost track of time. He used to count it obsessively. It always seemed like he was running out of time at the Academy, but now he had lots of it, and it seemed to stretch onward forever into oblivion.

He wrote letters to Lee, piles and piles of letters, so many letters they probably wouldn't all fit into their library back at home. He tore off pages from abandoned books he found or scoured for old receipts and long forgotten newspapers and wrote to her. He would never admit it, but for a while he carried around the torso of a mannequin he named after her and talked to it as if she were there.

He wrote to her about his regrets, about missing her, about all the things he wanted to say but never got to, about things that happened to him in the apocalypse almost like diary entries. But mainly he apologized for leaving her. He knew how hard it must be for her in the Academy, all alone. He could only wish that he would return to her before she even knew he was gone and she would never have to read the words he wrote.

He stuffed all the letters into his backpack until they started taking up too much room, and then he started leaving them in places he came across like some sort of scavenger hunt no one would ever complete.

When he joined the Commission, he was forced to leave behind all the letters, except for one, which he kept safely tucked inside his blazer over his heart for years.

—

WHEN I WALKED IN, I heard the fridge door open. "Five? Are you done throwing a fit?"I called out.

I walked into the kitchen to see him rifling through the fridge. He had his blazer off and picked up a container of water. He barely glanced at me before leaning his head back and downing the whole thing in one big gulp.

I froze in the archway. "What are you doing?"

He put the container back and swallowed, smacking his lips. "I'm gonna need to be hydrated." He slammed the door to the fridge. He picked up a bottle of talcum powder and started shaking some down the sleeves of his button up.

I held my hands up. "Okay, what's going on now?"

"It'll help with the itching," he answered like that would explain everything, pouring some down the front of his shorts.