𝐖𝐄'𝐋𝐋 𝐂𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐎𝐍, five hargreeves¹

𝟎𝟖 the chink in each knight's armor

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⊹⊱ № 𝟎𝟏.𝟎𝟖 ⊰⊹
𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐇𝐈𝐍𝐊 𝐈𝐍 𝐄𝐀𝐂𝐇
𝐊𝐍𝐈𝐆𝐇𝐓'𝐒 𝐀𝐑𝐌𝐎𝐑

"even heroes have
the right to bleed"
superman
(it's not easy);
five for fighting

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THERE WERE ALSO BAD DAYS. The days that were hard to get by. The days when they found it hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel, when it felt as if they were dragging their hollow bodies. The days that made them wonder what they did to have to go through all this crap.

Because some days, their father's words get to them. Sometimes, they would realize he was right and find themselves questioning everything they worked hard for.

In truth, there had been a lot more of the bad than the good.

People fail to recognize that they were just children. That they were merely living the twelfth year of their lives. That they were meant to be coddled by their mothers and protected by their fathers. That it was okay to cry, to feel hurt, to show weakness. That they didn't deserve such a heavy burden being carried by their little bodies because children were meant to be protected and not the other way around.

And among those many bad days was the present.

It didn't take long since their big break for things to spiral downward. It felt as if they were riding on a roller coaster and in the middle of their high, they crash down the slope with no breaks nor a single warning about how low they'd actually fall.

To put it simply, the past week had amounted to absolute shit.

The Umbrella Academy had managed to defeat evil, once again, but there were too many losses that they don't dare call it a victory.

It started with a crucial mission that turned out to be too much for them to handle. There were numerous hostages and so many lives that depended on them. There was too much that weighed on their small figures and inevitably, there had been casualties.

That one mission, puts them all in a slump, leading to more, as their father put it, 'failure.' The very thing that was never tolerated in their household.

Their father had naturally been ahead of them on that subject.

Reginal Hargreeves immediately berates them, tells them to keep in mind that every little fault of theirs had caused this damage— caused them to let the world down. He made sure that he said it enough to engrave the memory in their minds as if doing so won't allow history to repeat itself.

Naturally, the man believes that mere words would have been too easy. They also had to go through punishment, to recall how grave their duties were. Thus, their training regimens were increased to the point that they felt spartan.

Each of them had it rough.

Luther and Diego had been at odds. Luther was aggravated by the fact that one of Diego's mistakes caused Allison to get injured, and likewise, the other boy claims it's his fault as Number One for failing to lead them properly, that there would be graver consequences had he not acted on it. Their tension leads them to fight over even the smallest problems. They kept pinning the blame on each other, continuously pointing out every single fault they can find, that it ends up straining the performance of the team.