A bend in space-time (Season 2) - The Umbrella Academy

Chapter 23: Azure dust into the Void

Chronological markers: this scene fits like a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, saison 2, episode 7, around 28:20 (around the time when Diego comes to find Klaus at the Mansion to tell him to come to the meeting point, and then when Five is forced to send the briefcase through space-time).

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Thursday, November 21 1963, 1:41 pm

"Mark. Hey, Mark."

All around on Avon Street, people look at me as if I were the ultimate in strangeness. Because I'm dressed in gardening clothes, perhaps. But more likely because I'm trying to wake up the one who's even more invisible than I ever was, in the eyes of the locals.

"Hey, there, buddy."

The homeless man's eyes open hazily to the label on his bottle of Jim Beam, and he struggles for a moment to focus, before flinching as he realizes I'm the one waking him up.

"Zeppelin girl! Dang it! Howdy..."

He moves backwards, sitting against the side wall of the cinema where he's settled. On this sunny November day, his usual 'spot' - in front of the bank - is being occupied by the ice-cream van, its music echoing through the neighborhood.

"Everything's fine, everything's okay," I tell him, "I'm not going to lock myself away to weep again, I promise..."

I'm well aware that I was rude to him the other night, after my argument with Lloyd and Klaus, when he was only worried. I also realize that I scared him with my self-preservation reflex, and I'm not sure what he thought about it.

"Lock you away? You've rigged a big cracklin' bubble around you, kiddo, so understand I'm sweatin' like a hooker in church..."

"It was an energy sphere."
"I saw it. And I would have thought the moonshine had finally drowned my brain, if Eliott hadn't confirmed that it was very real."
"I'm sorry."
I owe him an explanation.
"Heartbreak. Didn't handle the situation the right way. And I apologize, really."

He looks at me as if I really were one of those aliens Eliott has been waiting for so long. From the way Mark told me about Wayne's house being haunted, back to my very first days here, to the way he's reacting now, I realize that he's open to the improbable, the unthinkable. And that perhaps his alcoholic loneliness predisposes him to it, sadly. But above all, there's another kind of inadmissibility to which he's accustomed.

"It's okay, it's okay, not my first rodeo," he tells me. "You needed to whine to yourself, bless your heart. And you know, people usually treat me even worse than that."

I know that Stadler chased him away by throwing his coffee grounds at him recently. And I can't bear to see someone who's already suffering so much treated badly. But today... I'm not here by chance. I didn't just come to say hello passing by, no. I've ~also~ come for him.

"Do you have any plans this afternoon?", I ask him, and it seems that such a word hasn't rang in his ears for over a decade. Such an ordinary question, for most of us, but he'd almost cry to hear it again. Suddenly he reminds me of Ben, when he opened his eyes on the orchard for the first time since his death, even though I still can't forgive him. But Mark is very alive, despite a form of 'social death' that makes me so sad.

"I... no...", he stammers. "I've got nothin' planned but to snooze here..."
He sits up clumsily and looks at me, wrinkling his flabby eyelids amidst his pockmarked face.
"But 'seems you've got something up your sleeve, kiddo..."

I smile a little mischievously, pull on his arm to pull him out of his cardboards. And as I lead him down the alley winding into the neighborhood, behind the movie theater, I reply: