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

Chapter 26: A conflict of interest

Chronological markers: this scene fits like a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, saison 2, episode 9, around 02:10 (after Viktor's deflagration throws Klaus violently across the corridor). TW: considerations about death, mention of NDEs (near-death experiences); minor death of main characters (yes, it's possible); reference to drug use.

Before reading this chapter, I recommend re-reading the chapter from season 1 entitled 'Antechamber to the Beyond'.

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In the dark, we're all unaware of just how heavy our bodies are. Our souls too, even when it seems like we're doing fine. The truth is that every day of our lives brings us heavier and heavier burdens. Week after week, year after year, they stack up if we do nothing about them: they overwhelm us, crush us, suffocate us. And we don't realize it until we're free of that.

I've always thought I was a tough nut to crack. I think I've been through a few challenges and always tried to keep going. And to support the people around me too, in our paths of misfortune. I'm aware that I've carried part of the weight of Klaus's existence - in addition to my own - and I also readily admit that I've sometimes almost got lost in the process. But I hadn't realized how much my being was affected, tired and worn out. Like a threadbare rope just waiting to break.

In the last two years, he'd stopped telling me he'd be relieved to die, which was for the best, because - every time he did - he almost asphyxiated me a little with his words. When you give everything you've got for someone, following them from squats to rehab corridors, from police station cells to apocalypses, when you struggle to try and get a smile out of them other than a facade in the midst of their suffering... and you hear this in return: I can swear your chest feels like it's splitting in two. And yet I understand now. I understand what he was striving for, defying death with repeated overdoses and nights spent in near-hypothermia. He was simply hoping that this accumulated weight would finally be lifted from him.

He sometimes told me that there was no 'good way to die': not even in one's bed, as people often claimed. That he thought one was always invariably alone at the moment of death, even if supported. A final lonely fear and suffering, paradoxically euphoric at the same time, the brightness of which was very hard to forget if you ever came close to it. I've always taken his NDE recollections with great caution. But I guess that's because I've repressed the memory of what happened to me in the past. On that distant day, when Luther doesn't even remember having killed me.

The first thing I recognize is the peaceful silence, only broken by the gentle breeze and the flight of dragonflies. The feeling of sudden lightness as I open my eyes. I sit up, I stand up, contemplating the luxuriant place where I now wake up. I recognize those bushes, those streams, those ponds, in the unreal light that bathes everything: sepia, almost monochrome. Yes, I've seen them before, those paths of fine gravel crunching underfoot. And the greenhouses, similar to those in the Thao Cam Viên botanical garden in Ho Chi Minh City, where my mother and grandmother used to take me when I was a child.

"Fuck", is the first word that comes to my mind. Because even though I know nothing about the nature of this place, what's left of my own energy perception doesn't fool me about one certain fact:

I'm no longer alive.

I sigh, stunned by the realization of what my death implies: what I'm losing, what I'm leaving behind. I could shudder. Yet I have little time to dwell on it: suddenly, my contemplation is swept away by a movement different from that of the carps splitting the clear pond, amidst the water irises.

A summer dress, a ribbon hat. A young girl - almost a child - strolls like me through this delicately scented garden. I frown slightly as she crosses a small wooden bridge: she scrutinizes her surroundings with a critical eye, and exudes that self-confidence you have when you're perfectly at home.