A bend in space-time (Season 3) - The Umbrella Academy

Chapter 4: Schrödinger's Five

Chronological markers: this scene fits in as a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, season 3, episode 1, around 40:07 (just before Five joins Klaus, Luther and Diego at the bar after his shower, for dinner).

Suggested soundtrack: Iggy Pop - The passenger

---

April 2 2019, 07:17 pm

Was it common practice in the 1910s and 1920s to design a hotel whose rooms were not equipped with bathrooms or toilets? To plan that you'd have to step out into the corridor to have a pee in the middle of the night, and wash up in a sort of common room ? This one is delightfully named 'Oasis Spa', but is nothing but a square room circled by individual bathtubs, showers and sinks, closed by curtains or wooden doors like privacy-less cubicles. With also several open baths in the center... for the more audacious.

I refused to sleep with the Hargreeves, I have tremendously little desire to bathe with them, despite all the detachment I've gained regarding modesty, over the years I spent with the 'Children. But I won't be picky this time. My last shower was - let's see - I don't even know. Oh yes: on November 21 1963, the day before JFK's assassination, and - incidentally - one of my own deaths.

I haven't talked about it with Klaus again. I don't know whether he remembers or not meeting me in what I assume was the afterlife: the place where - for me - that annoying girl was wandering among lotuses. He seems to me to be completely off the mark on this subject, or constantly postponing the eventuality of thinking about it. For him, they are near-death experiences. But having been a ghost myself, I reserve the right to express my doubts as to what really happens to him, every time.

Anyway, I feel very dirty now, perhaps because I've returned to a non-spectral, very much alive and tangible energy in the middle of a half-ruined Texan barn. I've never really liked baths, unlike Klaus, who considers them as a safe place. Yet, this time, I am truly happy to be able to soak in the water of my spa cubicle.

Relentlessly, my finger traces the same pattern in the light foam of the bergamot-scented bubble bath. The same lines, the same concentric squares. The same figure, the one from Reginald Hargreeves's notebook. Damn it, if only I could stop thinking about it. But my subconscious is irresistibly drawn to this pattern since the 'light supper', as if I were somehow connected to it.

This obsession has grown even stronger since I arrived at the hotel. At times, it even overwhelms my cognitive faculties. Drawing it brings me some relief. But the truth is, I think that what I need is to be able to look at it, because - as soon as I draw it and make it appear before my eyes - I feel better.

In the nearest shower cubicle, I hear an old bald man washing himself. One of those regulars haunting the hotel, whom I had already noticed in the same hallway.

I let the foam gradually fade away along with my obsessive diagram, and I sink under the clear water to rinse my hair. Then, I take a deep breath and open the drain. I wrap myself in two towels - one for my body and one for my head - then I step out and put on the slippers provided on the shelves, under the incandescent lamps.

And I nearly jump as I open the curtain.

"Hey, Five".

Behind me, the bathtub water drains away slowly with a vortex-like sound, and he raises an eyebrow in his bathrobe, as he walks over to the sink he's chosen to complete his sauna session with a skin scrub.

"Wow," I blurt out in surprise, and he turns around, holding a tube of scrub with the hotel logo on it.
"What?"
"Nothing, nothing. It's the first time I see you take time for yourself."
He lets out a somewhat sarcastic laugh.
"Probably because I've been running around for twenty days saving your asses. But if you really want to know, and if you've forgotten: puberty causes excess sebum and an inexorable outbreak of acne, even the second time around."