5 Deserved Better

Chapter One

Cover image by TheStainedGlasses on DeviantArt

Note: This story will be best enjoyed by readers who have viewed the Umbrella Academy season 1, and season 2, episodes 1-5. 

*****

When she got home from work that night, 5 was waiting for her. She didn't notice him right away. Seated there patiently waiting in the shadows, one leg tossed over the other, ankle resting on his knee. She realized it too late as she felt for the switch that would illuminate his presence.

She never reached the light. 5 was on her before her fingers could make contact with the wall plate. She wasn't exactly surprised. She'd been waiting for it, really.

"I'm sorry," was what he said, as he clamped his hand over her mouth. He even kind of looked like he meant it. 

*****

5 had taken to calling her 7 because of the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Exactly seven of them. Like the Pleiades. Those freckles were dotted in the precise arrangement of the Seven Sisters. He didn't think Vanya would mind his reassigning her number, and it was fitting. The girl had become a kind of constellation for 5 - a waypoint in every timeline. She'd be older or younger, but always there, wearing those freckles and some ridiculous wig that never quite fit her face.

She was at the turn of a corner, or a glimpse in a crowd. In the Wasteland she was mirage. Never far, but still out of reach. No matter how hard he tried - how diligently he applied himself to the task - she was merely a breath to him, there and gone. A whisper on his lips, softly spoken and not tasted. Yet always persistently, unnervingly there.

It's her he was thinking of when he propped himself up on a barstool at the Star Lounge. There were a handful of these gin joints occupying the street. Dallas was ripe with them. A sign of the times, they were all fashioned after the same spacey theme - Orbit Lounge, Rocket Lounge, Space Lounge. More trash than new age treasure. Places 5 never thought to find himself, but he'd started that day with a family reunion and ended it in failure. Now he was forced to contemplate committing a handful of axe murders in a spit-shake deal with the one person in the known timeline who's word he knew he could never, under any circumstances, trust.

By the time he'd shuffled down the main strip it was dark and half-past defeat, and 5 was in need of a stiff drink. Not gin - too sweet. He ordered a scotch - neat - made it a double, and told the bartender to keep them coming.

It was tacky, the Star Lounge. All dark walls and dusty leather and cigar smoke clinging to its patrons. Someone painted the barback to look like a knockoff Milky Way, but it rather resembled the gang graffiti of an unskilled child. It was certainly no Pleiades. No representation of the incarnate 7 taking up residence rent free in his troubled mind.

For once, 5 wasn't consumed by the quantum physics of having seen her - the how and why of her deliberate reincarnation. Instead, he was worried because he hadn't. It had been days since his arrival and she'd yet to materialize. As much as he'd thought that her reanimation left a buzz in his ear, not seeing her consumed him. She'd become his companion. His only constant in an infinite unknown. His lucky number 7.

He wasn't foolish enough to deny that the thought of her had turned his head toward a seedy gin mill in a row of cosmically laughable establishments. He might have even subconsciously entertained the notion that the universe so labeled the place as a destination. X marks the spot, so to speak. The unfortunate truth was that he missed her.

5 drained his glass at that realization, and slid it over the glittered counter for a refill. The bartender shot him a sideways glance, much like the one he'd had when 5 walked in. But what he lacked in aesthetically-marked maturity he made up for with a surly disposition and a well-placed scowl. No reason to think this round would be any different. When his glass was returned to him, however, the sharp snap of his favorite Black and White was watered down with ice. He was just about to lecture the barkeep on maintaining the integrity of the malting process when he was driven to distraction.