Dysfunctional ~ F.Hargreeves

70} The Jennifer Incident

Diego burst through the doors of the Hargreeves mansion, yelling, "Hey!" He stomped up to his father with Jenna, Five, and Lila close behind him, "We need to talk about Ben."
"Why does Abigail know about the town, Jenna?" Allison crossed her arms over her chest, ignoring Diego, "What the hell are you two up to?"
"To keep it short and sweet," Jenna rolled her eyes, "I talked to Reg here and he wouldn't help, so I got Abigail to. She gave me money and that's that. Well, and helped donate weapons it seems, but I don't know any of that for sure."
"Um, hello?" Diego snapped his fingers, "Ben, remember?" He started to show off the contents of the file they'd discovered, "In Moldovan. From Moldova. And it's mostly redacted," He handed it to Allison.
"Oh, great," She scoffed, "So we can't read it or see it."

"It's a document from the original timeline," Jenna sighed, "I stole it and gave it to the Keepers a while ago. It explains why Ben died in that timeline. It's called the 'Jennifer Incident' from every version I could find. None of which I could entirely read, but I got the gist of."
"That's fine," Luther shrugged, "Because we already know how Ben died."
"Okay, then," Five planted his hands firmly on his hips, "Tell us."
"Well," Luther gulped, "It was a tragic accident. Ben, our Ben, died because we failed as a team. Nobody was responsible, and..."
"And what?" Five eyed him suspiciously. When Luther didn't respond he turned to his sister, "Allison, how did Ben die?"
"It was a tragic accident," She said, "Ben died because we-"
"Failed as a team," Both her and Diego recited at the same time, "Nobody was responsible, yet we were all responsible. Ben Hargreeves represented the best of us. Ben was the Umbrella Academy."

"What kind of sick party trick is this?" Lila glared at Reginald, who hadn't uttered a single word since they'd shown up.
"Okay, can any one of you remember how Ben actually died?" Five continued on.
"I wasn't there," Viktor broke the lingering silence.
"Well, neither was I, but the rest of you were," Five looked around the room, "You think you'd remember something about the death of your beloved brother, but you don't."
"What the hell is going on here?" Luther muttered, confused by his own memories.
"Well, for one, you're all reciting the speech your father gave to the press after Ben passed," Jenna walked to the center of the room, "And secondly, your memories surrounding the incident have clearly been mushed like mashed potatoes."
"Messing with our memories," Diego glared at Reginald.

"As fascinating as this may be," Reg started to giggle, captivated by the situation in front of him, "I assure you I haven't the foggiest notion of what this is about."
"He doesn't-" Jenna started to say, but was cut off by Diego.
"You have something you wanna tell us, old man?" Diego lurched closer to Reg.
"You are speculating about the actions of a completely different version of myself from a completely different timeline," He explained, "That said, it does sound like something another version of me might do."

"I know what fucking happened with the memories!" Jenna blurted out, "Stop hounding him. Yes, your father helped wipe your memories, but not this version of him. Reg, do you still have the weird 60's mind shit?"
"Naturally," He scoffed, "It was quite expensive after all."
"Well, good thing, because that's what helped erase the memories, so it can restore them, too."
"I'd assume so, yes," Reginald thought deeply for a moment.
"But this version of him doesn't have our memories, Jen," Five put a hand on her upper arm.
"He might not have them," Jenna dug around in her compact case and pulled out a funky canister, "But I do."

~

"So you're telling us that you went back to visit our original father and stole our wiped memories from him?" Diego followed her down the hall along with everyone else.
"Yes, I also stole plenty of other things along the way," Jenna confirmed, "He was quite helpful actually."
"Jenna," Reginald sped-walked to catch up to her, "We shouldn't be worried about this. We should find the girl pronto. Abigail told me just how important she is, we must get her immediately."
"Yes, I did say it was important," Abigail replied from behind them, "But their memories need to be restored first. I get that this is messy stuff, but Jenna's right. We need to help them remember, regardless of the timeline it happened in. Just help her help them."
"Fine," He let out a sigh and grabbed Abigail's hand, giving it a small squeeze, "Jenna, you better know what you're doing. I haven't used this technology in decades."
"Oh trust me," She walked into the 'memory room' and looked over the equipment, "I think I know what I'm doing."