8 ○ Umbrella Academy

Go to the Courtyard, They Said

I had just finished organizing, everything was in it's proper place, washing relief over me. It had helped everyone had stopped thinking for a while, all of us listening to one of Luther's records. But everything stopped abruptly.

The music cut off, thunder sounded outside my window, small metallic things flew towards the wall holding that window, instinctive panic flew threw everyone, and all that hard work organizing had been wasted by the way things that had been thrown about, all at once. Furrowing my brows and internally screaming, I decided to follow the rushed footsteps down the stairs and into the courtyard.

Above the gazebo, a blue hole was torn into the sky, a hazy landscape in the center of it. "What is it?" I asked cautiously, feeling a collective, unanimous unease.

"Don't get too close," Allison warned, seemed to also air on the side of caution.

"Yeah, no shit," Diego called over the wind.

"Looks like some sort of temporal anomaly," Luther informed. Well look at that smarty pants, I scoffed. "Either that or a miniature black hole, one of the two."

"Pretty big difference, Paul Bunyan!" Diego pointed out.

"Out of the way!" Klaus yelled. If I could read impulsive actions, I could've stepped away in time, but I can't, so as Klaus shoved past all of us with a fire extinguisher, he knocked me a step forward, into Diego's back. He lifted a brow in question as he looked down at me before I righted my posture with a huff, watching our brother toss that fire extinguisher through the hole.

"What is that gunna do?" Allison yelled, just as perplexed as the rest of us.

"I don't know!" Klaus offered with a shrug. "Do you have a better idea?" I flinched at a strike of lightning, wherever it was, it was close enough to hear the electricity sizzle.

"Woah, woah, woah, everyone get behind me," Luther ordered as Diego pulled Klaus back into the group huddle. Something changed in the landscape, a figure appeared and slowly clarified to be an old man pressing himself against the hole.

"I vote for running, c'mon!" Klaus encouraged. I subconsciously reached out and took his hand, not looking at his face when he turned to me, too mesmerized by the old man. But his image wavered, the age regressing a moment before turning old, before regressing again, becoming a more recognizable shape as the hole closed and dropped the man's body in belly-flop-form to the foliage covered concrete. Slowly, the wind stopped, the sun came back out, and the thunder faded.

I didn't even notice Klaus had dropped my hand as we all stepped forward, my mind hurting from the complexity radiating from the - now - boy's mind as he picked himself off the ground. I held my breath, restraining the urge to take his hand again. "Does anyone else see little Number Five or is it just me?" Klaus asked softly. It was a fair question, for if only Klaus saw him, it meant that he'd died. But, unless my brain had induced a shared hallucination between the six of us, I didn't think so.

"Shit," Five uttered, looking over us before himself. Shit indeed.

○

We all sat around the kitchen table, watching Five pace about in bewilderment. "What's the date? The exact date."

"The twenty-fourth," Allison answered as he grabbed the half loaf of bread.

"Of what?" he pestered.

"March," she offered with a shrug.

"Good." I sat on the edge of the table, beside Klaus as he sat Indian-style atop the table, Diego at my other side as Five made a sandwich, my head too clouded by his intense thought process to notice much other than the spoken words.