"I'm not mad."
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Cassandra Hargreeves- or Number Eight as her father always called her- was the eighth member of the Umbrella Academy. Despite having powers, she had spent her whole life on the sidelines. She had been trained to fight, of cours...
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Cassandra sat alone in her bedroom. Her father's death had been all over the tabloids although it left out the part about his estranged daughter trying to strangle his lifeless body. You know, to leave him with some dignity. The others didn't know either. Pogo told her he wouldn't tell them so long as Cassandra didn't forget to take her medication again.
The pot of pills stood on her vanity table. She sat on the edge of her bed staring at them. They made her feel...weird. She didn't like it, she never did. Right from the moment her father had first told her to take them she had hated them.
He had told her that it would make her better, that it would make her stronger. But he had also told her that going without food or water until she learned to conjure up a vision at will would make her stronger. It didn't.
She could hear the others downstairs. She had heard them all enter and walk around the house but no one had thought to come into her room. It hadn't been that long, had it? That they had forgotten about her?
Cassandra sat at her vanity table, staring at her unamused reflection in the mirror. Without realising it, she picked up a sketching pencil and began doodling on an open sketching pad.
The sound of raindrops lulled Cassandra into a trance as her hand danced across the paper. The soft, hazel of her eyes stared back at herself in the mirror. They were wide and unblinking as time seemed to move faster until her trance was broken by the sound of shouting from downstairs.
She smiled softly at the sound of her brothers, Luther and Diego, arguing downstairs. It was nice to know that nothing had changed.
Cassandra jumped slightly as she realised she was holding a pencil. Her fingers relaxed all at once and the pencil clattered on the table, rolling off the pad, onto the vanity table and onto the floor. Cassandra stared at the pad, her eyes wide as she stared at what she had drawn. The entire page was filled with the same word: Five.
Cassandra ripped the page out of the book and crumpled it halfheartedly. She tossed it over her shoulder as she left her bedroom. The sheet of paper came to rest on her bedside table, landing on the cover of an open book, covering the somber face of her sister and author, Vanya Hargreeves.
*
"I suppose we should get this started." Luther began, seeming not to have noticed Cassandra enter. If he did, he certainly did a good job of hiding it.
"So, I figured we could have a sort of memorial service in the courtyard at sun down. Say a few words, just at Dad's favourite spot."
"Dad had a favourite spot?" Allison interrupted, her voice fluctuating in confusion, the same confusion that everyone else, except Luther, wore on their face.
Not even Cassandra knew that their father had a favourite spot and she had stayed at home, living with Dad, for years longer than anyone else. Even in death he had kept secrets from her.
