The Flood // the umbrella academy [Klaus]

t w e n t y . o n e

AN: Big story reveal! Most of this chapter is original content as a window is opened into Bea's past so I hope you enjoy it.

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*11 years ago*

It wasn't a big house by any means. It stood separated from its neighbours; a picturesque family home. The antithesis of what she had grown up in for the first seven years of her life. Back then it was damp corners, leaking holes in the ceiling and peeling wallpaper. Her mother wasn't a rich woman by any means, and an unexpected pregnancy had led her to becoming disowned and unloved by her devout Christian family. And what did that lead to with Bea? A resentful mother who blamed her for every hardship that befell them. It was especially unfair to blame a newborn child for a situation over which neither party had any control - yet that was the reality.

Bea's biological mother was only nineteen when she fell pregnant. She had tried to explain to her own mother that there was no man involved. That on the morning of October 1, 1989, she hadn't been pregnant and by the afternoon not only had she ballooned but she had also given birth to a tiny baby girl. "That child is the spawn of Satan!" her mother would yell at her, shoving her things into a suitcase as she rushed her daughter and granddaughter out of her home. There was nothing more to be said between them ever again.

After losing her home and family, Bea's mother had retreated to a squalid little property a few miles away. It was all that could be afforded with what little money she had stashed away. She had no support, no prospects for the future, and a daughter that she was admittedly afraid of. Over the next few years, Bea's mother had found herself a boyfriend who was understanding and who came with enough money to survive on. Life was good - for a while. Eventually, the boyfriend left and was replaced by another, then another, then another; there were eight in total over the seven years Bea and her mother were together. Each one was more important than Bea. Her mother made that painfully obvious.

Her powers manifested when she was two. Her mother had placed her in the kitchen sink to be bathed and had stepped away as her boyfriend called her over from the adjacent living room. Infant Bea had never been taught how to swim, so when she had slipped into the water she began to drown. Before this was possible, the water in the sink exploded upwards, hitting the ceiling with great force and dispelling itself outwards. Her cries were what caught her mother's attention. Walking back leisurely into the kitchen, Bea's mother was shocked to see her daughter's makeshift bath bone dry. It only went downhill from there. When Bea was four, she discovered that she could make water droplets levitate. For that...she was scolded and disciplined with the palm of her mother's boyfriend's hand. He left them after that - an event for which, of course, Bea was blamed. "You really are the spawn of the devil," her mother would tell her on a regular basis.

By the age of seven, Bea had taught herself to read as her mother wouldn't. She had taught herself how good children should act by watching others outside the window, because her mother consistently told her she was 'bad'. She had found a way to provide food for herself by sneaking out and eating from restaurant dumpsters, because what little food her mother could afford would be better suited for herself and her boyfriend-of-the-moment. It was truly a miserable existence.

Bea had never forgiven her 'mother' for the way she had treated her, and she certainly hadn't forgiven her for abandoning her when it all became too difficult. True - her existence with the Hargreeves was a far sight better than anything she had ever experienced and she was sadistically grateful to have been abandoned. But the feeling of rejection had never left her. And after ten years she was ready to get answers, whether her 'mother' wanted to give them to her or not. She was disparate from her younger self now. She was a goddamn superhero and she had ways of retrieving information from unwilling parties.