WARNING: some mild violence toward the ending...written in a non-dramatic, non-graphic way. Don't read if you think it might upset you!
Chapter Soundtrack: watch?v=vPRonG87eKw. The one from the jukebox ;)
29.
"I'm here!" Five announced himself one evening, blinking directly inside Marben's dorm; she greeted him with a dazzling, knowing smile and no wonderment whatsoever.
"Oh, it's you!".
"Why, were you waiting for someone else?" mumbled the boy, a bit disappointed.
"Don't be daft. Now, put this on" the girl tittered, and then shoved something under his nose: looking down, Five noticed it was a bundle of clothes.
"Why?".
"I'm taking you out". Not receiving further clarification, Five began to fidget, his restless feet changing position on the floor several times.ù
"…like with a gun?" he asked eventually, in the cautious tone he usually directed to those he deemed unstable.
"Like on a date!" stressed Marben, stopping to collect the scores scattered on the floor and turning to look at him, halfway between incredulous and amused. "Why should I ever make you change clothes, if I wanted to kill you?".
"…to dump my body somewhere and make it difficult to identify it?".
"Again, don't be daft babe. It'll just be a date".
"Another one?" the boy snickered.
"Yes, and it will be awesome, you'll see. So, dress like a normal guy and let's go!". Under his girlfriend's watchful gaze, Five examined the clothes she had handed him.
"Do normal guys wear their in-laws' flannel shirts?".
"Listen, it's that or you come out naked. How am I supposed to find normal clothes for you to wear, if I'm trapped here all day?" Marben said dryly.
"Point taken" the boy rushed to reply, to then show her a pair of trousers. "And these jeans?".
"My brother's".
"What the hell are you doing, a million miles from home with your relatives' clothes in the closet?" asked Five, disbelieving; Marben's expression got perplexed, at that point, as if hearing the question out loud had made her realize the situation really was uncommon.
"Dunno, they probably ended up in the mail by mistake...or maybe Oliver sent them as a joke". Catching a glimpse of Five's formal dress shirt, however, she dismissed the thought. "Take off that shirt too, nobody our age wears them".
"And what do I wear?". Again, Marben handed him something: Five automatically took it, and when he understood what it was he gave her a skeptical look. "Your father's worn-out tee? Seriously?".
"What's up, are you too precious for anything other than tailored suits?".
"Tell me, rather, do your relatives agree about you lending their clothes to strangers?". Tutta la giocosità e il sarcasmo di Marben si dissiparono, lasciando spazio a un'espressione aperta e gentile piena di tenerezza che trasfigurò i suoi lineamenti.
"You're no stranger. I belong with you as much as I belong with them" she said looking Five straight in the eyes. "Now dress, quickly! I'll be waiting on the fire escape".
Five felt his cheeks burn, while giving up and getting rid of his uniform. He had believed that after some time together he would eventually stop blushing, in Marben's presence, that sweetness and intimacy would just become a matter of habit; but hearing her put him on the same level as her family had made him understand that, probably, a time when Marben would have had nothing significative to tell him would never come. And that was because it was him, in the first place, with his overwhelming feelings, who gave to the girl's voice, words and gestures the most absolute importance.
When he was done putting on what Marben had given him, Five stepped over the windowsill and joined her on the fire escape's landing. He realized he hadn't jumped only when he found himself outdoors, and it was a powerful sensation, exhilarating and frightening at the same time, as if with his usual clothing Five had left behind his powers too.
His girlfriend was waiting for him, looking at the smoky sky of the city night, perhaps hoping to catch a glimpse of stars. She was so beautiful, as always, in her simple low rise jeans and long sleeved shirt, that suddenly Five felt stupidly inadequate. Evidently so, judging by the inquisitive look Marben gave him when she felt his presence and turned.
"I feel and look ridiculous!" the boy blurted, a bit accusatory.
"You do, that has to be said" Marben indulgently replied with a smile, but immediately cursed herself for saying so, and had to run to stop Five from going back inside and recovering his Umbrella Academy uniform. "Come on, babe, relax!".
"Why do I have to parade through the city looking like this?". Five was being irrational, and it was so unusual from him that Marben understood immediately what was wrong, so she tried to be conciliatory.
"Because nobody will recognize you, dressed as a boy of your age. Forget about the clothes, those are supposed to make only the Umbrella Kid invisible, not the real you…the you that matters!". The boy appeared to have been persuaded for a few moments, but then he stopped staring at his feet and raised his eyes to give her a stare full of insecurity. "What is it, Dimple? You can tell me".
"It's just that…you're so beautiful. I'd like for people who'll see us together to think I deserve to be with you".
"Screw 'hem, they know nothing about you! And I say I'd want you with me even if you were dressed in rags and smelling of sewage" said Marben, in a voice firm enough not to let transpire her heart had cracked a little, hearing Five doubt himself in comparison to her. As an answer, the boy cupped her face and kissed her like she was the air he needed to live.
"I love you so much" Five panted on her lips when he broke the kiss, and Marben smiled.
"I…more".
.oO°Oo.
"Where are you taking me, then?" Five casually asked as they strolled down the street, hand in hand. Marben shrugged.
"Nowhere specifically…I thought we could improvise, do everything normal kids do and you never had the chance to…or nothing at all. Whatever you prefer, actually".
"So…you took me on a date without having a plan about it?".
"Maybe I'm just taking you somewhere quiet where 'to dump your body and make it difficult to identify it'…". At that, Five guffawed and wrapped an arm around her neck.
"You're too fond of my 'skinny arse', like you love to call it, to cause it any harm" he snickered, kissing the top of Marben's head.
"You're right, you lucky sod…hey, isn't that Klaus?". Following the girl's pointed finger, Five squinted his eyes to try and see more clearly the features of the boy who was just then sneaking into an alley not far from them.
"Uh...yes" he reluctantly agreed, eyes burning holes in his brother's back. "Come, let's cross, if Klaus gets into that alley it means it's not frequented by decent people".
"But shouldn't we stay around to check nothing bad happens to him?" asked Marben, vaguely resisting when Five tried to push her towards the crosswalks.
"He's trained to fight, remember? He could handle it". The boy could tell his girlfriend wasn't too happy to leave Klaus on his own, which annoyed him a little, but said nothing; he merely guided her to the most respectable part of the city, where there was no danger of meeting drug dealers or thugs, and forced himself to put his own jealousy to sleep: if on the one hand he felt moved by the knowledge that Marben could be protective of his siblings, on the other he was not willing to share her attentions with them. His brothers and sister had already taken everything, from his birthday to the Academy's best rooms, the precious time their Father could use to train him in time-traveling. He didn't want to give them anything else.
Chatting and trying to decide where to go and what to do, the two of them reached the Park without even realizing it. Finding the gates still open they sneaked in.
"Oh" said Marben in a soft voice when she noticed the trees surrounding them, "Here, now it looks like a real date!".
"Yeah" Five agreed, looking around and appearing unusually at peace. "A little more romantic".
The two exchanged a sweet and intimate smile, without saying anything because they had long since learned their silences were often worth a thousand words; their fingers, already entwined, tightened even more around each other, and for a moment finding a suggestive spot in the city to visit or choosing which forbidden activity to try, was no longer important…
"Five? What are you doing here?" someone asked, forcing Marben and Five out of their reverie. Turning abruptly, the two teens met the gaze of one of their least favorite people.
"What am I do...what are you doing here, Loofah!" peevishly snarked Five, and Marben burst out laughing right away, earning herself a proud smirk from her boyfriend and an abashed glance from his brother.
"Why is she laughing?".
"An inside joke I'm not going to explain, you wouldn't understand it anyway".
"What do you mean…".
"Hi guys!". Turning on their heels again, Marben and Five found themselves face to face with another one of their least favorite people.
"Oh, of course there's Allison too!" exclaimed the blonde girl, sounding enthusiastic but dripping with a sarcasm that didn't go unnoticed.
"Of course" Five settled, and at that point the sarcasm must have been too much, because Allison seemed to be uncomfortable.
"So…what are you two doing here?".
"Same thing as you lot" Five answered, annoyed once again.
"As in 'take advantage of dear old daddy's absence to sneak out of the house and mess around a bit like normal kids'…you guys are trying to take 'normal' to a whole new level, though…" added Marben, to then burst into a loud laugh again. Allison looked at her suspiciously.
"Is she drunk?" she asked Five, who gloated at the sight of his amused girlfriend.
"Just allergic to idiots, I'm afraid".
"Five, I swear…".
"Oh, just ignore him, Luther. You know how he is". Turning her back to Marben and Five as if to completely exrase them from all existence, Allison approached Luther with a smile and offered him one of the hot dogs she had held until then. "If you know what I mean…I have prepared a feast!".
"Don't do that ever again" Marben severely ordered to her, abruptly interrupting her own laughter, "Not the 'feast' part, mind you, the 'ài hév pweppéw'd éi' one".
"She's right, it sounded pretty offensive!" chirped Lear walking up to them, Vanya securely clinging to her arm.
"Nooooo, y'all got out too?" Allison joyfully asked her sister; not far away, Five muttered an unenthusiastic 'Yaaaaay' while glaring daggers at Lear, and earning himself an elbowing in the ribs from his girlfriend.
"Hi, Vanya" Marben went to hug her student, deliberately ignoring Five's pained gasps. "Wait, Lear, if you're here who is…".
"I asked Diana if we could swap places on Myery's deathbed tonight, otherwise I would have missed the only opportunity to go out with Vanya from here to who knows when...".
"Wait, is your cousin alright?" Allison unexpectedly asked to Marben, who was taken aback by the other girl's concern.
"Yeah, she just likes to complain a lot, when she gets the flu. Thank you".
"How many people I don't give a damn about, all crammed together…" mumbled Five, leaping away with a yeet when Marben looked at him with hostility in her eyes. Luckily, Klaus' flamboyant appearance saved him from an exemplary punishment.
"Hey, beautifolks!".
"Beautifolks?" several voices repeated, some curious, some confused and others simply annoyed.
"Yeah, sort of a mashup between beautiful and folks…" Klaus clarified, sounding extremely self-satisfied with his invention. Luther, though, didn't appreciate the creativity.
"I did get that!".
"Well, beautiful…ish, I guess" Klaus mumbled, ignoring Luther and examining everyone else's oufit; only then did Marben realize that Allison and Luther were dressed decently, but the other Hargreeves hadn't managed to get away with it much better than Five.
"Anyway. Whatcha doing, having fun without me?". A chorus of voices objecting to Klaus joining the group rose immediately. "Hey, this really hurts my feelings! It's offensive!" the poor boy whined, putting a hand on his heart and taking on a distraught expression, credible but which Marben identified as studied all the same. She hated that it was, it meant Klaus was used to being poorly treated by his siblings and to feigning emotion on command. So she defended him without a second thought, and Vanya took her side.
"He's right, you guys are assholes!".
"I'm happy you're here, lieber Bruder". Klaus sweetly smiled back at his sister, squeezing her hand.
"Danke schon, kleine Schwester".
"Well, we might be assholes, but at least we don't fill other people's hairdryers with talc!" snapped Allison out of the blue, piqued. Five rolled his eyes and the sweet moment was over.
"Jeez, here we go again…".
"That wasn't just me!" forcefully objected Klaus, raising his hands in a placating gesture when Luther stood up.
"Hey, accomplices are not to be betrayed, douchebag!" accused Five, alternating threatening glances at Klaus and cautious ones at Luther; Klaus, on the other hand, chose not to worry about the super-strong brother and to focus entirely on the scrawny one.
"Oh, aren't they? Served you well, then, when I mixed the leftover peanut butter with salt last week!".
"Was that you?".
"Oh, dear…" sighed Marben, covering her eyes with nervous hands.
"What the hell is happening?" Lear snickered, confused but also amused by the situation. Vanya, instead, tried to be the responsible one and coax her brothers back to reason.
"Guys, come on…".
"Now that I think about it…who did replace the toilet paper in the west wing third floor bathroom with insulating tape?". Everyone fell silent and turned to look at Luther.
"I only know he gave me his coke after he'd been shaking it for ten minutes solid to see if it would explode…" Allison mumbled, pointing at Five.
"HA! Do you remember that time Ben said 'Let's put Luther's hand in hot water while he's sleeping!' and I was like 'But first we should burn all his clean underwear!' and you went to steal a lighter from Dad's study?" Klaus asked Five, who surprisingly let go of his customary frown and started laughing with him.
"Guys, why can't you just love each other, since you're allowed to stick together?". Next thing Vanya knew, Klaus was in full combat mode.
"Careful, little Vanya. We know it was you who put shaving foam on Diego's strawberries while Mom wasn't looking".
"HOW…'We' who?" Vanya asked, outraged, but Klaus had already forgotten her.
"And we also know who did put the kitchen nut in the shower head…Allison!".
"WHAT? Why?" Luther blurted out.
"I wanted to prank Five, not you! I swear!".
"Trust her, she's telling the truth. Pity that I sensed the trap and made you go first…".
"Yeah, and do you know what else is a real pity?" Marben intervened, without looking at any of them. "That you all didn't sense trouble, busy as you were waging war amongst yourselves over childish nonsense. Because I think Diego may be in the shit, up to his neck".
Following her worried gaze, the group dropped the the animosity and found itself looking over the Park's fence: on the other side of the road, in front of a bar, some noisy and probably drunk - certainly hostile - men were shouting insults at a familiar looking boy, who seemed strangely unable to react, while they pushed him around and rummaged inside his pockets. However, seeing him helplessly faltering wasn't the most worrying thing in the picture, since the men who were taking it out on him were all big, strong adults and the situation was rapidly deteriorating.
"Holy shit, they're gonna eat him alive!" Klaus said in a thin, mortified voice, with wide open eyes that could not turn away from the bleak show. Beside him, Five made a vague noise of assent.
"Why the fuck doesn't he react?".
"You think they made him drink?" Luther turned to ask Allison, but before she could answer Marben cut them off once again.
"Guys, why are we here, supposing, while your brother risks going to eat salad from the roots?".
In the blink of an eye they all started running disorderly toward the bar. At some point, Five managed to reach Marben and grab her by a hand, taking her with him when he jumped: they landed a few meters away from the altercation and only some ahead of the others, mere seconds before Klaus made his way out of the Park shouldering them both and howling Diego's name. Hearing his brother's voice, Diego turned to look at them and the strangers ceased their tormenting for a moment, focusing on the newcomers.
"Diego!" repeated Klaus, catching up with his brother and grabbing him by an arm while Diego watched him, dumbfounded, "What do these bad guys want from you?".
"Our money!" brayed one of the strangers, and another came to his aid.
"Yes, the lil' shit cheated at darts and robbed us of the win!". Further back, a man spat on the ground: Marben heard Vanya make a disgusted noise, and briefly turning to look at her, she saw the rest of the group had also reached the sidewalk.
"Well, if my brother returned the money you could go back to your evening as if nothing had happened, right?" asked Five, and although he was dressed in clothes that were not his, too big for him and that didn't befit his build, for a moment he looked exactly like his usual self: hands in pockets, duck feet, brazen expression on a clean and apparently innocent face. Utterly adorable, Marben thought.
"Not on my watch, you waif!" sneered the spitting man, and the others with him. "Theft must be punished…and who did you say it is, the thief? Your brother?".
"Alright. What do you want, apologies?" blurted Klaus, clearly anxious. Diego, however, by dint of being left on the sidelines had become nervous, and now wanted to let everyone know what he thought of the whole affair.
"T-the fuck I'm gonna apo-logize, the fuck I-I'm gonna give up the mo-money! I won it, it's mine!" he said categorically, grabbing Klaus by the collar and shaking him to add emphasis, albeit with little vigor. In the tense silence that followed Lear burst out laughing, hysterically and amused at once.
"Oh, you're messing up spectacularly!" she squealed, nonchalantly clapping a hand on Vanya's one, who was shaking her arm in an attempt to make her act reasonable.
"WHAT DID YOU JUST SAY?" one of the strangers thundered over the chorus of his cronies' protests, and the group began to throw cigarettes on the ground, get rid of the bottles of beer and menacingly approach Diego - and by extension, the kids. Marben grabbed Klaus by the wrist and tried to pull him away, while he did the same with Diego.
"SHIT!" hissed Five.
"Ditto! We shouldn't even be here!" whimpered Allison, and Marben didn't need to look back to know for sure Luther was shielding her. A few steps back, however, and a car passing by at full speed forced the two of them to leap forward with a duet of highly undignified squeaks. Without a way out, the squad of angry drunkards mere steps away from them and continuing to push forward, the kids started to guess what the only possible escape was. Lear made it clear for everyone.
"Alright, Umbrella Kids, it's time for you to show us what you're really made of" she said exhaling hard, with her eyes fixed on the 'enemy'. "No powers allowed, and no killing. Just an old-fashioned, unfair, filthy brawl. May the best non-superhero win!".
And with a belligerent scream that Marben supposed was a battle cry, Lear rushed at the bar's patrons, who apparently were expecting nothing more than a signal from them to spring into action.
From then on, everything became a blur.
The only clear thing from the start, was that luck was on the kids' side: the strangers were weighed down by alcohol and junk food, presumably tired after a day of work (and a long evening of drinking and smoking), while the teens were agile and quick, even if a bit improvised fighters (they evidently were used to rely a little too much on their supernatural skills).
Marben managed to make herself useful here and there, mainly making fall those who ran towards her, giving a few shoves, sticking her fingers in a couple of eyes. Almost immediately someone inside the bar sent a drunkard crashing against a jukebox, and an old song from the sixties started to mingle with the noises from the brawl.
"WOOOOOOHOOOOO! I LOVE THIS FUCKING SONG!". Klaus. Of course it had been Klaus!
Not far from Marben, Lear showed Vanya how to properly kick a man in the nuts; in a corner, Five smashed a bottle on a patron's nape. Allison was repeatedly banging a stranger's head on a coffee table, and Luther simply dodging all the blows anyone tried to deliver (had he answered, there would have been no way not to resort to his power). Klaus was not in sight, but no one else in the world could have fought shrieking in such an unmistakable way.
"FIVE, HOW COME YOU DON'T KNOW JACK ABOUT POP CULTURE AND YET YOUR BROTHER IS SCREAMING LIKE XENA?".
"SCREAMING LIKE WHO?".
Klaus, indeed, even had the courage to draw a plate from the nearest table and slam it into the face of the first drunkard who went against him. At that point, however, Marben had no way to keep checking that the others hadn't gotten into too serious trouble, because a stranger saw her alone and unarmed and started running uncoordinatedly toward her, arms outstretched as if wanting to lean out to grab a hold of her despite the distance. Instinctively, the girl seized the coffee table next to her, and in doing so she revealed where Diego had holed up (even if the squawk he emitted when he was discovered would have betrayed him anyway). Marben dismissed him, his eyes wide with terror, his fists full of dollars clenched to the chest, and placed the small table's bracket on one of her shoulders; leaning forward, head protected by the tabletop, she charged her attacker like an infuriated ram. With a strong 'SMACK! the stranger was thrown back of a few meters, enough to make him hit three of his cronies and send them all ruinously tumbling to the ground.
"STRIKE!" Marben shouted as she got rid of the coffee table and raised her arms to the sky, in exultance. A moment later, Five was girdling her around the waist; another yet and they were gone in a flash of blue light.
A/N: Hello everyone, I'm back! :) How are you? I hope to 'find' you healthy and safe, although unfortunately the world continues to be a difficult place to live in...
I know, it took me so long to write this chapter, but IN THE END HERE IT IS! I hope you enjoyed it, it has been a whole lot of fun to write. Don't worry for the kids, they ALL will be heading home safe and sound, not just Marben and Five! There will be great progress, soon...soooo soon.