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35.
Not seeing Five arrive at her window as promised left Marben confused and even a little disheartened, especially after sharing with him a moment so intimate that simply thinking about it still made her blush. Nevertheless, the girl did not worry. It wasn't the first time her boyfriend missed a date.
That evening, she excused Five's absence thinking that he had ended up in detention for having being late for breakfast or having been caught going back home early in the morning, and went to bed, a little saddened but otherwise serene.
The next day, however, Sir Hargreeves did not show up at rehearsal as was his custom, and although that would normally have made the Girls rejoice, it appeared too strange for them not to get worried (the four of them were so accustomed to entering with downcast eyes, taking his presence for granted, that only halfway through the lesson they'd noticed the old man wasn't there, and nudging each other they had exchanged a few perplexed glances). Marben, in particular, interpreted the totally empty stalls as a sign that something might be wrong.
For the next twelve hours, so, the blonde girl had puzzled over how to reach the Academy and get in touch with Five without attracting the attention of her teachers or Arsegreeves, being however forced to give up after some time. By mid-afternoon she was so worried that she had become impatient, so she pretended not to feel well and retired to her dorm, without even stepping outside to go to the canteen at dinner time.
The unfortunate confirmation of her nagging suspicions came around ten, when the sky had been dark for a while and she was beginning to loose hope that Five would eventually have come to disprove all of them. It wore Klaus' pale face.
Klaus had wanted to tell her before the news came out in the newspapers, and so he had come to her, looking terrible, tormented and oppressed like someone who is about to say horrible things. There and then Marben had wanted to believe he looked that way just because he was drunk and high, but an annoying little voice in her head, refusing to give her rest, had immediately started screaming that she had never seen Klaus like that, neither high nor sober.
So she had opened the window, giving the newcomer a questioning look, and the river of words form Klaus had swept her up, monochord and expressionless like only someone long accustomed to dulling their feelings could have spoken about a mishap with such carelessness.
"He…he's gone, Marben, disappeared into thin air. I know little more than you do, I think that through yesterday's training session he and Dad had an argument, which was taken up again at dinner: Five had no intention of letting Dad have the last word and so he stormed out of the house…and hasn't been back since. The others and I are not allowed to talk about it, but...we fear he's had enough, and left for good. Our Father will go to the police, tomorrow, to report the disappearance".
Right then and there Marben had felt her knees suddenly become so weak she had had to hold on to the windowsill not to fall. Although she knew that Klaus was certainly not one to get scandalized, the girl had thought that, shocked and breathless as she was, she really had to be a pitiful sight.
Everything boiled down to the dull, throbbing pain in the center of her chest, her breath getting shorter and shorter, and her mind going completely blank.
Marben heard her voice contesting what Klaus was saying while her mind refused to wrap itself around the idea that Five was nowhere to be found, then come up with hypotheses on a possible escape toward some hiding place just to prove a point or on a kidnapping perpetrated by someone who might be holding a grudge against the Hargreeves family, as the terror began to kick in; both times Klaus was reasonable, albeit cautious, in his responses.
"It would be a lot like him…to be honest, I hoped I would have found him holed up in here".
"How many ordinary kidnappers, pedophiles or organ traffickers could stand a chance against us? And besides, you know Five: you really think he would allow someone to hurt him?".
At that point the girl had started to frantically pace back and forth through the small room, without really seeing her surroundings, and to obsessively repeat that Five would have certainly told me, had he premeditated to run away from home, it's not something that can be improvised, and if he really had wanted to do it I would have known, Klaus, because he tells me everything.
Klaus had immediately regretted having refuted her hypotheses about his brother's vanishing, and hadn't been able to find the courage to tell her that, in hindsight, probably no one could've said to really having known Five. He, who with Five had grown up, certainly felt as if he had never really understood him, and the idea that Marben could even think of having done so seemed silly to him...but likely, his brother and the delirious girl in front of him had shared things he didn't know or couldn't understand.
At some point Marben had stopped her wandering, and turning to look at him with wide eyes had ordered him to do something, anything to find Five: Klaus had recognized it as the plea it had been, directly addressed to him but also to his family by extension, and had reassured her the police would be notified of the disappearance the next day, that a very extensive investigation would result. She had started to sob again, and to accusing him and his family of not wanting to deal directly with the matter. By then seriously worried about her ragged breathing, Klaus had slipped into the dorm to reach her, and begging her not to get a panic attack he had coaxed her into reclining on the bed. Careless about the shoes she had still been wearing, Marben had curled up on it, gathered in fetal position, and asked him to leave. Without any resentment whatsoever, but Klaus had felt guilty all the same. That little heap of tears and anguish was nothing like the image of Marben he had been holding in his mind.
"I don't want you to be alone, little Marben, you're not well…".
"Please".
"Fine…but call your cousin, if you're in need of assistance, okay?".
Once alone, Marben had continued clinging to herself and crying, her chest violently shaking with sobs, her head swimming with thoughts about how Five wouldn't have abandoned her, how they had only known each other for little over than two months and their story had only just began, how she hadn't even given him a birthday present; at the same time, she had wondered where her beloved had ended up, if he had been in danger, if he had found some kind of shelter against the oncoming winter's cold. She had mourned their newborn intimacy with its caresses and kisses, the playfulness between them, the long chats about either complex topics or nonsense, the late nights looking at the stars while eating sweets by the window, and for all the things they hadn't done together yet, and perhaps, now, they could had never. She had yearned to grasp Five's hand, hold him tight against her and revel in the sounds of his living, present being, to never let go of him.
Everything had been too strange. Klaus had said the Umbrella Kids hadn't been allowed to talk about what had happened, and on her part the blonde girl hadn't been able to stop thinking it had sounded so very suspicious. She had let herself be tormented by some terrible presentiment, while a part of her still wailed in agony at the loss of her love.
The last thing she sensed before collapsing into a fitful sleep was a gentle hand stroking her head, a voice singing a simple and unknown melody, and a fleeting vision of red hair. Then she determinedly closed her encrusted eyes, and didn't reopen them.
.oO°Oo.
In the days that followed, the city got carpeted with posters printed by the police, on which from an old black and white photo, Five grinned confidently staring right at the camera. Or at least, that was what Myery told her cousin. Marben didn't want to go out.
For a few days she had made excuses, alluding to a general malaise first and to a particularly painful period then, and the school nurse had believed her, obtaining from the teachers an exoneration from her lessons. After a week, however, Myery had forced her to come out of her room, hoping that the music would have distracted her from her depression. Unfortunately, the red-haired girl had been wrong.
Marben could think of nothing but Five, and in a confused and nebulous way: the only thoughts that clearly silhouetted against all that whiteness were her boyfriend's name and the pain caused by his absence. Worry was clutching her stomach shut, and although she rarely drank, her eyes were always ready to fill up with tears. At night she slept little and during the day dragged herself wearily to lessons that now seemed inconclusive and frivolous to her. If she stared for a whole hour at a music sheet, not only she wouldn't see it, but it would eventually get watered down by her tears, and at last she would excuse herself to end up in the first available toilet, to cry her eyes out.
Her teachers began to notice, a couple of them even tried to speak to her, but she did not know how to explain herself, and therefore avoided them: the whole city, perhaps the whole world by now knew that Five was gone, yet how could have Marben confessed the concern for him was devouring her alive if nobody in the first place had ever known that they had been a thing? The only ones who had always known about them were the Girls, and Marben didn't want them around too much. She knew she wasn't being good company, even though they just wanted to ease her suffering a bit. But all she wanted was Five.
.oO°Oo.
"Do you think his real mother heard the news?" she asked Myery one day, while they sat in the backyard waiting for Lear and Diana to come back with some books to try - with little success - to coax her into studying. "What if until last week she wanted nothing to do with him but now she's crying her eyes out and asking herself where her baby is?". Myery had looked at her with astonished mortification in her dark eyes.
"Don't go down this road, sweetie. It's already so painful".
"But I've called the police, earlier, and they sounded surprised to be asked about the investigations! It means that no one is pressing for them to carry on! Not even the family!" ranted Marben, tears already running out of her puffy eyes; her cousin had tried to no avail to wipe them with delicate fingers, afraid of hurting her reddened face. "I can't believe I could be the only one crying him, My!".
"The whole world knows what Five's power and skills are. Everyone's probably just assuming he's starting all over again, somewhere else, and has no intention to come back…".
"No, it's…he would have told me something" Marben had drily replied then, annoyed by what she had perceived as a belittlement of the situation and her pain from her cousin, who, however, hadn't intended to offend her. "It's all too strange, you don't understand".
Myery had seemed on the verge of tears too, at that point, but Marben had refused to pay her attention any more, turning to Lear, who was just at that moment arriving with some scores.
That had been the last time she had tried to open up with the Girls about the whole thing.
.oO°Oo.
When several weeks later she let herself be persuaded to go out again, Marben could not bear to look at the posters. She walked with her head bowed in front of the walls, the lamp posts, the advertising spaces on which they had been glued, otherwise the dear face of her lost boyfriend would have never allowed her to avoid madness. She hated herself for this, but at the same time she knew she needed to distance herself from the pain. The more things about Five she remembered, the more she would have had to mourn.
One afternoon, during one of the usual supervised walks of her class, Marben spotted Diego and Allison next to a poster pasted on the temporary fence of a building site: Diego was smoothing its outlines, pressing them against the wall to make the corners adhere, while Allison cautiously looked around. To immediately avert her gaze from the poster and avoid Five's fading face, Marben was forced to meet his sister's eyes, and was surprised to see that Allison looked sad, nervous, somehow jaded, but not prostrated. Moving to Diego, the blonde girl saw that he too simply appeared more composed than usual. Both their gazes became pitying, however, when they landed on her.
Allison took a step towards her and held out a hand, but Marben just turned away, and with downcast eyes moved away from the Girls to hurry up and get closer to the rest of their class.
Creeping, the idea that the circumstances of Five's disappearance were too strange came to her mind again. The two blandly sorry faces of his brother and sister had confirmed it, yes, but above all the telephone number she had glimpsed on the ruined poster: it hadn't been the one she had called days before to speak with the police.
A/N: ...here we go, have some angst. Cheers!