Chapter Soundtrack: watch?v=tBOsCZvJXew

37.

In February, Marben received a phone call from her uncle. He was a powerful man involved in various states' affairs, so despite her own common sense the girl had for a moment hoped he had called to report that Five had been found. Her hopes, however, dissolved as soon as she heard his clumsy, prim greeting.

"Good afternoon, dear niece" he had said, in the sweet and cautious tone he used when someone extremely close to him was in distress and he didn't know how to be effectively supporting, "I hope to find you in good health…all things considered".
"To your credit, it has to be said you haven't seen me in a while".
Marben had closed her eyes for a moment, letting her scorching disappointment slip away, and then reopened them, ready to make room for a new hope.
"Hello, uncle. Happy New Year. I too hope you're doing fine. Did you read the letter I sent you through Dad?".
"Ah, yes. Straight to the point, I see…".
"As if this wasn't the exact reason why you're calling".
"…you're right".
"So, do you believe me or not?".
"Of course I do. We all do, Marben".
"Even Father?".
"After he read your letter, yes. We've been investigating". Those words had an almost thaumaturgical power on Marben's fragile nerves, lifting from her shoulders much of the tension that had gathered there during the previous months, making her breathe a sigh of relief that seemed to shake her from the bones like an earthquake, forcing her heart to beat fast making her feel more alive than she had in weeks. With damp eyes and a slightly wobbling lip, the blonde girl tightly squeezed the receiver in her fist and bowed her head.
"Thanks. Does this mean…the school exchange is gonna get canceled?".
"In due time. We need proofs, in addition to the papers you sent us over, to warn the other girls' families about what's going on" her uncle said, in a tone that hinted there would be no second thoughts once the aforementioned evidence would have been found.
"Of course. But please, hurry. We're not safe, here".
"I know, dear. Remember that you are not alone".
"All right. Thanks, uncle".
"Whatever happens, let us know. Keep your eyes open".
"We will".
"And Marben?".
"Yes?".
"I'm sorry for your boyfriend. I always hoped something like this would never happen again to our family...".
Marben's uncle was referring to all the times her Father had been reported missing in action while serving in the army, years before she was even born. The comparison with Five's case irritated her greatly: there was an abysmal difference between an armed and aware adult who faces a war and a boy lost in the vastness of the world. Her boyfriend may have been trained, but Marben knew that hand-to-hand combat was not his forte, and that after a few attempts his spacial jumps usually began sabotaging themselves. Five was in danger, wherever he had ended up, but no matter how hard she was trying to explain it to people, nobody ever seemed to understand…

Noisily swallowing the lump occluding her throat, Marben resigned herself to having won at least one of her many battles.
"Well, it really seems that, after all, hope is never enough".

.oO°Oo.

By the early days of March, Marben had honed her ability to play the piano to the point that Mister Kai began pressing and trying to coax her into giving a small concert for the local press, such as the one in which she and Myery had performed a few days after their arrival; a tune the girl had been strumming for weeks had attracted the professor's attention, and after discovering that Marben hadn't been simply reproducing but actually composing from scratch, his enthusiasm had seemed to lose all limits. The girl had tried to decline the offer, however, and the old professor had reacted nervously, oddly even a little guiltily. Marben hadn't been able to fully comprehend his behavior, but supposing that Mister Kai didn't really want to force her into doing something she was opposed to, had been enough to insinuate in her mind the doubt that the suddenly renewed idea to exploit her to bring notoriety to the School was suspicious. And indeed, a few days after the subject had been raised for the first time, the girl found the Headmaster personally waiting for her while Mister Kai busied himself pretending to adjust the already impeccable tuning of the Theater's piano.
Mister Pembroke had affably greeted her and then taken a seat in the stalls, leaving her and her teacher free to carry on the lesson; for all its duration, even if she had never turned to check, Marben had felt his gaze on her back, and when, before dismissing her, Mister Kai rhetorically asked if she had changed her mind about performing for the press, she had immediately understood what was about to happen.

"Be a dear, do it for the School. After all, you've been our guest for almost a year, now, and you won't be with us forever...am I right?" the Headmaster had asked without waiting for her to say anything, suddenly close and squeezing her shoulder too tightly, looking down on her with threatening eyes that clashed with his smile while she still sat in front of the piano. Marben had felt tiny and helpless.
So she had relented, and then run off to look for Myery, earnestly hoping that her cousin wasn't being as watched over as she evidently was.

"Have Diana or Lear call your father to tell him the Headmaster knows we want to leave. And if he knows, Hargreeves certainly will too" she had erratically whispered to Myery's ear when she had found her, and without waiting for any sign of assent from the red-haired girl, Marben had fled to her room to try and calm down.
Once inside her dorm, fear had turned to anger; her gaze had fallen onto the violin peeking out from under the case's lid, and unexpectedly Marben had gotten overwhelmed by a rush of nostalgia, not addressed to the instrument itself, but predictably to how much that same violin had played a fundamental role in everything good had come from her stay in America, and which she had now lost.
Like Five. Marben had recently realized she had nothing of him outside memories. And now that even the memories had begun to fade, she had started to be terrified about being left with nothing at all.
Testily, she had pushed the violin's case open, and once grabbed the rosin, had thrown it against the wall, watching as it shattered in a thousand shimmering and golden splinters.

.oO°Oo.

Hargreeves hadn't been showing up at rehearsal for quite some time, and Marben had assumed it had been due to the pressing, all-consuming commitment of pretending to be looking for his missing son. Whatever had been the reason for the creepy old man to absent himself, however, the girl hadn't really been in the right state of mind to appreciate the freedom that had come with suddenly not being stalked anymore so she had limited herself to take notice of it and then confine the matter in a small, secluded corner of her worried mind. The day she unwillingly dragged herself to the Theater to perform for the journalists, nonetheless, Marben wished she had given more importance to what had been her privileged condition.
Obviously, Hargreeves was sitting in the front row. And next to him, so was Klaus.
Following the program, Marben had silently entered, addressed her unwelcome audience with a slight nod of her head and downcast eyes, sat down, somberly played her piece - a very sad song, the fruit of her tormented heart - and replying to the applause with another restrained nod she had left without bothering to stay for the last photos. She had wasted no time wondering if she had done something that Hargreeves might have considered suspicious, knowing she had been staring at the floor or at the piano's keys for all the little time she had exposed herself. She only regretted not having met Klaus' gaze: she feared he wasn't faring too well, in his father's company.

That evening, she went to bed even before dinner was served, and it took her a long time to fall asleep. When oblivion finally came, it did it as a blessing for many reasons, the most important of which being that Marben couldn't have known, but if only she had been awake, she could have changed the fate of the boy who was looking for her.
Beyond her window, in fact, unaware of being followed, Ben Hargreeves was climbing up the fire escape. Once he reached the right landing, the boy made to knock, but then he probably thought the heavy curtains obscuring the dorm from the outside were a sort of request, a plea to be left alone. So he just did what he had come for, leaving on the windowsill the pile of papers he had fished from under his coat, with a stone from the courtyard on top to prevent them from flying away in the night, and silent as he had came, he left.
A few minutes later, equally silent, the threatening figure of Reginald Hargreeves did also reach the right window, and seized the papers with bony, old hands. Undisturbed, the Monocle unfolded the sheets and saw that they were photocopies of his private journal in its entirety, the one that had disappeared weeks prior and that Number Six had later found under a cupboard in his study; he immediately recognized which pages were on the top, eyes scanning the words written in his own calligraphy rendered gray by the copier, and focusing only on some of them.

'Presumably quite skilled', 'Persuadable? Eventually, request Number Three's intervention', 'Valid substitute for incorrigible Number Four'.

Calmly, Sir Hargreeves folded the papers and put them under his coat like his son had done earlier, to go out and reveal his father's secrets. Then, he left, taking away the evidence that Marben would have needed to indict him.

.oO°Oo.

"... look, a creative writing contest!" Diana jovially chirped one morning during breakfast, slamming a copy of the city newspaper on the table. Marben looked indifferently at the few grapes on her plate rolling away for the windage.
"Mmmmh".
"I said, creative writing!" Diana repeated eloquently, before pulling up the newspaper and unfolding it in front of Marben's face, bending to peer at it from behind her shoulder. Indeed, the ad truly was there.
"I get it, I'm not stupid. I just don't give a da-".
"Forget it, it's all an excuse to talk to you in public without attracting anyone's attention. How are you, hun?".
"Like this".
"...maybe this will cheer you up a bit, then: My's father just called. He said we should get ready, we might have to leave at any time". Marben turned to look at her, confused and hopeful at once.
"Has he found the evidence?".
"I guess so" Diana said vaguely, shrugging. "Go pack, all right?". Marben nodded, and then hurriedly left the canteen.

Unfortunately, however, neither she nor the Girls received the desired news of their imminent departure that day. Instead of it, the next they received a horrible one for which they hadn't been prepared.

.oO°Oo.

"What's the matter, dear?" Myery had asked in a whisper, cautiously crossing the stage to reach Marben, who, hearing her approach, stopped playing but did not turn around.
"Ben has died".
"WHA-".
Marben had brusquely grabbed a newspaper - gone unnoticed until then, resting on the edge of the open chest of the grand piano - and had thrown it on the ground, to then slam her elbows on the keyboard and hide her face behind her hands, bursting into silent sobs. Myery had winced, partly because of the thunderous noise the newspaper made when it landed on the parquet and partly for her cousin's dramatic gesture, but immediately got up and bent to retrieve the daily. On the front page, a photo of Ben and a grim title in large letters.
"Oh, no…" the red-haired girl had murmured, her free hand flying to cover her quivering lips and in the process muffling the sound. "Poor Ben…he was such a dear boy…".
For a while, the two girls had softy cried in silence; then Myery, who knew her cousin like the back of her hand, realized how Marben was painfully embedding her fingers in her scalp, knuckles growing increasingly pale and shoulders getting more and more contracted.
"You think it was no accident" she had simply said, and the blonde girl nodded. "Will you tell us about it?".
"When we'll be far from here. Now more than ever, we need to leave". Marben had said nothing else and simply resumed to play once again the song she had been forced to play for the journalists.

The first time they had met, Ben had asked if the music she played was hers. With hot tears that seemed to be corroding her face as they flowed, Marben wondered if he would have been proud to know the one she was playing on the day of his death, had really been composed by her.
This didn't have a name, only few hours ago - she had thought - Now it does. 'Lamentation for a lost life'.

.oO°Oo.

The newspapers hadn't given away any information about when the funeral would have been held, so Marben had sneaked out of School to try and directly ask one of the Umbrella Kids; the unfortunate problem of having to avoid Hargreeves at any cost still existed, though, so she had decided to hide behind a corner, not far from the Academy, and wait for an idea to pop into her mind. Not much later, the blonde girl had seen the Kids get off their unsavory father's shiny, black Rolls Royce, and open the door. To see that there were only four of them left felt like a punch in the stomach, to her; she would have liked to reach out and say she was sorry for all the horrible things that had happened to them and still continued to, and probably unconsciously took a few steps forward, because Diego and Klaus saw her, upon entering their home. Strangely, though, the former sent her a hostile glance while making a show of slamming the gate close with much more force than necessary, and then Klaus stubbornly refused to meet her gaze, disappearing inside without even acknowledging her.
Marben had gone back to School in a daze, with such an upset mind that not even Myery's sudden news had managed to brighten her day.
"We leave on Thursday, at midnight".

The blonde girl had tried to go back to the Academy again, the next day, and she had found policemen guarding every entrance to Hargreeves' property.
On her way back, she had found the Girls waiting at her room's door, talking agitatedly; Lear had been the first to see her, and leaving the others aside had approached with a grim face.
"The funeral will take place privately on Friday afternoon" she had said, and feeling her heart sink Marben had resigned herself to the final idea she wouldn't have participated to the obsequies in any way.
"How do you know?".
"Vanya broke up with me. Not in person, she wrote me a letter. I think she didn't mean to tell me about the funeral, but it slipped anyway…". Lear had choked at that point, and stopped talking; looking up, Marben had found her intent on shunning her gaze at all costs, while biting her lip. She hadn't wanted to be seen in tears, proud as she was.
"Oh, Lee…I'm sorry".
"Don't be. Turns out they all believe it's your fault, what happened to their brothers" Lear had confessed with a hard edge in her voice, icy anger and outrage in her eyes that right then found the strength to stare right into Marben's. "If they are so idiotic as to think so, then they don't deserve us at all".
Marben had burst into tears then, seeking refuge in the embrace of her childhood friend and pretending not to know that she was crying in turn; although Lear's loss was more recent, it was Marben who nevertheless got comforted.
"At least Hargreeves will no longer torment you…" Myery had murmured, mortified to see them like that, but it hadn't sounded like a consolation.

.oO°Oo.

The night before his brother Ben's funeral Klaus Hargreeves rolled the largest joint he had ever managed to put together, and slipping it between his lips went to the window, rummaging in his pockets in search of a lighter. Once he had finally found it, the boy lit the spliff and then made to open his window, but froze with his hand on the knob, too stunned by what he saw to actually remember what he was trying to do: on the sidewalk across the street, Marben stood staring up right at him, dressed in black, drenched clothes and with a hood lowered on her head. She was openly sobbing, Klaus only noticed because of her ragged, open-mouthed breathing. Next to her, were the pestiferous little kid with red hair and an asian-looking woman he had never seen before, both looking towards him too, impassively so. A third figure in black and with its bowed head covered by a hood was holding Marben's hand.
Suddenly the blonde girl raised her left hand and held it firmly open in the air; Klaus realized she wanted for him to look at it, and shifted his gaze: in black, probably written with a marker, he recognized two words. GOOD BYE.
A moment later, the mysterious figure to Marben's right decided to show itself, and Klaus felt like he was about to die on the spot. Watching him from the sidewalk, under the rain, dressed in clothes that Klaus had never seen him wear and holding an unequivocally alive girl by the hand, was his brother Ben.
The lit joint fell from Klaus' gaping mouth, and the boy roused himself with a curse, stepping on the spliff to prevent it from starting a fire; he then wasted no time and ran down the stairs at breakneck speed, earning himself a reproach from Pogo. Once he threw the Umbrella Academy's doors wide open and set foot on the street, however, the four figures had already disappeared in the night.

A/N: ...would you be willing to read a sequel? *runs away*