WARNINGS: trauma, mentions of death, war and privacy violation.
Chapter Soundtrack: watch?v=ABRxvbZnHpk
5 (II).
On her way back to the flat, Marben can't stop thinking about Diego's dark, grieving eyes.
The pain caused by the memory is so sharp she's feeling stunned, so when a familiar-looking man staggers off a bus while clutching something dark to his chest, not far ahead, she's not sure she actually recognized him. The man disappears right away behind a stone flower bed; Marben curiously approaches the bus stop, her pace gradually speeding up as she hears rhythmical thuds and, inexplicably, sees sparks flying from behind the plants.
Her perplexed eyes weren't mistaken, it's Klaus, and he's alternatively slamming a black briefcase onto a bench or a nearby low wall; under Marben's astonished gaze, the no longer missing Hargreeves throws away the case, which lands on the sidewalk in a puff of flames as he screams and clenches his fists.
Marben is astonished. She watches him stop and fall to his knees, shake, and then take to run his hands over the cobblestones, as if to dig or caress.
Maybe he's hallucinating.
Maybe he's impossibly high.
Whatever the case, she can't leave him like that, she just can't.
"Klaus? Hey, Klaus...come on, honey, stop...you'll get hurt" she gently coaxes, crouching beside him and prying his frantic hands away from the sidewalk. They're bloodied. She rapidly checks them, fearing Klaus may have already cut himself with some glass shard, but there are no scratches under the red, and her friend is looking up at her with big, blue and anguished eyes full of tears.
"It's me. Marben" she whispers caressing his damp cheek. Klaus squeezes his eyes shut, then, curling up in a fetal position on the pavement, openly bawling.
Heedless of the passers-by's shocked gazes, they stay put for a while, Klaus folded in on himself and crying while Marben whispers sweet nothings to him, stroking his hair, his head resting in her lap; little by little Klaus' wails distemper into hushed sobs, his tears thin out, and Marben notices how emaciated he is.
"Come on, rockstar, come on. Let's get you home" she murmurs in a comforting tone, as she struggles to put him upright.
She doesn't ask what happened as they walk toward the Academy, not wishing to force Klaus to relive whatever reduced him in such a miserable state. This automatically leads her to think about the briefcase abandoned on the pavement, burnt, crumpled. Unmistakable. The sight of it hasn't been a new one, to her.
Marben shakes both memory and worry off, forcing herself to face one problem at a time, and focuses on keeping Klaus on his feet, girding him around the waist with his arm wrapped around her own shoulders, encouraging him to hold on just for a little bit longer.
When they reach the Umbrella Academy and no one answers the door, Marben opens it with a kick and a muttered curse, stepping in without a single care in the world about the racket or property damage. On wobbly legs, she drags Klaus up the stairs and, upon request, to a specific bathroom, in which she elbows the toilet lid closed to offer her friend a seat.
"I…I should probably take a bath, little Marben…" Klaus utters, reaching out for her as she moves away a little; again, Marben resolves to deal with the door through a kick, while grabbing Klaus' outstretched, bloodied hand.
"Yeah…good idea, rockstar".
She carries him to the bathtub, and helps him to sit on its edge; she can't see what Klaus' face is doing, while she's turned to open the bathtub's faucets, but a little huff tells her he has at least registered the nickname.
After she's plugged the tub, Marben helps Klaus undressing - he being so unresponsive as to not complain about being seen naked - and when the water is ready she pours some bubble bath in it, diffusing a good scent she hopes will be calming for her distressed lump of a friend as it is for her.
Entering the tub, Klaus shakes, but he's steady on his feet, and manages to lie down stretched out amidst the bubbles with little assistance. At that point, the woman squats down and crosses her arms on the white edge of the tub, reclining her head on top of them to melancholy look at the catatonic man.
"You want me to help you, Klaus?".
As if forgetful of her presence, Klaus jolts, and after a slight shake of his head, he turns his teary gaze on her. He fleetingly thinks Marben looks like she can understand, like she won't reproach, or judge, or demand for him to spill everything. If there's someone he can open up with, it's her.
"Would you believe me if I told you I've fought in the Vietnam War and saw the love of my life die, there?" he whispers, and his words hit close to home. Marben has to grip the tub's edge to steady herself.
'That blasted briefcase…' she thinks, screwing her eyes shut to shield herself against the pain in Klaus' haunted gaze, but hers as well.
"I'm so sorry, Klaus. So very sorry" she murmurs back, feeling tears press under her eyelids.
"Yeah, well…it sucks".
"I know. I-". Taking a deep breath, Marben tells herself she can at least partially confide in Klaus, because nobody in his family ever listens to him, and that's horrible and unfair, but exactly what she's in need of. With a sigh, she goes on. "I lost my son's father…before finding out I was pregnant. He died without even knowing. They never met".
"Oh…then I'm sorry too, little Marben".
Reaching out, Klaus pats a wet hand on Marben's head; then, something like puzzlement, even if a bit detached, makes his face ripple.
"Wait…does this make me an uncle?".
She stares at him in utter confusion.
"…I'm not with your brother anymore and we're not related, so…no?".
"Oh…pity. I would have liked to meet the little tot. I still have to be introduced to my own niece, you know?".
"Yeah, that's probably because your sister is-" 'a bitch', the blond thinks, but then seems to remember that Allison and Klaus used to share some sort of intermittent camaraderie, as kids, and refrains at the last moment from saying what she wants. "…been through a lot, lately. Maybe she'll let you meet her little girl, when she'll get permission to visit. Anyway I can't do the same with my son, he's in London with my parents".
Klaus nods, his face sad and his eyes distant again. It's both a haunting and haunted look, the one he's sporting. Marben recalls having seen it in the photos from her old school books, on the careworn face of Esterina the Birkenau survivor. Or in many other places, on-site, on people who experience war in their day-to-day present. It's a thousand-yard stare.
The woman throws a glance at the clothes abandoned on the floor, and notices they really look like rumpled, threadbare military attire. Like the shiny dog tags on Klaus' bare chest, and the new tattoo on his left shoulder. The one on his stomach, instead, even if new, has nothing to do with the army.
"Are you gonna need help, rockstar? It's getting late and I have some things to do before going to the hospital for my shift…".
"No, no…I'm fine…".
"You sure? I could ask someone-".
"Really, I'm fine. Don't worry, I'll just…soak a bit, I guess…".
"Call, if you need anything, all right?".
"Yeah…thank you, little Marben".
"Love you".
"Love you too".
So Marben silently exits the bathroom, leaving the door ajar.
Not having Klaus' tormented eyes and naked, thin body in front of her is not the complete relief she'd been hoping for.
In any case, nothing can prepare her for what she sees as she crosses the Umbrella Academy's dimly-lit mezzanine.
Mom's dear silhouette shows her its back, resting too still on a borne settee, with its head tilted to one side and one wrist outstretched, torn open and displaying wires to the most unlikely audience Marben could ever think of: a chimpanzee, in a shirt, tie and reading glasses.
Caught unprepared, Marben fails to keep her aplomb and ends up stumbling on a carpet, uttering a muffled scream. The chimp abruptly diverts his attention from his work and looks at her with unbelievably human eyes.
"Good afternoon, Miss" he offers, as if having a stranger he has not seen enter inside the house was the most normal thing in the world.
'Good point, I could never win the lottery of the weirdos against a machine-maid and a talking ape'.
"H-hello" Marben stammers, completely disregarding her traitorous brain's commentary.
"Can I help you?" the chimpanzee asks with the utmost courtesy and formality, but Marben doesn't miss the note of impatience in his tone. Perhaps her natural aversion to monkeys is showing…
"No, thanks, I was leaving" she answers, eager to get lost. On second thought, however, there is something she needs to ask of him. "Wait, actually…I just took Klaus home…".
"Ah, yes, Master Klaus. I haven't seen him in days".
'You're yet another uncaring asshole, then'.
As if by magic, the uneasiness dissolves, and all is left for Marben to feel is anger.
"…right" she grits out. "He's not feeling well, I'm afraid he's rather distressed...he's taking a bath, right now. Could you please check on him in a bit? I need to get to work…".
"I shall take care of it, Miss. Thank you for your help, it's been invaluable" the ape reassures her, nodding and hinting a smile, but remaining stiff and motionless, with his gnarly-knuckled paws resting on the handle of his cane, frozen into an attitude that screams distrust.
"No problem".
Marben really can't wrap her head around what's happening. If she weren't so concerned about Mom, she would probably pause to ponder how surreal is to be conversing with a primate in comparison far behind her on the evolutionary scale. Did any of the Hargreeves ever tell her about this housemate of theirs, by any chance? Klaus? Diego? Five, all those years ago?
Five. She needs to get out of his house before they stumble upon each other. But first, another little question.
"What happened to…Mom? Is she okay?".
The chimpanzee keeps impassively looking at her for a moment more, then he sits down in front of Mom once again and retrieves a screwdriver from the borne settee.
"She will be. Every now and then, her programming deteriorates and an adjustment becomes necessary".
"Oh. Thank goodness you're here to help, then. Mom's too precious to be lost" Marben tells him with an open smile. He evasively looks at her out of the corner of his eye.
"Indeed".
"Gotta dash, now. Sorry for the intrusion, have a nice day!".
"You too, Miss".
For the few meters that separate her from the outside world, Marben feels chased by the ape's gaze. She gets goosebumps and hurries her pace as much as she can without making her exit look like the escape it actually is.
While in her brain the name Charla Nash obsessively reverberates, she thinks she doesn't trust the chimp's inexpressive eyes, nor she believes a single one of the words he said about Mom's programming.
.oO°Oo.
Were anyone to search the words 'Allison Hargreeves' in any library's archive, they could find all sorts of informations about her - photos, the list of movies she starred in, more or less personal data scattered here and there through a slew of interviews, the whole story of her divorce from Patrick and the ensuing legal battle for Claire's custody - as is to be expected for all the famous people that grew up under the limelight rather than sunlight.
Allison knows well how it works.
Yet she finds herself checking how impressive is the amount of things the fans can find out about her for fear of having just dreamt of those actually being in the public domain, because she can't believe what she sees - or rather, what she doesn't see - when she types the names she wants to investigate on.
According to the Argyle Public Library's archive, Diana, Lear, Myery and Marben - in alphabetical order depending on their surnames, which Allison does not remember by heart but are quickly provided anyway by old judicial records - attended the Royal Academy of Music of London, which brought them in the city in 2002 that ended with them embroiling the eminent Sir Reginald Hargreeves into trial, and once grown up, they decided to become models, in spite of the education and prestige they had already managed to hoard during girlhood. It's a bit of a shame, but ultimately nothing new, since Allison has even found herself posing with them, once or twice.
So she makes the longest phone call from the days when she still was unmarried, that phase during which she was trying to establish herself as an actress with the phone as the only mean to keep alive a romantic relationship, and her personal assistant confirms that even Los Angeles' archives cannot supply anything more about the Girls.
It's unnerving. There's no record of anything about them that isn't related to Sir Hargreeves' trial or the sporadic appearances on the magazines or in some video clip. Not even the awarding of nursing degrees to any of the names Allison remembers having used to address the Girls with over the years - and that none of those names transpire from anywhere only makes everything more suspicious. So why did Allison see them work as nurses in at least three different hospitals under false names?
'There must be at least something true in what Myery told me last night...' the actress thinks as she intently stares at the microfiche reader's screen, as if wanting to force it to reveal what lies behind the living mystery the Girls are proving to be.
For a little while more she racks her brains over what the whole thing might mean, but then she has to throw in the towel and worry about a far more impending worry.
Leonard Peabody.
A/N: Thanks to each one of you, a million times. Your presence and support warm my heart.
Love.