A/N: sooo i've started an umbrella academy story and wrote pretty much the entire starting point for it over a couple of days when i had spare time. i plan to upload it in three parts - the 'before' as kids, the middle with five lost in the future, then the actual show itself with some changes. but how long it'll take, i don't know. so i hope you can all enjoy this starting part and let me know what you think!
Number 8
"number eight"
two years before
Beneath the soft yellow of the lampshade, the small pieces which would compose the pocketwatch shone and dulled between the forceps that held them. Scattered on his leathered desk-pad were pencilled sketches with wheels and hairsprings marked and numbered. He studied the pattern before he drew his forceps along that neat arrangement and found what he had sought.
I leaned against his arm and watched the gentle flow of his hands which rose and fell like he composed a symphony written in chords of golden casings and balance screws.
"Time is a man-made construct," he told me. "In some faraway part of the universe, where little aliens babble with each other through their antennae, there might not be such a concept as time; no pocket-watches nor big grandfather clocks to guide them."
Held underneath the magnifying-glass, the intricate swirls and pattern carved into the gold plate shifted and twirled as if brought to life. He tapped the arm of his chair and I sprung forward to hold the forceps that he gifted me, because he had gotten into the habit of letting me finish his pocket-watches for him until he could seal those glittering numbers behind glass.
"But if the concept of time never existed in their world, then maybe the aliens are happier without it, because nothing ends for them – it continues. I think I much prefer how those little aliens do it," I said.
He had brewed a fresh pot of tea for us and its steam rose from its spout in licking wisps. I took the floral-patterned teacup that he had left for me and poured in the warm ochre-coloured tea and sweetened it with sugar-cubes. I swallowed a mouthful and felt its warmth trickle downward from my throat. In the jar closest to where I sat, I spotted my reflection, distorted and drawn up into horrid shapes that shifted and flowed.
"Then that explains it," he said, his hand lifting to press his thumbs against my temples. "I suspected it all along."
"Suspected what?"
"That our little Astrid was sprouting antennae of her own," he answered, "for she comes from someplace without pocket-watches and grandfather clocks."
He loosened an old notebook from between the long row of others practically welded together on his shelf and tossed it onto his desk and it bumped against a withered plant, whose petals flaked off in pairs. He brushed aside those curled, rotted petals. Then, he swivelled in his chair and placed the pocketwatch in my hands, cupped together like the pocket-watch might turn to liquid and pool downward to the hardwood flooring of his study.
"Perhaps those aliens are happier," Pogo said finally. "But there is something to be said for holding a pocket-watch in the palm of your hand and finding yourself in its ticking sound."
one week before
monday
Rainwater fell from the gutters overhead and sent onslaughts of gushing water through the street. Murky brown water slopped onto the pavement in gentle laps that touched against my shoes and swept back out again, like curling tides in an ocean. There was an awning overhead an antique store that we used for shelter and its blue material bucked and fought against the wind; its snapping corners flicked beaded rain against the nape of my neck. I remembered another night when Klaus had pinched the collar of my jumper and dropped a blind slug into the gap and the slug curled and caught on the creases and stuck against my spine and the droplets spat against my skin felt were like that; slimy and alien, wet and unpleasant in their coldness.
I felt the artificial hand of my mother wrap around mine. I glanced up at her and saw that she was smiling at the ground, nodding toward a small wooden matchbox which spun and dipped and bobbed behind tattered old shreds of newspaper and gnarled cigarette-butts in the makeshift river that ran alongside the pavement, weaving its winding path through that trash until it finally crashed against the hardened shell of a beetle wedged between some sewer-grates.
I slipped away from my mother and darted into the downpour despite her calling for me.
In the cabinets that lined the house, there were all sorts of beetles that our father had collected; foreign bugs with long-winded names, identified by splotchy patterned shells and angled pincers. I thought one had crawled out of its frame somehow and fallen into the sewers in its desperate search to find itself again. I stooped low on that pavement, though, and realised that it was not one of those beetles caught between the sewer-grates.
Instead, it turned out to be some kind of plastic wrapping that had been dented and reflected the acid-blue lights of store-fronts in its craters. I reached out, gripping its sides and yanking it out from the sewers.
The matchbox shuddered sideways and slipped into the dark pit with a saddened plop.
Clouded lumps rose on the plastic wrapping and I pressed them down with the pads of my thumbs to peer through the whiteness. It was a book, its cover made of an illustration that showed an astronaut whose colouring had faded so much that it seemed the stars of his galaxies had already exploded and scattered their stardust into other places faraway. The name of the author were chipped and worn too much to tell its letters apart. The spine was broken and lined in rough furrows, like it had been loved and cherished and lost accidentally.
I stood and turned back to my mother. The rain had eased; the monsoon had ended and her umbrella tipped toward the ground.
"What treasures have you found for me this time, Astrid?"
x
I held the book in one hand and hers in the other while we walked and I had finished the first chapter before we had even passed through the looming gates of our house. I followed her to my bedroom and read while she found fresh pyjamas for me, helped shed my sopping socks, spread toothpaste on my toothbrush, led me back toward my bed, peeled apart the sheets for me to slide in comfortably. I had read it all before I had even touched the pillows.
She reached for the string that dangled from my lamp and pulled it, flushing us both in soft yellow. She perched alongside me. There was an odd comfort in how the mattress dipped beneath her and she rested her hand on mine again. "What was your book about, sweetheart?"
"It was about this astronaut trapped alone in a spaceship that malfunctioned," I told her. "The spaceship drifts into a part of space that affects time. He meets future versions of himself. He sends out distress signals that are never answered. He runs out of supplies and the future versions of himself begin to disappear, which means that his death must happen eventually for him not to exist at all."
"How did it end?"
"He repairs the spaceship," I said, "and continues back to Earth."
She kissed my forehead again and smoothed away strands of hair. "Then I can sleep well knowing our little astronaut made it back to Earth to be with me."
x
The book slid into the ravine of creases beside my limp arms and she placed it on the bedside table moments later, switching off that light that reminded me of something distant and faint. I pretended to sleep until she shut the door and then I kicked off the bed-sheets, slipping out to reach for the satchel underneath my bed. I crept out into the hall and went to find him, because he would be waiting for me; he was always waiting there.
x
The wallpaper had peeled from around the arch and dangled in thickened strips and its curled edges rippled against the faint chill that slivered between the gaps in the cloudy windowpanes before running across the room in a whistle. The staircase was somewhat shrouded behind a fallen beam that I crouched to fit beneath, emerging on the other end through the small opening and stooping beneath sloping ceilings.
There he sat, one knee drawn against his chest upon which his arm rested, dangling languidly, turned toward the dimming light.
In the past few months of summertime, the heat had bubbled the paint on the windowsill beneath the arched window and small flakes had fluttered onto the floorboards that creaked and sighed beneath each step. I felt the rounded lumps of paint press into the flesh of my legs once I climbed onto the ledge, looking between the milky patches that fogged the glass and finding the roofs of other homes blended into the clouds. There was a tin-box on the windowsill between us; if opened, it would be filled with Polaroids and postcards bundled in rubber-bands and one spare packet of gum tucked alongside a bag of white marbles and finally a crinkled map of the world.
He looked at me and said, "What took you so long?"
"I brought you something," I told him. "I think we could put it with the other stuff, after."
Then, I handed him the book and he skimmed the blurb, turning it this way and that.
"About an astronaut," I said. "You should read it. I think you would like it."
Number Five looked up from the book and smiled at me.
x
Stooping beneath the wooden beam, I followed him out from the disused room and into the hall, taking the staircase that led toward our bedrooms. He held in the book in his left hand and often glanced its cover, his brows pinched together; his other hand was loose around mine, not at all like the warm and present touch of my mother, but more like he wanted to tether me there beside him and make sure that I would not drift off like a kite. It had been like that between us for a long time, latching onto each other with imagined rope so that one would not fly too far from the other. It had to be like that, in this house.
x
Both of us stood outside our own doors, facing each other. And he went into his room and I went into mine, and still we felt the tugging of those ropes, back and forth, back and forth.