My name is Vanya Hargreeves. And this is my story.

"Oh… sounds ominous and a good way to start her narratives."

"Unoriginal though."

"Five, don't be too harsh on her."

The first few weeks with Five was a bit… chaotic and tense, to say the least. Each Five and Elora had spent years being alone and were probably used to it. So, whenever they woke up to a body next to them, they tended to react negatively. Five, who was paranoid, almost killed her once, already aiming a knife to her throat before realizing that she was Elora and they had reunited. Elora's reaction was a bit frightening. She woke up to a corpse's face once, and it made her jumped out whenever she woke up next to Five's body.

The tension between them melted when they had a heart-to-heart. Elora, with difficulty, recalled what happened to her. Basically, she was forced to relieve her trauma, frozen by her own powers, living but not being able to move, her ice destroyed and she was freed only to find out that it was because of whatever triggered the apocalypse, spending approximately two years in a basement with barely any food and melted ice to hydrate, dug her way upwards for two months, and finally, spending six years wandering around before finding their siblings' graves and eventually Five himself. Five recounted his own journey of wandering around, finding shelters and a bad twinkie as food to finding their siblings' corpses and buried them. He did leave out the part of how he hallucinated sometimes, but Elora caught on this two days after meeting him.

As days turned to weeks, they adapted to each other's presence, even enjoying it as it meant they were no longer alone. In fact, after they had processed that the other's alive and they had each other's company, Five turned to awkwardly courting her, something Elora was more than eager to encourage and reciprocate.

It was evening, and both already had dinner when Five showed her Vanya's autobiography that he found 8 years ago. It was filled with scribbles of Five's theories and equations that he said would help them go back home in the past, but it was readable. Five told her that the book was basically Vanya outing their family's shame and all the worst qualities of each members. Elora had already known about the book, having it being read to by Luther. When asked if they wanted to read it together, Elora took a moment to decide whether or not she wanted to tell him that once upon a time, Luther read the whole book to her frozen body for three days straight.

But in doing so, she would reveal that one of their siblings did know of her situation. Their so-called leader, Number One a.k.a Luther Hargreeves. She thought "what good will it do?" Luther's dead, and she did not want Five to have a tarnished memory of their dead sibling. She also did not want Five to go ape shit crazy and swore vengeance on Luther if they ever did manage to go back in time. Moreover, whatever happened to Luther, that made his body changed from human to that of a gorilla's, must have been horrible already. She bet it was one of Mr. Hargreeves' experiments. Whatever the experiment was, it must have been painful. She didn't want to cause more pain to him, no matter how horrible he had been in participating in Mr. Hargreeves' deceit.

So, she gave him a smile, full of pretenses and pain, "I have never read that before. Frozen, remember? Let's do it!"

…We were never a real family. We were our father's creation. Family in name but not in fact…

That sentence had hit home for Elora and it still did. She had dubbed her times being part of the Umbrella Academy as "under training and tutelage of Mr. Hargreeves" never being "adopted" into a family, as there never was a family. She tried so hard to make it one. Every birthdays were celebrated, the first one openly in front of Mr. Hargreeves before they were forbidden to do so. The rest were celebrated in secret, where they would sneak out of the dorm and went to the nearest donut shop, owned by the nicest couple and their daughter.

She had lost hope in making Mr. Hargreeves to be a father. However, she tried to make them into siblings with Grace as their mother. She spent time with them individually, hoping that she might connect them somehow. Still, there was little to no warmth between them. They weren't like how she was with her parents and how she imagined herself with her could-have-been siblings. Sure, there were instances of them getting along, such as whenever Five spent his time with Vanya and Ben. But, somehow Mr. Hargreeves managed to instill a sense of rivalry between them and foster feelings of envy and a bit of hatred. As much as Vanya loved Five and Ben, she envied them for being "special" and having Mr. Hargreeves' attention. Ben was the kindest, yet Mr Hargreeves made him nurture a little bit of resentment for Allison, Luther and Five for getting Mr. Hargreeves' approval the most. Five's arrogance could have matched Luther's. His superiority complex stemmed from being told that his powers had so much potential and he could possibly be the strongest member of the Umbrella Academy by Mr. Hargreeves. Thus, Five felt himself too important and better than his siblings, making him cruelly dismissing their siblings as "inferior and useless". It also resulted in him having to butt heads with Luther often.

Allison has always been daddy's girl and she basked in the attention of being the only girl with pretenses of modesty, so she hated it when Elora arrived and ruined everything. Allison agreeing to hang out with Elora and was kind to her were probably due to guilt from using her powers to entrapped Elora or she managed to warm up to her. Whatever the reason was, it didn't matter whenever Allison would give her a cold shoulder after Mr. Hargreeves gave Elora a small approval. The piercing glare and the door shut in front of her face hurt her a little bit, as she thought they had gone past the initial hatred-at-first-sight.

She pitied Klaus. He had problems, serious problems. And Mr. Hargreeves and the rest of the Umbrella Academy did not care and sometimes cruelly thought of it as a joke. Mr. Hargreeves, the one who caused those problems, even pointed out that he was weak for having them. The other children often felt exasperated of Klaus' antics, knowing full well that they were influenced by the drugs and alcohol. Yet, they did absolutely nothing about it. Luther bossed him around by barking orders and getting angry when Klaus did not comply due to heavy intoxication. However, he never seem to want to know why Klaus was drinking and seemed "out of it" in the first place. Vanya said she adored him when he was little as he was "the sweetest". As he grew up, Vanya turned to fear him as he sprouted out cruel and vindictive words when under the influence, and Vanya was too sensitive and had fragile sense of self to hear the words "worthless", "nobody" and "outsider" in a sentence when it came to describing her. The rest could not care less and tend to avoid Klaus, even Ben as he did not want to receive a disapproval looks from Mr. Hargreeves. If only Elora had money and could physically went against Mr. Hargreeves' wishes, she would try to get him into therapy and rehab.

Don't let her get started on Diego and Luther. Their rivalry and hostility had gone past the inner-thoughts of discontent and petty show of bitterness to actually physical fights. Mr. Hargreeves actually encouraged their fighting, as it could be counted as "training". When Diego lost, as he would always do most of the time, Mr. Hargreeves reinforced his jealousy and resentment to Luther, by praising Luther and reminding Diego why he was Number 2. It also inflated Luther's ego further and reinforced his arrogance and his notion that he was a hero and it was more important than being part of a family. Thus, it gave Luther more reason that he was their leader and it was his rights to boss them around.

Speaking of Luther, Elora herself had complicated feelings for him. Complicated as in she did not know whether to hate him or to like him. On one hand, she was grateful that he spent his time reading her books, talking to her about the news and recent events and putting on beautiful music when she was frozen. On the other hand, she hated him and Pogo for complying to Mr. Hargreeves' wishes to keep her condition a secret. It was typical of Luther, naïve enough to listen to what Mr. Hargreeves said about how "this is for the good of the world" and "it was the right thing to do" and heartless enough to prefer playing hero instead of saving her. She thought her times spent with him were enough to make him more sympathetic.

She thought wrong.

…Our brother, Five disappeared when we were only thirteen years old. I was worried about him. To this day, he never return. Others fear that he had died, but I knew better. Five had always been resourceful and he had powers. I am certain he survived. Though I envy him, having checked out of this family so long ago…

"Did you know, when you disappeared, she left the lights on for you cuz she's scared you would come back and the house would be dark and you wouldn't be able to find us so you'd leave again?" Elora turned to Five and found him giving her small sad smile. "She also made little snacks and left them on the floor, worried that you'd be hungry. Pogo stepped on some of them."

"Did she? What snacks?"

"Peanut-butter and Marshmallow sandwich, of course."

"Oh, man, I miss that the most. When we get back, I'll have that for every meal."

Elora smiled sadly at the emphasize of the word "when". She truly hoped that both of them could go back in time.

…Another one disappeared. This time, it was Elora. One day, father came to us and told us that Elora just vanished into thin air. No further explanation. Most of us were suspicious father had involvement in her disappearance. Diego was the only one vocal about it, but was quickly shut down by father. I miss her to this day, but if she ran away from home, then I'm glad she got out…

"None of the others knew you were frozen, huh?"

"Yeah, no one knew about it." She hoped she had schooled her expression enough that it wouldn't give away that she was obviously lying.

"Dad never try to get you out of there?"

"He did. But, as you can see, nothing worked."

"Why didn't he just bring in Luther? He could probably destroy it with a single punch."

Elora stopped herself from reacting instinctively towards that statement. She didn't want to give away the fact that Mr. Hargreeves did try that once. She tried to come up with an excuse. "I heard him once said that the last weapon they tried on me was stronger than Luther. And it did not work." Elora was thankful that Five wasn't looking at her, but at a small dot in a distance, perfectly occupying his thoughts on various ways he could maim, possibly kill, Mr. Hargreeves. This way, he wouldn't know that Elora was obviously lying.

"Did Pogo knew?"

A small part of her, perhaps justified, would like to scream out "Yes!" out loud. That part hated Pogo for turning away when she looked to him for help and doing next to nothing to aid her. Yes, he did protest Mr. Hargreeves, but that happened when she already relieved the experiences of drowning. He was an accomplice, perfectly aware of how horrible the situation was, but still agreed to assist Mr. Hargreeves. Moreover, she could not lie to Five that Pogo had nothing to do with it as the monkey was quite literally joined at the hip with Mr. Hargreeves. Every schemes, every plans and every intentions Mr. Hargreeves came up with, would most certainly be known by Pogo.

That small part won. "Yes, he did."

"Bastards. Both of them." Five had thought of ways he could maim Mr. Hargreeves and Pogo. When he went back in time, he would make sure both of them paid for what they had done. He just had to make sure he went back in the right time, before Father's death.

…In the end, after our brother Ben had died, there was really nothing connecting us. We were just strangers living under the same roof, destined to be alone, starved for attention, damaged by our upbringing and haunted by what might have been...

When she heard those words of how one of her brothers died, specifically Ben, she was devastated. She wanted to mourn his death properly by visiting his grave and filling it with chrysanthemum because it was his favourite flower. For years, she thought of why Ben had died. A part of her wondered if it was because of her siblings' lack of areal observation that made him possibly died accidentally. She knew how her siblings sometimes too focused on the enemies that they forgot what or who was impacted by their powers.

At the moment, she had to feign surprise. After all, she could not half-assed this "acting like I don't know about the book" thing. "Ben died?!" Elora shouted, shocked by the revelation, "Will it later explain how he died?"

"No, just vague explanation of how it was Luther and Father's fault. And Father had blamed the group for it."

It was Luther's fault?! Now she regretted having to save his sorry ass from Five's wrath. Before she wanted to confess the whole truth, about how Luther actually knew where she was and did absolutely nothing about it, even going along with Mr. Hargreeves' plans, the next words uttered by Five made her stop in her tracks.

"When I get back, I'm gonna break both of that son of a bitch's arms. Probably both of his legs too."

Five would have killed Luther if Elora had let him in on her secret. So, begrudgingly, she only nodded, and tried to calm him down so he wouldn't even think of desecrating Luther's grave.

"I wonder if he died because of that thing inside of him…" Five thought out loud. It did grieve him when he read that his brother died, but he couldn't help but to theorize what might have caused his demise. Elora did not give him an answer, too frightened to think of possible reasons why her brother was deceased.

… We all wanted to be loved by a man incapable of giving love. Our father never missed an opportunity to remind me that I was ordinary. A hard thing for a little girl to hear. If you're raised to believe nothing about you is special, if the benchmark is extraordinary, what do you do if you're not?

Luna Motor Lodge Motel, March 27th 2019, 21.27 PM

Klaus hears the tell-tale sign of his kidnappers coming back from whatever they're doing now that they know Five's been lurking around the Meritech Lab. A small part of him, buried under the feelings of withdrawal, worries about his brother. Is he dead? Those guys are pretty relentless in their pursuit of him and from the looks of it, he was to be captured dead or alive. But then again, Five has always been tough and resourceful. Maybe the little guy managed to evade them or something. At the moment all he can ever think about is getting out of this closet. He doesn't want another flashback to the times he spent trapped in the mausoleum.

He whimpers as the door of the closet opens and the lights from the room blinded his vision for a bit. Thank god. The room was suffocating him. He almost wants to run towards his captors and give them hugs and kisses. Almost, since he's tied to the chair he's currently sitting, is suffering from withdrawals, and those guys destroyed his drugs after promising to give them to him. The torture foreplay was nothing but touching his stash was a big no no.

"Oh, my God, he's still here." Duh, asshole! Where else am I gonna be? I can't just teleport myself outta here. I'm no Five!

The guy— what was his name again? Oh yeah Henry— drags his chair out of the closet and closer to the room's door. Damn! What now? Klaus whimpers and groans, tired of all these kidnapping shenanigans. He just wants to get back to the house and pops down as many drugs as he can find in his bedroom with one of Dad's expensive wine. He looks up to his captors' face, finally seeing their real face, behind those goofy masks. Yikes! Maybe the masks are there for a reason.

Those last words were actually spoken by him behind the tape they put on his mouth.

"What's he saying?" Hans turns to his partner.

His partner, Cherry takes away the tape, along with it, some of Klaus' mustache and beard. Shit! There'd better be no bald patches. His beard is part of his charm.

"What are you sayin'?"

"You guys are scarier without the mask." That earns him a slap across the face by Chelsea.

"That's no way to say hello to your old friends, is it?"

He lets out an exasperated groan, "Can we call it a night? I already gave you what you wanted. Just please… Please let me go. Please."

"Well, technically, we want your brother. Is your brother here now?"

Klaus lets out an amused chuckle as he turns out Ben, who's laying on his side on one of the beds, winking at him, "You're gonna have to be a little more specific on that."

That earns him another slap by Charice. Damn! She must have been jacked behind those suits since every slap he received from her hurts more than from Harry.

"Ow! I told you already. He's not coming." A sad truth, but the truth nonetheless. "No one will." Klaus knows how little his siblings care for him. None of them will ever come looking for him if he ever goes missing. They would just assume that if he's not home in three days, he must have died from overdosed somewhere in the ditch.

"You wanna know who you should kidnap to get Five's attention?" he says, trying to turn back to his kidnappers, who look at him with interest. There was no playful tone in that sentence, so perhaps this is the one thing he's ever said that is serious. Klaus himself wants to blurt out that kidnapping the huge chunk of ice by the fireplace in the living room will definitely get Five go crazy looking for it, but he never want to hurt Elora. The feeling of withdrawal does not cloud his judgement, his affection for his sister and the little bit of empathy left. Moreover, Ben is glaring daggers at him from across the room. He doesn't want to face Ben's ire, neverminded the fact that Ben is a ghost and cannot physically harm him.

"Well, who, nimrod?"

The serious look on his face turns to mischievous again, "A legless bald mannequin called Dory something Debbie something, I forgot. She's Five fuckbuddy, or something, I don't know the logistics. But I don't blame him, she was pretty gorgeous for an object—"

This time both Hector and Cindy slap him on both side of his face. Fuck, that hurt like a bitch. He's glad though. That means, they thought he was playing with them and won't further question who they can kidnap to get Five's attention. El will be safe from these brutes. That's all that matters.

"Well, whatever. You're gonna have to make do. Number Five knows now. We left him a message. And when he comes for you, we'll be ready." They turn him to the door and assume the positions for ambush. Klaus lets out a whimper and a sob as another memory of Father not letting him out of the mausoleum came to mind. He tries to forget of the many screams and moans of spirits haunting that place, but he cannot. He vaguely hears Ben asking him a question as he repeatedly whimpers the word "No".

Shit, he feels the drugs effects on his body left as he can hear a Russian muttering. Unless his captors can speak Russian or Ben suddenly manage to learn that language in his spare time whenever he's not following him around, then that means his powers are no longer suppressed. The spirits are back and he's gonna have to hear all their tormented screams and whining again.

Think happy thoughts. Think of something that will distract you.

He tries to think of his favourite songs and the sound of a waterfall, but nothing works. Suddenly, he hears a voice. A voice he has long forgotten, perhaps repressed in the back of his mind. A voice from a memory, precious to him, calling out his name gently.

Klaus!

"Klaus! Can you hear me?"

13 year-old Klaus slowly stepped away from the corner of the mausoleum he tend to stay in whenever Father put him there. This time was because he was "lacking in training so he had to make up for it." He was going through a withdrawal since he did not have enough money to buy some more from one of his 'friends'. Dad must have been a psychic knowing when Klaus was sober enough for him to suffer through one of these types of training.

The voice came from the outside and by the sound of it, it was a girl. It was also very familiar. He tried to think back on where he could recall this voice. His mind came up to the many instances of a 13 year-old girl, the same age as him, with dark hair and blue eyes, coming up to his room just to have a chat with him and scold him for using drinking or getting high. It was El. What was she doing here, in the middle of the night?

"Klaus! Are you there? Can you hear me? It's El! I'm outside!"

"El! What are you doing here? It's night! You could get into trouble if he found out you sneaked out!"

"Luther told me father put you here sometimes as an exercise to overcome your fear." She paused for a moment, "I told him it was cruel and fathers shouldn't do that to his children, but you know how Luther is."

"So?"

"I wanna come here and keep you company. Luther said you hear voices from the dead, right? And that makes you scared? Well, don't worry! I just need you to focus on mine while I read this book."

Klaus cried a little at that. He never thought he would receive such kindness, especially from someone who was nothing more than a stranger to him just a couple of months ago. He was glad that she would always want to hang out with him. But he thought that was merely because she was lonely. Here she was, going out of her way, possibly risking severe punishment, just to ease his suffering.

"Dad'll punish you if he sees you here."

"Don't worry about it! I'm pretty observant. If I see any movements in the distance, I'll run away as fast as I can."

He doubted she could do that. A part of him wanted to tell her to go back to the house and just stay there so she wouldn't get into trouble. But another part, the more dominant one, wanted her to stay, no matter how selfish it sound. Well, we'll see how true her words are.

"Thank you… Thank you, El!" he cried out loud, no longer holding back his tears. He repeated the words "thank you" as he sobbed, full of snots. He was glad El couldn't see how gross he looked at that moment.

"It's nothing. Ok, here we go… It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife…"

…However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered as the rightful property of someone or other of their daughters…

He hears the warm voice reading, and mispronouncing, the words from one of Jane Austen's infamous books. Turns out, Elora was in fact observant and she could run fast enough. Granted, the graveyard was close to the house, so the feat wasn't exactly impossible. Or she must have taken a shortcut. He didn't remember any shortcuts, but that was probably because he did not pay attention whenever they went to and from that place.

After two incidents of her alone accompanying him whenever he was put into the mausoleum, she then brought a friend. Well, it was actually more of the friend was there on his own accords instead of Elora dragging him to keep her company while she read to Klaus. It was Five, and he was there because "it was dangerous for El to go out in the middle of the night cuz there are creeps, Klaus!" and "it's faster if I teleport her to the house if Dad's coming, Klaus!". Klaus scoffed fondly at that memory. The little shit could not have been more obvious on his crush. He wanted to teasingly point that out, but he was afraid that he would piss off Five so much that he took away El. Besides, he was glad he got to hear two voices now: one reading to him and one correcting the many mispronunciation the other did.

I used excerpts of Vanya's books from the both the movies and the comics. I have never read the comics completely, having only read the first two issues. This fanfic will be based on the tv series, not the comics. Although, there are few changes or inclusions based on the comics.

Bonus, here's an excerpt of Reggie's notes about El :

Extraordinary prospects. Limitless boundaries. Unfortunately, was crippled by human emotions and sentimentality. A shame and a waste of potentials.

There are some changes from the previous chapter. It was the last conversation of Luther and Five. I'm really sorry about that.

I am really sorry that I could not update fast enough. I had promised to update twice a week, but I'm sorry to say that I can no longer do that. Mind you, I will finish this fic. I already have a rough idea on how it will go and how many chapters will it be.

Again, I'm looking for a beta-reader. If anyone is interested, please message me. English is my second language, sorry if there are grammatical errors. See you in the next chapter.