31 March 2019
Morning had broken by the time Harold and Vanya had arrived at the Greenpoint Terminal warehouses, where they lay resting out there in the rust-coloured corners of Brooklyn. Ramshackled and indisposed, the old dilapidated buildings hadn't changed much since the last time they had been there, all those years ago. Rubble littered the place just as it had always done and a variety of fire pits & rumpled cardboard slats told of the drifters who occasionally called this place home.
Bringing the car to screeching halt as close to the building as he could get, Harold then had the joy of dragging Vanya's body from the vehicle, through the chink in the chain-link fence and over to the former tobacco warehouse in question. In doing so, he found that he was glad that it was early enough that no one was out and about yet, but not so early that he couldn't see what he was doing. Because on the one hand, a limp body was a pain in the ass to move by oneself, but on the other, if she had been conscious she would have surely fought back (at least as far as the cocktail of drugs would allow), making it infinitely harder.
The tobacco warehouse where they had first met—the illustrious Shed Number Seven—no longer looked like a scene from some dystopian coming-of-age film ruined by wayward teenagers; one that had been poorly hidden by streamers and crates or painted over with vomit and spilt booze. Instead it had been painted in an altogether new spray of foliage and yet, he could still picture it like it was yesterday. Fresh out of the juvenile detention centre, a young Harold had strategically placed himself in the posh boarding school with the youngest & (supposedly) ordinary Hargreeves child.
If he closed his eyes, he could hear the pounding bass of some noughties song that had played the soundtrack to the start of a dream come true. It was here, surrounded by his newest classmates that he had finally captured her attention, keeping her close as he started the first step in a very long and time consuming plan to infiltrate the Umbrella Academy. Vanya was supposed to be the gullible & naive one, the easiest to access & manipulate; so he had pushed her up against the battered crates and marginally cleaner walls so that he could devour every inch of her. It was here that he had inhaled her very essence and departed from her, leaving her with the one thing that would guarantee his acceptance into the respected academy just as he so desired.
But that was then and this was now. Now, the warehouse was filled with all kinds of flora (both human and not) that bloomed in & out of every crevice, every nook & cranny that he could see was plugged with nature's very own mossy plaster. The wayward sleeping bags huddled off to the side and childish etchings that littered the walls suggested that this place was no longer the party house it had once been, but instead the sanctuary of some runaway LANE kids or the occasional drifter just passing through. At least, he assumed that this makeover was the result of the LANEs because the warehouse was so overgrown that it had been turned into a fantastical forestry in just thirteen short years. Harold was sure that this was the perfect final resting place for the White Violin.
Mercifully, Shed Number Seven was empty on that cold morning that Harold dragged Vanya inside, because he didn't particularly feel like adding to his work load where he would have of had to get rid of the added baggage had that not been the case. Instead, he simply hauled her unconscious and listless body inside, laid her out in the middle of the room on a pallet of cardboard slats that he had shoved together and then moved to gather the rest of his tools. He was more than ready for the final steps of his lifelong plan to begin.
Harold had always known that he was special, even if the rest of the world refused to see it and when his son had been born—born with abilities so astounding—he knew that the boy—this extension of himself—would soon take the world by storm and hand to him, his father, what he desired most in this world. But then Vanya had to go and ruin everything; everything that he had ever built, ever crawled through the mud for. Which is why he had taken her. With Vanya gone and the elder Hargreeves preoccupied with their late father's death Theodore would have only one other option to turn to and that was him. But that time had passed and Theodore hadn't come to him, leaving Harold feeling bitter and more alone than he had in years. It was then that he decided that Vanya had now outlived her usefulness.
Humming pleasantly as he worked, Harold soon returned with a variety of tools and a mental checklist in his head that he made sure to go through in order to pull this task off successfully. Latex gloves were snapped tightly around his wrists as he went about upping Vanya's dosage before he lay her out on the makeshift grave. Some sort of sense of decorum within him insisted that he dress up Vanya for her last day on God's green Earth, which is why he had wrestled her into a white dress (it, being the easiest piece of clothing that he could suffer to put her in whilst she was like this) and tucked her beloved white violin (the one that he had swung by her apartment to pick up) into her grasp.
Shallow breaths made her chest rise & fall as her eyes flickered excitedly back & forth beneath her lids, letting him know that even though she was outwardly docile now, inwardly was another story. And for what he planned to do, he only a small window in which to complete those other steps. With Vanya otherwise preoccupied, Harold then moved onto clearing the car of any lingering trace of the violinist, before he lit up one of the many old petrol barrels (empty of course) to dispose of his blood-stained clothes and pull out the change of fresh ones (from his Go-Bag) that he would swap into once the deed was done.
Pulling out a burner phone that he had bought in bulk at one point in time, he spent a few awkward minutes shoving the SD card into its tiny slot before turning on the device and dialling the number he had already memorised as he pitched his voice just so; ready to give the performance of a lifetime. All he had ever wanted to do was be a family again; for it to be father and son against the world—taking the world by storm and putting it to rights! But that didn't happen; it would never happen and all because of them. So, Harold did the next best thing; because if he couldn't have them, then no one could.
"LANE Keepers Hotline, how may we help you?"
"Hi, uh, we're at ISHMAEL'S TOWING SERVICE and there's this kid who just walked passed he looks like that LANE from the news! Y'know, the one that blew up the school?"
"Okay, and where are they right now?"
"He just went into that big building down the street—y'know, the one with all the umbrellas on it?"
"Do you mean, D.S. UMBRELLA MANUFACTURING COMPANY?"
"No, no, it's the one 'cross the street from the donut store—GRIDDY'S—uh, I think it's that old hero academy? Y'know, the one where that billionaire died?"
"And you're SURE that it's him?"
"Uh huh! He looked JUST like that kid from the news! He had the pink cast on and everything!"
"Okay, don't worry, sir and please remain calm. A unit has been sent to your location; they'll be there shortly. In the meantime, remember to stay clear of the area and do NOT confront him! The LANE Keepers are MORE than capable to take care of these LANEs; they are here to HELP"
"O-okay, thank you"
"This is Theodore Hargreeves, please leave a message after the beep"
BEEP~
"Teddy, this is your doro. Your vera has a surprise for you!
Meet us at the old Greenpoint Terminal Warehouse; Shed #7.
Oh, and Happy 13th Birthday!"
With the bait laid for Theodore, Harold then moved onto dealing with Vanya. By this point, she had long outlived her usefulness and he needed to deal with that. Slipping the straps of his leather woodworking apron over his head, Harold spent a few precious minutes fiddling with the strings before he went to fetch his precious hammer (not the exact one that he had used before—that one had been taken as evidence—but one of the same brand).
"Don't worry, Vanya" Harold knelt and bent to press a chaste kiss against her lips, "It'll all be over soon" With a final goodbye, Harold sat back on his heels and raised the hammer high in the air. He was doing her a favour, taking her away from this life and away from this pain. Once she was free, there would be no more running, no more hiding, no more fear.
WHACK!
The hammer rained ruthlessly down upon her temple. Both claw & face ruthlessly striking against her skull until blood began to pool beneath them and brain matter splattered itself over everything that it could reach. Inwardly, Harold was glad that he had forgone changing into his spare change of clothes just yet, but this was a messy process.
WHACK!
Loralite flooded her veins as the Lien du Lorne [Bond of the Forsaken] between Harold & Vanya was finally rejected, causing pain to rack her frail frame. Clearly close to death, Vanya's Legacies bubbled to the surface as Harold rained down blows upon her unconscious form in an instinctual and last ditch effort to protect herself. They ripped themselves free from their mortal coil with the force of a hurricane and pulsed outwards in waves like that of her weakly beating heart.
WHACK!
But it was too late. Where a dream started, so too, should it end.
WHACK!
Drugged up like this and trapped within a prison of her Lorne's own making, Vanya felt like she was back in the bunker—back in the basement—with her father and those damn pills. So cold and so alone. Stuck inside four walls—four soundproofed walls—with only a bed and her own thoughts to keep her company. Occasionally, her days would be interrupted by Grace or Pogo coming downstairs to deliver her food, water & pills and those were the days she longed for. But it was the ones when her Father came down expecting her to have changed, that she dreaded the most; they were also the most frequent. It was like he expecting that throwing something against a brick wall would eventually make something stick. And it did eventually, but only with the aid of Allison's Rumour.
Behind her eyelids, she could still picture herself trapped inside those four dark walls and her younger self mirrored in the tiny pane of glass embedded into the door; her one link to the outside world. "They're all still afraid of us—of our powers—even after all of these years" The ghostly image of young Vanya sneered.
"…Y-you're not real" Vanya shook her head, trying her hardest to decipher the difference between what was real and what wasn't which was a hard thing to do considering the pain racking her frail body.
"We abandoned Theodore" She pursued.
"Because he's safer without us" It hurt to admit, but it was true. As long as Harold was near, Theodore would always be in trouble; which is why she hadn't really fought back against her captor before now.
"We hurt Harold"
"Because he wanted to use us" Just like Father; but just like Father, Vanya had loved him, once upon a time. Maybe not as a lover like she had first thought, but perhaps as a friend (She would say a brother, but that would be weird).
"We killed Allison"
"Because she lied to us!" Venom coloured her tone, filling her soul with a fierceness that only her sister seemed to rouse from within her.
"Not about EVERYTHING"
"What are you talking about?" Vanya sneered, hoping that her disdain was obvious. After everything that Allison had done to her, after every blight placed against her, her perfect sister was still somehow in the right? How the fuck was that fair?!
"You know" Young Vanya drew herself up to her fullest height, puffing out her chest with chin tilted in defiance. "You ALWAYS know! Our family, the Keepers; they're JUST like Father! Driven to keep us down; a MUTED voice, ISOLATED from the rest of the family, NEVER in the limelight, NEVER the center of attention. It will NEVER end! Not until WE act!"
"…But-but they're our family!"
"They FEAR you now; just like EVERYBODY else" She refuted, "You're just another DANGEROUS LANE to be put down! They're gonna put you back in the ground and keep you in there FOREVER!"
"…No" Vanya whimpered pitifully, already hating the idea.
"Do you remember what it was like? Staring at those grey walls hour after hour, day after day whilst THEY played together? Do you wanna live like this again?"
"No, no, no! I—I can't move! I—I can't breathe!"
"Does your LORNE's rejection make you THAT weak?"
"N-no!"
"Do you WANNA die?"
"NO!"
"Then do SOMETHING about it! EMBRACE who we are, who we've ALWAYS been; who we've been ALL along!"
BOOM!
Vanya—drugged to the gills—jolted only once; just enough to frighten Harold back onto his haunches before the waves of lumen exploded outwards and burnt through anything in her closest proximity. Not that she seemed to care much. And as she lay dying in her catatonic state, Vanya found herself turning reminiscent as the Lien du Lorne bled from her heart in ebbing waves of blue. Loralite flooded her veins turning her into a marbled figure as pain racked her body and the lumen emanating from her frail body mirrored that of her weakly beating heart, she found herself wondering what would have of happened if she had never chosen Harold Jenkins-slash-Leonard Peabody as her Lorne all those years ago.