Saturday, November 23 1963, 7:57 pm
It's strange to look towards a horizon to which you don't belong.
I've often thought about this, without saying it out loud, since my smashing arrival in 1961. For this was not my time, even though I did everything I could to feel at home. This is what I tell myself again, now that my gaze wanders to the icy meadow where all the bodies of the Commission's agents have been 'cleaned out', by their own organization.
Night is falling on Texas, with its colors of azure and ochre. Over the fields that feed Dallas, and beyond. So many souls live here, unaware of all we've just been through. Even more oblivious to all the challenges humanity will continue to impose on its own species and environment, in the decades to come. It's a crazy world. But in hindsight, I like it.
I take an intangible, invisible step onto the terrace that runs along the front of the Cooper farmhouse, behind Viktor's back, who is looking in the same direction as me, sitting on the steps. Slowly, I take a deep breath, enjoying my returned senses. I can smell the soil again, the hay, and even the bitter scent of the grapeshot that rained here during the day. On my skin, the cold lingers, even if Harlan's heart has calmed down. He has rested in his small, fortunately untouched room and eaten decently. Sissy and Viktor stayed with him for a long time. And I guessed that the latter had managed to free him from the 'marigolds' that had passed between them.
This calm could almost seem paradoxical, at the end of this day. But when I came to in the barn, I knew in a flash that The Handler had been neutralized. That Lila had bolted, in a way that didn't surprise me, but left Diego heartbroken. I learned that the Swede had turned tail.
That time had indeed resumed its course.
That Five had obtained a briefcase.
And that this sunset would be our last here.
Yes, it really is strange to look towards a horizon to which you don't belong. And yet, I have cherished them, those hard and excluding sixties, yet exalted by the immeasurable hope given by a few. The proto-hippies, the very first nerds, the dreamers, the poets, the activists. And those who accepted that they were simply - humbly - human. Some of them - no doubt - have changed me for life and timelines.
I'm thinking of Mark and Wayne tonight. To all the 'Children', especially Kitty and Jill, Timothy and Allen, and even Priscilla. I think of Lloyd: I don't blame him. I also imagine Ray - alone tonight - in the house he shared with Allison, who now returns to her daughter. To Sissy, who has finally made the choice to stay in this era.
And I'm thinking of Dave.
Just like Klaus, still inside the devastated living room behind me.
More than anyone who lived through 1963, he left his mark on my short life here, although being just seventeen. Not for what another version of him had been for Klaus, no. For what he is already - here and now.
Klaus and I both know: by now, if he hasn't changed his mind, Dave should be boarding one of the vehicles parked outside the Avon Street recruiting office. As on every Saturday, the blue Air Force bus will carry off the young recruits, including the aspiring Sky Soldiers, their crest still tattooed on Klaus's shoulder. The skull, the rifle, the palm leaf. But this minibus is never the only one parked there. Right alongside it, a red bus takes young Marines to both similar and different fates. Another kind of involvement in the Vietnam War, in particular. And in this moment, as I walk back through the living room wall, I know what Klaus is thinking about, as he drops his smile of nostalgia, sorrow and hope.
He's wondering - as I am - which of the two buses Dave will be boarding.
I come closer, amid the devastation of what was only yesterday Sissy's living room, now merely a vast sieve, riddled with bullet holes. Walking immaterially, through a heap of collapsed rubble, over to the sofa where Klaus sits on the floor beneath the half-crumpled frame. I stand there for a moment, until he quits his recollection. Then I crouch down beside him, and just make tangible what I need to talk to him.
"Five says we're leaving in less than fifteen minutes," I tell him as he lets the dog-tags dangle from his neck again, and he sighs with a form of relief.
"There you are. For a moment, I thought you'd started ghosting me again."
Paradoxically, he was less worried when I was a ghost. Because he could see me, and even track me if I was out of his field of vision. But now, there's nothing of spectral energy left in me that he could detect. I'm lurking on the border between matter and energy, saving my power as much as I can. And I'm alive.
"I'm saving my strength to materialize myself entirely when the time comes to set off. If it's anything like with the vortex back in 2019, I don't want to risk leaving a piece of me behind here."
I'll save on visibility: I'll just make myself material when Five activates the briefcase. And Klaus understands it, because he nods slowly. Without seeing me, but speaking to the source of my voice.
"Will your body be exactly the same as before, when you rematerialize it?" he asks, and I gasp with laughter.
"Why, is there something you might miss?"
He shrugs, letting a hint of innocence sweep away some of his wistful sadness.
"I don't know. You could have taken the opportunity to update yourself. Ben was letting himself age."
He can't see it, but I blink. I'd always wondered why Ben hadn't kept the teenager's features under which he'd died. But now I get it. I understood that his desire to carry on existing with his siblings had unconsciously caused his spectral appearance to evolve.
"No," I say with a faint smile that he doesn't see, but hears.
Klaus knows everything about me, including my complexes, including my dysphoria. And yet, in this moment, I feel nothing but the desire to return, exactly to the state I was in before all this.
"I think you'll find me identical down to the tattoo. Even the one I thought I'd regretted."
He laughs softly, as we hear the others begin to gather outside on the balcony.
"Then you'll be like one of those old cars that gets a new body. You can't tell the difference, even if there's nothing left of the original."
And he squints, both exhausted and joyful.
"But are you sure you don't even want a few extra centimetres? I would have grown a few."
"Not in height, I suppose."
We giggle in a silly way, as we've done so often, and then he looks out of the window, even though the sun is now completely down. Outside, the night is dark and icy. And if all goes according to plan, we won't see the dawn break on the '63 Texas.
It's the end of something.
With the certainty that we've changed, even if we go back to where we came from. Well, almost. In a future where Reginald Hargreeves has had proof before his eyes that Viktor was able to control his power in a decent way, where he may not have subjected him to the ostracization and suffocation that led to the first Apocalypse. It's a gamble, that Five is risking, for sure. But I have this hope of seeing The City unscathed: Argyle Park, Hargreeves Mansion. I have some kind of faith that we won't arrive in the middle of a devastated world.
And to see Granny again.
"Too bad we're leaving just before bell-bottom pants become fashionable..." Klaus sighs as he stands up and stretches like a cat.
"Mmm, you've never refrained from wearing them."
He adjusts his long black coat, and strides across the living room, over the lampshade and debris of Texan furniture. Left behind, the battered record player will play no more: Sissy and Harlan have just left this place to start a fresh life in New Mexico. And Klaus chuckles softly:
"I also wish I'd lived on a farm like this. You know? Close to nature... with meatloaf, nooners in the straw and farm-fair binge drinking. Oh, and sexy fringed leather jackets."
What a pile of clichés, which also omits much of the ordinary intolerance of communities here, which recently earned him a good punch in the face. But I burst out laughing, which is good for both of us.
"Hey, you're the one who refused to buy a cowboy hat on the way to Baja. It actually looked good on you..."
He laughs briefly, then stops, looking right through me. This simple memory brings everything back to him, all at once: the dust under Priscilla's wheels, the rooftop evenings, the meandering Colorado Delta. The sleepless nights of Rio. Snippets of Destiny, under Iceland's northern lights. The colorful markets in Delhi, the winding roads to Rishikesh, even though he had puked. The yoga postures in the ashrams. All the energies and the people we crossed.
Our lives are made up of encounters, choices, and consequences.
We don't know what the outcome of our time here will be. But I don't think we should have any regrets about what we've experienced. In fact, we've grown up a bit in the last few years. Since our first days on the road, and that hat he refused to buy.
"Klaus, Rin, we're setting sail".
With these simple words, as we head outside, Five has just made this departure more real than ever. On the snow-sprinkled grass at the front of the farmhouse, he adjusts the briefcase as we gather around. He looks briefly for me, to check if I've followed, so I discreetly clear my throat beside him, to let him know I'm here.
Boy, it's still freezing. And I'm all the more eager to get back to The City's permanently humid weather.
"Everyone is ready?"
"Let's do it, yeah".
"Okay".
That's all it takes for me to summon up all the strength I've managed to save. Even though I remain invisible, for the first time since my 'Klaus-like mishap' I feel my whole body rematerialize. With a kind of joy - even euphoria - mixed with the prospect of going home. Five had promised it, and it seems he's finally about to make it. Like Ulysses, he's bringing his crew safely back home.
'Oikade'.
"All right," Diego whispers as I place a hand on Viktor's shoulder, and another on Klaus's. But the latter exclaims, with a quick step back:
"Wait!"
He raises his eyebrows, more touched than I expected by this departure and the conversation we've just had. Then he scurries off one last time in the direction of the house balcony... and unhooks a cowboy hat from a planter, left behind in the wake of Sissy. I smile in the shadows, while Diego jokes about abandoning her here. But he wouldn't: not ever. I'm sure of that now. Fortunately, Klaus can't hear him and returns, proud as a texan rooster, adjusting his new favorite headgear.
I put my fully tangible hands back on the shoulders of my fellow time-travelers. About to be carried away by the means of a briefcase I know nothing about, but with infinite trust in Five, and basically in the future.
A few more seconds will tell us if we've done the right thing.
*Click!*
A single touch activates the device. Such a simple sound, but it means so much to us. I look up one last time at the black Texan sky, as an electric crackle echoes the energy all around, bending space-time. I take a deep, quiet breath, my last one here.
Because - yes - it's strange to look towards a horizon to which you don't belong.
But who you do it with makes all the difference.
*Swip!*
.
.
-
"April 2, 2019".
The first thing I see when I open my eyes again, as Five reads the date from the newspaper picked up from the round table in the entrance hall, is the black-and-white tiled floor punctuated by small square tiles. The orange light of the wall lamps. And the daylight filtering through the stained-glass windows of the front door. The smell of the place seizes me. That of waxed woodwork, of antique tapestries and of Grace's kitchen.
Hargreeves Mansion.
No rubble, no collapse, no desolation. Would I have believed it? Being back in this suffocating chiaroscuro is bringing tears to my eyes.
We did. We're back the day after the first Apocalypse, which - as a matter of fact - didn't happen.
I can barely hear Klaus marvelling at the idea that we've finally accomplished something successfully. I hardly realize that everyone is exulting and dragging me - invisible but material - towards the beautiful moorish and art-deco living room. I'm in a state of shock, struggling to realize. Stunned. Subjected to the unsettling impression that - perhaps - I've been dreaming for the last few years of my life. Have we really lived it all, or only fantasized it? But Diego's voice suddenly brings me back to myself.
"Why is there a painting of Ben over the mantelpiece?"
This question immediately makes my stomach churn, as I uncross the arms I've been clutching to my invisible chest. Klaus jostles me as he hurries back from the bar where he was already rummaging, and all our gazes converge on the wall. Diego is right. There, instead of the portrait of Five that once adorned the living room, it's Ben's face that stares back at us out of oil paint. Young. Dignified. Ectopic.
Deep down, I already know something's wrong.
"I knew you'd show up eventually".
An icy shiver runs up my spine. That voice - now - I'd recognize it anywhere. Ever since the 'light supper', it has haunted my thoughts: its advice and remarks perfusing my mind, like a tenacious opiate. Older, all goatee and grey hair, Reginald Hargreeves is alive and well, peering at us through his monocle in his blue suit.
"You're alive..."
As inside all of us, I can feel the baffled energy almost choking Luther's words in his throat.
"Why shouldn't I be?"
"Yeah. Y-yeah, you're right. I'm just happy that we're home and... together again".
There's little sincerity in the words of the man who was once Number One, and has now nothing but resentment towards the man who used him, then rejected him. But Reginald Hargreeves sweeps his feeling away with a flick of his moustache. There's something different in his gaze though, although I can't define what.
"Home? This isn't your home".
Allison stands frozen next to Viktor.
"What are you talking about? This is the Umbrella Academy".
And Hargreeves protests, looking up.
"Wrong again. This is the ~Sparrow~ Academy".
At that word, my stomach twists. Maybe it's because I understand the implications, because the stark reality is sinking into my very core: the one that screams at all of us that if we are indeed in 2019, we are not in ~our~ reality. But there's more, probably because I'm standing just below the gallery where Pogo once revealed to me that Reginald Hargreeves had always had intentions about me.
A man who manipulated destinies, triggering events and then letting the causal chains unfold. A brilliant mind who loved Shakespeare, to the point of forcing his children to study his work. A lover of well-chosen quotations, whose favorite lines were spelled out by the old chimpanzee. Those Shakespearean words, I've never been able to forget, even if I was devastated that day: a parable of destiny taken from Hamlet, which I'm afraid is today painfully coming to its full meaning.
"Not a whit, we defy augury. There's a special providence in the fall of a sparrow. If it be now, 'tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come. The readiness is all".
What is to come? For what purpose is Hargreeves getting so ready? As these words pound on my conscience - against the glare of the stained-glass windows in the gallery upstairs - five unknown figures appear, and another from the side of the bar, at our level. The latter is more familiar, albeit with a completely different demeanor, making Klaus stop just as I sensed he was about to take a step.
Ben.
With an improbable little prick haircut, a ridiculous tiny moustache, and a smug look that would make you want to slap him for nothing, but Ben. That's him staring right at us.
"Dad, who the hell are these assholes?", he says, scanning every visible face, eyes squinting in judgmental disbelief.
But my attention is drawn to another thing. Magnetically. Something I spot in the energy, even before I contemplate it with my eyes. Marigolds that suddenly seem to blind me: pulsating in a way both different and familiar. Upstairs, a cube containing pure, vivid energy floats alongside the squad watching us from the balcony.
If everyone else's eyes are on Ben, mine are locked on this entity that considers me in return, despite my invisibility. It can 'see' me perfectly through energy, through matter, its 'attention' focused entirely on me. We scrutinize each other as if we were looking in a mirror: both different and similar, in a way I don't understand.
My throat knots as my fingers search for Klaus's sleeve, I tremble as I wonder what Reginald Hargreeves did, after meeting us all in 1963. What direction his feedback loop has led him to embrace after assessing us all.
What a new reality His Providence has founded on the wings of the sparrow.
I feel almost dizzy.
And in my stupor, feeling my whole self begin to return to visibility in spite of myself, I finally whisper along with my startled companions:
"Shit."
Notes:
It feels really strange for me to be leaving this second season, because I really felt at home in it. And at the same time... I'm pretty excited to start writing season 3! I'll kick this off when I get back from my vacation in August... right after watching season 4.
Finally, Pogo's words make sense, and we meet the Sparrows. Something's going on with Ben... and Christopher, too, isn't it? If Rin ever thought that seven Hargreeves was too many, she's not out of trouble yet. And soon, Reginald Hargreeves's plans will be in perfect alignment...
Once again, I'd like to thank you for reading this story, and for supporting me every week by giving me the motivation to keep going! Your comments are precious; they are literally the marigolds that keep me going. If you've read this season to the end, even if you've been silent so far, please leave me a little comment... even just a smiley!
And if you'd like to know more about Rin and Klaus' young years, you can also discover the prequel "Snippets of Memory", also on my profile.
See you soon... for a third bend in space-time