Chronological markers: this scene fits in as a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, season 3, episode 3, around 14:00 (while Luther, Viktor and Allison discuss the missing persons at the bar).

Suggested soundtrack: Omnia - Shaman of Chaos ; Parov Stellar - All Night.

April 3 2019, 23:32

I was unsettled when I teleported out of Hargreeves Mansion. Even more so – a thousand times more, to be honest – than when I had entered it in search of answers. At least now, I know what happened to Christopher. What could have happened to me. My mind is roaring and churning. Because now I know what Reginald Hargreeves did to him, and – through the looking glass – to me.

As I walked, letting the biting air of April nights invigorate me, I realized that he hadn't entirely lied to Klaus. In his twisted way, he had admitted - unbelievably - that he had messed up raising the Umbrellas by choosing a form of 'parenting' based on absolute authority and domination. He had used the 'control group' - in the experimental sense - consisting of Lila, myself, and perhaps others, to study how our powers might have developed under different upbringing scenarios.

I also got a kind of confirmation that he didn't adopt the Sparrows simply to replace his previous children, but to complement them with a group raised differently, and perhaps with complementary powers. He was fully aware that Five would bring the Umbrellas back to him. This time, he took the opposite approach and based his parenting on mastering powers, boosting self-worth, and building ego. He created such confident personalities that he might once again lose control: at the very least, that's what happened with Christopher, and it cost him dearly.

Two different types of parenting, two failures stemming from excess. Really, it's as if Reginald Hargreeves is incapable of nuance when it comes to understanding human psychology, even though he can manipulate the most incredible technologies.

And unfortunately, there is more to the turmoil I am experiencing now. Earlier, another one of those terrible waves of energy pulsed through me, so strong that my hands flew to my temples. Incredibly powerful this time: as if it were being drawn from point-blank range. As if it were born from the very depths of Hargreeves Mansion.

Rainshade Square was absolutely deserted when I crossed it. Not a soul in sight, as if I were in one of those zombie or epidemic movies, where cities are empty of people and silent. I can't help but connect this to Five's words earlier in the car. With this new apocalypse he predicts, due to the paradox we have become. A new kind of doomsday, which he assumes is inexorably destined to sweep away all beings, and then everything else.

And yet, the bus passed by. A few pedestrians re-entered my line of sight as we crossed the few stops that separated us from Hotel Obsidian. It's a lot to take in for a single day, and I feel like I'm in a daze. It will be very difficult for me to sleep, even though I'm exhausted.

Invisible and intangible, I cross the lobby, as if I want to remain hidden from everyone and everything. Basically: to not exist myself, just for a moment. Chet is no longer behind his counter: only Iggy is still sipping a drink, alone at the bar, the long feather of his hat standing out in black against the amber bottles of liquor. I think back to our conversation from the morning, but I don't stop. I head toward the Grand Staircase, concealed from anyone's view, not slowing my pace.

I don't even use the buttons to operate the elevator. I channel my energy directly into its system and turn to watch the doors close on the retro-futuristic lobby.

It starts to move.
I close my eyes.
And my power probes what is around me.

I feel the energy and mechanics pulling me upward, much like Klaus would encourage me to feel the shakti flowing through my chakras. Just as I once sneaked into the mechanics of the bus we called Priscilla, I explore the electrical systems of the floors I pass, the rooms, letting the connections extend down to the basement and higher, ever higher. The coffee machines, the Art Deco lamps, the telephones. Up to the crackling of the large red neon light on the roof.

More than anything, the tall pillars of the lobby stand out to me in the energy. They distill this almost stellar blue light, yet paradoxically appear golden to my senses behind my closed eyelids, just like the horseshoe-shaped console of the switchboard. I have always felt the energy within machines as an intertwining of golden grooves, ever since the explosion triggered by a fit of anger against Klaus and Lloyd, at Merelec in 1963. And in this moment, everything is clear to me.

I am at the heart of a machine: I have absolutely no doubt about it.

A machine whose connexions delve into the matter and energy of the neighborhood, the city, perhaps even beyond. The Hotel seems to intertwine with everything in this moment, and my chest tightens. The energy - all around me - is like the 'Great Mystery' of the Lakota, which Iggy called Wakȟáŋ Tȟáŋka. This creative life force that permeates and connects all things in the machinery of the universe.

*Ding!*

My concentration relaxes as the elevator doors open onto the hallway where are the rooms we occupy. I shake my head to force myself back from my contemplation.

I don't use the switch to turn on the ceiling lights either: I walk on the carpet to the end of the corridor, without paying attention to the faint sounds coming from the Hargreeves' rooms. I pass through the door of the suite I occupy. Inside, the pink-walled room is bathed in the only light from the sign outside. I won't use the lamps here: I promised Klaus to maintain my discretion. However, I finally become visible and tangible again, kicking off my shoes against the bar, causing the glasses to clink slightly.

I exhale in the flickering half-light, trying to let my thoughts flow without allowing them to grip me, as we learned to do in the ashrams of Rishikesh. I walk on the long, ugly white fluffy carpet, the touch of which soothes my troubled senses.

And I look at 'it'. Above the mantelpiece. 'Him'.

I wonder how much it weighed in its prime, this white buffalo whose black eyes stare back at me as I gaze at them. Its fur is a clear white, just like that of the carpets. It carries significant meaning in Lakota culture, which connects it to the Great Mystery. It symbolizes a bridge to the Great All that binds things and beings together. And a promise of the restoration of harmony, when the time comes.

Harmony. What a load of crap.

I stare at it defiantly, my gaze now hard. Because every day, I wonder more and more what my place is in this world where I'm supposed to no longer exist. Where a nasty, cubical oddity has taken my place, where my grandmother doesn't remember me. Where Klaus's mother never gave birth to him. Where our lives exist only in the memories we share.

Where a new apocalypse is on the way once again.

If we truly are part of the Great Mystery, why do we constantly feel that we could be erased from it? My gaze hardens, as if I'm angry at the buffalo.

For several seconds, I continue to stare at it. And suddenly - almost as if it were a response it was giving me - something catches my attention to my right. A piece of decor in this room that I hadn't noticed before, having been too exhausted every time I entered this suite.

A slot machine—decorative in purpose here—possibly a pachinko. Backlit and shiny, it emits the crackling sound that I recognize as the one that wakes me at night. Vibrating with a strange energy behind its metal bumpers, stylized like a Kandinsky painting. Stylized?

Fucking hell. How had I not noticed it?

There, blended into the elements of one of the most famous games of chance, wealth, and ruin, is the same pattern that is now irreversibly etched on my arm. The one I referred to as a 'nexus' last night while sharing a cachaça with Klaus. Concentric squares. Perpendicular lines. Dots.

My eyes widen as I step back, bringing my hand to my forearm and nearly tripping over the fur carpet. Terrified, fascinated: I can't really put a name to it. Under the gaze of the White Buffalo, I don't wait around: I retreat further, grabbing my boots against the bar. And as my heart pounds against my ribs, I start to run out of the room, becoming temporarily intangible to pass through the door that will take me out of here.

"HOLY SHIT".

As I emerge into to hallway and become tangible again, I realize that I just passed through someone, their hand raised to knock on my door. Someone I almost re-materialized into, which could have had disastrous consequences...

"Klaus?"

I lean against the wall, the turmoil of my emotions clearly visible on my face, panting as best I can, still feeling a sense of dread. But damn, is he wearing a wetsuit and a swim cap?

"What's wrong with you?" he asks, turning to me with a look of confusion in his eyes. "Are you having a Sigourney Weaver moment like in Ghostbusters?"

He turns toward the door of the White Buffalo suite, which he has never entered, and his thick eyebrows furrow beneath the neoprene cap that holds his mass of wild curls.

"Nothing... it's nothing...", I tell him as I put my boots back on, because I can't manage anything else in that moment.

I'm already wondering if I really saw what I think I saw, and if it's not just my exhausted brain fabricating the image of that pattern, where there was nothing but the decorative lines of an industrial object. That's probably it, in fact: I'm so obsessed with that design that I've likely imagined it again.

"It's okay", I tell him. "I think I'm just struggling with the big trophy of the white buffalo."

Klaus isn't stupid, even when he finishes off the leftovers of every abandoned glass at the bar late at night. I can tell he's wondering what's really going on in there. But I can't take him with me, not now. For the moment, I just want to distance myself from it, for a paradoxical reason: the attraction I feel toward that suite has never been greater. I think he sees it on my face, because he looks at the door again, then back at me, and says:

"Yes, taxidermy freaks me out too. But your little cozy nest is becoming more and more intriguing to me."

I shake my head vigorously, as if I'm also emerging from icy water, grabbing his rubbery arm to pull him further down the hallway while changing the subject.

"What the… what are you doing in that wetsuit? Are you going to go snorkeling in Niagara Falls? And where did you even find that?"
He shrugs.
"I borrowed this beauty from the hotel's lost and found closet. Looks like my skills at picking are still intact. You can't imagine the wonderful clothes I've found in there, including several pretty floral mustard shirts, like the one I wore today. I'm going into fashion week mode, darling. You can search through it too."

I sigh, but seeing him so refreshingly true to himself helps me feel a bit better. His flamboyance is truly something that lifts me up, and I raise an eyebrow, still trembling.

"Fashion week? Is Vivienne Westwood doing a collab with Scubapro?"

I realize that I haven't talked to him since he came back from Pennsylvania. Since I saw Granny, too. He was asleep in the backseat when Five picked me up a little earlier and told me everything. My heart tightens as I remember that he didn't find any trace of the so-called Rachel, as he had hoped. That she's actually dead. But maybe he's already moved past a certain point in his disappointment, because he seems troubled, but not defeated.

"You're right," he says with his gangly raccoon look in his swim cap, doing a little spin. "Even though I really hope that the steampunk 'Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea' look will be all the rage soon, because it really puts the essentials on display. But no. I'm doing some fashion try-ons for my 'sneak-a-thon' mission tomorrow."
I frown.
"A 'sneak-a-thon' mission. Where to?"

He points to the zipper of his suit on his back so that I can help him zip it up completely. I pause briefly because I have the impression that he's wearing a black vinyl bodysuit with straps underneath, beneath a pair of blue swim trunks. But Klaus's fashion choices no longer make me question anything. And he answers me honestly.

"You know, back when we first met... I used to steal things to pawn in Dad's office..."

I pull a little on the zipper, but the suit finally closes. Of course I remember. That's exactly how he had brought back the check stub with Rachel's name on it.

"... I would sneak directly into storage closet through the pipes and central heating of the Academy. And then the same thing in reverse to get out. Since you're working tomorrow... I opted for autonomy and this lovely snorkel."

He's right. I won't be able to teleport him inside tomorrow, like I've done a few times before. But more than that, I wonder why he's so determined to sneak into Hargreeves Mansion, especially when everything there is hostile to us.

"What are you going to do there? Klaus, Five told me about Rachel's death. And about all the others's too. I don't think looking for more documents will bring you anything more now. Especially if the apoc—"
"No. No", he repeats, turning around. "What I want... is to confront Dad."

He's kind of holding back tears, but no less determined than last night at the Nexus. My words catch in my throat, and he adds, with a seriousness that leaves me frozen on the hallway carpet:

"It's just something I need to do, Rinny. To be able to at least close this chapter. I need to know if our mothers' deaths were his doing."

My shoulders sag a little. I know how it feels in such cases. I know that searching for a culprit is an instinct almost as natural as despair, even when one hasn't known the person, and is clinging only to hope and ideas born from imagination.

I have no idea what Klaus had hoped for, even putting aside the idea that a doppelgänger of his might be wandering around. That his 'mother' would open her door and welcome him with open arms? That she would adopt him as a son at nearly thirty-four years old? That she would give him all the affection he lacks, which I am rather terrible at providing? Suddenly, the White Buffalo, the pachinko, the Great Mystery, and all the anxiety I've felt seem far away. And I sigh.

"Do you think he could have caused their deaths... to prevent you from existing?"
I frown, now, as he stares back at me intently.
"He's capable of it. Diego and Viktor think so. And... they're definitely right."

I know that Reginald Hargreeves could have done it, and the history of everything he has put Klaus and his siblings through only makes this hypothesis more plausible. But I heard that old man talk earlier, and he may not be as infallible as his former alter ego led us to believe. I actually think that the bearers of Marigolds are precious to him - even if I don't know why - and that he possibly wouldn't have done that. Not for them... but for himself.

"And what if it's not him?"

Klaus exhales: I can see he doesn't know what he would feel or do in that eventuality. He struggles to find his words. I'm not really going to try to change his mind: his approach is, in any case, respectable. All that matters to me - at this moment - is that he doesn't do something that will trigger his post-traumatic stress syndrome and ruin his nights again. So I blink and ask him the only thing that truly seems to matter:

"Are you sure you want to talk to him?"
He shakes his head in his swim cap.
"Interrogate him, more accurately. But this version of Dad is different, Rin. He offered me cookies yesterday while the others were busy throwing punches."

My shoulders sag slightly upon hearing this. Certainly, I too have witnessed a weakened Reginald, slightly hunched, trapped in routines and almost at the service of those he raised. Almost a servant or a maintenance worker, in regards to Christopher, with only one desire: to quickly finish his checks so he could return to his television, his slippers, and his tea. But once again, I'm wary of the calm waters.

"Cookies? Klaus, cookies have never been a sign of good intentions!"
"Rin-rin, you underestimate the world-dominating power of carbs. And I'll be careful, I promise. I... need answers. Just answers."

I run a hand over my forehead. Since we arrived, I've felt constantly torn between the need to recontextualize my existence and the regret of not being able to help him in his quest for his own identity.

"I wish I could come with you. But it's my trial day at the hardware store."
He nods with an understanding tinged with disappointment.
"I know, I know. Lately, you need some fresh air, and tomorrow you'll shine at the waltz of screws and bolts. It's just... I miss the time when you were Indiana Jones and I was the Lost Ark."

I laugh, a bit sadly, wondering for a moment if there's a saucy allusion in there or not. But despite myself, I glance back down the hallway, where the door to the White Buffalo suite still seems to be calling to me, sending a long shiver down my spine.

"And by the way, how did it go with Granny?", he asks, pulling me out of my daze again, as if he could sense it. "I was just about to knock on your door to ask how it went for you."
My lips tighten.
"I can tell you… but only over half a liter of coffee."

This day has been long, far too long. I can't believe I'm going to work tomorrow. Yet, I want him to know everything, about what happened to my grandmother... and Christopher. I wouldn't be able to keep it to myself.

"Perfect," he says. "I'll have an Irish coffee."

He pulls me toward the elevator, his suit squeaking slightly with each step. I follow him in, really wondering if his snorkel will be of any use, given that he's already struggling to stabilize his breathing in the open air. I press the button for the ground floor and finally allow myself to give him a genuine smile.

"Are you planning to walk around like that tomorrow? No doubt, you'll make quite an impression..."

Bending his knees, he performs a dramatic bow. And as he tucks a few wayward curls back under the neoprene, he reassures me just as the elevator doors slide shut:

"No biggie, Rinny. I'll just slap a raincoat on top, and The City crowd will just assume I'm a trendsetter."

Notes:

Rin begins to question the nature of the Obsidian Hotel, which resembles a machine at the heart of the universe's mechanics. She still doesn't understand the connection to herself, despite her innate attraction to machines through energy since Season 1. And yet... this symbol now on her arm is also on the pachinko in the White Buffalo suite.

t is only natural for her to wonder where she fits into all of this, just as Klaus is still searching for his place after his huge disappointment in Pennsylvania. However, the quest for Rachel will soon lead him... to greater understanding of himself.

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