Chronological markers: this scene fits in as a deleted scene from The Umbrella Academy, season 3, episode 8, around 23:30 (before the start of Luther and Sloane's wedding at 6 pm).

Suggested soundtrack: David Bowie - Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud.

April 07 2019, 5:24 pm

"Haaa, I wish I had a ruffled shirt."

In the middle of the mustard-yellow room we're now squatting in, Klaus casts a lamenting look at his reflection in the mirror, where he can also catch a glimpse of me, sitting cross-legged on a large, black, furry pouf.

I've always been fascinated by the way he prepares for an event he deems important, or that means something to him, including concerts. Me, I've never cared. At most, a spritz of hairspray on my crest back in my punk days, maybe a slightly less ripped sweater or a t-shirt that made me feel slightly less awful. But spending an hour in front of a mirror, adjusting my curls, tweezing every single small hair one by one, and smoothing the green velvet of my suit jacket? That's never happened. So, I smile.

"It's a wedding, Klaus, not a coronation."
"Exactly. A wedding where my BROTHER asked ME to OFFICIATE, to unite him with that little romantic hoverboard - what's her name again - Simone?"
"Sloane."
He clasps his hands over his heart.
"With just a few apocalyptic adjustments, this speech has been ready since I was six. I'm so flattered they trust me."

And it's not even for lack of options, given that the world is ending and there's literally only a handful of humans left alive, along with a robot and a lizard-man from another world. No. I believe that, even without the Kugelblitz, Luther would have still wanted Klaus to take on this role. A huge paradigm shift in the Hargreeves family, almost enough to justify an apocalypse on its own.

"Holy glitters, I'm so exciteeedd!"

I can confirm: his energy radiates from every pore of his well-scrubbed skin. I have no idea what the next few hours will bring, and I try not to overthink it. But Klaus asked me for one thing, just one: to be at this wedding with all of them, with him. And I agreed, just because it makes him glow with happiness.

"It's going to be fabulous, Rinny. The dress code is 'creative black tie'"
"Sorry, but I'm sticking to just 'black'."

I'm already making an effort by not wearing a metal band t-shirt. But Klaus is already holding up two small Art Deco-styled bottles.

"You could show up in pajamas for all I care: the main thing is that you're there. But now, onto the real issue: cologne, Lavender or Magnolia? I left Ylang-Ylang for Dad. I figured he could use a scent that makes him seem a little less evil overlord and a little more glamorous yet approachable."
"Wait, your father is invited?"

We look at each other, because we both know this is extremely touchy.

"Not exactly, no. Let's just say I managed to convince him to sneak in on the tips of his Crockett & Jones, just in time for dinner."
I frown.
"You're playing a dangerous game, Klaus, trying to rally everyone around him. He's just going to try to use us for his own ends again."

With a vague, dismissive whistle, he brushes off the thought, and I never really expected otherwise. Ever since he came back from the 'bus-ball' and the cemetery, he's been genuinely convinced that Hargreeves showed him some kindness.

"Rin, Rin, Rin. What ends? We're standing at the edge of the great septic pit of nothingness, and the flush is being pulled. It's time to make peace."

After everything he's done to him. I know Klaus isn't the vengeful type. He's even capable of seeking, again and again, the caress of the hand that has struck him. And that's not even a metaphor.

"Five said we should enjoy the time we have left. And what better way to do that than with a Hamptons-worthy wedding? There's no way I'm letting Dad just sit there staring into the eyes of his White Buffalo all night. Even if he doesn't wear cologne, he's coming, and I promise you, he'll say something nice. Trust me. I've trained him."

I'd be really worried if I weren't already focused on something that makes my blood pound in my temples. Hargreeves is going to Luther and Sloane's wedding. He won't be staying in the White Buffalo suite tonight. He'll be out of his den, away from the pachinko he guards so jealously.

I had my doubts the other day, in his office, about whether his monocle let him sense me despite my invisibility. But by bringing him to the wedding… Klaus just solved that problem for me, giving me a golden opportunity to slip away… leaving me free to explore the controls of the great machinery of the Universe.

My throat tightens a little. Klaus still knows nothing about Oblivion. He doesn't know about the guardians, under whose blades Hargreeves is ready to send us all, just to reset the world according to his will. He laughed in my face when I told him his father was an alien: it's his way of coping with the anxiety of the end of time. Denial and carefree abandon. And his mind is already spinning like a hamster wheel as he decisively picks the Magnolia cologne.

"I wanted a champagne fountain, but I'm not sure we'll have enough bottles. Maybe it may just be prosecco. Either way, the buffet will be magnificent: we're allowed to empty the cold storage rooms. Chet will be in charge of music, Luther gave him the playlist himself. He'll take vintage-style photos, and we'll have a photo booth. Luther found smoke machines, Diego is blowing up balloons, and anyone who wants to can make an embarrassing speech. We'll end the night watching the stars, after a dove release."
"Klaus, we can't see the stars anymore, and there isn't even a single pigeon left alive."

I see this detail colliding with all his event-planning talents, but he finally concedes.

"You're right. I'll see if we can get soap bubbles instead. It has to be grandiose: they're going to live happily ever after. For, you know, twenty-four beautiful hours."
"I'll never stop being amazed at your love for kitschy weddings and eternal promises..."
"I know, I know..."

Klaus knows exactly how much I hate the very idea of commitment. As a matter of fact: he was too high for too long to even know how many people he slept with - either sequentially or all at once - so the question never really applied to him either. But at the same time, I've always sensed in him this longing for some kind of stability. Dave's brief incursion into his life reflected that. There's what Klaus says, what he does, and what he keeps deep inside. But judging by his expression, I can already tell he's about to say something stupid.

"... but it's too late for you, Rin, even though I'm objectively the only constant in your life."

We've often joked about ending up squatting in the same place if nothing ever changed for us in our old age. The thing is, we probably won't even get an old age, and our 'love' and sex lives - considered together or separately - have never been anything but chaos. Like everything else. But I smile.

"That's not what I meant at all."
"No, no, don't argue. You missed your chance, that's just how it is. Accept it. You'll never have my kombucha fermenting in the kitchen, the furry cushions on the couch, the border collie, the disco ball as a toilet light. My rainbow-colored bath salts lined up on the edge of a lilac bathtub… or my three-meter-long walk-in closet, with just one drawer for your three black t-shirts, while my collection of thongs takes up three on its own."
"A collection you would have bought with my money."

We chuckle softly, before a silence settles in. As always, he jokes, but deep down, I know there's a painful truth there: he rarely hears how much he truly matters to me. Like I told Lila earlier, he's the kind of person who openly tells others he loves them, yet is rarely heard. I, on the other hand, am the kind who keeps it to myself, and I know that weighs on him more often than not. I look out the window, at the sliver of apocalyptic sky I can see. Fully aware that this might be my last chance to be honest with him before the world ends.

"Klaus, you know…"
My eyes drop to the fringed rug as he checks if his jacket properly highlights his lower back.
"I don't know if I want a disco ball in the toilet. But you were right when you said you've always been the only constant in my life."

It's not hard to admit: it's just obvious. Across all the timelines, more often for the better, despite the constant presence of the worst around us, he's always been a part of me. His playful expression fades, replaced by a kind of quiet, touched seriousness.

"A constant, or a burden, uh? Because let's be honest—without you and Ben, I'd have been six feet under more times than I can count."
I shake my head.
"You might not realize it, but you've saved me just as many times as the other way around."

Quite literally, since he brought me back to life twice. But more than that, in every hard or painful moment of my life. When my mother died. When I had to find work. When I was terrified I'd caused the first apocalypse instead of Viktor. When I was lost in 1961 Texas, drowning in its racism. When I thought I'd found Granny, only to watch the woman who wasn't her get taken away. Every time I felt like I was fading away. Through every world-ending disaster and every new beginning. And beyond that, every single day since we were nineteen.

He changed my perception of what it means to be there for someone. He blurred every line between what it means to be a friend, a lover or an annoying, insistent parasite. What it means to be a man, a woman, or anything in between. He made me more at peace with everything, including my powers. He made me someone different from what Chris became in this timeline. In reality, he shaped everything I am today. So I smile at him.

"You know, some people promise each other the moon after knowing each other for five days. And then there are those who don't need to promise anything, because it exists despite them."

He turns, standing there on the rug, in his hideous green velvet suit: his idea of the 'nicest' thing he currently owns.

"You know, Rinny, I think if I didn't have your grumpy, sassy tiny self, I wouldn't even bother coming back from the afterlife anymore. Yeah. I think I'd just stay there. There are only two places I truly belong: the Void, and next to you on an old couch."

I blink, absorbing his words, feeling deeply how little time we've had to just sit and talk, ever since that day in another version of 2019 when I got a telegram telling me his father was dead.

"Come here, Shirley Temple."

He knows why I call him that. It was the first name I ever heard for him, spoken in a police officer's scornful voice, in the hallway of the Argyle Central station's holding cells. He steps closer and bumps his hip against me until I scoot over and make space for him to sit.

"If we get out of this, I promise, we'll find a new couch to crash on. And we'll listen to Wild Eyed Boy from Freecloud, just like the first time."

We fall silent. I can feel his energy pulsing quietly beside mine, just like so many times before. Very much alive, this time. He takes a deep breath.

"So, are you cool with having a border collie?"
I pretend to push him off the pouf.
"I wonder which of you would exhaust the other first."

He chuckles softly, then - just like me - he stares for a moment at the purple sky, where debris floats aimlessly. A second passes, then another. Finally, he murmurs:

"Do you have any regrets?"
I blink.
"What do you mean?"
"If our lives really do end in the next few hours: do you have regrets? About everything you've lived? Because the more I think about it, the more I realize that despite everything, I wouldn't change a thing."

For a moment, his fingers brush against his dog tags, over the green velvet. No matter what happens - even if the universe resets - nothing can erase everything we've lived through. Our stories belong to us, and we'll take them with us, whether we move on or continue. I learned that from Chris, and I'm grateful.

In the distance, the long chains of matter seem to convulse for a moment. By now, the Kugelblitz's pulses aren't even perceptible anymore: it's everywhere.

"As far as you're concerned, no, I don't regret anything. Even with all this apocalyptic madness since it started. But…"
He already knows. That wasn't a random question.
"What weighs on me… is not knowing how to tell people I love them. You. And my mother. Every single day, I regret not telling her, not thanking her for everything she did."

Klaus smiles, almost breathless. And finally, he whispers:

"Then tell her now."

I sit up suddenly on the pouf, looking at him in urgency.
"What? Klaus, you're not going to-"

But he's not listening. He's too focused on what little control he has over his abilities, especially after the whisky from the bachelor party earlier. On the green velvet of his knee, his hand is turned palm-up. 'Hello'. And I can already feel it at my back: that spectral energy, familiar yet unfamiliar.

He catches me off guard. My hands start shaking, and I can barely bring myself to turn toward the couch, where I know she's sitting. I lock eyes with Klaus, unable to turn my head, frozen. And yet, slowly, I put my feet on the ground and I turn around.

"I won't be able to hold this for long: take your chance, Rinny", he says, and I laugh through something that sounds more like a sob as I stand. My legs tremble. But I step forward, and she's already looking at me.

She doesn't have that distant look she had at the end. No regrets either - regrets that, deep down, she and I shared. Her hair is as thick and black as mine, and I suddenly realize that back then, I never really noticed how much our features were alike. Dressed simply but with dignity, Hoàng Kim Liên watches me, as if for the first time. And, in a way, I can tell she's not exactly the woman I once knew.

"You're Chris's mother", I say, sitting at the edge of the couch, careful not to impose. And she slowly shakes her head.
"I feel you within me the same way I felt him."

I know nothing about the mechanics of space-time or where the afterlife stands in relation to different timelines. But from the universe's perspective, despite all the divergences we've caused, we are still, fundamentally, the same energies. She looks at peace. That's what strikes me most, more than just seeing her again.

"I watched you, every day, from your little hardware shop to the banks of the Ganges. And everything you've always regretted not telling me, I already know."

Klaus is struggling to hold her, and she doesn't have many words left. Neither do I.

"I… I was the worst. It's not just about saying 'I love you'. I was a nightmare of a teenager, and I-"
"It doesn't matter. Look at the person you've become."

She smiles, peacefully, but my chest is tight as her image starts to fade, revealing the couch cushions beneath her.

"Chris… Chris isn't in the afterlife, is he."

She shakes her head sadly. I look at Klaus, his brows now furrowed. The fact that he's summoning my mother when almost everything else has disappeared around us has implications we both understand: souls, at least for now, remain untouched by the Kugelblitz. Not yet, anyway. Maybe the afterlife will be the last thing to go. But those swallowed by this time-devouring monster: they're truly lost. In a way, they didn't even get the chance to die before being erased.

Chris fought to the very end to protect us from that.

"He was a good person", I tell her. "He shouldn't have been the asshole that Hargreeves made him into. He would have wanted to know you, he-"

There's no more time to speak: Klaus isn't trained enough for this.

"Don't worry. I know all of that too. Chris and you… you were much more alike than it seemed."

Yes. I've understood that as well. The only differences between us were shaped by one man: by how he molded us into what he wanted.

Kim is fading now, her energy thinning like the most delicate rice paper: that's the only way I can describe it. And on my cheeks, tears fall, the kind I've rarely shed in recent years, despite everything we've endured.

"I love you for real", I say as she disappears. "And thanks to Klaus, I have no more regrets."

Notes:

This is a bittersweet chapter, a moment to finally pause, after so much chaos, and before even bigger changes.

In the series, the logic that drives Klaus to impale himself on the White Buffalo's horn rather than be taken by the Kugelblitz is unclear, but it implies that he understands the afterlife still exists, at least for a little while longer. With this chapter, I wanted to fill in that gap: now, he knows. And because of that, he will be able to take that step.

After three seasons, Rin has finally found peace regarding her mother, thanks to Klaus. I only wish for one thing: that, in the end, they both truly get to crash on that same couch again.

Any comment will make my day!