tact from me is like blood from a stone

[opiate_visions]

Isaac's birthday had been registered as the 17th of September, two weeks to the day before those children were born from mothers who weren't pregnant, the miracle children who were forgotten again until the unveiling of the Umbrella Academy.

Isaac had never learned much about it all. He'd lived somewhat sheltered from that part of the world and by the time he was old enough to explore on his own, the Umbrella Academy had come and gone and he was more interested in his own life and future.

But the blackouts became more frequent and the medication didn't help. He stopped taking the medication and it got more out of control, but he had found other ways to control it and by the time he was thirty, he was out of rehab (again) and didn't know what to do or where to go to learn about what he was.

So he used the last of his money to make his way to the old address of the Umbrella Academy and hoped someone there might be able to help.

He was raising his hand to knock on the door when he saw the flicker, a momentary glimpse and he stepped back enough that whoever was coming to the door wouldn't barrel into him...

Comments

Set to when she leaves after Five shows up

[missnobody]

Her cab was waiting for her. Vanya wasn't sure why she'd ever thought she could come back to the Academy, maybe start over now that their father wasn't here to dictate their lives. Those were uncharitable thoughts, though. She didn't hate her dad, exactly. Mostly she was disappointed. In him, in her brothers and Allison, in herself.

They'd had the funeral and hey, even Five was back, but now things would go back to normal. Now all the members of her family would go their separate ways and she'd probably never hear from them until something disastrous happened. Pogo dying or maybe the memory issues that Mom seemed to have getting worse. It made her sad, but maybe that was as much going back to the life that she just seemed to live by rote as anything else. It had been too many years since she'd been close to anyone in the house behind her.

She was expecting the cab, but what she wasn't expecting was a man to be standing almost right in front of her. He was stepping back as she opened the door as if he knew she was going to be there. Well, in her life, maybe he did.

"Can I help you?"

[opiate_visions]

He knew her.

He stared for a moment and then swallowed and smiled, remembering his manners. "Perdon, I just, I have seen you before, Miss Hargreeves. In my paintings." He straightened up a bit more. "Isaac Mendez." He offered a hand out to her. "I've come to suspect I was born on the first of October, nineteen eighty nine. Whatever my parents have told me."

[missnobody]

Vanya frowned. Maybe she should have been more surprised, but she’d just come from a room of people who could make people do whatever she wanted, could bend throwing knives around corners, and could speak to the dead. Seeing things in paintings was pretty much par for the course as far as she was concerned. The part that did surprise her was that he’d seen her.

She shook his hand and then jerked her head back to the door behind her.

“The people you’re going to want to talk to are in there.” Because he might have been one of the people who used to idolize her family, but they’d never known about her. Not unless they’d read her book and people had pretty much forgotten about the book almost as soon as they read it.

“I don’t have any powers.”

[opiate_visions]

"Don't you?"

He knew what he had seen in the paint. A moon falling apart, a white figure with a white violin, surrounded by her siblings.

"I read your book. And I painted you. It's why I came here, what I saw in those paintings." He looked up and saw a figure move past a window. A blink, and he saw the actual person move through.

"I destroyed them. Took photos and destroyed them. I want to help stop them happening. Stop that happening to you."

[missnobody]

Vanya shivered slightly, thinking of some of the things Five had said. About how the future was shit and talking about finding her book in a library that was ‘still standing’. But whatever the future held, there was one thing she knew for sure.

“No. Trust me, I’ve spent my entire life knowing that there was absolutely nothing special about me. I was the dud of our father’s experiments.”

“Five’s inside,” she said. If he’d read her book, he knew who Five was and why that was important. She’d written about how their father hadn’t even tried to find a way to get Five back. “He just showed up and if anyone is the person to talk to about the future, it’s him. He’s apparently lived it.”

She shivered again at the idea of something happened to her. Of everyone, she knew she was the most defenseless. Her father hadn’t even bothered to give her the self-defense lessons that the rest of the family got. Probably because she was supposed to be safe behind the walls of the Academy.

[opiate_visions]

"Forty three children were born to mothers who hadn't been pregnant until the moment they gave birth. Every single one of them has powers. So... either you're so unique that you don't have a power, unlike every other one of us..."

He swallowed hard and made the decision on the spot, which wasn't the best way to do it, but it was what he tended to do. He dug into his pocket, pulled out a wallet and slid out a polaroid photo which he held out, face down.

"If you look... you'll know what I saw. I see futures. Possible ones. Pasts, sometimes, other presents, but this is a future. Or was, I don't know. It's you. I've painted you a lot. And what I saw inspired me to get clean and come here."

[missnobody]

"There's nothing special about me," Vanya repeated, the words obviously a litany that she had repeated to herself or that had been repeated to her. Or both. "Believe me, our father did extensive testing on us when we were younger. If there'd been something there to find, he would have found it."

It was true. It had to be true, because what was her life otherwise? A lie from beginning to end? That or a mistake.

She took the photo because it was offered to her without actually looking at it. A part of her was scared at what she'd see if she looked down. What would she prefer? To know that he was wrong? Or that he was right?

[opiate_visions]

"Your father? You mean the man who bought seven children and then pitted them against one another relentlessly until one vanished and he managed to drive another to his grave? That father? Why wouldn't he lie if he had a justification in his mind? What if your power was exploding? What if he just didn't think you could cope so he decided to take it away entirely?"

Isaac read about the Academy, not just Vanya's book. And Reginald Hargreeves might have been a great man, but he was a terrible father and not a particularly kind person."

He took hold of her hand. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not like, a hundred percent accurate or anything. And whatever you choose, it doesn't change that you survived your childhood with your mind intact, and that's pretty amazing in and of itself. Nothing can take that away from you."

[missnobody]

Vanya took a step back at the impact of his words. And then another. She reached for her bottle of pills and was already shaking her head as she dry-swallowed one. “Not everyone could control their powers, exactly.” She didn’t go into details, but she was thinking of Klaus. Klaus had never entirely been able to control his powers. It was more as if they controlled him.

But what, a small part of her whispered, if it was that he couldn’t control you?

She shivered and looked at where he was holding her hand. She didn’t know what to say because he was so very wrong. None of them had survived with their minds intact. They each just had varying degrees of being able to fake it.

[opiate_visions]

"I can't," he says honestly. Like a lot of drug addicts, he varies between wildly honestly and imperceptibly manipulative. "I have black outs, flashes of things that aren't where I am..." He shrugs slightly. It's not terrible, but it's not much fun either.

He keeps hold of her hand. Her violin calluses are almost familiar, like other musicians' he's held. "I'll leave it to you, Vanya. No matter what you decide, I would love to hear you play sometime. And maybe, you'll let me draw you?"

[missnobody]

The need to play almost overwhelmed her. There were other times she felt like this, but usually only in the middle of the night when nightmares she could never remember were clawing at her mind and making it impossible to sleep. Her fingers actually started to twitch in his grip.

“Sure,” she muttered. “Yeah, maybe.” And what would he see if he drew her? Could she even be sure he could do what he said? All she had to do was look at her work, but it was terrifying. She was at the center of whatever he saw. He thought she had powers. She tugged her hand away and looked behind him.

“My ride’s here. You can ask Pogo for my number.” She thrust the picture back at him and ran for the car. What he was saying had to be impossible. Maybe Pogo would just send him away.

[opiate_visions]

He lets go of her hand the moment her discomfort is apparent, which is a lot faster than some people pick up on it. "All right. Look after yourself, Miss Hargreeves."

He takes the polaroid and pockets it, watching as she gets into the cab.

He blinks and sees ash drifting across a wasteland of a city.

He turns and heads back up the stairs again.