Promise [Number 5 X Reader]

- Prologue -

You weren't very old when you realized that Reginald Hargreeves' use of the word "family" was a purposeful misnomer. You were around three the first time it happened apparently, your "Mom," had told you the story once, claiming you had always been quite observant, even with your previously forgetful nature; you could hardly remembered what your numerical name was back then.

However, the first time you actually recalled noticing it wasn't long after your eidetic memory kicked in. It was a bit after you turned six, and you noticed a family walking across the street outside of your bedroom window.

The children were a beautiful blend of their parents' skin tones, one had her mother's luscious, curly hair, the other sported his father's upturned nose. Both children had similar face shapes, and shared the same eyes. The similarities the children shared with their parents and each other were so plentiful that their relation could not be denied.

You didn't have any of that, not with your self-proclaimed father, not with your robotic mother figure, nor with your "siblings."

You vividly remembered standing in front of a mirror and mentally skimming through the faces in your household, trying to find any similarities, only to turn up empty-handed. The chin wasn't right, the eyes were set differently, your hair didn't have the same texture, your cheekbones were at different heights - nothing ever quite fit.

Once your eidetic memory had kicked in, you became the quickest study out of the eight children in the Umbrella Academy, searching for and absorbing information at an almost alarming rate. Due to that development, this conundrum of why you didn't look like anyone resulted in you learning what the term "adopted" meant from Pogo, an uncle of sorts.

"Your father adopted the eight of you not long after you were born," your android mother, Grace explained to you when you had asked her about the circumstances of your adoption. "None of you are truly related, but isn't 'family' a nicer term than 'team?'"

"But don't we use both?"

The blonde robot giggled down at you, "Yes, but you use 'team' when you go out on missions, and 'family' when you're here."

You pouted in thought, which must have been quite a sight on the face of a six-year-old child. "If we're not really family, does that mean I call you 'Grace?'"

"Of course not!" she replied, lifting your small body to sit on her lap. "I fully expect you all to call me 'Mom,' even when you're all grown up!"

Your little shoulders shrugged and you gave a half-smile, "If you say so!"

Of course, that was what you felt you had to say at the time. The truth was, when you had looked at that family, they were all pearly smiles and genuinely took pleasure in being together. The children didn't push or shove each other, looking back to check if the parents acknowledged the superiority of one child over the other.

You had never smiled like that with your own "family" before, never wanted to stay in the room with them for longer than you had to. Never had much to do with the majority of them save for training and missions.

That family bond wasn't there, and you had a sneaking suspicion that it never would be.

XxX

Being the quickest study in the academy was a double-edged sword.

For starters, you felt the smallest bit isolated from the others, as you had given up the ruse of family bonds long before them. Nonetheless, you understood your mother-figure's stance on the terminology: "family" took a lot less explaining than "comrades of circumstance forced to save the world because an eccentric, rich, old man told us to." You were also able to come to the conclusion that Reginald Hargreeves - you had made the mistake of calling him "Mr. Reginald" to his face once and he scolded you for it - didn't have the capacity or will to care for you or your companions as anything other than tools with which to preserve the world - whatever the hell that meant. Even if one of you had proven yourself better than the others - which was usually a dogfight between One and Two - Reginald could never seem to be bothered to hand out even a mere "congratulations." With that knowledge handy, you really saw no need to prove yourself to him as a person or a hero. Why do a trick if you won't receive a treat, right?