𝐃𝐑𝐄𝐀𝐌𝐒

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THE NAME HARGREEVES

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In the twelfth hour of the first day of October, 1989 fourty-three women around the world gave birth. This was unusal only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible.

He got eight of them.

Nowadays they had barely heard of each other.

Number One, Luther, who has been living on the Moon for four years. For him, every day began the same way as he watched the sun rise from the Earth behind his home planet.

Number Two, Diego, who has decided to be a self-proclaimed hero and run away from the police, just like the people he fought.

Number Three, Allison, who is now a world-famous actress and having the time of her life with her husband and daughter.

Number Four, Klaus, was a regular visitor to all the local rehabilitation centres and ambulances.

Number Five, who has been gone for seventeen years.

Number Six, Ben, who's dead.

Number Seven, Vanya, who was now a violinist at the city they grew up in.

At least that was all Number Eight knew about them.

Number Eight, Eleanore, who was now almost as famous as her sister Allison, only in a different industry.

Eleanore's life changed drastically after she left the Hargreeves house and its child torture academy at the age of sixteen. It seemed to most of her siblings that she wanted to forget even them, and perhaps deep down there was some truth in this; in the period after Ben's death she was deeply traumatised as she watched her family fall apart. She felt that it was safer away from them, and she firmly believed that her brothers and sisters would only have to leave their old home to achieve the same. In a sense, she was right; once everyone was gone, the traumas existed only beneath the surface, leaving their daily lives behind. The only brother who didn't end up following her example was Luther, with whom they had several arguments about who was right, only because they were both too stubborn to consider the other's point of view.

At first, Eleanore tried to keep in touch with all her siblings - even Allison, with whom she never had a smooth relationship. But over time, morning coffee mornings and lunches stopped, and when Eleanore moved to London, only Diego and Klaus spoke to her regularly, and in the eight years she spent on the other continent she felt terribly lost without her two brothers. Klaus still visited every two years, but she had not seen Diego since she moved away. Not even after she moved back to America.

And now, after four hours of singing and jumping around on stage, the reporters somehow seemed particularly irritating.

Eleanore glanced around her. She still loved the gritty streets of London and sometimes regretted moving back, but always realised that she would miss her original home there. But it was at least a hundred times easier to run into Klaus.

Above them, rain clouds were already gathering thickly as they prepared for the storm. Eleanore was barely paying attention to the reporters and Elliot, the band's bass player, had to tap her shoulder occasionally to pull her back to the ground. Elliot was a boy in his twenties with long blond hair, and the lead singer claimed he looked like Kurt Cobain in his prime. Although the members of 'The Orphans' were not close and often thought that music was the only thing that connected them, they had their own inside jokes and memories.

"Eleanore, when was the last time you spoke to your father?"

She froze as she heard the mention of Reginald.

"Eleanore, have you read the news?"

By asking this question, they made her very confused. What did they mean about 'the news'? Beside her, the British Kurt Cobain tensed up a bit and asked one of the staff members to look up Reginald Hargreeves and find out what the riporters were talking about while dragging Eleanore away from the public.

"Shit," he muttered when a woman gave him a phone with strong white light. "I'm sorry, El." he said while giving her the phone, so she could read the riport too.

Billionaire Reginald Hargreeves is dead.

"Shit," she muttered too and she started looking for a free chair to sit down. Of course, she wasn't mourning like Elliot has suspected. Eleanore was probably the one who hated their father the most, but the news still surprised her. She thought that Reginald was at least four houndred years old and would live another four hundred years. She glanced behind Elliot. On the wall there was a small poster of their newest album which listened to the name THE NAME HARGREEVES after Eleanore said "the name Hargreeves has only given pain and suffering to me" in an interview.
"Dad is dead for real."