IGNIS : the umbrella academy [COMPLETE]

IV

     SOMEWHERE OUT OF TOWN, THAT SAME DAY.

     Harold Jenkins was certainly shaken up. He had gone with Vanya to visit the Umbrella Academy, a place he had dreamed of setting foot within, but instead had come across a face he never thought he'd see again.

     It had to be Carla - he could tell because she didn't have the small scar on her right cheekbone like Sarah had.

     He knew it had been her, because Vanya had mentioned her name, but Harold's brain was having a hard time processing this fact. He knew that she had died in a house fire, alongside Sarah and their mother, when he was twelve.

     He also knew that if she were still alive, she wouldn't be a teenager.

     "Who, uh, who was that girl at the Academy earlier today?" Harold asked as they drove down a long road surrounded by trees.

     "Her name is Carla Jenkins," Vanya replied, "A friend of Klaus. Why?"

     Harold's lips pursed, trying to keep his face as neutral as possible, "You just seemed really upset because of her, about her 'taking your spot' or something."

     Vanya sighed, looking out the window, "Yeah. She's been a lot more involved than me in what's going on."

     "Why's that?" Harold tried to make his voice sound as casual as possible, but his heart was racing.

     "I know it's because she has powers," the woman said simply, "She's like the Number Seven I never was."

     "She looks young though. How old is she? Sixteen?" he glanced at Vanya briefly, before his gaze flickered back to the road.

     "Fifteen, actually," Vanya corrected, "Although apparently she's been fifteen for the past fifteen years."

     Harold startled in surprise, wheel jerking, and Vanya looked at him in concern, "You okay?"

     He offered her the barest of smiles, "Yeah, of course. It's just a lot to take in, you know? You forget I'm not used to all these irregularities."

     She smiled at him, "I get it."

     "Do you, uh, do you know how she stopped ageing?" Harold asked, "Is it a power?"

     "I think something happened with her sister, I'm not too sure, though," Vanya looked at Harold, frowning slightly, "Why?"

     "Just curious," he said, taking one hand off the wheel and using it to intertwine their fingers.

     Vanya's frown disappeared, and she smiled softly again.

     Harold didn't know how to feel. Of course, he was happy, relieved that Carla was at least okay, but he was understandably in shock.

     It's not every day you find out your cousin is alive and has stayed the same age for fifteen years.

     A large part of Harold, however, felt betrayed. Carla and Sarah had been the ray of sunshine in the never-ending cloud that was his life.

     They had given him an escape from his home, or more particularly his father. That had all stopped when they were nine.

     They had abandoned him, left him to face his father all alone. That was when things had changed. It was when the beatings got worse, and Harold had even tried running away from home. That had led to him getting a broken nose.

     When he was twelve, Harold's father told him that there had been a fire, and that Carla, Sarah and his Aunt Myra had died.

     Then Harold tried running away to the Umbrella Academy, only to be publicly humiliated.

     When he got home, something within him snapped, and the next thing he knew he was standing over his father's beaten and bloody body, hammer in hand, covered in crimson liquid.

     Anger started to boil within him. Carla was alive all this time. Finding out Carla, Sarah and Aunt Myra were dead was an incredibly low point in Harold's life, and it also affected his father in a horrible and aggressive way that Harold had to pay for.

     If only they had stayed in his life.

     Then Harold would have had his cousins to rely on. Maybe he wouldn't have tried to run away, or gone after the Umbrella Academy as a child. Maybe they would have prevented him snapping and killing his father. 

     Harold couldn't help being bitter when he was ten and eleven, but when he found out that the three of them died, he felt awful. But for him to discover that Carla had been alive all along? And hadn't tried to find him? It made his stomach twist and lip curl in a snarl.

     "Oh, look," Harold said, distracting himself from his own brain, pulling into the drive of a wooden cabin, "We're here."

     They got out of the car and walked inside, Vanya looking around in admiration, "Wow. This place is so nice. Whose is it again?"

     "This was Grandma's place. Lots of pinched cheeks right here," he said with a chuckle, pointing to the spot he was standing in.

     Then, his gaze flickered to a picture standing on the table of Harold, Carla, Sarah, their mother and his father. Smoothly, he placed the frame so that it was facing down, the picture out of sight.

     He'd need to be careful. Vanya mustn't know his connection to Carla. Not now and not ever.