Prophecy | The Umbrella Academy |

Prologue

Cassandra Hargreeves was alone now. Her siblings had all left home, in one way or another, a long time ago. Cassandra knew she was different from her siblings but it's in every child's mind to think they are special. Yet she never expected she would be left on her own like this. Cassandra still lived at home. She still walked along the hallway every morning on her way to the kitchen and found herself peering in through the doorways into all the old bedrooms, remembering the people who used to sleep there. Lately she hadn't been doing a good job of remembering as well as she used to.

Cassandra woke that morning as she always did. She wasn't in bed but she was in the bedroom. She found herself sat at her vanity table, staring blankly back at her reflection. Cassandra sighed, sleepily as she worked out where she was, trying to get her bearings after not waking up in her bed as she expected. By now she should be used to waking up in a different place than where she went to sleep.

Cassandra stood up and stretched, listened to the rustling of paper as her arms stretched out. She narrowed her eyes. Paper? Looking around her she began to piece everything together. Her entire room, the walls, the floor, the ceiling, the windows, even her bed was covered in sheets of paper, each with the same thing having been drawn on them. The words on those sheets of paper, nor the paper themselves, had been there when she went to sleep. All over her room, in her own handwriting, was the word "Five."

With a handful of sheets of paper in each hand, Cassandra ran up the stairs and made her way into the kitchen. She slammed her toe on the pedal and watched the lid of the bin flip up in a sort of trance she couldn't exactly explain. Her vision was ever so slightly blurred. Perhaps she was more tired than she thought. She shook her head to clear her mind and stuffed the papers into the bin, pushing them as far down as they would go.

Cassandra jumped as she heard the sound of footsteps behind her and sighed in relief. It was Mom.

"Good morning, Cassandra." Her Mom greeted cheerfully, a broad grin on her face. Cassandra smiled too, suddenly the fear and confusion from only moments ago seemed to vanish as she looked at her Mom's face.

"Would you like some breakfast?" Her Mom asked, having already taken a frying pan off the rack and a carton of eggs out the fridge.

"I'd love some, Mom." Cassandra smiled.

"Wonderful!"

Cassandra watched from the dining table as her Mom prepared a small feast of bacon and eggs. Sometimes Cassandra wondered if Mom knew that if was just her left and that she didn't need to cook breakfast for her other siblings anymore.

"Cassandra, could you take a plate to your father? He's in his office." Her Mom asked, beaming at her just as bright as ever.

"Of course, Mom." She agreed, taking the plate of bacon and eggs out of her mother's hands. Even though she, and all her other siblings, were 30 now and their father was God knows how old, Mom always turned their bacon and eggs into a smiley face. Two eyes made of eggs and grinning mouth of bacon. Cassandra smiled as she took the plate down the hallway to Sir Reginald Hargreeves' office.

Hesitantly, for she always dreaded interrupting her father, Cassandra knocked on the heavy wooden door. She listened to the deep sound echo about the room and waited in a tense apprehension for an answer...but was met with none.

"Father?" She called, too softly to be heard as a part of her wanted to take the plate back and lie to her mother, telling her that she had checked father's office but it was empty. Yet her conscience got the better of her and she called out again, this time louder.

"Father!"

Yet still there was no answer. Swallowing what little she had left to fear of the old man now she was an adult, she pushed open the door.

All her hoping that Hargreeves wouldn't be in his office somehow hadn't prepared her for the sight of that empty chair looming behind the grand desk. Cassandra crept softly across the threshold and crossed the room, standing a meer inch away from the desk just to be sure. She frowned and, taking the plate with her, left the room.

Although she had the option of returning to the kitchen and, without lying this time, telling Mom she couldn't find father, something in the back of Cassandra's mind was biting and scratching to claw itself to the front of her mind and told her to go upstairs, to father's bedroom, and give him his food there.

The door to Sir Reginald Hargreeves' bedroom was slightly ajar when Cassandra arrived that morning, which was odd, for the entire time that Cassandra had known him he had always gone to sleep with the door firmly shut and that's how it stayed until morning, no matter how many times one of his children had a nightmare. She pushed it open, listening to the ominous creak of the rusted hinges as it swung open. Cassandra poked her head around the door before she entered fully. The sight she was met with almost made her stop, turn around and leave but it was so unbelievable that she just had to see for herself.

The curtains were drawn but the bright morning sun was shining through casting the room in a  sepia haze as if Cassandra had stepped into a memory. She wasn't thrown by this as her vision wasn't quite what it used to be now.  Most days her vision was blurred or grainy in some way or another.

Cassandra crept softly across the old, wooden floorboards, wary about what the old man would say if she woke him. But deep down she knew there would be no waking him now.

She set the smiling face of eggs and bacon down on the bedside table as she peered over his dead body. There was a smile on his lips. Cassandra had never seen him smile before, that bitter old man. But his smile was not of happiness, it was of spite, like he knew that Cassandra would be the one to find him. Now, after everything he did to her, he was laughing at her with that twisted smile from beyond the grave. Laughing at all the pain he had caused, what he had turned her into. Cassandra sat on the bed next to her father's dead body and placed a gentle hand on his neck. She wanted to know if he was really dead. She wanted to make sure he was really dead. Before she even knew what she was doing her grip had tightened around his cold, deathly white, neck.

"Miss Cassandra." A stern voice announced from the doorway. It was Pogo. Cassandra stared at him, not moving from the death grip she had on her own father.

"I didn't kill him." She said calmly because she knew it wouldn't make a difference if she had or not.

"I know." Pogo acknowledged and Cassandra let go of him. "Are you okay, my child?"

"I'm not mad." She whispered, her voice breaking. "Tell him I'm not mad, Pogo." She insisted, staring now at her father's lifeless body. 

"Tell him I'm not mad!" She screamed and Pogo came further into the room, took her by the shoulders and gently pulled her away from her father's corpse. By now, Cassandra had tears flowing down her pale cheeks.

"I was never mad! I wasn't mad! You knew! You knew I wasn't mad! He had to know, Pogo. He had to know and he did it anyway. I'm not mad!"

"Come now, child. Have you taken your medication this morning?"

"I'm not mad! I'm not! I'm not mad! I'm. Not. Mad!"