"I'm not mad."
------
Cassandra Hargreeves- or Number Eight as her father always called her- was the eighth member of the Umbrella Academy. Despite having powers, she had spent her whole life on the sidelines. She had been trained to fight, of cours...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Cassandra felt her whole body tremble as she saw the image before her of her father fade away. She heard less and less of Sir Reginald Hargreeves' voice as he shouted at her to concentrate and to practise using her power. In her fourteen years of life, Cassandra had yet to master having visions at will. Even now, as she felt a vision overcome her, she was not in control of it. She could just make out the bemused look of anticipation on her father's face as Cassandra's eye went completely white and she succumbed to the vision.
Hargreeves slowly, cautiously, approached the girl. She couldn't see him, he knew, but she was always very unstable during her visions and the slightest movement could distract her. He pulled out a notebook from his waistcoat pocket and uncapped his fountain pen before scribbling down notes on her physical appearance to her clearly unstable emotional state. The girl was trembling and flinching despite the atmosphere around her being completely calm. He could see beads of sweat forming on her tensed brow as she screwed up her eyes which remained open and deathly white all over.
Then, without warning, her eyes widened as if they had snapped open and the white visage dropped in the time Hargreeves' took to blink. Before he could do anything further, the girl opened her mouth and let out a deathly scream. The sound that escaped her lips was deep and guttural, filled with raw emotion as if her very soul had escaped her body. Hargreeves' flinched as the sound hit him like a shard of glass but made no attempt to comfort the girl. She kept on screaming, oblivious to the word around her.
"Don't come in!" Hargreeves' ordered as the other children quickly flooded in the doorway. They froze as he had ordered but lingered in the threshold, trembling in sympathy as they could only watch their sister's face twist in terror as she continued to scream and whimper, tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
Grace pushed her way through the crowd who had formed in the doorway and, ignoring or just not hearing Hargreeves' instructions to leave her, cupped Cassandra's cheeks and scooped her trembling body into a firm, motherly hug as Cassandra's body crumpled to the floor. The girl lay in her mother's arms whimpering as her screams ebbed and the vision faded. She would always remember the chaos she saw that day. The terror nor the vision would ever leave her. It haunted her every night in her dreams.
*
To prevent herself from fixating on her nightmares, Cassandra took to aimlessly walking the halls. She found herself heading from the kitchen down to the bedrooms. At the end of the hallway she could hear the distant chatter of raised voices. It was coming from Five's bedroom. After her nightmare, which she was sure she had seen Five in and seemed so real, she felt drawn to him. He had been acting awfully shady recently, perhaps he had some answers.
"What are you doing here?" Cassandra heard. It was Luther's voice, authoritative as ever, coming from inside Five's bedroom.
"I'm looking for Five." That was Diego, defensive as always. Cassandra smiled to herself. Those two.
