Number Eight {The Umbrella Academy} -- [On Hold]

Eighteen

"Here we go. This'll fix ya," Klaus said, carefully pouring Luther a cup of coffee. Before he could even touch the mug, Five was already drinking from it, leaving Luther to stare at the table in defeat.

Klaus had gotten us up at an unreasonable hour in the morning for a family meeting. Whatever he had to say, I had no idea why it couldn't have been covering at the meeting of the previous day, with more of the family there.

"Nice, okay." Klaus finished pouring a cup for me, and stood back to look at us as Five took a long slurp of his stolen cup. A disgusted face came soon after the liquid hit his lips.

"Jesus. Who do I gotta kill to get a decent cup of coffee?" he asked, setting the cup down.

"No one, you just have to not live here," I told him, stretching out my sore limbs.

Healing him had taken a lot out of me. My body was completely exhausted, and to make it worse I had gotten maybe five hours of sleep. I was ready to go back to bed.

"Can we get started please?" Luther was hunched over the table, his hoodie pulled to cover his head. If I didn't know him better, I would say he was hungover.

"Anyone seen any of the others? Diego? Allison? No?" Klaus asked. I shook my head, and he picked up a spatula. "All right, then, this is the closest thing to a quorum-" he banged the table with his utensil, the metal and wood combining to make quite an ugly noise- "that we're gonna get. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna spit it out. Yeah."

He didn't continue.

The three of us sitting at the table stared at him.

"Klaus," Luther encouraged. 

"I conjured Dad last night."

We continued to stare at him, this time more confused than expectant.

"What?" I questioned, wondering if he could do it again so I could exchange a few choice words with my father about his parenting tactics (mainly how he shouldn't torture children to see how their powers work).

"You said you haven't been able to conjure anyone in years," Luther stated. I knew that wasn't true, he was able to conjure Ben, but decided not to drop that on Five and Luther alongside whatever Klaus was going to tell us.

"Ah, yes, I know, but I'm sober. Ta-da!" he exclaimed, gesturing excitedly with his spatula. "I got clean, yesterday, to talk to someone special, and then ended up having this... conversation with dear old Daddy himself." We sat in silence, processing the new information.

"Has anyone got some aspirin?" Luther asked, moving to get up.

"Top shelf, next to the crackers," Five told him.

"White bottle, purple label," I added, standing up to get water.

"Hey, hey, hey. This is serious, guys, all right? This really happened, I swear!"

"Okay, fine. I'll play. What did the old man have to say?" Five leaned forward, a patronizing smile on his face.

"Well, he gave me the usual lecture about my appearance and my failures in life."

"Sounds pretty typical for Reggie." I grabbed a glass and turned on the sink.

"Yeah, no surprise there. Even the afterlife couldn't soften a hardass like Dad, right? But he did mention something about his murder, or lack thereof, because..." I finished filling up the glass and turned to look at Klaus. "He killed himself."

"I don't have time for your games, Klaus." Luther stood, and Klaus hurried to reassure him as I hopped up onto the counter.

"I'm telling you the truth, Luther. I'm telling you the truth."