Prophet - Five Hargreeves X oc UMBRELLA ACADEMY

9

Waking up in a sickening amount of pain wasn't how she had planned her night, but as she woke up, it wasn't the only thing that alarmed her.

She was in a bed that definitely wasn't her own, in a room that wasn't familiar to her and in a shirt that also was not her own.

(She could only hope that it was Grace that had seen to her.)

Anneli blinked slowly to get rid of the blurriness and inhaled deeply before halting and gritting her teeth, the pain from such a simple movement sending pain up her chest and collar bone area. Taking slower breaths, she cautiously pushed herself up with her good arm and adjusted to the darkness in the room. A slither of light from the moon escaped through the curtains, so she could only assume a couple of hours had passed.

She reached over to pull the neck of the tee shirt away fro her skin and was surprised to see thick white gauze covering the space where her collarbone met her upper arm. Reaching back slihthly, she felt more on the back of her shoulder too - her eyebrows furrowed - she hadn't realised the bullet had gone all the way through.

No wonder she was bleeding so much.

Mouth dry and body aching, Anneli swung her legs over the side of the bed so her feet touched the cold floor and ran a hand through her hair, barely awake.

"Oh, you're alive."

Anneli let out a noise of surprise and a hardcovered book resting on the bedside table flung across the room towards the voice.

Before she could catch herself for her mistake, realising too late with her tiredness that it wasn't an enemy, (not really, anyways), a thud and hiss of pain met her ears and she stood, covering her mouth to silence her gasp.

"Dritt, jeg mente det ikke!" She spoke fast, staring wide eyed at Five who was holding his temple with a disgruntled expression on his face, eyes closed.

He released a slow breathe, reopening his eyes, and Anneli felt awful when he took his hand away and she saw a miniscule smear of blood on his fingers.

"Beklager, beklager-"

"I don't know what you're saying!" He cut her off sharply, making her go quiet.

He frowned down at the blood and wiped it on his blazer before wiping the small cut with his sleeve.

Anneli watched him quietly, unsure what to say, still fiddling with her fingers when his eyes met hers again.

"You talk in your sleep."

She blinked at him, surprised, and swallowed as she watched him pick up the book and brush some blood off of the corner that had struck him. He headed towards her and maintained eye contact with her as he placed the book down pointedly back on the small table.

Anneli finally gathered her thoughts. "Uh, what was I saying?"

He shrugged one shoulder up. "I don't speak Swedish-"

"-Norwegian." She quietly cut in, pride getting the best of her.

He shot her a dry look. "Whatever. I'm guessing 'fiolin' is violin?"

"Great guess, Eienstein."

She nodded, rubbing the space between her eyebrows tiredly. She wondered what else he had heard her say. Her cheeks turned red as she realised the button up shirt she was also in barley fell halfway down her thighs.

She placed her hands on her warming cheeks to cover them, grimacing. "What else did I say?" She asked quietly.

He thought for a moment, plucking the foreign vocabulary from his memory. "Erter. You said that a few times. Didn't seem like you liked that all too much, whatever it is."

"Peas?"

Now Anneli was confused. She sat herself tiredly down on the beds edge, holding her head in her hands to stop the room from spinning.

"That supposed to mean something?" He asks curiously.

"Who knows... maybe peas poison the world and cause everyone to die." She muttered to herself, annoyed at her powers for making things difficult.

He watched her for a moment before finally asking a question that had been pressing on his mind. "How do you tell the difference?"

She knew what he was talking about before he had to clarify.

"Between real visions and my subconscious?"

He nodded.

"Usually I can tell when things feel real... but it can be a complete toss of the dice most of the time." She admitted, fiddling with her fingers in her lap before closing her eyes and groaning. She flopped down on the bed, legs still dancing over the edge. "God..."

"What's wrong?"

"The room won't stop spinning."

"I'm not surprised, you pulled the bullet out yourself. That's enough to effect an anaesthetised person and you just..." he trailed off, gesturing.

She furrowed her eyebrows in deep thought. "I thought the bullet went all the way through."

"It practically did, but half was still in your arm and you insisted you could fix that yourself." He sounded half amused.

"Did I?" She didn't remember that at all.

As she pondered it, a flash of images moved in front of her eyes like a movie playing out.

Her back was on the hardwood floor and the left side of her torso felt uncomfortably warm. She could feel Five's footsteps reverberating through the floor beneath her.

"Im fine," she had blearily croaked.

His footsteps come to a stop.

"Tell me that when you're not bleeding out on my floor."

A great discomfort made her grimace, vision blurring dangerously as her hand was placed over the wound and she lifted her arm sligthly to get access to the half torn exit wound. It felt like her insides were twisting and a buzzing rang in her ears.

"The hell are you doing?"

The sound of metal clinking against the floor silences him. The blood covered bullet rolled from her fingers as her eyes flickered shut.

Anneli broke the silence after a while of not unpleasant silence, mind wandering as it usually did. "You know I used to think I made you up inside my head."

He stared at her confused and sat down on the other side of the bed, resting his elbows on his knees. "What?"

"When I was little I used to get dreams of you." She murmured tiredly, not caring how it sounded.

He hid his amusement and chose not to comment considering she was still recovering from bloodloss, and let her ramble despite how strange that sentence was.

"Before I figured out what my powers meant, I never knew if things were apart of my imagination or real. I kept dreaming about death and everything being destroyed... And then you'd be there, but I didn't know it was you, and when I told my mother," she trails off into a breathy, bitter laugh. "She thought I was crazy. Told me to stop talking about it or she'd push me down the stairs next time I opened my mouth."

He frowned, then, at how casually she had mentioned her mother in such a violent nature, so unbothered, so nonchalantly. Like those kind of words from her mother were normal. (Sadly, they were.)

"Yeah, she wasn't the nicest... but I used to think I was going insane until I saw the painting downstairs... Grace let me stay the night while your father was away once."

He watched her, just listening.

"Sometimes I wish I was normal," She sighed while laying her good arm over her eyes, exhausted.

"Don't we all." He said blankly, but strangely empathetically, understanding her point.

"I feel like I'm going mad, some days." She whispered.

Five took in her words and stayed quiet, not  knowing how to respond to that, or if anything he could have said would have been a comfort.