Raincoats | The Umbrella Academy

Bodies in the Closet

"Mom..." The brunette trailed off, gaze sliding to the strange redhead eating lunch with her mother. "Who is this?"

Grace stood, smoothing down the front of her flowy dress. "Oh, Vanya. This is-"

"One of us," a new voice interrupted. "She's one of us."

All three of the women turned to see who had joined the conversation. The kid in the school boy uniform had entered from the hall, he was holding up a tan folder full of papers.

With a frown, the woman in the gray approached the table, now more focused on her brother than the random girl in her house. "What's going on?"

Five dropped the folder in front of Charlotte and the finger sandwiches. "This was in dad's office. Her name is Charlotte Cafferty. She was born in Northern Ireland, on October 1st, 1989."

If Charlotte had been eating anything at that moment, which she wasn't, she would have choked. She grabbed at the folder, quick to open it. What the hell? How did he know that? The first page of the stack was a copy of her birth certificate. At least that's what it looked like, she had never actually seen it on account of running away before all her legal documents were released to her as an adult. It was obviously a copy, because it was in black and white, but all the info was there. Her name, scrawled in shaky cursive, signed by a single parent. 

"Where's-" She stopped herself, staring down at the document in shock. That must have been her mother's handwriting, right? It was the first time she had seen something attached to her biological mother since the day she was born. Charlotte had never minded that she didn't know her mother, but it didn't change the fact that this was her first look at something that she had written. There was no signature in the space for the father, but that didn't matter. She felt dizzy.

"Wait, you mean that she's like us, like us?" Vanya questioned urgently. Her round eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head.

Grace's cold hand clasped Charlotte's, but this time she didn't think of it as a sweet motherly gesture. Why did Sir Reginald Hargreeves have her birth certificate? She pushed the first page out of the way to reveal a sign in sheet from a hospital visit. Her name was on that too, as well as the name of a long gone foster parent. The reason for the visit was listed somewhere in the middle of the page as being for a broken wrist. Her allergies and other medical information filled the page. The next page was a sheet of a guardianship document from the day Mr. and Mrs. Calhan began fostering her.

Charlotte recoiled from the folder as if it had tried to bite her, clutching her hands to her chest. "No," she whispered. "No, no, no." The world started crystalizing around her like ice. She was suddenly overwhelmingly aware of the burn marks on her upper legs. The scars were a product of fabric melting into her skin and having to be ripped out. They had never had a chance to fade with age.

Vanya shouted in surprise, eyes sliding past where Charlotte sat, but Five kept his focus on her chair, where he could no longer see her. His cold eyes locked on her wide ones despite her lack of visibility. That had never happened before and she was not a fan of the intrusive stare.

"This isn't happening," Charlotte soothed herself, chest tightening by the second. Everyone else in the room heard her disembodied voice. "This can't be real." The remaining papers in the folder fluttered, being searched through.

"I don't have time for this," Five spoke over the shuffling of paper. "You need to come with me."

Grace was standing now, gently patting the flickering girl's shoulder. "Hey... Shh, it's alright, Dear." Her hands were quickly batted away, but she persisted with trying to calm her down.