Raincoats | The Umbrella Academy

Number Five

Denis Finley was having a breakdown.

The original plan had been to retire in 2019 and spend the short rest of his life with the woman he loved. Obviously, that had gone to shit. Now he was stuck in an apartment that cost him a ridiculous amount of drug money, without Charlotte, in a world on the verge of apocalypse.

And the worst part was that he couldn't even fix it. His briefcase, the one he had used for years to get them from place to place and time to time, the one he had specially altered so that they couldn't be tracked with it, was destroyed. He made sure of it, for Charlotte. But look where that had got him. 

If he had the choice, he would go back. He would go back and fix everything. Before he had even met Charlotte and go down a different path. This would have been better for them both if he had never got caught up in the Commission.

He had no idea what to do now. She was gone, really gone. Denis knew that girl inside and out and he knew from the look on her face that she was done with him for good.

That morning, he could barely get up. He had been beaten to pulp and left alone to deal with it. The last thing he wanted was another hospital visit, but the pain in his ankle was excruciating. Limping to the closet, he searched for a sheet to wrap it in. The only extra one they had was a twin top sheet with dinosaurs printed on them. Charlotte had stolen it from the laundromat like most of their clothes and bedding.

He cursed, sitting all alone on the floor of his apartment, wrapping his broken ankle up with little sight left from his swollen eye. His whole face ached with every movement. Normally, when Denis was hurt, Charlotte was there to clean him up. His Charlotte.

She would carefully dab away at bloody cuts, hold his hand as she cleaned them out with peroxide. Charlotte was always all business, but she was tender when it came to him, or at least she used to be. 

It was everything about her that he missed. Everything from the way her small mouth would pull up at the corners when he cracked a joke, to the way she would roll her eyes when she was annoyed at him. He missed her witty comments and the diligent way she worked. Denis didn't think he could stand to have her this angry with him.

All he ever wanted was for her to be happy, or at least that's what he had convinced himself. Of course, he had done his best to respect her wishes when she rejected his advances. He settled for being friends with her, so that he wouldn't lose her completely.

But Denis never really looked past all her little gestures. He never really saw how she felt about all of this. 

It didn't matter anymore, because she was gone. She left in the middle of the night with some teenage boy. Who even was that? And why the hell did she trust him more than Denis, who had kept her safe for years and did everything for her? Denis, who had loved her more than anything or anyone ever had.

With his limp ankle securely wrapped in a thick bundle of sheets, he dragged himself into the tiny kitchen. He was starving. The bastard who had kidnapped him the day before hadn't given him any food and he had been too tired to even try to move when he got home that night. 

There was a half eaten bologna sandwich in the fridge, but not much else. Denis settled for the old sandwich. There were still shards of the ceramic mug on the linoleum, but he ignored it. 

Charlotte hated bologna. She also hated it when he left things on the floor. Denis's heart hurt. He could still see the tortured look on her face when he told her that he loved her. And he did. Denis had never loved anybody else as much as that girl and she had just shook her head at him and left like it didn't matter. Like he didn't matter.