Raincoats | The Umbrella Academy

Loss

A vast open sky hung overhead. It was clearer that day, the dark gray had faded to a lighter, less polluted cloud of ash. The man standing amongst the rumble took a deep, rumbling breath. The smell wasn't as bad now, either.

Emerging from his small home in the ruins, he stretched his arms out to help shake himself from sleep. He scratched at the straggly beard that encompassed the lower half of his face. If he had a razor, he might have shaved it off, but he didn't and he wasn't sure he could bare to look at himself long enough to do it.

The cracked mirror set up in his home was mostly left alone. If he ever stopped to really look at himself, he might realize that the life had long since drained from his cerulean eyes. Most days he couldn't manage to take in his own appearance, though. The very sight of his grown up face, that hadn't felt like his own for a very long time, was enough to make him dizzy with thoughts.

In all honesty, Five hated the way he had grown up. As silly as it sounds to regret things from so long ago, he still deeply hated how things had played out. If only he hadn't been so hard headed and thick to think that he knew more than he did, maybe he could have stayed with his family and eventually stopped the world from crumbling.

Let's at least wake up before drowning in regret, he thought as he ducked back into his house.

'House' was a term applied loosely to the structure in which Five lived. No one in their right mind would call that open tent of scavenged materials a house.

"Yes, Dolores. I'll make breakfast in a second," he said, trudging back inside.

Sticking straight out of the wagon sitting to the side was his most prized book. At least 75% of the books in the Umbrella Academy were salvageable, and luckily, this was one of them. Found in the wreckage of the Academy was a book written by one of his very own; the author was Vanya Hargreeves.

From the picture of her on the back of the worn cover, he could tell that she grew up to be beautiful. That quiet, timid little girl that used to sit up late at night with him and eat snacks while he restlessly worked on his powers, had grown into her own. She grew out her bangs, and allowed her hair to flow over her shoulders. Her eyes seemed more hollow now, like whatever hope for the world she had left was gone by then. Five would never forgive himself for not being there to watch her grow up.

A makeshift tarp covered the small section of his home, where he would keep what little food he had. The tarp consisted of a lot of different materials haphazardly sewn together. A leather jacket here, a few spare pieces of an actual tarp, a yellow raincoat that still kept it's brightness over the years. He had no idea where that one came from. He found it somewhere in the ruins of the Academy, but it was much too small to have belonged to anyone there.

That would just remain one of the many mysteries stuck in the ruins that he had to accept. The raincoat, the glass eye tucked into his jacket, the bodies... He wouldn't be getting the answers he wanted and he had to deal with that. As if Five was accustomed to reality at that point.

"I know we've had tuna for the past week," he huffed as he began looking through the small pile of cans. "It's all we have."

The mannequin stared ahead lifelessly. She was all he had, as crazy as he knew it was. Unless he wanted to dig up some skeletons, Delores was all he had for company.

The loneliness was unbearable for the first few years. It sat on his chest like a fifty pound weight. He always considered himself a loner. When things were simpler and he was home with his siblings, he always did his best to stay away from their antics, save for a few outings with them. Five regretted not taking the chance to spend time with them more than anything. Their absence left a hole in his heart too big to possibly fill.