003.
Examining the oddly detailed blueprint, Ava wondered to herself why it had been created in the first place. Every room, every hallway, every outrageously expensive vase was there and labeled accordingly. By the way each individual bedroom was marked by the owner’s number instead of their name—it would almost appear that Sir. Reginald Hargeeves had drawn it up, himself. No, he’d never concern himself with such a ‘pointless,’ activity as free-drawing, as she recalled him saying to her once. Her relationship with him, as many others, was complicated, to say the least…
~
September 1st, 1995
“Why are we back here, Mama?” Ava questioned as she was being unbuckled her booster seat and helped out of their car.
“Because your sister needs you, sweetie. I’ll be back to pick you both up in a bit.” her mother explained curtly, the underlying unease in her voice almost completely lost on Ava. She would’ve thought after over five years of motherhood, she’d be relatively used to the abnormality of her situation but no dice. There were just no books on ‘How-to-Raise-Your-Surprise-Miracle-Twins.’ An untapped market, indeed.
“Oh okay!” exclaimed Ava cheerily, taking her mother’s hand, and following along towards the massive and frankly intimidating mansion. Hopping happily up the stone steps all the way to the great glass-plated doors embolized with silhouetted umbrellas, she bounced on her heels as she waited for them to open. Rapping three times on the glass, Ms. Wei did not wait around for it to be answered, giving her 5-year-old a quick peck atop her head, and promptly fleeing back to her car.
Despite her awareness that she was the better-liked child—perhaps for her fairly mellow temperament or possibly just for the fact she possessed no powers to get herself into any major trouble, Ava could still sense a certain reluctance to be near her from her mother. She, in her naivete, presumed this was not merely a result of her presence, but rather that her mom was just ‘like that.’ Unaware that in the years leading up to her unanticipated birth, Cynthia Wei, had been one of the most lively and fearless women in her town with dreams of becoming a professional singer someday. Those dreams, as expected, were quickly dashed the second she came along.
“Oh, hello! You must be Ava.” said a woman with a particularly strong trans-Atlantic accent upon seeing her standing alone on the doorstep. She was tall, adorned in a beautiful red-checkered 50s-swing dress and white apron—with perfectly coiffed blonde hair and bright, vibrant blue eyes. Ava couldn’t help but marvel in her beauty—it seeming nearly inhuman in nature.
“Uh—yes, I’m here for my sister, Zoe.” she recited just as her mother had told her to. The woman nodded, directing a bright, disarming smile her way.
“Yes, of course—follow me,” she instructed kindly and gently, automatically putting Ava at ease as she crossed over the polished wooden threshold. Instantly she was taken by all that surrounded her—from the mountainous wood pillars to the large set of stairs she suspected would be perfect to sled down on.
Remembering her manners, of course, she did not rush to test this theory. Yet right as they were advancing towards them, excitement rising in her chest, Ava was stunned when a brigade of frantic boys came rushing down them, the first of which accidentally running straight into her.
Laying mostly incapacitated on the carpet, Ava felt her head start to spin and her lungs ache for air as if she had dunked her head under the water in a pool for too long. All talk she heard from those nearby was now only background noise as she attempted to catch her breath, the woman from before too busy scolding the rest of the boys to notice her predicament.
“Ah—nice going, Ben—you got the wrong one!” she heard a strangely whimsical-sounding voice chastise the boy who had knocked her down. From her limited vantage point she could see he had light, ruffled brown hair and a certain doe-like quality in his hazel-green eyes.
“Oh, shut it, Klaus!” the one she identified as Ben snapped back, coming into full view when he got to his feet and went to her, extending a hand out for her to grab on to. Accepting this offer of help, Ava gave the boy a brief onceover—taking note of his short black hair and deep, enigmatic brown eyes. “Sorry about that—someone was pushing me,” he apologized, shooting an annoyed glare Klaus’s way.
“Was not!” the other boy adamantly denied, hands clenching into fists as he stomped his feet.
“Were too!” countered Ben, their argument rapidly devolving into a petty back-n-forth. Choosing to let them settle this disagreement themselves, Ava turned her attention on the blonde woman, who was speaking to another boy of which caught her off-guard if only for the fact that he was casually twirling a small, but rather sharp-looking throwing knife between his fingers. She guessed the house-rules for dangerous objects were different here. Pressing on, she walked up behind her, about to open her mouth to speak when there were more thunderous footsteps down the stairs and in a flash, found herself toppled to ground once again.
“Ava! Ava, thank goodness you’re here—they’re trying to hurt me!” cried Zoe, clinging onto her now immensely confused sister.
“What—” she was barely able to squeak out when a fourth boy suddenly appeared at the bottom of the steps in a flurry of teal-ish blue light.
“Uh, correction—you were trying to hurt us.” he rebuked, a pointed sense of superiority about him as he straightened out the cuffs of his white button-up shirt. Shortly thereafter two additional children could be seen coming down the stairs—a girl with dark, curly brown hair and a boy with bright, blonde hair. By the way they chatted so freely with one another, it seemed the whole Zoe debacle had hardly registered with them at all, joining the rest of the children in the room with little urgency.
“Real A+ leadership back there, Luther—I nearly lost an eye.” the boy with the knife snarled.
“Well, maybe if you listened to me when I said to leave her alone that wouldn’t have been made a possibility,” retorted the blonde snidely, his head held high like he was a nobleman speaking to a peasant. The rest of the kids collectively rolled their eyes at this exchange—suggesting they’d heard similar iterations of it too many times over to be genuinely concerned.
“Ah, yes because ignoring the problem is exactly how to solve it!” returned knife-boy, throwing his hands up dramatically. Luther narrowed his eyes, finally peeved enough to face his nay-sayer.
“You know you are so—”
“Enough!” a harsh and authoritative command rung out over the commotion, immediately sending everyone but Ava, Zoe, and the blonde woman into a frenzied line-formation in front of the source of said commander. He was entirely stone-faced, grey-haired dressed in a muted black suit with a monocle over his right eye. Next to him cowered a meek-faced girl with a clipboard held tightly in one hand, a stopwatch in the other. Watching in amazement and grave puzzlement as the man’s eyes scanned the scene, calculative and emotionless, it was as if all the world had gone quiet in anticipation for his next words,
“Where is Number Eight?”
~
For the remainder of that day, Ava couldn’t help but feel a tad… aimless. The doctor she’d talked to had told her all the damage Zoe had sustained was thankfully minimal, but that due to the sedative she’d been given when she arrived, it was best they let her wake on her own.
With this in mind, Ava had no reason not to resume work at her desk—knowing she’d most likely be spending the night, anyway. As the hours dragged on, her mind continued to wander back to long-suppressed memories of her time spent as an observer to the Umbrella Academy’s innumerable training sessions and all the many shenanigans they got up to in between. All moments that heavily involved Ben, which for her, amounted to most of them, were off-limits—her often taking to busying herself with mundane tasks to get her mind off them. Although the rest of them made her think—where had those kids she’d once known so well gone? Allison, she knew had blossomed into somewhat of a Hollywood darling—occasionally having noticed her in fairly big-name film productions or in more recent times, on the cover of a few trashy-tabloids at the grocery-store checkout line. Though never being quite as close with him as the rest of the members, the news of Luther’s moon-excursions had not escaped her. The whereabouts of her remaining childhood confidants, apart from Ben and Five, of course, she hadn’t the slightest clue of. Not that she’d really been searching for them.
Staring down at Zoe’s floorplan of the old building, however, made her wonder if she should be. Reaching for her breakroom’s only private-call phone, Ava exhaled before dialing the number of the one person she hoped would have some guiding wisdom on what she should do.
“Hey, sweetie—how’s it hanging?” said a kind, old voice on the other end of the staff breakroom phone—making Ava smile almost instantly, her nose scrunching up at the rather confident use of outdated slang.
Becoming a part of her family when she was about six years old, Ava was sure her adoptive father, Dr. Dan Clark, had been exactly what she and her mother were missing all along. Even if at first, she and Zoe didn’t see him that way.
“Hey, Dad—it’s hanging…fine. I uh, can I talk to you about something? A lot’s happened today,” she sighed, trying in vain to get more comfortable against the wall she was leaning on.
“Of course! Nothing involving that ex-fiancé of yours, I hope,” her adoptive father added concernedly, a note of subtle resentment sneaking in. Ava shook her head, laughing incredulously at how easily the biggest fiasco of her life in recent times had been put on the backburner by an even bigger one. Life was funny that way—in a ‘that friend that calls you names all the time and fails so magnificently at convincing you they’re just jokes’ kinda way.
“No, no—I haven’t heard from him in weeks—probably still stuck in Vegas with that newfound true love of his.” Ava joked, ignoring the dull ache in her heart. ‘One breakdown at a time,’ had become her rule over the years.
“What an idiot… Anyways, you had something on your mind?” the older man inquired warmly.
“Yeah, yeah—it’s about Zoe—she uh, she’s back, Dad.” Ava informed, the reality of it not entirely registering with her, herself.
“Oh my—really? When? Are you okay?” the amount of questions being asked of her all at once overwhelming to say the least. It was a rare occurrence that her dad ever sounded worried or serious, but it never failed to make Ava uneasy whenever he did.
“Uh yeah, earlier this morning—and I don’t know, honestly—it’s just been a lot to take in, seeing her again after all this time, you know?” she could feel her resolve to keep her emotions in check breaking down by the tremors attacking her fingers and the sound of her own voice beginning to tremble.
“Yes, I imagine it would be… Do you need me to come down there?” was her father’s next inquiry, and Ava knew the offer was fully sincere.
“No, that’s okay, Dad—” she wiped a few stray tears forming at the corner of her eye, “I just—I guess I needed to talk to someone who I know would understand, and so I wouldn’t have to go through explaining it all again.” Ava finished with a shaky laugh, thinking back to Angie’s prior extension to talk.
“I see—yeah, that’d be no fun—if they wanted all that they could just go read that Vanya-girl’s book,” her dad quipped with a short, slightly melancholic chuckle. Vanya. Though sure he had only said it to lighten the mood, the mention made Ava stop dead in her tracks. How could she forget about her? Back in the day they’d been so close, becoming friends before she’d even began to form a real relationship with Ben. Maybe she knew of some secret details hidden within the old academy—something that would explain the map Zoe had been found with. It was worth a try. “Ava, you still there?” Ava flinched at the unintentional scare her father had given her—recognizing how her pondering silence could’ve been misconstrued as something else.
“Yeah, sorry, Dad—I actually gotta go right now—but thank you for listening and I’ll check in with an update as soon as possible—love you, bye!” she sped hurriedly through her farewell, mentally promising to deliver on said vow later on before placing the phone back on its wall-mounted receiver. Right now, Ava had a mission to complete—and the first objective on her list was: find Vanya’s number.
Just as she going to embark on the journey back to her desk, Ava got caught in a minor collision with someone at the door. It was Angie, and she looked to be in a hurry as well.
“Ava! I was just looking for you—you gotta come quick, your sister’s awake!”