chapter nine

Lunch with The Handler was definitely interesting. Blair had been laying on a sofa in The Handler's office when The Handler and Five entered, the latter looking uncomfortable for some reason. There was an awkward tension resonating around Five, but if The Handler had noticed, she hadn't made any indignation that she had. The Handler always had great stories considering everything she'd seen and done over time, and she had not held any of those stories back as they all sat at the desk in her office.

"And that's how Phil determined that the archduke just had to go," The Handler concluded another story with a long slurp of her smoothie. Apparently the already fit woman was going on an all liquids diet for some health related reason, and the whole meal she had been trying to live vicariously through Five and Blair by forcing as much food as possible on them. "Care for a dessert?"

Five leaned forward and put his empty glass of water back onto the tray in front of him and Blair. "I had a bad Twinkie in the apocalypse once. It kind of put me off desserts."

"Please," The Handler mused, "indulge me."

Five continued to stare at the woman while Blair leaned forward and took a piece of candy. If Five wasn't going to take one, then Blair would, just for the sake of being polite. She carefully unwrapped the candy and popped it into her mouth whilst The Handler lit up a cigar.

"What's that taste like to you?" She asked, leaning back in her chair with a smirk.

Blair's eyebrows furrowed together. "The nineteen fifties?"

"Precisely right," The Handler grinned. "Our clever metaphysics division concocted a way to perfectly distill an entire decade into a single candy. This one's molded after the Fudge Mutt, America's favorite in nineteen fifty-five."

"Remarkable," Five commented.

"You'll be happy to know it's the very division that's building your new bodies," The Handler mused. "Oh, that reminds me, I have something for the two of you." She pressed a button on her desk and an intercom buzzed to life. "Carla?"

"Yes?" The intercom replied.

Without breaking eye contact with the two siblings, The Handler requested, "would you bring in the box, please?"

"Certainly."

The intercom clicked off and a woman who looked like the ideal nineteen fifties woman from those weird posters you'd find online entered the room. She flashed charming smiles at Blair and Five as she set down one large box and one minuscule box on the desk in front of them. When she left the room, The Handler maneuvered around her desk and stood in between Five and Blair to watch them open their gifts.

"Go ahead," The Handler prompted them, "open them."

Blair carefully took the top of her box off and looked at the gift inside. Laying on a piece of Styrofoam for safety was a plain silver ring— Connor's ring. He had given it to her when they first started dating with a promise. Blair remembered swearing it back to him on that cold night on top of the roof, his eyes boring deep into hers with affection and adoration practically spilling out of them. They had been best friends first, after all, and their bond was much deeper than a surface love story.

The promise was to stay loyal to each other before The Commission. They had heard horror stories of partners killing partners before, and although the stories were far and few in between, they both wanted confirmation that if one of them was given the order, they wouldn't follow through with it, regardless of the consequences. It was the same way with the rest of their team: they would value their familial bonds before their coworker bonds.

The Handler, who might've sensed that Blair didn't want to make Five complete privy to every aspect of her life or was simply only addressing Five because he had the larger box, said, "clothes make the man, Five. Won't it be nice when you can actually wear it? Very soon, I assure you. They're perfecting your body as we speak."

Five looked up from his box and replied, "thank you. It's a very kind gift." He put the box top back on and turned around to face the rest of the room. "Is that a Chinese flamethrower?"

"Good eye," The Handler nodded, watching as Five crossed the room to inspect it closer. "War. Such a fascinating concept. A temporary salve for a permanent human flaw. Course, it's a bit easier to see from thirty thousand feet. These are just some of the things I've collected in my travels. M26 grenades from the Vietnam War. And this, the most noteworthy, perhaps. My Walther pistol. The very one Hitler used to kill himself. We're not supposed to take these kind of things, but... he wasn't gonna use it anymore. Feel... how perfectly balanced that is."

Blair, who had crossed the room somewhere around the middle of The Handler's monologue, took the pistol from the woman's hands and gazed at it with longing eyes. It was beautiful, indeed. It had gotten rid of Hitler, and it was a wonderfully well balanced gun. Blair honestly envied The Handler for getting to possess such a beautiful pistol.

Five, who was somehow unfazed by the very gun Hitler used to off himself with, stated, "I had some thoughts I wanted to run by you. Some suggestions to improve Commission protocol."

"Mmm! Shaking things up already!" The Handler exclaimed. "I admire that. Go on. Do tell!"

Five headed back to the desk with Blair limping behind him. "Gloria. The tube operator. Wouldn't it be simpler if case managers were to send their own messages?"

"I appreciate the thought. I really do, but everyone loves Gloria," The Handler answered. "I— I would never hear the end of it. She's been with the Commission family for years, and she's this close to making pension."

A knock at the door interrupted the conversation and some random woman entered with a bashfull look on her face. "Sorry to interrupt. May I have a moment alone?"

"Of course." The Handler turned back to Five and Blair. "Duty calls. We'll continue this discussion later, Five. Blair, if you wouldn't mind, would you stick with Five for a little bit so Dot and I can talk in private?"

Blair nodded. "Yeah, sure."

"May I?" Five asked, finally reaching out towards the bowl of delicious decade flavored candy.

"Please," The Handler mused.

"Blair," Five called out, his footsteps echoing behind Blair in the freakishly Kong Commission hallway. "I need to talk to you."

Blair turned around, her eyes meeting Five's. She cocked her head to the side in confusion, yet still allowed him to jump them into some random supply closet. A medic had given her heavy pain killers to help with the pain in her leg, and it had helped so much that she didn't even have to rely on the crutches while the pain medication was still affecting her.

The supply closet was small and dimly lit, and muffled noises of everyday life could be heard from beyond its entrance. Different bottles of cleaning solutions littered the shelves on the walls among different cleaning products like plungers and sponges. The two teenagers were leaning against opposite walls, surveying the other as they both waited for the other one to start talking.

"I... need your help," Five admitted, ducking his head to avoid looking in Blair's eyes. "We need to get out of here."

Blair scoffed, "why? This place is great and our siblings are gonna survive the apocalypse. It's a win win situation."

Five looked back up at Blair. "Our siblings aren't gonna survive the apocalypse. The Handler never promised, she said she'd try. She's likely leaving them to die."

Blair rolled her eyes. "Can you not trust that people are nice sometimes? Our family is gonna survive and we get jobs once again, end of story."

"And the rest of the world? They'll die in the apocalypse," Five pointed out.

"Since when did you care about the rest of the world? Look, the world has to end at some point in time. I was on an apocalypse prevention special operatives team when I was here, we prevented the apocalypse from striking at the wrong times, but you can only stall the end of the world for so long," Blair explained. "The world has to end some day. That's how the universe works."

Five rolled his eyes. "Blair, we need to save our siblings. The Handler wants them dead."

"Five, they'll be fine," Blair repeated herself. "Why don't you trust The Handler?"

"Why don't you want to stop the apocalypse?" Five fired back.

"Because I want some goddamn rest!" Blair exclaimed. "I want to go back to where I belong with the people I love and have some fucking peace. I was in apocalypse prevention, and now I'm done with that shit. I'm stealing a briefcase and going home."

Blair internally cursed herself for revealing her plans. She didn't want anyone to know her plan yet. It had only taken her a half hour from the creation of the idea to spill it to Five. Blair was really getting out of touch with her old skills, she supposed.

Blair wasn't aware that she was so done with saving the world until she was walking down the hallways once again. It was always a touchy subject for her— most days she loved saving the world, and yet some days she didn't. She knew how indecisive she was, but this time it didn't feel like indecisiveness, it felt like certainty. She had saved the world more than enough times. It was about time she got her retirement.

"You're just going to ditch us all like that?" Five scoffed. "Are you that heartless?"

"Don't talk to me about heartless when you were the one that walked out on us first," Blair laughed coldly. "I'm just following suit."

Five ran a stressed hand through his hair and groaned in annoyance. "Blair. Help me save our siblings first. I'll even help you get back when we're done, I swear."

"It's gonna be a little hard to go back if I'm fucking dead," Blair snapped.

Five stepped forward, the space between him and Blair decreasing majorly. His eyes were full of a new desperate look, a look of vulnerability.

"Please, Blair," he began, "I need your help."

Blair groaned this time, the noise quite similar to the one her brother had made when he was annoyed with her. She had no reason to help, and she didn't have to. Yet, as Five's eyes bored deep into her own, she found it increasingly harder to say no. Saying no would practically being saying no on her siblings lives, and their deaths weren't something she needed on her conscience.

"I'll haunt you if I don't get to go home."

"Hurry it up," Blair hissed, limping back towards Five's desk from where she had been keeping watch. She still wasn't keen on helping, but she kept a look out for Five regardless of her own feelings.

"I'm going," Five replied, his fingers flying over his typewriter hastily.

Five put the final slip of paper into a container and handed it to Blair. He gripped her wrist and hopped them into the tube room, where they slid the containers up two different tubes to be delivered to Hazel and Cha-Cha respectively. It was a simple plan, to get them to assassinate one another, and yet one that would make Blair extremely happy. They had tortured her, a little revenge on Blair's behalf was called for.

"You know that's not how we do things here," The Handler tutted, a calm expression on her soft features. Five and Blair whirled around to see the woman standing at the entrance of the tube room with a disappointed look on her face. "Where's Gloria?"

"Don't know," Five lied, "couldn't find her anywhere."

Soft groans filled the air and The Handler turned her head, spotting the ends of Gloria's legs sticking out from behind the desk. Blair cringed as she realized they should've taken care of Gloria better when they knocked her out. Should've hidden her body that wasn't somewhere totally obvious, at the very least.

The Handler turned back to face the two Hargreeves. "You're great disappointments to me. You can''t change what's to come. I truly find it so odd neither of you can shed this fantasy. You're first rate pragmatists. You belong here with us."

"I don't belong anywhere, thanks to you," Five spat. "You made me a killer!"

"You were always a killer. I just pointed you in a direction."

As The Handler raised her gun, Five jumped himself and Blair behind some of the machines in the room as The Handler fired at them, her bullets hitting the ground were they had previously stood. The alarm began to blare, its horrible noise filling Blair's ears as it screeched, 'Security breach in tube room. Security to tube room'.

Five pushed a wire cart into the hallway at The Handler's feet and jumped him and Blair behind The Handler.

"Come on, Hargreeves," The Handler tutted. "You both have so much potential. Blair, how could you let him string you along in this? You always knew one day there'd be an apocalypse you weren't supposed to stop."

Blair pursed her lips together.

"Don't you want to see Connor again? Or Atticus? Lolita? Amelie? Don't you miss them?" The Handler asked, trying to tug at Blair's emotions to get her to submit. "You won't see them again if you go along with Five's plans. Is this really how you want the last line of your report to read?"

"I'll find a way to do both," Blair shrugged. "Don't worry about me."

Seemingly changing tactics, The Handler turned to Five and said in a much colder tone, "you can't keep this up, Five. We both know that even you have a limit. I saved you from a lifetime of being alone. You owe me." She went to fire her gun, an empty clicking noise sounding out instead of the bang of a bullet.

"I do owe a debt," Five said, jumping him and Blair into the office behind The Handler. "But it's not to you."

Five pulled the pin on his grenade, rolling it towards the Handler's feet as he yanked Blair out of the office. The siblings hid behind a wall as they waited for the explosion. When the fire burst out of the room along with multiple shards of glass, Five and Blair jumped into the briefcase room to grab their much need briefcase.

Another pin pulled and the briefcase room burst into flames behind Blair and Five. Blair's leg felt a lot worse after running on it— the pain medication was wearing off. Five's hand gripped Blair's wrist and they disappeared with their briefcase, nothing but the fiery remains of different rooms as proof that they had been in the Commission. It was so quick that all of it had blurred together for Blair until she felt that falling sensation in her gut.

On the previous Wednesday at eight fifteen in the morning, Five and Blair went crashing onto the bar in the living room of the Umbrella Academy, scaring the shit out of their siblings. Blair yelped in pain as her injured knee took the brunt of her fall, her body sprawling onto the bar uncomfortably. That knee really couldn't catch a break, could it?

"You guys, am I still high, or do you see them, too?" Klaus asked.

Five and Blair tumbled off the bar top and onto the floor, Blair's knee once again taking the brunt of the impact. While Five stood up, Blair simply sat up and leaned against the bar so that she wouldn't have to move her knee at all.

"Where have you two been?" Luther demanded.

"Are you alright?" Allison asked as she and Klaus helped an unwilling Blair onto her feet. They probably thought they were being nice, but it was honestly putting Blair through much more pain.

"Who did this?" Luther asked.

Five took the coffee out of Allison's hands and replied, "irrelevant," before passing the cup to Blair. "So, the apocalypse is in three days. The only chance we have to save our world is, well, us."

"The Umbrella Academy," Luther concluded.

"Like a reunion tour," Blair laughed before wincing at the pain that came shooting up from her knee at the movement her laughter caused.

"If y'all don't get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves, we're screwed," Fine snapped, his eyes flitting towards Blair for a moment as if to tell her that she needed to get a better attitude about the situation as well. "Who cares if Dad messed us up? Are we gonna let that define us? No. And to give us a fighting chance to see next week, we've come back with a lead. We know who's responsible for the apocalypse."

Allison leaned forward, grabbing the slip of paper from Five's outstretched hand with a sense of urgency.

"This is who we have to stop," Five explained.

"Harold Jenkins?"

"Who the hell is Harold Jenkins?"

episode six : the day that wasn't