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❛ ᴛʜᴇ ᴍᴀʀᴛʏ ᴍᴄғʟʏ ᴇғғᴇᴄᴛ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐓𝐖𝐄𝐋𝐕𝐄 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ ᴀ ʟɪɢʜᴛ sᴜᴘᴘᴇʀ ꒱　


❝ IF YOU GET [ DAD'S ]
HELP, I'M OUT ❞

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Alexa groaned as she woke up, feeling the headache come on. Something— someone— shifted underneath her and spoke: "good, you're up."

She blinked, lifting herself up slightly to see the face of a very familiar boy looking up at her with a slightly bored expression. Immediately, her face warmed. "Uh, morning?"

He snorted. "It's still the same day. Now get up." He gently prodded her into a standing position. "You might want to brush your teeth. We're going to meet Dad."

Her dismay must have shown on her face because he backtracked: "not alone. Hopefully the others will meet us there."

"Bu-but Dad? Five, I can't—"

The boy stood from the bed, clothes slightly rumpled and he approached her. "Hey, Lexa— I'll be there. I'm not going to leave you to face him alone." She looked incredibly worried but he wouldn't budge on this. "We need him. The only other option is something I definitely don't want to do."

Alexa frowned, still unconvinced. "But—"

The blonde broke off as Five stepped closer to her and reached for her hand to grasp it gently. "It's going to be fine, Lexa." His gaze met hers and she saw how serious he was. "He doesn't know us yet, he's got nothing on us."

"That's not what you said a few nights ago."

He sighed. "You don't have to come," he said quietly. Then he hesitated before he admitted, "but I'd really, really like it if you did. I don't want to face him alone either and I don't know if anyone else is coming."

She swallowed nervously. "Promise you won't leave? Like— like last time?"

Of course, she meant the last time he'd argued with their father and disappeared into the future for forty-five years.

"Not like last time," he said firmly, then he paused. "Is that why you don't want to see him?" he asked as the idea came to light. "Because-because—" He couldn't finish the sentence.

"In part," she admitted. "He-he made one of the people I care about most in the world disappear almost forever."

One of the people I care about most in the world. She definitely almost sober now. He swallowed. "Well, forever is an awfully long time."

Alexa gave a little nod and repeated her words from the previous night as she whispered, "that was one of my greatest fears."

Five had never been great at emotional comfort and he certainly wasn't any better at it now but there was something he was familiar with. His gaze flicked down to her lips. Would that help? With too many unknowns in the equation, he pushed aside the thought. "I'm not going to disappear this time," he told her softly instead. "Would-would you come with me?"

The blonde hesitated and then gave another nod, knowing that she couldn't leave him to face their father on his own.

☂☂☂

Alexa and Five were the first ones in the elevator that evening and she couldn't help but be glad for the stop over they'd made to her apartment. There, she'd cleaned up and brushed her teeth to be more presentable while Five paced in her living room. It had almost given her a strange sense of normalcy.

While memories of earlier that day were fuzzy she remembered the happy feeling she'd had with her siblings and tried to hold on to it as she shifted anxiously next to him. As if sensing her unease, he reached down and gently squeezed her hand in silent comfort only to promptly drop it when Diego's hand stopped the elevator door from closing. "Wait up."

Everyone crowded in and Alexa relaxed slightly. "Good, we're all here," Five said easily.

Only halfway up, Luther farted and Alexa clamped a hand over her nose as her siblings protested around her.

"Sorry, I'm a little nervous," Luther apologized.

They burst out once they reached their floor, coughing slightly in the cleaner air of the tiki-style restaurant.

"Alright, when Dad gets here, I'll do the talking, okay?" Five said.

"I got a few questions for him myself," Diego protested.

"I'd like to give him a piece of my mind," Alexa chimed in, remembering her promise.

"Hey, we don't want to scare him off," the boy argued.

"That wouldn't be so bad," the blonde mumbled, earning a glare from him.

"We still need him," Five said. "He might be able to help us stop doomsday and get home."

"No, Five, we need to figure out why he's planning to kill the president," Diego said, sticking doggedly on his opinion.

"This is a matter of life and death, you imbecile."

"Okay, yeah, maybe we should all take turns talking?" Vanya suggested. "Here, whoever has the conch shell gets to talk." She picked the item up off a nearby table.

"Vanya, we don't have time for debate, okay?" Five retorted irritably.

"Maybe I should lead," Allison suggested as she went for the shell. "We all know I'm the better public speaker."

Alexa reached up and grabbed it from her. "Maybe I should lead so I can protect you guys."

"Look, we don't need protection," Diego said, "and okay Daddy's girl."

"Oh, jealous, Number Two?" Allison asked.

"Hey, no more numbers," Diego insisted. "No more bullshit. We're team Zero. We're all team Zero."

"Uh, Diego?" Alexa asked innocently.

"What?"

She held up the shell. "You're not holding the conch." He took it from her and threw it to the other side of the room. "Classic," she muttered as she dropped down into a chair.

Then, their father banged the door open as he strode in purposefully. Alexa felt her blood chill as she stared at the man who'd made her life miserable, a man whom she hadn't seen for sixteen years. Her mouth went dry and she knew she couldn't speak even if she'd needed to. Luckily, Reginald filled in the silence as he sat down. "Not only have you burglarized my lab, set my chimp loose, conned your way into the Mexican consulate, repeatedly stalked and attacked me, but you have, on numerous occasions, called me—"

"Hey pops, how's it hangin'?" Klaus asked as he sat down with a drink in hand.

". . .Dad," he finished. "My reconnaissance tells me you're not CIA, not KGB, certainly not MI5, so who are you?"

There was a beat of silence before Five started speaking: "we're your children. We're from the future. In 1989, you adopted us all and trained us to fight against the end of the world. Called us The Umbrella Academy."

"Why on earth would I adopt seven—"

"Eight," Allison corrected him. "One of us isn't here."

Alexa tensed, ready for her father's usual disappointment speech and was surprised when it didn't come. That's right, he doesn't know you. He doesn't know you failed.

"Dead," Diego said quietly. "One of us is dead."

For some reason, Klaus turned and said, "ba-bah-bah-bah, enough of that now."

Alexa suspected he was talking to a ghost. He made a gesture to continue and Reginald spoke again: "regardless, what would possess me to adopt eight ill-mannered malcontents?"

The blonde felt the first prickle of anger at him. It wasn't their fault alone that they'd turned out like this. He'd had his fair share of the way they were raised. How dare he attack her siblings without knowing the full story especially when one wasn't there to defend himself? Ben had never been a malcontent.

"We all have special abilities," Five explained.

"Special. In what sense?"

"In the superpower sense," Luther put in, speaking for the first time.

"Call me old fashioned but I'm a stickler for a pesky little thing called evidence. Show me."

The anger grew slightly. They weren't circus acts. He shouldn't be able to demand things from them.

"Everyone wants to see powers all of a sudden," Allison grumbled and Alexa shot her a curious look. She must have told Ray.

"We're not circus animals, okay?" Luther argued, thinking along the same lines. "We're not going to bounce balls on our noses or clap our hands like seals for your amusement." He finished by doing the exact action.

Diego ignored his brother's rant and pulled out a knife, arcing it to the middle of the table before it landed in the wood behind Reginald's head.

"You should've hit him," Alexa muttered, earning a smirk from her brother.

Reginald leaned over his now-open book. "What are you writing?" Diego demanded.

"You are zero for two, young man."

Allison snickered as Diego surged forward, only to be stopped by Five's flash of blue light as he landed in front of his brother.

"Now, that is interesting," Reginald commented.

"Alright, quick rundown," Five conceded. "Luther, super strength. Klaus can commune with the dead. Allison can rumor anyone to do anything—"

"—except she never uses it," Diego mocked her.

"I heard a rumor," her sister started, "that you punched yourself in the face."

Diego's fist came up and hit his nose. Hard. The blonde cracked a smile as Five gave a half-exasperated I told you so gesture.

"And you two?" Reginald asked, leaning towards the last two siblings.

Alexa tensed, as her father's cold, grey eyes landed on her. Luckily, Luther saved her for the time being. "Uh, maybe we don't take Vanya for a test run."

"Oh, yeah that's probably not a good idea," Klaus agreed.

"Yeah."

"Guys, it's fine," Vanya protested. "I can handle it."

"Handle it?" Allison asked in disbelief. "The last time you handled it you blew up the moon."

Her siblings started becoming more vocal in their protests but Alexa and Vanya exchanged a brief glance, the blonde nodding at the older woman. At the same time Vanya clinked her spoon against her drink, blue light flared around the table in front of all her family members except for Reginald. There was the steady humming of Vanya's power and then the fruit platter exploded, hitting Alexa's shield and the gap where her father sat as it fell all over him.

The two girls grinned at each other. "Oops."

"That was impressive," Luther admitted.

"Look," Diego said as he stood. "We know you're involved with the plot to assassinate the president."

"You were recently hospitalized, is that correct?" Reginald asked. "You still appear to be suffering from delusions of grandeur and acute paranoia."

The blonde stilled in her seat as everything went quiet while blood rushed towards her ears in a loud roar. It was one thing for their father to target all of them but quite another to do so individually. Now she knew his manipulative habits weren't just from adopting eight children.

"Am I?" Diego demanded.

"Explain this," he said. He pulled out the picture and handed it across the table. "That's you. That's two days from now on the grassy knoll at the exact spot the president's going to get shot."

"Well," Reginald said slowly, "I suppose you've solved it. You've single-handedly unearthed my nefarious plot. Is that what you want to hear?"

Diego's pleased expression turned confused. Alexa clenched her fists underneath the table and bit her lip to refrain from shouting at their father. Next to her, Vanya gently placed a hand on her arm in an eerie rendition of a similar argument from years ago that she hadn't been able to stop.

"You fancy yourself a do-gooder? The last good man who will save us from our descent into corruption and conspiracy? This is a fantastic delusion. The sad reality is that you're a desperate man, tragically unaware of his own insignificance, desperately clinging to his own ineffectual reasoning. More succinctly, a man in over his head."

Diego sat with a terrible, upset expression on his face. "Y-you're wr-wrong."

There was a loud clatter as Alexa stood up as she roughly pushed her chair to the floor. "That's enough," she announced. Her voice came out far colder than she'd ever heard it before. "You want to believe you're not our father? That's fine." She turned to him and it felt good to tower over the man she'd bent to for so long. "You want to target my siblings all at once? Not as fine, but I'll take it. You target us individually, though? That's where I draw the line. You may think you're better than us, you may know that you are, but the truth is you're the reason we're like this today." She pointed a slightly shaking finger at him. "I'm not going to stand by and let the man I once called my father brutally verbalize the people I care about. I don't care if you're the last person— the only person on earth who can help us. I'd rather die in doomsday than stay even ten minutes in your presence you awful, awful man."

She turned her gaze to Five's and was pleased to see him look shocked. "If you get his help, I'm out," she said simply, then turned and stalked out of the room, allowing the elevator doors to close behind her.

As the lift moved downward, Alexa struggled to regain her breathing. If she'd stood up to her real father like that, there would have been hell to pay. She was surprised she'd been able to remain so civil but seeing the hurt expression on her brother's face had been the tipping point. Five hadn't even cared. No one had, apparently.

She clenched her fists. With a roar, she turned abruptly and punched the wall of the elevator in what normally would have been a very painful gesture for the average human. Instead, the blonde stared at the shallow dent she'd left in the metal, another reminder that she wasn't normal. While super strength hadn't caused the wall to give, normal flesh and bone hadn't taken away the impact of her punch.

Alexa did it again in the same place, feeling relief as she let out pent-up emotions. When the elevator dinged at the first floor, she practically ran outside and took heaving, deep breaths of the night air as she tried to relieve herself of the stifling feeling that came with being in her father's presence.

The blonde collapsed on her knees on the concrete, bringing her hands to her head as she clutched her temples in a desperate effort not to cry. She had been angry in the face of her father but fear had threatened to overwhelm her as she'd spilled out her rant, remembering the past times the man had reacted to back talk. There were voices not long after as her siblings filed out of the building, most of them dispersing to their own lives.

Then, she felt gentle, warm arms wrap around her as someone knelt next to her. "Hey. Hey Al, it's okay," Diego's voice murmured quietly.

Almost as if she'd been waiting for him, she let out loud, gasping sobs to release her fear and collapsed against his chest. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry—" It seemed like all she was doing nowadays was apologizing.

"It's alright," he whispered as he held her close. "You did good back there. Really showed that old bastard. You're the only one who stood up for me, you know."

Alexa lifted her tear-stained face towards his, "I was so, so scared Go-Go," she confessed quietly, "I-I couldn't let him hurt you like that. I was too-too late for Five, for Ben, but—" she broke off and continued to cry against him as he held her gently.

"You weren't too late for me," he reassured her. "It's okay, Al." Her tears continued to come and she felt him give a little sigh. He stood carefully and in the next second, he'd scooped her up and cradled her in his arms bridal-style. "If it makes you feel any better," he said softly, "you really did a number on that elevator. And I think I helped break Mom and ol' Reggie up."

She gave a watery laugh and curled closer against his chest, feeling more like the fifteen-year-old girl that she looked like than the thirty-year-old one she was mentally.