Snippets of Memory - The Umbrella Academy

Closer to the Sun

This story is a one-shot, part of the recollections of Rin and Klaus' younger years, both of whom appear in the story "A Bend in Space Time" (taking place over the seasons of The Umbrella Academy - links in my profile).
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Context: Rin is a 21-year-old punk girl born with a strange power that she uses for illegal work: she can teleport, make herself invisible or intangible. Over several nights in police custody, about two years ago, she met a strange cellmate named Klaus... also endowed with an extremely invasive power: that of communicating with the dead.

TW: Reference to drug and alcohol use, violence.

Soundtrack : Memento Mori - Closer to the Sun ; Jilax - Satisfaction

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In the spring of 2011, I started to imagine I could change jobs. For most people, that might seem like no big deal, especially since I wasn't aiming for the moon. I was just tired of selling screws and bolts. What I liked most about the hardware store gig was fixing the paint-mixer machine and the cash register. I pictured myself working in electronic or mechanical maintenance.

The thing is, I had a criminal record as long as an unrolled roll of toilet paper, and a power that people more or less knew about in the neighborhoods around where I lived. I'd been sorted into the category of freaks no one wanted to deal with. And the fact that I was constantly seen with Klaus didn't help.

Everyone knew he was blasted to hell and constantly high as a skyscraper. And I think it was the day an employer told me straight-up that this was the reason they wouldn't hire me, that's when I decided to stop looking. Why? Because some people would've gotten rid of the problem by dumping Klaus. And me? I was two seconds away from dumping any job, instead.

I came to my senses. I chose to stay with Rodrigo. He understood. He helped me through it with genuine kindness. He let me handle the soldering iron more often in the backroom. And in the end, I worked for him until the end of the world. Literally. And more than once.

I went through a few rough patches around that time, though. Phases where I stayed home willingly instead of roaming through The City's colorful and eccentric fringes with Klaus. He could feel it: I'm sure of that. And he swung between two modes: either feeling like a burden and keeping his distance, or trying to come pull me out of it, when he was lucid enough to try.

It had been four days since I'd seen him, which - by our standards - was starting to feel like a long time, but I wasn't worried. Usually, it just meant he'd gotten lost in one of those endless cycles of chemical, emotional, and sexual highs and crashes, which he only ever came out of to collapse on my doormat, or, failing that, to get shipped off for thirty days at Lakeshore Hills.

When he finally knocked on my window - his curls a tangled, unwashed mess - I didn't even flinch. He looked... decent, considering what I'd imagined. Though his under-eye circles hung lower than the shoulder of his coat, and his boots didn't match.

"Rinny", he said, lifting the windowpane himself.
I just lowered my magazine and raised an eyebrow.
"I need to be myself again. Flamboyant. Closer to the sun than ever. I'm feeling chromatically diminished from hanging around all these Fendi and Burberry coats, and if I hear Adele or Gotye one more time, I'll throw myself off the tenth floor of the International Business School dorms on purpose".

I closed the magazine, set it on my nightstand, and crossed my arms. This wasn't the first time he'd gotten swept up by rich boys in overpriced private schools. Let himself slip into their dorms, only to end up tossed out headfirst onto the street once a supervisor caught on.

In the meantime, though, he made more money there than anywhere else. Room after room, and a good number of those students handed him drugs in exchange for half an hour of his night. Sometimes, he wouldn't see the outside of those corridors for days, and he'd walk out knowing the lunch lady's name. Like this time, he was both euphoric and sick. And it always ended with him crying himself to pieces, out of nerves.