Various The Umbrella Academy One Shots

Who Am I?

(Season 2 spoilers and coarse language, approach with caution)

One moment there was absolutely nobody there, and the next, and with a flash of light, there was somebody there all of a sudden. Upon the grassy hill of wheresoever the woman wound up - she had not been paying attention to where she was going, just to the fact it got her anywhere but the barn - Lila Pitts was finding it to be exceptionally difficult to catch her breath. There was a part of her that wanted to think this was a side effect but she had used the briefcases to travel often enough to be virtually immune to the side effects that came as a result.
No, the reason her legs failed to keep her standing and tears were determinedly budding in the corners of her eyes no matter how hard she tried to blink them away was because her life was crumbling to pieces around her faster than the metaphoric walls had been put up.

Thankfully the grass was soft and kind enough to meet her as he half fell, half sunk down to her knees. The steely facade that she had spent years building up and maintaining over the years had managed to shatter with the ferocity that seemed reserved for one punching a mirror with all the force they could muster only to be showered in glass. Had there been a reflective surface on hand Lila just might have shattered it in an attempt to release some of the stress and actually feel better.

Yes, she had lied, and lied with ease, but each and every falsity that had dripped from her silvered tongue had been done with the belief that it was for the greater good in the end? And what was that greater good? Utter g*d damned bullshit, that's what! Every single thing she believed was a lie! Everything she lived for, everything that she was willing to risk life and limb for was nothing but a crock of pure and proper bullshit!

"Damn it," Lila hissed out through her teeth, gritted so hard together that there was shocks of pain twinging in her jaw from the force, "Pull yourself together." With a balled up fist, she rubbed at her eyes hard enough to hurt. This did not go nearly as well as she had planned it as it unfortunately just managed to smudge tears and blood into her eyes, which sent them stinging something fierce and painful.
"Aw fuck." she lamented, weaker in that that moment than she had been allowed to be in all the years since she was taken in after her parents murder.

Had she been able to muster a laugh, things could have almost been bitterly laughable. She had lost her parents at a young age and who was the one to take her in? Take the part of a loving - if the damned woman was even capable of love - mother in the place of her own? Raised her like a little soldier? The very same fucking woman that had stolen her family, her life from her and made her believe that The Handler was the only one who could care for her!

She hadn't realised she was tearing at the grass she was perched upon until she brought her hand down too hard and jammed a terribly placed little twig under one of her fingernails. Letting out a hiss, she shook her hand in an attempt to dislodge the offending entity from her hand. It was far from the most painful thing she had experienced - she was trained as an assassin after all, and she was a pretty darned good one at that! - but it certainly did nothing to help her already fragile state. The brief shock of pain did do something in her favour, however, as it did cause her to stop her weeping. Perhaps she should weep, there was no better time or place for her to do so after all, but there was as a part of her that was telling her that she couldn't let herself let her guard drop even when she was alone, even after learning that she was playing the part of the obedient lapdog for the very person she had unknowingly sort to destroy.

Perhaps, with the suitcase in hand, she might be able to go back and save her parents and none of this would have ever happened, and she could live a simple, happy life.

Flopping back into the ground, letting out a breath that was almost a sigh, she buried her head in her hands. Lila had spent too many years in The Commission to let herself follow such wild and hopefully dreamings. So what, she'd go back and save her parents and everything would be fine and dandy would it? Of course not! If she saved them then she wouldn't be able grow up to stop The Handler from having them killed, so they would die again, and she'd stop it again and then wouldn't be able to go back again to stop it again, and it would be just one big shitty paradoxical loop that she'd have to keep jumping through time and time again, in the most literal sense.
It was all some grand theatrical performance that she had to go back every night to play out, pretending to be happy even when she knew how it ended. But was it a comedy or a tragedy? So often the two were so intertwined that not even the keenest of eyes could tell where one ended and the other began.
Well, that was just her life, a comic tragedy and a tragic comedy.

She did laugh, sudden and fast, despite the fact she couldn't muster even the faintest chuckle even a mere heartbeat ago. It wasn't out of any sort of merriment, however, but rather just a desperate need to release all the pent up emotions and energy that she had been trying her hardest to pretended did not exist.
The harsh sound of what only loosely resembled laughter bounced about the area, but there was nobody there to hear it but the poor and wretched Lila herself.