Prophet - Five Hargreeves X oc UMBRELLA ACADEMY

2:6

And Anneli was about to leave, still unsure why the room had caught her eye when she spotted more red stains further down the white bed. They were all over the womans nails and hands and it had dried to her skin like paint.

Anneli departed quickly, a sickening feeling in her gut.

The fresh air hitting her skin should have calmed her down, and it did for a brief moment, but before she knew it she was pacing outside the entrance waiting for Five.

But her mind was on something else as she thought about something important she'd left at her apartment, and before she knew it she was walking there without even thinking about what she was doing.

Five could wait, she reasoned with her self. He knew she would be back. She was sure he knew the way to Elliot's by now.

The sun was making her eyes water and every so often she had to wipe the corners of her eyes so people wouldn't look at her strange thinking she was walking and crying. Her eyes were fixed to the floor as she had a feeling if she looked up into the light directly she'd spontaneously combust or something.

Whatever this headache was, it was quickly becoming a migraine and it was making her want to vomit up her cereal with the pain.

It took her almost an hour to get to her apartment building and two minutes to walk up the stairs (she was tired, give her a break.)

Key in hand, she stepped inside her apartment only to realise that the lock was already open. She frowned and checked the door, locking it to make sure her door wasn't just broken but no. It locked fine now.

She couldn't have forgotten to lock her door, surely?

She tried to recall her memory but struggled.

Anneli rubbed her temples, feeling like she would be better at home in the mental institution than Diego Hargreeves. (It was a wonder she hadn't been carted off already.)

She sure felt like she was going insane.

Anneli walked through her apartment slowly, dazed, and went to the drawer next to her bed almost immediately where she hid a pack of cards. But not just a normal deck, a tarot deck.

They were colourful and illustrated, backed with blue and wrapped with an elastic band to keep them together. She'd long since misplaced the pack they came in. Ruby had gotten them for her as a gift a few weeks into getting work.

Anneli owned a deck as a teenager and remembered teaching herself all the cards meanings and reversed meanings. As she looked back she realised they had predicted more accurately than she remembered. For four years she'd used them to check menial things, predict how the following week was going to go, if she was going to stumble upon a breakthrough with the Hargreeves or not, if she was to expect conflict or trouble... it was funny, she had never believed in tarot cards and fortune telling for some reason - but in her own hands she realised the potential.

She also recalled hiding them under her bed from her mother, only taking them out when her mother left the house. She had been caught one time with them when her mother had gone through her room, convinced she was lying about taking one of her bracelets, and when she found out Anneli had been smacked with the broken broom handle so hard she had her hand wrapped up for weeks. She recalled also being made to clean up her bedroom after her mother had torn through it like a whirlwind. (And her cards had been burned, just like her book had been, and she'd been distraught then too.)

Unwrapping the band, she slid it around her wrist and began shuffling through the deck quickly, throwing cards at the top of the deck in front of the growing pile in her hand, swapping more out with every downward movement.