Raincoats | The Umbrella Academy

Convalescence

Immediately, she shook her head. She blatantly ignored Five's stare as he walked around the car. "No, not yet. It's twisted, if you take it out now, I'll lose more blood."

She was covered in it. It was smeared across her face, neck, soaked through the lower half of her shirt and where the knife was sticking out was wet with fresh blood, but there was just too much on her pants for it all to be from that one wound.

"Is it all yours?" Five asked, noting the way she turned her head away from him at the question.

"No."

They helped her into the foyer, but Five paused on her side. "Diego, I've got this, go help Allison." His brother nodded gratefully and sprinted up the staircase.

Once alone, Five and Charlotte carefully walked to the kitchen. With a grimace, she fell into the nearest chair.

He began to search through a closet somewhere on the other side of the kitchen for supplies, while she squeezed her eyes shut in pain. "Hang in there," he said over his shoulder as he grabbed a box of gauze. Charlotte groaned in response.

"You guys keep medical supplies in your kitchen?"

Five circled back to the table and set down the armful of things he picked out, along with a stack of hand towels. "There were seven kids in the house," he said, crouching down. "There are band aids in every room."

Laughing shortly and without humor, Charlotte turned so he could get to it. "Good to know."

There was an array of supplies in front of them, scissors, a box of gauze, medical tape, hydrogen peroxide, and a small box labeled as a first aid kit. Five examined the dagger hilt, which was certainly twisted inside her leg, because the wound was rounded.

"You're going to need something to bite down on," he informed her.

Expecting as much, she nodded, looking back over at the table. She grabbed a discarded plastic ladle and stuck the handle of it between her teeth. Five braced a hand on her knee and got a good grip on the bloodied handle.

He yanked and Charlotte let out a muffled howl of pain.

"Sorry, sorry," he huffed as he kept her leg pinned to the seat. "It's out." He pressed a hand towel to the injury and grabbed the scissors with his free hand.

The ladle fell from her mouth. "What are you doing?" she asked, eyes bulging as he brought the scissors toward her leg.

He raised an eyebrow. "I have to clean it."

"With scissors?" She squeaked.

"Your pants are in the way."

If she hadn't been so exhausted she certainly would've blushed. "Oh." She scooted up so he could carefully cut away her pant leg. She stared as he began to untie her boot to take it off. "I'm sorry about Allison."

It was too much to focus on everything at once. Allison would be fine. She would be okay. There were questions in desperate need of answering. "What happened, Charlotte?"

Under his gaze she began to shift uncomfortably. The wall that she put up to keep herself from thinking about the events of her outing was starting to break down. Five paused his work to observe her twitchy demeanor.

"He's-" She took a deep, grounding breath. "He's dead."

That wasn't surprising, but she obviously wasn't taking it well, so he refrained from any unkind comments. The blood flaking off her skin probably belonged to Denis. "I'm sorry."

She scrubbed at her tearful eyes before they could fall. "Don't be."

A few moments of silence passed as Five worked off her shoe and discarded the stained denim stuck to her skin. He pulled the towel away to get a better look at the wound, but noticed something peculiar.