𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐢𝐯𝐢𝐧𝐞 || ▹Umbrella Academy

Divinity, Unmade

"You can't change anything if you're unwilling to discard a part of yourself.
Change necessitates sacrifice."

✧✦✧

Things were bad. Very bad. So bad that Five Hargreeves was convinced of some higher power mocking his desperate attempts at making things right.

The Commission was in ruins. Nothing remained of the fortress of time and instead, all he had been left with were the dusty, decrepit remains of a crumbling building and an impromptu meeting with his older, dying self. Even worse, he'd left with more questions than when he'd arrived!

What good was meeting your future self if they had nothing useful to say?

Or would he be considered a past self? Or was he older, considering Five himself was reaching his sixties...how old was the old man? Older than the previous older incarnation of him? These kinds of thoughts only made his head spin. Who knew keeping track of the multiple-dimensional versions of yourself could be so complicated?

Sometimes, Five hated time travel.

How long had the old man been hibernating in that high-security time capsule, anyway?

Five ran a ragged hand through his hair in an attempt at staving off the clawing hands of doubt and distress which threatened to pull him under should he waver.

Too many damn questions!

Tugging on the ends to feel the burning pain of his scalp, to feel something other than the suffocating sense of hopelessness for just a second.

Eyes crossed to see the hair which hung limply over his forehead and into his eyes, Five considered. It had grown. When had he last had it cut, anyway?

So busy on the run for the last couple of weeks – had it really only been a couple of weeks? Was this his life now, constantly on the run, unable to take a moment to breathe without disaster around the corner? – he had not considered stopping to get it trimmed.

Is it worth cutting? Would...she like it shorter?

Blinking slowly, almost as though in a daze, it took Five a moment to jolt to awareness as he realised where his thoughts were spiralling.

What am I, a teenager with a crush? You're old enough to be browsing happy home brochures, idiot. Not weighing the pros and cons of whether the girl you like would prefer you with short or longer hair.

Frustrated with himself for drifting so off course, Five slapped his hands against his face to force himself out of his hormonal delusions.

Kugelblitz. World-ending disaster. No time for high-school drama.

"You good bro?"

Five looked up, narrow-eyed and lip curled involuntarily to snarl at whoever had interrupted his important inner monologue, to see his assembled family watching him with raised brows.

...well. Suppose he had ordered them all here only to space out immediately afterwards. So what? Five felt that he deserved a fucking second break after the absolute shitshow he'd been dragged through the past few weeks.

'Am I good?' Do I look fucking good? Give me a break! Don't ask such stupid, insipid questions–

"I'm positively peachy," he drawled, looking around and noticing a distinct lack of the one person he could tolerate right now. And her clingy plus-one. "Where's Z and Klaus?"

A head popped up from beneath the bar, wide-eyed, hair a ruffled mess and struggling to juggle the multiple different bottles of alcohol in his hands "Present and accounted for!"

"Quite frankly, you were my secondary concern." He turned to the rest of his siblings. "Where's Z?"

"Dunno," Diego shrugged nonchalantly. "Haven't seen her since we last spoke."

Five's brow twitched. "And when was that, exactly?"

"Last night?"

Luther perked up. "Oh, I remember. She was sitting at the bar when Sloane woke up and we all ran after her. She didn't join, though. Which was weird because we could have really used her power..."

Five's jaw clenched. He turned narrowed eyes toward the drunken mess.

"Klaus? Perhaps you'd like to enlighten us on the whereabouts of your sister?"

"Who knows?" Klaus said, diving back down out of sight and cheering when he pulled out a vintage bottle of whisky. "Score!"

"Klaus," Five said through clenched teeth. "Where. Is. She?"

Wide-eyed, Klaus shrugged innocently. "Honestly, I've no clue. Probably out shopping with the brat again."

"Stan is upstairs in our room," Diego refuted. "You know, after his little stunt."

"Ah, yeah." Klaus chuckled. "You'd think I had a spear to the head – I can't remember shit." He pulled a goofy expression but reeled back at Five's swatting hand, offended by the near-assault.

"Woah, buddy! Easy. I mean...who knows where she is? Probably decided to treat herself to some pampering. Oh! Maybe she found a new beau. We shouldn't interrupt her when she's having such a good time." He sent Five a sly side glance, wiggling his brows.

"Maybe she's taken the dog out for a walk?" Viktor offered, eyeing Five anxiously. "They could have lost track of time..."

"What dog?" Five asked.

"Woof!!"

At his question a large, golden retriever came bounding into their meeting, tongue lolling from its mouth and tail wagging ferociously. It looked up at Five with shining brown eyes and he was taken aback to be the centre of such undivided attention.

"That dog," Viktor said with a quirk of the lips.

Five narrowed his eyes as he reluctantly scratched the dog on the head, trying his best to push the canine away from where it had latched onto his side. It really did remind him of a certain someone. "Isn't this the Sparrows' dog?"

"The one and only," Diego drawled, eyeing the dog like he still expected it to be a spy for their adversaries. Without Thea around it couldn't be trusted. "Claims she didn't steal it. That he just turned up."

"Huh." Five contemplated the animal for a moment before speaking. "That still doesn't explain where she is."

"Thea is probably just out doing Thea things," Allison drawled, watching them all darkly. "Why are you so hung up on this point? Can we finally get onto the bigger issue at hand? Like the briefcase, which is now useless."

"I don't care about a goddamn briefcase when one of us is missing," Five snapped. "And none of you seems to be the slightest bit concerned of her whereabouts," he scolded, glaring at their sheepish expressions. "That none of the tiny, pathetic synapses in your brains have sparked to make the connection that her being gone is highly suspicious is beyond me."

Lila strolled into their conversation after having left Stanley in Diego's room. As usual, she butted into the conversation like she had always been there. "Munchkin one is missing?"

"Supposedly," Five corrected.

"Hmm, that is disconcerting. Things are so boring without her around. Don't you agree, munchkin two?"

Five ignored her childish attempt at riling him up. He felt too highly strung to be sure he wouldn't respond with extreme violence if she pushed too hard.

"She has always been at family meetings..." Luther trailed off thoughtfully, expression becoming a tad more concerned as the realisation that he hadn't seen his sister since last night sank in.

He had been so busy with Sloane that he hadn't noticed anything... the memory of her greeting him with such honest relief and open arms came to mind and Luther's whole body slumped. How awful of him.

Many of the others were having similar revelations and Five wanted to shake them all until they realised just how fucking useless they were. Until their empty little heads rolled off their useless shoulders.

Z was missing and he'd been left to put up with this bunch of clowns.

How was it that Five was more confident that just the two of them could have tackled this entire Kugelblitz situation more competently than the group he'd been left with?

"You're all useless," he hissed, finally snapping. "Fucking useless."

"Hey!"

"There's no need to take your anger out on us–"

"No," he snapped, cutting them off. "Shut up. You don't have the right to speak when Z is missing and none of you even noticed until I asked you."

Everyone shifted awkwardly. Five was not done.

"She isn't some convenient stress ball for you guys to use whenever you're high-strung. The fact that none of you even considered her whereabouts in the last twelve hours spells out perfectly how much you appreciate her as a person, and not just as a tool for personal development."

"That's not fair," Luther argued, frowning at Five's harsh words. "We do care about Thea. Of course we do. But we're all dealing with things that have made it difficult to keep track of everything, okay?"

"Yeah. If you hadn't noticed, Einstein. There's eight of us to keep track of," Diego said sarcastically. "In all likelihood, Thea has gone out without telling us and just lost track of time. You're overthinking things. She seemed fine when we spoke."

Five breathed out as evenly as possible, attempting to rein in the overwhelming desire to strangle them for such incompetence.

"Woof-woof!"

Everybody turned to stare at the dog, who was wagging his tail and looking up at Five with a burning stare.

"What's up with him?" he muttered, unnerved by how the animal kept singling him out. "Does it need feeding?"

"Woof!" The dog continued to sit there, staring at him intently, the fur above his eyes almost furrowed impatiently.

"...Is it just me or does he seem to be waiting for a reply?" Five murmured, perplexed.

Glasses clinked as Klaus popped up once more from the bar, pouring out several shots of vodka for them all. "Oh, yeah. Thea can like, totally talk to the dog."

"Excuse me?"

Klaus looked nonplussed. "Huh? Did you not notice? Oh, right. You've been gone." He chuckled. "Well, I only saw her briefly after the whole Sparrow attack but she was totally conversing with the dog like she could understand every word. I just thought she might have been high. Don't blame her, I could do with a little assistance myself..."

Ignoring almost 95% of Klaus' words as usual and filtering out the nonsense, Five focused in on the idea that Thea had been taking to the dog. His mind was reeling.

Staring down at the animal, he narrowed his eyes. He felt utterly foolish for even considering it, but if the dog belonged to the Sparrows – if Reginald Hargreeves, who was known to dislike frivolities more than anything and yet had adopted a pet of all things – then it wasn't completely out of the realm of possibility...

"Can you speak?" he asked.

"Woof." The dog shook its head from side to side as best it could.

Huh. Five asked again.

"Are you special? Like us?"

"Woof-woof!" A nod of the head.

Despite having braced himself for it, Five was still surprised. Well, how intriguing – what this could answer about the phenomena of our births is extraordinary...

But now wasn't the time for losing himself down an intellectual rabbit hole. Thea was missing and the universe was at threat of collapsing in on itself.

Bigger problems, Five.

"Can you talk to Z?" he asked, pursing his lips when the dog didn't reply. "You might know her as Thea."

"Woof! Woof!" the dog did a couple of twirls on the spot, tail wagging even more incessantly. "Woof!"

So, somehow, she had managed to communicate with a dog.

What on earth had she gotten herself into while he'd been gone? Adopting a sentient dog which could communicate with her – what? Telepathically? Some kind of empathetic gift that forged a connection between the two? Whether it was due to her own ability or some bizarre power the dog had was the central question.

However, more importantly...

"Do you know where she is?"

"...woof." A despondent shake of the head; brown eyes wide in sadness and distress. The inability to detect his mistress was clearly weighing on the dog and his ears slumped, a whine in his throat.

Five sighed just as despondent, shoulders slumped. "Figures."

The dog whined louder, paws clawing at the carpet in distress. Five tsked, but scratched his head in shared sympathy, able to empathise with the very obvious distress over Thea's disappearance.

Me too, buddy. Me, too.

Never had Five thought that he'd find a dog the most relatable person in the room. But when compared to the sorry state of his personal affairs, Five was seriously considering placing the dog at second place on his family rankings, just below his human counterpart.

Speaking of family...

"If you're done playing Doctor Doolittle," Allison drawled, knocking back her third shot of vodka; the stress lines on her face were pronounced, her eyes shadowed in impatience. "Then maybe you can finally tell us what the hell this Kugelblitz is."

"A Kugelblitz," Five said between clenched teeth. "Is the end of everything. The annihilation of every single thing in the universe; every planet, rock, star – everything sucked into the vacuum of a black hole until not a single atom remains."

Until not a single person remains, Five thought despondently. Once more feeling that clawing pressure within his chest and the dark spots creeping up on the edges of his vision.

Nothing will remain. Nothing.

Not even her.

Five grabbed the bottle of vintage whisky and downed it, drinking until the burn in his throat was enough to take the edge off; to replace the burning in his chest.

"So what can we do?" Viktor asked, becoming increasingly uncomfortable. His dark eyes were flicking between them all like he expected one of them to reveal some brilliant plan which would save the day. He looked pointedly at Five. "How can we stop it?"

"Our only option would be to go back in time and eliminate the paradox...destroy whatever it is that killed our mothers and caused this entire mess...put a stop to the Kugelblitz before it can occur. But that option is well and truly shot because the briefcase no longer works." He took another drink. "So, unless any of you wise guys have an idea, I'm out."

"Why can't you just jump us out of here like the last time this happened?" Allison asked in frustration. "That would solve the problem."

Five ran a hand through his hair in mounting aggravation. How many times did he have to explain these kinds of things to people? Why was everyone so goddamn slow? Five was going mad, worrying about the impending doom of the entire universe while simultaneously babysitting his incompetent and ungrateful family.

Z, where are you? I can't handle this lot in your absence...

"The last time I jumped us away from a world-ending disaster, I inadvertently scattered you all through time." He pointed out, narrowing his eyes at his irate sister. He could feel his frustration levels surmounting in response to her own.

"Unless you want to run the risk? What if this time we're not just scattered through a decade, but centuries?" he pushed. "One of you could end up in the seventeen-hundreds and we'd be none the wiser."

They were all taken aback by that concept, clearly not having considered the ramifications of abusing time travel.

How unsurprising, he mused bitterly. So eager to take advantage of time travel when it posed no risks but all the while ignoring the serious consequences of meddling with time.

It wasn't like Five hadn't already considered this possibility himself. Like he hadn't scoured over the endless scenarios and consequences of taking such a risk again... what would happen if he decided to say fuck it and jump them out of this time and into a period that was more stable, more comfortable to live in.

But you wouldn't risk even the smallest possibility of losing her.

Five scowled at the darker turn of his thoughts. Annoyed at being unable to deny it, because they were right on the mark.

Five was a selfish, horrible man and he wouldn't risk the chance of jumping them out of time – even if he was more than fifty per cent sure that it would be successful, even if his entire family pleaded and begged for him to take the risk, to help them escape this impending doom – because Five could not take the chance of losing Thea.

Not again.

The decades of living alone in the apocalypse had been a living hell. The merest suggestion of returning to that state of living...of having to suffer every day alone, starving and dying of thirst and feeling the clawing smoke clinging to his skin, rattling every breath he took as he wandered the endless wasteland of desolation...

Five could not stand the merest suggestion of subjecting her to that. Five could not quite stand the suggestion of returning to that himself.

An involuntary shudder wracked his body, eyes hazy as he nursed his drink in one hand. He ignored the heated arguments going on around him, ignored the puzzled looks being sent his way at his silence, ignored everything to focus in on the one thought which was repeating incessantly within his mind.

Where is she? Where is she? Where is she?

Where are you, Z?

No longer able to stave off the intrusive thoughts now that he was no longer on the move; no longer forcing himself to keep going, to continuously push forwards, to ignore the creeping doubts and creeping dread from emerging.

No longer could Five deny what was staring him straight in the face.

All night and nobody has seen her. Not a single soul knows where she is, nobody even realised she was missing.

Like a record on repeat, their last conversation mocked him.

"The less trouble you get yourself into, the better," he'd said.

"You say that as though I go searching for trouble," she'd admonished him with that teasing smile of hers.

Just after he'd confessed his love for her... a confession she'd accepted with so much compassion.

Why did I expect anything else, really?

Even in his wildest dreams – in those cruel visions which haunted him during the apocalypse, where he believed for a moment that she were really there; he would turn to ask her a question or even fool himself into believing that he could feel the warmth of her hand in his own – Five had never expected to have been listened to with such patience; to be looked at with such genuine adoration.

Looking so vibrant and gifting him with that smile of hers; pouting cherry lips and golden hair curled around her face like it wanted to kiss every exposed strip of skin, peach cheeks flushed in happiness.

Five had been tempted to kiss her, in that moment. To brush away the curls and press his own lips to her skin; to find out if she tasted as sweet as he believed.

He blinked and with it the image distorted; instead of her angelic face he saw empty eyes and a face unerringly blank from death's touch. The trail of blood which ran down the side of her face; covered in ash and soot and the smoke encasing them like a tomb; billowing fog clawing his throat with every desperate lungful he inhaled as he fell to his knees and clawed at the rubble crushing her body, hiding her from view like a final, cruel penance for his recklessness–

She's gone and nobody noticed.

Five was quite sure he was spiralling but couldn't gather the wits to pull himself out.

Where are you?

He tried swallowing the sickness rising in his throat.

This can't be happening...he hadn't lost her already, right? The clawing sensation was back, nails sharper than ever and cutting deep ridges into the pliant flesh of his gut; tugging incessantly as though desperate for him to move – for him to do anything but stand here uselessly.

Where would she be? Where can I even start looking?

He felt helpless. Incompetent and bereft. Where had she gone?

What was the use of being able to travel through space and time when he had no clue where to look? Useless.

What use was age and experience and talent when Five felt well and truly like a child once more at the sudden and paralyzing realisation that Thea was missing and he had absolutely no idea as to where she could be. He felt lost. Useless.

Five took a shuddering breath.

The brief memory of his meeting with the old man flashed through his mind; the decrepit form which wheezed with every struggled intake of air, like his body was fighting a constant battle to continue living; the watery eyes beseeching his other self to listen, to heed his words, using his last, dying breath to warn him–

'You're going to lose her. We always do.'

A painful chuckle ripped through his throat and Five slammed his drink down on the bar top, squeezing the glass so tightly that he was only mutedly shocked when it shattered from his grip, sending shards of glass everywhere.

"Five!"

"Holy shit man, what was that for?"

The others had reeled back and out of range, looking at him in shock for the sudden and uncontrollable outburst. It was so unlike their usually calm and calculated brother to give in to such displays of emotional volatility.

"Apologies," he said blankly, blinking back the haze from his eyes and staring down at the blood which welled from the fresh cuts on his hands.

She won't be pleased to know I've hurt myself. Five stiffened at the automatic thought process, mood souring further. You'd have to find her first.

"Five, what's wrong?" Viktor asked in concern, watching his brother in genuine empathy. When he moved to grab his hands to check the damage, Five automatically flinched back, eyes narrowing.

"I'm fine," he muttered, stuffing his hands into his suit pockets. "Nothing but a scratch."

"You're bleeding!" Viktor insisted in exasperation. "I'm quite sure that Thea will be mad when she finds out that you've hurt yourself in her absence," he admonished but flinched at the sudden stiffening of Five's shoulders, his expression turning sour.

"Then it's a good job she isn't here," he said, grinding his teeth. The words soured his tongue.

"Maybe the Sparrows have her?" Allison suggested, still continuing down this line of rationale. "It wouldn't surprise me. They're willing to take everything else from us, why not her?"

"I certainly didn't see her when I went to visit Dad," Klaus murmured, seemingly too drunk to understand that they were, in fact, talking about his missing sister. Inebriation had cooled down his better senses. Five was infuriated at the easy dismissal.

"If the Sparrows had her they would have made contact with us by now for an exchange," Luther reasoned calmly.

"For what?" Five hissed. "We have nothing that they want."

"I doubt they have her," Diego said. "We'd likely know about it if that were the case. Have you guys forgotten the freaky signal call she can do? I think lover-boy here would have picked up the phone by now if she'd been kidnapped."

"What about you?" Five directed his question to Lila, who was stuffing her face with the complimentary roasted nuts from the bar. She'd been suspiciously quiet during the whole affair.

She cocked her head in question and Five explained. "Can you copy her at all?"

Lila's power, while extraordinarily useful in combat situations, had one single weakness. She had to be in proximity of the person whose ability she wished to imitate. This meant that if Lila were able to read anybody's minds, Thea was not so far away.

Lila scrunched up her nose at his question. "Do you think I'm stupid? I would have told you if I could sense her nearby, wouldn't I?" She scoffed. "I doubt any of you are currently in the right mind to shield yourselves anyway. It'd be like a broadcast, loud and clear."

Five hissed in frustration. "Nothing? At all?" he pushed. "Can you not even sense her a little?"

Lila pursed her lips in concentration. "Well..."

"Well?"

"I can't really sense her, that's not my forte," she grinned. "But it does feel weird, like her powers just out of reach. Like it's on a reaaaally high shelf that I just can't get to." She hummed, finding the sensation bizarre – this kind of thing had never happened before. "If she were in the hotel I'd definitely be able to sense it, but if she were outside my range I'd feel nothing. Weird, huh?"

Definitely strange. The analogy was revealing and Five fell silent in contemplation. What did that mean? Could Thea be somehow close by yet just out of reach?

Five's lip quirked into a bittersweet smile. Story of my life.

"Then we're back to square one," Viktor sighed, worrying at his lower lip. "Thea is missing and...the world is ending."

Right then, as though spurred on by Viktor's words, a pulsing wave of energy shot through the hotel lobby like a tidal wave, rippling through the air without disturbing a single thing on its way. However, that was not the case for its return. The Hargreeves family watched in disbelief as the scattered patrons of the hotel were decimated in its wake; vaporised into nothing but cosmic dust as the energy consumed them whole; reducing them to less than particles.

"What the..."

"What was that?" Diego asked, shooting up from his chair in alarm.

"That," Lila said with a twisted smile. "Was a Kugelblitz wave."

"Stan!" Diego said, shooting to his feet and racing towards the elevator in search of his son who could have very well been vaporised alongside the other patrons. After a moment of shock, Lila followed him in as much of a hurry, glancing around the now unnervingly vacant hotel.

Five stared out at the emptiness in silence. To those around him it was like he'd simply stopped functioning; so unnaturally still and expression slacked into a blank, unreadable mask.

So it was a surprise when he was suddenly enveloped in blue before disappearing into thin air.

Five's mind was spinning faster than ever in his calculations of the possibilities and probabilities of a Kugelblitz wave having affected a single individual. But, no matter how many equations he ran through he was too caught up in his own desperation to think straight.

He didn't have the best track record when it came to formulating reliable calculations.

What use were numbers and equations when it came down to her, anyway? She always did go beyond the probable and straight into the impossible.

Should anybody be roaming about the hotel – had anybody been left alive to do so, that is – they would have been surprised to be greeted with a boy popping into their room at random, scouring the environment with a frustrated scowl before disappearing once more. Not even the private bedrooms or bathrooms were safe, as Five methodically jumped into every single room in the hotel in search of the missing girl.

She has to be somewhere, he rationed, ignoring the very real possibility that Lila could have been wrong in her assumptions and that Thea may not even be in the hotel at all.

When he next popped into a hallway, Five looked left and right before pausing on a sleek door with a plaque reading White Buffalo Suite. Momentarily perplexed at such a bizarre name for a hotel room, Five blinked, and was taken aback when the door disappeared, leaving only a blank, wallpapered wall behind.

Blinking fast in his disbelief, the boy moved forward to press his hands against the wallpaper, feeling for any grooves or indentations, anything which would reveal a hidden door underneath.

Nothing.

Five couldn't feel a single disturbance in the wallpaper and stepped back in confusion. How was that possible? He could have been sure he'd seen a door there moments before. He wasn't old enough to be having delusions already – what on earth would compel him to have made up such a pretentious name as the White Buffalo Suite?

Shaking his head and running a hand through his hair, tugging on it a little to alleviate the accumulative stress building up within him, Five sighed heavily.

"Z, where..."

. . .

"...are you?"

Somewhere deep on the other side of the hotel, Thea turned her head.

"Five?" she whispered.

But nobody answered. Instead she was left with the deafening silence of her surroundings.

Looking around in confusion, she could vaguely make out that she was in some kind of theatre. When she spoke, her voice echoed throughout the room; the high domed ceilings and spacious stage amplified her voice two-fold.

"Is anybody else here?" she asked.

Is anybody else here? Her voice echoed.

         ...body else here?

                      ...else here?

                                   ...here?

The recurring echo was distinctly unnerving and Thea unconsciously withdrew on herself; fingers curling into the palms of her hands and arms crossing in a defensive posture.

Feeling like she was walking on the knife's edge, she slowly walked down the centre walkway, passing empty seats, a phantom performance for an invisible crowd. The soft padding of her footsteps the only applause; the echo of her unsteady breathing the only cheer.

Thea was unsure of why she was here. In fact, where was here? Glancing around nervously, she couldn't gleam much from the darkened lighting and the shadowed viewers boxes. All that was available were the red plush seats she passed, all empty, and the grand stage before her which had been empty since she arrived.

Had been empty, that was.

Only now, Thea saw an individual standing at the centre of the stage holding an oblong case in one hand and the other lax at their side, as though simply taking a moment to absorb the atmosphere of the theatre for themselves.

Thea felt like she was intruding on some private moment and hurried to take a seat at the nearest seat, hunching down in an attempt at hiding herself.

The individual soon approached the stool and placed down their case, of which they pulled out a beautifully crafted violin. Pure white, like finely crafted bone.

Intrigued despite herself and momentarily forgetting the unnerving feeling which had permeated her since arriving in this dreamscape, Thea watched as the individual placed the instrument gracefully upon their shoulder and with their other hand, drew the bow.

With a single, fluid movement, the violin emitted an ethereal melody; a familiar tune which made Thea's heart beat wildly within her chest.

In sleep he sang to me, in dreams he came...

Unconsciously, she found herself mouthing the lyrics to a long-forgotten symphony; a shared moment of peace and tranquillity found between siblings. A connection forged between the musicality of their love for one another; one which ignored the outside world and its prejudices and expectations.

That voice which calls to me and speaks my name...

Thea felt tears well into her eyes as the individual continued to play the song which had comforted her so fondly during childhood. The same song which she had sometimes listened to from outside a bedroom door; a door locked to anybody but the person inside. A door which had muffled distressed cries until they tapered off into the cries of strings.

...And do I dream again?

Entranced, all Thea could do was sit and watch.

Sing once again with me, our strange duet.

With every high and low; every strike of the bow and every graceful slide of their hand, Thea was enriched into the theatricality of the performance. The one-man concerto which had somehow captured the essence of her heart and was playing it out on stage, as though reading the notes of her memories like sheet music.

In this labyrinth where night is blind...

A recital of nostalgia; a performance of the past long-lost.

Sing my angel, sing.

Sing for me.

As the final note rang out through the theatre, the vibrant echo of it resonating like a tremor throughout her body, Thea rose to her feet and clapped. The sounds of her applause reverberated within the grand-hall, but as she stood there, emotional and exuberant in her adoration for the performance, Thea slowly came to the realisation that she was alone. Nobody had joined in with her gratitude because nobody else was present.

The seats remained empty; vacant of all life but her own.

The violinist stared out into the empty auditorium with a sombre countenance, instrument slack in grip and bow barely hanging from dejected fingertips.

Thea's clapping tapered off until she stood identical in posture; a sombreness enveloping her which could not be shaken off. She stepped out from the seating and into the centre walkway, trembling as she moved closer to look upon the individual who had moved her heart so effortlessly.

Somehow, some deeper part of her was not so surprised as the lighting shifted and the face of the individual was revealed – their longer hair and modest clothing unable to disguise the familiar face that was clouded in an unnerving acceptance. As though they had not expected to be greeted with applause after such a heavenly performance.

"Viktor," Thea called, desperate for her brother to look her way – to see that she had come. She had finally fulfilled her promise to see him perform, to support him where nobody else seemed willing; where nobody else had bothered.

Not even yourself.

Heartbroken at the despondent expression on her brother's face, Thea scrambled toward the side of the stage, up the steps, in order to try and reach him; to gather him in her arms and apologise for having ever missed something so evidently important.

But as she finally reached him and moved to wrap her arms around his unmoving form, Thea cried out as she was instead sent tumbling to the floor, nothing but air in her grasp. Kneeling on the hard wooden stage; bruised and upset, she could do nothing but stare out at the empty theatre, squinting from the harsh, unsympathetic lighting above which left nothing in view but a stark whiteness.

"Viktor..." she whispered, brokenly.

Is this all you ever saw?

Emptiness.

. . .

What could have been a moment later; a second, minute, hour, days even, Thea opened her eyes once more.

Where she found herself was unexplainable; the only indicating factor a hauntingly bitter chill which wracked her body, forcing her to curl into herself like a child scared of the world.

Shivering from both the temperature and her frayed nerves, Thea raised her head a little to take stock of her surroundings.

Stone. High, dominating stone slabs surrounded her; some more intricate than others, with imposing carvings crafted atop mounds of grey; their expressions twisted into caricatures of holiness, looking down at her imposingly from hollowed eyes.

It did not take long for her to understand. She was in a mausoleum; trapped, if the clawing hunger in her stomach and the dryness of her throat were any indication.

Her limbs were small and weak, clearly she was inhabiting the body of her child self if the small hands and protruding knees, but Thea noticed quite quickly that this body did not feel her own. Somehow, she was possessing another's form and watching the world play out through their eyes; like an interactive film that she had no part in.

The sound of the concrete door opening caught their attention and the individual whose body she was inside turned to look; the grinding of the stone causing them to cover their ears in discomfort. The light from outside streaked into the room, revealing her worst fears.

They were inside a veritable tomb; buried alive.

"Dad..." a high-pitched voice not her own spoke into the silence, beseechingly staring up at the man who cast an ominous shadow by the doorway.

Their position from the floor made him an imposing figure, so opposed to the senile old man he had become in later years and instead a domineering master who watched on uncaringly at the child, scuffed and starving, begging to be released from their early grave.

"Please, Dad...can I go home, now?"

"Not yet, Number Four. Have you been able to control them yet?"

The boy cried and Thea was left suffocating in a combination of their grief; his overwhelming despair and anguish bleeding into her own sadness and anger. Their combined desperation to escape; to be reunited outside of this graveyard. Outside of this chamber of torture.

"Dad, I can't." The boy muttered through broken tears. "I can't do it. I don't want to. I want to go home. Please!"

A huff of disappointment and a single gleam from the shadowed face reflected off of the monocle's glass surface. "How unfortunate. Then, you must remain for as many days as it takes you to succeed, Number Four. You have nobody but yourself to blame for your situation."

Completely indifferent to the boy's trembling cries, the man, their father, stepped back to once more close to the tomb door which would lock them into this endless nightmare. Thea could feel the clawing desperation which threatened to drown her; choking in its frenzy.

They hurried forward on all fours, uncaring for the cuts reopening on their knees or the nails which cracked against the stone flooring, all in a desperate attempt at reaching the door before it could close. Before their father would once more lock them in here to suffer a fate worse than death; a never-ending purgatory which had slowly chipped away at the child's fragile psyche.

"Try harder, Number Four." Were the final parting words as the tomb door shut with a resonating thud, draping the room into complete darkness.

Trembling from their position on the floor, vulnerable and no longer safe from their position backed into the corner, Thea watched, unable to interfere as they turned their head to greet the haunting visage of a ghost only centimetres from their face.

Letting out a blood-curdling scream, the twins scurried away from the spectre, choking on their tears and blubbering incoherent pleads for their father to come and save them – promising that they'd try harder, be better, anything to get out of this hellscape.

More ghosts began to surround them, their rotting flesh and yellowed eyes rolling around in their sockets as they crowded them; suffocating the child until they could do nothing but curl into themselves like a ball, rocking back and forth.

Thea was trapped in her own purgatory; unable to do anything as she felt her brother suffer in tormented anguish, all the while forced to feel every second of agonising terror he felt like it was her own. She was thrashing and screaming inside of him, begging for him to listen to her, to hear her voice.

But she was drowned out – the pleads and shrieks of the ghosts all clambering for his attention, calling out his name.

'Klaus! Klaus! Klaus!'

"Klaus...please listen to me..."

'Klaus! Help us, Klaus! Klaus!'

. . .

It was a nightmare. A vision of unending horror and misfortune.

Thea was forced to witness the excessive tragedies of her family; the endless hardships and humiliations they had been subjected to throughout the years, the tumultuous relationships and disastrous hopes and dreams, all of which had come crumbling down one brick at a time as they were forced to witness it all, feeling like they were victim to cosmic karma out for retribution.

It had felt like living countless lives, all of which had left Thea dizzy and disorientated from herself. Who was she anymore? What memories were hers – which experiences had she lived herself or simply second-hand in this woeful phantasm?

Had she ever been famous? Adored and loved in abundance but feeling all the while the trickling sense of guilt; the slow drowning sensation of imposters syndrome, of knowing that it was all a falsity, all a consequence of her own undeserved power; a selfish desire to be loved, to plaster over her own abysmal childhood with the adoration of thousands. The shutters of the camera like an ominous sentence of her own shame; millions of eyes watching as her life fell apart piece by piece, as she lost her child and her husband and everything that she cared about until she was forced once more to return to that horror house which had caused such a split in her personality.

Thea couldn't be sure.

Had she ever been to the moon? Abandoned by the one person who she had looked up to her entire life. Betrayed by the one person that she had always placed the utmost faith in, even after everybody else had abandoned hope and left; hadn't she still stood there, the last one, Number One in an abandoned sequence and yet still nothing in the cold eyes of that one man. The one person she had wanted to impress most. Had desperately desired love from. The person she had sacrificed everything for; even the chance at real love. All squandered in the pathetic attempt at searching for a love in a place it would never bloom. When she looked in the mirror every morning, she was disgusted by the ugly amalgamation she had become; Frankenstein's monster in visage and just as unloved by their creator.

Thea was uncertain.

Wasn't she always suffocating in her own inadequacies? Second best always and never good enough to move forward, always one step behind and shadowed by that broad figure one step ahead, unable to see the light. Jealously churning in her gut, envy pooling in from every place she looked. The desire to be one step closer and yet angered by the fleeting, contradictory desire to instead fall behind and find comfort in the ranks of those content with their situation in life. Those who didn't struggle with every thought; who didn't fight every opinion and second-guess every comment because they were assaulted with a debilitating complex toward inferiority and superiority in equal measure. Who couldn't let go of the past because they were so accustomed to taking orders and following rules that they could only continue to follow that path, to play make-pretend in the desperate attempt at clawing back a childhood they'd never actually had.

Thea was confused – who was she?

The child seeped in tragedy? Whose life was cut short by their own goodwill, abandoned not only by father but Mother Fate, too. Reaped of everything she was; goodness and potential and instead cast aside like an unwanted toy; useful only in the ability to save another in a crimson display of unwarranted bloodshed and pain. Unwanted volatility in every asset of life and even in death. Leaving behind a painful reminder of what could have been; a life that would have been better; would have meant something. A life that had never been.

But she was alive, wasn't she? No, Thea was instead...

Lost in time. Laden with guilt and grief and shameful remorse in equal measure. So young and scared but unwilling to admit that this was really her reality, that this could be true. Surely, it couldn't? This couldn't be happening, could it? Struggling to breathe; both from the suffocating smog and the dawning realisation that this was now their reality. Sane enough to feel herself slipping further into insanity with every day, every minute spent no closer to returning home...no closer to no longer being alone.

Thea was tumbling forward; falling down the rabbit hole and into a whole new world, one which was destroyed before it had even properly begun.

Crumbling to her knees, she squinted at the hellfire scene that she had arrived in. Derelict buildings falling into piles of rubble; fire and brimstone; a prophecy come true of one man's pride – one man's stubborn refusal to treat those under his care with a semblance of humanity which had instead caused the end of everything. Retribution.

Dusting off her shorts; a familiar navy blue paired with knee-high socks, Thea looked around them in despair. Stumbling through the destroyed streets and kicking away fallen bricks and waving away the smoke from her face, she struggled to find any semblance of familiarity. That was until arriving at the single building which was somewhat still standing; only the imposing archway with the crooked umbrella insignia barely visible covered in black soot and ash.

Turning around, she had to catch herself when she almost tripped over something. Looking down she was disturbed to see a hand poking out from the rubble. Bending down and plucking an eyeball from stiff fingers, Thea glanced at the face and almost fell back in her surprise.

Luther's unseeing eyes stared back at her, frozen forever in death.

She wanted to move forward and comfort him, check if he had a pulse, do anything, but once again she felt as though her body was moving on its own, no longer listening to her commands and instead she had been demoted to observer.

It was worse than she could have ever imagined; being forced to watch one by one as her siblings' dead bodies were revealed, all staring up at the sky blankly, eyes distant like they were dreaming, if not for the awkward positioning of their bodies and the blood splattered everywhere; drowned as they were in rubble – buried beneath the very bricks which had threatened to bury them all as children, suffocating them from living any semblance of a happy life.

Killed by the very home they had all desperately tried to escape.

Thea felt herself move, stumbling almost desperately, feeling her heart beat faster in her chest as they continued onwards, turning a corner where two more bodies lay forlorn.

The muted surprise she felt at seeing her own corpse did not match the frenzied hammering inside her chest and she was surprised to find herself collapsing to the ground, small, childlike hands reaching forward in desperation for the dead; surprised despite herself at the pure sound of grief that left her lips when the cold skin touched their own; tears wetting their cheeks as they slumped beside her own dead body, hidden almost protectively beneath Klaus' own, identical blue eyes unseeing as they both watched the clouds drift by in the sky even in death.

"Z...please, wake up."

Like a rough shake away, Thea woke up from the bizarre reality of crying over her own bloodied corpse at the sound of that familiar voice.

"Z. Wake up. Z! Thea, please."

"Five?"

But she couldn't move and he couldn't hear her.

She could only watch from the boy's perspective as he tried waking up the obviously dead body of her former self; feeling the almost debilitating, crushing hopelessness that wracked her body; the unnatural frequency of her beating heart threatening to pound right outside of her chest.

'Z...where are you?'

"Five? I'm here!" she tried to shout but instead all that came out were his continued cries of her name as he clutched her lifeless body. "Five! Five, I'm here! Anybody, I'm here!"

But nobody would listen. Thea was drowned out, her cries going unheard.

Just like the sweet melody of the violin, or the shrieking cries of the ghosts. Like the shutters of the camera and the deafening loneliness of the moon. Just as the chronic stutter and the silence of death. Just like the grieved delusions of a man lost in time, talking to himself to stave off the creeping insanity.

Nobody could hear her and Thea screamed louder, voice echoing into the endless, uncaring abyss.

. . .

When her lashes fluttered open once more, Thea was sitting in a chair, staring at an uncannily familiar face.

The girl who had started all of this; who had caused her to question her sanity and who had guided her into this other world. The blonde stared back into the dark eyes which glittered with an unknown emotion.

Licking her dry lips, Thea tentatively broke the silence. "Who are you?"

That seemed the most important question. There was no need to ask where she was. The imposing mahogany desk; the shuttered windows which allowed only a slither of light into the room; the heavy, maroon draperies and the exquisitely painted oil canvas hung above the mantlepiece, an uncanny recreation of its owner.

Thea Hargreeves sat in a perfect imitation of her late father's office, and judging by the knobbly knees and feet which did not quite reach the floor, she was nothing more than a child again.

The degree to which her neck had to arch in order to meet the eyes of the girl behind the desk – despite her young age – was familiar from years of neck ache in her childhood; the countless hours spent staring at her unresponsive father, waiting for even a glimpse. A murmur. A single word of acknowledgement.

Unlike Reginald, the girl behind the desk answered Thea's question. Though, just like the old man she had a knack for talking in riddles.

"I do not adhere to names, child."

"You're calling me a child?" she couldn't help herself, the childishness slipping through at the mere thought of this young girl calling Thea a child. "You must be younger than me."

"I also do not adhere to human conceptions of form." The girl's voice was surprisingly crisp; a deeper tone that she would have expected from such a young child. It was oddly comforting.

Though, her words gave Thea pause. Does not adhere to human form? Then that would mean...

"This is not how you really look." She narrowed her eyes, scrutinising the form a little closer. Now that she was concentrating, there were slight deviations in the girl's physicality; a slight blurring in particular areas as though the illusion was incomplete; unable to stabilise itself fully, like it was working without a full image for reference. "Whose form are you using?"

"Clever child." Her voice was pleased, dark eyes narrowed in satisfaction.

"Do I know you?" she asked.

"Conceptions of the self are of no consequence. I have simply taken on the form of somebody from your mind. I had the belief that it would aid in acclimatisation to our meeting."

"...I don't know this person," she denied apprehensively. "I mean, I've seen you – her. I've seen her, that is. She led me here."

"Wrong. What you saw was only an illusion."

Thea blinked rapidly. "Then I am going mad?"

"Human conceptions of psychology do not concern me."

"I see..." Thea trailed off, uncomfortable at the sight of the youthful face and unable to meet her gaze. To have been told that she knew this young girl somehow and yet her memory held no memory whatsoever...

Dripping in blood; crimson splattered everywhere, on her hands and her cheeks and her lips; tasting the bitter tang of copper–

Thea wrenched herself out of that particular train of thought before she could spiral further into madness.

Shut it out. Forget it. Shut it out. Shut it out. Forget!!!

Like a light switched off, Thea blinked languidly and the brief glimmer of insanity had been dispelled from her eyes; blue no longer clouded in grief.

"Interesting," the voice spoke, once more gaining her attention. Thea pointedly stared at her shoulder, refusing to meet the uncanny eyes.

"What's interesting?" she slurred, feeling almost sleepy after the sudden whiplash of her emotions.

"You have control of a power that you do not acknowledge." Before Thea could question that further, the voice continued, the little girl's lips opening and closing and yet no longer could Thea believe that it was her speaking. The intonation too deep; too solemn and ethereal for any human being. "You do know this face, only you do not allow yourself to remember it. You refuse yourself your own memories. How fascinating."

"I'm not some specimen you can gawk at," she snapped, feeling uncomfortable at the leering gaze on such an innocent face. It was like being under a microscope; such a familiar feeling when sitting in the stiff, cold chair facing her father's desk. "Or a science experiment for you to prod and poke at. I've had plenty of that to last me a lifetime and a half. Thanks."

No humour shaped that face and yet the dark eyes glimmered with humour. "Yes. That is only too obvious."

"Are you reading my mind?" she asked, askance. Narrowing her eyes and furrowing her brows in an attempt at shutting down every single wall in order to shield her thoughts.

The girl laughed, a sound that was so deeply rich that it sent shivers down her spine. The laughter seemed to spill from her lips and cumulate within the air, saturating the atmosphere like the smoke from an incense.

"Does it frighten you to be vulnerable to your own ability?"

"No!" she pursed her lips, thinking of the multiple times Lila had teasingly used her power against her, or the few times she'd used it against her with violent intentions. Still, none of those moments came close to the terrifying sublimity she felt at this being invading her mind.

"The holder of such infinitesimal potential and yet restricted by your human shell."

"Shell!?" she squeaked, unsure whether she should be offended or afraid. Shells were meant for cracking and Thea certainly did not want to be split apart like a crab feast. No, thank you. She narrowed her eyes. "What are you saying? – No, you know what? Never mind any of that. What I really want to know is why you showed me all of those things. All that, that – all that misery!"

"You did not appreciate the performance."

The tone of voice indicated less of a question than a statement, and Thea was speechless at how to reply. Performance? A demented show for her to enjoy – like the torment and suffering of her family was something amusing that she could sit back and watch with a bucket of popcorn?

When she spoke, her voice was pitched low in mounting anger. "Is that what you'd call it?"

"You are angry. I see. Then I apologise that the intended message was not sufficiently received."

Tch. Upper lip curled in distaste, Thea stared daringly into the being's eyes, unwilling to be deterred by her own memories, clawing to escape the shadows of her mind. "And what message was that, exactly? That my life fucking sucks? I'm sufficiently aware of that without your help."

"Nothing was forced," the girl argued, the first sign of a human emotion twisting her features as her brows furrowed a minute amount. "Only awakened. Do you see now?"

"See what?" she asked, exasperated by the manner of speech. Could nobody simply talk bluntly – tell her exactly like it was.

Those dark eyes sharpened; the browns bleeding into pure black. It was like staring into the void; dual black holes that wanted to swallow her whole. "The debilitation of your blessings."

"Blessings?" Thea repeated, losing the edge of anger in her confusion. "You mean our powers?"

"Indeed. Not blessings from God but curses from a man playing one."

"Are you God?" she asked before she could bite her tongue in silence.

A crack in the mask; a booming laughter which crackled within the room like lightning, enveloping all in its wake; causing the small hairs on her body to rise in tandem with each thunderous chuckle.

"No, child. I am not God. Nor the Devil. I am simply...nothing."

Thea's mind was spinning, the dregs of knowledge formulating in her mind; words printed on the pages of a well-loved philosophy book pilfered and then hoarded under her pillow returning to her mind.

"Nothing...and everything," she answered.

A wry smile twisted peach lips. "Indeed."

"Would that mean that you don't have an original form?" She guessed. It would make sense, seeing as though it had already admitted to using this young girl's body only as a gateway between Thea and itself; an attempt at bridging the gap.

"Are you uncomfortable at the form I have chosen to appear?" it asked, getting straight to the point, sensing the underlying unease that squirmed in her gut at every passing glance of this uncannily familiar stranger.

"...yes," Thea admitted reluctantly. She could not look in the girl's eyes for too long without thinking of blood and death.

"I see." A pause, and with the next words, voice sweet and nostalgic, Thea whipped around to stare at a face which turned her own ashen.

Ben stared back at her.

"No!" she snapped, surging forward to grapple onto the desk in a white-knuckled grip. "Do not wear his face. Change, now."

Within a blink a new face had emerged, but Thea only tensed with a different emotion at the distinctive face of Leonard Peabody, aka, Harold Jenkins.

"Wha- I don't..." she struggled with what to say. "Why him?"

Leanord – no, the being wearing his face – cocked its head to the side, cataloguing her every movement and emotive reaction to this new form.

"I believe it a sufficient prop to aid in my intentions."

"Prop?" she repeated in bewilderment. "He was a person," she argued. "A human being. Not some prop for you to use to hammer home your point. They're all people!"

"This man committed acts of which humans consider wrong."

"I know that," she said with a frown. "But once he was just a child that was pushed too far."

"You feel sympathetic to an individual who harboured ill intentions to those you love."

"I don't feel sympathy," she hissed, running a hand through her hair in frustration. "He tried to kill us – hell, he tricked Viktor into believing he loved him. I can't forgive that."

"Yet you harbour empathy in your soul."

"Of course I do," Thea said, now looking at the being wearing Leonard's face with a touch of pity. "He wasn't evil. Just misguided... pushed to seek revenge against those who had dominated his life... I can't blame anybody for fighting back against their oppressors."

"This individual harboured positive feelings for you. What I gleam from your memories is that your sympathy resonated with his young soul. You guided him towards retribution."

Thea stared back at Leonard, speechless. She had... guided him? Towards his actions – those very same actions which had put her family in danger, had caused Viktor such emotional turmoil and had essentially caused the end of the world? She... had encouraged that?

"No..."

"Do you see now?" Leonard asked, watching her with half-lidded dark eyes; shining in a madness disguised as empathy. "I couldn't help myself – if your father had only taken me in, hadn't pushed me away so harshly... you told me that determination was the best kind of power. I only practised what you preached."

"I didn't preach murder," she argued vehemently. "I felt bad for you. I was trying to help."

"Did you feel bad for icky wicky Harold Jenkins?" his voice became sickly sweet, mocking. "How wonderful of the Divine Thea Hargreeves to take a moment to look down on those inferiors; to offer us her impassioned, hypocritical advice."

"Stop!" she said with a shake of her head. "Stop it. I get it, okay? I caused you to lash out and it was all my fault that everything went wrong. Everything is always my fault and I can never be good enough to stop it!" Her mind flashed to her father's imposing face. "...I'm the biggest disappointment."

"Haven't you ever wondered what your life would be like without powers?" the voice asked, no longer wearing Leonard's face but instead her own.

Thea stared into identical blue eyes, so wide and innocent set in that small, cherubic face that she was unable to answer its question. The copy's voice was much lower than her own and did not match the childish face it wore; pitched deeply in a seductive drawl.

"I know you dream of what life could be like, if only you were completely normal. Don't you want that?"

Thea Hargreeves was an individual who had always looked at life with a glass-half-full kind of mentality. When destruction hit she would look at the scattered remains of whatever surrounded her and think, with a forced sense of positivity, that things could have been worse. It was a defence mechanism, she knew, for the countless disappointments in her life that would have already crushed a lesser man into hysterical madness.

But maybe the glass had been drained dry because Thea was currently closer to madness than she had ever been before.

She could feel it slipping, her sanity, piece by piece like the sand draining from an hourglass; counting down the grains of time until she inevitably fell into despair.

"That's not possible," she whispered, feeling the sadness weigh upon her shoulders.

It was a recurring wish of hers; a dream she knew was so far off reality that she had stopped herself from even thinking about it once she hit puberty, no longer able to write them off as childish wishes. Finding the deep ache of disappointment too unbearable to handle. Willing to simply ignore the possibility than face the deeply buried discontent.

"I do not adhere to human concepts of possibility."

Unconsciously, a shine entered shadowed eyes. Thea peeked up at her carbon copy with a glimmer of interest. She blinked once, ever so slowly, as though afraid movement would interrupt the delicate balance of its words.

"...What are you saying?"

But before a reply could be made, a distant call cut into their conversation.

"Thea...Thea...please, Thea..."

The girl in question whipped around to stare at the heavy oak door, lost for a moment in the illusion of the academy, believing that her sister was calling out for her from beyond. "Allison?"

"The ideal opportune for enlightenment," the being said with a twisted smile. "Go, child. See for yourself the destruction wrought by the false God's blessings."

"I can leave?" she asked dumbly, straining her ears to hear her sister's continued calls. "I don't even remember how I got here...not really."

"Listen closely. Follow the sound of her call."

With befuddlement, Thea closed her eyes so as to hear Allison's voice more clearly. Moments passed and she was afraid to have failed in this smallest of tasks, but soon heard the distinctive ticking of her father's grand clock. Tick tock.

Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick. Tock. Tick...Tock...

Slowly, like submerging herself into the water of a hot bath, Thea felt her body relax, surrendering to the mechanical melody which lulled her into a trance-like state...following the sound of Allison's voice like a sailor following a siren's song.

Soon enough she found herself floating once more, falling down the rabbit hole and landing, not on her own two feet but in the very shoes of the sister she was trying so hard to find. Looking around herself, blinking in shock at the sudden difference in the environment and stark awareness of the world around her.

Everything was so...crisp.

So alive and fresh; Thea was so distinctly aware of every breath she took. It had only taken this moment for her to realise how muted her senses had been within that dreamworld; reacting to everything as though through glass.

"Thea?"

It was a disorientating phenomenon to speak your own name from foreign lips.

'Allison?' the words whispered themselves in her sister's mind; a sibilant echo of her sweet voice.

"Oh, thank god," the woman said in evident relief. Thea felt their shoulders slump, the burden weighing them down momentarily lifted.

'Ally, what's happened? Why did you call me?'

They were inside of a car, from what Thea could tell by the limited perspective. The outside world looked dark, not quite night time but the sun slowly creeping its way down and retracting its light.

"I can't believe you actually heard me," Allison said in disbelief. "It was a complete shot in the dark. I panicked, before remembering Diego mentioning something about your freaky signal call and I just – I tried it."

'I've only ever done it myself...I've never heard someone else's call.'

Allison sighed shakily, and Thea felt them run a hand through their hair. It was certainly difficult to differentiate movements when you were sharing a consciousness.

"Where are you, Thea? We've all been worried. Five's on a rampage trying to find you and the others are split on storming the academy in the belief that you've been kidnapped."

'Not kidnapped...at least, not really. I don't really know where I am – somewhere far away.'

"Well, that answers everything. Vague and nondescript, we'll find you in no time."

Wanting to roll her eyes at her sister's sass, Thea tried to explain herself better. 'I really don't know. I was at the hotel and the next thing I know I woke up somewhere else...it's still the hotel, somehow, but changed. Different. Full of uncanny people and even more uncanny events...'

Allison sighed. "Are you safe, at least? If you don't know where you are, could you maybe lead us there?"

'I don't think I'll be gone for much longer...'

"No?"

'I can't explain it...but I have this feeling that soon enough I'll be with you all again.'

"...well, that's good. Great." Allison's hands shook from their place on the steering wheel. "Just marvellous."

'Allison...what's going on? Why did you call me?'

"I need your help," she admitted in a rush, as though hurrying to say it now before she changed her mind. "I made a mistake and I don't know what to do...I need your help fixing it. Before I do something I regret."

'You're going to need to explain it better than that, Ally. What's happened since I've been gone?'

"Can't you just, I don't know, see it?"

Sensing her sister's discomfort at the unspoken events, Thea spoke slowly, choosing her words carefully.

'I can... but I'm going to need you to push those memories you want me to see to the forefront of your mind. Otherwise, I'll have to go rifling through, and that's never pretty. See too much, see too little... I don't want to invade your privacy like that.'

"Okay," Allison said shakily, taking deep breaths to calm herself down. Their view of the car disappeared as Allison closed her eyes, attempting to centre herself and breathe in even intervals as Thea had once taught her as a child. Meditation techniques when the stress became overwhelming. Much more effective when guided by a mind reader. "Go ahead."

'Then, pardon the intrusion...' Thea trailed off as she focused intently on gathering the strands of memory from Allison's mind; collecting the fragmented wisps of her psyche in phantom hands in order to glimpse into their glimmering light and view the memories within.

Once again Thea felt herself watching the world pass by from another's perspective.

She felt, more than saw, the utter despair at the realisation that there was no way to go home; the broken briefcase sputtering out its last breath alongside the remaining hope in her breast. The clawing anxiety; the claustrophobia choking her as it drained all the air from the room, hands coming to clutch at her neck as she tried her hardest to focus on breathing through the pain.

Trying to fight back tears at the knowledge she would never again see her daughter's smile. Hear her husband's calming voice. That she would never be able to reach her dream of listening to Raymond sing Claire a night-time lullaby.

Thea felt the acidic taste of Allison's raw anger as they stared up at Luther; listened to him defend the Sparrows, talk amicably about the people who had tried to kill them; become gooey-eyed over Sloane and felt the burning seething in her gut as he continued to ignore her grief.

The righteous indignation burning a pit in her stomach, fuelling the anger she felt at staring at his turned back – turning away from her, away from them all, leaving her all alone just like everybody else...

No. Not anymore.

Lips parted; the rising fury frothing up her throat and spilling forth in her words–

"I heard a rumour..."

Watching the whites of his eyes mist over at her control, feeling the rush of power boil within her veins. Opening her lips to speak once more...

I heard a rumour...that you want me.

                                                                                                 ...tasting the unspoken threat on her tongue. Like ash; dissipating before it could be vocalised.

Allison broke down, reeling back as recognition bled into Luther's eyes once more, running away before he could confront her for the horrible act she had very nearly committed. The sin she would never have been able to come back from. Her body shook, trembling from the idle adrenaline.

Oh, Allison, Thea thought sadly. Feeling the rising guilt in her throat, choking them both.

The next memory hit her like a tsunami; the turbulent winds and the cacophony of noise whistling through her ears like she was to be swept up in its storm. She stared up at the sky as Viktor and Harlan floated as ethereal beings; communicating in their shared power of volatility. Allison shivered, dread curling her stomach and Thea felt the sickness rise in her throat all the same.

But nothing could have warned her for the gut-punch of admission as they stared into Harlan's aged face, watched his lips move as though in slow motion as he spoke the dreaded words that turned her whole world over; cruelly tearing off the plaster she had tried placing over her hurt and revealing the ugly, festering wound.

"I thought Viktor told you...about the mothers."

His admission was like nails clawing into the raw, vulnerable flesh.

The betrayal. Viktor knew. The treachery. And he said nothing. The despair. You're both the reason that Claire is dead.

It was like Thea was a cord pulled much too taut and that final thought snapped her back to reality. She gasped, feeling overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of information –

Harlan was responsible for the death of their mothers, consequently, he was also responsible, by proxy, for the end of the world and Allison had let the hellfire consume her, override her better senses and had finally snapped.

The cord pulled too tight. Not simply snapping back but snapping in two. Broken.

'Allison, what did you do?' Thea asked warily, feeling the simmering turmoil of her sister's mind from where they now shared a consciousness once more.

Her fingers spasmed, clutching the material of her trousers sporadically, as though attempting to combat the anxiety.

"I didn't know what to do. I was just so angry." Her breathing hitched. "I wanted to kill him," she whispered shamefully. It was like a confession; a call for help, for penance.

'Did you go through with it?' Thea asked calmly, no reprimand in her tone of voice.

Thea was first and foremost a pragmatic individual who held too much love in her heart for her family. If Allison had killed somebody, even someone who may not have deserved it, an innocent, Thea would spare her the moral judgements and simply ask her where she wanted to hide the body.

If Allison had snapped and killed Harlan after finding out that he was responsible – however unintentionally – for the erasure of Claire's existence and the oncoming death of the universe, then Thea believed that she could spare her sister a sliver of sympathy. Thea was sure much lesser would have snapped long ago.

After a long period of silence, Allison looked up into the rear-view mirror, seeing her own eyes but believing that she could see a certain glimmer that was all Thea.

Thea herself stared through her sister's eyes at her face, able to finally see the stress lines and dark shading beneath her tired eyes.

Allison spoke lowly, eyes blank. "Would you hate me if I said yes?"

'You already know the answer to that question. That's why you called me.'

Lips twisting into a bitter smile, Allison let out a brief chuckle. "Sometimes I wonder just how far your loyalty goes. One day it's going to get you killed. You know that, right?"

'If my loyalty to my family gets me killed, I can't find anything in that future that I'd regret.'

"Do you even realise that people use you, sometimes? That we use you?" Allison's expression was mostly closed off, but Thea did not need to be inside of her sister's mind to sense the underlying guilt and shame. Allison recognised the hypocrisy of her words.

'If I can be of use to any of you then I'm always willing to give you anything I have.'

Allison snorted in a derisive manner, but Thea knew it was self-reprimanding and took no offence. "You're ridiculous. If the world was more like you then I'm sure we wouldn't be in this goddamn situation to begin with."

'If the world was like me, then I'm quite sure it would have ended much sooner,' she tried to joke and was pleased when the bitter smile on her sister's lips became a little more genuine. Not wanting to sour the mood further but unsure of how long she had in this quasi-possession, Thea brought the focus back to the matter at hand. She asked once more what Allison needed her to do.

"It's probably better if I show you," she sighed, opening the car door and walking to the rear. She unlocked the trunk and opened it, revealing a curled-up, unconscious form within. It was Harlan; a little bruised, eyes closed and lips parted; small tufts of breath causing his chest to rise and fall in sleep.

'He's alive,' she acknowledged.

Allison picked up on her evident surprise. "Were you so sure that I'd killed him?"

'I was prepared to help you get away with murder, Ally. Forgive me for being a little relieved that I'm not to be complicit in disposing of a body.'

"I think all ways of disposing of a body are considered immoral."

'Very true.' Thea scrutinised Harlan's face, scanning his brain waves and surface thoughts to ensure that he really was just sleeping. That he hadn't suffered any kind of brain injury from his involuntary slumber.

"What did you just do?" Allison asked in alarm.

'Huh? What do you mean?' Thea asked, alarmed in response.

"Did you just read his mind? Like two seconds ago? I could have sworn I saw something – like a thousand intrusive images in my mind... a collective whisper of thoughts that didn't feel like my own." She shuddered. "It was horrible. Like an itch. It felt like they weren't supposed to be there."

Thea was shocked, the description a familiar feeling she had once experienced as a child, at the beginning stages of developing her abilities; when their father had begun to push her to expand herself and encompass the world around her.

'I did,' she confirmed, pushing away the weird connection they seemed to have shared for now. There were more important matters to focus on. 'I took a look into his mind to make sure he wouldn't suddenly wake up. Whatever you did, he's certainly in a deep sleep. Nothing short of an apocalypse will wake him up,' she joked.

"I rumoured him to believe he had suddenly fallen into a coma. He won't wake up unless I tell him to."

'That's one way to go about it,' she mused. 'So, what's your plan from here? Does Viktor know you took him?'

"No." Allison snapped harshly, her breathing picking up a little at the mention of their brother. Thea hastily soothed her nerves with a calming alteration to her mind; like dosing a fire before it could spread.

'Okay, no more questions for now. Why don't you just tell me what you want to do from here? You know I'll support you whichever way you choose.'

Allison paused momentarily before speaking. She seemed to be choosing her words wisely. "The Sparrows want Harlan in exchange for access to the basement, where the Kugelblitz is."

Ignoring for now the insanity of the entire situation – a Kugelblitz, seriously? – which was something she did best and had a history of experience to keep her calm while doing so, Thea hyper-focused on moving forward. This way, she had no way of ruminating on things that would only pull her back into dark thoughts.

'You want to continue with the exchange – and somehow convince them that Harlan really is dead.'

"Right as always," Allison sighed, finally slamming the trunk shut so that Harlan was no longer in sight. "Can we do it?"

'I'll find a way,' Thea insisted. 'I've certainly had much harder tasks that I've somehow bullshitted my way through. The plan is simple, really.'

"Which is?"

'First, we panic and then we get shit done.'

A poignant pause. "Is that how you always go about tackling issues?"

'Pretty much. You know that face I always make before missions as children? That thinking pose.'

"The pretentious one, yeah. Diego once called it your stance of pomposity."

Unwilling to give rise to that particular jab, Thea continued. 'Yeah, well, that was only ever to hide the absolute mental meltdown I always suffered before missions. Trust me, a little panic is important, practically ritual at this point. Then, once you've gotten rid of all the nervous energy you can move on and get shit done unimpeded.'

"I think what you needed was psychological help. That can't be a healthy coping mechanism."

'Kettle – black. That's pretty hypocritical of you, Ally. You know, when I was summoned precisely due to your near-murderous intentions.'

"...that's valid," Allison conceded, allowing a little of that mental panic to leak out.

Feeling the jittering of her hands and clenching them at her sides in an attempt at repressing it further, she startled at Thea's pointed mental nudge and instead let them free, shaking them in the air as though releasing the electric currents of anxiety out from her body.

For almost ten minutes Allison stood there, pacing back and forth outside of the stolen car and trying to release all her pent-up emotions as best she could. When at last she felt a semblance of sanity within her grip, Allison returned to the front seat and buckled herself in.

They had Sparrows to meet.

The journey was mostly silent; an uncomfortable tension in the air mostly of Allison's making. She couldn't help but feel a curdling of shame in the pit of her stomach, whether from her sporadic actions or the childish way she had called out for her sister's help; like she was ten all over again and needed Thea to clean up the messes made in her blind enthusiasm.

Only five minutes away from the academy, Allison finally broke the silence.

"How are we going to do this?"

'I have a plan. Though I'm not quite sure if it'll work.'

Hearing Thea's voice inside of her mind, after almost two hours of complete silence, was more comforting than she'd like to admit. She felt the respite like cool water on a summer's day. Instant relief.

"Meeting up with the Sparrows with a half-baked plan doesn't sound like the smartest move," Allison mused.

'Unless you have a better idea, it's all we've got. Don't worry, I'm like... seventy-per cent sure it'll work.'

Allison deadpanned, pursing her lips as she watched the traffic pass ahead of them beyond the red light. "I don't like the sound of those odds."

'I've worked with less,' Thea drawled sarcastically and Allison withheld a smile.

Yes, she was more than sure of that statement.

The girl likely didn't know it, but within the small circle of Hargreeves siblings, Thea was somewhat of a miracle worker. Heralded by the divine title – a mantle the blonde was known for cringing over whenever reminded – Allison had always held a confusing combination of feelings when it came to her sister's capabilities.

On the one hand, it was an asset having such a competent member of the team, especially one as empathetic as Thea who would never allow any of her family members to get left behind; something that reassured that small part of Allison that had night-terrors as a child about losing her voice and being discarded like trash, abandoned and useless.

However, some nights, after a particularly gruelling mission where they had come out on top only by the skin of their teeth – and very probably due to Thea and Five's combined efforts and quick thinking – Allison lay in bed and ruminated on the sick, envious feeling pooling in her gut as she spent countless hours comparing their every quirk and asset. Unable to stop herself from evaluating them like livestock – exactly as their Father did – and feeling a consuming dread upon realising that she very much fell short.

Why was it that Allison – the girl who could rumour anything into existence, who could spin lies into truth and falsehoods into realities – could not even convince herself that she could ever live up to her sister's shining standard?

It made her sick. It made her want to laugh in hysteric irony.

How foolish she had been back then, so young and innocent and naively unaware of the cruelty of the world. Remembering now the despair in her sister's eyes after Ben's death, unable to stop herself from thinking on that day when she was adorned in white, that despite finally having achieved something over her sister, all she could taste was ash in her mouth. Could feel the blankness in her sister's eyes – the sister who had still come to her wedding despite all of her own pain – and finally understood.

Thea Hargreeves was not any better than the rest of her siblings, no matter how much they had falsely placed her upon an unwanted pedestal. Only she was well equipped at hiding the crushing weight of such responsibility.

Allison was sure. That this time, she wouldn't rely on her sister anymore; not for things that she could take care of herself. Allison would no longer lean on her sister so heavily, no longer force Thea to clean up her messes; to sweep up her carelessness and paint over the wounds of her destruction.

After this day, Allison Hargreeves would not rely on her rumour or her sister or anybody else to get what she wanted. She would follow in her sister's footsteps and take what she wanted herself; by pure will and determination.

'We're here.'

Thea's voice rang loudly, clearing the fog in her mind. Allison had driven them to the academy blind, only grateful that her body remain functional even without her full attention.

The sky had turned dark, not quite nighttime; a burnished orange glow illuminating the clouds from the setting sun. She turned to look at the doorway as it opened, revealing two familiar people who stepped out to greet her.

'Ally, listen closely, okay? I'm going to do something stupid and reckless, and god is Five going to kill me if he ever finds out, so I'm asking for your promise not to tell him, and for your trust. In me.'

"Of course," she said softly, not wanting to move her lips too much in case the Sparrows thought she wasn't alone. "Anything, Thea. You know that."

'...then, here goes nothing I suppose.'

There was a note of apprehension in her voice and that was the only warning Allison got before she reeled back in pain.

Suddenly assaulted by a litany of stimuli; resonating throughout her mind like the echoing of a large cathedral was a liturgy of chorused voices; a symphonic chorus of melody that was neither subtle nor comprehensible. The voices were too loud. The images too bright. The feelings too raw.

Allison's head felt like it was splitting in two. No longer concerned about drawing attention to herself, she clutched the sides of her head in agony.

"What...are you...doing?"

No answer came, and Allison felt like she was going to collapse, like the car was somehow closing in on itself and crushing her inside, like her head was slowly being melted from within and that any moment her brain matter would decorate the leather seats–

Until it stopped.

As suddenly as it began, the throbbing ache and the chorus of voices all halted as one. The heavy door slammed shut and Allison no longer stood in that echo chamber.

'Sorry.'

Thea's voice was smaller, now. More like a whisper in the back of her mind than a distinguishable voice of her own. Allison could almost make believe that it wasn't her sister at all, but instead her own subconscious imitating the sound of Thea's voice in an attempt at calming her down.

'I told you it was a long shot. But it looks like seventy-per cent odds weren't so bad, after all.'

"What did you do?" Allison asked again, this time a little stronger. No longer cowered by the pounding of her brain wanting to escape the confines of her skull.

'What you felt was myself opening up. Think of it as me prying open my brain so that you can cosy up inside–' at Allison's disgusted expression Thea paused, apologising for the visceral imagery. 'Sorry, bad analogy. Anyway, the pain was because I'd never done this kind of thing before. I'm always the one invading others' minds, guiding myself through it, so doing the reverse was, to say the least, difficult.'

"It felt like my brain was going to explode."

'Yeah, sorry about that. If it's any consolation you were only feeling what I was feeling. You were never in any trouble of actually...you know.'

"Exploding from within?"

'Yeah. I mean, no. You weren't in danger, Ally. It was just an echo of my own feelings.'

An echo...? Then that meant...Allison felt sick with the implications.

That meant whatever she had felt just now had been only a small part of whatever Thea had felt. She fervently pushed that thought to the very back of her mind for now. Any reminder only made her want to hurl the pitiful substance in her stomach – mostly alcohol – and that wouldn't look good in front of the Sparrows.

Who were currently eyeing her still shut car door in impatience.

"Please tell me this means your plan worked."

'Like a charm.'

"And pray tell what this plan is? I can't help but feel left in the dark."

'Just follow my lead.' When Allison's frustration seemed to spike, Thea was quick to cut in. 'You said you trusted me, Ally. I promise it will work out just fine, okay? Just act natural and follow my lead.'

Taking a shuddering breath, Allison let it out slowly, staring at herself in the rear-view mirror before snapping her eyes away and toward the academy. At Ben and Fei who watched her like hawks.

Opening the car door she met them both by the trunk, her expression smoothed out into a cold detachment that she certainly did not feel on the inside. Allison felt ready to burst; like a broken faucet hastily repaired and inevitably due to combust at any given moment.

Deceptively put-together but broken, nonetheless.

'Open the boot and imagine Harlan is dead. Picture it clearly – make yourself believe that he's not breathing. That's he's beyond all hope. Imagine it, Allison. If you want to convince them then you have to make them believe it.'

Expertly hiding the apprehension that she felt, Allison popped open the trunk and let it slide upwards, revealing the slumped, unconscious figure within. Harlan was quite clearly alive; not even a mar of blood on his body to make it a believable story on her part, but Allison followed her sister's lead; putting trust in her words and ignoring the small part of her, that ten-year-old girl who wanted to rebel against the lead of others, and willed with all of her might to make the Sparrows believe that the body inside of the trunk was dead.

"You got what you wanted," she said evenly, staring fixedly at their shadowed faces. "Harlan's dead."

If they noticed the extra push of power in those final words, the deeper inflection of her voice then they made no show of it. Allison watched them look at Harlan, felt the sweat trickle down the back of her exposed neck, the pinpricks of anxiety swell in the cold air of the night, and willed herself to believe the lie she was spinning.

No rumour would work here, she'd be caught out before she could finish her sentence. Instead, she could rely only on her sister's words – her sister's power; always one step above Allison even in this regard. But she could not will up any of the bitterness she used to feel, only an all-consuming relief when the Sparrows finally turned their searching eyes away from the body to face her instead. Grim smiles on their faces.

"Yes," Ben replied, his voice a deep tenor. So different to her brothers. Allison withheld a wince at the echo of grief she felt in the recesses of her mind, a grief not her own. "He certainly is." A smile as sardonic as it was amused.

Ignoring the blatant attempt to rile her up, Allison waited while the two murmured to one another, heads close, before Fei inclined her head and Ben turned to nod once at a figure looming in the doorway. It was Reginald Hargreeves, watching the entire debacle like a spectral shadow, illuminated by the light of the academy, his expression unreadable, obscured by the darkness outside.

"How are we going to dispose of the body?" Allison heard herself ask, eyes narrowed at the pair who had yet to move away from the car. She wanted to believe that they had done so out of suspicion of her and not the very un-dead body lying unconscious in the trunk.

Thea had promised. They wouldn't see through her lie.

Allison had made it a reality; to them at least, Harlan was dead.

Ben's smile was unlike any she had ever seen on his face before, at least, on her brother's face, that is. "We'll let you deal with that." He chuckled, humourlessly. "Wouldn't want to sully our hands with such...dirty work."

Allison was sure they could all hear the grinding of her teeth, the willpower it took not to smash her fist into his smug face like those assholes she had beaten up at the bar. The wounds still burned pleasantly when she flexed her knuckles.

Likely sensing a brewing storm, Fei moved forward with a polite, yet no less superiorly detached smile. "Let us not quarrel like children. Instead, Allison here will dispose of the body before returning to the academy at once. Then, we shall contact the rest of your...family."

She said the final word like it soured her tastebuds.

Ignoring the disgust squirming in her gut at the sound of her name coming from the enemy, Allison nodded once in agreement, perfunctory and to the point. They could not know how relieved she was that they did not want to dispose of Harlan themselves. Let them believe they had gotten away with the better end of the deal. Let them believe Allison was in their debt.

She withheld the cruel smirk that twitched at the corners of her lips at just how easily they had been played.

'Leave now,' Thea's voice was like a ice down her back; startling her back into reality. 'Before they change their minds.'

Following the advice, Allison gave the Sparrows one last look before sliding back into the driver's seat and igniting the car once more, pulling out of the parking space without looking back. Once they were back onto the road, she felt a shuddering breath release from her chest all at once, like a balloon losing all its air.

"That went surprisingly well," she laughed, a touch of hysteria sharpening its edges. "I can't believe that actually worked. What did you do? What did we do?"

When she spoke, her voice still remained a distant whisper in the back of her mind, as though Allison had overshadowed Thea's prominence in their shared consciousness.

'I let you use me – my powers. I don't know how to explain it properly, but imagine dipping your hand into a pond and cupping some water between your hands. Like that, I suppose. I let you take your own handful.'

"It was...it was just..." Allison struggled for words, to explain the exult she had felt at so easily controlling those around her without even having to mutter the catchphrase she had relied on throughout her life. She had barely even had to speak the words, only push her intent onto them and watch as they crumbled into her demands. "...exhilarating."

'That's one way to put it...' Thea said softly, sounding a little despondent. 'Though the buzz wears off pretty quickly once you realise how dangerous it can be.'

"How you don't use it all the time is beyond me," Allison chuckled, already feeling a little better now that they were driving away from the academy, and away from the busy roads. Taking a turn, Allison steered the car down a side road, where there were fewer bystanders walking the streets.

'For the same reason you don't, Ally,' Thea said a little sternly. 'Because I don't like to think that everything in my life is due solely to my ability to control people. I want the things I have to be because of me, not this...curse.'

"Curse? That's new, I haven't heard you call what we have that before." Allison smiled when she caught her own stare in the mirror, knowing that her sister was lurking somewhere within. "Changed your mind so suddenly on it all, have you? What happened to seeing our powers as blessings, little miss Divine?"

'Shut up,' Thea grumbled. 'You know I hate that name.'

"Just as much as I hate The Rumour – it makes me sound less a mysterious femme fatale and more like a second-rate supervillain."

'Don't you ever wish we hadn't been given these powers, Ally?' Thea asked, voice a little stronger even as it remained a whisper in her mind. 'That we could have been normal. Grown up without the fame and the recognition, without Dad forcing us to play superhero and instead just...live our lives like regular, boring people?'

"Regular and boring has never really been my style," Allison tried to joke, but could only feel a deep sadness in the recognition of her sister's words.

For so long, Allison had grown up wanting to be famous; to break free from the superhero mould her father had forced her into and instead emerge from the stuffy cocoon into a beautiful social butterfly, who would preen and smile at the cameras, who would no longer make play-pretend of her idyllic family in the confines of the greenhouse, with a shabby tent and her brother's smile, but instead would achieve the real thing.

A husband. A house. A daughter that she loved.

...a daughter who had been taken away from her because of her own mistakes; errors exacerbated by a power which twisted her expectations of reality.

A daughter that she had lost because of Viktor's outburst; fuelled by despair cruelly malformed by being told he was ordinary.

A daughter that had been erased because of Harlan; a power unwillingly bestowed.

Claire...

"But I can't help but think that, right now, being normal is the most desirable thing in the world."

'Don't worry,' Thea said, her voice sounding distant even more than before. 'Somehow, someway, I'll make sure that we all get our happy endings.'

Her voice was like static, like a radio frequency losing signal, tinny and thin, coming in and out of range and affecting the strength of her voice. Allison strained her mind to focus on the words.

"Thea? I'm losing you, I can barely hear what you're saying."

'I think I need to go, now.' She mused lightly, as though the prospect of disappearing was not at all a terrifying concept. Allison disagreed, and clutched the steering wheel in her hands tightly, suddenly afraid of being alone again.

"Don't leave," she rushed to say in a sweep of breath, nails creating indentations of the leather of the wheel. "I don't even know what to do next." Wracking her brain for anything to say. "What about Harlan? What do I even do with him now?"

'...rumour him...make...believe he's...normal...happier life...'

"I don't know if I'm powerful enough to do that, Thea. My rumour can make things happen but they can't make things natural. Just because I rumour someone to do something that doesn't make them believe they're doing it of their own free will."

'...can now...trust me...enforce your...will...'

"Thea I can't–"

'Ally...make sure...remembers Viktor...promise me...'

Sucking in a harsh breath, Allison's lower lip trembled as she realised that her sister really was disappearing once more – to god knows where, so far away from any of them, from their help – and that she would be left alone again. At the mercy of the clawing silence, bereft at the gaping loss that would make itself known once her sister's presence disappeared.

Allison could already feel the phantom chill; the draft blowing in from her absence.

"Wouldn't it be better if I made him forget–"

'...no child...should forget....parent...promise me...'

"I promise," she muttered, biting back the petulant desire to refuse; to say no, to say how unfair it was of her to ask this, to allow Harlan to remember the ghost of a parent when Claire was not even alive to remember hers – her own mother.

But the pleading in Thea's distant, airy words stopped her short. Cut off the petulance at the knees before it could rampage blindly in its misguided anger.

Such earnest wishes for everybody but yourself...she thought darkly; not sure if the anger was aimed at her selfless sister or herself; twisted and selfish that she was. You always did like Viktor the most, whispered a darker, envious part of her mind. Allison refused to settle on that thought.

'...love you...Ally...'

A whirlwind of tumultuous emotions spiralled within her gut – grief, envy, anger, but most of all, love – and Allison stubbornly clenched her jaw to stop the cry which wanted to make itself known. She stared, narrow-eyed out at the road, imagining that she was driving them both somewhere better, somewhere that they could escape the end of the world in peace, and she spoke evenly; voice brittle yet honest.

"I love you too, Thea."

. . .

Waking up was like being dragged from the waves; spluttering the phantom water from her lungs, gasping for air which had been stolen from her – Thea opened her eyes and saw.

No longer was she sitting in the illusion of her father's office, rather she was floating; suspended in the air, limbs hanging listlessly by her sides and her head thrown back unnaturally so that she could see the swirling labyrinth beyond. An unnatural inverted void; not dark but bright and colourful, beyond the human limitations of conception; like staring directly into the sun; a rainbow which burned when gazed upon.

Her eyes were open to the truth.

'Do you see, child?'

Yes, she mouthed the words, unable to speak. Unable to think beyond the tremor of awe.

'You understand the false God's curse. You acknowledge the sacrifice that must be made.'

Yes.

'What is sacrificed is only what you're willing to exchange. So long as it is important to you, then the toll will be paid.'

I understand.

'The false God must be punished. The balance must be once more restored.'

Thea blinked languidly, her brain so consumed by the kaleidoscopic aurora which danced in her vision that she could barely hear the words being spoken to her. Psychedelic prisms coalesced into one another, merging to form and multiply, to expand on themselves as they expanded her vision; her conception of the truth of matter; of the universe.

From within her minds eyes she saw flashes of ones and zeros; on a continuous loop, forever performing their endless cycle of creation and destruction, of birth and death and rebirth once more.

The infinite code of the universe; of universal truth; foundational binary.

'Open your eyes wide, child. You must not miss a single moment as you are unmade.'

Thea felt as her head was pulled taut, far further back than she would think possible, her spine arched unnaturally.

'To the sacrifice, you must bear witness.'

Unable to protest as her eyes were forced to accommodate the rapidly brightening light which seared itself onto her retinas, burned them alight – striking like lightning, the final crack of thunder as her head snapped back, spine curved into the cyclical symbol which had etched itself onto her very being.

Zero; nothing and everything.

The nothing that is. That nothing which exists, nonetheless.

Thea heard the tolling of bells and saw the stained-glass kaleidoscope scorch its truth into her mind. The rumbling thunder spoke above the tolling of the ritualistic dismantling.

Suspended weightless, suffering the pleasure which came with the pain, the exultation she felt at being stripped bare, taken apart and dissimilated at the basest level; remade pure and unsullied by the false blessings.

For Thea, she was sure it would be the closest to heaven she would ever experience.

Somewhere not so far away, a doorway opened.

The portrait opened with a click.

✧✦✧

Damn, this chapter near killed me to write. I hope you all liked it. Next chapter we'll be returning to the canon plotline and reuniting with the others ('｡• ᵕ •｡')

Did this chapter take me forever to finish because I rewatched The Phantom of the Opera and was consumed by a Vea fixation where Viktor plays the phantom and Thea is Christine? Yes. Did I write lots of plot notes and draw them together? Also, yes. Perhaps I'll upload it as a one-shot after s3 is done (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

As always, leave your thoughts, theories and questions in the comments as I love hearing them!♡