Ragna Hargreeves didn't sleep.
When she was forced to, she would rush into her bathroom, dig around the vent, find her Valium, and chase it with a gulp of decaf coffee and sweet Italian crème. Ragna Hargreeves was deliberate and never, ever dreamed. She couldn't allow herself to fall into R.E.M. and so it had become routine to down that Valium and coffee and wake up exactly three hours from her starting point. Intervals of three prevented R.E.M.. However, over time, her deliberateness faded out and it just became normal life.
Ragna stood in her kitchen wearing a black tank top and boy shorts, tattooed arms supporting her upper body. She slumped her head into the sink, a few last droplets of pink vomit dripping from her lips. Mixed with her own deep red blood, it coated and slid down the dishes accumulating in the big steel vessel. She wiped her lips with her wrist and turned her body around, her mascara dripping wetly down her cheeks. A big black cat rubbed itself against her ankles.
"Hello, Carlisle..." she breathed, bending down and picking the heavy creature up in her arms. Due to her upbringing being less than ideal, her physical illnesses really only got worse after she left because she had no idea of how to manage them. Everything was taken care of by Grace or her nannies. She barely even knew shit about her actual illnesses. Moving out just meant that she lost her insurance and any means of obtaining new equipment to care for herself.
-
"Alright, sweet girl! Are you ready?"
"Yes, mom."
"And you all are watching behind me?"
"Yes, mom!" The other seven children said in unison, watching intently as Grace popped open Ragna's low-profile feeding tube. Tonight, she was teaching the others how to handle the tube if they ever had to help Ragna eat.
"It's easy as pie..." Grace started. "First, you just open the tube...like that. Then, you attach this here..." she attached what looked like an extension to it, removing the back of that one too. "And now, you fill the syringe with whatever Ragna wants to eat and attach the syringe into the back piece here. Who wants to try first?"
The kids looked at each other, each of them holding their breath and waiting for a hand to raise. Everyone was afraid of hurting her.
A confident, "I'll go" could suddenly be heard from the back of the group, and Luther shifted past his siblings to the front.
"Luther, of course." Grace smiled, handing him the empty syringe. "A natural-born leader. Don't worry. She won't be in any pain."
Luther inhaled deeply and nodded, kneeling next to Ragna. She made eye contact with her brother, who was always metaphorically much 'older' than she was. "Please be careful." She said quietly. Truthfully, one wrong tug on the tube and it's inner plastic would rub against the raw hole in her flesh, causing an aching discomfort. She knew it was important that her siblings learn how to feed her, but it didn't mean she wasn't terrified that they would fuck it up. Until this point, Grace and only Grace had handled Ragna's tube.
"I will. Promise." He replied. They exchanged that same comforting smile from what could be considered an elder to his junior before Luther filled the syringe with the thick yellow liquid settling in the measuring cup. Today's glorious mixture was a conglomeration of sweet potato, corn, Pediasure and corticosteroids. Luther carefully injected the syringe into the gastric tube, and as he did, Ragna pondered how strange it felt to have food enter your stomach directly. It had been all she knew her entire life and the sensation was still almost foreign.
Each child took a turn with the syringe until the measuring cup was empty. They made jokes with Ragna, trying to make her experience as painless as possible, and although the meal was viscous and foul she almost felt normal in the presence of her mother, along with the many children who cared for her as if their relations were natural.
-
Ragna ran her fingers over the swollen crater where she had tore out her feeding tube. She winced. It had been months and still, the wound was so painful that it felt like it was only yesterday that she hastily dug her fingers into her stomach and pried out the plastic gateway to her guts. If anyone asked, it was because she was tired of letting the stroke she suffered as an infant get in the way of her day-to-day life. Truthfully, it was because she no longer could afford low-profile tube replacements. Swallowing was still almost too much of a challenge to conquer and as a child, she was told she would likely need that tube for the rest of her life. It's absence meant that eating was typically unpleasant and food had to be swallowed forcefully. This is why Ragna was almost constantly vomiting.
With Carlisle snuggled in her arms and a belly just recently emptied of its contents, Ragna paced her way through her small and cluttered home. Posters and newspaper clippings littered the walls, mostly those involving her family. Of course, the generic "Billionaire Adopts 8 Super-Children: What's Next for The Umbrella Academy?" all the way to Vanya's book release, "The Umbrella Academy's Vanya Hargreeves Details Shady Past in Extra Ordinary: My Life as Number 7." But Ragna's favorites were the ones concerning herself.
RUMOR HAS IT! Eighth Hargreeves Infant Suffers Stroke. Will She Be Paralyzed Forever?
Eighth Hargreeves Child Missing From Umbrella Academy Bank Bust
Eighth Umbrella Child Ragna Hargreeves diagnosed with Lymphoma at Age Four
Umbrella Academy's Charity Case: What's Wrong With Number Eight?!
It made her sick. The public tried to seem so invested in her well-being, so obsessed with her welfare, but never cared enough to even try and examine what she and her siblings were being subjected to. It wasn't even just about the tank anymore. It was about Klaus and the mausoleum. It was about the gross disrespect for Vanya as a person simply due to her lack of powers. It was about Ben's careless death. Although she tried for years to escape her past, these were the reasons why her home was a hoard of relics from that very time. She tried to get the police involved, investigators, private workers hired off of The Silk Road; all responses were the same. Either she was spat on as mentally unstable or disregarded out of fear for her father. It was useless.
Ragna slumped into her couch. It was cluttered with huge books stacked up taller than she was about all sorts of topics. It only had one gap for her and Carlisle to sit. He meowed quietly.
"Oh, yes, Carlisle. I know you like the TV." She cooed, flicking it on and beginning to page through channels. "Let's find Animal Planet for you...hopefully they're giving one of them good kitty shows. What's that one we like? Yeah, My Cat From Hell. That's gotta be like, the Playboy of cat TV sh-"
Ragna's thoughts came to a yield when she turned to the national news station for no other reason than her childhood home being right there, blasted across the screen. "Hell is this..." she muttered, turning up the volume. "I swear to God if this is Vanya again, I'm gonna-"
"Reclusive billionaire and philanthropist Sir Reginald Hargreeves was found dead this morning at..."
Ragna stopped. Frantically, she began to rapidly jump between national news stations, listening to each of them repeat some variation of the same sentence. She then turned to the internet and began skimming articles, drilling its idea into her head before finally reacting. She began to cry and shake, combing her fingers through her tangled hair and smiling wide. She wiped the tears from her eyes with her wrist.
"Oh, he's dead!" She shrieked, standing up and beginning to hop in circles around her remaining living room space. "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead, he's dead! Oh, Carlisle, he's dead! A daddy dead is a daddy dearest! Oh...Oh Lord..." She was on her knees now, knelt in faux prayer. "Oh Lord I may have never prayed to you, I may have never really believed in you but I know! I know now that you're real because you have...blessed me! With this gift! Oh, you killed my father, thank you GOD!"
She was crying and hopping wildly, celebrating the death of Sir Hargreeves in her own manic one-person party. In the midst of her jumping, though, her hand brushed the thick scar in between her collarbones. Suddenly, a wave of emotions came flooding back. She collapsed onto her rear, running her fingers over her scar. "Oh..." she began. "Oh, K..."
She bit her lip in an attempt to hold tears back, but she couldn't stop the rushing waves that began to gush down her cheeks. Now she was sobbing, ugly huffs and whimpers escaping her lips as she curled down into a child's pose. "Oh, K, I'm so sorry I left you." Long black nails scraped the dirty hardwood and her hands slammed it too, a poignant and undying array of emotions dashing through her body. She was angry at Klaus for getting so addicted but angrier at herself for abandoning him. She was melancholic because she missed him, as well as all of her other family that she had been away from for years. She was ecstatic that her father and constant abuser was dead. She was sick and tired of being so perpetually unwell. She was exhausted.
"K..." she repeated, holding her hand over her scar and shutting her eyes as she curled into a fetal position on the floor. "He's gone now, K. It's over." She mumbled, taking in deep and shaky breaths of air. "He's gone now and he can't get us anymore...no more tank...no more mausoleum...no..more..." Ragna sighed in shaky breaths, unable to move for fear of breaking herself all over again.