Chapter One.     Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!

        Who is the lamb and who is the knife?

In some small way, deep down, Ramona Hargreeves knows that in every scenario, in every timeline, she is always the lamb.  Her finger may always be the one on the trigger, but her trigger finger is The Handler's and once, it had been Dad's.  Because when she was plucked out of her time loop and recruited to the Temps Commission, even though she left that childhood home behind, she was never really free of it.  There wasn't a single part of her that did not belong to somebody else; her eyes and her mouth and her hands and her childhood—all of it stolen away first by The Umbrella Academy, and then by The Handler.

Some days, Ramona wishes that she could take it all back; every life that she took in the name of The Handler, every person that she hurt, all the pain that she had caused across every single time line that she had ever touched.  Ramona Hargreeves sits that the epicenter of a web of pain because for every person that she killed, there was somebody out there crying for them.  In some ways, Ramona was better because of it; her soft edges were hardened, she is no longer the little exploited girl grieving her dead brother.  Nobody could ever really hurt her anymore.  The first few times she was told to kill a person, she cried the whole way through.  The Handler told her that what she was doing was good.  That every person that Ramona plucked off of the timeline deserved it.

Ramona tried so hard to be good.

It's all that she ever wanted: to be good enough.

To be good enough for Dad.  Ramona would have done anything for Reginald Hargreeves.  She would have doused the entire world in kerosene and dropped the match if he asked her to.  She would have done anything for Reginald if it meant that he would smile at her and tell her that he was proud of her.  She always put Reginald first; she had gotten shot once on a mission, and even though she was bleeding on the floor, all she wanted to know was if Reginald was having a good day.  But nothing any of them would ever be enough for Reginald, and soon it just became apparent that they were all hungry dogs fighting for the same thing, but Reginald would always hold it just barely out of reach. 

Ramona would have done anything for Dad.

The Handler knew that, too.

In between teaching Ramona how to twist the knife and how to stretch out the pain as long as possible, she brushes Ramona's hair and plays chess with her and wash her back when she bathed.  Sometimes, she would pull Ramona into her lap and whisper into her ear just how special she is.  Ramona's real mother had given her away, traded her daughter away like a rag doll in exchange for a stack of crisp euros, but The Handler would never let Ramona go like she did.  She let Ramona grow out her hair and dress how she wanted.  While Reginald had always just fed Ramona scraps of love that she often had to lick off of knives, The Handler served it to Ramona on a silver platter. 

Ramona would never be good enough for Dad, but she was good enough for The Handler.

But Ramona knows now that The Handler never really loved her in the way that Ramona wanted her to.  All The Handler ever wanted was another puppet to manipulate; another lamb she can send to the slaughterhouse.  A perfect little toy soldier to play with when she was bored.  And Ramona had been stupid enough to fall into her trap because a child starved of love will do anything to receive it. 

Ramona didn't realize for a very long time that some of the ways that The Handler loved her were wrong.  She was still too young to know that there were some kinds of love that could be bad.

What a stupid girl she was.

"...the Dallas Fort-Worth area broadcast, here to bring you a special description of the arrival of President John F. Kennedy..."

1963.

The Kennedy Assassination. 

"Should I find you a box?"

"Fuck off," Ramona replies as she she hoists herself up on the back of the wooden fence to see over the top and out into the grassy knoll below them.

"That's not any way to speak to your elders."

"We were born on the same day, dipshit."

"And yet..."

Ramona rolls her eyes and doesn't respond to her brother who stands just behind her, assembling his sniper rifle.  Time had cast its spell on Five Hargreeves, but Ramona would always recognize him.  He had once asked her how she knew it was him even after all those years had passed for him.  Ramona had only replied that it was a stupid question.  She was born knowing him.  Five Hargreeves had once been headstrong and stubborn—qualities that had ultimately been his downfall—but now he reminds her more of a gnarled oak tree, withered by age and haunted by the ghosts that live behind his eyes and the rotted remnants of the apocalyptic wasteland he had been condemned to for years.  He doesn't talk about the apocalypse and she doesn't ask.  Some things are better left untouched.

He's humming to himself now, and Ramona does her best to tune him out.

"This is my favorite part," Five sings to himself as he snaps the last few pieces of his sniper together.  "The calm before the storm..."

"You have your mental health screening yet?" Ramona snaps.  "You sound like you're losing it."

"You weren't followed?" Five asks as he sides up beside her, raising scope of the sniper to his eye.

Ramona shakes her head.  "Nope."

She pops the p just how Klaus used to when they were kids.  Ramona can't count the years that she's lived without her siblings—it's strange now, that she's had to remember them longer than she's actually known them.  Still, she carries so many tiny pieces of them with her wherever she goes.  There isn't a day that goes by where is isn't sorry that she left them behind.  She knows that it was for the better, but it still never quite felt right leaving them behind in that house while Reginald Hargreeves was still living.  That house was suffocating and Ramona thought that leaving would help her to breathe again.  But even after she left, she found that she still couldn't breathe knowing that her siblings were still in that house.

"How'd you even get here?" Five wonders, eye still trained on the road below them.

"Called in a favor." Ramona shrugs.  "Jude likes me." 

Five lets out a little laugh at that.  "Where are you guys going?"

Ramona sighs. "We're supposed to see Dvořák's Symphony No. 9 in a few days."

"Ah, young love," Five laments.  "I remember being seventeen and in love."

"It's not like that, weirdo," Ramona retorts. "Are we doing this or not?"

"Are you ready?" Five replies. 

"If we wait 'till we're ready, we'll be waiting our whole lives," Ramona replies. 

Five sighs and lowers his sniper.  "Okay."

Ramona lowers herself from the fence and turns to watch Five as he pulls his copy of Extra Ordinary out of his back pocket.  He'd let Ramona read it once, and she'd read it cover-to-cover, fingers tracing over the notes and calculations that Five had littered the margins with because it was the only thing that she had of any of her siblings.  It was kind of like watching a car accident, where Ramona knew she should look away, but it was a morbid curiosity that kept her watching.  She had wanted to be angry at first because Vanya had taken their lives and put them on display for everybody to see all over again just when she had thought that she finally escaped from the glass display case that Dad kept them in, but the more she read, the more she understood.  After all, whenever Ramona thought that she had it particularly bad, her first thought was always: At least I'm not Vanya. 

Vanya was a Hargreeves, but she was never really one of them.

Five mutters to himself as he flips through the pages, fingers tracing over the notes scrawled in blue ink.  He stares at the page for a moment and then tucks the book beneath his arm.  Ramona sidles up to him as he closes his eyes and balls his fists.  His fists begin to shake and glow blue as electricity crackles around them.  Five makes a sort of grunting sound as his fists shake even more as the wind blows around them and the blue grows bigger and bigger until there's a small tear of the universe in front of them and she finds that they're staring through the tear at their siblings—or at least, who's left of them.

A moment later, another figure comes running into view with a fire extinguisher in hand. 

Ramona ducks out of the way as the fire extinguisher comes flying through the tear in the universe and lands on the ground behind them.

"Take my hand!" Five shouts over the sound of the wind and the crackling.

Ramona takes Five's outstretched hand and together they step toward the rip.  The force of the wind blows Five's bowler had off of his head.  Ramona screws her eyes shut as they step further and further into the rip.  There's a strange sort of plasticity to it; a strange resistance as if the rip in the universe, too, knows that they should not be doing this.  But Five and Ramona have never been particularly good at following the rules of the universe.  Five is screaming beside her and Ramona's eyes are still screwed shut and she feels herself suspended in the air for a few moments.  She opens her eyes again as the crackling disappears and she plummets to the ground. 

Ramona groans as she pushes herself up from the ground as the sky above clears and the sun shines down on them once more.  The five siblings who remain—Luther, Diego, Allison, Vanya, and Klaus—are mobbed together and approach them cautiously. 

"Does anyone else see little Numbers Five and Eight, or is that just me?" Klaus asks from the back of the group.  He doesn't want to believe that he's seeing his sister and his brother right in front of him because that can only mean one thing, and Klaus isn't sure that he can take the loss of more siblings. Even years after Ramona and Five hadn't returned, he had always been fueled by the small hope that if he never saw them, they might still be alive. But seeing Ramona and Five here in the backyard of their childhood home strikes something in Klaus. Seeing Ben when nobody else can is an ever-present reminder of what could have been, that they had failed their brother, seeing Ramona and Five will only add to the never-ending pain.

Two things are apparent to Ramona now; her clothes don't fit her the same as it did only ten seconds ago, and her hair is not as long as it had just been.  Letting her hair grow long as a testament to being out of the house.  When they were all still children, Reginald never let Ramona grow her hair long; it was always cut to the same length on the same day every month.  The longer her hair grew, the farther Ramona was from the Umbrella Academy.  She turns to look at Five and a smirk threatens to cross her face as she finds that rather than the old withered man stands the thirteen-year-old he had once been dressed in clothes way too big for him.

Five glances down at himself, at the crumpled suit and sleeves that hang over his hands, and then back up at the rest of his siblings.

"Shit!"

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

"What's the date?"

Those who remain gather in the kitchen; Allison, Vanya, Diego, Klaus, and Luther all gather at the head of the table, so tightly packed together that it feels almost as if they share one mind.  Ramona perches on the nearby countertop, picking at the dirt beneath her nails while Five crosses the kitchen with a cutting board and knife.

"The exact date," Five clarifies.

"The twenty-fourth," Vanya answers quietly.

"Of what?"

"March."

"Good," Five nods, glancing up at Vanya from his loaf of bread for a split second.  "Sandwich, Ramona?"

Ramona nods.  "No crust."

Five eyes her strangely, almost offended by her instructions.  "What do you take me for?"

"So, are we gonna talk about what just happened?" Luther questions from where he sits, arms folded on the table in front of him.  Luther looks different now.  As a kid, he was tall and lean, bulked with some muscle, but now he stands almost impossibly tall.  His large, muscly arms are concealed by a large black trench coat and black turtleneck and there's this kind of emptiness behind his eyes that wasn't there when they were kids.

Ramona and Luther had never been particularly close—well, at least, they had been closer than most of her other siblings had been with him.   It had been programmed into the children from day one that Luther was meant to be the leader.  It's always been listen to Luther or risk facing the consequences.  Luther is Number One.  What Luther says goes.  Luther calls the shots. Luther gives the orders.  Always follow Number One.  And because of that, Ramona never felt like she was allowed to really be friends with Luther.

They all had held certain levels of respect for Luther, who while he could be harsh when he needed to, still had a heart full of kindness that Reginald did not.  Sometimes, Ramona would find herself from time to time traipsing into Luther's bedroom when the silence became too loud and she would beg him to play some music.  Other times, she would lay on his carpet (the floor had always been so much more comfortable than a bed) as he read some of his poetry aloud to her.   They would talk sometimes, idly in the afternoons as Ramona poured over a book, or Luther hunched over his paper with a pencil in hand.

Ramona looks away from Luther.  She doesn't want to talk about it.  She doesn't know if she'll ever really be able to talk about it in the way that she knows that Luther wants to.  Five doesn't reply either, spreading out four pieces of bread on his cutting board.  The Commission brought them together in a way that the rest of their siblings would never understand.  The blood dried underneath Ramona's nails and seeped into the very marrow of her bones was the same blood that Five had plunged his hands in.   What was so very wrong with Ramona is also what is so very wrong with Five.  The Handler took a lot from Ramona, but she had also taken a lot from Five.  He is the only one who could ever really understand to a certain degree.  Their siblings would never really understand.  And Ramona isn't even sure if she would want her siblings to get it.

She doesn't want them to be burdened with the knowledge of what had happened to her.

"It's been seventeen years," Luther persists, standing abruptly with an exasperated sigh.

Five scoffs.  "It's been a lot longer than that."

For a moment, it looks as though he's about to step toward Luther, but instead he blinks and reappears on top of a conveniently placed stool just beside Ramona and begins to rummage through the cabinet.

Luther stares at the spot where Five had just been only moments before with a slightly dumbfounded expression on his face before he lets out a sigh.  "I haven't missed that."

"Where did you guys go?" Diego questions, arms crossed over his chest as he looks pointedly away from Five and Ramona.

Ramona doesn't think Diego has looked her in the eyes once since they had come back home.  When they were younger, Ramona would lay on the floor of his bedroom and they would just talk.  He'd practice reading to her.  Whenever Diego made some sort of discovery, it was Ramona that he ran to first.  So, Ramona supposes that in a way, she does deserve the cold shoulder.   After all, she had left them behind that night—she had left him behind on the staircase—while she had escaped from Reginald, she had left her siblings to continue the abysmal childhood they had been thrown into and she hadn't looked back once because she knew in that moment, if she looked back at Diego on the stairs, she never would have left.

The running away part was easy.

It was the leaving the was hard.

"The future," Five replies, grabbing a package of marshmallows from the shelf before blinking back to his spot in front of the cutting board.  "It's shit by the way."

"Called it!" Klaus exclaims from where he sits criss-cross on top of the table.  He holds a triumphant finger up. 

"I should've listened to the old man," Five sighs.  He crosses the kitchen and opens the fridge and grabs the jar of peanut butter before returning to his spot at the head of the table.  He closes the fridge behind him, but Ramona watches as it just bounces back open slightly.  None of them make a move to close the fridge.  "You know, umping through space is one thing, jumping through time is a toss of the dice."

Five glances up at their siblings then.  There's a flicker of a confusion on his face when his eyes land on Klaus, but it disappears just as fast as it had appeared.  He deadpans, "Nice dress."

"Oh!  Well, danke!" Klaus replies.  He glances down at the skirt that he wears with a gleeful expression on his face as he plays with the tassels at the ends of the skirt.

"Well, how did you get back?" Vanya wonders.

"In the end, me and Ramona had to project our consciousnesses forward into suspended quantum state versions of ourselves that exist across every possible instance of time," Five replies. 

"That makes no sense," Diego utters, shaking his head slightly.

"Well, it would if you were smarter," Five responds, not even looking up from the sandwiches.

Ramona sighs and rests her head on her hand, watching as Diego rises from his chair with a murderous expression on his face.  Luther sticks out a muscled arm, holding Diego back from attacking Five.

In a much calmer manner, Luther asks, "How long were you there?"

"Forty-five years," Five replies.  He shrugs.  "Give or take."

Diego and Luther both sink back into their chairs in tandem.  "So what are you saying?  That you're both fifty-eight?  How did Ramona get to the future?"

"Ramona and I found each other after," Five answers as he cuts the crust off of the second peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich.  "And no, my consciousness if fifty-eight, Ramona's seventeen still.  But apparently, both our bodies are thirteen again."

"Wait, how does that even happen?" Vanya inquires as Five crosses the kitchen and gives Ramona her sandwich. 

"Delores kept saying the equations were off," Five replies.  He takes a bite of his sandwich and with a full mouth adds, "bet she's laughing now."

"Delores?"

"Hmm," Five replies, eyes trailing to the discarded newspaper on the table.  Reginald stares up at Ramona from the cover the newspaper.  She looks away.  "Guess we missed the funeral."

There is no remorse in his voice.

"How'd you know about that?" Luther questions.

"What part of the future do you not understand?" Five rebukes.  "Heart failure, huh?"

"Yeah," Diego replies at the same time that Luther says, "No."

Ramona raises her eyebrows.  "Schrodinger's heart failure, then?"

"Nice to see that nothing's changed," Five hums with raised eyebrows.

He starts to leave the kitchen, plate in hand.

"Uh, that's it?" Allison calls after him.  "That's all you have to say?"

"What else is there to say?  The circle of life!"

"Well," Luther says.  "That was interesting."

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Ramona slips away from her siblings when they're not watching.  She was always good at going unnoticed when she didn't want to be seen in her childhood.  When she was younger, she wasn't somebody who wanted to stand out in a crowd.  She liked to melt into her surroundings.  She would watch and observe, but she would rarely ever reveal herself.  It was all too suffocating with them; the weight of their stares and the weight of the questions about things that they would never really be able to understand.  Ramona keeps them at a distance because then they'll never really be able to find their way back into her heart.  Letting them back in means letting herself become soft again.

One of the first things that The Handler ever taught Ramona was that she could no longer afford to be soft.  Softness was Ramona's first mistake she had ever made.  But The Handler told her it wasn't exactly her fault.  Ramona was just born soft.  But softness is what molded Ramona into Dad's perfect little soldier.  Softness is what ruined Ramona.  Never again would she be soft.

And now, on most days, she has claws for hands.

She doesn't emerge from her childhood room until it's time for the funeral.

The sky is cloudy and grey when they emerge in a procession from the back of the house and into the courtyard.  Rain falls heavy from the sky.  They all, save for Luther and Diego—Diego, who had some sort of point to make that had obviously gotten lost in translation on its way to Ramona, and Luther who carries Reginald's urn—carry umbrellas black over their heads to shield themselves from the rain. Klaus breaks away from the mold, holding his own clear, pink-rimmed umbrella above his head.  Ramona smiles to herself.  If Reginald wasn't already dead, she thinks he might have keeled over at the sight of the thing.

The last time they were all gathered in the courtyard like this is when Ben died.

The weather would have been perfect if there was anything for Ramona to be really sad about.  She still doesn't know how she should feel with the knowledge that Reginald Hargreeves no longer exists, because surely he can't really be gone. He's Reginald Hargreeves after all.  It's a hard pill to swallow, the death of a parent, even if they are the roots of your worst memories, even if they're the source of the scars that you have. Except, Ramona isn't upset.  Ramona doesn't feel anything.  She wonders if she should.

One time, Ramona had dreamed that she was beating Dad with a baseball bat.  She still remembers the patterns his blood had made against the walls of his office as she did it.  She still remembers the crunch of his bones as she brought the bat down again and again and again.  She remembers how he sounded as he screamed and cried for help (and she remembers the satisfaction she had felt when nobody came running).  She remembers it all.  And it was about halfway through the dream that she realized that it was more about killing Reginald than it ever really was about protecting herself.

Still, there's a small voice in the back of her head that reminds her that despite everything, Reginald was still her father.  But Ramona was still his daughter and that should have meant something to him.  He was her father, so why couldn't he have been her father?  The only thing that Reginald had ever really given Ramona was years upon years worth of therapy sessions.  Reginald might have died, but there are parts of him that will linger with Ramona for the rest of her life—if they even make it to the end of the week.

Why should Ramona mourn Reginald when she could map out every wound that Reginald had ever given her?  Why should she mourn Reginald when she could pinpoint each and every bullet wound that had been stitched up because of him?  Why should she morn Reginald when he is the reason that she flinches every time somebody raises their voice at her?

Her hands tighten around the handle of her umbrella.

No, she decides right then and there.  Reginald Hargreeves will never be mourned by me.

"Did something happen?"

Ramona blinks and turns to look at Mom who stands beside her with a pleasant smile on her face.  Grace loved them in Reginald's stead.  Ramona knew that it was just her programming, but Grace loved Ramona and her siblings with everything that she had.  She loved them as if she were a human and not a robot, and they were all made from her blood and cells.  Ramona hates how perfect Grace still looks with her bright red lipstick and hair pinned delicately behind her head.  She how even though Reginald is dead, Grace would always be trapped by his rules—always trapped by the delicate strings of coding that he had constructed her out of.  It hits her then, that if things had been different—if there was not an impending apocalypse looming on the horizon—there would have come a day when Grace outlived all of her children because they were real and she was not.  

Her siblings all share similarly confused expressions as they turn to stare at her.  There's something off about Grace, something wrong with her coding. 

"Dad died," Allison reminds her gently.  "Remember?"

"Oh," Grace says, face falling slightly.  "Yes.  Of course."

"Is Mom okay?" Allison questions, looking to Diego.

"Yeah, yeah, she's fine," Diego replies.  "She just needs to rest.  You know, recharge."

Ramona doesn't think that Diego quite believes what he's saying.

Pogo takes a few shaky steps forward and nods to Luther.  "Whenever you're ready, dear boy."

Luther nods and takes a few moments to stare down at the urn.  There's a look in his eyes, then.  One that Ramona recognizes all too well.  He looks threadbare.  Defeated.  The tiredness that he's tried so hard to hide from the rest of them finally surfaces after a few moments.  He's sacrificed a lot for Reginald, he's spent the past four years on the moon without so much as a thank you.  Now, Ramona supposes Luther will never rest easy.  It's what's kept him going all these years, the burning hope that one day, Reginald will finally look up from his studies and see him.  Not a weapon.  Not a servant.  But his son.  Obviously, though, that hope has died along with Reginald.

Ramona watches as Luther lifts the lid off of the urn and without much ceremony spills out Reginald's ashes into a pile on the ground.  Ramona stares down at the pathetic heap that Reginald Hargreeves had been reduced to.  She finds some irony in the fact that somebody who big could be reduced to something so small in death.  For a long time, Reginald was Ramona's god.  The fact that he could actually die was a concept almost unfathomable to Ramona.  The fact that he could be made into something small was unfathomable to Ramona, and yet here he was.  A small pathetic pile of ash on the ground.  Soon, the wind would come and scatter him and he would be so small that nobody would ever really see him again.

"Probably would have been better with some wind," Luther admits.

Nobody else really says anything. 

Finally, Pogo steps forward, looking as though he's about to cry.  Ramona has never seen Pogo before—could chimpanzees even cry?

"Does anyone wish to speak?"

Nobody speaks up.

Not even Luther.

Klaus raises his cigarette to his lips.

Ramona might have found it in herself to speak up, but she was pretty sure that people were only meant to say good things about a deceased person at their funeral.

"Very well," Pogo says quietly.  "In all regards, Sir Reginald Hargreeves made me what I am today.  For that alone, I shall be forever in his debt.  He was my master...and my friend, and I shall miss him very much."  Pogo trails off for a moment, voice slightly choked before he regains his composure.  "He leaves behind a very complicated legacy—"

"He was a monster," Diego interrupts, voice devoid of any emotion.  Klaus lets out a laugh at that, long and breathless.  "He was a bad person and a worse father.  The world's better off without him."

"Diego," Allison says, the warning clear in her voice.

"My name is Number Two," Diego replies.  The contempt in his voice curls off his words like smoke from a fire.  "You know why?  Because our father couldn't be bothered to give us actual names.  He had Mom do it."

Grace perks up at the sound of her name.  "Does anyone want something to eat?"

"No, it's okay, Mom," Vanya assures her.

"Oh," Grace smiles, "okay."

Diego takes a few steps forward and continues, "Look, you wanna pay your respects?  Go ahead.  But at least be honest about the kind of man he was."

"You should stop talking now," Luther warns, voice dangerously low.

Diego studies him for a few moments, a flicker of amusement on his face.  "You know, you of all people should be on my side here, Number One."

"I am warning you," Luther growls, taking a step toward Diego.

"After everything he did to you," Diego continues, closing the space that stands between him and Luther.  "He had to ship you a million miles away—"

"Diego, stop talking."

"—that's how much he couldn't stand the sight of you!"

With each word, Diego jabs a finger into Luther's chest.

With a growl, Luther knocks Diego's hand away from him and takes a swing.  Before, Ramona might have gotten in between them because she hated when her siblings fought.  But now, she knows that this isn't her fight.  Instead, she takes a few steps back to give them more room to figure out their differences.  After her time in The Commission, Ramona had learned that sometimes, the only way that people can love each other is with their fists.  She'd seen it all on her missions across time.  Bruised knuckles and bloody brawls are something she's used to now.  Diego dodges out of the way.  A few more punches land.

"Boys!" Pogo shouts.  "Stop this at once!"

Diego and Luther either don't hear him or don't care.  They continue to pound at each other with years of repressed malice shining in their eyes.  She studies them for a few moments.  Neither of them had lost their edge over the years, though Luther tended to fight more erratically, using his brute strength to his advantage while Diego was more practices and precise.  Ramona catches a glimpse of Klaus attempting to shield Five from the fight, but the boy-man only swats his protective arm away. 

"Stop it!" Vanya shouts.

"Hit him!  Hit him!" Klaus cheers.

Ramona watches as Pogo shakes his head and turns on his heel, disappointed, but not surprised.  He disappears into the house as Luther grabs Diego and throws him to the ground.  Diego rolls back onto his feet and throws a few well-aimed kicks in Luther's direction.  Luther takes them as though Diego had been merely poking him.  Diego swings to hit Luther, but the latter grabs his fist with one hand and the collar of his shirt and jacket with the other, leaving Diego to wildly flail his arms.

"Get off me!" Diego exclaims.

There's an exhilarated grin on Diego's face as he staggers away from Luther. 

"We don't have time for this," Ramona hears Five mutter from a few feet away.  He turns and heads back into the house.  Ramona has half the mind to follow Five, but it's a morbid curiosity that keeps her rooted to the spot in the courtyard.

"Come here, big boy!" Diego goads, squaring his fists as he settles in front of Ben's statue.

Luther takes the bait and with an almighty war cry, charges forward.  Diego dodges out of the way at the last second and Luther's wayward fist crashes right into the statue of Ben rather than Diego's face.  Ramona watches as Ben's statue is knocked off of its pedestal, falling to the ground with a sort of twisted grace—it's the same the kind of grace that a dead leaf possesses as it falls from the branches of a tree when the autumn comes around.  Ben's statute crashes to the ground with the same force that Ramona had felt in the days following his death—what had happened to Ben was a tragic accident, none of them were at fault and yet they all were.  She watches as the head of the statue breaks off, tumbling away from the rest of his body.

"Idiots..." She whispers as she turns on her heel before she can see the aftermath of Diego and Luther's actions.

The only thing she has left of the only person who had ever understood her when she was younger. 

There's a strange lump in Ramona's throat that she hasn't let herself feel since The Handler beat those feelings out of her.  It was an unwelcome feeling in The Commission; the lump in the throat, the tears gathering in the corners of the eyes, the shaking hands—it was all weakness.  When Ben died, something inside of her had died as well; something that she doesn't think she'll ever really be able to get back.  When she and Ben were younger, they'd both had this mutual understanding that they both hated a part of themselves that they could never change.  Ben's death brought down one of the only pillars keeping her upright.  She rubs furiously at her stinging eyes and hopes that nobody else can see her, hopes that nobody can see just how weak she is.  Weakness is not an option for Ramona.  

Not anymore.

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Ramona fiddles with the ends of her sleeves.  She's always liked when her sleeves were long enough that she could bunch the ends in her fists.  It was the feeling of folding in on herself and making herself look smaller when she did not want to be seen—that, and the fact that if her clothes covered most of her skin, it acted as an armor of sorts.  She stares silently at the boots that Klaus had discarded on the table across from her.  The man himself sits at the head of the table, legs crossed over one another and a guitar in his lap.  He's been strumming a few dissonant chords, though Ramona had long since tuned out the broken song that he had been trying to play.  Five stands a few feet over, rummaging through the shelves in search for coffee.

"Where's Vanya?" Allison asks as she strides into the kitchen.

"Oh," Klaus replies.  "She's gone."

"That's unfortunate," Five pipes up as he makes his way to the table with an empty can in his hands.

"Yeah," Allison agrees quietly.

Five, however, continues, "An entire square block.  Forty-two bedrooms.  Nineteen bathrooms, but no, not a single drop of coffee."

As if to emphasize his point, he slams the empty tin down on the table.

"Yeah, because the stuff's disgusting," Ramona says.

"Dad hated caffeine," Allison adds.

"Well, he hated children, too, and he had plenty of us," Klaus points out with a sarcastic laugh. 

Five only sighs.  "I'm taking the car."

Klaus perks up.  "Where are you going?"

"To get a decent cup of coffee."

"Do you even know how to drive?" Allison questions, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"I know how to do everything," Five replies, he leans across the table with confidence oozing from his voice.  He glances at Ramona.  "Coming?"

Ramona only shakes her head.  "Good luck seeing over the dash."

Five scoffs at that and disappears in a blink.

Klaus rises and reaches out for the spot where Five had just been standing.  "I feel like we should try and stop him, but then again, I also just kinda want to see what happens."

Faintly, Ramona can hear the sound of an engine turning over and a few moments later, the squealing of tires against the gravel alleyway.

"All right, I'll see you guys in, what, ten years?"  Diego strides into the kitchen then, duffel bag over his shoulder.  His eyes pass right over Ramona as if she were never there. "When Pogo dies?"

Allison crosses her arms.  "Not if you die first."

"Yeah, love you too, sis," Diego replies. "Hey, good luck on your next film.  Hope it turns out better than your marriage, huh?"

Allison pokes her tongue into her cheek; it's a habit that Ramona recognizes even after all of these years.  Usually, she did it when she was upset—it was a way to stop herself from crying in front of Reginald who tended to chew up and spit out any one of the kids who dared to show an emotion.  She looks as though she wants to bite back at Diego—after all, once upon a time, her weapons were her words curled around a siren's tongue, and God knows that sometimes, Diego deserves it—but instead, she crosses her arms over her chest again and leaves the kitchen without another word. 

Diego turns to leave through the back door to the alleyway and Klaus eagerly pushes himself out of his chair and trails behind Diego like a lost puppy.  She could tell that he was restless.  For as long as they had been alive, Klaus was always in perpetual motion, desperate for anything that could distract him from perpetual haunting that only he could see.  The drugs tended to do the job.  At first, it had started with the occasional joint, something that Ramona could coax out of his grasp, but as soon as he had reveled long enough in the relief that it gave him, how the ghosts seemed to disappear when he took a drag on a stick of nicotine it turned into a craving, a clawing, an undying thirst for it.

Soon, not even Ramona was enough to save Klaus from his own cycle of self-destruction.

"Are—are we leaving?" Klaus asks Diego.

"No," Diego replies.  "I'm leaving.  Me.  By myself."

"Oh, fabulous!" Klaus exclaims, clapping his hands together.  "I'll get my stuff!"

Diego ignores Klaus and keeps moving.  

He doesn't cast a single glance in Ramona's direction. 

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Grace finds her later that night after she's changed into the blue silk pajamas that still hung in her closet.  The sleeves don't cover her arms the way that she likes them to; the tiny bruises and scratches that she tries her best to hide away just barley poke out from the ends of her sleeves. The sight of them makes her sick and she wants desperately to scrub at her skin until they're all gone.  Scrub at her skin until all the evidence that anybody had ever touched her had disappeared.  She would never escape The Handler.  Her touch would always linger in the places where it should not have. 

"Do you want something to eat?"

Ramona jumps.  She hadn't noticed Grace standing in the doorway.

Ramona arches an eyebrow.  "It's a little late for food, don't you think?"

"Oh," Grace says.  Her face falls again.  "Yes.  I suppose it is."

"What are you even doing up here?" Ramona questions.  "Shouldn't you be sleeping?"

"It's been so lonely," Grace replies.  "All these empty halls with no children to fill them."

"It's been a long time since any of us were kids," Ramona replies.

"You still are," Grace points out.

Ramona only shakes her head.  There's a bitterness in her voice when she says, "I grew up a long time ago."

Grace is wearing a wistful expression on her face as she takes a sudden step toward Ramona.  She flinches out of instinct and takes a tiny step backward.  Grace's face falls and Ramona finds that she feels a tiny pang of guilt in her stomach because she knows that all Grace ever really wanted was to be loved and to be capable of loving.  So when Grace tries again to take a step toward Ramona, she steadies herself and doesn't stop her from drawing closer and then Grace is reaching out toward Ramona and her hand is cupping the side of her face and though the action makes Ramona want to tear her skin off, she lets Grace touch her.  

"You're hurt," Grace says, pulling her hand away from Ramona's face and is reaching for her wrist.  "Tell me where it hurts."

Ramona flinches and yanks her wrist away before Grace can see the bruises and scratches.  "Don't touch me."

Grace only smiles sadly.  "My sad sweet girl..."

Ramona's stomach churns at the name.  Whenever she had done something that The Handler was particularly proud of, she would always call Ramona her sweet girl.  At first the name had felt like home to Ramona because at the time, she was under the illusion that she had found love and a mother in the form of The Handler.  But soon, the name turned into something bitter; a sort of poison that The Handler would inject her with.  It was never love.  Ramona has to remind herself of this constantly.  The name had been whispered into Ramona's ear while her hands were exploring places that they never should have been and now it burns Ramona in all the wrong places.

Grace doesn't try to close the distance between them when Ramona stumbles away from her.  She just wears that sad smile on her face again when she asks:

"What did they do to you?"

─── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ───

Seventeen years ago...

Ramona covers her ears as the alarms ring through the bank—she had always heard and felt things more deeply than her siblings, what felt like a brush against fabric for most people felt like being smothered to Ramona.  Most of the time, she wears headphones to drown out the sounds when they get too loud, but now they are on a mission, and Reginald had ordered that she leave them behind.  Pogo had told her once after she'd had a breakdown at the dinner table (because the combination of the smell of food, the feeling of her collar against the back of her neck, and the sound of utensils against plates had been too much) that she would never be able to make everybody feel as deeply as she did.

That would always be Ramona's tragedy. 

She understands them, but they would never understand her.

Except, maybe for Ben.

Sometimes, when Ramona looked at Ben, she could see her reflection in his eyes. 

Ben knocks his shoulder against hers and gives her a weak smile when he notices her distress.  Ramona does her best to smile back at him, but it doesn't quite reach her eyes—not that he can see them through the mask that's plastered across her face. 

Allison flounces out from where they hide just out of sight from the robbers.  Her hands are tucked neatly behind her back and her hair bounces against her back, falling back into place like a cascade of dominoes.  She plays the part of an innocent school girl a little too well—all bright smiles and dimples on the cheeks and an unmistakable innocence.  There is no blood on her hands.  Not in the way that there's blood on Ramona's.  Ramona thinks that if things were different, Allison might have been destined for the big screen. 

A few moments later, Ramona hears gunshots followed by screams.  She feels each one of the gunshots in the pit of her chest, rattling her brain in her skull.

There are a few crashes followed by the sound of shattering glass and more screams—Luther had made his entrance.

Diego steps forward and holds out his hand to Ramona so that they can do their handshake before he, too, disappears further into the bank with an exclamation of: "Guns are for sissies!  Real men throw knives!"

And then there were two.

Ramona slides back against the wall until she's sitting criss-cross on the ground.  The alarms are gone now and she finds that she can breathe easier. "I don't wanna do it."

Ben joins her on the ground.  "Me either."

The thing about Ben and Ramona is that even in a room full of knives, they were still the most dangerous things in the room.  And so, in a way, Ramona supposes that she was always meant for this life.  She was born as weapon, so a weapon is what she became.  She was born for violence, and sometimes, she couldn't get the taste out of her mouth no matter how hard she tried.  She just wished that sometimes, the blood on the mouths of the people she hurt was hers instead. 

A dog that bites is a dead dog.

By that logic, Ramona should have been put down a long time ago.

She can't count the times that she's tried to be gentle only

The others call Ben and Ramona out of their hiding place when they've dealt with the rest of the robbers.  The hostages are gathered around their siblings as Ben and Ramona approach and Ramona feels like she's being put on display for everybody to see.  It's as if Ben and Ramona are going to put on another show for them, not sink their claws into the people who lie just beyond the door and Ramona thinks that that is what sets her and Ben apart from the rest of her siblings.  For the most part, their powers are for show, a magician's trick that they can hide in a hat.  But Ben and Ramona sometimes were more like weapons than actual people.

"Do we really have to do this?" Ben asks quietly.

"Come on, Ben," Luther coaxes.  "There's more guys in the vault."

"I can do it by myself," Ramona offers.  Whenever her siblings got into trouble with Dad, Ramona always tried to take the blame so that she would be punished instead of them.  She would take care of the robbers by herself if it meant that Ben wouldn't have to.

"No, it should be both of you," Luther replies.

Ben sighs.  "We didn't sign up for this."

Ben opens the door and they step in empty-handed.  You don't need a weapon at all when you were born one.  Sometimes, it feels like Ramona is a better knife than she is a person.  Her claws are extended when she enters the room; three twelve-inch blades in her forearms.  They had once been bone like the rest of her—and something about that made her feel more like a human and less like a weapon—but Reginald had bonded them with metal and they started to resemble blades more than claws.

Ramona always loses a bit of herself whenever her claws are extended.  There's some primal, animalistic part of her that emerges along with her claws.  She's all bared teeth and angry growls as she sinks her claws into the robbers and tears through them and when their bullets graze her skin, she doesn't notice.  Their blood tastes sweet on her tongue and leaves her aching for more.  It's that primal anger that keeps her alive and the thing about that anger is that it cradles her in a way that love never really did.  It was something that she could use; to fashion into a blade of her own devices.

What happens inside the room is a blur.  She's barely conscious of it by the time the room is empty; blood stains the windows and covers Ramona and Ben from head to toe and Ramona is still aching for more.  The animal inside of her would never be truly satiated.  She supposes that she is in part at fault for that.  She starved that unwanted animal inside of her and it wanted nothing more to get out and satiate that hunger; eat and eat and eat until its stomach was full.  Ramona should have known better.  You kick a dog enough times and eventually, when it learns that it can fight back, it will.  One time, Pogo had walked in on Ramona eating as much chocolate as she possibly could because she had read somewhere the chocolate could kill dogs and there had been that small part of her that hoped that she would be able to kill the animal inside of her.  Ramona has always been at war with herself.  She doesn't know which side is winning.

Ramona is panting and that primal rage is burning in her stomach.  But then Ben is next to her and he's putting a hand on her shoulder and she remembers who she is and what she promised herself she would never become.  The claws retract into her forearms.  The blood is sticky on her skin and she can barely see through the clots that cover her mask.  The beast is gone.  Ramona is all that remains.

Ben pushes the door open and pokes his head out with a sad sigh.  "Can we go home now?"

They don't get to go home.  Not just yet.  They file out of the bank to greet the press that eagerly awaits them on the other side of the doors.  Ben is glued to her side and she's fiddling with the ends of her sleeves.  She doesn't know what the public is going to see when she and Ben step out of the Capital West Bank.  Would they see them for the heroes that Reginald says they are?  Or will they see two wolves wearing sheep's clothing?  Diego reaches over to give her shoulder a comforting squeeze.  He didn't care that her clothes were covered in blood, he didn't care if it meant staining his own clothes.  He just cared that Ramona and Ben were going to be okay. 

Luther as always stands at the front of the line, standing tall and proud as he waves to the crowd gathered at their feet.  Allison stands beside him, just as tall, hands in her pocket and hair blowing gently in the breeze—the picture of elegance and beauty.  Sometimes, Ramona wished that she could be pretty in the way that Allison was pretty.  She wonders what it must be like to be Allison.  Klaus leans on Five's shoulder and Ramona and Ben stand at the end of the line, trying to shrink away from view.

Ramona tries not to stare at the body of the robber that Luther had thrown out of the window.

Reginald joins them on the steps and addresses the press.

"Our world is changing," Reginald announces to the masses that have gathered at his feet.  "Has changed.  There are some among us gifted with abilities far beyond the ordinary.  I have adopted seven such children—" 

Ramona's eyes stray to the skyline and the building directly across from the bank.  Just on the rooftop, she thinks that she can see Vanya watching all of it happen from above.  No matter what she did, it always feels to Ramona that they're living on two separate sides of a glass pane and no matter how much Ramona claws and scratches at the glass, they will never be able to meet each other in the middle because Vanya is ordinary and they are not and that is enough difference to create a chasm between them.  Vanya would always be on the outside looking in.  Ramona would always envy her sister.

"—I give you the inaugural class of The Umbrella Academy."

Reginald steps aside and the reporters leap up like hungry dogs.

"Mr. Hargreeves!  Mr. Hargreeves!" A woman calls.  "What happened to their parents?"

"They were suitably compensated," Reginald replies.

"Are you concerned about the welfare of the children?" Another reporter inquires.

"Of course," Reginald replies.  "As I am for the fate of the world."

Author's Note: got a sneek peek of young ramona.  she's so baby i love her

diego and ramona :(((

i can't wait for their relationship to approve.  they used to be best buddies.  

also young ramona and ben <3333 they just inherently understood each other in a way that nobody else could and now ramona lost that person that she could turn to.