Hazy Shade of Winter [ON HOLD FOR NOW]

13

Adriana waited for Five to wake up and when opened his eyes, she asked, "How do you feel?"

"Like shit, but I think I'll live."

She nodded. "Good, because we've got concerning matters at hand."

"What do you mean?"

"The apocalypse. There are only two days left and if we can't stop it-"

He took her hands. "We will, Ana. I don't know how, but we will."

Adriana pulled her hands away. "What if we can't? Nu vreau să mor."

(I don't want to die.)

"Ana, I promise I'll do everything in my power to make sure you and my family don't die. Okay?"

She met his gaze and nodded slowly as she whispered, "Okay."

Their attention was drawn to Klaus yelling loud enough to hear upstairs, "Whoo! He popped his cherry!"

Adriana sighed. "He has no filter."

"No he doesn't," Five agreed.

The two of them walked down the stairs.

When they entered the kitchen, Klaus was pouring coffee and Luther was sitting at the table with his hood up. Adriana noticed a cup in front of an empty chair and guessed it had to be for Ben.

Five stole Luther's cup of coffee and immediately frowned. "Jesus. Who do I gotta kill for a decent cup of coffee?"

Adriana smirked, then let out a sigh. "This coffee is utter crap."

Luther sighed as he leaned across the table. "Can we get started?"

Klaus frowned. "Anyone seen the others? Diego? Allison? No?"

Adriana leaned back in her chair and rested her feet on the table, crossing them. "I was with them yesterday. They joined me and Five when we went to Harold Jenkins' home. He has an unhealthy obsession with the Umbrella Academy and an even absurder obsession with Vanya."

He frowned at her words, seemingly disturbed. "All right, then, this is the closest thing to a quorum-" he banged the table, "-that we're gonna get. There's no easy way to say this, so I'm just gonna spit it out."

"This is a bad idea."

"Yeah."

Klaus got distracted, and Luther called his name again. "Klaus."

He looked down as he said, "I conjured Dad last night."

Luther frowned. "I thought you said you hadn't been able to conjure anybody in years."

"Ah, yes, I know, but I'm completely sober. Ta-da! I got clean yesterday, to talk to someone special, and then ended up having this conversation with dear old daddy himself."

Luther ignored Klaus to ask for aspirin. Adriana got up, climbed on the counter, grabbed some from the top shelf, and jumped down. She gave it to Luther as she said, "Your dad might have had something useful to say. Did you ever think of that?"

Klaus nodded and Five frowned. "Okay, fine. I'll play. What did the old man have to say?"

"Well, he gave me the usual lecture about my appearance and failures in life," Klaus replied. "Yada, yada, yada. No surprise there. Even the afterlife couldn't soften a hardass like Dad, right? But he did mention something about his murder, or lack thereof, because..."

"Wait for it."

He paused for effect. "...he killed himself." He glanced down, pretending to be sad.