The world ended on April 1st, 2019, and Dolores swears she had nothing to do with it. Even if she did, she couldn't tell you, because she can't remember a thing before the apocalypse. Or... so Five Hargreeves believes.
Dolores Caro was born on October 1st, 1989, to a mother who had not been pregnant moments before this birth, and 'adopted' by A.J. Carmichael four days later. She was raised by Temps Commission with one single purpose: to keep Five Hargreeves alive, and ensure the end of the world. Easy enough. All she had to do was make sure that the most unstable family in the known universe remained unstable — child's play. So, she joined Five at the end of the world, distracted him just enough so he would never be able to figure it out on time, and just before everything went boom she would simply slip back to the Commission headquarters and live out the rest of her days in blissful retirement. Maybe finally grow old, for once. Get a cat.
Then again, Dolores should have known that plans that involve the Hargreeves family tend to go awry, especially when Dolores develops something that she never imagined she was capable of developing; feelings.
Gross.
Now, retirement will have to wait, as Dolores allies herself with the people she was raised to despise, and fights to protect a timeline that is always doomed to end. All while trying to win back the trust of the person she hurt the most.
❝ On October 1st, 1989, forty-three women who had not been pregnant when the day had begun suddenly gave birth to forty-three children who would shortly begin to display superhuman abilities. After this event, eccentric billionaire Reginald Hargreeves had made quick work of trying to adopt, or buy, more accurately, as many of the children as possible from their traumatized and confused mothers, looking to develop their powers as they grew and hopefully use them to change the world.
He managed to acquire eight of those children. And Robin had been one of them.
Like all her siblings (with the exception of Vanya, not that it had ever made Robin love her any less), Robin was also blessed, or perhaps cursed, with amazing abilities. Similar to how her brother Diego could manipulate the concept of trajectory itself, they could toy with the concept of force, able to make a light tap of her fingers hard enough to shatter someone’s ribs or turn one of Luther’s superstrength-enhanced punches into little more than a tickle. And their so-called “father,” of course, had never hesitated to make sure she would use it to the advantage of his little Umbrella Academy. But Robin had hated the whole thing, hated being made into little more than a weapon and having to live in a house where they and her siblings were barely allowed to acknowledge the two brothers they’d lost, even as Reginald erected a goddamn statue to Ben and the mystery of where Five had disappeared to that fateful day when they were all thirteen haunting the place like an uncertain spectre.
And so, the second they’d turned eighteen, Robin had run. She’d left their goddamned stupid Academy uniform in her bedroom closet and stormed out with a single bag over their shoulder and a bird flipped to Reginald, heading out into the city determined to make her own life and never step foot in that house again. Sure, it meant that they mostly lost contact with her siblings, especially since Luther resented them for leaving and everyone kind of turned on Vanya after she published her memoir (with the exception of Robin, who had texted her asking for a signed copy and read the thing cover to cover several times), and she missed them all, along with their robot mother figure and the loyal biologically engineered ape that had cared for them all these years, but it was a small price to pay, she told themself, for being able to escape the painful memories of that house and the simmering rage towards her father and the way they’d been raised that she almost felt like they’d been born with. Out here, in the real, child superhero-free world, she felt like they could forget all of that.
Until, that is, Robin, who has made a solid life for themself as a martial arts instructor with no true friends but the stray cat she regularly feeds these past years, receives the news that that the bastard who “raised” them has finally kicked the bucket. Against her better judgement, they find herself returning to the mansion they swore she’d never see the inside of again for the funeral, reconnecting with the siblings they’d only reluctantly admit to missing - although, of course, that reconnecting winds up involving nearly coming to blows with three separate siblings, defending Vanya against pretty much everyone, and trying to make Luther see the truth of his sycophancy to their father. And then, to make matters worse, her long-disappeared brother falls out of the sky, looking barely worse for wear than the day he vanished, only to tell Robin and Vanya in secret that the world is going to end and they’re all going to die in nine short days.
In order to try and stop the apocalypse, Robin is going to be forced to do the one thing they swore at age eighteen she’d never do again: work with their siblings to save people and, in this case, the entire world. And she knows it’s going to be an almighty mess, of course, because there has never been a family more dysfunctional than the Hargreeves are… but maybe they’ve missed getting to fight alongside the only people in this world who truly understand her, and maybe, just maybe, their merry band of misfits can succeed in saving the universe. If they can manage to not kill each other first. ❞
This fic is part of the Academy Projects series, a full rewrite of The Umbrella Academy with the addition of an original character, Kassandra Hargreeves. Throughout the story, you'll stumble across a few songs. This is supposed to make the fic feel as much like the show as possible, so I recommend you don't skip them.
Warnings: Canon-typical issues, death, drugs
On the 12th hour of the first day of October 1989, 43 women around the world gave birth. This was unusual only in the fact that none of these women had been pregnant when the day first began. Sir Reginald Hargreeves, eccentric billionaire and adventurer, resolved to locate and adopt as many of the children as possible.
He got eight of them.
These eight children, numbered and ordered, had grown up together at the Umbrella Academy, stuck in a time capsule as their Number 4 would later say, with no friends outside those walls and little space for themselves despite the sheer size of the house. You would think that such an experience would bond the children together. Make them virtually inseparable. But fate had other plans. Tragedy struck the family, not once but twice, and the second time was the match that finally hit the powder barrel after dozens had been tossed. One by one, each of the siblings left, and over the next decade, they all lost contact.
Well, not all of them. One of them still knew where everyone was. What they did, who they were… or who they remembered them as. Number Eight, the one at the bottom of the list, also known as Kassandra Hargreeves. She had been among the first to leave and now worked as a librarian, but she still tried to keep an eye on her siblings. For old times’ sake, she told anyone who asked.
Number Seven, Vanya Hargreeves, had stuck to her passion for the violin, and had taken up teaching the instrument to other people. She also played third chair in a local orchestra and, perhaps most notoriously, had written a tell-all biography about her life at the Academy, one that none of her siblings had taken very well.
Number Four, Klaus Hargreeves, was still a drug addict. Had been since he was young and maybe he always would be. Kassandra knew because she had had to collect him from the police station, the hospital or jail a few times. After all, she was still his emergency contact, since he couldn’t find himself a new one. Still, the two of them didn’t really talk, for reasons they wouldn’t tell the other.
Number Three, Allison Hargreeves, the superstar. An incredibly famous actress, she now had everything she had dreamed of as a girl… except for a stable family, according to various gossip magazines and newspapers. After a messy divorce from her husband, poor Allison had lost custody of her daughter, Claire. That couldn’t have gone well for her, Kassandra knew. She had planned on calling Allison after the divorce, but had only reached the answer machine.
Number Two, Diego Hargreeves, hadn’t changed his ways at all. He was a vigilante now, still brave, with a firm sense of justice - and a troublemaker for the police. Originally, Kassandra had been the one the police would call on in case something went wrong, but Diego had erased her as his emergency contact only a month or two in.
And finally, Number One, Luther Hargreeves. Luther was in space, that was all Kassandra knew. One last mission from dad.
As for Number Five and Number Six… Kassandra tried not to think about them, and every day, she failed.
In over 13 years, the Hargreeves siblings hadn’t been in the same room or even the same building together. Whether they were avoiding each other or just drifting apart was unimportant, what mattered was the distance. But all of that was about to change.
On the 21st of March, Sir Reginald Hargreeves suddenly died. The news of his death travelled around the world, across every tv screen and radio station, by word of mouth or rumors. Inevitably, it also had to reach the siblings and reel them in. In an ironic mirror image of the way things usually went, Kassandra learned of her father’s death last.
It was close to midnight and Kassandra was still at work, finally having finished sorting the new books. The library had been closed since 9pm, but the new books had come in late and they needed to be sorted before 9am the next day, which was opening time. Well, technically, they didn’t necessarily need to be sorted, but tomorrow was Friday, a busy day, and also one with few experienced workers there. Bad combinations, really. Sorting could take hours if you didn’t know what you were doing, so Kassandra had volunteered to stay and finish the job. In the end, she hadn’t had to do it on her own though.
“Alright, Timmy, are you ready to go?” Kassandra called as she put on her coat.
“Coming!”
Timothy Carmichael, one of her coworkers. A nice man, a bit boyish though, and not the good kind. Still, he was good company, especially on those late nights. As Kassandra waited for him to emerge from the rows of shelves, she moved to turn off the radio still playing in the break room. But then, the news came on and she paused.
“The world mourns the death of eccentric billionaire Sir Reginald Hargreeves, a known adventurer and philanthropist.”
Kassandra froze in place, her eyes turning glossy and her hand gloved hand moving on its own to turn the volume up.
“The news of his death were made public just an hour ago by a speaker of the Umbrella Academy. As of now, the cause of death is still unclear, but evidence points towards a heart attack, says the speaker. Sir Reginald Hargreeves leaves behind a large fortune, multiple companies and properties, as well as five children that–”
With an almost violent swiftness, Kassandra shut the radio off, her fingers hovering over the button afterwards. She pulled her hand back and rolled her shoulders, taking a deep breath. All the while, her expression remained controlled, though her eyes were somber.
“I’m sorry,” she could hear Timmy saying next to her.
“They got it wrong,” Kassandra just said. “Even after that book, they still get it wrong.”
Timothy blinked a few times, and Kassandra could’ve heard the gears in his head turning if she had been paying attention. But she was too busy listening to her own inner voice.
“Get what wrong?” Timmy finally asked.
“The number. There’s six of us left, not five. Poor Vanya…”
“You’re not… upset about your father at all?”
Kassandra sighed and tugged at her thin satin gloves, making sure they were snug on her fingers. “I don’t know. I just… didn’t think the man could die.”
Timmy was kind enough to drive Kassandra home, allowing her to make it home at a somewhat reasonable hour. As she turned the keys, her mind was still lingering on that news report, the jingling of metal taking her back to her younger years. She tried to ignore it, she really did, but her mind kept telling her that there was something wrong, striking her with guilt over and over.
At 1:30am, against her better judgement, Kassandra made a phone call.
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