PREMISE

The theater had been absolutely beautiful, ornate archways and stained glass, inlaid gold baroque swirls in the wainscoting. It was a concert hall with majestic history, its sweeping doorways and velvet-cushioned seats holding the city's most affluent and cultured season after season as the orchestra played the classics on the weathered, well-oiled boards of the stage. Vanya Hargreeves had put in so many hours on that stage, meek little Vanya who barely reached the shoulder of most grown men, Vanya with her mousy brown hair and huge dark eyes and a way of flinching when someone spoke to her with silver on their tongue. Playing since the tender age of ten, and she'd never made it to first chair before. She had always been a background sound, an afterthought despite how deft her fingers were on the bow, how studiously she worked her way through the notes of whatever concert she was playing in. Her family had never come, of course, except for Grace. And once, when she was a teenager, Allison, but she'd ducked out at the intermission because she was meeting some friends. But while the other players had always had friends and family in the audience to clap for them, to give them ovations at the end, Vanya had stared down at the floor so that she wouldn't have to see her reserved seats occupied by the guests who had taken the released tickets, since she knew it would be a cold day in hell before Reginald Hargreeves would attend one of her functions, and her brothers would more likely skin themselves alive than listen to a violin concert. Tonight had been different, though. She had been first chair, and Vanya's face had been on the concert posters around town, the programs that were held in manicured and jewelry-encrusted hands. She had been the star for once in her life. She had been anything but ordinary. Her powers had chosen a hell of a time to manifest, all thanks to Leonard of course. A puppeteer pulling strings, or so he thought. Even now, she couldn't fathom how he would've thought it would have ended well for him. Did he think they would've remained partners, that maybe they could've become villains side-by-side since he could never be a part of the Umbrella Academy, and she... well, she'd been the most powerful of all of them? Almost three decades of rage and hurt and isolation and despair and insecurity had poured out of her in waves, and the evening had been... Catastrophic. The manor, her childhood home, was in shambles, and Pogo, the ape who had raised her like a combination of butler and guardian, was impaled on the wall like a hunting trophy. It had been horrible, and gruesome, and yet... she couldn't find it in herself to grieve him. Not knowing what she knew now. Knowing that they had all known--- that Pogo and Grace had known that she was so powerful, that they'd allowed her to be locked away in that isolation chamber, that they had permitted Reginald to keep her away from the other children for their entire upbringing. That Allison had used her powers against her--- her own sister had whispered "I heard a rumor..." and just like that, Vanya had forgotten that she was anyone. She had forgotten that she could manipulate the very air around her, the sound waves in the atmosphere. She had forgotten that she had been so powerful she'd frightened their cold, calculating father. She had spent the next nearly twenty years alone, hated, excluded, convinced that she was unloveable as day after day it was drilled into her that she was worthless, useless, without merit like her siblings. Even though every one of them had failed Reginald in some way or another, none had been abused and shunned the way she had. And why? Because they were afraid of her. Her brothers didn't know, of course. But they knew now. She had almost made the ceiling collapse on Diego and Klaus. She had slit Allison's throat, even though that had initially been an accident. She'd just been too worked up to control herself, and the instant it had happened she'd been horrified. But slowly that feeling had seeped away, as she sat in the isolation room again, staring at the walls and feeling her own heartbeat vibrate in her chest. They didn't love her. They didn't accept her. They had never understood her. And now, they would hate her. Fear her. Fear was better than apathy. Vanya had come to play her concert, after all. The violin's bow ran across the strings in perfect pitch and she had played, and as she did the catharsis had poured out of her. All of the angst and hurt in her soul, all of the doubt, had manifested itself into tangible energy and the room had taken on a blue glow. Vanya felt her skin tingling as the energy pulled that darkness she'd kept inside her all her life, turned it into something else. She could feel the world splitting around her. She could feel the gods themselves trembling. The power was a rush, intoxicating, amazing. Was this how her siblings felt? Ben, maybe, when he opened the portal inside him and allowed the demon to emerge. Klaus, if he could ever be sober enough to focus. Allison, playing god with her whispers and suggestions. Five, when he pierced time and space with just a flick of his wrist. But this? They couldn't compare to what Vanya was doing now. If the world didn't want her in it, then she didn't want the world to exist. The energy had poured out of her, and everything had come to a head. Gunfire, tentacles whipping through the air, the siblings thrown alongside assassins and would-be interventions were stopped in their tracks. And all the while, she played her concert. First chair for once. And then Allison had grabbed the gun. A bullet into Vanya's head or heart would've ended it all. But Allison couldn't do it. She knew how much pain they'd put Vanya through, how cruel a hand she'd been dealt. Instead, she had shot the energy pulsing around her sister. It had swelled and then exploded, a supernova blast that shot through the ceiling of the trembling, crumbling theater and up into the night sky. Her siblings had all collapsed in relief, catching their breaths. Alive. And then the energy blast struck the moon. The signs had all been there, of course--- Reginald had foreseen it, at least somewhat. But as chunks of the moon broke off from the massive shock wave, falling to earth like asteroids, flaming and hellbent on mass destruction, Vanya had been unconscious, collapsed on the stage, ivory-white and motionless. It had been Luther who scooped her into his massive arms, and Five who had shouted that he had an idea. A crazy one, and one that very much might not work. But as the world burned around them, as more and more pieces of the moon headed to earth to end mankind as they knew it in a matter of moments, what choice was there? Jumping time and space was risky, dangerous. Potentially lethal. And Five had only ever transported himself before. But they had all linked hands, with Ben clutching Klaus's shoulder and Vanya cradled in Luther's arms, and Five had unlocked the power inside himself to create the biggest rift he'd ever attempted. It would split the world in two, it would create a hole big enough to pull all of them--- Luther, Diego, Allison, Klaus, Ben, Vanya, and Five--- out of this doomed moment and into another. Where, he wasn't sure. Maybe thirty minutes ago. Maybe twenty years. Maybe they would end up in prehistoric times, or in an active volcano. There was no way to control it, not on this kind of scale. All he could do was hope for the best and pray to any higher power listening. At worst, they would all die, and that was what destiny had foretold anyway. He'd seen it, his siblings buried in rubble, the world a wasteland of death and destruction thanks to Vanya. He hadn't been able to stop it in time, despite all of his best efforts. But maybe he could change it. And so with that final push of his power, Five drained everything in himself into the rift and he felt that familiar yank. It caused a sick feeling, like your bottom dropping out in a roller coaster combined with awful sinus pressure and a dizziness that lingered for hours, if you weren't used to it. Spatial jumps weren't for amateurs, time leaps even less-so. But he felt the connected energy of his siblings and knew instinctively that he'd succeeded, that he'd brought all of them along with him for the ride this time. The world vanished around them, and suddenly it was there again. They were in the manor, which was whole and perfect and unmarred by bullets or debris or blood. They looked like themselves--- he was still a thirteen-year-old boy in a private school uniform, but his siblings looked like themselves, and Vanya was still unconscious but the others were stirring on the floor where they'd landed. Everyone was alive, and the world hadn't been destroyed by the moon's explosion. The apocalypse had been prevented--- he'd done it, after all. He'd saved the earth. The question was, what had the rift done? And who else had been affected by it?