faye_dartmouth (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
faye_dartmouth) wrote2019-12-23 03:05 pm
faye_dartmouth) wrote2019-12-23 03:05 pm
Entry tags:
Umbrella Academy fic: Thicker Than Blood (6/13)
PART ONE
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
-o-
Something he had always loved about Mom was that she didn’t ask unnecessary questions. She was trained to fix things, and she didn’t much care about why they were broken. His siblings might think of that as programming, but it was the only source of compassion Diego had ever truly known.
Therefore, she didn’t care how Five had come to be drowned and then revived. She didn’t care about the car in the river or the bomb with a six digit passcode. She didn’t care about the dude in the basement. She didn’t even care that Diego had been sneaking out of the mansion for weeks now.
Instead, she got to work, quickly hooking Five up to an IV -- “He looks anemic, and IV fluids never hurt anyone” -- before listening to his lungs and heart.
“Breathe normally, dear,” she coached Five with a smile. “Just breathe normally.”
Five complied while Diego tried to take a stunted breath. It felt weird to him now, the air passing in and out of his lungs. Perfunctory somehow.
Mom then performed a series of tests to check for deficits -- “All routine so there’s no need to be offended” -- before declaring that Five needed lots of rest and to avoid swimming in the near future.
“Is that it?” Luther asked. He had been standing behind her, hovering just out of the way, eyes on Five the whole time. “He’s okay?”
She turned, hands clasped as she smiled. “His lungs are a little wet, but there’s no indication of pneumonia. All his faculties appear to be in order, which means that there is no apparent damage from the lack of oxygen. Obviously, I will continue to monitor him for at least 24 hours to watch for further signs of compromised breathing. However, there is every indication that Number Five will recover without further complication.”
She was pragmatic, too, when you got right down to it. Shit, she really was the perfect woman. The fact that she didn’t have air moving through her lungs might seem limiting to some -- it had never seemed less important to Diego.
Or less ironic.
Luther hemmed a little bit, clearly anxious.
From the bed, Five sighed, giving Luther a weary look. “You did good, moron,” he said. “Don’t act so surprised at your own success. It’s off-putting.”
Luther blushed. “I still don’t even know what this is about,” he said. He turned and looked at Diego. “I mean, what the hell happened?”
Mom, as if sensing the potential for discord, smoothly moved between them. “Whatever happened, you can discuss it in the morning,” she said. “You all look exhausted. I am inclined to put both of you on IVs with bed rest, but I suspect neither of you would like that very much.”
“I don’t like it much either,” Five quipped.
She tipped her head at him, smile still in place. “You don’t get the option, dear,” she said sweetly. She looked back at Luther and Diego. “You two, however, do. So I suggest you return to your rooms until I take that option from you.”
“But Mom--” Luther started.
She looked at him sternly. “Luther, you know better than to question my authority.”
Luther nodded his head, abashed. “You’ll let us know if anything changes?”
Her smile returned, kinder than ever. She put a hand on his arm. “Of course,” she said. “Now get some rest. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about in the morning.”
Luther, ever obedient, did not need to be told again. He cast another affirming look at Five before letting his eyes slide over Diego. There was no condemnation, but the uneasiness was hard to mistake for something else. He seemed to swallow it back, and he gave another lingering look at Five before leaving the room.
When he was gone, Mom gave Diego a keen look, eyebrows raised. “And you, young man?”
“I’ll go, I will,” he said. Over on the bed, Five seemed to have dropped off to sleep already. Diego hesitated and wet his lips.
He hesitated because family.
Family was more than he thought, maybe. Or different. Just look at Five. Prick and bastard -- Five wouldn’t object to being called either. He could be logical to the point of heartlessness when needed, and Diego knew him to be nearly indifferent to outright murder.
And yet, Five loved his family with a ferocity that put Diego to shame.
It wasn’t the kind of love he’d come to expect; it wasn’t even the kind of love he wanted. But was it a love he needed? Was this definition of family -- shitty as it was sometimes -- part of who he was?
Watching him, Mom had always been able to see when he was thinking. “But?” she prompted knowingly.
Diego sighed, drawing back a step and lowering his voice. “But you’ll stay, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “I always stay when one of my children is hurt or in need.”
Diego shook his head. That wasn’t what he meant. He just wasn’t sure what it was he meant instead. “Do you ever, I don’t know, think about not staying?” he asked. “I mean, now that Dad’s gone. Now that you can do whatever you want. Do you ever think of making a different choice? For yourself?”
She looked at him, curious. “Diego, you know my programming--”
“No, not your programming,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re more than your programming. You have a choice. You can choose.”
“Then I choose family,” she said, and she cocked her. “I would always choose family.”
She said it so plainly, so unflinchingly. Diego tried not to think about the words being programmed into one of her subroutines. Taking her by the hand, he drew her further away and implored her. “But family isn’t even a choice,” he said. “It’s just what it is. And I can’t even see how we do you any good. I mean, we come and go as we please and expect you to be here on demand, never thinking about what you might be doing.”
The look she gave him was quizzical. “But what else could I be doing?” she asked, shaking her head. “Nothing of importance, at any rate.”
Diego exhaled, short and heavy. “You could do anything, Mom,” he said. “Everything.”
“But what else would I want?” she asked.
That was another thing without Mom. She was without wiles. Smart and intuitive, she knew how to dole out platitudes, but outright lying had never been permitted by her programming. In their restored timeline, there was no indication that she had been tampered with. And even if she had been, Diego knew her better than that. She would always tell Diego the truth. That inner conflict had nearly sent her into system failure before.
Which meant she was earnest about this. She meant what she said about family. She meant all of it.
Eyebrows drawn together, Diego shook his head, feeling moderately hopeless. “I don’t know.”
She squeeze his wrist, smiling at him kindly. “Diego,” she said softly. “You can write it off as programming. You can minimize it by calling it choice, like picking what dress to wear or what to make for dinner. Other people might look at it and call it fate or destiny. And I’m not stupid. I know that this family isn’t perfect. I know that I’m easy to overlook and take for granted. But family defines me, Diego. It gives me meaning. Without it, we’re just working parts. Only together are we more than the sum of those parts.”
It wasn’t an answer that surprised him, but he found his throat constricting. The pressure in his chest was there again, and he had to forcibly remind himself that he wasn’t underwater this time. He wasn’t drowning; shit, he couldn’t drown, even if he wanted to.
Sometimes, it felt like he wanted to.
“But you act like that’s the only sum,” he said. “Like there’s only one meaning. There are other things, Mom. So many other things.”
“But what could mean more than this?” she asked, and she gestured back to wear Five was sleeping now. “There’s nothing more important in life than caring for people and having them care for you in return.”
Diego’s face twisted and he shook his head. “But you’re brilliant, you’re good,” he said. “You could do things that other people -- normal people -- can’t. You could save lives, Mom. Lives outside the Academy.”
“We all have our place, dear,” she said. “I simply know mine is here. If I can save you, all of you, then I’m doing my part. True contentment is about knowing your place, darling.”
He let out his breath and blinked rapidly. “But -- isn’t that limiting? Don’t you ever think about that and just hate it? This part that someone else picked for you?”
At the question, she looked genuinely surprised. “Darling, I thought you more than the others would understand how I feel about this,” she said. She tipped her head, eyes locked on his imploringly. “This life, this responsibility -- it doesn’t matter why. All I know is that it’s the best thing ever.”
It would be impossible to disagree with her. She was so authentic, so real. For an android, she was the most human person in the whole damn Hargreeves family.
Also, he loved her.
With a sigh, he cast a long glance over Mom’s shoulder to the bed where Five was resting. “He’s really going to be okay?”
She had already told him as much, but Diego needed to hear it again. Mom, unlike his father, was indulgent. She smiled sweetly. “We need to monitor his breathing for a day, but there is every indication that he is completely fine.”
Diego let his gaze linger on his brother a moment longer, trying not to think how close they’d come. Trying not to think that as much as Diego fumbled to understand family, Five probably understood it implicitly, no calculations required.
Mom lifted a hand to cup his face, bringing his eyes back to her. “Diego, I promise,” she said. “I’ll stay here and make sure. You go back and rest. You look exhausted.”
He leaned into her touch, the smile tugging on his lips. “I am pretty tired.”
“So you rest, darling,” she said, almost cooing the words now. “Don’t worry about anything for now.”
He didn’t know how to follow that advice, but for the life of him, Diego didn’t have the heart to disagree.
-o-
That was how Diego ended up back in his room. His clothing was still damp, and he could feel the pull of exhaustion in his suddenly sore muscles. It was nearly dawn, and Diego was used to pulling all-nighters, but there was no solace in rest now. He stripped down, putting on some clean, dry clothes, before tossing the soiled uniformed into a pile on the floor. The mask was gone; he’d lost it in the melee of their escape.
His knives were at the bottom of the river. Idly, he thought about retrieving them. If he really could hold his breath indefinitely, then it wouldn’t be that hard.
He sat down on the bed with a sigh. The knives didn’t matter. His newfound ability mattered less. Rubbing a weary hand over his wet tufts of hair, he looked around his room. His eyes came to rest on the police radio.
Out of habit, he got up, crossing over to switch it on. It crackled to life, and Diego stood there, listening as the calls came in. Traffic stops; welfare checks. A domestic dispute. There was a convenience store robbery with a suspect on the run.
Instead of feeling compelled to help, Diego felt achingly useless.
All these problems he could solve.
Just so he wouldn’t have to solve his own.
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
Shit, could he still pretend like it wasn’t?
Diego wanted to save people, save everyone -- the whole damn world -- so that he didn’t have to look at himself. It was selfish in its own way; Patch had seen it and not been able to abide it. She’d seen that for as much as he wanted to do the right thing, he’d only wanted it on his terms.
Because it was an act when you got right down to it. Diego knew -- he had to know -- that he would let the bad guys go if it meant saving her. If he could bring her back -- shit, he’d open the prison doors and let them all go.
Because you had to value the people.
Saving the world started with saving the ones closest to you.
He needed to stop.
God help him, he just needed to stop.
He needed to stop with the mask and the outfit. He needed to stop with the knife and the midnight runs. He needed to stop with the job, the all-encompassing job.
He needed to stop with the damn police radio.
Because there were actual people at stake here. He’d been too late to save Patch, but he wasn’t too late to reconcile with his family. They were messed up and they drove him crazy, but they were a part of him. The old man had missed the mark with the Umbrella Academy because he didn’t focus on the people, because he thought the concept of family was merely a tool that often proved inconvenient. That was why it failed the first time.
It would fail again if Diego made the same mistake.
To think, all this time he’d been angry at Luther for being like their Dad, and here he was, making the old man’s mistakes all over again.
Fingers trembling, he turned off the police scanner.
In the looming silence, he listened to the sound of his own breathing fill the void.
-o-
Diego laid down, he even closed his eyes. It was entirely possible that he slept, sometime after dawn and before the first signs of life started to stir in the mansion. But when Diego sat up in bed, he was hardly rested at all.
He had never been less ready to face the day.
Because today his family would ask the questions.
And today he would be expected to give real answers.
He wanted to run away from that. After all, cutting and running was sort of his thing. It was an option that was certainly on the table, but call it fate, call it duty, call it obligation.
Diego knew it could only be called family today.
-o-
Despite his commitment to seeing this through, he was still the last one up.
Correction, he was the second to last one up.
Five, still recovering from his injuries, was still holed up in bed with Mom at his side by the time Diego came down. The others, however, were gathered in the living room.
Luther was pacing back and forth anxiously. Allison was perched on a chair nearby, looking like she wanted to comfort Luther but didn’t know how. Klaus was eating a pack of Hostess donuts while Ben sat on the couch next to him, chewing his lip. Vanya was seated at one of the bar stools. When Diego entered, she was the first one to meet his gaze.
The fact that she looked worried and not pissed only made Diego feel worse.
“Look,” he said, before anyone could speak. “About last night--”
Luther stopped pacing, turned around to face Diego. “Yeah, about last night--”
Diego held up his hands. “I can explain. I can--”
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Allison said. “Luther said how close it was.”
Diego’s mouth hung open in surprise. He looked from Allison back to Luther.
Luther’s look back was earnest. “I told them about your new power.”
“That’s crazy lucky,” Klaus said. “And don’t worry. I’m all about exploring new powers.”
“Me, too,” Vanya added sympathetically. “I mean, it seems weird, but it’s not so weird when you think about it. There would be no way for Dad to know everything about us.”
“Not even our old man would be so sadistic as to suffocate us just to know for sure,” Klaus said.
“And we just talked to Mom,” Ben added softly. “Five’s still resting, but his breathing is better.”
“He’s sore as hell though,” Klaus quipped.
“He wasn’t breathing,” Luther shot back, a touch defensive. He bobbed his head toward Diego. “Diego did what he had to do.”
“We know that,” Allison said, and she smiled warmly. “We’re relieved. We’re just really relieved.”
Diego stared at them, not sure what to say. They seemed sincere in their wishes, but Diego couldn’t quite fathom it. He had snuck out without telling them, taking Five with him. The job had barely been salvaged but not without direct links to the family and Diego himself. Five’s life had nearly been lost in the process, and the only reason Five was alive was because he called for backup himself. Five’s quick thinking and Luther’s quick action had saved Diego from facing them this morning with a disaster that could not be salvaged.
As it was, it was still a disaster, and he couldn’t understand why no one was calling him on it.
Except, maybe he could.
Because family.
“We have questions, sure,” Luther said. “But we’ll get there.”
“We need to eat, get our bearings,” Klaus said. “And mostly eat. Is anyone else hungry?”
Ben rolled his eyes. Vanya got up and crossed over to Diego. “What happened to Five,” she said quietly. “You should know it wasn’t your fault.”
Diego’s breath caught in his throat
She reached out and squeezed his arm. “None of this was your fault.”
It would have been easier if she was lying to save face, but Vanya wasn’t Allison. It wouldn’t matter anyway, Allison was still looking at Diego in complete agreement. Luther, Klaus and Ben -- they were all on the same page.
“We’ll figure it out,” Luther promised him. “We’ll figure it out together.”
Diego wasn’t one to follow, and he sure as hell wasn’t one to take orders, but this morning, he found that all he could do was agree.
-o-
Numbly, Diego found himself in the kitchen. The others had directed him here, ordering him to eat something. It wasn’t clear to him if they had already eaten or not, but the thought to ask them didn’t occur to him until much later.
Standing there, he stared at the full shelves of food, but he couldn’t think about breakfast.
All he could think about was what his siblings were doing.
Sitting with Five?
Going over his condition with Mom?
They should have been talking about Diego behind his back, but that wasn’t how this worked. At least, it wasn’t how it worked anymore. Family had become something more than a burden to them. Family had become a critical part of how they functioned. Maybe Diego had understood that for awhile, but he’d failed to grasp the implications.
He’d failed a lot of things recently.
He was still standing there, like the idiot he was, when there was a noise behind him. He turned abruptly, ready to face the shit his siblings had to offer. When he saw Pogo, he practically deflated.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”
Pogo gave him a curious look. Leaning heavily against his cane, it was hard to tell if this was just what he expected from Diego or if he was officially too tired for this shit. “Good to see you, too, Master Diego,” he said. Then, with an airy tone, he continued. “I hear you had quite the eventful night. I am quite glad that you and Master Five have returned with minimal harm.”
That was the long way of saying it. Diego shook his head. “Yeah, well, whatever,” he said. He was being unfairly dismissive, but Diego was tired, too. He went over to the shelf and picked up a box of cereal for the lack of something better to do. He wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t much like cereal, but he needed something to do so he didn’t have to look at Pogo. “Things are never easy when the Umbrella Academy is involved.”
Pogo came farther into his room with his uneven cadence. “I thought the Umbrella Academy had not fully formed again,” he said. “At least, that was my understanding of your recent objections.”
Diego gritted his teeth, getting a bowl out with a clatter. “The Umbrella Academy has never had to be a thing to attract trouble,” he muttered. He opened the fridge, reaching for the milk. “It just sort of happens.”
It was as much a deflective strategy as it was the truth. Pogo rested heavily on his cane again. “All the same,” he said. “If there is anything I can do for you--”
“Yeah, yeah,” Diego muttered, pouring the milk over the cereal. “I’ll let you know.”
Pogo wasn’t stupid; he knew when he wasn’t wanted. Unlike the rest of the freaks in this family, he was actually willing to leave things at that. As Diego rustled up a spoon, he started on his way back out of the kitchen.
It was a second later that Diego realized two things.
First, he hated milk on cereal.
And second, more pressingly, he did need something from Pogo. “Wait,” he said, wheeling back around. “There is one thing you could do actually.”
Pogo turned back, a bit laboriously, but he didn’t look put out. “And what is that, my dear boy?”
There was no way to say it except to say it, and for all that he dreaded telling his siblings the full details, he accepted the inevitability where Pogo was involved. At least he knew Pogo wouldn’t be prone to nosy questions.
And besides, this was Pogo. Pogo was a genetically modified monkey who had literally been a butler all of Diego’s life. Sure, Pogo was smart as hell and had been more fatherly than the old man had ever been, but it was still Pogo. Diego had an overly developed sense of pride, but Pogo wasn’t ranked with a number and he hadn’t been the one doling out the numbers, so there was nothing to prove there.
“Just a heads up, you’re probably going to get a phone call from the tenants at the old place Dad used to do weapons training,” he said. “The one by the river.”
Pogo placed both hands on the cane, looking curious once more. “However can you know that? Not one of you has looked into the full scale of properties left to you in your father’s will. I had assumed you to be indifferent.”
“I was. I am,” Diego said, fumbling somewhat. He shook his head. “Five and I were over there last night. Someone had broken in, staged an attack.”
Pogo didn’t look surprised. “Yes, I had heard something about that,” he said. “The police contacted me about the matter, seeing as we are the owners.”
Diego collected a breath. “Well, I don’t know what they told you, but it probably wasn’t the full story.”
“The family didn’t see anything, as it were,” Pogo said. He narrowed his eyes. “But the explosive device had been miraculously disarmed.”
Diego reddened despite himself. “I wish I could say it was a happy ending. The armory downstairs was cleared out.”
Pogo looked grave. “And how does this relate to a phone call I will be receiving?”
“It’s not about the weapons; we made sure that no one knows about that,” Diego said. “But Five and I, the family saw us. We didn’t think that the publicity of us being there would do any good. Five offered them reduced rent in exchange for their silence.”
Pogo’s mouth twisted into a grim sort of smile. “I would like to say that I’m surprised, but I must admit, it seems to fit a recent pattern I’ve noticed.”
Diego’s defenses flared; now Pogo was going to criticize his nighttime exploits, too?
But Pogo continued. “There have been some troubling disturbances in your father’s vast portfolio.”
Still primed to defend himself, Diego was caught off guard by that telling omission. “Wait. Portfolio?”
It was always a bit frustrating to Diego how composed Pogo was. Sure, he didn’t feel the need to compete with the butler, but it would be nice if he didn’t always feel like he was one step behind. Diego hated a lot of things, but condescension was one of the worst.
It was the way he felt every time someone had the audacity to call him Number Two.
Pogo, however, was the epitome of professionalism. Diego’s triggers aside, he knew that Pogo wasn’t trying to piss him off. Sometimes, Diego had to admit, it really was in his head.
Just sometimes.
And never when Luther was concerned.
“Yes,” Pogo said easily. “Your father had extensive holdings and investments. His assets are spread into many industries and properties throughout the city. All of this information is available to you and your siblings, but only Master Luther showed any interest. However, I think the task proved too emotional. He didn’t get very far.”
His desire to make a snide comment about Luther was overwhelmed by growing trepidation in the pit of his stomach. He was still standing face to face with the crazy dude in the basement and entering his own birthday to disarm a bomb. “What sort of disturbances?”
There was no way to be nonchalant about that kind of question, and Diego was well past playing cool.
Pogo took note. “Blips on the security radar, most of the time, but nothing that amounts to anything. Some unusual inquiries as to our holdings,” he explained. “Taken separately, they would be non-events, but the cumulative effect seems to suggest that someone out there is testing the waters, so to speak.”
It wasn’t intended to be a pun -- Pogo wasn’t like that -- but Diego still forced himself to swallow. And breathe. Why the hell wasn’t he breathing? “Someone?” he asked, unable to keep his voice from sounding strained.
Pogo inclined his head sympathetically. “I have tracked it with some care,” he said. “I have come up with nothing conclusive.”
That was the polite and proper way of saying it, but Diego was past the point of giving a shit about the formalities. This wasn’t about what was probable. With this family, it never had been. He shook his head. “But you still think that has something to do with the family.”
Pogo’s expression was wry. “With this family, there is always something. Given your exploits last night, I trust that you will take the investigation to the next level. With your siblings, I can assume.”
The implication was clear, and Diego thinned his lips. “Yeah, I’ll tell them,” he said. “They want to wait until Five wakes up.”
That was a point Pogo didn’t argue. “Very well, then,” he said. “If you would like to know more detail about my other accounts of interference, I have copious notes. You need only ask.”
Pogo was being nice, but Diego wasn’t inclined toward charity. He also wasn’t inclined to see the good in people. That was one of the reasons he and Patch had argued so damn much. She always believed a sob story; Diego just thought that people were inherently assholes. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner? If you suspected something. You should have told us.”
The accusation grew more vehement, and Diego felt himself take a step forward.
Pogo was not intimidated. “I have been fully transparent about your father’s business affairs, but interest in said holdings has been slim. You, in particular, Master Diego, respond to any comment about your father’s estate with vitriol. Besides, you seem especially keen to practice purposeful omissions.”
“Hey!” Diego said. “I only keep secrets that don’t matter.”
Pogo tipped his head again. “Indeed,” he said. “I am quite relieved that you and Master Five are back in one piece this morning.”
It wasn’t that Pogo was a monkey; it was that he was the damn butler. And here he was, deflating Diego’s pride with a passive-aggressive musing. He stepped back, retreating just a little. “It’s just part of the job,” he said, almost by rote. It was a reflex.
Pogo didn’t disagree. Diego clenched his jaw; that just made it worse. “Anyway,” Pogo said, hobbling toward the door again. “I will make the rent adjustments as necessary.”
“Thank you,” Diego said. Because he wasn’t mad at Pogo. And Pogo hadn’t actually done anything to him. And also Diego could only assume people were all assholes because he knew how easy it was for him to be one. “It’s just been, uh, a long night.”
Pogo smiled graciously from the doorway. “Your father expressed it in his own way, but he did believe that family was the one thing worth any sacrifice. Sometimes, worthy every sacrifice.”
Diego shook his head, jaw still tight. “Dad was a bastard.”
“Yes,” Pogo said. “But that didn’t mean he was always wrong.”
Diego had no reply as Pogo limped out of the room. He heard the cane plod down the hallway and out of earshot. Turning back to the counter, Diego sighed. He picked up the bowl and dumped the soggy cereal into the sink.
Shit, he thought as he closed his eyes and braced himself on the counter. This was going to be a long day.
-o-
One might think that having a gaggle of supportive siblings might make it easier. That having Luther pat his shoulder and Allison squeeze his hand would be encouraging. Or that having Klaus offer him a chocolate bar would be endearing. Or, you know, that having Ben smile at him and Vanya say, “It wasn’t your fault” would be reassuring.
One might think that.
They would all be wrong.
If anything, Diego found the vigil awkward, as they cycled through Five’s room and milled about the hallway. It was stupid that they didn’t want to talk about it. It was so damn idiotic that all this shit had gone down and they were standing there, doing nothing.
“Family comes first,” Luther had said, and they had all agreed. All of them.
It wasn’t like Diego wanted to talk about it -- any of it -- but not talking about it wasn’t exactly helping things.
Diego was a man of action.
Anything else was tedious.
But he couldn’t forget that this was, in some ways, his fault. It had been his job, and Five had forced his way on, but if Diego was serious about being a leader in this family, then he had to own this shit.
So he held his tongue and waited with the rest of them. It was like Pogo said. This was, no matter how much Diego resented it, for family.
Maybe, someday, they would understand the level of sacrifice.
-o-
Five woke up in the morning, but between Mom’s careful ministrations and the line of siblings who wanted one on one time, Diego had to wait until almost lunch time to finally talk to his brother. It was with some relief, he noted, that Five looked hardly any worse for wear. Pale and tired, sure, but he looked as perturbed as Diego felt.
“You haven’t told them,” he said before Diego could even sit down. Mom had barely managed to close the door behind him to shoo the others off to lunch. Five’s garbled voice only served to make him sound more intense. “Why haven’t you told them?”
Diego sat down and tried not to show how happy he was that Five hadn’t told them first. True, that would probably be easier if Five did tell the story, but Five wouldn’t know how to express the details in the most effective way.
In other words, Five would throw Diego under the bus.
Still, Diego played the defensive because he wasn’t going to be out-talked by someone who looked like a 13 year old. “I tried to tell them,” he said. “But they were all worried about you and didn’t want to talk business. I told you. They’re not ready for the job.”
“But this isn’t the job,” Five said caustically. He drew his brows together in frustration. “This is family now. You need to explain that to them.”
“They don’t want to hear it,” Diego said. “I was right all along.”
Five rolled his eyes, settling back with a dramatic huff on his fluffed pillows. “Spare me your grandstanding,” he said. “You can enjoy the fact that you’re right about something without missing the fact that you’re still wrong.”
“Oh, whatever,” Diego said.
“I’m serious, Diego,” Five said. “You can’t neglect the family.”
“But they neglect me!” Diego protested. “Why do you all keep overlooking that? All this talk about needs and wants -- but what about me? No one gives a shit about me.”
“I may look like a child, but you sound like one,” Five said pointedly. “And you’re still willfully obfuscating the point.”
“What, that you drowned last night?” Diego asked.
“No,” Five said. “That this is now family business. They need to know. Everything. Even the parts you didn’t tell me yet.”
“How do you--”
Five leveled him with a glare. “Because I’m not an idiot,” he said. He drew a breath and let it out with a wince. “Also, you shouldn’t argue with me. My chest hurts like hell.”
“What about your throat?” Diego asked. “You sound terrible.”
“Because I spent 30 minutes hacking up water this morning,” he said curtly. “And Mom says you didn’t break my ribs, but it sure as hell feels like it.”
“Well, sorry,” Diego muttered. “Next time I’ll consider not saving your life.”
“You did,” Five snapped at him. “By not calling for backup. We need to go over this whole case, from start to finish, the whole family, right now.”
“Just ease up, okay?” Diego said, holding out his hands to placate his brother. “You’re supposed to be recovering, okay? That’s why they want to wait. That’s why they need to wait. That’s what we’re about, right? What they need?”
Five groaned. “I thought Luther was the literal one, but you lack serious imagination sometimes,” he said. “There’s a difference between needs and wants. Where family is involved, we allow some indulgences with wants. And we never ignore a need. They want to give me time, but what they need is the full story. Then you’ll see the Umbrella Academy come together just like you want.”
Five said it convincingly, but Diego had said lots of shit convincingly. He shook his head. “You’re overestimating them.”
“And you’re underestimating your own need for them,” Five said.
Diego sat up straighter, his defenses flaring. “I don’t need anybody.”
“I thought that way once,” he said. He pursed his lips. “Then I ended up in the apocalypse and learned what is it be wrong the hard way.”
Diego sighed, slumping back. “It’s not the same thing.”
“No, but the results are the same,” Five said. He narrowed his gaze and sat up a little more. “You want to know why I indulge them? You want to know why I’m okay with waiting for them to come around while they explore their hobbies?”
Diego lifted his shoulder with a weak shrug.
“Because,” Five said. “I spent 30 years with nothing but time to look back and think about all the time I wasted. I had 30 years to regret the games I didn’t play. I had 30 years to think about the jokes I never bothered to laugh at. I get it, it’s mundane sometimes, what the others want to do. It can feel like a waste of time. But that’s the point. When you have time to waste, then waste it well. Or you end up with nothing. I’ve been there, Diego. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t go back.”
It was more than he’d expected; more than he quite knew what to do with. “This isn’t the apocalypse, Five,” Diego said.
“Exactly,” Five said. “When the stakes are low, then we have to let people be happy. Because the stakes will not always be low. As our job last night proved.”
But Five made it too easy. He made it too black and white. “I can do this on my own if I have to.”
Five made a face. “No, you can’t,” he said. “I couldn’t do it by myself, so why would you be able to?”
“Because I’m not you,” Diego snapped back. “I’m more than capable--”
“Of letting me drown?” Five asked. He cocked his head. “Because if Luther hadn’t showed up….”
Diego’s chest ached and his eyes burned. “That’s not fair.”
“I know,” Five said. “And I’m not blaming you for that. But I will blame you if you don’t tell them the truth now.”
With a sigh, Diego shook his head yet again. “But they don’t want to know.”
“And that was fine before,” Five said. “But now they need to know.”
“They’ve been so self absorbed all this time,” Diego argued. “What changes now?”
Five was intent. He was unrelenting. “Now, it’s family. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to grasp. Are you really that petty? Since they told you no when it didn’t matter, you won’t accept their yes now that it does?”
“It’s not petty,” Diego said, hating how petty he sounded. He furrowed his eyebrows. “But if they want to waste time, then I’ve got better things to do.”
When Five gathered another breath, the weariness on his face betrayed his youthful countenance. “Look, those 30 years I spent in the apocalypse, do you know why they were so bad?”
Diego didn’t humor him with a response, not even a stiff shrug.
Five was indifferent. “It wasn’t just the hunger or the death. It wasn’t even the loneliness or the endless equations I couldn’t solve,” he said. “It was the knowledge that I had wasted the time that mattered. I had ignored the help when I had it offered to me. I had undervalued the importance of family because I thought I was too smart, too fast, too good. The worst part was sitting there, thinking about how much I took the family for granted. That was how I came to the conclusion that I would sacrifice anything to get back to you all. Anything.”
Diego couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
What the hell could he say?
That he was sorry?
That he was wrong?
That he was tired of not knowing what he was?
“So I know how hard it is, Diego,” he said. “So believe me when I say that these last few months haven’t been a waste. But the next ones will if we don’t act now.”
Diego was out of defenses. He was out of excuses. He was out of time.
He was just out.
“Fine,” he said, hands up in the air. “But I promise you, they’re not going to want to hear it.”
“That’s your job now, then,” Five said. “To make them listen.
-o-
That job was shit, by the way.
It was absolute shit.
Five knew it, too. Bastard was all sick and laid up in bed so he couldn’t take the point. No, he had to have Diego do it. Because his chest hurt. Because he was still recovering.
Little prick was a coward, that was what it was. Mom wouldn’t even clear him to come downstairs, which meant Diego had to do this on his own. That seemed typical, didn’t it?
Still, Diego was a man of action.
He wasn’t exactly a man of his word, but whatever.
If it was time to act, then Diego wasn’t a chicken. He’d act.
Staring at his gathered siblings in the living room, he reconsidered whether or not he still had time to get the hell out of here. He could run faster than his siblings; they’d never catch him.
He shook his head, keeping his focus.
He had to stay focused.
That was his thing, in the end. He kept his focus. He did the job.
Even when he didn’t want to.
Even when no one else wanted to.
“So,” he said because he was willing to do the hard stuff when no one else would. You could call him Number Two, but he still rose to the challenge every time. He was still the hero they needed, even if they didn’t want him. He held his head high, looking at them each in turn without shame. “We need to talk about last night.”
-o-
Diego hated it -- every damn word -- but he told the story in excruciating detail. He was tempted to gloss over some of the less savory bits, and he wanted to make light of the less appealing details, but if Five could drown in a car, then he could at least tell his siblings the truth about it.
He started with his side job, which is what he called it, the little excursions he took playing a hero. He was vaguely disappointed that none of them seemed surprised by this; he had been more confident in his stealth abilities than their non-response warranted.
The news of a hit on one of Dad’s properties, however, raised more than sufficient concern. Even Luther, who knew this part of the story, seemed to be on tenterhooks as Diego went over his assessment of the job -- with some credit to Five.
He was able to detail the scene upon arrival and how he and Five had carefully and thoroughly conducted a search of the grounds, starting with the hidden sub-basement. It wasn’t necessary to mention that Five had been the one to identify and open the sub-basement. Instead, Diego skipped to the part where he found and confronted the bad guy in the weapons cache by himself.
Of course, it would have been more heroic if he’d stopped the guy, but that wasn’t even the worst part. No, the worst part wasn’t telling his siblings that the guy made off with all the weapons. It was explaining that the guy seemed to know Diego.
Like, well.
Diego recounted the conversation as best he could. Every time he thought to skip over a few parts, he thought of Five going limp in the car from a lack of oxygen. The air pressure was throbbing in his own chest as he laid bare every detail he could remember.
Then, Diego got to tell them about the bomb.
They were all quite impressed that Five was now able to move so many people in such a short period of time. But when Diego explained how he guessed the bomb’s passcode with a single try, they were dumbstruck.
For the lack of something better to do, Diego finished the story, explaining their escape, their plan to bribe the family and ultimately the car that pushed them off the road. His siblings handled the revelation that he had another power -- to hold his breath, apparently -- with relative aplomb. Or, even if they didn’t, Diego didn’t give them a chance to question it. In a rush, he finished the story with Luther’s timely rescue and the small but possibly relevant note that the bad guy indicated his involvement in the mall attack and the personalized nature of the Highland attack suggested that the mall was the precursor and that the family was the target all along.
“For what?” Diego asked. “You got me. But I don’t think this guy is done with us yet.”
After that, he gave them a minute.
Or three.
He watched as they processed it, one horrifying detail after the next. There was a part of him -- a large part -- that wanted to circumvent the process, to tell them it was no big deal, that he had it all under control. He wanted to downplay it, minimize it. He didn’t want them to think he was standing here, asking for their help.
Except, he was, wasn’t he?
Standing there, he was spent. Physically, he hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. And emotionally?
Well, he was so much worse off that way. While he grappled with the vestiges of his pride, he had to face the fact that he’d screwed up. That he’d chosen the job over the family. That he didn’t even know what the hell family was all about.
Here he was on solid ground and it still felt like he was drowning. It felt like he’d been drowning ever since he joined up with his family again. His whole damn life for what it was worth.
Do you sacrifice the family for the job?
Or do you sacrifice the job for the family?
And why did everyone else know how to answer that question except him.
No, that wasn’t true. Diego did know. He had always known. He just hated the answer, loathed it.
But here he was, staring it in the eye.
He could hold his breath forever, sure, but that didn’t mean he should.
“So?” Luther was the one to finally ask the questions. “What do you think we should do?”
That was ironic, then. That it would be Luther, Number One, asking him to step up and make the decision. It was painfully ironic, that question, now. All the times he had been so sure of the answer only to have it rejected. Now, he could give any answer he damn well pleased and he could see it, they’d agree. They’d agree because Five almost died last night, and they cared about family more than anything else.
How was it that they all got it? So much sooner than he did?
His pride fought the answer, but Diego believed in doing the right thing, even at great personal cost. That meant his pride would have to go.
“Nothing,” he said. “I think we do nothing.”
“Wait, nothing?” Allison asked, clearly taken aback. “You just laid out a case for our family being attacked, like actively attacked, and you want to do nothing?”
Diego took a breath. A slow, strong, measured breath. “We’re not ready to do anything,” he said. “Five’s still recovering; we’re still processing all this information. This isn’t about what I want. This is about what we need, our family needs. We’re not ready to charge out there. Part of me wishes that we were, but we’re not.”
Luther and Allison were gaping. Klaus looked as if he might be having a stroke. “So you’re, what?” he asked, truly confounded. “You, Diego, our headstrong Number Two, are asking for restraint?”
“I’m asking for common sense,” Diego said back. “We need to recover. We need to plan. We need to train.”
The others were vexed, but Ben was nodding along. “That’s what you do for family.”
Sometimes you willingly drowned.
Sometimes you showed up with no questions asked.
Sometimes you showed restraint.
Because family? Well, family was the job. The sacrifice could be anything.
Sometimes, it would be everything.
“So we lie low for now,” Diego said. “We figure this out.”
“It will give this guy time to make his next move,” Luther said, still skeptical.
“What if it strikes again?” Allison added.
Klaus gestured wildly. “Uh, and what if he succeeds? He bombed a mall! He nearly killed Five!”
Diego waved them off with a shake of his head. “And if he has time, we have time. Time to go through the research Pogo has collected. Time to build our leads. Time to work together, be a time.”
“Time to bring the Umbrella Academy back online,” Vanya said.
The quiet certainty in her voice was startling to him. He had thought about this as lying low, but she had followed it through to its natural conclusion. When she said it like that, it sounded like what Diego had wanted all along.
He shook his head again. “No,” he said. “Time to protect our family. Any discussion about the Umbrella Academy is one we’ll have another day.”
Luther straightened, and Allison drew her brows together decisively. Klaus settled back, placated somehow, and Ben was smiling. Vanya nodded for all of them. “Okay,” she agreed, because she was the only one with the voice that could really signal a consensus anymore. She wasn’t the leader; she wasn’t their comic relief; she wasn’t their moral center. She wasn’t a barometer of truth or the source of intellect. But she was the common thing in all of them, the unity that made them all special. Her eyes were kind; her eyes were sure. “That sounds like a plan.”
-o-
The plan wasn’t to bring the Umbrella Academy together.
The plan just involved all the possible steps needed to bring the Umbrella Academy together.
They gave it several days, of course. This was out of respect to Five, who was on forced bed rest until Mom officially cleared him. Even after that, everyone seemed hesitant, until Five finally got so annoyed at doing nothing that he insisted that training begin.
There was a part of Diego that thought that it was about damn time.
There was another part of Diego thought it was only a matter of time before something went wrong again.
Which part scared him more?
Well, time would probably tell whether Diego wanted it to or not.
-o-
It wasn’t his call to start with training.
Really, he wasn’t.
Diego knew how it would look, but it wasn’t even his idea. One day, after breakfast, a week after Five drowned, Vanya came downstairs and joined him.
“Have you seen Klaus yet?” she asked.
Diego was eating his eggs and drinking his juice. “Um, no,” he said. This wasn’t surprising. Klaus had irregular sleeping habits. No, Klaus had irregular habits across the board. Even now that he was sober. Maybe especially now that he was sober.
“Oh,” Vanya said, and she seemed a little disappointed. “He said he’d be here.”
Diego shrugged. “It’s Klaus. He’ll show up whenever.”
Vanya sighed, reaching for a box of cereal. “I know that, it’s just he said he’d be here,” she said again. “We, uh, had plans.”
Diego made a face. “You and Klaus?”
She wet her lips with a bit of hesitation. “And you.”
Now, Diego was surprised. “And me?”
“Well, we thought with your new power and all--”
Diego blushed out of reflex. He had always taken great pride in his powers. He had thrown anything and everything when he was a kid just so no one could forget how special he was. But this new power was one he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. He wasn’t sure of its viability. He wasn’t sure he wanted it.
And every time he thought about it, he remembered Five going limp right next to him.
By the time he got through that thought process, he had to force his lungs to work again.
“I’m not sure how useful it’ll be,” Diego said, keeping his tone neutral as he cut her off. “And I don’t need another skill in combat. I’m good.”
Vanya gave him a funny little look. “You don’t need it, maybe,” she said. “Just like I don’t need my powers. And like Klaus doesn’t need his. But if we don’t embrace them, we’re bound to be held back by them. Besides, who’s to say that learning how to use your power won’t help?”
“Since I plan on drowning often?” Diego quipped.
“Okay, on the surface, it does seem a little less than useful,” Vanya conceded. “But that’s all the more reason we have to explore it.”
That was a good argument, probably. Honestly, it was the kind of argument Diego probably would have made a week ago. He still found himself hesitant this morning. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” Vanya said. “Eat a good breakfast, and then meet me in the library. I’ll round up Klaus and we’ll get started.”
She got up with that, moving toward the door without waiting for affirmation. “I can do it by myself, you don’t have to,” he said before she could leave. “I mean, you’re still figuring shit out for yourself.”
She turned back, and to his surprise, she was beaming. “I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it so perfect. We’ll figure it out together, right? You and me and Klaus?”
That sounded…
Well, Diego wasn’t sure how that sounded.
Thoughtfully, he nodded his head. “I guess so,” he agreed finally, watching as she left.
This wasn’t what he wanted, maybe.
He took another bite of eggs before washing it down with orange juice.
But maybe it was what he needed.
-o-
Or maybe not.
Diego had tried to be optimistic, but meeting up with Vanya and Klaus a short time later made his optimism fleeting. This was Vanya, after all. Who had never trained in her life.
Worse, this was Klaus.
Who had always found a way to make training fundamentally not useful.
It took 20 minutes just to convince Klaus that he had, in fact, agreed to train. It took another 10 for them to decide on what to do. After 30 minutes of nonsense, Diego agreed to whatever they suggested, and he only realized belatedly that training in a pool would have bad implications after he was changed into swim gear.
Because Diego could already swim, and neither Vanya or Klaus had any connection to water.
Which meant.
“No,” he said, crossing his arms at the side of the pool. He was trying to be a team player, like an actual team player, but he had his limits. “I’m not doing this.”
“That was what I said, but Vanya told me I didn’t have a choice,” Klaus said serenely from the pool deck. Their father had always had a pool in one of the buildings on site, but they had rarely used it. It was in surprisingly good condition, and Diego wondered how often Pogo paid for upkeep. “But I have to admit, this could be better than I thought.”
Klaus folded his arms under his head, lounging on one of the deck chairs. He was wearing a speedo with a bikini top that he must have swiped from Allison.
Vanya rolled her eyes. “I get it, it’s not the most pleasant way to go about this,” she said, sounding sorry. In contrast to Klaus, she was wearing trunks and a rash guard. “But before we can figure out what to do with your power, we have to know what it is. We have to see what you can actually do.”
“By drowning me?” Diego asked pointedly.
“Baptism by fire,” Klaus quipped. Then, he chuckled. “Or, you know, with water.”
Diego did his best not to glare at his brother.
Vanya, though the most powerful among them now, was still a natural peacekeeper. “We thought about having Mom run some tests or something, but the results would be hard to interpret,” sh said. “I still can’t believe it’s been a week and you haven’t tried this yourself.”
Diego closed his mouth. He’d spent the last week trying to remember how to breath, not how not to.
“No kidding!” Klaus said, and he opened his eyes now. “I would have thought you’d be excited. Telling us what happened, you led with all these other details and not the part where you don’t need to breathe!”
Vanya looked a little skeptical, but ultimately she nodded in agreement. “It is kind of a big development.”
“It’s not that big of a development,” Diego said. “I mean, it doesn’t impact the case at all.”
“But it impacts us,” Vanya said. She tipped her head to the side. “The family.”
Vanya didn’t seem the type for emotional manipulation, so he gave her the benefit of the doubt. She was sincere.
Which just made it worse.
For all that Diego hated this, everything about this, there was no way he could deny her now. “Fine,” he said with as much grace as he could muster. It wasn’t much. “But I still think this is a bad way to go about it.”
“It’s unconventional,” Vanya said gently.
“No, it’s bad,” Diego said. He pointed at the pool, mildly incredulous. “You want to drown me!”
“That is untrue,” Klaus interjected from his seat. “Because, if we’re right, then we can’t drown you!”
Vanya gathered herself before Diego could contemplate throttling Klaus. He wished he strapped on a knife under his wetsuit. Yes, he was wearing a wetsuit. The lycra in his getup doubled for underwater work because Diego was prepared for shit.
“We considered less dramatic methods, but they would all be too easy to tamper with,” she said. “If you just hold your breath, you might panic and take a breath just out of reflex. Or, who knows, maybe your breathing rate would be so depressed that we wouldn’t notice.”
“Well, if I go underwater, how is that any different?” Diego asked. “I’ll just surface when it gets to be too much.”
Vanya looked even more sorry now, casting a worried glance at Klaus.
Klaus held up his arms. “I’m not going to tell him!”
Diego narrowed his eyes at Vanya. “Not tell me what.”
“Well, we were going to weight you down so you couldn’t surface,” she said with a wince. “Dad had all those free weights and there’s rope--”
“Whoa!” Diego said, gawking a bit now. “You really are going to drown me!”
“But you can’t drown, so not really,” Klaus said. “Honestly, and people say I’m the dramatic one.”
Diego was not amused. “All we know is that I didn’t drown once.”
“Which is why we need to test it again,” Vanya said, as reasonable as ever. “We’re going to be right here, in the water with you. If something goes wrong, we’ll get you out right away. That’s why we’re doing this together. We have your back, one hundred percent.”
Diego couldn’t help but be skeptical. Considering that they were talking about tying weights to him and throwing him in the deep end, he was probably entitled this. “The drug addict and the girl with uncontrolled powers at my back,” he said. “No offense, but I’m not sure that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
Klaus sighed, increasingly melodramatic. “It’s just training. All you have to do is try,” he said. “That’s what you always say, right? What you’ve been telling us all this time? That we have to confront our powers sooner or later, right?”
Well, shit. Leave it to Klaus to listen to that much -- and worse, to remember it at the exact moment to leverage against him.
Diego closed his eyes and muttered a curse again.
This was what he had wanted.
And, now, apparently it was what he needed.
How the hell was he supposed to fight that?
Wearily, he opened his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “But I swear to God, if you let me drown--”
Vanya held up her hands. “We won’t, we won’t.”
“But hey, if we do,” Klaus said. “At least you know I’ll be able to conjure you, no problem.”
Diego glared.
“He’s joking,” Vanya said. She glared at Klaus, too. “He’s joking.”
“Yeah,” Diego muttered. The resolve was there, that ache in his chest. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.”
-o-
Vanya had a whole order of tests to run, but they really only needed one.
Because Diego knew, the moment he went under, he didn’t have to surface again.
He knew that he could hold his breath indefinitely, forever.
He knew because he realized, he finally realized, that he’d been holding his breath all along.
The water just gave him a valid reason.
PART TWO
PART THREE
PART FOUR
PART FIVE
PART SIX
PART SEVEN
PART EIGHT
PART NINE
PART TEN
PART ELEVEN
PART TWELVE
PART THIRTEEN
-o-
Something he had always loved about Mom was that she didn’t ask unnecessary questions. She was trained to fix things, and she didn’t much care about why they were broken. His siblings might think of that as programming, but it was the only source of compassion Diego had ever truly known.
Therefore, she didn’t care how Five had come to be drowned and then revived. She didn’t care about the car in the river or the bomb with a six digit passcode. She didn’t care about the dude in the basement. She didn’t even care that Diego had been sneaking out of the mansion for weeks now.
Instead, she got to work, quickly hooking Five up to an IV -- “He looks anemic, and IV fluids never hurt anyone” -- before listening to his lungs and heart.
“Breathe normally, dear,” she coached Five with a smile. “Just breathe normally.”
Five complied while Diego tried to take a stunted breath. It felt weird to him now, the air passing in and out of his lungs. Perfunctory somehow.
Mom then performed a series of tests to check for deficits -- “All routine so there’s no need to be offended” -- before declaring that Five needed lots of rest and to avoid swimming in the near future.
“Is that it?” Luther asked. He had been standing behind her, hovering just out of the way, eyes on Five the whole time. “He’s okay?”
She turned, hands clasped as she smiled. “His lungs are a little wet, but there’s no indication of pneumonia. All his faculties appear to be in order, which means that there is no apparent damage from the lack of oxygen. Obviously, I will continue to monitor him for at least 24 hours to watch for further signs of compromised breathing. However, there is every indication that Number Five will recover without further complication.”
She was pragmatic, too, when you got right down to it. Shit, she really was the perfect woman. The fact that she didn’t have air moving through her lungs might seem limiting to some -- it had never seemed less important to Diego.
Or less ironic.
Luther hemmed a little bit, clearly anxious.
From the bed, Five sighed, giving Luther a weary look. “You did good, moron,” he said. “Don’t act so surprised at your own success. It’s off-putting.”
Luther blushed. “I still don’t even know what this is about,” he said. He turned and looked at Diego. “I mean, what the hell happened?”
Mom, as if sensing the potential for discord, smoothly moved between them. “Whatever happened, you can discuss it in the morning,” she said. “You all look exhausted. I am inclined to put both of you on IVs with bed rest, but I suspect neither of you would like that very much.”
“I don’t like it much either,” Five quipped.
She tipped her head at him, smile still in place. “You don’t get the option, dear,” she said sweetly. She looked back at Luther and Diego. “You two, however, do. So I suggest you return to your rooms until I take that option from you.”
“But Mom--” Luther started.
She looked at him sternly. “Luther, you know better than to question my authority.”
Luther nodded his head, abashed. “You’ll let us know if anything changes?”
Her smile returned, kinder than ever. She put a hand on his arm. “Of course,” she said. “Now get some rest. I’m sure you’ll have a lot to talk about in the morning.”
Luther, ever obedient, did not need to be told again. He cast another affirming look at Five before letting his eyes slide over Diego. There was no condemnation, but the uneasiness was hard to mistake for something else. He seemed to swallow it back, and he gave another lingering look at Five before leaving the room.
When he was gone, Mom gave Diego a keen look, eyebrows raised. “And you, young man?”
“I’ll go, I will,” he said. Over on the bed, Five seemed to have dropped off to sleep already. Diego hesitated and wet his lips.
He hesitated because family.
Family was more than he thought, maybe. Or different. Just look at Five. Prick and bastard -- Five wouldn’t object to being called either. He could be logical to the point of heartlessness when needed, and Diego knew him to be nearly indifferent to outright murder.
And yet, Five loved his family with a ferocity that put Diego to shame.
It wasn’t the kind of love he’d come to expect; it wasn’t even the kind of love he wanted. But was it a love he needed? Was this definition of family -- shitty as it was sometimes -- part of who he was?
Watching him, Mom had always been able to see when he was thinking. “But?” she prompted knowingly.
Diego sighed, drawing back a step and lowering his voice. “But you’ll stay, right?”
“Of course,” she said. “I always stay when one of my children is hurt or in need.”
Diego shook his head. That wasn’t what he meant. He just wasn’t sure what it was he meant instead. “Do you ever, I don’t know, think about not staying?” he asked. “I mean, now that Dad’s gone. Now that you can do whatever you want. Do you ever think of making a different choice? For yourself?”
She looked at him, curious. “Diego, you know my programming--”
“No, not your programming,” he said, cutting her off. “You’re more than your programming. You have a choice. You can choose.”
“Then I choose family,” she said, and she cocked her. “I would always choose family.”
She said it so plainly, so unflinchingly. Diego tried not to think about the words being programmed into one of her subroutines. Taking her by the hand, he drew her further away and implored her. “But family isn’t even a choice,” he said. “It’s just what it is. And I can’t even see how we do you any good. I mean, we come and go as we please and expect you to be here on demand, never thinking about what you might be doing.”
The look she gave him was quizzical. “But what else could I be doing?” she asked, shaking her head. “Nothing of importance, at any rate.”
Diego exhaled, short and heavy. “You could do anything, Mom,” he said. “Everything.”
“But what else would I want?” she asked.
That was another thing without Mom. She was without wiles. Smart and intuitive, she knew how to dole out platitudes, but outright lying had never been permitted by her programming. In their restored timeline, there was no indication that she had been tampered with. And even if she had been, Diego knew her better than that. She would always tell Diego the truth. That inner conflict had nearly sent her into system failure before.
Which meant she was earnest about this. She meant what she said about family. She meant all of it.
Eyebrows drawn together, Diego shook his head, feeling moderately hopeless. “I don’t know.”
She squeeze his wrist, smiling at him kindly. “Diego,” she said softly. “You can write it off as programming. You can minimize it by calling it choice, like picking what dress to wear or what to make for dinner. Other people might look at it and call it fate or destiny. And I’m not stupid. I know that this family isn’t perfect. I know that I’m easy to overlook and take for granted. But family defines me, Diego. It gives me meaning. Without it, we’re just working parts. Only together are we more than the sum of those parts.”
It wasn’t an answer that surprised him, but he found his throat constricting. The pressure in his chest was there again, and he had to forcibly remind himself that he wasn’t underwater this time. He wasn’t drowning; shit, he couldn’t drown, even if he wanted to.
Sometimes, it felt like he wanted to.
“But you act like that’s the only sum,” he said. “Like there’s only one meaning. There are other things, Mom. So many other things.”
“But what could mean more than this?” she asked, and she gestured back to wear Five was sleeping now. “There’s nothing more important in life than caring for people and having them care for you in return.”
Diego’s face twisted and he shook his head. “But you’re brilliant, you’re good,” he said. “You could do things that other people -- normal people -- can’t. You could save lives, Mom. Lives outside the Academy.”
“We all have our place, dear,” she said. “I simply know mine is here. If I can save you, all of you, then I’m doing my part. True contentment is about knowing your place, darling.”
He let out his breath and blinked rapidly. “But -- isn’t that limiting? Don’t you ever think about that and just hate it? This part that someone else picked for you?”
At the question, she looked genuinely surprised. “Darling, I thought you more than the others would understand how I feel about this,” she said. She tipped her head, eyes locked on his imploringly. “This life, this responsibility -- it doesn’t matter why. All I know is that it’s the best thing ever.”
It would be impossible to disagree with her. She was so authentic, so real. For an android, she was the most human person in the whole damn Hargreeves family.
Also, he loved her.
With a sigh, he cast a long glance over Mom’s shoulder to the bed where Five was resting. “He’s really going to be okay?”
She had already told him as much, but Diego needed to hear it again. Mom, unlike his father, was indulgent. She smiled sweetly. “We need to monitor his breathing for a day, but there is every indication that he is completely fine.”
Diego let his gaze linger on his brother a moment longer, trying not to think how close they’d come. Trying not to think that as much as Diego fumbled to understand family, Five probably understood it implicitly, no calculations required.
Mom lifted a hand to cup his face, bringing his eyes back to her. “Diego, I promise,” she said. “I’ll stay here and make sure. You go back and rest. You look exhausted.”
He leaned into her touch, the smile tugging on his lips. “I am pretty tired.”
“So you rest, darling,” she said, almost cooing the words now. “Don’t worry about anything for now.”
He didn’t know how to follow that advice, but for the life of him, Diego didn’t have the heart to disagree.
-o-
That was how Diego ended up back in his room. His clothing was still damp, and he could feel the pull of exhaustion in his suddenly sore muscles. It was nearly dawn, and Diego was used to pulling all-nighters, but there was no solace in rest now. He stripped down, putting on some clean, dry clothes, before tossing the soiled uniformed into a pile on the floor. The mask was gone; he’d lost it in the melee of their escape.
His knives were at the bottom of the river. Idly, he thought about retrieving them. If he really could hold his breath indefinitely, then it wouldn’t be that hard.
He sat down on the bed with a sigh. The knives didn’t matter. His newfound ability mattered less. Rubbing a weary hand over his wet tufts of hair, he looked around his room. His eyes came to rest on the police radio.
Out of habit, he got up, crossing over to switch it on. It crackled to life, and Diego stood there, listening as the calls came in. Traffic stops; welfare checks. A domestic dispute. There was a convenience store robbery with a suspect on the run.
Instead of feeling compelled to help, Diego felt achingly useless.
All these problems he could solve.
Just so he wouldn’t have to solve his own.
That was the thing, wasn’t it?
Shit, could he still pretend like it wasn’t?
Diego wanted to save people, save everyone -- the whole damn world -- so that he didn’t have to look at himself. It was selfish in its own way; Patch had seen it and not been able to abide it. She’d seen that for as much as he wanted to do the right thing, he’d only wanted it on his terms.
Because it was an act when you got right down to it. Diego knew -- he had to know -- that he would let the bad guys go if it meant saving her. If he could bring her back -- shit, he’d open the prison doors and let them all go.
Because you had to value the people.
Saving the world started with saving the ones closest to you.
He needed to stop.
God help him, he just needed to stop.
He needed to stop with the mask and the outfit. He needed to stop with the knife and the midnight runs. He needed to stop with the job, the all-encompassing job.
He needed to stop with the damn police radio.
Because there were actual people at stake here. He’d been too late to save Patch, but he wasn’t too late to reconcile with his family. They were messed up and they drove him crazy, but they were a part of him. The old man had missed the mark with the Umbrella Academy because he didn’t focus on the people, because he thought the concept of family was merely a tool that often proved inconvenient. That was why it failed the first time.
It would fail again if Diego made the same mistake.
To think, all this time he’d been angry at Luther for being like their Dad, and here he was, making the old man’s mistakes all over again.
Fingers trembling, he turned off the police scanner.
In the looming silence, he listened to the sound of his own breathing fill the void.
-o-
Diego laid down, he even closed his eyes. It was entirely possible that he slept, sometime after dawn and before the first signs of life started to stir in the mansion. But when Diego sat up in bed, he was hardly rested at all.
He had never been less ready to face the day.
Because today his family would ask the questions.
And today he would be expected to give real answers.
He wanted to run away from that. After all, cutting and running was sort of his thing. It was an option that was certainly on the table, but call it fate, call it duty, call it obligation.
Diego knew it could only be called family today.
-o-
Despite his commitment to seeing this through, he was still the last one up.
Correction, he was the second to last one up.
Five, still recovering from his injuries, was still holed up in bed with Mom at his side by the time Diego came down. The others, however, were gathered in the living room.
Luther was pacing back and forth anxiously. Allison was perched on a chair nearby, looking like she wanted to comfort Luther but didn’t know how. Klaus was eating a pack of Hostess donuts while Ben sat on the couch next to him, chewing his lip. Vanya was seated at one of the bar stools. When Diego entered, she was the first one to meet his gaze.
The fact that she looked worried and not pissed only made Diego feel worse.
“Look,” he said, before anyone could speak. “About last night--”
Luther stopped pacing, turned around to face Diego. “Yeah, about last night--”
Diego held up his hands. “I can explain. I can--”
“We’re just glad you’re okay,” Allison said. “Luther said how close it was.”
Diego’s mouth hung open in surprise. He looked from Allison back to Luther.
Luther’s look back was earnest. “I told them about your new power.”
“That’s crazy lucky,” Klaus said. “And don’t worry. I’m all about exploring new powers.”
“Me, too,” Vanya added sympathetically. “I mean, it seems weird, but it’s not so weird when you think about it. There would be no way for Dad to know everything about us.”
“Not even our old man would be so sadistic as to suffocate us just to know for sure,” Klaus said.
“And we just talked to Mom,” Ben added softly. “Five’s still resting, but his breathing is better.”
“He’s sore as hell though,” Klaus quipped.
“He wasn’t breathing,” Luther shot back, a touch defensive. He bobbed his head toward Diego. “Diego did what he had to do.”
“We know that,” Allison said, and she smiled warmly. “We’re relieved. We’re just really relieved.”
Diego stared at them, not sure what to say. They seemed sincere in their wishes, but Diego couldn’t quite fathom it. He had snuck out without telling them, taking Five with him. The job had barely been salvaged but not without direct links to the family and Diego himself. Five’s life had nearly been lost in the process, and the only reason Five was alive was because he called for backup himself. Five’s quick thinking and Luther’s quick action had saved Diego from facing them this morning with a disaster that could not be salvaged.
As it was, it was still a disaster, and he couldn’t understand why no one was calling him on it.
Except, maybe he could.
Because family.
“We have questions, sure,” Luther said. “But we’ll get there.”
“We need to eat, get our bearings,” Klaus said. “And mostly eat. Is anyone else hungry?”
Ben rolled his eyes. Vanya got up and crossed over to Diego. “What happened to Five,” she said quietly. “You should know it wasn’t your fault.”
Diego’s breath caught in his throat
She reached out and squeezed his arm. “None of this was your fault.”
It would have been easier if she was lying to save face, but Vanya wasn’t Allison. It wouldn’t matter anyway, Allison was still looking at Diego in complete agreement. Luther, Klaus and Ben -- they were all on the same page.
“We’ll figure it out,” Luther promised him. “We’ll figure it out together.”
Diego wasn’t one to follow, and he sure as hell wasn’t one to take orders, but this morning, he found that all he could do was agree.
-o-
Numbly, Diego found himself in the kitchen. The others had directed him here, ordering him to eat something. It wasn’t clear to him if they had already eaten or not, but the thought to ask them didn’t occur to him until much later.
Standing there, he stared at the full shelves of food, but he couldn’t think about breakfast.
All he could think about was what his siblings were doing.
Sitting with Five?
Going over his condition with Mom?
They should have been talking about Diego behind his back, but that wasn’t how this worked. At least, it wasn’t how it worked anymore. Family had become something more than a burden to them. Family had become a critical part of how they functioned. Maybe Diego had understood that for awhile, but he’d failed to grasp the implications.
He’d failed a lot of things recently.
He was still standing there, like the idiot he was, when there was a noise behind him. He turned abruptly, ready to face the shit his siblings had to offer. When he saw Pogo, he practically deflated.
“Oh,” he said. “It’s just you.”
Pogo gave him a curious look. Leaning heavily against his cane, it was hard to tell if this was just what he expected from Diego or if he was officially too tired for this shit. “Good to see you, too, Master Diego,” he said. Then, with an airy tone, he continued. “I hear you had quite the eventful night. I am quite glad that you and Master Five have returned with minimal harm.”
That was the long way of saying it. Diego shook his head. “Yeah, well, whatever,” he said. He was being unfairly dismissive, but Diego was tired, too. He went over to the shelf and picked up a box of cereal for the lack of something better to do. He wasn’t hungry, and he didn’t much like cereal, but he needed something to do so he didn’t have to look at Pogo. “Things are never easy when the Umbrella Academy is involved.”
Pogo came farther into his room with his uneven cadence. “I thought the Umbrella Academy had not fully formed again,” he said. “At least, that was my understanding of your recent objections.”
Diego gritted his teeth, getting a bowl out with a clatter. “The Umbrella Academy has never had to be a thing to attract trouble,” he muttered. He opened the fridge, reaching for the milk. “It just sort of happens.”
It was as much a deflective strategy as it was the truth. Pogo rested heavily on his cane again. “All the same,” he said. “If there is anything I can do for you--”
“Yeah, yeah,” Diego muttered, pouring the milk over the cereal. “I’ll let you know.”
Pogo wasn’t stupid; he knew when he wasn’t wanted. Unlike the rest of the freaks in this family, he was actually willing to leave things at that. As Diego rustled up a spoon, he started on his way back out of the kitchen.
It was a second later that Diego realized two things.
First, he hated milk on cereal.
And second, more pressingly, he did need something from Pogo. “Wait,” he said, wheeling back around. “There is one thing you could do actually.”
Pogo turned back, a bit laboriously, but he didn’t look put out. “And what is that, my dear boy?”
There was no way to say it except to say it, and for all that he dreaded telling his siblings the full details, he accepted the inevitability where Pogo was involved. At least he knew Pogo wouldn’t be prone to nosy questions.
And besides, this was Pogo. Pogo was a genetically modified monkey who had literally been a butler all of Diego’s life. Sure, Pogo was smart as hell and had been more fatherly than the old man had ever been, but it was still Pogo. Diego had an overly developed sense of pride, but Pogo wasn’t ranked with a number and he hadn’t been the one doling out the numbers, so there was nothing to prove there.
“Just a heads up, you’re probably going to get a phone call from the tenants at the old place Dad used to do weapons training,” he said. “The one by the river.”
Pogo placed both hands on the cane, looking curious once more. “However can you know that? Not one of you has looked into the full scale of properties left to you in your father’s will. I had assumed you to be indifferent.”
“I was. I am,” Diego said, fumbling somewhat. He shook his head. “Five and I were over there last night. Someone had broken in, staged an attack.”
Pogo didn’t look surprised. “Yes, I had heard something about that,” he said. “The police contacted me about the matter, seeing as we are the owners.”
Diego collected a breath. “Well, I don’t know what they told you, but it probably wasn’t the full story.”
“The family didn’t see anything, as it were,” Pogo said. He narrowed his eyes. “But the explosive device had been miraculously disarmed.”
Diego reddened despite himself. “I wish I could say it was a happy ending. The armory downstairs was cleared out.”
Pogo looked grave. “And how does this relate to a phone call I will be receiving?”
“It’s not about the weapons; we made sure that no one knows about that,” Diego said. “But Five and I, the family saw us. We didn’t think that the publicity of us being there would do any good. Five offered them reduced rent in exchange for their silence.”
Pogo’s mouth twisted into a grim sort of smile. “I would like to say that I’m surprised, but I must admit, it seems to fit a recent pattern I’ve noticed.”
Diego’s defenses flared; now Pogo was going to criticize his nighttime exploits, too?
But Pogo continued. “There have been some troubling disturbances in your father’s vast portfolio.”
Still primed to defend himself, Diego was caught off guard by that telling omission. “Wait. Portfolio?”
It was always a bit frustrating to Diego how composed Pogo was. Sure, he didn’t feel the need to compete with the butler, but it would be nice if he didn’t always feel like he was one step behind. Diego hated a lot of things, but condescension was one of the worst.
It was the way he felt every time someone had the audacity to call him Number Two.
Pogo, however, was the epitome of professionalism. Diego’s triggers aside, he knew that Pogo wasn’t trying to piss him off. Sometimes, Diego had to admit, it really was in his head.
Just sometimes.
And never when Luther was concerned.
“Yes,” Pogo said easily. “Your father had extensive holdings and investments. His assets are spread into many industries and properties throughout the city. All of this information is available to you and your siblings, but only Master Luther showed any interest. However, I think the task proved too emotional. He didn’t get very far.”
His desire to make a snide comment about Luther was overwhelmed by growing trepidation in the pit of his stomach. He was still standing face to face with the crazy dude in the basement and entering his own birthday to disarm a bomb. “What sort of disturbances?”
There was no way to be nonchalant about that kind of question, and Diego was well past playing cool.
Pogo took note. “Blips on the security radar, most of the time, but nothing that amounts to anything. Some unusual inquiries as to our holdings,” he explained. “Taken separately, they would be non-events, but the cumulative effect seems to suggest that someone out there is testing the waters, so to speak.”
It wasn’t intended to be a pun -- Pogo wasn’t like that -- but Diego still forced himself to swallow. And breathe. Why the hell wasn’t he breathing? “Someone?” he asked, unable to keep his voice from sounding strained.
Pogo inclined his head sympathetically. “I have tracked it with some care,” he said. “I have come up with nothing conclusive.”
That was the polite and proper way of saying it, but Diego was past the point of giving a shit about the formalities. This wasn’t about what was probable. With this family, it never had been. He shook his head. “But you still think that has something to do with the family.”
Pogo’s expression was wry. “With this family, there is always something. Given your exploits last night, I trust that you will take the investigation to the next level. With your siblings, I can assume.”
The implication was clear, and Diego thinned his lips. “Yeah, I’ll tell them,” he said. “They want to wait until Five wakes up.”
That was a point Pogo didn’t argue. “Very well, then,” he said. “If you would like to know more detail about my other accounts of interference, I have copious notes. You need only ask.”
Pogo was being nice, but Diego wasn’t inclined toward charity. He also wasn’t inclined to see the good in people. That was one of the reasons he and Patch had argued so damn much. She always believed a sob story; Diego just thought that people were inherently assholes. “Why didn’t you tell us sooner? If you suspected something. You should have told us.”
The accusation grew more vehement, and Diego felt himself take a step forward.
Pogo was not intimidated. “I have been fully transparent about your father’s business affairs, but interest in said holdings has been slim. You, in particular, Master Diego, respond to any comment about your father’s estate with vitriol. Besides, you seem especially keen to practice purposeful omissions.”
“Hey!” Diego said. “I only keep secrets that don’t matter.”
Pogo tipped his head again. “Indeed,” he said. “I am quite relieved that you and Master Five are back in one piece this morning.”
It wasn’t that Pogo was a monkey; it was that he was the damn butler. And here he was, deflating Diego’s pride with a passive-aggressive musing. He stepped back, retreating just a little. “It’s just part of the job,” he said, almost by rote. It was a reflex.
Pogo didn’t disagree. Diego clenched his jaw; that just made it worse. “Anyway,” Pogo said, hobbling toward the door again. “I will make the rent adjustments as necessary.”
“Thank you,” Diego said. Because he wasn’t mad at Pogo. And Pogo hadn’t actually done anything to him. And also Diego could only assume people were all assholes because he knew how easy it was for him to be one. “It’s just been, uh, a long night.”
Pogo smiled graciously from the doorway. “Your father expressed it in his own way, but he did believe that family was the one thing worth any sacrifice. Sometimes, worthy every sacrifice.”
Diego shook his head, jaw still tight. “Dad was a bastard.”
“Yes,” Pogo said. “But that didn’t mean he was always wrong.”
Diego had no reply as Pogo limped out of the room. He heard the cane plod down the hallway and out of earshot. Turning back to the counter, Diego sighed. He picked up the bowl and dumped the soggy cereal into the sink.
Shit, he thought as he closed his eyes and braced himself on the counter. This was going to be a long day.
-o-
One might think that having a gaggle of supportive siblings might make it easier. That having Luther pat his shoulder and Allison squeeze his hand would be encouraging. Or that having Klaus offer him a chocolate bar would be endearing. Or, you know, that having Ben smile at him and Vanya say, “It wasn’t your fault” would be reassuring.
One might think that.
They would all be wrong.
If anything, Diego found the vigil awkward, as they cycled through Five’s room and milled about the hallway. It was stupid that they didn’t want to talk about it. It was so damn idiotic that all this shit had gone down and they were standing there, doing nothing.
“Family comes first,” Luther had said, and they had all agreed. All of them.
It wasn’t like Diego wanted to talk about it -- any of it -- but not talking about it wasn’t exactly helping things.
Diego was a man of action.
Anything else was tedious.
But he couldn’t forget that this was, in some ways, his fault. It had been his job, and Five had forced his way on, but if Diego was serious about being a leader in this family, then he had to own this shit.
So he held his tongue and waited with the rest of them. It was like Pogo said. This was, no matter how much Diego resented it, for family.
Maybe, someday, they would understand the level of sacrifice.
-o-
Five woke up in the morning, but between Mom’s careful ministrations and the line of siblings who wanted one on one time, Diego had to wait until almost lunch time to finally talk to his brother. It was with some relief, he noted, that Five looked hardly any worse for wear. Pale and tired, sure, but he looked as perturbed as Diego felt.
“You haven’t told them,” he said before Diego could even sit down. Mom had barely managed to close the door behind him to shoo the others off to lunch. Five’s garbled voice only served to make him sound more intense. “Why haven’t you told them?”
Diego sat down and tried not to show how happy he was that Five hadn’t told them first. True, that would probably be easier if Five did tell the story, but Five wouldn’t know how to express the details in the most effective way.
In other words, Five would throw Diego under the bus.
Still, Diego played the defensive because he wasn’t going to be out-talked by someone who looked like a 13 year old. “I tried to tell them,” he said. “But they were all worried about you and didn’t want to talk business. I told you. They’re not ready for the job.”
“But this isn’t the job,” Five said caustically. He drew his brows together in frustration. “This is family now. You need to explain that to them.”
“They don’t want to hear it,” Diego said. “I was right all along.”
Five rolled his eyes, settling back with a dramatic huff on his fluffed pillows. “Spare me your grandstanding,” he said. “You can enjoy the fact that you’re right about something without missing the fact that you’re still wrong.”
“Oh, whatever,” Diego said.
“I’m serious, Diego,” Five said. “You can’t neglect the family.”
“But they neglect me!” Diego protested. “Why do you all keep overlooking that? All this talk about needs and wants -- but what about me? No one gives a shit about me.”
“I may look like a child, but you sound like one,” Five said pointedly. “And you’re still willfully obfuscating the point.”
“What, that you drowned last night?” Diego asked.
“No,” Five said. “That this is now family business. They need to know. Everything. Even the parts you didn’t tell me yet.”
“How do you--”
Five leveled him with a glare. “Because I’m not an idiot,” he said. He drew a breath and let it out with a wince. “Also, you shouldn’t argue with me. My chest hurts like hell.”
“What about your throat?” Diego asked. “You sound terrible.”
“Because I spent 30 minutes hacking up water this morning,” he said curtly. “And Mom says you didn’t break my ribs, but it sure as hell feels like it.”
“Well, sorry,” Diego muttered. “Next time I’ll consider not saving your life.”
“You did,” Five snapped at him. “By not calling for backup. We need to go over this whole case, from start to finish, the whole family, right now.”
“Just ease up, okay?” Diego said, holding out his hands to placate his brother. “You’re supposed to be recovering, okay? That’s why they want to wait. That’s why they need to wait. That’s what we’re about, right? What they need?”
Five groaned. “I thought Luther was the literal one, but you lack serious imagination sometimes,” he said. “There’s a difference between needs and wants. Where family is involved, we allow some indulgences with wants. And we never ignore a need. They want to give me time, but what they need is the full story. Then you’ll see the Umbrella Academy come together just like you want.”
Five said it convincingly, but Diego had said lots of shit convincingly. He shook his head. “You’re overestimating them.”
“And you’re underestimating your own need for them,” Five said.
Diego sat up straighter, his defenses flaring. “I don’t need anybody.”
“I thought that way once,” he said. He pursed his lips. “Then I ended up in the apocalypse and learned what is it be wrong the hard way.”
Diego sighed, slumping back. “It’s not the same thing.”
“No, but the results are the same,” Five said. He narrowed his gaze and sat up a little more. “You want to know why I indulge them? You want to know why I’m okay with waiting for them to come around while they explore their hobbies?”
Diego lifted his shoulder with a weak shrug.
“Because,” Five said. “I spent 30 years with nothing but time to look back and think about all the time I wasted. I had 30 years to regret the games I didn’t play. I had 30 years to think about the jokes I never bothered to laugh at. I get it, it’s mundane sometimes, what the others want to do. It can feel like a waste of time. But that’s the point. When you have time to waste, then waste it well. Or you end up with nothing. I’ve been there, Diego. And I promised myself that I wouldn’t go back.”
It was more than he’d expected; more than he quite knew what to do with. “This isn’t the apocalypse, Five,” Diego said.
“Exactly,” Five said. “When the stakes are low, then we have to let people be happy. Because the stakes will not always be low. As our job last night proved.”
But Five made it too easy. He made it too black and white. “I can do this on my own if I have to.”
Five made a face. “No, you can’t,” he said. “I couldn’t do it by myself, so why would you be able to?”
“Because I’m not you,” Diego snapped back. “I’m more than capable--”
“Of letting me drown?” Five asked. He cocked his head. “Because if Luther hadn’t showed up….”
Diego’s chest ached and his eyes burned. “That’s not fair.”
“I know,” Five said. “And I’m not blaming you for that. But I will blame you if you don’t tell them the truth now.”
With a sigh, Diego shook his head yet again. “But they don’t want to know.”
“And that was fine before,” Five said. “But now they need to know.”
“They’ve been so self absorbed all this time,” Diego argued. “What changes now?”
Five was intent. He was unrelenting. “Now, it’s family. I don’t know why that’s so hard for you to grasp. Are you really that petty? Since they told you no when it didn’t matter, you won’t accept their yes now that it does?”
“It’s not petty,” Diego said, hating how petty he sounded. He furrowed his eyebrows. “But if they want to waste time, then I’ve got better things to do.”
When Five gathered another breath, the weariness on his face betrayed his youthful countenance. “Look, those 30 years I spent in the apocalypse, do you know why they were so bad?”
Diego didn’t humor him with a response, not even a stiff shrug.
Five was indifferent. “It wasn’t just the hunger or the death. It wasn’t even the loneliness or the endless equations I couldn’t solve,” he said. “It was the knowledge that I had wasted the time that mattered. I had ignored the help when I had it offered to me. I had undervalued the importance of family because I thought I was too smart, too fast, too good. The worst part was sitting there, thinking about how much I took the family for granted. That was how I came to the conclusion that I would sacrifice anything to get back to you all. Anything.”
Diego couldn’t bring himself to say anything.
What the hell could he say?
That he was sorry?
That he was wrong?
That he was tired of not knowing what he was?
“So I know how hard it is, Diego,” he said. “So believe me when I say that these last few months haven’t been a waste. But the next ones will if we don’t act now.”
Diego was out of defenses. He was out of excuses. He was out of time.
He was just out.
“Fine,” he said, hands up in the air. “But I promise you, they’re not going to want to hear it.”
“That’s your job now, then,” Five said. “To make them listen.
-o-
That job was shit, by the way.
It was absolute shit.
Five knew it, too. Bastard was all sick and laid up in bed so he couldn’t take the point. No, he had to have Diego do it. Because his chest hurt. Because he was still recovering.
Little prick was a coward, that was what it was. Mom wouldn’t even clear him to come downstairs, which meant Diego had to do this on his own. That seemed typical, didn’t it?
Still, Diego was a man of action.
He wasn’t exactly a man of his word, but whatever.
If it was time to act, then Diego wasn’t a chicken. He’d act.
Staring at his gathered siblings in the living room, he reconsidered whether or not he still had time to get the hell out of here. He could run faster than his siblings; they’d never catch him.
He shook his head, keeping his focus.
He had to stay focused.
That was his thing, in the end. He kept his focus. He did the job.
Even when he didn’t want to.
Even when no one else wanted to.
“So,” he said because he was willing to do the hard stuff when no one else would. You could call him Number Two, but he still rose to the challenge every time. He was still the hero they needed, even if they didn’t want him. He held his head high, looking at them each in turn without shame. “We need to talk about last night.”
-o-
Diego hated it -- every damn word -- but he told the story in excruciating detail. He was tempted to gloss over some of the less savory bits, and he wanted to make light of the less appealing details, but if Five could drown in a car, then he could at least tell his siblings the truth about it.
He started with his side job, which is what he called it, the little excursions he took playing a hero. He was vaguely disappointed that none of them seemed surprised by this; he had been more confident in his stealth abilities than their non-response warranted.
The news of a hit on one of Dad’s properties, however, raised more than sufficient concern. Even Luther, who knew this part of the story, seemed to be on tenterhooks as Diego went over his assessment of the job -- with some credit to Five.
He was able to detail the scene upon arrival and how he and Five had carefully and thoroughly conducted a search of the grounds, starting with the hidden sub-basement. It wasn’t necessary to mention that Five had been the one to identify and open the sub-basement. Instead, Diego skipped to the part where he found and confronted the bad guy in the weapons cache by himself.
Of course, it would have been more heroic if he’d stopped the guy, but that wasn’t even the worst part. No, the worst part wasn’t telling his siblings that the guy made off with all the weapons. It was explaining that the guy seemed to know Diego.
Like, well.
Diego recounted the conversation as best he could. Every time he thought to skip over a few parts, he thought of Five going limp in the car from a lack of oxygen. The air pressure was throbbing in his own chest as he laid bare every detail he could remember.
Then, Diego got to tell them about the bomb.
They were all quite impressed that Five was now able to move so many people in such a short period of time. But when Diego explained how he guessed the bomb’s passcode with a single try, they were dumbstruck.
For the lack of something better to do, Diego finished the story, explaining their escape, their plan to bribe the family and ultimately the car that pushed them off the road. His siblings handled the revelation that he had another power -- to hold his breath, apparently -- with relative aplomb. Or, even if they didn’t, Diego didn’t give them a chance to question it. In a rush, he finished the story with Luther’s timely rescue and the small but possibly relevant note that the bad guy indicated his involvement in the mall attack and the personalized nature of the Highland attack suggested that the mall was the precursor and that the family was the target all along.
“For what?” Diego asked. “You got me. But I don’t think this guy is done with us yet.”
After that, he gave them a minute.
Or three.
He watched as they processed it, one horrifying detail after the next. There was a part of him -- a large part -- that wanted to circumvent the process, to tell them it was no big deal, that he had it all under control. He wanted to downplay it, minimize it. He didn’t want them to think he was standing here, asking for their help.
Except, he was, wasn’t he?
Standing there, he was spent. Physically, he hadn’t slept. He hadn’t eaten. And emotionally?
Well, he was so much worse off that way. While he grappled with the vestiges of his pride, he had to face the fact that he’d screwed up. That he’d chosen the job over the family. That he didn’t even know what the hell family was all about.
Here he was on solid ground and it still felt like he was drowning. It felt like he’d been drowning ever since he joined up with his family again. His whole damn life for what it was worth.
Do you sacrifice the family for the job?
Or do you sacrifice the job for the family?
And why did everyone else know how to answer that question except him.
No, that wasn’t true. Diego did know. He had always known. He just hated the answer, loathed it.
But here he was, staring it in the eye.
He could hold his breath forever, sure, but that didn’t mean he should.
“So?” Luther was the one to finally ask the questions. “What do you think we should do?”
That was ironic, then. That it would be Luther, Number One, asking him to step up and make the decision. It was painfully ironic, that question, now. All the times he had been so sure of the answer only to have it rejected. Now, he could give any answer he damn well pleased and he could see it, they’d agree. They’d agree because Five almost died last night, and they cared about family more than anything else.
How was it that they all got it? So much sooner than he did?
His pride fought the answer, but Diego believed in doing the right thing, even at great personal cost. That meant his pride would have to go.
“Nothing,” he said. “I think we do nothing.”
“Wait, nothing?” Allison asked, clearly taken aback. “You just laid out a case for our family being attacked, like actively attacked, and you want to do nothing?”
Diego took a breath. A slow, strong, measured breath. “We’re not ready to do anything,” he said. “Five’s still recovering; we’re still processing all this information. This isn’t about what I want. This is about what we need, our family needs. We’re not ready to charge out there. Part of me wishes that we were, but we’re not.”
Luther and Allison were gaping. Klaus looked as if he might be having a stroke. “So you’re, what?” he asked, truly confounded. “You, Diego, our headstrong Number Two, are asking for restraint?”
“I’m asking for common sense,” Diego said back. “We need to recover. We need to plan. We need to train.”
The others were vexed, but Ben was nodding along. “That’s what you do for family.”
Sometimes you willingly drowned.
Sometimes you showed up with no questions asked.
Sometimes you showed restraint.
Because family? Well, family was the job. The sacrifice could be anything.
Sometimes, it would be everything.
“So we lie low for now,” Diego said. “We figure this out.”
“It will give this guy time to make his next move,” Luther said, still skeptical.
“What if it strikes again?” Allison added.
Klaus gestured wildly. “Uh, and what if he succeeds? He bombed a mall! He nearly killed Five!”
Diego waved them off with a shake of his head. “And if he has time, we have time. Time to go through the research Pogo has collected. Time to build our leads. Time to work together, be a time.”
“Time to bring the Umbrella Academy back online,” Vanya said.
The quiet certainty in her voice was startling to him. He had thought about this as lying low, but she had followed it through to its natural conclusion. When she said it like that, it sounded like what Diego had wanted all along.
He shook his head again. “No,” he said. “Time to protect our family. Any discussion about the Umbrella Academy is one we’ll have another day.”
Luther straightened, and Allison drew her brows together decisively. Klaus settled back, placated somehow, and Ben was smiling. Vanya nodded for all of them. “Okay,” she agreed, because she was the only one with the voice that could really signal a consensus anymore. She wasn’t the leader; she wasn’t their comic relief; she wasn’t their moral center. She wasn’t a barometer of truth or the source of intellect. But she was the common thing in all of them, the unity that made them all special. Her eyes were kind; her eyes were sure. “That sounds like a plan.”
-o-
The plan wasn’t to bring the Umbrella Academy together.
The plan just involved all the possible steps needed to bring the Umbrella Academy together.
They gave it several days, of course. This was out of respect to Five, who was on forced bed rest until Mom officially cleared him. Even after that, everyone seemed hesitant, until Five finally got so annoyed at doing nothing that he insisted that training begin.
There was a part of Diego that thought that it was about damn time.
There was another part of Diego thought it was only a matter of time before something went wrong again.
Which part scared him more?
Well, time would probably tell whether Diego wanted it to or not.
-o-
It wasn’t his call to start with training.
Really, he wasn’t.
Diego knew how it would look, but it wasn’t even his idea. One day, after breakfast, a week after Five drowned, Vanya came downstairs and joined him.
“Have you seen Klaus yet?” she asked.
Diego was eating his eggs and drinking his juice. “Um, no,” he said. This wasn’t surprising. Klaus had irregular sleeping habits. No, Klaus had irregular habits across the board. Even now that he was sober. Maybe especially now that he was sober.
“Oh,” Vanya said, and she seemed a little disappointed. “He said he’d be here.”
Diego shrugged. “It’s Klaus. He’ll show up whenever.”
Vanya sighed, reaching for a box of cereal. “I know that, it’s just he said he’d be here,” she said again. “We, uh, had plans.”
Diego made a face. “You and Klaus?”
She wet her lips with a bit of hesitation. “And you.”
Now, Diego was surprised. “And me?”
“Well, we thought with your new power and all--”
Diego blushed out of reflex. He had always taken great pride in his powers. He had thrown anything and everything when he was a kid just so no one could forget how special he was. But this new power was one he wasn’t quite sure what to do with. He wasn’t sure of its viability. He wasn’t sure he wanted it.
And every time he thought about it, he remembered Five going limp right next to him.
By the time he got through that thought process, he had to force his lungs to work again.
“I’m not sure how useful it’ll be,” Diego said, keeping his tone neutral as he cut her off. “And I don’t need another skill in combat. I’m good.”
Vanya gave him a funny little look. “You don’t need it, maybe,” she said. “Just like I don’t need my powers. And like Klaus doesn’t need his. But if we don’t embrace them, we’re bound to be held back by them. Besides, who’s to say that learning how to use your power won’t help?”
“Since I plan on drowning often?” Diego quipped.
“Okay, on the surface, it does seem a little less than useful,” Vanya conceded. “But that’s all the more reason we have to explore it.”
That was a good argument, probably. Honestly, it was the kind of argument Diego probably would have made a week ago. He still found himself hesitant this morning. “I don’t know.”
“Well, I do,” Vanya said. “Eat a good breakfast, and then meet me in the library. I’ll round up Klaus and we’ll get started.”
She got up with that, moving toward the door without waiting for affirmation. “I can do it by myself, you don’t have to,” he said before she could leave. “I mean, you’re still figuring shit out for yourself.”
She turned back, and to his surprise, she was beaming. “I know,” she said. “That’s what makes it so perfect. We’ll figure it out together, right? You and me and Klaus?”
That sounded…
Well, Diego wasn’t sure how that sounded.
Thoughtfully, he nodded his head. “I guess so,” he agreed finally, watching as she left.
This wasn’t what he wanted, maybe.
He took another bite of eggs before washing it down with orange juice.
But maybe it was what he needed.
-o-
Or maybe not.
Diego had tried to be optimistic, but meeting up with Vanya and Klaus a short time later made his optimism fleeting. This was Vanya, after all. Who had never trained in her life.
Worse, this was Klaus.
Who had always found a way to make training fundamentally not useful.
It took 20 minutes just to convince Klaus that he had, in fact, agreed to train. It took another 10 for them to decide on what to do. After 30 minutes of nonsense, Diego agreed to whatever they suggested, and he only realized belatedly that training in a pool would have bad implications after he was changed into swim gear.
Because Diego could already swim, and neither Vanya or Klaus had any connection to water.
Which meant.
“No,” he said, crossing his arms at the side of the pool. He was trying to be a team player, like an actual team player, but he had his limits. “I’m not doing this.”
“That was what I said, but Vanya told me I didn’t have a choice,” Klaus said serenely from the pool deck. Their father had always had a pool in one of the buildings on site, but they had rarely used it. It was in surprisingly good condition, and Diego wondered how often Pogo paid for upkeep. “But I have to admit, this could be better than I thought.”
Klaus folded his arms under his head, lounging on one of the deck chairs. He was wearing a speedo with a bikini top that he must have swiped from Allison.
Vanya rolled her eyes. “I get it, it’s not the most pleasant way to go about this,” she said, sounding sorry. In contrast to Klaus, she was wearing trunks and a rash guard. “But before we can figure out what to do with your power, we have to know what it is. We have to see what you can actually do.”
“By drowning me?” Diego asked pointedly.
“Baptism by fire,” Klaus quipped. Then, he chuckled. “Or, you know, with water.”
Diego did his best not to glare at his brother.
Vanya, though the most powerful among them now, was still a natural peacekeeper. “We thought about having Mom run some tests or something, but the results would be hard to interpret,” sh said. “I still can’t believe it’s been a week and you haven’t tried this yourself.”
Diego closed his mouth. He’d spent the last week trying to remember how to breath, not how not to.
“No kidding!” Klaus said, and he opened his eyes now. “I would have thought you’d be excited. Telling us what happened, you led with all these other details and not the part where you don’t need to breathe!”
Vanya looked a little skeptical, but ultimately she nodded in agreement. “It is kind of a big development.”
“It’s not that big of a development,” Diego said. “I mean, it doesn’t impact the case at all.”
“But it impacts us,” Vanya said. She tipped her head to the side. “The family.”
Vanya didn’t seem the type for emotional manipulation, so he gave her the benefit of the doubt. She was sincere.
Which just made it worse.
For all that Diego hated this, everything about this, there was no way he could deny her now. “Fine,” he said with as much grace as he could muster. It wasn’t much. “But I still think this is a bad way to go about it.”
“It’s unconventional,” Vanya said gently.
“No, it’s bad,” Diego said. He pointed at the pool, mildly incredulous. “You want to drown me!”
“That is untrue,” Klaus interjected from his seat. “Because, if we’re right, then we can’t drown you!”
Vanya gathered herself before Diego could contemplate throttling Klaus. He wished he strapped on a knife under his wetsuit. Yes, he was wearing a wetsuit. The lycra in his getup doubled for underwater work because Diego was prepared for shit.
“We considered less dramatic methods, but they would all be too easy to tamper with,” she said. “If you just hold your breath, you might panic and take a breath just out of reflex. Or, who knows, maybe your breathing rate would be so depressed that we wouldn’t notice.”
“Well, if I go underwater, how is that any different?” Diego asked. “I’ll just surface when it gets to be too much.”
Vanya looked even more sorry now, casting a worried glance at Klaus.
Klaus held up his arms. “I’m not going to tell him!”
Diego narrowed his eyes at Vanya. “Not tell me what.”
“Well, we were going to weight you down so you couldn’t surface,” she said with a wince. “Dad had all those free weights and there’s rope--”
“Whoa!” Diego said, gawking a bit now. “You really are going to drown me!”
“But you can’t drown, so not really,” Klaus said. “Honestly, and people say I’m the dramatic one.”
Diego was not amused. “All we know is that I didn’t drown once.”
“Which is why we need to test it again,” Vanya said, as reasonable as ever. “We’re going to be right here, in the water with you. If something goes wrong, we’ll get you out right away. That’s why we’re doing this together. We have your back, one hundred percent.”
Diego couldn’t help but be skeptical. Considering that they were talking about tying weights to him and throwing him in the deep end, he was probably entitled this. “The drug addict and the girl with uncontrolled powers at my back,” he said. “No offense, but I’m not sure that makes me feel a whole lot better.”
Klaus sighed, increasingly melodramatic. “It’s just training. All you have to do is try,” he said. “That’s what you always say, right? What you’ve been telling us all this time? That we have to confront our powers sooner or later, right?”
Well, shit. Leave it to Klaus to listen to that much -- and worse, to remember it at the exact moment to leverage against him.
Diego closed his eyes and muttered a curse again.
This was what he had wanted.
And, now, apparently it was what he needed.
How the hell was he supposed to fight that?
Wearily, he opened his eyes. “Fine,” he said. “But I swear to God, if you let me drown--”
Vanya held up her hands. “We won’t, we won’t.”
“But hey, if we do,” Klaus said. “At least you know I’ll be able to conjure you, no problem.”
Diego glared.
“He’s joking,” Vanya said. She glared at Klaus, too. “He’s joking.”
“Yeah,” Diego muttered. The resolve was there, that ache in his chest. He took a deep breath and nodded. “Yeah.”
-o-
Vanya had a whole order of tests to run, but they really only needed one.
Because Diego knew, the moment he went under, he didn’t have to surface again.
He knew that he could hold his breath indefinitely, forever.
He knew because he realized, he finally realized, that he’d been holding his breath all along.
The water just gave him a valid reason.