InsaneJournal

It was a grey November morning, and Diego was out running. He’d left a note for Isabela, but given the past week of insanity with the festival and the wedding, he wouldn’t have been surprised if he came home before she even woke up. Diego’s sleep schedule had always been weird, dating back to the Umbrella Academy and training that could happen at any hour, to his life as a vigilante patrolling the streets until the wee hours of the morning when he’d collapse into bed for a few hours before people started coming into the gym.. Now, with his life as solid and sure and good as it had ever been, he still had the habit of waking up at odd hours. Especially today. There was something in the air, he woke up with a sharp exhale and drawing a knife to throw convinced there was someone in the room.

So he ran. It was quiet and brisk, Diego’s own breath and feet on the ground the only sound around, which suited him just fine. Music was distracting and took the focus away from the surroundings.

Which was how he saw the man with the black umbrella appear out of literally, fucking no where.

It was stupid to say Diego knew that silhouette because from a distance, it was just a man holding a black umbrella, but he did. The black umbrella was tattooed on his arm when he was a kid and he dug his nails so hard into his palm so he wouldn’t faint that it bled. He followed it around like a goddamn dog, they were the fucking Umbrella Academy, he saw it in a recording of JFK’s assassination. He hated himself for the instant stomach churning fear he felt and stomped on it with anger instead. There was nothing to be scared of. But there was a hell of a lot he could be angry about, and Diego used that as fuel to push himself to follow the man with the black umbrella. Tormentor of their childhoods. Asshole of the century. Reginald Hargreeves.

Not for himself, of course, he didn’t give a fuck. But for Allison and Claire, and Ben, and Jesus Christ, for Vanya. Diego gave a fuck about them, and if anyone was going to run into Reginald Hargreeves first, it was going to be him. He was going to stare their father in the face and say exactly what he thought of him not that you could the last time his brain ever so fucking helpfully provided, along with a flash of a memory that only sort of belonged to him. Sitting at a round table with the family, in the past, their father who isn’t their father yet but somehow has the same evaluating weighing stare that Diego remembered as a kid. The one that said he didn’t measure up, that he’ll never measure up. And once again, Diego’s words getting caught in his throat until he felt like he’d choke on them.

There was a logical part of Diego (okay, it’s small, but it exists) that knew this was a terrible idea. It was too early, he was alone, he couldn't think straight when it came to his dad. He should have picked up his phone and called his siblings or the people in his small, tight circle. But what would he have said? Pretty sure I just saw Dad, might be in jail because I stabbed him, bring bail money. Yeah. It sounded stupid even to him.

He caught another glimpse of the black umbrella--his father going down an alleyway and that settled it for Diego. Reginald Hargreeves was surprisingly fast and notoriously difficult to find when he didn’t want to be, probably thanks to conspiring to assassinate the President and all.. The thought of one of Diego’s siblings running into him first, or Claire, or him showing up at the Underground, or Jesus Christ, at their apartment, and upending Diego’s entire life had him running down the street, in hot pursuit of a man who seemed to disappear and reappear over and over again.

Or Diego was just fucking losing it. Either way.

He came to a sliding stop in the alleyway, and had to do a slow 360 spin to look around because there was no one there. Right, great, he really was fucking losing it. Awesome. He bent over, hands on his knees to actually breathe instead of the shallow pants he had been doing. But when Diego stood up, he was face to face with Reginald Hargreeves, who jammed a knife into his gut.

It was the second time he’d been shanked by his father, he thought. What a fucking cheater.

“Number Two,” Reginald said, in that clipped, sharp, cutting tone that had Diego’s lip curling on instinct alone. “Forever disappointing and falling short of any kind of worth. A pathetic salmon perpetually swimming against the current to prove your value and earn affection, a task in which those around you will realize your ineptitude and failure long before you do. The sad reality is that you’re a desperate man tragically unaware of his own insignificance.”

Diego’s throat constricted, the beginning of a word coming out. “S-” he cut it off before it could become a stuttering mess, Grace’s advice to picture the word in his head impossible, because he didn’t have the words. A goddamn adult face to face with the father who had treated his childhood like some sort of experiment, and he was rendered speechless.

The edges of Reginald’s body were out of focus, blurry. He was transparent, and then, gone.

And Diego was left to bleed out on the concrete.




No, wait, he wasn’t.

He was still standing, alone, in an alleyway. No blood, no injury. No Reginald Hargreeves.

Just the phantom pain of a physical wound that was more memory than real, and the sound of his own heartbeat in his ears.