Chapter Text
You act as if I couldn’t understand.
To walk into the Hargreeves manor was to be swallowed whole.
It was to put foot after foot after foot in front of the other and willingly, and repeatedly bring yourself into the needle-sharp teeth of a particularly vile monster. It was to be crushed, to be grounded into dust between the molars of a socially acceptable smile.
It was to be taken in hopeful, and spat out broken and golden crowned, and be told that you were one of the lucky ones.
How could you ever understand?
Make me understand.
It was to throw yourself back into the dark abyss that you’d crawled out of, to bottom out hope and grief, and find out that there was so much more of it. It was to claw yourself open with dull bloody fingernails and claim yourself part of the Umbrella Academy.
It was to be welcomed home to a house that never existed as one, to cover yourself in comic book ink until you wore it like leather, and to believe it’d protect you until it didn’t. It was to cut your hands and scar your knees and learn to ration food in preparation for an apocalypse that only ever happened on pages.
I carry my own baggage and I’ve shared that with you. I am strong enough to carry part of yours and I want to.
To be here was to be wrong and to know it. To be so unwanted and so stolen that there was nowhere else to be. It was to turn his back on all his strong-willed and biting words that he had left on the floor as he left.
It was to dip his hands into black and leather, and blood, and to be a stuttered witness to a slow kind of internal damnation because the manor was many things, real and fake, but it had never functioned as a house, or an escape, or home.
Just explain what you’re afraid of and talk to me. I can help you through it, just help me understand.
He never felt lucky.
Like those kids and their golden tickets, it was not a wonderland behind the Hargreeves’ doors and no one believed otherwise unless they lived it.
Why would I ever do that to you? I love you, Eudora.
The Hargreeves manor was an eldritch monster, dormant in its sleep with padlocked teeth and to step inside was to be devoured under the grind of plaqued horror. It was to be engulfed in a past not worth remembering, that lingered and followed, and left scars that were never going away.
He knew where he was fucked up. He knew it in the ache of long since healed broken fingers, in the pulse of the scar on his head. He knew how it happened, and by whose hands.
He could not fix it.
It was to be engulfed in a lifetime of carrying the name of a monster that was called charming, and eccentric, and brilliant, and being told that he was so, so lucky to have lived crushed in between those teeth, to be chewed up and spat back out.
Reginald Hargreeves was a monster. He was a creator, and a visionary, and a monster inside of a monster. He sliced with a deft hand, a blunt instrument, and he took apart orphan kids and built them into the sick, damaged images that he wanted. He was not a man, he was a thing.
I’m not doing this.
Is this about Ben? It wasn’t your fault what-
I’m not doing this with you, Eudora.
It was the push and pull, and all the childhood abuse at the hands of a man that wasn’t just a creator, inventor, monster but insane, and paranoid, and a recluse. It was all the abuse that had been varied and different for all of them, and horrible. The Hargreeves manor had burnt like brand into the skin and bled into the present just by proximity.
Then when are you going to? I’m trying to help you.
I don’t need your help!
To be back at those teeth felt like ripping open unhealed wounds.
It was not a burden to bear alone, but each of them did.
Diego, where are you going?
It echoed heavy in their footsteps.
Diego, what are you doing with that knife? You put that vigilante stuff behind you.
It echoed in their shoulders.
It echoed in the way that Eudora had said, if you walk out that door than this is over between us, Diego.
It echoed in the way that he left.
Diego breathed in.
He forced his lungs to expand against the rock in his chest and held the breath, sinking down into the seat of his police issued vehicle. He needled absently at a seam in the seat with the dull end of a knife, watching from across the street as the monster slept.
To take a step towards it would chance waking it, so he didn’t. He waited.
The manor stretched across an entire city block, overran with weeds and decrepit, as ancient in the town’s settlement as it was cemented in local lore. It’s big and empty windows sunk back into the brick face, dead eyes to a world it was not looking at. The sidewalks cracked into a smile, mocking him. Calling him a coward.
There were monsters inside of that gated door, whispered as horror stories at sleepovers and slumber parties. There were ghosts that haunted the dusty overstuffed halls and rows of teeth that ate up orphan children.
Parents used to joke, don’t leave your children unattended, Reginald Hargreeves will snatch them up and make them into superheroes.
There were whispered tales all around the city and in the pages of comic book stores – eccentric billionaire inventor-turn-comic book writer adopted a hoard of foster children and they became superheroes in the pages of the best new super family since The Fantastic Four.
Diego – The Kraken – Destined to destroy everything good in his life. Good with knives.
There were whispers of those children training in that big old house, growing up into vigilantes, and movie stars, and dead. There were whispers of creepy inventions, of robots, of monsters.
There were no ghosts, no machines, no monsters.
Just one.
And he had died.
Diego, have you seen the news?
He breathed out.
He waited.
He watched.
Luther was the first to arrive, unaware of the observing eyes hidden behind dark sunglasses and darker window tint. He looked hollow-cheeked and red eyed from back to back flights on whatever errant or business meeting that their father had sent him out of the country on. He watched the woolen beast in his thick jacket and his high turtleneck yank his overnight back from the trunk and tip the driver.
He watched the universe warp itself around bulging muscles and slumped shoulders to make space in the outside world for a man that was as absent from it as their father had been.
Luther had never left like the rest of them, the eldest and the most loyal. He stayed behind with their father, made excuses for their father, took care of the old man and all of his businesses. He only ventured out for board meetings and to run errands.
He embraced the teeth like home.
Diego watched Allison arrive with a suitcase almost too heavy to carry and designer shoes that never did much walking. The small crowd of paparazzi that had followed her from the airport stopped at the gate and then disbursed.
Klaus arrived in leather and feathers, skipping down the street to a beat only heard in his cheap headphones. Diego watched him swing on the gate and drink from mini-bottles of stolen alcohol before shimmying his way around back to the patio doors.
Diego didn’t know why he still waited for Ben after so many years because it was never Ben and he was always disappointed, crushed.
Vanya was last to arrive.
She had taken enough care to text the rest of them the night before that she had practice and would be late. No one had responded.
She came by taxi, violin case still held to her chest the way she carried it as a child. She stared up at the tall jagged cut of the manor in front of her, and then dropped her gaze from it.
He could read every ounce of trepidation in her, could feel it measure up against his own and in that moment, it felt like those horror stories were true after all. Ghost, monster, machine.
Her shoulders slumped forward with a weight that he knew all too well, the desire to run and the decision not to. She followed like the rest of them, into the teeth.
And Diego, he would follow too.
He sighed.
He pocketed his knife, dropping it on the newspaper left abandoned and unread in his passenger seat – Eccentric Billionaire Dies in His Sleep.
The body hadn’t even been cold before the newspaper headlines started to pour in. The family hadn’t been notified before the reporters started to call, wanting statements. Everybody wanted to know what Reginald Hargreeves’ estranged children had to say about his death.
It was out of habit that he checked the knife that he kept slid up his sleeve, and the one in his pocket and the two he kept attached to his holster. It was a habit like it was also a habit to check for his gun and his badge, and that the radio clipped to his belt was on. It was habit in the same way that it was habit to check for Ben, to count the heads of his siblings and always come up one short.
He’d joined the police force as a way to do something with all the residual anger from his childhood, as a way to be helpful and purposeful that wasn’t conditional to what Reginald Hargreeves thought. The police academy was supposed to break him of his knife wielding habits, but the knives had stayed, and the anger had stayed, and the looking for Ben.
He took the knife in his passenger seat out of nerves, though he would call that a habit too.
The anger was something that was supposed to be worked out in productive and healthy ways, in the detective work and the precinct baseball league, but it snapped into place like bruised knuckles and the realignment of broken bones when he walked into those teeth. All the things that he thought he’d be cool about melted against red hot indignity, “What is she doing here?”
The last memory that he had standing in this cursed house was in his dress uniform with news of being shortlisted for detective. It was of being so proud of himself, and filled with an almost giddy need to say, ‘look, Dad, look what I made of myself.’
Vanya’s book had been left on the table, thick and unopened, and sepia. He hadn’t known she was writing a book, hadn’t known about all the little revelations that it included – his stutter and his violent expunged teenage years, his collection of knives and the years he spent living out his comic book counterpart as a vigilante.
It set back his track to detective by years.
“She shouldn’t be here after what she did.”
Vanya shrank back, and Allison put her hands on her hips with the hardened expression of a tv sitcom mother. He could almost hear the laugh track as she said, “Is now the time to be doing this? Today of all possible days.”
“They opened up an investigation into me because of her!” He exclaimed, too angry and too hot like sunburn peeled back. “I almost lost my job.”
“And you didn’t, so we’re not doing this right now,” Allison replied dismissively, not moving as he stomped around her. “And way to dress for the occasion.”
“At least I’m wearing black.”
“Where are you going?”
“To find Luther so we can start this thing,” He stopped at the top of the stairs. “Some of us have real jobs to get back to. Thanks.”
“I literally just came from my job,” Vanya muttered, but he ignored her. He often ignored her.
He didn’t need to stick around for ‘girl talk.’ He already knew how it would play out. Vanya would insist that she should leave, that no one wanted her around, and Allison would say that yeah, writing that book was a dick move. She’d say that he was also a dick and that Vanya wasn’t going anywhere.
They’d all deal with their father’s estate, or wishes, or ashes, or whatever, and then they’d be on their merry fucking way until the next funeral.
This house brought out the worst in him, in all of them.
The ugly wallpaper and dusty old portraits on the hallway walls were familiar in the way that repeating nightmares were, like a haunting meant for someone else. To be in this house fucking sucked.
The only real comparison Diego had was to the dementors in those books Eudora had kept trying to get him to read because this place sucked the happiness right from his bones. He had been happy with Eudora but in here, in these halls, remembering her felt like remembering the pictures in a children’s book, flat.
Reginald had been abusive to each of them in their own special horrible way. He had piled upon Luther’s shoulders the responsibility of the ‘team,’ had expected him to make sure that the rest of them stayed in line and watched with disinterest as he struggled to upon an impossible standard.
He turned Allison into a snitch, a gossip, an undercover spy. He destroyed Klaus in ways that Diego still didn’t understand, in the way that shattered teacups could never be put back together just right. It had been neglect with Vanya, a complete disinterest. And Ben…
Diego touched the scar on the side of his head and refused to think about his own abuse. They were all unwittingly falling into their roles.
Vanya, the timid. Diego, the snoop. Luther, loyal to the very end. Like a dog.
“Let me save you the time,” He drawled from the doorway of their father’s bedroom. He watched the way Luther tensed at the sound of his voice and took a little pride in it. “Windows are locked.”
Luther’s hand dropped away from the window he was inspecting, “I didn’t know you were here, Diego.”
“All the windows are locked,” He repeated, arms crossed over his chest. “There was no forced entry, no sign of a struggle. Nothing out of the ordinary. Dear old Dad passed away in his sleep.”
Luther’s hulking form slumped at the shoulders, but his voice was a firm accusation, “Were you the first on the scene?”
“Seeing how I work homicide and not in the ‘old man died of a heart attack’ division, no. I wasn’t the first on the scene,” He said, pulling a folded report from the inner pocket of his uniform. Luther tensed like he had been expecting a knife.
Any other day and it would have been a knife.
Diego rolled his eyes like they both didn’t know how much he would have preferred it to be a knife and passed over the report. “I got a friend of mine in the medical examiner’s office to do me a solid and slip the autopsy report to me. Death was as normal as it gets, boring ordinary heart failure.”
“So?”
“So, what are you doing in here then?” Diego asked in a voice that rubbed like cool metal against Luther’s nerves. “Why are you checking all the windows unless you’re casing the place.”
“What? I’m not-“
“Of course, you’re not. You’re investigating, aren’t you?”
“I hate when you act like every conversation with me is an interrogation.”
“You think foul play was involved.”
It wasn’t a question because they both knew that was exactly what he thought, that it was the only logical reason for him to be in this room. He didn’t answer the blunt non-question, asking again instead, “Were you the first at the scene?”
He wasn’t.
He was arguing with Eudora when Dad’s heart gave out. He was being broken up with as he lied dead in his bed, prowling the streets half the night looking for trouble and ignoring phone calls when he was found.
He’d stopped an aggravated burglary when the news of his death spilt onto the early morning news stations, and he’d answered Eudora’s call, Diego, have you seen the news?
He didn’t tell Luther any of that because it didn’t matter. He was going to believe whatever he wanted to believe, so Diego tilted his mouth into a smile and looked up at the big man, “Had to make sure he was really dead.”
“Accept it, Luther,” He added, pressing. “He was just a sad old man that kicked the bucket in a big empty house like he deserved.”
“You should leave.”
“Whatever you say,” He snapped.
Luther snapped back, “Good.”
They both ended up in the living room.
It felt like an oxymoron to a call a room with a couch a living room because living was never what any of them did in this room. It was the hold your breath and keep your head down and hope that you didn’t piss him off room. It was the awkward conversations room, the make you wish you were dead room.
They sat on separate pieces of old dusty furniture like wax figures in a demented museum. The air was stuffy and silent until Diego took a bat to it, “This place sure went to shit after Mom left.”
“I was just thinking that!” Klaus exclaimed from his face down position on the floor, his voice muffled by the carpet. He rolled slowly to his back with a loud continuous groan before shoving his arms into the air with jazz hands and a grin, “He’s dead, yay.”
“Klaus,” Luther warmed.
“I need a drink,” Klaus declared as he bounced over to the bar in a newly stolen leather skirt, never one to heed to warmings anyways. “The man didn’t know how to love or take care of children but, love him or hate him, at least he had the good graces to leave behind a fully stocked bar.”
“I thought you just got out of rehab?”
“What’s your point?”
“We should get started,” Luther commanded. He thought that being the first adopted and having two months alone in the manor before Diego and Allison had been adopted meant that he was in charge. He thought it made him number one. The leader.
Diego rolled his eyes at Allison. She shrugged back the same sentiment but was willing to give Luther the benefit of the doubt, so Luther continued uninterrupted, “I was thinking that we should have a memorial service this evening, in the courtyard. Someone could say a few words. Nothing big, he wouldn’t want that.”
“He didn’t want children either and he had a ton of those,” Klaus pointed out, dropping onto the couch next to Vanya. “We should have a party. Rave lights, sequence, loud music… I know this great Molly dealer that could-“
“Are you high right now?”
Klaus laughed, tongue flickering over his cracked bottom lip, “Yeah, D. I am.”
“We – a small service sounds nice,” Allison agreed, getting back on topic. She gave Diego a look like she was waiting for a uniform confirmation, but he had no intention of giving that to her or Luther.
She added with her Hollywood smile, “We can catch up afterwards. We’ve all drifted apart.”
Vanya was the only one that voiced the sentiment that they all felt, mumbling, “For good reason.”
They all pretended that she didn’t.
“We can make hot chocolate and breakfast food,” Allison added, “The way that Mom used to make them. Is she coming in for this?”
“No,” He and Luther said at the same time.
They looked at each other and Diego prompted with his hand, “Get on with the show. Some of us are busy.”
“We get it,” Allison sighed, rolling her eyes. “You got a big boy job, Diego. We’re very proud of you. We all mostly have jobs.”
“Oh, but nothing as important as the PD’s finest. Protecting the streets from all those crazy drug dealers, right?” Klaus oozed sarcastically, extending a ‘hello’ in the form of a dramatic wave. “Hi.”
“You don’t even have a job, Klaus.”
He sipped loudly from his drink, “And how’s the detective, Detective?”
Diego gritted his teeth involuntarily, sucking in a breath that pierced like the sharp side of one of his knives and Klaus noticed. His expression swung hazardously between brotherly concern and being a brotherly dick about it.
He chose the latter, “You’re not? Did she dump you? I am, well, for one, I am just shocked.”
“How was rehab? Again.”
“Riveting. You know what they say, three times the charm, D,” He said flippantly, pressing a hand to his chest like he was sharing a secret with the room. “I really discovered myself in there. Did you know that I have a problem with authority? It must be from that time my brother arrested me for no reason and tried to send me to jail.”
“I saved your ass from going to jail,” Diego snapped, crossing and then uncrossing his arms defensively. He pointed at him, “You tried to buy drugs from an undercover cop.”
“Well, he didn’t say he was a cop.”
“He was undercover, jack-“
Luther sighed, loud and low, “Can we not do this right now?”
Allison added, “Arguing isn’t appropriate.”
“But it is typical,” Vanya pointed out.
“Dad wouldn’t want us to fight like this.”
“Dad is dead.”
Klaus exclaimed, “Thank the lord!”
“And Luther thinks one of us killed him.”
The conversation died on the lips of those with something still to say and everybody’s head swiveled between Diego’s deafening statement and Luther. The silence ticked like a bomb before it exploded, “What?!”
“How could you-“
“Why do you-“
“I never said that I thought one of us killed him, I-“
“But you think someone did?” Allison asked. “Who?”
“He thinks that I did,” Diego stated.
Klaus clicked his fingernails against his glass, “Rude, bro.”
“Well,” Luther sighed against the varied expressions of his siblings. He pinched the bridge of his nose and then just said it, “You are the only one here that has ever almost killed-“
“Shut the fuck up, Luther.”
Allison tried a soft warning in vain, “Guys. Let’s just sit and talk.”
“I just said that I thought the circumstances were unusual and warranted investigating,” Luther told the room as a whole. His big hands were spread out in front of him, extending into the limited distance between him and Diego. “He wouldn’t just-“
“Just what, Luther?” Diego demanded in a tight deadly calm. “He wouldn’t just die without telling you? I don’t think he got much of a choice in the matter. No one does.”
“Ben didn’t.”
They both ignored Klaus’ comments, eyes narrowing at the other. Luther insisted, “He was healthy.”
“He was an old man.”
“He cancelled his annual charity Christmas ball this year,” Luther stated like it meant anything. “He’s had that ball every year since I was adopted. He didn’t call any of us on the holidays, which he always does. He wouldn’t have pushed all of us away if he thought that he was going to-“
“He’d pushed all of us away years ago,” Diego insisted, laying out fact after fact. “He was a recluse, who didn’t even attend his stupid charity ball, and hey, maybe he realized that he didn’t actually care about orphans getting Christmas. And maybe he got a clue that none of us were ever going to answer any of his calls and gave up.”
“He wouldn’t have sent me away if he thought – Something isn’t right here. Aren’t you supposed to be naturally suspicious? You’re the detective. Detect something, Diego.”
“I am picking up on something,” Diego nodded. “Yeah. Yeah, that whiff of bullshit that I kept smelling every time you opened your mouth must be from how far you have your head shoved up Dad’s ass.”
Luther got to his feet so quickly that the chair beneath him nearly fell backwards, and Diego tensed. He let the knife in his sleeve drop into his hand, let his teeth grind together and his vision got black with anticipation, with violent intention, and then his radio screeched with static.
The radio came to life, spitting out an address and a location, and a call for available officers. Diego didn’t break eye contact with Luther as he unclipped it, responding with his ETA.
“Shit, is that Griddy’s?” Klaus complained. “I loved that place.”
“Now it’s a crime scene.”
Diego shouldered past his brother, and Luther asked, “What about the service?”
“Do it without me,” He spat. “I have real victims to help. And who knows, maybe I killed them too.”
“If Diego doesn’t have to go, do I?”
“Shut up, Klaus.”