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So far, his time spent in 1963 had been pretty unpleasant. It was bad enough that he’d been caught camping out by Lee Harvey Oswald’s house before he could kill the bastard, consequently arrested by the police, and then slammed into a mental institution. On top of that, he’d been pumped full of antipsychotics to shut him up about the president’s murder and locked away in the isolation room for the majority of his stay. He didn’t know how Klaus had managed to survive his regular stints in places like that, where everything you did was marked down as a symptom and everybody was trying to pry into your mind all the time. It was like being back at the Academy.
When he hadn’t been dozy and detached from his surroundings on his medication, Diego had been frustrated with how he was treated. Like Dad, the doctors would note down everything he said and did, shaking their heads at him as if they felt sorry for him. As if he was crazy. Which he wasn’t! They had no idea what they were talking about. Not to mention, the food sucked and the tidbits he did feed Moncton about his childhood were labelled as being part of his delusions, his “hero complex”. They loved to use that last phrase on him. It had taken him a while to get out of there but he was grateful to say good riddance to the nuthouse, grabbing freedom with both hands and refusing to let go of it.
Unfortunately, Diego must’ve picked up some kind of bug while he was in there. A day or so after he left, he started feeling awful for no foreseeable reason: his head throbbed as if his brain was knocking around inside his skull, his appetite had completely disappeared (though he could put that down to Elliott’s Jell-O dishes), and he felt even more touchy than usual. Right now, as he fiddled with one of his knives, it took conscious effort not to puke in his own lap.
“How are you feeling?” Luther asked, glancing at their sister. She was slumped on the couch, fidgeting with her hands on her lap and an absent expression on her face. Apparently, she’d been lucky enough to lose all her memories, when she was knocked over by a car, after arriving in Dallas. Still, Diego didn’t feel particularly thrilled to see her again.
“Pretty shitty, to be honest,” She replied with a sigh, refusing to make eye contact.
“Where would you say you were on a scale of one… to ending all life on this planet?” Diego asked, fixing her with a stern look. He tossed his knife up in the air and caught it, repeating the action several times in a row, finding the motion oddly soothing. It kept his mind off how awful he felt anyway.
“Really?” Luther furrowed his eyebrows, “Diego, put the knife away, you idiot, she’s fine.”
“Last time I saw this one, she had me suspended in the air sucking the life out of me-“ Diego started but cut himself off midsentence, feeling too sick to bother arguing. It didn’t matter what he said anyway- Luther would just argue the opposite, like he always did, and refuse to hear anything else about it. God, talk about delusional, maybe he should've been the one they locked up. Instead, Diego just rolled his eyes and slumped back on the couch, still playing with his knife.
“I don’t know what I did but if… if it means anything, I’m sorry,” Vanya looked at him sympathetically and he softened under her gaze immediately. It wasn’t about her really, (though he still felt suspicious about what might happen if she lost her temper), but more just him feeling rotten and cranky. He couldn’t remember the last time he was sick.
Diego nodded to her, “It does. I’m just going through a lot right now. I think I picked up a flu or something,” He massaged his throbbing temples in a fruitless attempt to ease the pain, “The end of the world and my body decides now is the time to be a bitch.”
“Are you okay?” His sister looked concerned, “I thought you looked a bit… clammy.”
“Thanks, sis, but I’m just peachy,” Diego retorted immediately. He hated it when people pitied him, which was one of the reasons he’d kept quiet about the whole thing and just tried his best to swallow down his symptoms. It had been easy to keep it on the downlow around Luther, who cared very little about what was going on in anyone's life, but Vanya seemed genuinely worried now. A smaller part of Diego just wished that he could be back at home with Mom, like when he was small and had gotten sick- she had always propped him up in bed with extra pillows and fed him warm chicken soup until he was feeling better.
Before anybody could inquire further, the door open and a jangling bell told them that the rest of their siblings were here. A slightly tipsy Allison was laughing at something Klaus had said, while their brother chattered away endlessly as he always did. Heaving himself up from the sofa, the room spun in front of him as Diego stumbled over to the balcony, peering down at his three siblings.
“I know this is impossible,” Klaus announced, “But did we all get sexier?”
Diego certainly didn’t feel sexier. He felt like he’d been dragged backwards through hell.
When he woke up in the middle of the night, he knew immediately that there was nothing he could to stop himself from hurling in the next five minutes. Since the apartment didn’t have enough beds for all of them, Diego had volunteered to crash on one of the couches, while Klaus slept on the other: both of them had enough practice sleeping in unconventional places to fall asleep there. Surprise, surprise, Allison and Luther had been more than happy to share a bed. Moving with speed he usually reserved for life or death situations, Diego got to his feet and staggered quickly into the small grimy bathroom just in time to be violently sick.
He found himself dropping to his knees and hugging the toilet bowl, in a way he hadn’t done since that time he had gotten food poisoning from eating gas station sushi. His head throbbed with pain. There was a slight reprieve, where he got to stop and drew in several deep breaths, trying to quash his feelings of nausea. Then, he had to bend over and be sick again, his hair falling into his face. As he flopped against the bathroom wall, finding that he didn’t even have the energy to get up again, he heard the sound of muffled voices and footsteps. Oh, shit. Diego couldn’t imagine anything more humiliating than being found like this. He closed his eyes and pressed his hands to his face, rubbing his forehead.
“Diego?” came a concerned voice from the doorway and he glanced over to see Allison peering at him, “Oh my god, are you okay?”
“It was probably the Jell-O,” Luther weighed in from behind her, helpfully.
Diego groaned at the sight of them, “Just leave me to die in peace.”
Needless to say, they didn’t. Allison, who had seen her fair share of stomach bugs since Claire had started school, held back his hair for him when he threw up again and stroked his face soothingly when he groaned in agony. His stomach was almost completely empty, just pushing up bile at this point, and it hurt- stinging his throat and causing his abdomen to ache. As much as he hated this whole experience, Diego was grateful for her cool hands resting against his burning skin and her hushed voice muttering reassurances in his ear.
When his stomach had emptied itself completely, (and then some), he wiped his mouth on the back of his hand and, incredibly reluctantly, let Luther scoop him up in his arms to carry him back to the couch. Diego felt completely, utterly pathetic and he hated it more than anything, as his brother gently eased him back onto the couch and his sister covered him with a blanket. Even then, neither of would just leave him there and go back to bed, stubborn bastards.
“What’s with the midnight party?” Klaus yawned, obviously roused by the noise, and he budged up on the couch to make room for Allison.
“Diego’s sick. Flu or something,” Luther told him, as he turned on the coffee machine, “We found him puking his guts out in the bathroom. He’s got a fever.”
“Thanks for that mental image,” Klaus rubbed his eyes and now, all three of them were staring at Diego as he curled into a foetal position on the couch. He felt so, so, so terrible. It took everything in him not to cry for Mom and if Luther wasn’t watching him over the top of his coffee, he probably would’ve done so.
A cup of water was pushed into his hands and Diego sipped at it weakly, hating, hating, hating everything about this. He hated Five for landing them in the 1960s, he hated the cops for arresting him before he could save Kennedy, he hated the stupid asylum and their stupid flu that had fucked with his stupid stomach, and he hated his siblings for looking at him as if he was a scared little boy again. More than anything, he hated the dull pain in his head.
It was after they’d been sitting there for half an hour, Allison staring blearily into her coffee as if she could fall asleep right there and Luther flipping through a book he’d found absentmindedly, when Klaus suddenly started clapping his hands together and crying “that’s it!”. None of them paid him much attention, (it was Klaus), until he leapt to his feet and declared that he knew exactly what was going on. Since he had nothing else to do, Diego decided to humour him.
“What are you talking about, Klaus?” He sighed, handing his empty cup back to his sister.
Klaus clapped his hands together, way too animated for this time of night, and asked him, “How long were you in the loony bin?”
He told him, confused about where this was going, about the nearly three months that he’d spent there and wondered if Klaus had somehow managed to sneak some pills when none of them were looking. Usually, he only came out with this kind of nonsense when he was high. Thinking about the asylum and the long hours he'd spent counting the ceiling tiles in Dr Moncton's office only made his feel worse.
“And they probably gave you antipsychotics, didn’t they? Pills that made you feel all dozy and confused?” After getting a nod, Klaus continued eagerly, “And then you stopped taking them the day you escaped?”
It took Diego a second. Then, the penny dropped.
From his first day in the hell-house, when Diego had been carried in kicking and yelling by several men in white coats, he’d had been flooded with a killer combination of anti-psychotics and sedatives to keep him calm. For his entire stay, he’d been heavily medicated because he was “a very angry, very disturbed young man”, (thanks, Dr Moncton). Trying to hide them under his tongue or in his cheek had been pointless, since they’d always checked he’d swallowed them and threatened to put him back in the isolation room if he didn’t comply.
A few times, they’d even stabbed the sedatives directly into his bloodstream, when he’d grown frustrated with nobody taking him seriously and had tried to punch his way out of there. It wasn’t much of a jump to assume that his body had started relying on the drugs they’d given him during his stay and then, a few days ago, he’d gone cold turkey. He’d gone from being on a hazy cocktail of nuthouse drugs, floating through the days, to being suddenly knocked back into reality. It wasn’t a flu that he’d picked up at all- Diego was in withdrawal.
“You know what this means, right? We’re both addicts now!” Klaus held out his HELLO hand for a high-five, which he didn’t receive, “Oh, shit, we can totally lock down some older brother to little brother bonding time while you’re in withdrawal.”
He really didn’t need reminding that he was now one of the youngest siblings in their family, since he already felt about ten years old right now. Although, he appreciated that Klaus was at least trying to be nice, in his own weird way. And suddenly, a thought occurred to him: if this was how Klaus felt whenever he came down, Diego could suddenly understand why he’d do anything to keep himself high. He felt like death warmed up.
Eventually, he managed to drift back into an uneasy sleep on the couch, while his siblings played an amiable game of cards on the coffee table. It was weirdly reassuring to hear them faintly talking and joking at his bedside, knowing that he wasn't alone for once. When he woke up, he still felt like absolute shit but to give himself some credit, at least this time he managed to keep the contents of his stomach where they belonged. Blearily, he opened his eyes and made no effort to sit up, his joints aching as if he had gotten into a fight with Luther and lost. Instead, he pulled the blanket back over him and sunk back into the couch cushions, stifling a yawn behind his hand.
This time, neither Luther or Allison was watching over him, but instead Five was sitting opposite him on the couch, scribbling equations in a paperback. He looked smug as ever, the little bastard, and leapt to his feet as soon as he saw that Diego was awake. He trotted into the kitchen to talk to someone- probably to make fun of him behind his back, although it usually his style to do it to the person's face- and Diego recognised the sound of his other sister’s soft voice, as well as the sizzle of a frying pan. Worried mutters reached his ears and he realised, his anger falling flat with a thump, that Five wasn't making fun of him. He was concerned about him.
After a few minutes of failing to get back to sleep, Diego resigned himself to the fact that he was awake and forced himself to sit up a little, moving one of the cushions behind him to support his head. Due to his inpatient nature, he wished more than anything that he could just toss back a few painkillers and get back to work, trying to save the president. He wanted to get out there and prove to everyone, once and for all, that he could do it. Instead, he just sat there feeling sorry for himself, dull pain gnawing at his muscles and his mouth feeling like sandpaper.
“Good morning,” Vanya was smiling gently as she walked over to him, carrying something on a tray, “I hope you don’t mind… I know I’m not your favourite, but the others had stuff to do, so they said we should stay here with you. I thought you might like some breakfast.”
She lowered the tray onto his lap and his heart leapt involuntarily into his throat when he saw what was on his plate. Three pancakes, carefully decorated with blueberries to form a smiley face, just like Mom used to make for him. He had to swallow a wobble in his voice as he thanked her.
“I’ve been reliably informed by Five it’s your favourite,” Vanya sat down on the opposite sofa, shrugging her shoulders, “That Mom used to make them for us. He also said that you were Mom’s favourite but I don’t know if he was serious,” She cracked a smile, “Or just jealous.”
Diego wasn’t sure which stunned him more: the fact that Five still remembered how much he loved Mom’s pancakes or that Vanya had gone out of her way to find out what he’d like for breakfast. Neither of them had paid much attention to him when he was younger, (or so he thought), though it wasn’t Vanya’s fault since Dad had deliberately kept her away from the rest of them. On the other hand, Five had always chastised him for being a reckless idiot and seemed to have no patience at all for him. They’d never been close. He glanced over at where his brother was skulking in the kitchen, hands stuck in his pockets, and nodded at him.
Of course, Vanya wouldn’t remember any of this due to her amnesia. He started cutting into his pancakes with his knife and fork, wondering what it would be like to forget all of it- everything they’d been through. The good and the (mostly) bad. It sounded almost… peaceful.
“Mom was the only person who gave a shit about me,” He offered, as he chewed on a chunk of pancake, “And you, for that matter. She loved listening to you play the violin.”
Vanya contemplated this, looking thoughtful but pleased about it. Once he’d finished his breakfast, she wanted to hear more stories about their mom while she dabbed his forehead with a damp cloth. Maybe it was because he was still running a slight fever but Diego found it easy to talk about the time he’d spent with Grace growing up. How she’d always cared for him, never had a bad word to say about him, and- he was a little more guarded about reminding her of this but Vanya just listened kindly- how she’d coached him through his awful stutter.
Reassuringly, Vanya wrung out the damp cloth into the sink and said she never would’ve guessed he’d ever had a speech impediment. It only returned when he was nervous or stressed and part of Diego feared that it would come out if he came across his father again, since Reginald always seemed to bring about the worst in him. Vanya seemed to sense they were verging into uncomfortable territory, so changed the subject to ask about his power, and he was happy to demonstrate the accuracy with which he could toss his knives at whatever he wanted.
From the kitchen, Five rolled his eyes and jumped away in a flash of blue light. The blade struck the wall where he had been standing seconds before and he reappeared at the balcony, muttering: "Asshole."
“That’s really cool,” Vanya admitted, openly, “I wish I could do that.”
Growing up, Diego had been used to his father questioning whether his ability was useful in the slightest, especially when he was so impulsive in combat. He'd had to work hard to prove that he was a useful part of the team and not just a spare cog in the machine. It was nice to hear that somebody thought it was not just useful but impressive. He practically glowed.
“A light supper?” He raised an eyebrow, looking up from the invitation that his brother had handed him. It seemed that their father, (who, in this timeline, wasn’t even their father yet), had managed to track down Luther to give him an invitation that extended to the entire family. Though, Diego guessed it wasn’t surprising- that he had managed to track down Luther, he meant- since his brother was pretty difficult to miss. How many half-ape men could there be in Dallas?
As for his withdrawals, Diego had managed to keep down everything he’d eaten so far and his fever had finally broken just after lunch, thanks to his sister’s attentive learning. Then, he’d been fed painkillers by Klaus, (who had to assure him multiple times that they were definitely just painkillers, not ecstasy or anything ridiculous like that), and his brother had tucked himself into the corner of the couch. It reminded him of when they were little and Klaus had always climbed into his bed when he’d had a nightmare, poking Diego with his sharp elbows and knees.
They’d spent most the afternoon comparing institutionalisations:
“Did you have to do hospital corners when you made your bed? I never learned how to do it and it drove the rehab staff crazy, still don’t know why. I mean, it’s just corners. I don’t think learning to make a bed is going to kill my taste for heroin.”
“Whenever I brought up Dad, they would go Doctor Freud on me and insist that I thought of him as a rival because I wanted to fuck mom. And if I told them where to stick it, they’d blame it on my ‘anger issues’ and lock me in the isolation room until I shut up. Sometimes, they stuck me with a needle to keep me quiet. It was rough.”
Overall, Klaus was pretty sympathetic about the whole thing, even if he didn’t know how to show it like a normal person. He’d seemed both impressed and amused with the shit Diego had put up with while he was under a lot of drugs, giggling when Diego complained about how annoying he had found arts and crafts. Every now and again, Five jumped into the room to check that Diego hadn’t “choked on his own tongue”, as he put it, which was as close as he would ever get to showing any kind of affection. To anyone who wasn’t a mannequin anyway.
Then, Luther had returned with the invitation and the rest of their siblings had gradually gathered around to read it. After Diego had peered at it, he crumpled up the invitation and tossed it across the room into the trash with his usual accuracy. He was starting to feel a little better, his headache numbed a little and his fever gone, but he was pretty sure a family dinner with Dad would be enough to make him puke again. Oh, sorry, a light supper. Whatever the hell that was.
“It’s obviously a set-up,” Luther announced, through a mouthful of Jell-O, as if that weren’t clear to the rest of them. Honestly, he could be a little slow sometimes but nobody really held it against him.
“Maybe. But we should go anyway,” Diego said, getting off the couch and pulling his shirt off over his head. Thankfully, Allison had picked him out a new one that wasn’t stained with sweat and puke while she’d been out, so he could at least look presentable in front of Dad. Sure, he felt a little dizzy and unsteady on his feet but that wasn't going to stop him from confronting his father later. For the first time, he might get the chance to tell the prick what he actually thought about him- he wasn't a little boy anymore. He shrugged the orange shirt on, buttoning it up, and his siblings immediately started to protest.
“I don’t think you should be going anywhere,” Allison told him.
“Yeah, pukebag,” Five backed her up, leaning against the balcony, “You were foaming at the mouth just a few hours ago, remember?”
Diego rolled his eyes, tucking his shirt into his jeans, “I’m fine. Besides, me and Dad are going to have words about the shanking incident. Maybe his parenting methods too, while we’re at it.”
In the back of his mind, he recognised that the idea of seeing Reginald Hargreeves and likely walking into his set-up was a little bizarre. Especially after the history between them. All of them. He wondered if his withdrawal addled brain was contributing slightly to his desire to see Dad or, like they had told him in the institution, it was down to his deep-rooted desire to prove himself to him. As if. No matter what it was that was driving him to accept the invitation, now that he had decided to do so Diego would stop at nothing to see his plan through. He may be impulsive in his decisions but he was determined too, he wouldn't change his mind now that he'd made it up.
“Would you tell him he’s nuts?” Luther turned to Vanya, who had been sitting very quietly on the couch. Nobody would really blame her for having little to say about it. She’d lost all her memories except her own name, which meant that everything she knew about Dad and their upbringing had come entirely from word-of-mouth. It was probably hard to form a strong opinion about Dad until she actually met him, which is exactly what she said. She was in favour of going as well, which made Diego grin triumphantly and pat her on the shoulder.
See? Vanya's with me, he wanted to say.
“Look, we all know Dad, Vanya excluded,” Klaus waved an arm around vaguely, looking at them through the sunglasses disguising his hangover, “He’s just going to turn against each other like he always does. Even his funeral was a pathetic attempt to drive us apart. The old man literally staged his death just for the sake of causing family drama, lest we forget? Plus...” He took a swig from a flask, "He's a colossal dick."
Turning back to them, Diego put his hands on his hips and reminded them, “It’s different this time. We’re grown-ass men.”
“And women,” Allison added.
He clicked his fingers, pointed at her and nodded to indicate he agreed, “Look, we go in there as a united front. No more ‘Number One’, ‘Number Two’ bullshit. From now on, we’re Team Zero.”
Five snorted into his coffee mug but said nothing about it.
There was no doubt that the numbers had been part of what had their childhood so difficult. Before they'd even had names, Reginald had ranked them in a hierarchy and there was no wriggle room when it came to how he viewed them: if you were at the bottom of the list, there was nothing you could do to claw your way to the top. It had always driven Diego crazy that, no matter what he did, Luther would always be better than him in Dad's eyes and it had resulted in a lifelong rivalry for the two of them. He knew that the others had similar thoughts. All their lives, they'd been compared, pitted against each other. It had been a bloody battle for Dad's affection and every single one of them had lost.
Stripping themselves of the numbers he'd assigned them was the only way to get through this. They needed to be a team, a real team, and that meant every single one of them being equals. Diego was about to launch into a passionate, slightly addled speech about this, when his brother cut in.
“Okay, okay,” Klaus conceded, “But you, Mister Drug Addict, are going to rest until it’s time to go. We don’t need you collapsing on us in our time of need. Get back on the couch before I make Luther put you there,” When he received a look, he said, “What? Everybody knows I don’t have the upper body strength to put him there myself.”
“Fine,” Luther gave in, “Team Zero. Jesus, Diego, just lie back down. You look like a ghost.”