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The revelation that their ‘home’ was not their real home in this reality had been disappointing to say the least. Once again they had ‘royally fucked up the timeline’ as Five so eloquently phrased it.
They had found a hotel nearby, not prepared to separate themselves again after they had just found each other. They had managed to find somewhere with enough rooms and beds to accommodate them all. Vanya was sharing a room with Klaus and Alison, while Five, Diego and Luther had reluctantly bunked together despite Five’s arguments that he as the senior member of the group should have his own accommodation.
The hotel receptionist hadn’t asked any questions when they had asked for the rooms, and it looked like the kind of place that wasn’t in the habit of asking too many questions which was just what they were looking for.
She had tossed and turned in her bed envious of Klaus who snored loudly from the couch, and Alison who looked just as perfect in her sleep as she did when she was awake. It seemed only Vanya was unable to find peace in sleep. She had gained and lost so much over the past few days she couldn’t keep up. Her heart still ached for Sissy and Harlan and the life she had given up to stay with her family.
Then there had been the new memories that she had regained, they were painful in a different way. She could feel them in her bones, the anger, the frustration that they brought with them. But they were also confusing, there were some parts of them that she couldn’t quite reconcile herself with. So many decisions that although she knew were her own it felt like a different person had made them. Not the person that she was now.
She wanted to ask the others about them, but she found herself holding back. She didn’t want them to be afraid of her again, the more she talked about what had happened in the past the more afraid she was that they would remember what she had done, and who she was. It made her heart pound and head ache. She had taken two aspirin already to little relief.
There were some in particular that she wanted to ask Diego about, but she wasn't exactly sure how to casually just bring it into the conversation. Flashes of hands interlinked, his lips brushing against the column of her neck while her fingers twisted in his shirt. Heat rose to her cheeks and she groaned in frustration.
She huffed into her pillow when in truth she wanted to scream. She rose to her feet quietly in hope not to disturb the others, the bed dipping as she did so, and she was grateful that Alison didn’t stir at the movement. She tiptoed around the small hotel room, shrugging on her jacket and shoes.
She opened the door quietly and closed it slowly behind her. The cool air against her face brought her some welcome relief.
She spotted a familiar shape further along the narrow balcony, resting against the railing, his head bowed down so that his hair covered his face. But she had a feeling that she would recognise him anywhere.
Diego.
He looks up as if he can sense her presence, and she feels frozen. A familiar headache takes hold as more memories slot carefully into place inside her mind.
“Couldn’t sleep?” he asks her as he moves closer before leaning against the balcony next to her, looking over the car park below them.
She shakes her head pulling her lip between her teeth. He gives a chuckle, low and heavy.
“Yeah, me neither.” He had lost so much as well. He had wanted to stop everything from happening save the president, be the hero, and yet everything had gone to shit.
He had lost her asl well, the woman who had been trying to kill them, or perhaps more specifically Five. He had said that he loved her and she wasn’t sure how that made her feel. She shouldn’t feel a pang of jealousy at the confession, her heart also had been given to someone else, but it is there anyway and as these memories continue to make themselves known it only makes more and more sense.
He examined her carefully, “What’s going on in there?”
"Too much,” she sighs, pressing her forehead against the cool metal of the balcony railing. It was simpler when she couldn’t remember who she was. She was free. And now.
"I know the feeling," he mumbles, pulling a metal flask from his pocket and taking a sip, she looks up to see a grimace across his face. "Five has the worst taste." He holds out the flask and she eyes it carefully, before relenting and taking it from his hand. A peace gesture.
The alcohol burns her throat as soon as it hits and she gulps it down, before coughing as Diego grabs the flask from her hand before she can spill it.
When the burning starts to dissipate and she regains her breath, she manages a staggered, "That's awful." While Diego just nods in agreement before taking another swig.
And then it hits her like a train, the strength of the memory as it appears, neurones firing and connecting all at once as the piercing feeling at her temples returns.
She feels his hand grasp her arm, holding her upright, as the world becomes out of focus and her knees give way.
"You stole from Dad's office?" Vanya's eyes widened.
"What? It's not like it's hard. Klaus does it all the time."
"Yeah, but,"
"You want to try?"
She considers the bottle in his hand, a brown amber liquid, that is both tempting and forbidden. There is also the feeling of being included, she knows they all meet up without her when they think she won't notice, or perhaps they simply don't care. Diego's eyebrows are raised in a challenge, waiting for her to chicken out, expecting it.
"Give it here," she orders, pulling herself up straighter, despite still being much shorter than him. He chuckles handing her the bottle, watching her carefully as she takes a tentative sip, before spluttering and pushing the bottle back to him.
She expects him to tease her, to laugh at her and tell the others another example of how she is inferior to the rest of them, but instead, he wraps his arm around her shoulder.
"Damn, Vanya, I didn't think you would actually do it."
She decides immediately she likes the feeling of his arm wrapped around her and leans into it. He tightens his grip for a moment and she is sure that she feels the pressure of his thumb against her bare elbow, moving gently across her skin. He has never acted like this before, she is sure he has never actually spent this long alone in a room with her since they were children. But then Luther comes barging into the room and he jumps away from her like he has been electrocuted.
“Dad’s coming and he is pissed!” Luther shouts as he eyes the bottle in Diego’s hands, rolling his eyes.
“I’ll distract him,” Vanya offers, earning a grateful smile from Diego, and a shocked look from Luther at her uncharacteristic boldness. “Go, put it back,” she tells him, ignoring the little butterflies that have taken residence in her stomach when he smiles broadly at her.
“Thanks, Vanya.” He gives her a little salute before he leaves the room, leaving Luther shaking his head at the two of them and Vanya quickly concocting a plan to distract their father for long enough for Diego to make it back to the office.
“Are you okay?” Diego’s voice cuts through the memory and she feels the ground return beneath her feet, the solid arms wrapped around her preventing her from crashing into a heap on the cold concrete.
“Vanya,” she blinks her eyes open looking up at him, seeing concern etched across his features, while she stares blankly back at him, “Vanya!,” he repeats again, louder this time and the world finally comes back into focus. As he holds her steady she grips onto the balcony managing to support her own weight and he lets go, his hand still resting on her forearm.
She notices the flask has fallen to his feet, the liquid pouring out onto the pavement. “Five is going to kill you when he finds out,” she remarks as she nods to floor. Diego doesn’t even glance in its direction his attention centred on her.
“Let him. What is going on?” She takes a deep breath, the methodical pounding behind her eyes, continues to thump on. “Vanya? What was that?”
“I’m still remembering things.” She pinches the bridge of her nose in the vain hope that it may subdue the thumping and she almost considers taking another sip from Five’s fallen flask.
“I thought that everything came back?” He bends back down to pick up the flask, replacing the lid before pushing it back into his pocket.
“I did too, I mean there was so much, but I keep getting these flashes, memories of … before, back at the academy. It’s like everything in my brain is still trying to connect it’s…” she searches for the best words to describe the sensation of her head splitting in two, “overwhelming.”
Something crosses his face and before she can question it it’s gone again, pushed down somewhere. Diego has always been so difficult to read. She thought that she understood him back when they were children, but perhaps she had only ever been able to just scratch the surface.
“Maybe you should go back inside.”
“I’m okay, really,” she assures him, “just a little longer,” and while he does not seem convinced he leaves it be. They continue to stand there in silence, looking out over the empty parking lot. She feels oddly at ease. Perhaps that’s what gives her the confidence to say what she does.
“I didn’t understand it at first,” she muses out loud.
“Understand what?”
“Why you hated me more than the others did,” she replies quietly, eyes focused on her own fingers.
“I didn’t,” he tries to explain but she continues.
“When I first saw you at the electronics store there was something else there when you saw me, it wasn’t fear or disappointment like the others. It was something more visceral like ... betrayal.” She looks up from her hands to meet his gaze.
“And I needed you to accept my apology more than the others, and I didn’t quite understand why.”
She had looked out over that porch at Sissy’s farm, watching the quietness of the hills, feeling at peace with her decision, when he came to sit down next to her. Closer than he had before, no longer treating her like some fragile, breakable thing. A thing to be wary of.
He had been the one that she had felt the most confused about. She felt that in her gut they should be closer. But there were barriers between them she could ‘feel’ them.
The memories that she had regained so far had told her enough to understand.
She leant her head against his shoulder, needing to feel that connection again however fleeting it may be, half expecting him to pull away, but instead he moved his head to rest against hers, as they sat in silence.
She felt the same urge now, knowing all that she did, to reach out and place her small hand over his as it clung to the railing beside her.
“So you remembered … ” he asks her, as he holds onto the railing tighter, his knuckles becoming white with the pressure.
“Yes,” she replies quietly, barely above a whisper. “Sort of.” She knows what he is asking really. Whether she remembers him and the memories that they shared together, some good, some not so much.
“I’m sorry,” he tells her and she feels a weight lifted from her shoulders. Two words, that she has been waiting to hear since he left her on that evening, leaving her alone in a world where she felt so unloved. It is a weight that she inherited when those memories came back, and it was crushing. “For everything.”
“Me too.” She lays her hand across his, a thumb tracing the skin of his knuckles, encouraging him to release his grip, she wants to feel his hand against hers. The way he would take her hand in the middle of the night when the thunder rattled the windows of the old mansion and he would whisper to her that everything was okay, it was just a storm and it would pass.
They always did.
She holds onto that memory, it’s a good one.