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It was exactly like loosing Patch.
It wasn’t at all like loosing Patch.
Patch was all work while Lila was all play. Both did what they thought was right, just in different ways. Both hated Diego almost as much as they loved him.
Both died because Diego was too weak to save them.
He sucks in a breath.
It wasn’t just Lila he was loosing either. Diego tries really hard not to think about the baby.
Lila lies in a puddle of blood on the hotel’s cursed floor and Diego tries really fucking hard not to think about the baby.
Then Lila gasps.
At first Diego thinks his mind is playing a cruel trick because what else is he supposed to think? However, that theory is quickly quashed when the others stir around him. They heard her too.
Lila chooses that moment to sit bolt upright, causing Viktor, the closest to her, to visibly jump.
Five, near Diego, also jumps (though his involves a few blue sparks he quickly quashes).
“Well that’s a fucking trip!” Lila exclaims, spitting a mouthfull of blood. Her teeth are red, but no more gore escapes her lips. There’d been so much of it when she first went down.
“God is a little shit. Mind catching me up?” Lila continues unperturbed.
Five recovers quickly. “I’d say it’s a pleasure to have you back with us, Lila, but that’d be a lie.” He says the words dryly, but there’s no real venom. He’s reciting from a recycled script. All of their brains are buffering at this point, though as usual, Five is quicker than the rest of them.
“She was copying Klaus’ powers, Diego,” he states, still staring at Lila. Maybe he directs it towards him because he thinks he‘s the slowest. It’s not at all because Diego has been staring blankly this entire time. Five certainly wouldn’t say anything out of concern.
“Diego?” Lila says, uncertain, like Diego is the one sitting in a puddle of his own blood and not her.
All the blood was hers.
It stains Diego’s shirt, his hands, his heart. It’ll never wash out. He can hear Lila’s response. It’s just bleach and hydrogen peroxide, Diego, and blood stains come right out!
He was going to throw up.
Hands are on his arms then, still a bit too cold, and Lila’s face fills his vision.
“Hey, I’m right here,” she says gruffly. Uncomfortably. She was never one for comfort. (Or maybe that’s the blood still clogging her throat). Diego swallows.
“I’m right here,” she repeats. “See? Good as new.” She removes her hands from Diego’s arms to run them over her own. Her arms settle loosely across her stomach after, her shoulders hunched.
And that should make it all better, huh? To see her unharmed should discount her death. The collapse of Diego’s world only a temporary apocalypse, like the ones before. Like Klaus’s death. Like Klaus’s deaths.
Those had affected him too, though Klaus’s nonchalance and Stanley’s guilt had ushered him past it.
“What took you so long?” he finally croaks out.
They’d been in the damn lobby for thirty minutes, each in various states of disarray. Lila’s death had broken something in each of them, even if none were as attached as Diego.
Diego hadn’t been able to work up the courage to face the bloodstained body or the hotel guardian that had made her that way. Neither had his siblings, either out of respect or a similar fear. He knew the blood hadn’t scared Five, but something in Diego’s face had sent Five into the contemplative silence he’d maintained until Lila rejoined the world, a silent sentry by Diego’s side.
“Practice,” Five again answers for Lila as well as Klaus this time. And Diego does not have the time or energy to deal with the implications of that statement. His brother’s skeletons are a discussion for another day, when Diego doesn’t feel like a ghost himself.
Lila huffs. “It was still faster than Klaus’s first time.”
“How do you know?” Klaus whins, indignant.
Lila smirks. “God told me.”
Klaus pouts. “You’re right, she is a little shit.”
Lila laughs, and though she is no longer copying Klaus’s powers, the sound brings Diego back to the land of the living. He still isn’t alright, maybe, probably none of them are, but they are alive. They’re together. It would do for now.
Diego suddenly pulls Lila into his arms, trying to ignore her slightly pained huff as he does so. “Welcome back,” Diego says into her hair, both of their tense bodies relaxing against each other.
“Good to be back,” she whispers into his chest. “Now get off me you big softy!” She pushes him away but her eyes hold his as the once still room slowly stirs to life around them.
Somewhere, their father plots. Nearby, Five plans. And distantly, clanking steps tell Diego there’s a guardian to kill.
Just because Lila is back doesn’t mean Diego isn’t going to exact some well deserved justice