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Realistically, Diego knows a picture can’t hurt him. But the glossy picture of his unsmiling sister on the back cover of her book seemed to boring holes in his skull the longer that he looked at it.
His sweet, non-confrontational sister that had loved their family more than anything and had lived just five doors down from him for their entire childhood had recorded every miserable fucking detail of their young lives in one hardback, life-ruining book. Pages and pages of god-awful descriptions of the whole family and confessions that were surely making people across the nation clutch their pearls in shock. Not their Umbrella Academy. Not their dysfunctional teen family superhero team.
And she wasn’t wrong either.
That was the worst part about all of this, Diego thought to himself, leaning back in his little chair and hoisting his feet onto Detective Eudora Patch’s desk. He could feel numerous eyes on the police station on him. Or maybe they were on the book he held in his hands.
It was the same people that had been staring at him since the first time he’d waltzed into the police station like he’d owned the place that were staring now, only now their gazes were different. Some were more filled with pity, some with judgement, but none of them hurt the way that Vanya’s did on the cover of her shiny new, sure to be a bestseller, book.
“Get your feet off my desk, jackass.” Few voices could draw Diego’s attention as quickly as that one. Eudora Patch stood in front of her desk; arms crossed across her chest.
Diego managed a grin and looked up from the treacherous pages of Vanya’s book. It quickly died when he caught the look on her face, something like a mixture of sympathy and sorrow swimming in the murky brown of her eyes.
“Him again?” He didn’t need to wait for her nod; he already knew. There was only one reason why she ever gave him that look. Another goddamn report had come in. He was already shoving things into his pockets before he was halfway out of the chair. “Where is he?”
The address that she gave him was just in the city limits and sparsely populated; except with the occasional raging party that filtered in every month or so. Klaus’ favorite kind of place.
It was winter, and the bitter chill bit at Diego’s skin even through his thick jacket the second he got out of the car.
“Klaus!” he yelled for his brother, shivering as he waded through the snow that was beginning to cover the ground. “Klaus!” He’d been walking for a few minutes calling out for him before he got an answer.
“Is that my darling Diego? My darling brother?” Diego whipped around. The trilling words had come from what looked like a lump lying in someone’s front yard, which was wildly overgrown in some places and balding in others. Red solo cups and cigarette butts littered the grass. The party in the house that the yard belonged to was clearly still raging; music and screaming poured from the open front door.
“Klaus,” he sighed, rolling his eyes. He rushed forward, knelt in front of the lump and pushed at it. His brother rolled over, making bleary eye contact with him before breaking into a bout of hearty laughter, which quickly turned into a bout of hearty coughing. “Jesus,” he mumbled, grabbing Klaus’ shoulders and helping him sit up.
“Klaus will do,” he slurred, letting his head drop onto Diego’s shoulder, “or Daddy if you’re feeling spicy.”
“Shut the fuck up. Can you stand?” He didn’t wait for an answer before beginning to drag his brother to his feet despite his protests.
“Leaving so soon, handsome?” a voice called out from behind them and Diego stiffened. He turned, pulling Klaus with him, to see a man, gaze unfocused and limbs loose. He had a knowing smirk on his face and was wearing all too tight jeans. “Sure you don’t want to come back inside? Give us all a repeat performance?”
Diego’s blood boiled. He ran a hand over the knives in his belt, selecting a longer, curved one. He pulled it from his belt and pointed it at the man, whose eyes widened and hands raised in surrender at once. “So much as look at my little brother again, and it’s all over for you. Hear me?” he said quietly. The man nodded quickly.
“We’re the same age, asshole,” Klaus murmured sleepily against his shoulder. Diego lightly shoved at his head.
He helped him to the car, opening the back door and getting him situated inside, with his legs sprawled across the seats and on his side so he wouldn’t choke on his own vomit.
“This is the last time, alright?” Diego informed him as he strapped himself into the driver’s seat. “I’m not helping you out of another jam. This is it.”
They both knew that he was lying. He had said that the last time. And the time before that. And the time before that.
Klaus laughed. Most people had a sort of humorless laugh for situations like this, but all of Klaus’ laughs were packed to the brim with humor. A dark, twisted humor that scared the daylights out of Diego, but humor nonetheless.
They drove in silence for a few more minutes before Klaus spoke again. This time, his voice was devoid of any kind of twisted joy; he was merely somber. “I just want them to leave me alone, Di.”
Diego sighed, examining his brother in the rearview mirror. He was sitting up now, staring at his hands. “Who won’t leave you alone?”
“It’s burn victims tonight. There was a huge fire in this area, years ago, I think. A lot of people died. Firefighters, junkies, kids, you name it.”
Diego rarely felt sympathy and hadn’t ever since he was a young child. He couldn’t, not while growing up in the place that he did. But he felt sympathy for Klaus. Maybe he was able to learn that a picture couldn’t hurt him, but Klaus never did. He couldn’t.
Diego pulled the car into the back parking lot of the boxing club where he lived and parked the car. He opened the back door and Klaus’ head lolled out to the side, a happy, dazed smile on his face. “Yeah, yeah, alright, up you go,” Diego groaned, tugging him from the car and his arm around his shoulder.
“Home at last!” Klaus trilled, throwing his free arm up into the air. Diego frowned at him, but he wasn’t really wrong. He had slept here only two weeks ago.
But still, he didn’t sleep here frequently enough to avoid the raised eyebrows and questioning stares from the men sitting on the sidelines waiting to get into the ring. Klaus gave them a little wave. “Seen enough, assholes?” Diego yelled. All of them hastily looked away, rearranging and grumbling. What a perfect pair of brothers they were.
Diego unlocked his little room, and the brothers stepped inside. He deposited Klaus on the small couch near the entryway where he sprawled his long limbs out and made himself comfortable immediately. Diego snorted at the image, then moved to the fridge to fix himself a drink.
The room was cold and sparsely decorated; he had saved every expense. Some might argue the good that just one fake plant or family photo mounted on the wall would do but anything could be a distraction. What would a family photo even be anyways? A newspaper clipping from nearly twenty years ago? ‘THE SIX MEMBERS OF THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY SAVE NATIONAL BANK FROM ROBBERY,’ it would read. Six members.
His thoughts very swiftly returned to his sister and her book. And he very suddenly remembered that while there were only three other living people that would understand the hurt of it, one of them was in the room with them. They were all connected in so little, but they were connected in this.
“Did you read Vanya’s book?” It shocked him a little how quiet the words were, how quiet he could be in times like this. He felt like a small child, standing in the center of his room with a glass of water held so tightly in his hand that he was worried he might break it. Hoping, praying, begging for someone to see him, to understand him.
“Vanya’s book- oh. Yeah, I did. In rehab. Tantalizing read, but I do think she overuses the Oxford comma as well as the word ‘greatly.’” Diego glanced over. His brother was now laying on his back with one arm draped over his eyes.
“That’s all you have to say about our own sister’s exposé?” Diego snapped. “About all of our family secrets being leaked for the whole world to see?”
Klaus removed the arm from his face to glare at Diego. Fury laced his eyes, and it was the most genuine emotion he’d seen from his brother in a long, long time. “It hurt like hell. Diego. What else do you want me to say?”
Diego shook his head. Squeezed the glass of water tighter. “Nothing. Just go to bed. And be gone when I wake up.”
“Won’t be a problem, Kraken.”
Diego settled down into his bed, ruffled at the use of the superhero name he hadn’t heard in years. Klaus fell asleep on the couch first; he watched as his eyes slowly drifted closed.
Diego would rescue him the next time he was in trouble. He knew he would with all the certainty in his body.
In a world designed to tear them apart, all they had was each other and he’d be damned if he lost another brother.