Light As A Feather..Diego Hargreeves

11

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BOYS WILL BE BOYS

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past !

⸺WHEN THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY HAD TO go on missions, it was always all over the place. People wouldn't be able to find things or would be on the complete opposite side of the house and would have to sprint all the way down to the rooms. The Umbrella Academy was getting ready for another mission and of course it was chaos. "Coming through! Come on, Luther!"

"How will the Umbrella Academy ever become an effective crime deterrent if we can't even leave the house on time for missions?" Maria came sprinting down the hall and putting on her suit and mask as fast as possible. "I'm ready, I'm ready!"

"Behind you!"

"Come along, children, come along!" Allison was looking everywhere in her room for her mask and she couldn't find it anywhere. "I can't find my domino mask!"

"It needed a little TLC after the last mission."

"Thanks, mom." Grace had a job when they went on missions and that was to make sure that everyone had to be ready to go. She went into Luther's room to find him doing push ups with Maria sitting on his back. "Ready to go?"

"Yeah."

"Yes." Diego was running around the house frantically looking for his knives. "Where's my knives?"

Suddenly, his knives came flying threw the air almost hitting him when Maria yelled, "Sorry, I took them for aim practice!"

"You almost took out my eye!"

"Hey, now we're even!" Grace just shook her head and laughed at the two. She walked by Vanya's room, finding her playing her violin. "Sounds beautiful, Vanya."

"Thanks, mom." She continued on to find Klaus jumping up and down on his bed while there was a fire in his drawer. "Oh, Klaus!"

"Thank you, mother."

"Boys will be boys." She put out the fire in Klaus's room and he continued getting ready. She was about to go to Diego's room when Ben ran out with his suit half not done up. "Oh...Ben."

"It...It's stuck." She pulled on it just a little bit and it went up.  "Guys, wait for me!"

She walked by Diego's room to find him standing in front of the mirror. "Don't mm...mm...mm. Don't muh...muh."

Maria then came running in almost bumping into Grace and she came and gave Diego a big hug while he tried to keep saying the words. Grace put a hand on his shoulder and encouraged him. "Remember, Diego, just picture the word in your mind."

"D-don't mm...muh. Don't mm...Don't mo-move."

"You did it I'm so proud of you!" He looked up at Grace and down at Maria where she squeezed even tighter. "Good job, Diego!"

Reginald came in the room and cleared his throat. Maria was absolutely terrified of him so she immediately sprinted out of the room. Grace just looked at him with pleading eyes and Diego looked down at the ground, ashamed of what he couldn't accomplish.

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present !

Maria and Diego went to go find Grace a little while after she said she was going to go make cookies. The went upstairs and found her stitching in front of all the paintings. "Mom, we need to talk."

"Okay, but only for a minute. I need to finish this cross-stitch." Diego kneeled down so that he was at eye level with Grace while Maria stood next to him. Maria already knew what was about to happen so she didn't want to say anything, scared that if any words came out of her mouth, she would just start crying. Grace wasn't her real mom, not even her adoptive mom but she was the only mother figure she had ever had. "Everything you did for us when we were kids...for me...why'd you do it?"

"Because being your mother is the greatest gift of my life."

"Is that you saying that?"

"I'm not sure what you mean, Diego."

"I mean, our father he...made you. When you think something, is it like he's telling you what to say?"

"Your father isn't here, silly. Did I do something wrong?"

"No, it's...it's not...look. It's okay...if you hated him. He was terrible to you, to all of us."

"Don't say that."

"Why not? We were just tools in an experiment to him and sacrifices. Nothing more. So I'm saying I understand if you know if...if you wanted to hurt him."

"Now, now. Mr. Hargreeves was a great man. Industrialist, inventor, Olympic gold medalist. He made the world a better place." Diego then grabbed her by the arms and looked her dead in the eye "Stop it! Do you hear me?! Stop trying to defend him! Mom, you gotta feel something. Look he treated you just as bad as he treated Maria. You worked for him for thirty years and at least he gave Maria a bed to sleep on!"

She looked up at the paintings and said, "But I've got such a beautiful view here."

"Mom, those are just paintings."

"Of course they are. What a wonderful world she lives in. Sometimes I wonder if she's lonely." Maria's eyes had started to fill up with tears because she understood Grace. She knew that when she wondered if she was lonely that she wasn't referring to the lady in the picture. She was referring to herself. Diego looked at her and gently held her hand and squeezed it for a little bit of comfort. She looked Diego in the eyes and he gave her a light smile. They looked back to see Grace with a blank expression they hadn't seen before as she was staring at the paintings. It was a confusing look but one things for sure is that the lady in the picture wasn't the lonely one, but Grace was.