fire ; diego hargreeves

21 ; the day that wasn't

"Play the music," Alex said as the silence stretched on for too long. He leaned forward, looking at the dashboard, then pointed at the right button for Klaus.

It was weird how Klaus' hand moved through his, but it wasn't like Alex could feel any of it.

"Really?" Diego asked from his seat, hand over the wound on his arm. "This is stupid, turn that shit off."

"No; I lost someone too. This is me dealing. Totally." Alex glanced over at Ben, and both of them knew that Klaus sucked at lying.

Diego seemed to notice too. He looked at his living brother for a long moment before he dismissed it. "Fucking - whatever."

The Ride of the Valkyries played as their stupid truck disrupted a meeting in the road - those assassins, Five and Luther.

"Luther?" Ben and Alex said, identical faces of confusion from their spots in the truck.

"Go faster!" Diego yelled.

"Whee!" Ben said, grinning on his spot, popsicle in hand.

Alex laughed. "Having fun?" he asked, but then the truck hit the assassins.

Something happened, and Alex thought his head was going to burst. "FUCK!"

"Alex?"

It felt like he was dying all over again, but everything was hurting this time. His skin was burning, head splitting, and his senses were taken over by time. He couldn't see; it felt like whatever had happened had taken over all his senses.

🗡️☂️🔥

"The hell happened back there?" Was not the best first thing to hear after appearing back in reality.

So Alex was still dead.

He was surprised to find himself standing. "What's going on?" he asked, looking at Ben. "Where's Klaus?"

"He's being miserable in the bathroom. You vanished is what happened, what did you do?"

Alex looked at Ben, offended. "I didn't do anything - something happened with time and I had a reaction to it."

Ben raised his eyebrows at him. "You're dead, how can you have had a reaction to time?"

"Time isn't exactly solid. It's like fluid. I figure it can affect the dead as well as the living." He sighed, looking at Ben. "Even dead, people who are messing around with time is fucking me over. C'mon, let's check on Klaus before he does something stupid like kill himself."

The two appeared in Klaus' bathroom in time to see him flushing away his drugs. Alex looked surprised at it, but didn't say anything; Klaus had to have lost someone close to him, maybe the love of his life, and Alex knew he had to have deeply loved that person if he was willing to sober up to see them again.

There was a knock at the door. "Busy." Klaus said, sniffling. Luther came in, ignoring what Klaus had said.

Oh, Alex really wanted to physically manifest just so that he could sock Luther in his jaw. "Oh, good, you're up." Klaus looked about as annoyed as Alex felt. Ben just looked like he was used to it at this point. "We need to talk, you, me, and the others. So meet me in the living room." Luther looked back into the corridor before looking back at Klaus. "Like, now-ish?" he pressed.

"Yeah, that sounds like a real rager, but my schedule's already chock-full, so -"

Luther butt in. "Yeah, no time for that, the world's ending in three days." He left, and Alex nodded.

"Yeah, the world is ending in a few days. I may have forgotten to mention it," Alex said, looking between Ben and Klaus. "Blame Five, the fucking idiot."