x. | attacked
AT HER APARTMENT, Knox Morris furiously removed her sneakers and clothes, dropping everything in a dusty, bloody heap at the front door, before charging into the kitchen and rifling through the cabinets. She was hungry, sure, but she was on the hunt for something a little stronger than a meal.
The cool bottle of aged wine was pulled from the cupboard with ease, nearly slipping from between Knox's fingers. She held onto it tightly as she ambled around the room, grabbing a glass and setting it on the counter while she opened the bottle. The foil around the cork came off in one swipe of a steak knife, but the rest was more difficult.
Usually, Knox could open a bottle of wine with her eyes closed. She'd perfected the practice over many years, under various levels of intoxication. Yet, for some god forsaken reason, she couldn't open this one. It took a few minutes for her to realize that her breathing was still heavy with anger, then a few more minutes to realize she couldn't get the bottle open because her hands were shaking too hard.
Frustration hit Knox Morris like a wave. She groaned and dropped the corkscrew she'd been using to open the bottle, then braced her hands on the countertop in front of her. She closed her eyes tight, then reopened them because all she could see when she had them shut was red. Fiery, furious crimson that made her chest burn with rage.
She'd saved lives today. Fought off armed intruders. And what did get in return?
Her ear burned with the answer.
Moving on pure instinct, Knox grabbed the wine bottle from the counter, turned to face the wall, and sent it sailing. The bottle hit with a crash, exploding in a show of glass and red wine. Shards rained down onto the tiled floor.
"Dammit!" Knox screamed at the mess, watching as the alcohol streamed down the wall in red drips. "Fuck!"
She dropped her head into her hands and whined a long, shrill sigh that lasted until she needed to breathe. See, Knox Morris could handle almost anything sent her way, but she hated stress. She hated not knowing everything. She hated not being in the loop. She hated being treated as if she were a liability. The word burned in her head.
Instead of cleaning up the mess she'd just created, Knox moved into her bedroom and grabbed a pair of shorts and a tee shirt to wear. She'd left her dirty clothes by the front door, so she rushed out to grab them, making sure to leave the pill she found in Hargreeves's office on a nearby table, just so she didn't lose it.
With that small mess cleaned, Knox forced herself to take a shower, even though the water stung her wounds and made her muscles ache. She'd never been in a fist fight so severe before, and even though she'd held her own pretty well, there were some areas for concern.
Like her head.
Water cleaned away the blood oozing from the cuts of her head. She knew she had bruises forming as well, because even the little pitter patter of the stream on her wounds made her wince in pain. And her ear. God, if she ever got the guts to go back to the Umbrella Academy, she was going to bust Diego Hargreeves's ass.
That thought surprised her. Did she just say if she ever went back to the Academy? Why if and not when? For a second, she stopped scrubbing at her hair, staring at the tiled wall of the shower. She'd thought about it a couple of times in the last few days — collecting her severance fee and leaving the estate for good. It wouldn't be hard, she assumed, just asking Pogo for the check and then waltzing away without a worry.
And why wouldn't she? In the last week, her employer had died, she'd been accused of his murder the second she met the Hargreeves children, she'd been shot at, chased around, punched, kicked, cut by a knife. She deserved her pay and she deserved a break.
Knox finished her shower and hopped out onto her bathmat, drying off and dressing quickly before making her way to the kitchen's medicine cabinet, where she kept her first aid kit.
She planted herself on the carpeted ground of her room, right in front of the large, ornate full length mirror she had propped up on the wall. With slow precision, she began to bandage her wounds with gauze and tape, taking extra care to keep her hands from shaking. Fury still washed through her blood, but she'd calmed slightly, trying to decide whether or not she wanted to finish her job at the Academy.
Her ear caused the most trouble, simply because the wound was placed oddly. Knox tried her best to bandage it, but ended up leaving it uncovered, pulling her hair into a ponytail so it wouldn't get caught on anything.
As time passed, nerves replaced the anger in her chest. By the time Knox finished cleaning her cuts, bruises had formed and she was too antsy to sit still. She paced the space at the foot of her bed restlessly, glancing out of the window every once in awhile to see that the night had gotten darker and darker.
Just after midnight, Knox Morris stopped pacing and pulled on a pair of sneakers — not the ones she'd worn earlier in the day, just because those were stained with grime and blood. In her new shoes, she wandered around the apartment, collecting her keys, wallet, and a sweatshirt before making her way to the street. She couldn't rest, and she couldn't breathe in that apartment, feeling as if the walls were closing in on her.
To combat this feeling, she decided to go on a late night walk — disregarding everything she'd been told growing up. She was alone, she was a woman. Right now, standing on the dark city street all alone, Knox Vienna Morris was the perfect target.
That dumbass couldn't care less.
She walked down her street with a purpose in her step, not knowing or caring which way she stepped. She just needed to get away — away from the troubles plaguing her mind.
-
Nighttime in the city was something Diego Hargreeves knew a lot about. He'd spent years roaming the streets, fighting crime, avoiding police when they came to investigate, and becoming someone capable enough to nearly melt into shadows. He did it routinely — stayed up listening to the police radio he'd nabbed online, waiting for bad things to happen.
Stopping bad things from happening was Diego's favorite pastime.
This night, he roamed the streets without blending in, still wearing the black mask he always wore when working, but not hiding away in alleys or off-roads. He moved with purpose even though he had no where to go, and sneered at anyone he walked passed, just so they knew not to mess with him.
Like the knives strapped to his body wouldn't have warned them.
Crime in the city had risen in recent years, but had skyrocketed over the last few nights. Including the masked psychopaths that had broken into his family home, many other shootings plagued businesses around town. While Diego had a plan to track down Dog Face and her friend, he first needed to do his nightly rounds.
This included walking the streets of the poorer neighborhoods, watching for trouble, stopping anyone from getting hurt. He liked it. But he wasn't on his A-game tonight.
Thoughts of the evening's attack at the Academy plagued his mind. He passed up many crime stopping opportunities, including multiple drug trades and a possible shoplifter at a local corner store. To be honest, he wasn't in the mood to fight someone over something that didn't cause any harm. He was bored of not making a difference.
Diego whistled through his teeth as he walked, nodding at the citizens he'd become so accustomed to on his rounds — the homeless man on Second Street, the stray cat always digging for something in the sewers. The usual.
He stopped on a street corner, ignoring the possible prostitute that leaned on a nearby building. Her hair was peroxide blond and teased to the heavens. She held a lit cigarette between her fingers and puffed a steady stream of smoke from her thin red-painted lips. Her eyes raked over Diego unabashedly, taking in the leather and knives strapped to his chest. There were a lot of weirdos in the city, but something about him screamed business.
The prostitute — a woman of thirty seven who spent many nights on the corner telling scruffy men that her name was Peppermint — glanced across the street diagonal to her, where she saw one of her regular customers harassing a younger woman.
Huh, Peppermint thought, guy's a total asshole.
She watched the scene play out for a few seconds, warily glancing at Diego as he idly picked at his fingernails, not catching the commotion across the street. When panic spiked in her chest, worried for the youngster getting harried by the man, Peppermint dropped her cigarette and whistled at Diego.
"Hey, knife boy," she said, catching his attention, "Wanna do your job?"
Diego looked at the woman with a cocked eyebrow, then followed Peppermint's finger when she posted at the scene. He caught the woman in his sights, then looked closer to see the old man standing next to her, hands outstretched as if he were going to grab her.
"Shit," he said, running off.
Peppermint rolled her eyes and reached in her bosom for another smoke.
-
Knox Vienna Morris hated her situation at the moment. She was nearly ten blocks from home, standing on a shitty sidewalk in an even shittier part of town. In front of her stood a man that had been following her for nearly three of those blocks, with alcohol staining his breath and stubble dotting his jaw.
"What's the matter, sweetheart?" The man jeered nastily, stepping closer to Knox even though she kept moving away from him. He laughed at the worry on her face. "I won't hurt you."
"Piss off!" Knox said warningly, digging into her wallet without much thought, and pulling out the fifty dollar bill she always kept in there for emergencies. She three the money out in front of her, far enough away that she would have room to run if the man reached for it.
That laugh hit her like a ton of bricks as the man chuckled. "You think I want money? Oh, honey. Why would I need money when I have a pretty little thing like you?"
Her bones ached from the day's struggles, but that didn't mean Knox couldn't dodge the man's attempt at grabbing her shoulder. She yelped and twisted away when he lumbered forward, then gasped when she realized that he had her ponytail in his meaty hand. On instinct, she yanked away as hard as possible, yelling out when he pulled her by her hair.
"Get off of me!" She screamed, bashing her fist into her attacker's throat.
Instead of letting go of her hair, the man yowled in pain, then lashed out, striking Knox on the ear that had the open wound. Knox saw stars at the blow, and momentarily stopped her fighting, body nearly going limp at the pain. Thinking she was subdued, the man pulled her closer, until his face was deathly close to Knox's.
"Pretty young thing, aren't you?" He sneered.
Before Knox could respond with the ball of spit forming in her mouth, the man released her ponytail from his grasp, both hands flying to the back of his neck. Knox reeled back, tripping on her shoe and landing on her ass. The man towered over her, screaming bloody murder.
Knox's eyes searched the man quickly, looking at the back of his neck where he was clawing at...something she couldn't quite see clearly. Looking closer, Knox realized that there was a black leather glove holding the man in place, pinching the back of his neck so hard that he was calling out for his mommy to help.
"Diego?" She asked without meaning to. Who else would be roaming the streets wearing leather and beating up perverts?
The only response she got was the man being forced to his knees in front of her. His face was red and there was horror in his eyes — Knox couldn't help but smile.
"Apologize." Diego demanded, holding the man in place and using a voice much lower than his usual one. It was intimidating, but not to Knox. She found his eyes behind that black mask he wore when he worked, and hoped he could see how grateful she was.
The man wheezed. "I'm sorry," he said quickly, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
Diego dropped the man's neck, and watched as he collapsed onto all fours, shaking like a leaf and begging for forgiveness. Knox crab walked away a few feet, before realizing how ridiculous she looked. She stood quickly, sidestepping the man, who was now weeping on the sidewalk, smelling more and more like urine every second. Diego grabbed her arm — she didn't care that it wasn't gentle, she wanted to get away — and dragged her down the street.
They walked in silence for two blocks before Diego stopped walking, standing next to a beat up car parked on the side of the street that must have belonged to him. He took off that stupid mask and pocketed it before looking Knox in the eyes.
"Are you okay?" He asked, voice now pitched normally.
Knox's voice was shaky when she responded, but she forced it to smoothen out. "You know, I promised myself that the next time I saw you, I would punch you in the face."
"That's understandable," Diego nodded slightly, "But are you alright?"
"Yeah," Knox lied through her teeth, feeling her ear bleed and throb along with her other wounds. The jostling hadn't helped them at all. "I'm fine."
"That's a lie," Diego said without missing a beat. Moving slowly, he moved Knox's hair away from her ear, looking closer at the wound he'd inflicted not even five hours ago. Blood dropped onto his gloved finger, but he didn't care. Guilt filled his chest, and he sighed. "I'm sorry," he barely whispered.
Knox shrugged him off and tried to smile. "It's fine. We're even now — I save your ass, you save mine."
He wanted to say more, Knox could see it in his eyes, but he gritted his teeth instead. Diego Hargreeves was not a man who showed much emotion. He spoke when he needed to, felt things stronger than anyone else could imagine, yet he could never force himself to let his true feelings out. Especially not now.
To save himself from further embarrassment, Diego scratched his head and nodded at his car. "Do you...need a ride?"