"Vivian? Oh my god, Diego's been worried sick. Are you their brother?" Detective Patch turned to Klaus, who nodded frantically, then wailed out something unintelligible through the tape, gesturing with his head back towards the bathroom.
"Shh, shh." She flipped open a knife, and cut my arms and legs free from the chair. The woman helped me up, then handed me her knife, gesturing towards Klaus.
I cut my brother free as she pulled a gun from her holster.
The bathroom door slowly creaked open, and she fired off several shots, shoving us behind her. Klaus flung himself on the bed, then rolled off, while I made things easier and just ducked behind the bed.
"Police! Drop the gun, or you're going down!" Patch shouted, advancing towards the bathroom.
Klaus jabbed my arm with his elbow, gesturing to a vent he had gotten open. It held a briefcase, but I assumed he was referring to the escape route. I ripped the tape off of my mouth, then spoke, throwing Klaus' jacket to him.
"You go, I'll stay and make sure she gets out alright." Klaus took off his tape, and was going to protest before I stopped him. "Klaus, I'll be okay. Diego'll kill me if I let that woman die, I'm just gonna help her until the police come. I'll go straight home afterwards. Now get out of here, dufus."
Klaus nodded reluctantly, drew me into a quick hug, then squirmed his way into the vent. I shut it behind him before standing.
Hazel was slowly stepping out of the bathroom with his hands held above his head, his gun deposited on the floor.
"Hands behind your head, asshole," Patch demanded.
"Okay." Hazel complied. "Just don't shoot." He kneeled, and Patch advanced towards him.
"Cha-Cha, you come on out too, honey," I shouted, using the same patronizing tone she had used with me.
"What?" Patch asked.
No one came out from the bathroom.
"There's a-"
Two gunshots were the last sound I heard before everything went black.
~~~
Diego sat the disembodied mannequin on a chair, then turned to stare at Five with Luther. The boy-well, elderly man, but boy in body-was sleeping peacefully, seeming to be just a normal teenager.
"Funny. If I didn't know he was such a prick, I'd say he looks almost adorable in his sleep."
"Well, don't worry. He'll sober up eventually. Be back to his normal, unpleasant self," Luther muttered.
"Yeah, I can't wait that long." Diego turned around and began pacing. "I need to find out what his connection is with these lunatics before someone else dies."
"All that stuff he was saying before..." A loud thump sounded above them, catching Diego's attention more than his brother's words. "What do you think he meant by that?" Luther trailed off when he noticed Diego had put a finger to his lips. They both listened for a moment, and footsteps came, increasing in volume.
Diego grabbed a knife from the wall and quietly leapt up the stairs at the end of his room, ready to attack if the door opened. He decided to just take his chances, and opened the door swiftly, raising his throwing arm.
"You throw another one of those goddamn knives at me, I'm pressin' charges." Diego sighed, and swung the door open fully, revealing an older man who looked annoyed.
"What do you want Al?"
"I ain't your secretary."
"Yeah." Diego turned away from the man and walked back down the steps.
"Some lady called for you, said she needs your help."
"What lady?"
"I dunno. Some, uh, detective. I think she said her name was, uh, Blotch or somethin'." Diego stopped in his tracks, and turned to stare at the man.
"Patch?" Al shrugged in a manner that let Diego to believe it was her. "She needs my help." He went back up the stairs, and grabbed hold of the sticky note Al was holding.
"She needs you to meet her at a motel, that dump on Calhoun."
"When?"
"About a half an hour ago." Al walked out the door then tossed over his shoulder, "Uh, she said she found your brother."
Diego turned to find Five still on the bed, then it clicked. He had another, more defenseless brother.
"Klaus," he and Luther said in unison.
"Go, I'll wait here with-"
The door slammed as Diego ran out of his room, out of the boxing place, and stumbled to a stop outside his car. He fumbled for his keys in his pocket, almost dropping them on the concrete, but managed to pull himself together to unlock the car door and get himself in the driver's seat. He pulled out of the parking lot hurriedly, still fastening his seat belt because he knew Eudora would kill him if he turned up without one on.
The drive that usually would take five minutes seemed to take five hundred as Diego's mind raced through all of the possible outcomes of the situation. On the more positive side, he would turn up to see Klaus and Patch standing outside with the two masked people bound and gagged at their feet. More negatively, he'd find Klaus bloodied and beaten, with Patch soon to join him. If that was the case, he could just stab the assholes and take Patch and Klaus back to the Academy and get Pogo to help him fix them up.
He didn't even consider that the outcome could be far worse. He couldn't.
After what seemed to be an eternity, he pulled into the parking lot, passing a car on its way out. He parked and jogged into the motel's check in room, where a man was lazily spinning around in a chair, bored out of his wits, licorice hanging out of his mouth.
"You got a room booked?" The man asked, sitting up in interest.
"No." He sagged back into the chair, and continued to spin, biting off a piece of licorice and chewing it as Diego asked his question. "Was a woman here a while ago? A detective?"
"Yeah, said there were criminals hanging around. Not an unusual occurrence in this dump. Told her to come back with a warrant. She stayed here for a bit, then left. I hope she'll come back. She was hotttt," he drew out the word with a stupid grin until Diego punched him square in the nose. Then the smile quickly turned from grin to grimace. "Ow!"
The man in all black left the lobby, ignoring the man's groans from behind the desk. He hurried up the steps to the second floor of rooms, as he had a feeling that's where they would be. Unsheathing two of his knifes, he cautiously walked down the hallway, calling out for his brother.
"Klaus?"
Diego noticed a door open and stopped.
On the floor of the room, the first and last woman he had ever loved lay on the floor, unmoving.
The knives dropped from his hands, and his vision tunneled. He striped the gloves off his hands and gently turned Eudora over, revealing a bloody hole in the center of her chest. A gunshot, his reeling mind realized.
She was gone.
"No, no no no!"
He slammed his fists into the ground, then pulled back, placing a hand against her neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing.
His hand flitted to her face, cupping her cheek as her head lolled to the side.
"I was on my way. I was..." A tear dripped down his face, and he spat out the last sentence with all he had. "Why didn't you wait?"
Sirens rang in the distance, and he glanced towards them before looking back to Eudora.
"I gotta go, okay? I can't be here when they come, okay?" He choked out.
He shifted back to balance on his feet, then stood, reaching for his gloves before he noticed the small pale arm spattered with blood, only just coming around the corner of the bed.
He froze.
Eudora-it almost made him collapse to even think of her in passing-hadn't said anything about finding his sister. It couldn't have been her.
He shoved a chair out of his way and came around the bed to find Vivian.
His little sister was sprawled out on the floor between the bed and the window, a gunshot in her chest identical to Eudora's. He dropped to the ground once more, tears now streaming steadily down his face.
"N-no no I- I can-can't lose you t-too..."
He bent over her, shaking with sobs, tears dripping off his face onto hers.
"Viv-" he took in a shaky breath, then glanced up again as the sirens came closer. He had to get them out of the motel. Like he had told Eudora, he couldn't be at the motel when the police got there.
Diego Hargreeves acted almost robotically as he took his knives from the entryway, slid them into their proper places, then pulled his gloves on. Noticing a receipt abandoned on the table, he stuffed it in a pocket, then walked back over to his sister and gathered her into his arms. He couldn't leave her for the police, she wasn't theirs. She was her family's.
He stood in the doorway, taking one last long look at the woman who held and would always hold his love, then hurried out of the room as the sirens drew closer. He went down the stairs quickly, taking care not to injure his sister's body any further, and managed to get her in the car and the car out of the parking lot before the first police cars approached the motel.
The roads were empty as he mindlessly drove back to his childhood home.
~~~
He entered the door of the academy, Vivian clutched in his arms, and slowly walked up to the bedrooms, not bothering to check if any of his other siblings were around. He wasn't sure if he could face them, or watch them breakdown without doing so himself.
He passed Vanya's bedroom, then Klaus', then his own, and ended up at the one belonging to the girl in his arms. He entered, the slight scent of books and booze that Vivian had carried on her for years washing over him.
The brother laid his sister down, pulled a blanket over her, then sat by her feet and stared blankly at her face. There was a cut that stretched across her cheek, and a purple bruise spread across her forehead. It was clear she had been tortured before she was shot.
Diego registered the footsteps making their way towards the room, but ignored them. He could care less if someone wanted to kill him.
"Master Diego?" Pogo's weary voice asked. Diego couldn't bring himself to respond, leaving the chimpanzee to discover what had happened when he walked in the door.
The monkey with the intelligence of a man stopped in the doorway, and stood for a moment, frozen when he saw for the second time one of the children he had raised laying still on their bed.
"I- You should call and inform your siblings." He managed to keep himself composed, for the mourning brother's sake, but quickly left the room to leave for Reginald Hargreeves' study.
Diego stayed where he was for what could have been five minutes or an hour before he managed to pull himself off of the bed and walk to the phone hanging on the hallway wall.
He dialed Al's number.
"If this is someone looking for Diego, tell him when you find him to-"
"It's me."
"I can tell you myself, how splendid! I ain't your-"
"Not now, Al."
"I happen to think now is a perfectly wonderful time to-"
"Vivian is de..." He clenched his jaw, and got the words out. "She's dead."
Diego heard the old man's breath catch, and when he spoke again it was somber and shaky.
"I suppose you want to talk to your brother?" He made a noise of agreement. "I'll have him call in a minute." The line went dead, and Diego leaned against the wall opposite the phone, staring at it, waiting for it to ring.
When it finally did, the man hesitated, then picked up.
"Luther?"