fire ; diego hargreeves

22 ; the day that was

"Where did he go?" Diego asked, looking from where Alex was back to Klaus. "That was Alex!"

Klaus looked at Alex, a little confused. He went to speak, but then there was another temporal anomaly, and then Five crashed onto the bar. It took the attention from Alex's sudden appearance. It wasn't like a ghost manifesting was important to the other Hargreeves.

"Oh, this day just keeps getting better and better," Alex said to himself. "This didn't happen last time," Alex said when Klaus asked if he was still high.

"Five, where have you been?"

"Are you alright?"

"Who did this?"

Diego looked back into the space where he'd last seen Alex. He looked away again, and Alex felt his heart break when he saw the sadness break through Diego's mask.

"Alex?" Alex reached over, but his hand passed through Diego's arm, and it broke his heart into millions of pieces. He wished he was still alive, just so that Diego wouldn't be hurting so much.

Diego looked lost, and his siblings weren't comforting him. It was hard to watch, and Alex didn't know what to do. Maybe Klaus had accidentally used Alex's anger to manifest him without realising? But now there was no anger left in Alex, and he just felt empty and unhappy. It was hard to get try and get enough energy to help Klaus manifest him again.

Five had stolen Allison's coffee and chugged it. "So, the apocalypse is in three days. The only chance we have to save our world is, well, us,"

"The Umbrella Academy."

"Yeah, but with me, obviously."

"Luther mentioned needing Five this time around, so he got that right," Alex said, and Klaus glanced back at him, shushing him.

"So if y'all don't get your sideshow acts together and get over yourselves, we're screwed."

Alex looked back at Diego, only to see that he hadn't moved from behind the bar. Five was still talking, but Diego didn't seem to be paying much attention. Every time Alex looked at Diego, he could feel his heart break. He wished he was back in his normal body, alive and able to just hold Diego.

"I know who's responsible for the apocalypse." Five said, which had Diego move to his siblings and walk through Alex to look at the lead Five had.

"Harold Jenkins?" Allison said, confused.

Diego looked annoyed. "Who the fuck is Harold Jenkins?" he asked.

"I don't know, yet. But I do know that he is responsible for the apocalypse. So we have to find him, and we have to do it now,"

Alex watched as the siblings started arguing a little over Harold Jenkins, how there were probably hundreds in their city alone. It was a little tiring. Five explained how his former employers tried to stop him from coming back and saving the planet.

"My former employer, they monitor all of time and space to make sure that whatever is supposed to happen ... happens." He further explained how he intercepted a letter meant for the lunatics and got his lead from there.

Diego looked at Five, the first one to get a question in. "But Alex is dead, and in the last timeline he'd been alive. Doesn't that mean they fucked up?"

"Not ... really. Alex is an anomoly. Was."

"Comforting." Alex said, looking back at Klaus, who looked like shit from his spot on the couch. Alex sat beside him. "You OK?" he asked as Ben appeared on their right, sitting on the armrest.

"My skin is on fire." Klaus said.

It seemed that Five snapped a little, annoyed at his siblings arguing. "You know what else is insane? I look like a thirteen-year-old boy. Klaus talks to the dead, Alex could react to and manipulate time, and Luther thinks he's fooling everybody with that overcoat. Everything about us is insane, it always has been."