𝐑 𝐔 𝐌𝐈𝐍𝐄 ? ─── 𝘧. 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘨𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘴

O4. i think we're alone now

present day.

"listen up, old man."

klaus slowly starts to advance towards the urn containing his father's ashes on the top counter of the home bar in the sitting room. "you know, if i was murdered, and if one of my sons – adopted sons – happened to be able to commune with the dead, i might think about, i don't know, i don't know... manifesting! do the big angry ghost lecture. tell everyone who done it, and find eternal peace."

from the open entrance, lynette rolls her eyes at the sight of her brother trying to talk to their dear old dad. "eternal peace is probably overrated," klaus continues. he groans and turns around twice before continuing to wait for a couple of minutes. the blonde rolls her eyes again and leaves the room, managing to slip away without klaus noticing.

after walking upstairs to the third floor, she peeks her head into all the rooms except two until she finds diego in her old bedroom. "what are you doing in here?"

"you always were a stubborn bastard!" diego looks up from her desk at the sound of klaus cursing followed by a loud clinking noise. "did he just knock something over?"

"oh, god, please don't let it be dad's ashes. i really don't want mother to clean it up."

diego snickers. "you still call her that? you made us all feel so weird whenever we addressed her as 'mom' and you came in with the whole 'mother' thing."

"what? she loved it and i wanted to be the favourite, okay?"

diego smirks and shakes his head before looking back down at her desk and picking up a framed photograph of her and two of their brothers, ben and five. "remember when i took this?" he asks, wiping the thin layer of dust on the glass protecting the photograph.

"our tenth birthday. the three of you swapped all the labels on our gifts and insisted on having something to remember how happy you were to have pissed the rest of us off."

lynne chuckles at the memory and steps closer to him to look at the photograph. her small smile fades after a few seconds and she looks back up at diego. "are you just here to look at old photographs?"

"you and i used to hang out in here growing up," he continues, dodging her question yet again. it takes her a few seconds to figure out why he was here and snooping around. lynette raises an eyebrow and sits down on her bed. "you also used to come up here whenever you were mad at luther."

diego glances over at her and chuckles, placing the photograph back down on the desk facing her direction. "huh. so, aging really does weaken our ability to remember things." with that, he turns and walks out of her room, leaving the blonde to sit and stare at her ten-year-old self with two of the brothers who weren't here.

minutes later, a familiar beat comes from luther's room on the floor below her, making her look away from the photograph.

♪ 'children, behave'; that's what they say when we're together. and watch how you play, they don't understand and so we're running just as fast as we can, holding on to one another's hand... ♪

lynne can't help but smile and slowly stand up from the spot on her mattress upon hearing the song she and her siblings would usually jam to during the rare occasions their father was conducting business outside his beloved study.