EUNOIA ━ diego hargreeves

37

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
──-ˋˏ☂︎ˎˊ-──

FREYA STRAINED to keep Klaus upright as she moved him into the elevator, and the boys attempted to ease her struggles by grabbing his head and holding him against the wall. Diego used his strength to keep him there, and Stan moved to push the lobby button.

They fell into silence. Freya's head began to pound at the amount of concentration this was taking. It hadn't been longer than ten seconds after the elevator doors slid shut, that Klaus gasped.

Diego leaped away, shouting, and dragging Freya along with him to stand on the other side of the box as Klaus seized back to life.

"You told me he was dead, puta!" Stan yelled.

"He was! And now you speak Spanish?!"

"Who gives a flying fuck about Spanish right now?!" Freya hollered in return, back pushed against the wall, watching as Klaus stumbled around in the carpet. It would've been a hilarious sight to behold if they were under a different circumstance. "What the hell is going on right now?!"

Klaus collapsed into Diego, whose head momentarily smashed up against the elevator, and he gripped at his brother, who grunted. Freya hadn't even realized she'd placed a hand on Stan's shoulder to keep him away.

Klaus scrunched his face up. "Let's just turn down the volume a smidge, shall we?" He struggled to push himself up from Diego. "Celestial comedown is a bitch!"

Klaus tumbled back onto the ground with a thud. Diego crouched next to him. "Oh, you scared the shit out of me, Klaus! I thought you were dead."

With a shaking hand, Klaus found the open wound on his chest. "Me too."

Freya shoved past Diego and hugged Klaus with one arm. He weakly returned the gesture. Then, she pulled away, and lightly smacked him atop his head. "Don't ever do that shit to me again."

"I'd be lying if I said I won't," Klaus told her. He started to laugh, and Freya slumped against him with her own breath of relief. She briefly caught sight of Diego's expression, noticing how he'd began to rapidly blink tears away.

The elevator dang once they reached ground level, and Klaus insisted on walking on his own. Freya hung back for a moment, hesitantly catching Diego by the sleeve. He turned to look at her in surprise.

Still alive or not, seeing someone she cared about so deeply dead before her eyes was enough to make her anger disappear. Even if only for a moment.

She hadn't planned out what she was going to say. She knew how much Klaus meant to Diego, and even if he hadn't shown how upset he'd been over his (temporary) death, she knew how bad it'd affected him. There weren't really words to exchange. So instead of speaking, she reached down to squeeze his hand quickly, before exiting the elevator after Klaus, who was still walking like he'd drunk ten bottles of liquor.

"Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa," Diego called after him, and Freya uselessly tried to grab Klaus by the shoulder to steady him, only for him to brush her off. "Dude. Dude, slow down. You were dead like three minutes ago. Like dead dead, all right, so-"

"Well I'm back now," Klaus interrupted. "Apparently, it's like a thing I do. Who knew, right? And look, look." He pulled apart his shirt to show them the circle on his chest, which had decreased in size since the last time Freya had seen it, which was less than a minute prior. "It's already healing."

"What would happen if we cut off your head?" Stan asked. "Would it grow two of you?"

"Stan," Diego warned. He glanced to Klaus. "Would it?"