✓ Chaos Theory | Diego Hargreeves [1]

【CHAPTER SEVEN】

—chapter seven.

  ❛ so, you decided to come back. ❜  

LIFE WAS ODD, AFTER THAT.

Elodie hadn't seen Diego since their infamous incident. It had only been a couple of days, sure, but she had become a little used to him popping up. However, in his absence, she did think about him - more than she would ever admit to anyone. Even herself.

She dreamt about him, more and more as the week came to a close - her own nightmares mingled with his own name, haunting every corridor her dream-self stepped down until she was suffocated by the sound. The information she had learnt before, the mystical illusion of an 'Umbrella Academy' and the children all lined up in uniforms and masks, blood dripping from juvenile fingertips and tears lost in black and white fabric - they sung her calls of help, but she couldn't do more than stare and watch them fall, one by one.

Sometimes they haunted her own memories, too. She'd call out the name of one, but they appeared, black and white and frozen, watching her writhe and shout on the floor. She asked for their help, but they never did more than stare. They'd endure her abuse with white eyes and calm smiles, and wait until she was helpless against their own abuse. Their pain mingled with her own and as the week died, she forced herself to stay awake. Normally, she could withstand him; she knew him, had followed the memories out so many times that she could even best him. But they, he...was an unknown variable she couldn't conquer.

She wasn't sure why it bothered her after all that time. She figured read that before and slept like a damn baby (sure, a baby with horrific familial values that left them in cold sweats and teary-eyed, but the sentiment stood). But somehow, after their last exchange...

...she drunk herself to sleep, after that. And while it didn't kill her normal programming, at least his face wasn't there, joining in.

In waking hours, Elodie wondered how he came to the name Diego, and what he had done to end up at her shitty bar wearing a harness for knives and beat up combat boots. How had she never met him before? Where had he come from, where had he gone?

"Where did you come from, Cotton-eyed Joe," Elodie muttered to herself, grinning like she had made the smartest joke in the world. Her nail traced a particularly deep scour in the wood. "Hm. Cotton-eyed Diego...ha."

"What was that?"

"Nothing!" she called back to him. She didn't have to turn around to see the cowboy's lazy smile. "Get back to work!"