EUNOIA ━ diego hargreeves

01

CHAPTER ONE

──-ˋˏ☂︎ˎˊ-──

FREYA CONROY was not new to the knowledge that the Hargreeves family was a little odd. Maybe nobody was—she assumed everyone knew what they could do—what type of powers they possessed. But the type of oddness Freya was referring to was their actual family. How they hadn't spoken to each other in years. How their father's death was the only thing that could bring them back together.

That was the type of weirdness that was hidden to the public. Maybe it was the type of knowledge that should've been hidden from her, too, but Klaus Hargreeves could not keep his goddamn mouth shut.

Freya was eleven when she'd met him. She thought it was weird that his legs were all scraped up—she laughed at him for not being able to ride a bike. He had been silent and glaring at her from the sidewalk, and then, he opened his mouth, and hadn't closed it since.

Since then, he had snuck her into their mansion of a house countless times, he never allowed her to wander when the sun still hadn't set. Most kids were afraid of the dark, but Klaus made her look forward to it, because that was when they left his bedroom to snoop around the rest of the building.

It was on one particular night that they'd been caught. Freya was shaking so badly from beside him that somehow, after Grace had busted them, that she sparked a flame in her hands and nearly set the toilet paper on fire.

She knew by then the Hargreeves had powers, but what she didn't know was what happened behind closed doors so they could expand said powers. She remembered how Klaus' eyes got as big as saucers, how he murmured that he had no idea there were more of them, and how quickly his mischievous grin had fallen. Freya had never seen him so serious.

"Don't let anyone find out about you," he told her. "Especially my dad."

That wasn't a problem now, she supposed. It was a cruel thought, but a factual one. She was no longer in hiding now that he was gone. Klaus seemed over the moon when he called her that morning to tell her the news.

She was on her way to pick him up, actually. Klaus had probably been banned from driving in every state, which made her his chauffeur.

Freya hadn't been to the house in years, when her and Klaus grew apart as she went to college, she'd only visited once or twice. Both times, she earned a hard stare from Diego, but that was nothing new. At that point, she had no idea if their rivalry was even a joke anymore.

Klaus laughed in her face when she informed him of it. She had sat there, confused on his bed, but he just continued to cackle.

The interior of the house didn't change much, she realized as she stepped inside. Freya couldn't name one thing that looked any different. The outdated wallpaper was still in tact, the mounted animal heads were still creepy as ever, and the whole house still gave her the heebie-jeebies. It was no wonder why the Hargreeves moved out the second they got the chance to. Most of them, anyway.

She turned her head at the sound of a floorboard creaking behind her, and she was met with a familiar face. "Allison," she breathed, a smile playing on her lips as she took a step closer to her.

Allison enveloped her into a tight hug, and Freya returned it with just as much force. "It's great to see you. It's been forever, hasn't it? I honestly didn't think Klaus was going to show."