Chapter Text
Diego was face to face with his sibling again, and she did not look happy to see him.
"Move aside."
Diego frowned as he swivelled around to the familiar voice. Could that be…?
Lila was pointing a gun at him.
"What the hell is going on here?" he demanded. Lila had disappeared one day, about two months ago for Diego, from the hospital. They hadn't been given an explanation, which had exasperated Diego, but what could he do? And now here she was, decades in the future, looking the same. He was definitely missing some key information there.
As for Vanya, she had been the only sibling who hadn't shown up in Dallas. Despite his complicated feelings regarding the sibling who had almost killed him three months prior, Diego hadn't liked to think about the possibility that she was dead. At the same time this wasn’t exactly the reunion he had pictured. Diego stared at his youngest sibling, who stared right back at him, eyes all hard and cold, without a hint of recognition. But at least they weren't glowing. That was something, wasn’t it? Boy, his expectations had dropped. She'd had a haircut too.
Lila rolled her eyes at him, "I'm stealing from your brother, dumbass."
"Okay. Which one? Why? How? I've got more questions, just give me a moment."
Lila scoffed. "Diego, just move aside. I don’t want to hurt you, but I will."
"I haven't got any problem hurting him," Vanya offered, and Diego spun back to glare at her. She really didn’t care, did she?
"What did I do to piss you off?" he asked, not really expecting an answer. He had let Luther lock her up. But he hadn't been happy about it. Why should she be so eager to hurt him?
"Nothing." Huh. Forgiveness? "You're just in my way." No, that didn’t sound like forgiveness. Something wasn’t quite right here, but Diego couldn’t put his finger on it.
"Where is your way?" There were much more important questions here (like what the fuck is going on?) but Diego wasn’t certain how to bring those up.
"We're here for Five," Lila finally told him. "Now will you please get out of the way?"
"No. How do you know Five? Lila, how are you here? And why is Vanya with you?" He turned to his sibling. "Why are you acting weird? Where have you been?"
"This is Viktor, actually. And he's been with me."
Diego raised an eyebrow at his sibling, who nodded back. "Oh, okay. Why are you here, Viktor?"
"I'm just doing my job, idiot. Can you stop asking all of these questions?"
"When did you find the time to get a job interview?"
"Stop talking to me like you know me," Viktor snapped.
Diego halted. That hurt. Why was Viktor so determined to get rid of him? Had he really moved past their family that much? Had they hurt their sibling this much?
"Please, V. C'mon."
"Shut up," Viktor growled. He pushed past Diego and forced the door to the mansion open.
Diego watched with a wide mouth and turned back to Lila, who just smirked at him.
Five startled when his door burst open. He had heard Diego yelling about something downstairs but hadn't heard the hothead coming upstairs. Everybody in this damn house had forgotten how to be quiet. He swung around to give out to his brother but the sight that greeted him took away his breath.
"Va-" Before he could greet his assumed-dead sibling, there was a gun in his face. "Woahh, what's going on exactly?"
"My name is Viktor Hargreeves. You have something I want."
"Viktor? You changed your name?" Five was confused, but he wasn't going to admit to that. What did his sibling want?
"Yes," Viktor replied shortly. "Now give me the briefcase."
The briefcase? "Why? You need to start another apocalypse?"
"That's not my job. You're the shit who keeps messing things up."
"Sorry, do you think I blew up the moon?" Five asked incredulously.
"Stop meddling, and you'll never have to hear from me again."
"You- Viktor, we want you here." Did he still think they blamed him? Well, they did blame him, but Five wasn't going to suggest murdering him again. Probably. Depended on why he was still waving that gun around.
"I really don't care," he sneered. He glanced around the room and quickly located what he was looking for. He made a beeline for the suitcase that Five had shoved under the bed. Five was stunned beyond reaction.
His sibling had been missing for... an indefinite amount of time, considering the time travel of it all. When Five had landed in Dallas, there wasn't a single clue as to their location. None of the others had heard anything, and they'd eventually had to give up looking (and Five had to try and keep them from altering history irreversibly). They'd returned to their own timeline in the hopes that maybe Viktor had just stayed behind, but there had been nothing. It was like he had disappeared off the face of the earth.
"Are you with the Commission?" Five's sudden revelation was responded to with a single finger.
Klaus hadn't known how to react when his long lost sibling had shown up on the doorstep. It had been years since Klaus had seen Viktor, but he could hear the whole interaction between him and Diego from the window. Viktor wasn’t happy to be here. His room had always been great for eavesdropping. So he heard all of Viktor’s threats to Diego, and to Five. He also got to watch Diego’s staring match with the girl who had stolen his heart in Dallas. (Klaus had been told about her during a particularly weary night after Diego had run into Eudora’s old partner.) Lila was certainly something. But how had she met Viktor? And time travelled? This whole thing was really freaking weird. Ben was glaring at him from the corner with a “do something” face but Klaus could not be bothered. He just listened as Viktor stormed down the stairs and left the mansion again. Was that it again? Nothing to be heard for another three years?
“FAMILY MEETING. NOW.”
Well, Diego answered that question for him at least.
“Viktor?” Luther asked.
“Yes,” Five and Diego replied in sync, glaring at each other afterwards.
“And he was here?” Allison was incredulous. “Just like that? It’s been years, and he just showed up out of the blue?”
“With Diego’s ex,” Klaus piped in.
“She’s not my ex,” Diego snapped.
“It hasn’t technically been years,” Five was using his pretentious asshole voice. “I don’t even know if Viktor ever travelled back to Dallas. There wasn’t any signs of him there. Maybe he’s been here the whole time.”
“If he’d stayed here wouldn’t he have been stuck in your apocalypse?” Luther queried.
“It’s not my apocalypse!”
“Okay, okay, okay. None of this matters.” Diego was clearly thinking this through. “You said he’s with the commission now?”
Five hesitated. “It just seems that way. I don’t know. He was weird.”
“Weird how?” Allison was getting a small bit infuriated with her brothers now. They had all seen Viktor, her missing sibling, and she hadn’t. Yet they were acting like something bad had happened. “Why aren’t you guys happy about this? Viktor’s alive!”
“Because he wasn’t happy,” Diego replied. “He didn’t even act like he recognised me.”
“Like he got amnesia?” Luther asked.
“No,” Diego snapped, but then he hesitated. “Well, I don’t know. Maybe. Not like he’d forgotten everything. But like he’d forgotten us.”
“That sounds pretty much like amnesia,” Allison remarked.
“He didn’t seem to care that much about us,” Five mused. “Negatively or positively. He knew who I was, though.”
“But he would have to if he was working with the Commission, right? They hate your guts, Fivey.” Klaus was for once making a good point.
Allison let out a deep breath. “So what the hell happened to our brother?”