—chapter twenty-six.

  ❛ we're not kids anymore, diego. ❜  

FOR SEVEN BLISSFULLY IGNORANT MINUTES after waking up, Elodie did not remember the events of last night.

She slept a little later than she normally would, slapping snooze several times over as her sleep-deprived brain craved a couple more minutes of rest. When she finally woke, she chalked her aching muscles and irritated senses to a restless night and nothing more. Wasting no more than a minute staring up at the ceiling, she forced herself up and at 'em, sliding her feet into the socks set out the night before and padding off to get dressed.

It was only halfway through buttoning up her top when her previously blank mind finally recalled last night's events, and her mood immediately soured.

"Shit," she cursed, hands finding the bathroom counter, slamming angrily against the hard surface. Her eyes met the reflection across from her; an angry woman glared reproachfully back, frowning the very same emotions she had running through her. Shame curdled in her stomach, bitter and mirthless. 

"You're a fool, Verbeck," her reflection hissed. Elodie couldn't agree more.

There was no secret, not with her own self at least, that she had still a soft spot for Diego Hargreeves. Whether that be his fault or her own -- maybe if they had done things differently, separated properly, whatever the case, she still felt something for him. And hell, even seven years later she still thought of him a lot. Still mourned that loss when sleep escaped her weary soul, and still quietly wondered about the 'could-have-beens'. But she had made a point a few years back to not cave again. Her heart couldn't take the stress and the real world called her name. Diego had to remain in her past and she'd vowed to keep it that way.

Obviously, however, that promise didn't stick.

Her entire morning routine was spoiled then with the thoughts of that damned vigilante - as would be the rest of her morning, too. Elodie cursed and grumbled her way through getting dressed, straightening her hair and yanking it back, and trying to appear as put together as she possibly could. Twenty minutes later, her eyes were red and teary, her foot ached from being stubbed into her shower twice (for both foot, dammit) and things, to say the very least, were not going so swell.

Elodie tried to fake a smile when she entered their kitchen, though, ruffling Ellis' shaggy locks as she always did. He hardly glanced up from the bowl of cereal before him, but he did mumble a 'hey' to her which was suffice.

"You all set for school?"

He nodded.

"Mm. Thanks for making coffee, by the way."

Ellis swallowed his spoonful of corn flakes and once more, shook his head. "No problem. Figured it'd help for the morning."

"Yeah, no kidding," she smiled. Elodie was not as much of a coffee person as she was tea - but it did help after a bad night to wake her up. She slid out the pot and poured a cup, wrapping her hands around the heated mug with a sigh. "Had a rough night."

"M'sorry."

She waved him off. "Don't apologise. Not your fault."

"Well, still."

She hummed. There wasn't time to enjoy a mug of coffee, so she resorted to dumping the hot liquid into a thermos and taking it with her. She hid the stain of dark brown as it splashed onto her fingers from her brother. The burn didn't bother her -- but that wasn't ever the problem.

Wiping off her hands with a spotted rag, she turned back to her brother with a tired smile. "I should be home at a regular time today. I'll call home if things change, but I don't really have a reason to stay late. Okay?"

Ellis nodded. His eyes didn't lift from his cereal bowl, watching the milk drag the flakes down to their depths. "Sounds good," he mumbled, when she didn't move. "See you then."

"Alright." Her brother wasn't ever much a morning person, and their conversations rarely moved past groggy small talk before nine, so she really shouldn't have questioned his mousy behaviour. But a part of her mind caught on the dreary 'see you', wondering just what the kid could have on his mind. And, if he would ever tell her.

Unfortunately, there wasn't time to debate that moral conundrum, or to try and unravel Ellis'. Elodie let out a soft sigh and worked her way around the table, grabbing her bag and coffee and straightening her blouse with a free hand. She paused behind the boy and, adjusting her thermos so it didn't fall, pulled him in for a quick, one-armed hug.

"Love you, buddy," she mumbled into his thick hair. "Have a good day at school, okay? Walk safe."

She felt him nod against her. "You too."

"For sure. Kick some intellectual ass for my sake!"

When Elodie pulled back, she was relieved to see him smiling up at her. A cornflake caught at the edge of his lip; she snorted at the comical sight. He was still a kid, her brain reminded her, even if he thought grander, bigger than most. Still your baby brother.

"See ya," she repeated. She turned away, mulling over the bittersweet thought before--

"--oh, wait. Elodie?"

The woman paused. "Yeah?"

"Uh, who's coat is this?"

All at once, the gates broke and a whoosh of great flame burned through her body, rushing straight into her face and lighting the skin up bright red. She didn't have to turn to know what he was talking about, but her body moved anyways, leaving her staring down at the offensive article. Ellis poked at it, a little childishly, and she wanted to burn the jacket up right then and there. Send it flaming out of their house and leave it as a pile of ashes to get swept away by the wind.

Fuckin' Diego.

"Oh...um, uh - you - I - Charlie."

Ellis frowned. "Who?"

"Charlie," Elodie repeated, like a broken record before recovering. She forced herself to swallow the lump clogging up her throat. Think, think... "You know, the one I used to work with? In the Wallows days? He's in town again, came to visit yesterday. He meant to drive out yesterday, but the rain was coming down hard, and - and - he stopped here last night for an hour or so. To...wait it out. You know."

Her lie game really was not what it used to be. That was abysmal. Regardless of the obvious fact that only one man stalked around the city in that kind of coat -- and Ellis knew him too well to forget that -- her stuttering and useless rambling sold her right out. Hell, she might as well had taped a neon sign to the collar and shoved it in the boys face to read out: 'PROPERTY OF DIEGO HARGREEVES, GRADE-A ASS."

But still, Elodie stuck with her fib, knowing full well she hadn't the guts to tell her brother the truth. He still thought that they hadn't seen one another for five or six years...to tell him all that was a lie, let alone that the man was there last night...

"I'll ring him up at work and see if he's still in town, she finally said again. "If not, I...guess I'll find a place for this coat. Donate it, or something. No use for it here, eh?"

Ellis raised a feathery brow. "Charlie...the cowboy, right?"

"Ha. Yeah. Charlie the cowboy. You remember him?"

He nodded slowly. "A little. I thought he moved up to the Prairies."

"Sure, but he had work in town." At least that wasn't a lie. "Don't remember what for, but...you know. He was never one to gab."

Ellis just turned back to his bowl without another word. Either simply because he was done with the conversation, or he wanted to ponder it alone -- or, Elodie silently wailed, he was just so pissed off at her blatant lie that he didn't want to put up with it anymore. She wasn't sure which option was right.

Elodie sighed, scooping the jacket up onto her arm. "I love you, Ellie."

His mutter back was barely audible, just a breathless squeeze to her heart strings that hurt more than he probably knew. But, unfortunately, there was nothing she could do to solve the issue, and she let her feet carry her to her shoes, her own jacket, and out the door.

As she slid into her car, Elodie wondered if that painful strain in her chest was the feeling that real parents got with their kids.

The drive out was absolutely silent. She hadn't bothered with the radio, it often spluttered and the static wasn't really something she wanted to put up with that morning. Instead, her music source came from the squealing of tires and occasional horns cursing her piss-poor driving skills out, and her own curses at those same abilities. But it was hard to focus on the road, even moreso than usual, when her mind was fixated on the black jacket seated beside her.

She knew what it meant. It was a like a Diego-i-fied sticky note left to nag at her and remind her of what they once had. It had been a routine, many years back, where one would leave some form of clothing or object that just had to be returned, and their time together would get prolonged again. But they had broken off the tradition after two years back. She hadn't thought about it since. 

Or, so she had told herself.

Elodie gripped tightly to her steering wheel and swerved into the parking lot, flipping off the car she 'accidentally' cut off. Leather hissed and she quickly relaxed her burning grip; leaving more singe marks on the wheel really wasn't her best option. She hurried to put the car into park and, pausing to down a couple gulps of caffeine, leaped out of the vehicle, jacket in hand.

"Let's do this," she muttered, to no one really at all. 

Elodie marched into the gym, ignoring the sounds and bodies around her and following a well-traced path to the desk. She snapped her fingers at the older man behind it. "Hey."

"What'd'y want?"

"Does Diego Hargreeves still live here?"

The guy snorted and scratched at the front of his dirty shirt. "That punk? Sure. Why?"

"I need to see him."

He rolled his eyes. "You too?"

"Yeah, I--wait. Hell you mean, 'you too'?"

If he had an answer, he didn't offer it to her. His head bobbed towards the back hallway, "bastard's in there. And when you see 'im, tell 'im I'm not his shittin' doorman, will'y?"

"I...yeah, okay. Thanks." Elodie stepped away from the desk and headed the way he pointed. She had only come a couple of times, but it wasn't hard to remember the right way to go, leading her down to the boiler room entrance. 

Before she knocked, however, her hand hovered. Diego hadn't ever been one for visitors, at least not when she knew him. He didn't attract friends easily and even then, he hadn't eagerly shown off his place.

What if he had someone else over?

After mulling over her options (and deciding none of them were that great), she decided to continue with her instincts. Coming probably hadn't been a smart move. But, what other choice did she have? Her fist met the door, rapping three hard times, pausing then hitting it again. When she got no response, she repeated the process, adding in a shout at the door to the mix. "Hey. Hey. Diego, I-"

--the door swung open before she could finish her sentence. Elodie stumbled back a little, gaping back towards the man of the hour, wearing a grimace so tightly pressed into his skin, she could call it permanent. Probably not a good sign, but...well, she was already there.

"Hey. Finally, you answered."

"What the hell are you doing here?"

Elodie froze. His jacket hung heavy in her hands and she could only stare back at him, waiting for him to break the curse she found herself in. One sentence, one damned, angry question--

"--what are you doing here?"

"Oh." Elodie looked down to her hands, shrugging the heavy bundle. "I brought this. And I -- we hav'ta talk."

"Elodie--"

"--I mean it. We really need to talk."

"Yeah, not," he glanced behind the door quickly, "not right now."

"What do you mean, not right now? What's going on?"

"Uh, can -- can we do this later?"

Elodie huffed. A little bit of that fire from before came back and she ploughed forward, using it to drive her past a shocked Diego and into his tiny place. Only, just as he began to protest and pull back, she came to a full stop on the landing. Her eyes had caught on a rather surprising, unexpected and totally confusing sight. Not the sort of sight she had been expecting either. Later on she would swear that her jaw had dropped clean up onto the floor -- and physics be damned, she knew that had to be true.

They were huge. Superhuman-ly so, a titan of immense size, rippling muscles rising all the way up to his neck and leaving his head looking extremely out of place at it swivelled and cocked. She glanced over his plain, almost sweet facial features and down to the way he stood just about nine thousand feet tall. The guy could take her down in a blink of an eye and she probably wouldn't even know what happened.

And all Elodie could say was a breathless, almost inaudible, "oh, shit."

Vaguely, she heard Diego speak behind her, but her mind could not translate the blurred sounds to words just then. Elodie felt hot, far too hot -- not from anger anymore, but confusion and embarrassment and fear for just who her ex-boyfriend could have gotten himself wrapped up with. Her arms fell limply to her sides, just barely clinging onto the jacket.

"Uhm..."

Before either her or the strange man could speak, Diego moved forward and grabbed her shoulder. She flinched under the touch; in her state of shock, she missed how his face fell. 

"Why are you here?" Diego asked quietly.

Elodie swallowed, sparing a final glance to the strange being and looked back. "I told you, I need to talk to you."

"You said that. But now's not a good time."

"Why? Caus'a him?"

Diego's jaw clenched; the boiler room's shallow lighting just barely illuminated the muscles, rippling underneath the skin. "He's not important. I just can't do this right now."

Okay, hypocrite. Elodie scoffed and glared at him. "That so? Well, not like you're ever convenient for me," she snapped. "But oh, it doesn't matter if you need to talk, just that if I need--"

"--that's not what I meant at all!"

"Oh? Because that's what it sounds like, jackass!"

"Is everything okay here?"

Elodie started before steeling herself again. She hadn't expected the other man to speak. She didn't bother looking his way, "private conversation, buddy."

"Hey, I just--"

Both her and the strange titan got cut off by Diego again. He pulled at her wrist, and despite her arguments, insisted on pulling away so they could talk in more privacy. He yanked the two of them towards a corner that really wasn't private at all, before finally letting her hand go and slumping against the wall.

"Let's talk then."

But Elodie wasn't satisfied with that small win; her mind was too absorbed with the image of the towering blonde being that had stared at her like wherever they came from, women weren't a thing. She pointed back over her shoulder. "Who's your friend?"

Diego's face scrunched up in annoyance. A cute expression, if she wasn't royally pissed at the man. "I -- that doesn't matter. He's not important."

"Doesn't matter? That guy -- I don't know who they are but they're like, twenty feet tall and they look like they could crush you!"

Diego shuffled his feet a little. "He couldn't take me."

"That guy looks like he could take you and the entire U.S army, easy! I know you've gotten involved with sketchy people before, but he's on another level of bad."

"And why does that matter to you?"

Elodie scoffed. "You just came to me last night telling me your dad just died, you're bruised up and upset, and now you're dealing with this guy? I - I mean, I -- who's to say I'm not going to hear about you on the news next too?"

"I'm not going to die! Jesus El--"

"--well, you don't leave a lot of hope in that statement when you do crazy shit all the time! Makes me think I have to worry!"

She hadn't meant to raise her voice. She hadn't meant to add that almost sorrowful inflection to the end of her sentence, or let her hands fly up and simultaneously drop his jacket between the two of them. The conversation wasn't meant to lead to --

"--you worry about me?"

Elodie wanted to wipe that infuriatingly smug grin off of Diego's face as fast as humanely possible. She wasn't sure if her insides were intact at all, anymore, or if they had just combusted inside her body, leaving just her impatient heart egging her on like a bad high school friend who only wanted to stir the pot more.

"I didn't mean that. Like that."

"Like what? Like, that you still care about me?"

"Oh, piss off."

"Me? You're the one storming in here to check up on me and--"

"--I am not checking up on you, Diego," she spat back. But the fire was only half there, and the rebuttal fell flat. "I - I am concerned seeing that guy here, but only because I think most humans would be! And - now I'm more pissed than anything, and I still haven't talked to you!"

He was still smiling. "About?"

"About the fact that you thought it'd be clever to leave your coat at my place."

His cheeky smirk faded, and she knew she had got him there.

"You can't pull that. Trying to -- I don't even know what you were trying to do." That was a lie. She knew the second she saw the blasted thing hanging on the kitchen chair. And a part of her ached to pick the fabric back up, hand it to him and offer it a proper question instead of a demand for him to stop. But for their heart's sake... "My brother saw this. And he's too smart to not put the pieces together, which means I had to lie to him, and now -- I don't even know what, now."

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Not really, no."

Elodie groaned and stepped back, tugging at her hair in exasperation. "What are you trying to do, Diego? What are you trying to prove here?"

"Nothing," he shot back, then sighed. When he spoke again, he had lost the harsh tone in his voice, replacing it with something more solemn. Something sadder. "I don't know. What do you want me to say here?"

And to that, she had no good response. Elodie hung her head, staring down at her boots. "I don't know."

"You know I miss you."

"Diego..."

"C'mon." His words came soft, almost hoarse as they slipped from his lips -- but somehow they hurt even more than the others. "You can't tell me I'm alone in that."

"We broke up for a reason. We can't do this all again."

"And why the hell not?"

"Because we were just kids, Diego," she said back. Her voice quivered a little, "we didn't know what we were doing. Ever."

He rolled his eyes. "And you really believe that?"

"Absolutely, I do! I mean, I - we were just two broken individuals who needed some sort of comfort. And we offered that for a while, but in the long run we just got more messed up and screwed whatever we 'had' over. You know that. I - I mean, I don't think we ever resolved one fight, between us."

"That's not fair."

"Sure. Nothing's fuckin' fair. That's life."

Diego moved closer to her; when she didn't shift away, he rose a hand to meet her shoulder. It pressed, heavy and warm, into her blouse. "Just 'cause we didn't work seven years ago, means we can't try again?"

"I don't think right now's the best time to try and reignite anything, do you?!"

"Why not?"

"Are you serious -- Diego, your dad just died!"

"So?"

"So," she hissed, that syllable alone hanging heavy with emotional baggage neither wanted to unpack. "I know that's affected you, could tell the second I saw you last night. And before you roll your eyes at me again, look inside yourself and tell me I'm lying, because I guarantee you can't. That sort of thing sticks with you, no matter what the relationship was."

His gaze hardened. "I'm fine."

"Fine. Lie, convince yourself of that. I don't care."

His hand fell down to her crossed arms. She watched as he pressed circles into her forearm with his thumb, a reassuring motion she once got comfort from. "I don't want to stick with how things are between us."

"There's nothing between us."

"Exactly!"

Elodie huffed. "You want what we had before? Because we--"

"--I'm not talking about before. I'm not saying we rush back into things, I...I'd just like to see you again." The slightest hint of a smirk tickled his lips. "More than just like this."

That second, hushed part of his sentence made her nose wrinkle. "Man, that's not remotely better. I'd rather be strangers than fuck buddies right now."

"That's not what I meant."

"That's what we did before!"

"I don't want what we had before! I'm telling you that!"

"I know what you're telling me," she said back, "but we've had this conversation before, and that's what that led to. And then I couldn't see your face for a year without wanting to turn you into kindling. I don't want to go back to that."

He didn't say anything to that, but he didn't have to. Elodie could read what he was feeling from the hard look in his eyes, and see the way he gritted his teeth to know what he was thinking. She stepped away from his grasp and out of the corner. Feet shuffled behind her; she paid them no mind.

"We aren't kids anymore," she said plainly. "Whatever we have, or had between us, can't be given the limelight just for some 'I miss you' bullshit. Okay? You gotta think about yourself, and the long term goals, 'fore pulling any tricks with me."

"Don't talk to me like that. You don't have to fix me."

"Fix? I'm not doing any fixing, Diego. I'm leaving."

Elodie whirled around, only to catch another close look at the figure. The being was looking between the two of them with a gaped mouth, hands awkwardly swinging by his sides as they tried to figure out...something. It wasn't long before she realised they had just about heard everything from their supposedly 'private' conversation.

The cons of living in a one-room place, with a titan of a human skulking around nearby.

Elodie shifted her chin up high, trying to seem stronger than she was, and marched past the blonde being. She didn't bother asking about their purpose again; she knew she wouldn't get a straight answer, anyways.

"Seeya, Hargreeves." But she paused at the top of the landing with her hand shaking on the doorknob. "And...try not to kill yourself doing something stupid."

Just before she slammed the door behind her, Elodie caught the stranger's raising voice, "who's that, your girlfriend?" followed by Diego hardly telling them to shut up. Heavy footsteps pounded the boiler room floor and she hurried away before she could be followed. If only she had listened a while longer, even a moment more might she have more perspective. But her only goal was to get to her car and get the hell out of there.

Hopefully, never to come back.

I really love Ellis' character. I regret not exploring him more in this book - I was originally planning to, but I didn't want to add more chapters to this book just yet. I might do a total revamp later on, but I really want to move into season two with a sequel, and at least there, we'll see more of Ellis. But for now...

Hopefully this chapter offers some clarity into Diego's and Elodie's relationship over the years too. I know this isn't exactly the part two many wanted, but I promise it will (or might) get better from here.

Thank you for reading; let me know what you thought!