All The Things (I Never Wrote)
Diego Hargreeves/Vanya Hargreeves
Summary: She can hear the distinct clicking of the knife in his hand as it moves from side to side, between his fingers, precise and deadly.
He had not lost the talent of being able to catch her by surprise.
Vanya enters her old room cautiously. She hadn’t set foot in there in so long it no longer feels like her own. Moving to her old window, pulling away the curtains to look out at the grounds. Feeling an odd sense of deja vu reminded of the times she would longingly look down at the other members of the Academy training, laughing at times to the utter dismay of their father, but together. While she could only imagine what it might be like to feel a part of something.
They would tell her how lucky she was that she was not forced to undergo the training regime that they were subjected to. Five was the only one who understood, would shoot her a sympathetic look whenever they left for another mission and she would remain at home. An ally in a lonely house until he disappeared leaving her alone.
“You left out some parts,” the voice takes her by surprise from the chair in the corner of her room, cast in the shadows, the sun streaming through the window unable to reach it. She swallows deeply, instead of on the figure in the corner of her room, on the sheet music still laid out on her desk. But she can feel his eyes practically boring into the back of her head.
She can hear the distinct clicking of the knife in his hand as it moves from side to side, between his fingers, precise and deadly.
He had not lost the talent of being able to catch her by surprise.
She maintains her focus on the pile of papers, fingers moving over the paper, the softness beneath her fingertips, bringing back old memories she had tried to forget.
It was why she had written that book, hopeful that once she allowed those memories, her thoughts, to be committed to paper that she might be able to start to move on. To become her own person instead of living in the shadows of those around her.
“You read it?” she asks, catching his movement in the reflection of her vanity mirror as he shifts in the chair.
“The bits I could manage,” he replies, replacing the knife back into the harness across his chest. “A bit long and self-indulgent for my tates.”
She scoffs at the insult, he never did miss an opportunity to call her out.
“Well I didn’t write it for you,” she turns to face him, leaning back on the edge of her desk for support as she does so, “for any of you,” she clarifies.
He considers her answer giving a slow nod as he rises to his feet, moving across the room, and she is thankful that with the intensity in his eyes the knife is no longer in his hand. Her eyes flick towards the bedroom door, pondering whether to hold her ground or run away again.
“Didn’t stop you telling the whole world about us though did it?” The guilt feels heavy in her stomach.
“I wasn’t going to,” she admitted, casting her eyes down. She had looked at those typed pages in the weeks that followed pressing the final key. Whether now they were out if she needed to go further by sharing the story of her life with the rest of the world.
“It wasn’t about exposing you, or any of the others.” She had been angry, sad, confused when writing the memoir, but she didn’t place any blame on them, they were all just children. “It was about exposing him. The kind of man that he was. What he did to us.”
“Did it make you feel any better?”
After it was published and she had done the obligatory rounds with it, and it was discounted in bookstores beyond the ridiculous, she had merely returned to her previous life. There was no grand retribution, she didn’t find herself in between the pages of her own book. She just moved onto someone else’s shadow and perhaps that was where she would always remain.
When she looks up he is standing right in front of her.
His hands move to either side of her resting on her old desk. He is closer than he should be. She resists the urge to reach out and touch the scar that runs along his temple, wanting to know who had left it there.
They were still teenagers the last time they were this close. She was as just as nervous then, her heart pounding in her chest as his hand had moved over hers, his thumb brushing over her knuckles, a touch that was surprisingly tender for him.
He had leaned forward to press his lips against hers. A sharp intake of breath and he pulled away, worry in his eyes that he had overstepped before she rose to her toes and returned the kiss feeling his lips curve in a smile against her lips.
The rest had been a series of late-night meetups, hushed whispers in corridors and hurried fumbles in the Academy's many, many hidden corridors.
But in the end Diego had always wanted to be a hero. To prove himself to a man who couldn't care less. And he had left to do just that, left her. Alone again.
He considers her carefully, as if he is not sure what to do, caught in the moment like she is. Before his face hardens again, forehead creasing.
“Good,” he pushes away from her, making his way to the doorway. The moment slipping past her again.
She hasn’t spoken to him, not really, in years and she feels the urge overtake her to ask him if she doesn’t now she doesn’t think she ever will.
“Those things I left out,” she speaks up, and he stops in his tracks, looking back over his shoulder at her. “Do you regret them?”
He pauses, his hand resting on the door frame, a sadness falling over his face, “No.”
“Me neither.” Those moments however fleeting had been too special, too precious to share with the rest of the world.
Thank you for reading, also if you have any further suggestions or prompts I would love to write more for this pairing.
