if i wanted you dead, you'd be dead.

2️⃣ 4️⃣ 6️⃣

THE UMBRELLA ACADEMY ⇢ SEASON 2

abuse TW, canon incest mentioned

On Diego

Diego is often mischaracterized as gruff, insensitive, resentful of all his family, abrasive and rude. Especially towards Vanya. But in reality he’s big softie, although a less emotional one than Luther. Diego hides his feelings and   vents them in other ways.  No matter how visibly present they are, his has a disdain for his emotions. Maybe because they are so present. He feels very strongly. (anger and love being a very easily seen example) Reginald is cold and calculating and emotion is a blindness on the battle field as well as a liability to be manipulated by Reginald and by others. Diego hates his emotions not only to appear competent in his fathers eyes but to also hide from Reginald’s wrath. No doubt that boxing and vigilantism are whats keeping him from going insane.  

He will try to deny it but his father’s teachings have big bearing of who he is now. The duty of the strong to protect the weak, vigilantism, striving to to hone and train your powers and body so that you are useful a better hero. These are ideals that Diego has taken from his upbringing and we see him live by even so much as to abandon all reason and try to save a doomed man at the price of the timeline. This devotion to the teachings of his father despite Diego’s resent of him, is an ironic circle of his father’s manipulation that birth his hero complex. 

He does everything that Reginald instilled in them with the same subconscious motive. He is in confliction with his own emotions and his own motivation. Diego’s strive to be something in his fathers eyes as compared to Luther, who was seemingly given extra attention and praise. As Vanya wrote in her book, they were all starved for attention, but Diego was in such close proximity to Luther, that the extra weight attention that Luther had was in stark contrast to Reginald’s neglect. This explains both his obsession with the numbering system and his connection with Grace. In an attempt to be noticed by his father and to prove himself upon comparison to Number One. Diego pushed himself harder and harder towards more and and more impossible standards of what he thought would achieve his father’s love. But Reginald has no love and Diego broke. He began to resent Reginald and what he believed was a rank system. Before the dinner we find that Diego still believes that number is associated with rank. He appoints them as Team Zero, because the number one/number two bullshit would divide them in the face of Reginald. There is no proof that any of the others believed in the rank system.( Luther obvious believes that he is the leader, but in no way does he use his false authority as a palanquin over the other others.) 

Grace supplemented Diego the attention that he lacked from his father. To all the children she was fair, gentle, calm, and understanding. She was a guiding hand and beacon of love in a cold and isolating household. To Diego she was salvation. A chance at be given love and support that he so obviously was missing. Grace probably spent more time with Diego. Both from the boy’s own choosing and from the duties given to her by Reginald, A cold, commandeering, traditionalist. Diego’s stuttered was stamped out of him out of him by all means. While corrections and punishment would come at anytime, Diego’s real speech therapy most likely given out by Grace, who is the only governess the children the remember and is seen reciting tips to him when he struggled. This extra attention validated Diego and strengthened his connection with Grace. This connection opened his eyes a bit faster to Reginald’s narcissism. Grace is Diego’s mother, she is the only thing in his life that provides unconditional love. He has seen her beyond Reginald’s programming. Seen her think and feel. Shes a person him. A person that Reginald mistreats as severely as he does the children. He treats her like an object despite her humanity and she is oblivious to Reginald’s abuse of her and the others. It makes him hate Reginald even more. Grace’s treatment is confirmation of Reginald’s. He wants to save her, but until he can he will hate Reginald for her.

As I’ve said before Luther, Diego, and Allison were the golden trio, the jocks, the children which Reginald placed most of his attention as they were the first 3 and therefore the three most manipulable. Like Luther, Diego’s emotions and his powers (which require Reginald’s shaping to be a more than average threat) earned him the title of second useful. 

Diego was the third wheel among the 3. When he first began training Diego was most likely like Luther. Eager to learn, eager to help, however he was most likely motivated by fitting his father’s expectation. Later on trying to exceed his fathers expectations in order to compete with Luther. Luther was his rubric, but as it become more and more frustrating to become equal to him in his father’s eyes as well as more and more apparent that Grace was tool rather than a person Diego began to hate Reginald. Luther refused to see their father’s cruelty and Diego began questioning authority as result of this blindness. He saw Allison in a similar light. At this point she was self absorbed denier according to Diego and both Luther and Allison’s relationship (they were not subtle) reduced them to moon-eyed freaks. further fueling Diego’s self isolation and defiance.

Saving Klaus is saving people. To Diego, Klaus is a civilian that should not be. They are a victim much like Grace and their(Diego and Klaus’) siblings are to Reginald, but they have the ability to do more. Klaus is representive of Diego’s frustration with the inabilty to respond to the academy’s greater purpose.

Diego shed tears on his missing brother, but there were few good memories behind it. Five is a self assured asshole, he’s pretentious and spends little time with the siblings (except maybe with Vanya). He’s also able get to dads attention with little effort which Diego wants. His powers allow him shortcuts too. Diego was bound to be jealous and feel slighted. Diego does not instigate competition with Five because Five does not bathe in the attention nor acknowledge it. Diego also thinks the attention is less of something he compete with as such attention comes from the meeting of minds.

Ben was a great friend. They had quiet and limited friendship, though  as there was a rift between their motivations. As much as both hated how they were used by Reginald, Diego focused on Reginald and his experiments rather than the powers and crime fighting (which was where Ben directed his ire) but they had great times.As we know Ben and Diego played at least one prank on Allison as children however it is implied that this was a common occurrence. These pranks could have been a form of rebellion or simple play by them that didn’t involve their powers or Reginald. I’ve chosen to believe that Ben was actually a large part of these pranks creating them and doing a lot of heavy work with them, and that Diego was the enabler, willing to help, and coming up with wackier and wackier ideas. Luther, Allison, and Five were the likely targets because they were the ones that refused to have fun on their own time, or chose to eat out of Reginald’s palm.

Diego’s stint in the mental hospital had been… memorable, for sure. He shuddered every time he remembered it. Never in his adult life had he felt so helpless and the fact that he did feel like that while there spoke volumes.

He sat on the edge of the bench and pulled out a knife, with which he started to get the mud out of the soles of his boots.

The air was thick. It felt like the calm before the storm.

It was the calm before the storm; the thickness of the air hung heavy in his lungs. Normally, this sensation brought him temporary peace. These moments used to be his favorite, but now all it did was tighten his chest. He’d always been the storm. His targets suffered his wrath, and the silence after the altercation comforted Five too. The whole process gave his time structure, gave him a reason to stay relatively sober and focused in his downtime to plan his jump. It would be a lie to say he never looked forward to or personally benefited from his assignments, but the last two weeks were entirely different. Now, he had to weather the storm and protect his family from it at the same time instead. A hurricane merely passed through an area, but the shore needed to carefully prepare and monitor the situation or risk destruction.

Only, they couldn’t know how to prepare. He couldn’t know what move the Handler would make; Five could only contemplate the possibilities. This might be the end; no matter how long he searched, Five found no viable options. His siblings were going to die anyway. He’d known them only decades ago as children and for the last several days as supposed adults, but they were more important to him than they would ever realize. So, he was going to do it, then: the nuclear option. He would assassinate the board, and see if that helped or opened up new options. In a losing game, sometimes the only hope was that the opponent made a mistake. Besides, while he wouldn’t admit it fully even to himself, being the storm once more would give him better clarity.

Only, was he doing this because there truly was no option or because part of him sorely wanted to? Those fuckers had it coming. Five would do it with an axe. He’d transport one of them halfway through a ceiling grate to see if the body hung there or spliced through and dropped, and he would do that first so the rest of them would see. It would be a scenario from their nightmares, he knew. He wanted that control. For those thoughts, though, he questioned himself. Feelings couldn’t get in the way. Petty vengeance couldn’t get in the way. He’d said no to her initially for a reason. It wasn’t a good look; she was setting him up. That much was obvious. He needed to bounce this off someone; Five felt that he himself biased. He didn’t know where Allison or Vanya were, Klaus would be of no help, and Luther wouldn’t let him stay vague. That left Diego. While his brother might not like the vagueness either, he felt it was a better shot than Luther. Five stepped from the kitchen to in front of Diego’s bench outside in a flash of blue light.

Truthfully speaking, he didn't even know what the conversation would even look like.

During times like that, he wished he smoked. He watched idly as Five, seemingly, gathered his thoughts for a few seconds. He pushed his hair behind his ears, presenting the scar on the side of his head to the chill of the evening.

After what felt like hours Five spoke and Diego's grip on his knife tightened.

Opportunity to fix this?, he thought, concern plain on his face as he pondered. Although Five had presented it more as a statement, Diego knew enough about his brother to know that it was a question. And a laced with worry one, at that. He stared at his knife, the polished blade glinting in the orange light from the lanterns that rapidly flickered on. His throat tightened suddenly. If Five, arguably the most fucked up of the lot (next to Vanya, of course), considered something insane... It was really dangerous.

On the other hand, the man seemed to be confident that whatever it was would fix things.

Diego cleared his throat. He should demand answers. He should ask what this was about. What would be so unprecedented even for Five to be having doubts. Instead, he sighed once more.

Diego: ...evil. But hilariously evil

It’s super effective!

Bonus: