Fate has a way of playing games and I've been keeping score

[belay]

The last time Lara saw Diego, they were in Peru and they'd just saved the world. That was almost half a year ago and they'd kept in contact since. There'd been fighting people and animals (And Lara, herself, had downed a cougar out to kill her, with just her bare hands and some arrows), solved puzzles and discovered a hidden civilization. It had been probably one of her better adventures.

But she'd missed Diego. That wasn't something she was going to lie about. So when he'd texted her asking for help, she jumped at the chance. Booking her flight as they spoke, packing while they texted. She was in this more for seeing Diego than she was helping an old woman get her jewels back, though that had been a close second. And she'd thought she discovered members of Trinity on the Gala guest list, but that had been wrong. That was fine. She wanted a break from that insane group, anyway.

Her fight had one long layover in Ireland. Seven and a half hours, to be precise. And Lara didn't have it in her to wait that long. She could spend those seven and a half hours sleeping, but no. She didn't. Instead, she asked to be put on a waitlist for a flight that left about two hours sooner and lucked out.

She arrived in New York two hours before she'd planned, and she didn't tell Diego at all. Why ruin her fun?

The academy wasn't hard to find at all. Any and all Uber drivers know where it is. She had her Uber driver let her out a couple blocks away, tipped him well and made her way to the academy on her own, arriving at the gate just as Diego stepped out the front door.

She's just gonna wait and see how long it takes for him to notice her.

[ ooc: For excessed and eventually ouiking_ouija. I'll open it up to others later. ]

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[excessed]

Both brows jerk as Diego tenses as he gives Klaus a hard look, glancing to Lara and back to him. "I get we have a house full but I can't get even a little privacy?!" Rolling his eyes so hard it's likely that he sprained something, not happy about this at all. It means that not only is all privacy bets off, Lara was already known of before she came here. Great. Just great.

Diego knows he has enough trouble maintaining a relationship - ie the one and only one he'd had that had gone three kinds of sideways before the world ending shit happened - without adding this to it. God, he's fucked.

But he gestures for Lara to proceed him. "Obviously he already had your name," he points out. "Besides, I don't remember yelling Lara in a jungle," he adds, knowing that just because he finds more comfort in a surname, his own excluded, doesn't mean that's how most want to be referred to by. "So who else was up there peeking through the window?"

[belay]

Lara walks into the house, suitcase in hand, keeping the eyeroll she wants to do to herself. Diego, if she were being honest, is a bit ridiculous, but she's just barely gotten to know this family. All she has is what Diego's told her about them, so she can't really determine if this is typical sibling stuff or something she's missing entirely.

"He does," Lara replies, nodding slightly as she takes a look around the foyer before turning her focus to the brothers.

"No. That was reserved for Jonah, but he also called me Little Bird, so I'm fairly used to not hearing my first name." But please, Klaus, Lara is fine. She'll be happy to hear it.

"Etzli says hello, by the way. He did months ago, at least, when I stayed behind to help him rebuild Paititi." That poor kid had been through so much in the short time they'd known him. Losing his mother, stepping in as ruler of Paititi at such a young age. Lara had half a mind to head back to Peru to make sure he was alright, even if she's sure he was. Maybe Diego'd go back with her?

She finally turns to look at Klaus, giving him another smile. "Thank you for the welcome. And I appreciate you texting me to make sure I'm not out to harm Diego, or anything ridiculous. I thinK I'd do the same, if I weren't an only child."

[ouiking_ouija]

Klaus smiled, mostly because she'd agreed with him which was something that only rarely happened in this family even when he was right, which happened more often than the rest of the family wanted to believe, but he'd gotten used to it. But a nod followed, "Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's how most siblings are, threatening to kill each other one day, defending one another from a bear or something later, there's got to be some kind of 'this one's mine, nobody else can play with it' psychology at work, but that's not my area of expertise."

He just shrugged at Diego's question, transitioning smoothly from one answer to another with: "And can't confirm if there's anyone up there watching, I mean I can only vouch for myself." Which didn't mean he had been the only one, but just like he'd been prepared to protect Diego from a potential Black Widow, he was also going to protect any siblings from potential retaliation, because that was just how it worked.

[excessed]

Despite his nervousness over his family meeting Lara, and really more about Lara meeting his family - especially as it's become in this house - he can't help but smile when she mentions Etzli. "And it's all good? I probably should have stayed,' he admits, definitely looking sheepish then. He'd bailed for a lot of reasons. None of them good enough though for leaving Lara to cope with the clean up on her own. Well, not on her own but without him. "You been back to check since? I mean, couldn't hurt to maybe go have a look," he notes, caught up in Lara for a moment, and thoughts of more time in the jungle. With her. "Also please do not be disturbed by anything Klaus just said. Please," he says, looking at his brother, not even sure what to think of that. "In fairness, I haven't tried to kill any one of them, outside of the apocalypse, since we were maybe nineteen," he points out. Because that makes it all okay, right? And even then it was expected between him and Luther at the time and he wasn't trying to kill him. He just could have. "But do try and defend me from Lara. She'll kick your ass and I will laugh. A lot. Laughter. Actually laughter from me."

[belay]

"You had things to do at home. I didn't really have anything pressing to get back to." Not since they'd taken down Trinity for good and stopped all their plans indefinitely. But, she wouldn't have stopped him if he did say he was staying, now that she thought about it. "Etzli's good. Doing his best for his people. Teasing Jonah about his girlfriend."

All is well, Diego. She grins some at him worrying about checking on Etzli again.

"I have plans to go visit in a couple months. I told his mother I'd keep an eye on him as best as I can." And Lara keeps promises. At what Diego says about Klaus being disturbing, she shoots him something close to a look of disbelief.

"I don't really think anything he says will be disturbing," she replies, shaking her head. "I've dealt with far worse."


There were tunnels filled with dead people, Diego. And she had to crawl over them. This was horrifying and disturbing. She doubts Klaus could ever come close.

"And for the record," she adds, finally, pointing at Klaus. "As much as I'd like to hear Diego laugh, I'm not going to kick anyone's ass unless I have to."

[ouiking_ouija]

There was a flash of a grin at Lara's response, giving an easy, jovial shrug, "I did say threatening to not actually trying, he definitely hasn't done that in a while."

He did angle his head, thinking for a moment, "And I don't know, that asskicking might almost be worth it." But he was quick to add, "But D, I said a bear." He gestured to Lara with both hands, an oddly emphatic, unsurprisingly flappy sort of thing, like some sort of truncated, caffeine-fueled game show prize presenter, "Have you ever actually seen a bear, Diego? This is clearly not a bear."

Besides that, he had already, sort of, defended Diego from her, or at least demanded to know whether or not he'd actually have to, which he liked to think had worked out in his favor. He did take a half-step back then, "But I should let you two get on with whatever you're doing, I'll stop holding you up from the grand tour or the short version or whatever version you're getting up to."

[excessed]

Diego is not the most settled of people, and he hasn't been great about the fact that he finds Lara to be amazing, and positively enchanting, and not having a clue how to tell her how he feels. It's why he's so thankful for this chance to spend time with her, to see her and see if he could pull himself together finally.

Apparently not though in how he's nervous about his siblings around her, and the stories that could come out of this.

He rolls his eyes. "You would be better off facing a bear," he says. "Though speaking of taking on animals, if you want company," he says, looking at Lara. "I'd love to go," he says, pausing a moment. "Hopefully we'll have things settled here and won't have to worry about the world, well, falling apart." Literally. Yeah, he's not funny.

He snorts. "The one where I introduce her to Grace," he says, because to him that's the most important. "I mean, she already met you so..."