WARNINGS: mentions of home invasions, intoxication, disturbing behaviours toward children (not due to paraphilic intents), kidnapping, underage sex, sexism, toxic masculinity, death and mourning. Nothing graphic.

Chapter Soundtrack: watch?v=eNC1R_E9L4w

5 (I).
"…and here's your change, Nurse Jones! Come back soon!".
"Thank you, Lidia. Have a nice da-".
Marben turns around, a tray loaded with paper cups full of coffee and a large box of assorted donuts in her hands; as soon as she sees who's in line behind her, however, she abruptly stops talking.
"Oh! H-hi…" stammers the woman, looking at the same time disgruntled and surprised to see her.
"Hello, Allison" Marben sighs, while she assumes she's been all too lucky not to have run into her until then.
"What a coincidence, to find you here!" the actress offers; the nurse hints an unfazed smile.
"You say that every time".
"You, huh…you look great!".
"You too, if that was an honest compliment".
"Yes, well…".
Marben gives Allison a once-over: last time they saw each other they both were in bridal gowns, for a photoshoot. Thinking about it makes the moment even more strange.
Clearly short on pleasantries and uncharacteristically looking as she's feeling self-conscious, Allison glances around - perhaps searching for escape routes like a window to jump out of, Marben thinks. Against all odds, however, she seems to find the inspiration she needs to say something else, and even surprise the nurse.
"Wanna grab a coffee?".
"I already have six, thanks" Marben simply says, drawing the attention on her disposable tray loaded with cups; Allison stares at it with wide, embarrassed eyes, and the other woman takes pity on her.
"Go order, I'll wait outside. We can walk together for a bit, if you like".

On the sidewalk in front of Petrola's bakery, standing in a warm pool of sunlight, Marben looks down at herself, and when she hears Allison leave the shop and catch up, she shifts her gaze on her: Guns N' Roses oversized t shirt dress, black leather jacket and combat boots versus stilish sweatpants, flowy long coat and high heeled ankle boots. They couldn't be more different, even though they both look great. Yet, it feels subtly pleasurable to make Allison feel so bashful.
'Just to feel pretty for once I'm not in scrubs or with a small child smearing food and drool all over me'.
"How are you guys doing? I heard someone broke into your house, the other night…" the nurse asks as they start walking.
"Yes, they were looking for...my brother…" goes Allison, looking lost in thought. She rouses immediately, though. "Speaking of which" she mumbles, rummaging into her purse with her free hand, and fishing a little notebook and a pen out of it; Marben takes the actress' takeaway, to let her free to scribble. "Here, take this. It's the Academy's phone number. In case you…I don't know, need anything…".
"You're as subtle as a brick through the window" Marben says, piercingly staring at the other woman and seeing right through what she's trying to do; she decides to take the piece of paper anyway, just to mess up a bit with Allison's hopes, so note and takeaway pass of hand and the two women resume walking.
"We're all fine, anyway. Thanks".
"Great".
"…as I told your cousin last night".
Allison's eyes are knowing and a little bit defiant, when Marben looks at her again.
"Oh, yes. My...I mean, Tess told me about your meeting".
"All of it?" the actress asks. The nurse senses an oncoming change in the conversation's development.
"She told me you were hammered, but didn't give me any more leverage, relax".
Allison's lips morph into a smirk, but her brow furrows and she moves slightly away from Marben, straightening her back and squaring her shoulders. The nurse gives her a sideways glance and begins a mental countdown, to the moment when they'll stop chatting about this and that and will inevitably start arguing.

"What is it, exactly, that you girls are doing here in town?" Allison enquires after a moment, indeed, in a tone that is meant to sound playful but underneath which Marben manages full well to detect the intent to debate. It's her turn to stiffen.
"Nothing you need to worry about".
"Alright, try to answer this, instead: why do you always have to act this unwelcoming when I'm involved?".
"Because I'm jealous of your bubble butt" Marben sighs, and surprisingly Allison takes the bait, abruptly stopping on her tracks to overtly stare at her backside with eyes as wide as saucers.
"But your tush is supreme!".
A couple of bystanders turn to look their way, but the nurse refuses to worry about whether they're checking her bum out or not.
"Thank goodness for that, since my boobs stopped growing in seventh grade" she grumbles, stacking the coffee tray over the box of doughnuts and grabbing the actress' wrist with her free hand, to drag her away before their speech can attract more attention from the crowd.
"They're not the only things that stopped growing…" Allison impishly counters, and Marben decides she's had enough.
"That's it, I'm gonna deck you. Ma'am, please hold the donuts!" she orders to a lady who happens to be strolling down the sidewalk, dumping what appears to be breakfast for a regiment in her arms, then whirls on Allison looking like she's out for blood.
"No, wait! Listen, why don't you just answer my question?" shrills Hargreeves Number Three, recoiling and raising her free hand up to shield herself.
"Just joking, dear, thank you, have a nice day" Marben pivots once more and recovers doughnuts and coffees, patting the shoulder of the stranger to which she had entrusted them only a moment before. She then walks away, and Allison almost stumbles onto her own feet not to be left behind.
"To pick up where we left off, I act unwelcoming because it's none of your business, what we're doing here" the nurse says as if nothing happened, once the other woman catches up to her.
"It is, instead, given that yesterday Tess asked me anything and everything about the guys who attacked us, trying to be oh so sneaky but failing!".
"In just two days those two have made themselves responsible for at least two shootings, t…hree murders and, guess what, your brother Klaus' kidnapping, which of course happened without any of you assholes noticing! And since Diego plays vigilante but can't catch shit, and all you guys combined make a formidable but sadly useless team of crime-fighting superheroes wannabe, we want to know who we might have to watch our backs from!".
"How many chances are there, that you girls might run into those two loonies?" Allison asks after a brief pause, sounding disbelieving and a little bit amused too. Marben refrains at the very last minute from urging her to mind her own business.
"One never knows. And you're scandalous, by the way: I just said your brother has been kidnapped and all you can think about is telling me I'm wrong!".
"There are a lot of things I don't know about each of my brothers" the actress says, sounding bitter and sporting a faraway look as she does so. Marben is just partly impressed.
"Yeah, well, there's no excu-".
"Did you know our Father used to videotape us in our sleep?".
Marben is taken aback by the non sequitur, so she mimics the other woman and stops as well.
"No. And that's sick". Marben wishes she would be capable of sounding less judgmental, but what Allison just said is making her edgy, for some reason other than the immediate disturbance aroused by the idea of an old man spying on sleeping children.
"I discovered it when Pogo showed me surveillance footages dating back to our childhood. In the midst of that, there were entire tapes of us sleeping, too" Allison goes on, oblivious to the other woman's inner turmoil. "Five rarely showed up, in the last of them…I figured it could be because he had taken to sleep somewhere else, before going missing…".
And just like that, Marben's worry acquires meaning: if Arsegreeves had cameras installed in his kids' bedrooms, to keep an eye on them, surely he had seen her inside Five's, snuggling up to him on his bed... Allison keeps on talking, but Marben isn't paying attention, wrapped up in the revelation as she is.
The damn geezer had known about her and his son, now she's sure, and yet he had done nothing to effectively separate them…why?
'Oh. To keep an eye on me…and have me at hand's reach'.

"LOLA!".
"WHAT?" Marben barks out at the sound of her - fake - name being called out in such annoyance. Beside her, Allison is glaring daggers.
"I asked you a question. Several times, in fact".
"Repeat it once more, then".
"Was my brother spending his nights with you, at the time?".
Embarrassment forcefully supplants Marben's shock.
"Look, you don't want to embarrass us bo-". But, of course, Allison does.
"What were you two up to?".
For a moment, the two women just stand on the sidewalk, holding their respective breakfasts, and stare each other down. Allison seems to be ash the same time eager and so very nervous about the answer, and Marben thinks it's laughable.
"What do you think?" she defiantly asks, then, invading the other woman's personal space. As a response, Allison's eyes shot wide open and her nostrils flare.
"How dared yo-".
"Relax, Motherhen, it was safe, very much consensual and underage on both parts, thanks for your kind concern!" Marben grits out, unfazed, but also irked by the other woman's overbearing attitude. "We didn't get to do much anyway, we huh…didn't have enough time".
As soon as Marben's tone darkens and her words hint at Five's disappearance, Allison seems to deflate and realize what she has just done, as if snapping out of a stupor. She opens and closes her mouth several times, looking for something to say - hopefully an excuse, even if Marben can sympathize about how she would be feeling protective of her brother - but in the end, the nurse feels like they've already talked too much.
"Listen, just forget this whole meeting happened, we'll never understand each other" Marben sighs, tired despite it not being even mid-morning, and makes to leave. Allison, however, calls her back.
"Can I rest easy, at least?".
"What do you mean?".
"That you being in town doesn't mean trouble ahead?" the actress looks almost embarrassed to ask, but does it all the same.
"It was perfectly fine here, before all you Hargreeves gathered up for the Monopoly man's funeral, you know?" Marben peevishly shots back with an eye-roll, and resumes walking.
"Fine, whatever you say" Allison snorts, staying still and watching at her retreating back. "You'd look good in a pair of high heels, anyway!".
"And you with purple hair. I don't have time for heels or fake nails. I'm a nurse, I save lives" it's all Marben has to say in that regard, and even if they're already far away from each other, she can hear Allison's indignant scoffs.
"There's nothing wrong with heels and fake nails!"
"As with their lacking thereof!".
Rising her right hand up above her head, Marben shows the whole street her middle finger; Allison scoffs once again, then whirls and goes to call herself a taxi.

.oO°Oo.

"Your boss wants you to do him".
"He's not my boss, and I don't see how-". Marben lets the soiled napkins fall into the bin and spins around, recognizing the voice only when she's halfway through the rebuttal.
Diego looks like shit - as it's his habit to tell others when he's in the mood to joke, but today he blatantly is not, and it breaks Marben's heart to use his very words to describe how he's looking, all the more to be divesting them of any playfulness to render them truth. He's leaning against the ER's entrance door jamb, hunched shoulders and red-rimmed eyes that stubbornly keep looking down, shunning hers. He's not even toying with one of his knives, and his voice has been considerably quieter than usual, when he addressed her, moments prior.
Marben knew the news of Detective Eudora Patch's demise would have been devastating on Diego, but she's a big softie and no matter how much she prepares to see the people she loves suffer: every time, when life shifts from hypothesis to facts she finds herself unarmed and vulnerable.

The nurse moves closer to her friend, silently, cautiously, and speaks in a soft tone, reaching out a hand to take one of his bigger ones.
"Diego…I'm so sorry, sweetie. So, so very sorry". Diego nods.
"C-could yo-u…just…" he murmurs, hinting to himself and then Marben with a vague gesture of his other hand, which moves back and forth through the space between them; when his teary eyes finally look up there's something in the woman's kind features, fair hair and pale eyes that somehow feels deeply comforting, and brings him to melt in the embrace when she gathers him up into her arms.
They both hold onto each other with everything they have, making the hug seem more like a stranglehold than a huddle, with Marben that doesn't say anything and lets Diego crush her because she's aware he's not trying to hurt her, and Diego that feels a dire need to hide his pitiful face, red and grimacing and wet with tears, holding and letting himself be held so tightly to feel Marben living and breathing against his own body. They stand there and hug, even if in some ways it hurts, and they don't seem willing to break away. Not even when the sound of footstep and confident voice reach their ears.

"What's up, mamacita, are you angry because the surgeon ate your favorite do-".
The steps come to an abrupt halt, their sight must have caught the Aspiring Chief of Medicine by surprise.
"Oh. Spandexman".
Marben mentally swears. Diego, on the other hand, doesn't seem like wanting to hold back.
"You call names the women you sleep with, as well? And tell me, do they like it?".
Marben thinks Diego's instinct to protect her is as adorable as it is out of place, but she lets him pull her behind himself all the same, to make him vent a bit of his repressed anger.
"No, big baby, I make them speechle-".
"Percy" Marben thunders then, baffling everyone - except for herself - into silence. "Please. Not now".
Aspiring Chief of Medicine turns an inquisitive glance on her, but Marben refuses to add explanations of sorts, limiting herself to look unwilling to tolerate bullshit, and in the end Percy clenches his lips into a grim line and nods briefly, backing off.
"Stay away from her, 'boss'" Diego advises, earning himself the cocking of an eyebrow from the other man.
"Or?".
"Or she'll give you a damn lesson. And then I'll give you another one". Diego flaunts a knife he fished from somewhere. "See this? Get lost or it will go through something you'd miss".
Just at that moment, a short resident comes to dissolve the tension with her incredibly high-pitched voice.
"Boss, the patient from 203-".
"My goodness, would everyone just please stop calling me boss?" Percy blurts out, exasperated, pinching the bridge of his nose between two of his fingers.
"Shut up, numbnuts!" the Real Chief of Medicine reproaches him, passing by like a meteor, shooting straight to go have a smoke outside.

Marben sizes the chance to remove Diego from the general madness the hospital and her colleagues provide every day, and gently pulls him aside, taking him to seat on a free stretcher as if he was one of her patients.
"Hey…sorry about that" she softly tells him as she draws a curtain and grants his vulnerable state some privacy. All of a sudden, Diego looks inexplicably sullen.
"He's a scumbag. You know what it means, to call a girl mamacita?".
"To objectify her. But he doesn't mean it that way". At Diego's skeptical glance, Marben answers with a suggestive one of her own. "I know him well, Diego. He has breathed toxic masculinity all his childhood, as you did yourself, but he's always able to cast it aside when it counts. He's been a true gentleman, the only time we went out together".
"You...you went out wi…with…that?".
"Don't play fool. He may get on your tits, but he still is a good-looking, funny, and somehow sexy guy".
On the ER's table, Diego is showcasing the face of a man who's just had the worst epiphany of his entire life.
"Jesus...you like assholes!" he breathes, horrified. In response, Marben impishly smiles at him.
"Face it, Diego: I too need to sleep with someone, from time to time. And you can wipe that look off your face, now, nothing at all happened with him".
Diego's face does indeed look relieved, after that, but it's short-lived.
"What are you doing here, anyway? Have you come all this way just for a hug?" the woman softly asks, as if she was trying to blandish a shy child into leaving his mom's hand and go play with his peers. Diego looks down.
"How…how do I do it?".
"What do you mean?".
"How do I grow used to her being gone?".
Marben's face goes slack with shock and heartbreak. She's having a surreal déjà-vu of her fifteen-year old self asking the same question to her Dad over the phone, and wishing nothing else than to be able to spare the kind, soft man in front of her the pang that comes with the truth…but she can't lie, Diego deserves to get better. So she takes a deep breath and murmurs the ugly truth.
"You don't. So maybe you can…resort to what you did…you know, when it happened to your brothers".
'What if he tried to join the police to cope with the memory of the never carried out investigations on Five's disappearance and Ben's death?' an evil little voice inside her head horribly suggests. The lost look Diego gives her may be the confirmation she doesn't want to get.
"Oh, sweetie…come here".
Diego seems eager to make himself small to better fit into the embrace, and Marben endeavors to find a way to wrap as much of him as possible into the circle of her arms, as her hands caress his nape and his back, her breathing stays calm to lull him into a sense of calm - even if is distressing to see him grieve. She knows he's not gonna ask nor get any comfort from his siblings, and that he probably dares to look for it in her arms precisely because they don't have that big of a history. It's always been like that, for the Hargreeves, Marben has seen it happen more or less with all of them, over the course of the years: they'd rather die than communicate with each other.

"You're not gonna feel guilty for her death, you hear me? She wouldn't want it" she softly murmurs against Diego's hair at some point, without even hinting at freeing him from the embrace. He doesn't seem to mind, and continues to hold her just as well.
"True. Too bad she went to that motel because I told her my brother was missing…she wanted to help".
"Wait...did you know about Klaus?" Marben confusedly queries, at that point leaning back just enough to search Diego's eyes, which reflect the same confusion.
"No, I meant Five, then. I learned about Klaus later. He's still missing, by the way".
"Which one?".
"Klaus. Relax".
"I don't feel like relaxing at all, knowing that Klaus is still missing. I'm not gonna worry about Five, though, it's evident he turned going missing into a hobby" Marben scoffs, and with that she considers the subject exhausted, thus resuming the previous one. "Listen, Diego, you may have advised Patch to try and do things your way, meaning without following the rules…but she had the last say, in it. If she went to that motel and took action alone it's because she chose to do so, she believed it was right to act swiftly. Unfortunately she paid the highest price, but…had you been there, had you wanted to make her change her mind, you know very well you wouldn't have been able to. She wouldn't have listened".
Diego looks down, snorting a small, sardonic laugh.
"It's...it's too ironic she had to pay so dearly for the only time she did listen to me…".
"You're right. But that's just how life goes, some times" Marben dejectedly admits. Then she pats his cheek, sighs and focuses on worrying about the living.
"What about some coffee, sweetie? And a donut?". Diego makes a face and tries to shake his head, but she has just the perfect rebut for that. "You know you'll eventually have to eat something other than raw eggs…".
"…s-so what, now you're giving nicknames too?" he offers in the end, and it's heartwarming to hear his voice is a little less shaky.
"Shut up, you love it when I spoil you!".
"Yeah…god knows I do" Diego murmurs, as he tilts his head to softly kiss her left cheek. Marben's eyes flutter closed for a moment, while she savors the gesture as the rare, precious thing it is. Then she squeezes his hand and with a sweet, sad smile leads him to where her friends and coworkers are having breakfast on an ER's table.

A/N: This chapter was so long that I had to split it into two parts! Next one will be a bit shorter, but still full of feels. What do you think will happen? :)

Did you like 'big' sister Allison in full protective mode? Whatever your answer, i think it is imperative to agree that poor, sad Diego deserves a hug...why on earth do you find the sight of Marben so reassuring, though?