This is the idea that sparked this verse.
And yes, this is in the same world as the last one (which is something as accidental as blood). It's all connected.

nothing but dreams

The day that Diego finally leaves the doors of the Umbrella Academy behind is one of the happiest days in his entire life, even if he has to leave his Mom behind.

With the help of Eudora Patch — a woman roughly his age who he met at Griddy's — he sneaks out of not only the house but the city at one point. She doesn't stay with him, but that does not make him any less thankful.

He wants to continue to fight crime and to protect people and joining the police academy is like the sole way to do that right now. But he has to get away from this city and all of the memories.

Only his siblings could possibly keep him here, but with Vanya in college and unwilling to talk to him, Ben dead, Five gone, Allison on her way to stardom, and Luther still under their father's thumb, that leaves Klaus. And Diego does not have the strength to pull both himself and Klaus up at the same time, no matter how much he wishes he had.

He will come back to help him get off both the street and the drugs as soon as possible.

So Diego leaves for Chicago and gets into the police academy there. For a handful of months, everything is calmer than he had expected his life to ever be. It's good.

And then Vanya publishes her book.

The thing is, Diego doesn't hate Vanya for writing it. It's great for her, that she was able to turn all of the crap they went through into something to help her heal.

What Diego hates is what all of the idiots in police academy think they're entitled to. How little compassion they show — and that's coming from someone who lived with Reginald Hargreeves as a parent.

Everywhere he goes, someone is reading the book and they're all having the same ideas. Everywhere, some asshole Diego hasn't bothered to remember the name of says something along the same lines. "And that Number Four! He should be working with a police force somewhere not blowing out his brains like some worthless-"

At that point, Diego always leaves or forces himself to focus solely on whatever task was at hand if he can't. That at least is something he has learned when he was younger. Not a kid — he never quite was one — just younger.

Because if he wouldn't do that, he would get into a fight with these assholes. And they'd throw him out. It's not like he has a reason to be mad.

He's just Diego Morales, after all. Not Number Two Hargreeves, no he had left that behind with the mansion. Diego Morales. What his name would have been, if his mother had not died during the birth of a child no one had been expecting.

(He knows that only because of Klaus. It's one of the reasons why he's so incredibly mad at this.

He tapes the back cover to his punching bag, yes, but he isn't punching his sister, but the injustice they've all been suffering their whole lives.)

But then, one day, something changes.

It's not that they stop making their dumb comments — no, they never stop, though they do get rarer — but that someone actually says something against it.

It's not delivered by a punch, but by words — "Stop being dicks, they're still people who have the right to make their own decisions" to be exact — but that does not make it any less satisfying.

The person in question is none other than Will Gorski, also known as the man who had managed to punch another recruit in the face for a homophobic remark and get away with it.

Really does Diego have any choice but to befriend the man at his point?

Especially since the two of them share a sense of humor and multiple interests.

It's one of the first friendships Diego has made in all of his twenty-three years of life and he's decided that he's not going to let this one go if he has any choice about it.

The two of them open up more and more about each other and Diego learns that Will, too, has his own childhood traumas, namely the whole thing with Sara Patrell. Will, on the other hand, is surprised by the fact that Diego believes he had seen her and not merely imagined the whole thing.

"Believe me when I say that it's not nearly as weird as you think."

But Will merely snorts at these words. "I'm really curious about what kind of life you had before coming here that you come to this conclusion."

"One day I'll tell you about all of it," Diego promises. "But for now I'm not ready to do that. It's a lot to unpack."

And Will proves once again that it had been a good choice to befriend him when he only nods and says, "Alright."

Because there is a reason that Diego had not entered the police academy under the name Hargreeves. Yes, he wants to make it on his own and harder for his father to find him if he ever decides to collect them again — he seriously doubts he remembers the names of the families he had bought them from — but he also really does not want to think about it.

It's probably not the best thing to do, Diego is well aware. He is working towards healthier coping mechanisms first before he is ready to work upon all of his traumas. And he has plenty, some of them individual to him, others shared with his siblings — that would be those from the violence and lack of parenting. As for his individual ones, well, let's just say that you don't find out you don't need to breathe and can throw knives around corners in any good way. Especially not when you're a toddler.

(Yeah.)

Will's father isn't perfect either — it's the worst kind of impressive that he found one of the few areas to horrible in that Diego had been previously unaware of, what with his occasional 'take a shit for me' comments — but compared to dear old Reginald, he's nevertheless enough of a saint that Will won't understand what Diego and his siblings went through, if he even believes him, that is.

(The whole thing with Sara Patrell makes it more likely. There was definitely something odd going on with that, odd enough that Diego had to check Will's birthday.)

One day, Diego will be ready to tell his best friend everything, but he hasn't reached that point quite yet.