ic open post & overflow.

[obediences]

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for ~rumorist -- backstory / voice-testing

[obediences]

The missions had been getting harder and harder since everyone left.

Numbers One and Three were the last holdouts, the last ones standing, and they’d just returned from another fight gone askew; this one was worse than usual, the pair of them barely scraped back into the Televator and limping into the house to be patched up by Mom to the best of her abilities.

The manor had gone empty and echoing where once it had rung with noise and clamour (despite Sir Reginald’s best attempts to pin down the children’s rambunctiousness, trained soldiers should be seen and not heard): the pounding bass of Klaus’ music, movies from Allison’s room, the sound of their mother cooking and humming downstairs, Luther practicing in the gym.

Today, though, their house is more like a hollowed-out skeleton, and Mom is mopping blood from the foyer floor while Allison holds an ice pack to Luther’s swollen eye. He moves gingerly, his entire body a patchwork of bruises; he’s pretty sure he broke a rib.

They’re both exhausted. It had gone so, so poorly. It’s starting to look more and more likely that something’s going to go wrong and they won’t be able to be pulled back from the brink next time (and despite himself, despite everything, Luther finds himself thinking of Ben yet again). His hand unconsciously reaches up, traces the fresh stitches at Allison’s temple. Remembers the sight of her just an hour ago, and how the blood in her hair had struck him cold with fear.

(Head wounds look gruesome, Number One, but they’re a pittance.)

“I should’ve had a better eye on the back exit,” he says wearily. Blaming himself, as always, because he’s the leader and that’s what he’s supposed to do, isn’t it?

for ~rumorist -- backstory / voice-testing

[rumorist]

"Don't do that," Number Three replies, her voice soft despite the warning. "You can't have eyes in the back of your head, no matter what Diego used to say."

Allison talks about their brother as though he's gone; as though his departure from the house has rendered him lifeless, a figure only to be spoke of in the past tense, even though he still lives in the same city. He still lives and breathes though perhaps it might be better if he didn't (because of everything, Allison finds herself thinking of Ben yet again).

All of the others are dead or gone but only she and Luther remain. She lays her cheek against the palm of Luther's hand, feeling warm against his touch, his nearness, but only for a moment. When Allison pulls away, it shatters something between them; reminds them both that such closeness can't be allowed. She turns her back to Luther, shoulders squared as she breaks apart from him. (She remembers Luther's fury when the others had departed; the hurt in his voice as he accused them of turning their backs on this house, on their family. Despite this, she plunges forward.)

"This mission was doomed from the start." There's a sharp edge to her voice like a cold steel blade forged as she speaks. "We're not a team anymore, Luther. We're a pair." It sounds nearly like an insult. She sighs, permits herself a certain softness to round out the sharp edges of cutting out this part of her life. "It's getting harder and harder to do this on our own."

[obediences]

“I know.” Luther admits it while avoiding her gaze and looking down, at his split knuckles, at his boots still dusty from the debris in the museum. He’s ludicrously stubborn but not delusional; he knows what they’ve been reduced to. The title of team leader tastes like ash in his mouth nowadays, considering the sad dregs of what was once the bustling Academy. Whenever they’re deployed now, he only has the one person watching his back, only the two of them paying attention to the corners. They’re more easily overwhelmed. Even his brute strength isn’t enough to keep it all at bay, and that awareness stings.

“I don’t know what else to do, though. It’s not like we could ever recruit new members.”

Therein lies the difference between them, though: when Luther says he doesn’t know what else to do, it’s a sort of shrugging defeat, an unwillingness to even consider the alternative (that unspeakable alternative, that so many of their siblings have already opted for). Like a wind-up soldier determined to walk in its circle forever.

[rumorist]

A silence gestates in the absence of Allison's response as she struggles with the phrasing of her next words. Too condemning of their current lifestyle, and Luther would become defensive; he would buckle down and embolden his commitment to trying again despite the cost to him, to them. His unwillingness to accept defeat was admirable to her, so long as they were still on the same side. This no longer feels the case for her.

She clasps his shoulder with a grip firm enough to bolster him here before her. It's now. It has to be now. "We could leave." The entreaty hosts yearning but also ferocious confidence. Not only does she want this, but she believes they can do it. Together, most preferably.

[obediences]

"Leave?" He echoes the suggestion, in numb disbelief. It catches on the gears of his mind, snags like something's trapped in the wiring. Luther's trying to process it and failing. Because the others left, one-by-one trickling out of this house. But Allison doesn't leave. She's not supposed to be the one to abandon him.

"What do you mean?" he asks, even though he knows exactly what she means. He almost shrugs off that hand on his shoulder, but looks up at her in blinking surprise instead. (He realises, then, that his jaw is aching and not from the earlier brawl; he's clenching it tight enough to grind the teeth, waiting for the next blow from her words.)

[rumorist]

"What I mean is —" a scoff catches in her throat as she peers somewhere past him, this house, somewhere she's been dreaming of for a long time, and yearns to seek it out. She furrows her brow as though it pains her, being captured here instead. "Don't you wanna get out of this musty old house? Move out on our own, get out from beneath Dad's prying gaze?"

The memory of a dusty afternoon in the attic floats to the forefront of Allison's thoughts, but she also remembers the glint of light off of their father's monocle, and the happiness from that memory blackens like ash. This place darkened even the brightest of moments throughout her childhood. (Not only hers, but Luther's too.)

"We can leave the Umbrella Academy, Luther," she says, giving him permission if he's only willing to take the leap. She's there to take it with him, always. "We can leave, go out and get a place of our own, and be adults?"

[obediences]

Their father was a looming silhouette in the manor, a weight across Luther's shoulders with the burden of the man's expectations. One that had just become heavier and heavier as each sibling left, leaving Luther carrying what remained. There was a strangled panic tight in his throat at the thought of it, of being the only one left.

What is a leader with no one to lead?

So. Maybe he could go. Just set it all aside. Leave with Allison, leave it all behind, and carve their own path in the world—

But the thought of that sets a different kind of fear clenching his chest, like a vise around his heart, and he can't breathe. What would Luther even do, out in the world? What job could he have that wasn't trotting to Sir Reginald's drum? Allison wanted to act, they'd known that for years, she'd talked and dreamed about it. But cut Luther Hargreeves out of the academy, then what the hell is left of him?

He pulls away from her.

"I can't," he says stiffly. Voice cracking. "I have a responsibility here."

leaving home

[hellogoodhigh]

He'd been planning this for some time now.

Sneaking out bits of money, stashing clothes away. And the moment of their 18th birthday, the one that Five and Ben would never see because the bastard that kept all of them here, he planned on running.

He didn't know where, really. Bus stop, then train station, then getting halfway across the country for all it mattered. Because once he turned his back on those doors, he wouldn't be coming back.

Now all he has to do is convince himself to walk through them.

The house is quiet, everyone asleep, so why is he holding back? He's left the note in his room, he's got everything he can carry, so why is it so hard to walk out those doors?

yeeee ♥

[obediences]

All of the Hargreeves kids are old hands at this sneaking out business by now, so Klaus really should have it down pat. They've all memorised the spots where the floorboards creak in this ancient house; they know which steps to avoid and hop over when they're making their descent to the exit. They mostly obeyed curfew, of course, but you couldn't spend every day training them in how to infiltrate enemy bases without, inadvertently, teaching them how to get out of their own damned house. Even Luther's done it time and again, slipping out to the diner with his siblings.

Which means that when Klaus hesitates, stepping on the wrong floorboard with a gentle creak, it might be because on some level he wants to be heard.

Luther's awake. God knows why: insomnia? a late-night craving for some water? nerves over their eighteenth birthday? Or some nagging awareness that something's wrong? But regardless, he's already standing in the doorway leading down to the kitchens when Klaus crosses the foyer and stops partway through.

"Out for a midnight snack?" he asks. Because that question, sort-of-a-joke but sort-of-not, is easier than facing the truth. (He can see the duffel slung over his brother's shoulder. Knows what it means.)

aww little luther

[hellogoodhigh]

"Yeah, something like that." His voice is distant, a whisper, and he doesn't look to Luther at all. Merely stares out those doors like it can somehow make him put one foot in front of the other and keep going.
"... Bon Anniversare and all."

He finally looks back to Luther, because it's really just the three of them in this house now, isn't it? Luther, Allison, and Klaus.
Vanya had been sent away to boarding school. And Diego? Had left a few months earlier. Maybe that's why it's so hard to walk out the door, because he doesn't know what's going to happen next.

Were any of them really ready for the world outside? Was he? Was Ben?
"... Was thinking about going to Griddy's. You want to come?"

[obediences]

Luther folds his arms, unconsciously mirroring that thing Allison does when she's frustrated. He's not a good enough actor to lean against the doorway and feign nonchalance; Klaus is so much better at that airy lack of concern, the pretending that everything's okay, while Luther's expression seems to fold in on itself.

Because it had been inevitable, wasn't it? The house was bleeding Hargreeves, each of them slipping away one-by-one.

(For a second, he's not sure what'll happen if he just grabs Klaus and yanks him back with his super-strength and just. Sits on him. But that's not going to solve anything permanently, and won't keep this fracturing, crumbling team together.)

"We could tell the waitress it's our birthday. Get some candles in some cupcakes or something." A beat, and he looks at Klaus intently, his blue eyes sharper than usual. Knowing. "I'm pretty sure Mom's baking a cake in the morning."

A cake Klaus is never going to eat.

MCU AU

[hellogoodhigh]

It’s been a long time since he’s been home.

He doesn’t want to be here, is admittedly a little nervous about being here, alone, back to the house of horrors he’s tried to hard to leave behind. But he’d asked for his inheritance, and with it, of course, came certain conditions. Namely that he show up to the Umbrella Academy and prove that he was worthy of it.

His nerves are practically on fire as he stands in front of the door, gripping the handle and trying to calm himself as he pulls the door open.
“Dad?” He calls, and it practically echoes through the empty hallways.
“Pogo? Mom?”

[obediences]

It's for the best, really, that Reginald's grown more and more distant from the world with the dissolution of the academy. He sinks himself into his research and inventions and gathering data for next missions to send Number One on, but doesn't handle the training or logistics with the same obsessive hand that he once did.

There just isn't that much left to manage. No one left to train.

So when the prodigal son returns, the Monocle's nowhere to be seen. But a familiar tread comes stepping down the stairs at the sound of the front door, a tall shadow casting across the clean tiled floor.

"Pogo mentioned you might be stopping by," Luther says, and there's a carefully-calculated bitter carelessness in his voice that he spent all day practicing. He's hungry for a sight of one of his siblings, lonely and desperate for it, but he reins in his expression anyway when he looks at Klaus — and tries not to look happy about it. Tries not to look like this is the first visitor they've had at the house in years, literal years.

[hellogoodhigh]

One of several prodigal sons, he supposes. Five is still somewhere out there- he's tried to summon his ghost to no avail. And Diego? Well, last Klaus heard, the Vigilante apple seemed to fill this tree. But there's One- ever faithful. Ever vigilant, and Klaus finds himself snapping to attention at his voice like he's a kid again.

"Luther-?" Of course. Of course Luther would still be here, after all this time. How many years has it been, nine, ten, since they last saw each other? And he's only gotten more intimidating over the years.

Slowly, Klaus exhales, and wishes that he'd brought someone other than Ben along, who's following behind him half a step. Sobriety makes him sharply focused, and he can see the ghosts that haunt the corners of the building, peering down from the banisters to catch a glimpse of the new visitor.

"... It's, uh, it's been a while." Understatement of the century. And he imagines that they both have a lot to catch up on. For Klaus, well, he's been in New York. Got sober, helped fight a crime syndicate, moonlighting vigilante work-

"... You, uh, done anything recently?"

[obediences]

The question is in its own way absurd, even if Klaus doesn't know it, and so the look that he gets in return from Luther is skeptical, disapproving. After all these years, come slinking back to cash his paycheck, and... this is all he has to ask? You done anything recently? As if this is a catchup across months, not a decade.

"You know, the usual," Luther says through a tight jaw. "Fighting crime. Saving the world. Fought off some of Dr Terminal's resurrected bots."

And, the thing he didn't want to be caught dead mentioning: it was getting harder and harder each year. These missions weren't scaled for someone like him to tackle on his own. What's a leader without a team to lead?

"I'm pretty sure the paperwork's ready for you in the den." Pogo had set it all aside, gotten the signatures and the forms notarized (the ape was a licensed notary). But that leaves Luther standing here, a little lost, unsure what being a host entailed. Was he supposed to offer his brother a drink? Luther wasn't allowed to drink. Mom hadn't cooked anything, so there wasn't any food.

This wasn't a hospitable house. It had never had visitors.

"What've you done lately?" he asks after a pause, turning the question back onto Klaus in desperation. He feels rusty; he's forgotten how to talk to people, he's realising.

Just in case you forgot this is from a crossover AU....

[hellogoodhigh]

“I’m not signing anything yet.” It had been a warning from Matt. Not to sign anything until his lawyer- in this case Matt Murdock himself- took a look at it. Knowing his father there would be stipulations involved when it came to his inheritance- mandated sobriety, donning the mask of “the Seance” again, using him as an example to bring the others back to the academy.

So he crosses his arms, defensive, and at a loss for words- especially when Luther offers him a drink.
“Yeah, if it’s non-alcoholic.” He loosens up, rubbing the back of his neck. “I, uh. I got sober. One year.”

And that’s not the only thing he’s been doing in New York. He wonders if One would be proud, knowing that he was... loosely part of a team. Dancing with the Devil and dealing with daughters of dragons and men with unbreakable skin and other assorted oddities. That he has his own gimmick, his own costume, his own mask that he wears that’s nothing like the academy.

Or would he be furious? Because he’s not the one leading him?
No longer Number One?

“.... You should come out to New York, you know. I could introduce you to someone. Several someone’s.”

no i gotchu

[obediences]

"You what?" A tilt of his head in surprise. They haven't been in touch, haven't personally reached out to each other for calls or help, but some of Klaus' previous hospitalisations had been high-profile enough to reach the news, to reach Pogo, and thus to reach Luther. Just enough for Reginald to be furious from afar, at the stain on the family name happening while Number Four tore his way through the city.

A moment too late, Luther stutters into what he should've led with, if he knew how to react to things like this at all: "Hey. Congratulations. That's... uh, that's good. That's great."

I'm proud of you sits on his tongue, but he bites it back. It doesn't feel like his place to be proud or not, to measure Klaus against those yardsticks anymore or not. So the silence that falls between them is awkward again — god, they really aren't any good at this — but then Klaus throws in his offer, and Luther's brow crinkles in confusion. Trying to follow his brother's leap in logic, failing utterly, and thus grinding to a halt.

"Are you... setting me up with a date?"

Mask or Menace ☂ January 2020; Capes & Cowls AU Plot

[numberthree]

Her alarm had gone off at still too early to even be alive o'clock, and she'd wrinkled her nose and buried her face in her pillow, even as she gropped on the bed table to make the blaring noise stop. It was pitch dark, and she had actually been halfway back to oblivion when a forehead pressed into the back of her shoulder and part of her neck, sleep-thick breath ghosting against bare skin, "You'll be late again."

There was a huffed-groan of exasperation into her pillow, even as she knew he was right. She loved both her jobs, enough she was willing to put up with things like this, but it still took creative scheduling and ungodly hours sometimes. There was a chuckle behind her, that she could translate without language guides. He knew she didn't want to miss it, even if she didn't want to get up either. That this side of her frustration was better than the other one.

It was Sunday. Sunday's should be for sleeping in. At least for sleeping until the sun rose. Or was anywhere near rising. She let out an over-exaggerated sigh and slid her arm under her to push up. Words quiet and as much to her, as toward him. "Fine. I'm up, I'm up." Trying to will her eyes to want to be open and her eyelids to stop feeling like lead weights. "A shower, and I'll leave some coffee warming for when you get up."

The noise from the otherside of the bed could have as much been committal, if he was still awake, as it could have been just a mimicked noise to hers, if he'd already fallen back to sleep. She wanted even ten more minutes, but she pushed herself up to standing and went to do just what she said she had. Wandering through the dark bedroom and bathroom without lights, until a door was closed between them. It was easier once the cold shower started. Villainous cruelty, but a fast, full wakeup call for all her nerves.

Everything was a bit easier after that. Getting clean, all efficiently. Getting dressed, silently in the dark. Drinking enough coffee to float this familiar, and eternally, wrong side of four am. If she'd known the call she'd get halfway to her destination, she wouldn't have had so much coffee.

But as it is, when Luther gets up, he'll find a surprise that isn't coffee.
Curled into a corner of the couch, studying the day's newspaper with a pen.

[obediences]

Back in the day, Spaceboy had always been awake before dawn, the first one of the Academy to leap out of bed and get an eager start on their day. Over the past ten years, that iron discipline has relaxed a bit with no Monocle to chase them all into training, but old habits still die hard. He's still an early riser and never late to an engagement, nor a mission with the enforcers, nor a public event in the archangel Gabriel's shadow.

It's still never as early as Allison's calls, though. This disjoint in their mornings can be aggravating, but they've also grown used to it: Allison has to weather literal hours of sitting patiently in a makeup chair, while Luther's dayjob doesn't require anywhere near the same upkeep. He rolls out of bed, takes a shower, shaves, mostly leaves it at that.

Today, he's reluctant to leave the cozy nest of blankets and the warmth of their bed (his body tends to run hotter than hers; irritating, on those sticky summer nights), expecting nothing but a cold and empty house to greet him. By by the time he pads into the living room, though, sleep-rumpled and mussed, he pauses in the doorway in pleasant surprise.

"You said you had a gig this morning. Liar," Luther says, his voice cracked and gravelly from sleep, and he stops behind the couch enough to peer over Allison's shoulder and read the headlines. Hands pressed into the back of the couch, he stoops low enough to press a kiss to the top of her head; breathing her in, a quiet little gesture that they never allow themselves in public. Her scent had been all over the pillows, but it's still no substitute for the woman herself.

[numberthree]

She can hear him coming before he does. Getting off the bed. The sound of his steps in the silence. The sound of the silence right before his voice calls her out on existing, and her straight-faced focus on the paper crumples without any need to keep it like any of the other poker faces she keeps with her pretty face on every other day, model or actress. Or interrogator.

Giving it the breath of a second to look up leisurely from searching the ads and missing persons for anything that might look like coded messages the rats in the underground were trying to slip under everyone else's noses. Like she might not have all noticed that fact herself. About being home. On her own couch.

Allison smiled and leaned into the back of the couch, and the kiss in her hair, even as she was already moving. To look up, reach up a hand, to find the side of his neck, and tip her face up toward his, taking in the pillowcase lines still on his cheek and part of his forehead, even as she said, with imperious pertness, as though wrongfully slandered. "I didn't lie. I had a gig."

But deciding to tug on his neck and to go about dragging him down another inch for a kiss, it might still have the exceedingly Cheshire edges of her smile on her lips, on his, at still having not actually answered the unspoken question. Only the words of the playful, surprised accusation that heralded it.

[obediences]

They've both become well-acquainted with technicalities, thanks to her new lie detection power — with the ways to skirt a direct question, to deliver something that isn't, entirely, a falsehood.

"Splitting hairs," he declares, before Allison's hand is winding into the familiar line of his neck and he's pulled down, his lips captured in hers. The sensation is familiar (they've had years to learn each others' bodies and to get accustomed to it, to erode this boundary between them until it simply didn't exist anymore), but they're at an awkward angle considering his height and him standing behind the sofa. To make it a little easier, Luther finally just drops entirely, his arms winding around Allison from behind, lips migrating to her jaw, the side of her throat, teeth grazing her neck.

"You should've come back to bed," he murmurs into her neck. Sleeping in is still a luxury — one they'd never, ever gotten to take advantage of back home — but one that they occasionally get to savour here, limbs entwined in a tangle of sheets, buried in the pillows together.

[numberthree]

The drop, like an anything but small pile of bricks, against the floor and the back of the couch, elicits a noise in the back of Allison's throat that is part disbelieving snort, part delighted laugh, and still mostly utterly already forgotten even as it sounds. When his arms loop around her, even from there, and his lips start trailing down her skin.

Her head already tipping against the top of the couch and his upper arm on the other side, exposing more and more skin, delicate and vulnerable, and only ever touched by him, the single and only person in two worlds who was ever allowed to see even a single bone in her body as vulnerable. The hand on his neck turning into pressing fingertips and the accompanying bite of nails, unconcerned and unnoticed, as everything became the smallest shudder that rolled down her spine, pushing her both back against the couch and up into the pressure of his teeth teasing.

It's still lingering in her voice, saying, "Maybe I should have."

Luther was nothing if not making a compelling case.

[obediences]

Even as Allison arches her throat and he finds the particular spot right at the crook of her neck that he knows makes her toes curl (although he's ever, always careful to not nip too hard lest he leave a mark, something that'll need to be especially covered up by the beleaguered makeup artists, that might raise inconveniences for her modeling), part of Luther's mind is already running through the schedule: when exactly does he need to be at the base to run weekend drills with the squad? Not for another couple hours, at least. There's time. There's still time.

"I also don't see coffee," Luther points out, his voice an up-close murmur right next to her, teeth against the shell of her ear. Mock-chiding, sounding for a moment like Number One taking her to task — but even that steeliness is playful, is a recognisable toying with the roles they're already so comfortable with. Her nails dig in harder; that light pinprick of almost-pain doesn't get anywhere near breaking his skin, but it tantalises.

(They can be rougher, in this world. These living weapons already know, long-since, that they won't break.)

"What's the rest of your schedule? Any late-morning replacement shoot?"

He's asking. For reasons.

[numberthree]

It's always the razor edge.

Even as she hits back, undaunted, always undaunted, at that tone and his teeth, running small nips in all the right places, sinks its hooks into her skin the way it always does, always will. "It's in the kitchen, not on the couch."

The skip of her heart, and the prickle sensation spreading out from every place his lips touch, his teeth carefully taunt. The things she likes best, that send her to a true disarray, are the things her day job doesn't like to contend with. But nothing like rationality, or even past collisions of the two, can ever actually stop it starting to build.

The want already on the back of her tongue, the tips of her teeth,
her lips pressed, against a small sound escaping, the want to say harder.

She doesn't want to play nice, but when does she ever, when no one here can actually make her do anything she doesn't want to do, and somehow she still tries. A contest between insanity and Luther. Turning more sideways on the couch, inside his arms, feet sliding under her neatly so she can push upward on her knees, and put an arm on the couch back between them, letting the paper and pen end up wherever they do, while gaining a little height and the ability to move, as her hand finds his chin and she demands his mouth, a little more roughly.

Needs to put even the faintest burn of that want somewhere else, and his mouth is always the best place for that. "None." Carelessly dropping words into kisses. "I called Gabriel and he doesn't need me either--" she pulls back, just enough to see his eyes, the tip of her thumb brushing from the edge of his mouth up part of his cheekbone, while the rest of her hand stayed still, more than a little possessive, against his cheek and jaw. Eyes bright, against the words she chooses ever on purpose. "--so it has the makings of a very--"

Allison leaned that half-inch in to almost kiss him again, ghosting his lips with her breath, through the smile trying valiantly to break free of her over the top crestfallen look. "--boring day."

for ~desmoines: starlight & space.

[obediences]

[ What a bunch of assholes.

The Umbrella Academy are notorious for their cockiness, their brashness in the spotlight, but The Seven are somehow even worse. Hargreeves Industries and Vought International have been vying neck-and-neck for both patents and sponsorships, and Luther can chart the progress of the rivalry between the super-teams in the size of the vein pulsing in his father's forehead. Even the team's slogans sound similar: Fiat justitia ruat caelum, let justice be done though the heavens fall — Ut malum pluvia, when evil rains.

There were even the same number of members of each, although the seventh member of the Academy keeps being sidelined, fading into the background, and deaths and disappearances have taken their toll on both. The press has sunk their teeth into the whole situation, of course: publishing team leader profiles of Homelander alongside Space, or interviews of The Deep and The Kraken trading shots at each other and jostling for sex symbol status.

It is, frankly, starting to become a problem.

Every time another supervillain or monster attacks the city, there's a race between the teams to see who can mobilise first, who can rescue the most civilians and then pose for the photos afterwards. A-Train is usually first on the scene, which is when Number One misses Number Five most: if his brother were still with them, teleportation would give them an edge right about now.

Tonight, however, he's pretty sure the Academy made it out first. The ground shakes as the homicidal robots tear their way down the city block. His team splits up to handle them, and after propping up a wall long enough for some civs to flee, Luther lets go and the rest of it collapses; he eventually loses sight of the others in the debris, and then, domino-masked, he runs and slides behind a tumbledown wall for cover, finding himself side-by-side with—

A blonde stranger, costume white-and-gold, decked in stars. He blinks. Shit. She was unveiled recently, wasn't she? Diego's got The Seven's faces printed out on his wall for knife-throwing practice, but this one hasn't been fully burned into the nation's consciousness just yet. He can't remember her codename, exactly. ]

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