obediences | ic open post & overflow.

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?

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?

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?”

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.

Edited 2020-08-03 18:55 (UTC)

[ 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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