Have you seen this conversation about justice and how to quantify it?
[He's been having this conversation with Jacob and he's so conflicted on how to feel about any of it. And as much as he may butt heads with Luther, there is still a respect there, and over something like this? He can't really think of anyone better to talk to.]
Yeah. I responded, a bit. Looks like Allison did too.
Little too close to home, isn't it.
[ Now that Luther's got a larger communicator device where he can actually manipulate the keyboard properly, he has the advantage of text, and his voice not betraying himself when it comes to delicate subjects like this. Picking their way through it like a minefield. ]
[ For the second time in a week, Allison has not the slightest urge to be awake, to leave her bed, to go to the bastion of bloodsuckers that is her job. Unable to sleep, unwilling to move, tears long since dried, but sore from the strength of the sobbing that had wracked her on the sudden jarring crack of waking from this newest dream with her daughter’s face and voice so perfectly clear once more, as though she hadn’t remembered it as clearly somehow as she swore never to lose.
But morning waits for no one. Allison's communicator rings, even though she ignores it. People who want to know where she is. A thing she doesn’t have to worry about from her daytime sleeping roommates. Eventually, she does have to move, late into the light that doesn’t permeate the house of blackout curtains in every room. Pretending it’s not a little surprising, a little painful and yet painfully relieving both there isn’t something from Luther already for the first time in days.
She remembers too well that girl at the door — her face. Luther’s admission it was his. (Luther’s words at her shoulder. The blasphemy of her own choice. The guilt within it. Selfishness.)
Reginald Hargreeves daughter, broken toy soldier, to the last, when what she turns to, instead of messaging him, herself, is the Network. Surprised not to find the reports of the newest worst turns of this attack on reality but endless messages and news updates about how nothing has happened since dawn. How all the objects and people pulled from dreams are gone. All the changes and powers and dreams brought to life have vanished as though they’ve never been there at all. Wariness more than anything clings like a bur even as she scrolled.
It’s that more than anything that pushed her finally out of bed, into clothes, and into the city she has little love for. There’s a hollow wariness and a perceptive relief, but the further she goes the more it’s true, the more conversations she overhears continues to keep that truth, the more buildings have returned their original shapes, sizes, appearances, and that more than anything digs into her gut.
Sinks more and more hooks into that reluctance each time she looks at her communicator considering. No matter how much she does not want to open the door that already blew itself down like there were never any hinges and locks on that door. Doesn’t want to know what he thinks of her now. Knows what he thinks of her now. Worse than that look in the living room when he realized.
There was a difference between the joke of using her power to solve the problem of having her daughter taken from her, and using her power on her daughter herself. There was a difference between merely saying she’d thought she’d had an advantage and being judged by a body of her peers and sentenced a child abuser. Her father’s daughter to the last. Gone from his house, but not from his training here either.
But even as shame and disgust flare in every direction making the reoriented world barely seen for more than that, she can’t forget either.
Luther’s face in that long frozen moment in the foyer after his shirt and the jacket gave way with the chandelier. Horror and shame and fear before he ran away from all three of them, her, her most of all, as the only person he’d stared at. Horrified. Ashamed. Afraid. Luther’s hand catching her wrist, careless of the grind of the delicate bones there, to keep her from touching him again, asking her to drop it, telling her he was fine when everything about him said he wasn’t.
Four years later and nothing near to anything like fine.
Luther calling her first and foremost a week ago. Uncomfortable, yet easier, in his own skin.
But there’s silence.
It’s not the same. It is. The silence. What it means.
Her world might be ripped open, but no one she passes on the sidewalk, stands next to getting coffee, can tell, can see it, even pauses for longer than second in looking at her. The same would not be true of Luther; from the second he woke up. She hates herself. Every breath still feels an inch from proving she is still broken wide open, a shatter of shards forgotten how to pull together once again. But every single one she can’t forget. His admission. His regret. His face everytime. He called first. He called first. He called first.
He hasn’t called at all.
That she has to. Even if she doesn’t want to.
Allison finds a bench in a park that looks as run down as she feels. Sits drinking her coffee staring at the empty text box in her vision. Not the Network, itself. Not her communicator. Nothing open to the public. She doesn’t expect she's welcome. Wanted. She doesn’t even want to do it. Which doesn’t change she needs to. Needs it like breathing, too. Might be the only person who can. You’re the only person I can talk through things with, he said. How many times had she snapped at him? Things forgotten. Things unsaid. Things avoided. Things kept from her. How many things hadn’t she explained herself that he'd seen now?
She is a hypocrite at the highest level.
It doesn’t excuse her from this either.
With a breath in, Allison closes her eyes, even as the box stays in front of her vision all the same, against the back of her eyelids and the tracery of red-orange from the sunlight behind them, and sends the only question she can. Even if she knows the answer already. ]
[ Luther picks through all of the possible responses, sifts through his words, erases them just as carefully. It had been a temporary reprieve, he knew that, some things were simply too good to be true, and he had to have known it would go away eventually — and yet. And yet he can't help that helpless sting of bitter disappointment and grief when, for the third time in his life, he wakes up transformed overnight. Back to rough and leathery skin with its pockmarked scars, the ones that did not come from battle; those oversize hands; that clumsiness. He's been trapped in his room all morning, called in sick and unable to even step out into the hallway. Can't face the strangers in his house, or on the street. Any of them. Even the Hargreeves.
He'd lied to her before. Claimed it was fine. But Allison can see right through it, and so: ]
[ It's been a long day, and an even longer night, and as much as Allison felt so exhausted in her bones she thought she'd be unconscious the moment her head touched the pillow, but she hadn't been. The tiny realization that had tucked itself inside her chest as she was leaving the hospital needled at her.
She was too tired to pick up her communicator, and she curls up even closer to her pillow, only having taken long enough to slide out of her heels really. Rubbing her cheek against the pillow even as she makes the choices and the letter light up behind her eyelids, and they are too small, eight letters only, and they will be as flat as ever. She can't flood them with the unfairly, and maybe even apologetic, possessive-relief that feels so suddenly revealed, but she can't, apparently, sleep without saying it either. ]
[ He'd thought he'd just fall asleep immediately once he hit his bed, emotionally drained from everything that had happened today — but it turned out that he was too keyed-up, too, adrenaline still flickering through his veins from the close call and with nowhere to put it. Working out his energy in the house gym hadn't really been enough, either. So when Allison's text message comes through, Luther just rolls over and goes for his phone immediately.
Furrows his brow at the contextless message. Wonders what it's for. Reining everyone in at the hospital, maybe? ]
Luther. My man. You free at all this week? It has been a weird ass month, and I need to kick back. So how about it? Dude's night out.
[Surprise Luther. It's a social call, instead of a "hey we want to go explore space" or "hey there are things to fight" call. But Shaun has come to like Luther, so why not. It seems like a decent way to get to know the guy better.
[ His first reaction upon seeing the text, even with his name appended right at the start, is 'Is this a wrong number?'. A blinking surprise, simply not comprehending for a moment. There... isn't an emergency? No horrific attack where the Masons need backup? Even so many of the Hargreeves messages, when they crop up, are matter-of-fact and drilling down on specifics, requests for help, or passing on important information: Vanya is gone, Five is gone, Vanya is back. Diego has new powers. Ben is maybe being eaten by a bear.
The sheer concept of a dude's night out is... completely, and utterly, foreign to Luther. He's heard of them, of course, but. For other people. ]
There's nothing horrible currently battering down your front door or anything, is there?
[ yeah he STILL IS NOT QUITE COMPUTING JUST YET, SORRY SHAUN ]
Hey, do you know what the lunar cycles of this place are like?
[There's a pause before his next text comes through. The irony of it, and how those words are usually used a thinly veiled lie, is that he actually means it.
He doesn't consider how that last word might come across as a surprise of a kind.]
[After receiving this text. First, there's a screenshot that comes in, then-- ]
You get one of these?
[Diego isn't even sure this should be registering on their radar right now. They already have so much going on, they have Vanya to worry about, but there's a small part of him that almost wants to shift the focus, just for a little while. To have something to distract him.
But there's the question of whether that's even what he-- any of them-- need to be worried with at the moment, too. Which is why he went to Luther first.]
[ He'd wanted to send a mass family text at first, but then paused. Backtracked and reconsidered. Vanya was in lockup, Allison watching over her. Klaus in the hospital, Ben watching over him. Which just left Diego: who was, besides, the only other family member Luther could see willing to sink their teeth into something like this. A distraction.
What he wouldn't give to have Number Five back, right about now— ]
I got the exact same one, and so did Allison. I'd think someone was pranking us after what happened, but-- looks like a lot of other imPorts have gotten them, too.
[This comes absolutely out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, at least as far as Luther is concerned. Diego has been having a conversation with another imPort who happens to be an empath. But running these sort of things by Number One is practically automatic reaction by now.]
[Video of Ben is sent, looking like a WRECK. He's in what looks like a black and blue super suit, which no one has seen yet out of the siblings. He has blood on his face and neck but seems to be ignoring it.]
[He's clearly in his room, and clearly very, very drunk.]
Luther. Luther. Luuuuther. Pick up. [He smashes his face into a pillow, half off screen now, as he says louder] Pick up!
[ Normally, Luther's a text-or-audio-only guy. But when he's woken in the middle of the night to the call from Ben (all of his siblings bypass the do-not-disturb settings on his communicator), and he sees the blood on his brother's face, Luther's suddenly bolt-upright and awake and thumbing to answer the video call. He looks rumpled in his own bed, but sharply alert. ]
Ben. What the— Are you okay? What happened? Report.
[ Jumping into team leader mode, because the quickest thing to mind is dear god the world is ending again. ]
[Everyone is disappearing. Derek's gone, which means Vanya has a puppy to take care of. Does she know how to take care of a puppy? Fuck no! Does she want to take care of this puppy? Fuck no! Did she let him sleep in her bed every night since bringing him home and maybe cry a couple times because she has had all of two friends in her life and she made them both here and one of them is gone?
None of your fucking business.
Vanya's not doing well, but when she had enough of moping on her own, she reached out to Allison, hoping for an extra coffee-slash-alcohol date. She waited, figuring it might be a busy time for work. And she waited some more. And more. And when she texted again, she realized that Allison - like Derek, like so fucking many people now - was gone.
She got a drink on her own. She got a few drinks on her own, and when Chance had settled down to sleep on her bed, she got to thinking that there was probably someone she could blame for this.
[ If this hadn't been text, there would've been a dangling question mark hanging onto that thanks. Does it still count? Did it actually happen? It's an odd spot to be in, and the Luther typing out the response to Knock Out already doesn't sound much like the decisive monster who worked for the government. ]
I feel like I should be re-introducing myself, but that feels weird and redundant too. Hey.
[Gabriel's on the feed looking - more relaxed. He's not putting on his fancy suit, he's got a dark gray flannel on with light pink and blue added to it. He holds his hands in front of him because if there's one person he should speak to - two people - ]
...Luther I-
[He runs a hand over his hair.]
I'm still - adjusting to these memories but after all we've been through I - I need to check in. To tell you two I'm sorry.
[He wrings his hands. This is not, Jane. This is not people who he let odwn these are people who he's in the same boat with.]
Is there a way we could meet soon? Or anything I could do for you? I feel-
[ Luther doesn't usually answer with video — he traditionally prefers text, prefers shrinking away from reminding people what he looks like — but Gabriel feels like a weird exception. Exhibit A: The guy isn't even human. Exhibit B: He'd lived in the Hargreeves house and in Allison's body and therefore been, in some strange way, like part of the family for a while. Exhibit C: They've just been through a kind of hell together, for years, even if they were the stewards of said hell.
So Luther's clumsy hands and shoulders maybe aren't the most important thing right now. So he answers with video, and he looks a little haggard. Weary. ]
How can you be responsible when I was right there with you?
[In a set of blue armor and without the green, glowing circuitry she sports on this Earth, Ashley stands in a spaceship cockpit, her hand clenched on the back of a chair occupied by a white man in a navy blue uniform and an "SR-2" cap. Nearby sits a silvery blue gynoid with an orange holographic visor. All three are intensely focused forward, Ashley the only one who's not using holographic controls for the ship.
[Suddenly, there's a flash of green light that rocks the ship. The light leaves traces in its wake, finding its way through new circuit patterns in Ashley and the man's skin and eyes and over the gynoid's body.
[With a shout from the man, the pilots attempt to wrestle the ship back under their control, but the ship crashes, sending Ashley falling to the floor.]
[ The AtlanTech glitch is like a virus, chewing its way through people's contact history and the network and sharing these videos erratically. The mental network kicks in, sometimes uncontrollably playing the memories even if you try to delete the recording: so in the end, Luther's watching the video and cannot stop watching the video. It feels like he's actually there. He hears the rumbling of the ship as it careens out of control, as it slams nosefirst into the ground, the whine of ripping metal. The green light that washes over everything.
The circuitry lighting up in Ashley's skin like Christmas lights, making her look like the Ashley that he knows.
Huh.
After it ends, he's not sure whether the more appropriate thing is to mention it, or pretend it never happened. If it was Luther's memories bleeding into her inbox, he'd have stubbornly ignored it, probably. But in the end, like touching a wall of wet paint, he finds that he has to say something and not just let it sit there withering: ]
Hey, Luther? Sorry for not texting sooner. I mean, I don't think I need to tell you what happened, so we can just skip to 'I needed some time to play with some dogs, and shunned humanity for a couple days'.
[ He's been barely dragging himself out of bed these days, but of all people he might've heard from, Haru — Ruby, whatever her name is now — is one of the best ones it could've been. Luther didn't do anything terrible to her, that he can recall. So there's less of that shame twisting sharp in his chest when he responds. ]
Yeah. Kind of makes me wish we had some dogs, that sounds
[ therapeutic? ]
nice.
Things over here have been, uh, rough. Our whole family Ported out while we were gone.
[The setting doesn't make this the easiest video to make out - a back alley, at night, in the rain. Four young men (one of them more of a boy, really), lay beaten and sprawled amidst the trash and other odds and ends that tend to end up in alleys. One of them, dressed in a now distinctly dirty white suit over a red t-shirt, begins to flex his fingers.] Hey, are you guys alive?
I'm about to die...or maybe I should say I did die...[The African-American boy in a backwards baseball cap moans.]
[The largest of the four, a blond, speaks up.] That old bitch told told her men not to kill us there because it would stain the carpet... [He leans his head back a bit for an indignant shout.] Our lives are worth less than her carpet?
[White suit points out, reasonably-] So you wanted to die?
[There's one of them who still hasn't said anything - the teen with shaggy black hair and a brown vest over a black tank top. White suit has noticed.] Hey, Brandon... [No response. White suit finally opens his eyes, lifting his head up.] Brandon?
[Brandon lies still. The other three get up to their hands and knees to crowd around him.] Hey, Brandon!
[Suddenly, Brandon sits straight up. Holding up a hand, he gives the other three a thumbs up. They stare, smile, and all four break into laughter.
After a few moments, white suit carefully stands up.] Let's get out of here.
[The four help each other up, and throw their arms around each others shoulders to support each other as they start to walk away.
(It's the last time they'll be able to laugh at things like this, all together.)]
[ It's becoming something of an organised ritual with these things by now: these videos spilling into his inbox, auto-playing and not letting themselves delete, the slow itching feeling of voyeurism, the nagging curiosity, the wondering who's it gonna be this time?. There's been a few on the network from complete strangers, and those have been easy to archive and ignore. But more often, the virus — or whatever the hell it is, Luther's not high-tech enough to figure it out — has latched onto people's contact lists. So it's Allison, so it's Ashley, so it's Brandon. ]
Uh. Hey. Can you see anything in your outbox?
[ He's been wondering that, too. If these things leave traces behind, if there's any way to tell what's gone out into the void. ]
[ Maybe, in some small, back-of-his-mind kind of way, Shepard is distantly aware of the significance of the date. It's not like he's had much time in the past few years to celebrate his birthday outside of the context of duty. Duty to the cause, duty to the war. Duty to put aside his own personal milestones to drive forward the milestones of an entire galaxy.
But, consciously, he recognizes what he feels now. So used to be surrounded by a crew - a motley bunch, in some ways - all fighting for the best outcome they can cling on to.
He feels... lonely.
He and Ashley have made some headway with talking through their pasts, the singular point in time where their histories diverged. But it's not Ashley he drafts up a message to, sending it before he changes his mind. ]
Luther, it's Shepard. There's a meteor shower over Nonah later tonight. Thought you might be interested?
[ It can be easier, sometimes, with someone new who doesn't have the baggage of the past weighing them down, heavy round their neck like an anchor. Luther doesn't even know what's up, but he'd get it.
And a meteor shower is quite literally one of the fastest ways to his heart. At first he's squinting at his communicator and the unfamiliar ID, but then his expression clears and he straightens in his seat. ]
Handy, since I live in Nonah too. I'd love to. You got a vantage point in mind?
Compared to how someone might typically move houses, this is miserable.
Luther drags his heels each day, not looking forward to the task of packing away their missing siblings' belongings, so the whole process is painfully slow-going: methodically going through each room and disassembling the personal effects, neatly packing away everything that gave the rooms character and flavour, Luther labelling each cardboard box with a number. (And then Allison comes through afterwards, her tidy handwriting tacking on a name to each one.)
It's an exorcism, of sorts. Packing up the rooms and renting a new house means finally admitting that they're really gone. And going through the process of scrutinising all their belongings means feeling closer to them, in a way: puzzling over Klaus' eclectic aesthetic, sorting through Ben's dark and moody room, self-aware of invading their family's privacy even as they have to do it.
He can't decide if Diego would hate having Luther or Allison go through his room more. In the end, he lets Allison handle it; Number One pawing through and judging all of Number Two's things seems like it would drive the other man up the wall if he ever knew about it.
Even Five's empty room has a few items in it that need to be cleared out, labelled, set aside for the eventuality of someone else taking up residence here. For someone else to come and sublet this massive house. To live in the ruins of the Hargreeves' life.
(You can barely see the mismatched spot in the living room, where Vanya threw Klaus right through the wall, and where Luther arranged to have it repaired afterwards. It's like it never happened.
The dead patch in the yard where the kryptonite fell, though, that's a lost cause.)
The only empty bedroom is Vanya's — and he wonders, distantly, how much of that is his fault.
Once the entirety of the house is shrunk down to just the two of them, Luther and Allison, there's so little left. He looks down into the boxes that are his, and which are going to be carted over to the new, smaller Nonah house. They're mostly full of vinyl records. Books upon books upon books. Baggy oversized clothes. A few plants. It's not very much. For the measure of an entire life here in Nonah, it's not much.
They spend the whole month packing things up and putting things away, and when the day comes that they have to move, they manage it on their own, stubbornly, with Luther hefting all of the furniture they're taking with them. The boxes. Bundling them into a moving van he borrowed from work. They drive over in a silence that's somewhere partway between uncomfortable and companionable.
Askeladd has continued to make a point of familiarizing himself with all the Porter cities. And now it's brought him, entirely by chance, to the street outside Joe's Movers just when Luther's shift is ending.
(Those insane fans do track everything. Just one of the ways Bwitter is quite useful.)
"Ah, Luther!" Askeladd's tone and expression are all pleasant surprise.
Unlike the last time they ran into each other, now Luther's back to his normal (—or at least previous) proportions, large and hulking, and this time he's not lugging a piece of furniture over his shoulder either. Instead he's flexing his hands and shrugging back into an oversized jacket over a frayed white undershirt; it's warm enough that he's had to start shedding those long sleeves whenever doing the sweaty work of hefting furniture on a shift, but the moment he's off the clock, he scurries right back under all those layers.
"Oh, hey," he says, eyebrow arching in his own surprise. Fancy running into Askeladd here.
None of the other's appear, and Five hasn't answered his comm device yet, but it's still on, so he's somewhere here. Doing whatever Five does when he isn't with them. They part ways with Diego at the Porter, after getting his address and vague consensus they might need to look back into how long the current tenant contracts on the big house are, especially if everyone might be tipped back in here.
After that, it's just them. In a way, it hadn't been even in those two short times they'd been together in the last week. No overwhelming shock and small talk. No world was threatening to explode all over again. Allison can't fade out the hyperawareness of Luther at her side. The sound of the friction where his clothes rub, and the gravel under his heavy steps. The sound of him breathing.
"Home sweet home," Allison says, a complexly layered and almost noncommittal tone.
An announcement put into the air, when they turn down the last street and can see the small house in the not far distance from them finally. Not that she's much ever thought of it as home, or called it that often. Not that it looks anything like the place that still feels like home, but isn't anymore, too. And yet. She can remember going to sleep in that bed what feels like yesterday, too.
It's disorienting, still, juggling all of those discordant memories like a cup fill to bursting and about to overflow. Just yesterday, they had been comfortable in each others' presence and could walk side-by-side in companionable silence, without being so hyper-aware of every last little exhale of breath or footstep, each inch of space they occupy. Without sneaking glances to the side like the other one was a rare and precious thing, a miracle deposited back in his life.
(After thinking she was dead. For over a year. A year and change. Thinking they were all dead.)
Still, after the long, long day they've had (a long week, a long year, a long goddamned life), there is something inutterably reassuring in fishing around in his pocket, finding a key that still works, and fitting it into the front door. The door of the craftsman swings open under Luther's fingers, revealing their cozy home— exactly as it was, untouched, still theirs.
"Huh," he says, surprised. It's like no time has passed, and yet forever has passed. It feels like the whole place should be half-abandoned and covered with a light layer of dust, but it isn't; there's a mug on the kitchen table still ringed with coffee he just finished a day ago.
"Guess I'm glad it hasn't been that long back here. Dunno what I'd do if I had to room with complete strangers again."
(Not exactly correct. Luther has a good idea what he'd do: probably sleep on the floor of her bedroom if she'd let him, and immediately file for a government move once more. Reluctant and unable to let go, now that she was back. Alive again.)
[ The worst part about it is that she knows it's stupid. That it's digging in between her shoulder blades, leaving salt and sand to grate the skin there raw. Picking at the back of her mind. Refusing to let her slip off to sleep. Because she's forgotten to do something. Something she's done every night. For years and years now. So much that it's instinct, more than action; like she's forgotten to breathe in.
She doesn't need to do that, but it keeps catching. Sharp, insistent, impatient, in her bones, like her skin is too tight. Like if she closes her eyes for too long, this won't be real. Not their family finding each other, and not stopping the end of the world, and not ... everything. Like she'll open her eyes, and she'll be somewhere else. Somewhere that she can't sleep without doing it.
Like opening her eyes doesn't just remind her of the bitter biting reverse, too. Of the sheer emptiness of the big bed she's in, that's missing Ray's body, warm and close, comfortingly solid. Of the blistering, empty silence that isn't being playfully, affectionately, goaded into calming down, going to sleep. Being told she's beautiful. Loved. The luckiest, best part of someone's life
She doesn't want to close her eyes. She doesn't want to open them.
She so tired, but that itch just digs, regardless of reality.
Of all the laughter, and fielding Klaus and Diego, and dinner and talking through light game plans for the coming week. Of eating more familiar, modern food than she needed to and wanting to curl around the middle of herself like a snake and gestate on it forever. After these last six days, and appearing here instead of home, they deserve it.
But she can't. The silence needles at her. The silence that could make the world outside this room, this bed, anything. Like a child dreaming up nightmares in the dark, while refusing to move at all and ruffle the curtains for the world's universal night light. Because even that would be too real, would make it all feel like it isn't real, too. It's too quiet. Just. Too. Quiet. So quiet, it could just be her. Still, and alone, in the darkness, again. With only herself. Her real self. Deep in her bones. Like always.
It's the first time she reaches for it, without cringing. Maybe because she doesn't want to turn over and reach for the communicator charging on her bedtable. Like that would be giving in. Like somehow this isn't. It's not entirely surrendering. It's just ... cheating, a little, when the Mental Network box blinks to life against her vision even in the dark she's still staring into with half-lidded eyes, and she types only three letters. ]
[ April 2019. There's a message somewhere buried deep in Luther's outbox, one of the very first texts he'd ever sent after figuring out the stupid too-small communicator; his very first check-in with her, that first night. All of them exhausted and wrung-out and Allison still half-dead, Luther running on zero sleep and her blood still caught under his cuticles, when he'd reached out: Hey.
And now here it is again, lighting up the corner of his vision with the mental network, and even that feels familiar, too.
He's awake. Of course Luther's awake. He's not sure if he'll ever be able to fall asleep tonight, with those extra months and months suddenly kicking around in his memory, stirred up like debris in the water and needing time for all the disparate pieces to settle again, to fall back into place. He keeps compulsively checking his communicator, too, rolling over to refresh the network and the directory, searching in vain for Five. Ben. Vanya. Just running through the list over and over again. Five, six, seven. It feels like some kind of cosmic joke that they've been split in half like this, like a wedge has been driven between the two halves of the Academy. The undeliverable notifications are going to drive him absolutely insane; he deletes them faster and faster each time, with an increasingly frustrated slam of the button.
She catches him during a quiet moment, though, when he's lying there motionless. ]
Hey.
[ The mental network. Familiar-unfamiliar. That strange doubling effect; he closes his eyes against it, tries to reorient himself. The ceiling of his bedroom is the ceiling in Nonah, is the barebones ceiling in the Plano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men, is his ancient childhood bedroom with its dangling airplane models, is the smooth panels of the moon base. Sometimes he forgets where he is. ]
Trouble sleeping too?
[ Duh, it's stating the obvious as he always does, and yet... there's that one word. Too. An automatic note of solidarity; understanding. ]
Not in a bad way, so much as in that everything, as expected, upended itself on a beach in Heropa the moment she walked on the shooting set, looked up from her coffee, and said, 'Morning,' for the first time ever to the crew. It was always going to. It was why she took the last two days off, after all. Before the inevitable. Before the storm of another Day One. Before she never had a single break because everyone had to talk to her suddenly.
Also, to settle into this being a thing again.
This world. This life. That still wasn't the real world, or the life she was supposed to be in when she opened her eyes from being in a circle with her siblings, again, but wasn't (and it wasn't the life she'd had the last two and a half years only four days ago). It's a strange, grey, vertigo, in between other real/not-real lives, but at least most of the day had been spent too busy to think about any of it.
Still, she was relieved to put it down. For the few hours she took after shoots for today stopped, even with that weird run-in. To hit the porter, and grab the mail on the way up, and let herself in this old-but-new-again door, calling out, only, "I'm home."
(Just don't think about the last time she heard those words, or the fact this place had never exactly been one of those on its own.)
After that first disorienting day, rounding up Diego and Klaus, then the long hours of insomnia, talking to Allison into the night and struggling to fall asleep— After all that, he's been trying to settle back into a routine.
It doesn't feel as familiar as it once did. This, either. Having Allison around has become a rare precious thing again, something not to take for granted anymore (as if he ever did); now, when that aching grieving loss of her feels more immediate and close-to-hand than a year-plus living together. It's taking some time to reconcile those two sets of memories, lining them up next to each other and trying to figure out where the pieces align, because they don't.
And he's settling into it. Calling up Joe again (or Jack?), getting back onto the shift rotation. Showing up at work. Running into Brandon there, unexpectedly. Checking his messages and seeing the ones he'd missed and which have piled up for him: a coffee invitation from Kaneki, he'll arrange that later.
Luther's sitting in the living room still checking the communicator when he hears the front door, his head turning, practically like a dog's ears pricking up at the sound of its owner returning. "Welcome back," he calls out. He can't even pretend to busy himself with the communicator or be distracted from her; he looks up instead, watches Allison bustle in with a handful of mail, slipping out of her high heels.
[ Of course Luther's mind goes to worst case scenarios first: monsters, robots, werewolves. 'The shit that happened' is, well, a pretty broad umbrella. ]
[ It's odd, the way this hasn't left her. Has somehow become something new. A different kind of a habit. Another kind of closet. But they make do with what they have. It's the Hargreeve way. It's not even like they are in different rooms. Less than twenty feet are separating them. All three of them, and Allison has been laying on the couch with her eyes closed for a few minutes, ignoring the network show playing. ]
Do you think it’s stupid of people to choose to fall in love here?
Literally, physically jerks in surprise in his armchair like he's been slapped in the face. They've fallen out of the habit of the mental network, so he's not accustomed to seeing it quite as often anymore; and the message itself, once he sees it, makes his heartbeat suddenly ratchet and catch in his throat and he stares at the words until it feels like they're going to burn themselves into his eyelids. He has no idea where this is coming from, and so for a moment, there's a sickening, nauseating irrational panic. Has she been falling for someone here? Who would even? Who is there even?
[ Kaneki isn't well versed with Christmas and doesn't know which day he should be giving presents, so his will be delivered on the 26th. Luther will receive a nicely wrapped book called "Books for Living" as well a small a note saying "Thank you. I hope you had a Merry Christmas." ]
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obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
texts; backdated end of May
Have you seen this conversation about justice and how to quantify it?
[He's been having this conversation with Jacob and he's so conflicted on how to feel about any of it. And as much as he may butt heads with Luther, there is still a respect there, and over something like this? He can't really think of anyone better to talk to.]
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Little too close to home, isn't it.
[ Now that Luther's got a larger communicator device where he can actually manipulate the keyboard properly, he has the advantage of text, and his voice not betraying himself when it comes to delicate subjects like this. Picking their way through it like a minefield. ]
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May 9th { what goes unsaid, doesn’t go unheard
But morning waits for no one. Allison's communicator rings, even though she ignores it. People who want to know where she is. A thing she doesn’t have to worry about from her daytime sleeping roommates. Eventually, she does have to move, late into the light that doesn’t permeate the house of blackout curtains in every room. Pretending it’s not a little surprising, a little painful and yet painfully relieving both there isn’t something from Luther already for the first time in days.
She remembers too well that girl at the door — her face.
Luther’s admission it was his. (Luther’s words at her shoulder.
The blasphemy of her own choice. The guilt within it. Selfishness.)
Reginald Hargreeves daughter, broken toy soldier, to the last, when what she turns to, instead of messaging him, herself, is the Network. Surprised not to find the reports of the newest worst turns of this attack on reality but endless messages and news updates about how nothing has happened since dawn. How all the objects and people pulled from dreams are gone. All the changes and powers and dreams brought to life have vanished as though they’ve never been there at all. Wariness more than anything clings like a bur even as she scrolled.
It’s that more than anything that pushed her finally out of bed, into clothes, and into the city she has little love for. There’s a hollow wariness and a perceptive relief, but the further she goes the more it’s true, the more conversations she overhears continues to keep that truth, the more buildings have returned their original shapes, sizes, appearances, and that more than anything digs into her gut.
Sinks more and more hooks into that reluctance each time she looks at her communicator considering. No matter how much she does not want to open the door that already blew itself down like there were never any hinges and locks on that door. Doesn’t want to know what he thinks of her now. Knows what he thinks of her now. Worse than that look in the living room when he realized.
There was a difference between the joke of using her power to solve the problem of having her daughter taken from her, and using her power on her daughter herself. There was a difference between merely saying she’d thought she’d had an advantage and being judged by a body of her peers and sentenced a child abuser. Her father’s daughter to the last. Gone from his house, but not from his training here either.
But even as shame and disgust flare in every direction making the reoriented world barely seen for more than that, she can’t forget either.
Luther’s face in that long frozen moment in the foyer after his shirt and the jacket gave way with the chandelier. Horror and shame and fear before he ran away from all three of them, her, her most of all, as the only person he’d stared at. Horrified. Ashamed. Afraid. Luther’s hand catching her wrist, careless of the grind of the delicate bones there, to keep her from touching him again, asking her to drop it, telling her he was fine when everything about him said he wasn’t.
Four years later and nothing near to anything like fine.
Luther calling her first and foremost a week ago.
Uncomfortable, yet easier, in his own skin.
But there’s silence.
It’s not the same. It is.
The silence. What it means.
Her world might be ripped open, but no one she passes on the sidewalk, stands next to getting coffee, can tell, can see it, even pauses for longer than second in looking at her. The same would not be true of Luther; from the second he woke up. She hates herself. Every breath still feels an inch from proving she is still broken wide open, a shatter of shards forgotten how to pull together once again. But every single one she can’t forget. His admission. His regret. His face everytime. He called first. He called first. He called first.
He hasn’t called at all.
That she has to. Even if she doesn’t want to.
Allison finds a bench in a park that looks as run down as she feels. Sits drinking her coffee staring at the empty text box in her vision. Not the Network, itself. Not her communicator. Nothing open to the public. She doesn’t expect she's welcome. Wanted. She doesn’t even want to do it. Which doesn’t change she needs to. Needs it like breathing, too. Might be the only person who can. You’re the only person I can talk through things with, he said. How many times had she snapped at him? Things forgotten. Things unsaid. Things avoided. Things kept from her. How many things hadn’t she explained herself that he'd seen now?
She is a hypocrite at the highest level.
It doesn’t excuse her from this either.
With a breath in, Allison closes her eyes, even as the box stays in front of her vision all the same, against the back of her eyelids and the tracery of red-orange from the sunlight behind them, and sends the only question she can. Even if she knows the answer already. ]
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[ Luther picks through all of the possible responses, sifts through his words, erases them just as carefully. It had been a temporary reprieve, he knew that, some things were simply too good to be true, and he had to have known it would go away eventually — and yet. And yet he can't help that helpless sting of bitter disappointment and grief when, for the third time in his life, he wakes up transformed overnight. Back to rough and leathery skin with its pockmarked scars, the ones that did not come from battle; those oversize hands; that clumsiness. He's been trapped in his room all morning, called in sick and unable to even step out into the hallway. Can't face the strangers in his house, or on the street. Any of them. Even the Hargreeves.
He'd lied to her before. Claimed it was fine. But Allison can see right through it, and so: ]
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{ I never doubted it was there, just took a little time to find
[ It's been a long day, and an even longer night, and as much as Allison felt so exhausted in her bones she thought she'd be unconscious the moment her head touched the pillow, but she hadn't been. The tiny realization that had tucked itself inside her chest as she was leaving the hospital needled at her.
She was too tired to pick up her communicator, and she curls up even closer to her pillow, only having taken long enough to slide out of her heels really. Rubbing her cheek against the pillow even as she makes the choices and the letter light up behind her eyelids, and they are too small, eight letters only, and they will be as flat as ever. She can't flood them with the unfairly, and maybe even apologetic, possessive-relief that feels so suddenly revealed, but she can't, apparently, sleep without saying it either. ]
To: Luther Hargreeves (Private)
Thank you.
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Furrows his brow at the contextless message. Wonders what it's for. Reining everyone in at the hospital, maybe? ]
For what?
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text
[Surprise Luther. It's a social call, instead of a "hey we want to go explore space" or "hey there are things to fight" call. But Shaun has come to like Luther, so why not. It seems like a decent way to get to know the guy better.
Friendship, he's told, is magic.]
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The sheer concept of a dude's night out is... completely, and utterly, foreign to Luther. He's heard of them, of course, but. For other people. ]
There's nothing horrible currently battering down your front door or anything, is there?
[ yeah he STILL IS NOT QUITE COMPUTING JUST YET, SORRY SHAUN ]
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texts » 9/24
[There's a pause before his next text comes through. The irony of it, and how those words are usually used a thinly veiled lie, is that he actually means it.
He doesn't consider how that last word might come across as a surprise of a kind.]
Asking for a friend.
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[ He doesn't actually mean for that to come out quite as ribbing as it did, but whoops ]
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untraceable text
h-s•-n-i
o-n-’
t-o-t-s
t-s•-h
s•-s•-r-:-n-t•
d•-v-i-e-o-l
i-t-t-g-a
e-h-s•
text » 10/6
You get one of these?
[Diego isn't even sure this should be registering on their radar right now. They already have so much going on, they have Vanya to worry about, but there's a small part of him that almost wants to shift the focus, just for a little while. To have something to distract him.
But there's the question of whether that's even what he-- any of them-- need to be worried with at the moment, too. Which is why he went to Luther first.]
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[ He'd wanted to send a mass family text at first, but then paused. Backtracked and reconsidered. Vanya was in lockup, Allison watching over her. Klaus in the hospital, Ben watching over him. Which just left Diego: who was, besides, the only other family member Luther could see willing to sink their teeth into something like this. A distraction.
What he wouldn't give to have Number Five back, right about now— ]
I got the exact same one, and so did Allison. I'd think someone was pranking us after what happened, but-- looks like a lot of other imPorts have gotten them, too.
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text » 11/23
[This comes absolutely out of nowhere and apropos of nothing, at least as far as Luther is concerned. Diego has been having a conversation with another imPort who happens to be an empath. But running these sort of things by Number One is practically automatic reaction by now.]
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Uh. What?
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Jan 2nd evening
[He's clearly in his room, and clearly very, very drunk.]
Luther. Luther. Luuuuther. Pick up. [He smashes his face into a pillow, half off screen now, as he says louder] Pick up!
video
Ben. What the— Are you okay? What happened? Report.
[ Jumping into team leader mode, because the quickest thing to mind is dear god the world is ending again. ]
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text; 1/16 VITRIOL INCOMING
None of your fucking business.
Vanya's not doing well, but when she had enough of moping on her own, she reached out to Allison, hoping for an extra coffee-slash-alcohol date. She waited, figuring it might be a busy time for work. And she waited some more. And more. And when she texted again, she realized that Allison - like Derek, like so fucking many people now - was gone.
She got a drink on her own. She got a few drinks on her own, and when Chance had settled down to sleep on her bed, she got to thinking that there was probably someone she could blame for this.
Even if he was gone, too.]
hey
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here
whatever
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text;
The shield, did it work?
[ No hello, no preface, just the question. ]
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[ If this hadn't been text, there would've been a dangling question mark hanging onto that thanks. Does it still count? Did it actually happen? It's an odd spot to be in, and the Luther typing out the response to Knock Out already doesn't sound much like the decisive monster who worked for the government. ]
I feel like I should be re-introducing myself, but that feels weird and redundant too. Hey.
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Video |
...Luther I-
[He runs a hand over his hair.]
I'm still - adjusting to these memories but after all we've been through I - I need to check in. To tell you two I'm sorry.
[He wrings his hands. This is not, Jane. This is not people who he let odwn these are people who he's in the same boat with.]
Is there a way we could meet soon? Or anything I could do for you? I feel-
[pause]
Responsible.
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So Luther's clumsy hands and shoulders maybe aren't the most important thing right now. So he answers with video, and he looks a little haggard. Weary. ]
How can you be responsible when I was right there with you?
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memory video
[Suddenly, there's a flash of green light that rocks the ship. The light leaves traces in its wake, finding its way through new circuit patterns in Ashley and the man's skin and eyes and over the gynoid's body.
[With a shout from the man, the pilots attempt to wrestle the ship back under their control, but the ship crashes, sending Ashley falling to the floor.]
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The circuitry lighting up in Ashley's skin like Christmas lights, making her look like the Ashley that he knows.
Huh.
After it ends, he's not sure whether the more appropriate thing is to mention it, or pretend it never happened. If it was Luther's memories bleeding into her inbox, he'd have stubbornly ignored it, probably. But in the end, like touching a wall of wet paint, he finds that he has to say something and not just let it sit there withering: ]
Hell of a glitch at that expo, huh.
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Text, backdated to a couple days after CNC2020
How about you?
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Yeah. Kind of makes me wish we had some dogs, that sounds
[ therapeutic? ]
nice.
Things over here have been, uh, rough. Our whole family Ported out while we were gone.
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CW: Child abuse and murder, implied torture.
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video; memoryshare
I'm about to die...or maybe I should say I did die...[The African-American boy in a backwards baseball cap moans.]
[The largest of the four, a blond, speaks up.] That old bitch told told her men not to kill us there because it would stain the carpet... [He leans his head back a bit for an indignant shout.] Our lives are worth less than her carpet?
[White suit points out, reasonably-] So you wanted to die?
[There's one of them who still hasn't said anything - the teen with shaggy black hair and a brown vest over a black tank top. White suit has noticed.] Hey, Brandon... [No response. White suit finally opens his eyes, lifting his head up.] Brandon?
[Brandon lies still. The other three get up to their hands and knees to crowd around him.] Hey, Brandon!
[Suddenly, Brandon sits straight up. Holding up a hand, he gives the other three a thumbs up. They stare, smile, and all four break into laughter.
After a few moments, white suit carefully stands up.] Let's get out of here.
[The four help each other up, and throw their arms around each others shoulders to support each other as they start to walk away.
(It's the last time they'll be able to laugh at things like this, all together.)]
text
Uh. Hey. Can you see anything in your outbox?
[ He's been wondering that, too. If these things leave traces behind, if there's any way to tell what's gone out into the void. ]
text
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text; apr 11
But, consciously, he recognizes what he feels now. So used to be surrounded by a crew - a motley bunch, in some ways - all fighting for the best outcome they can cling on to.
He feels... lonely.
He and Ashley have made some headway with talking through their pasts, the singular point in time where their histories diverged. But it's not Ashley he drafts up a message to, sending it before he changes his mind. ]
Luther, it's Shepard. There's a meteor shower over Nonah later tonight. Thought you might be interested?
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And a meteor shower is quite literally one of the fastest ways to his heart. At first he's squinting at his communicator and the unfamiliar ID, but then his expression clears and he straightens in his seat. ]
Handy, since I live in Nonah too. I'd love to. You got a vantage point in mind?
If not, we've uh... got a pretty big backyard.
[ That's putting it mildly. ]
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throughout the month of april. narrative.
Luther drags his heels each day, not looking forward to the task of packing away their missing siblings' belongings, so the whole process is painfully slow-going: methodically going through each room and disassembling the personal effects, neatly packing away everything that gave the rooms character and flavour, Luther labelling each cardboard box with a number. (And then Allison comes through afterwards, her tidy handwriting tacking on a name to each one.)
It's an exorcism, of sorts. Packing up the rooms and renting a new house means finally admitting that they're really gone. And going through the process of scrutinising all their belongings means feeling closer to them, in a way: puzzling over Klaus' eclectic aesthetic, sorting through Ben's dark and moody room, self-aware of invading their family's privacy even as they have to do it.
He can't decide if Diego would hate having Luther or Allison go through his room more. In the end, he lets Allison handle it; Number One pawing through and judging all of Number Two's things seems like it would drive the other man up the wall if he ever knew about it.
Even Five's empty room has a few items in it that need to be cleared out, labelled, set aside for the eventuality of someone else taking up residence here. For someone else to come and sublet this massive house. To live in the ruins of the Hargreeves' life.
(You can barely see the mismatched spot in the living room, where Vanya threw Klaus right through the wall, and where Luther arranged to have it repaired afterwards. It's like it never happened.
The dead patch in the yard where the kryptonite fell, though, that's a lost cause.)
The only empty bedroom is Vanya's — and he wonders, distantly, how much of that is his fault.
Once the entirety of the house is shrunk down to just the two of them, Luther and Allison, there's so little left. He looks down into the boxes that are his, and which are going to be carted over to the new, smaller Nonah house. They're mostly full of vinyl records. Books upon books upon books. Baggy oversized clothes. A few plants. It's not very much. For the measure of an entire life here in Nonah, it's not much.
They spend the whole month packing things up and putting things away, and when the day comes that they have to move, they manage it on their own, stubbornly, with Luther hefting all of the furniture they're taking with them. The boxes. Bundling them into a moving van he borrowed from work. They drive over in a silence that's somewhere partway between uncomfortable and companionable.
His second move in this universe.
Onto something new, then.
Log; about a week after the wild magic event
(Those insane fans do track everything. Just one of the ways Bwitter is quite useful.)
"Ah, Luther!" Askeladd's tone and expression are all pleasant surprise.
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"Oh, hey," he says, eyebrow arching in his own surprise. Fancy running into Askeladd here.
"Looks like you're back to normal, huh?"
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August 14th { come wrestle me free, clean from the war
After that, it's just them. In a way, it hadn't been even in those two short times they'd been together in the last week. No overwhelming shock and small talk. No world was threatening to explode all over again. Allison can't fade out the hyperawareness of Luther at her side. The sound of the friction where his clothes rub, and the gravel under his heavy steps. The sound of him breathing.
"Home sweet home," Allison says, a complexly layered and almost noncommittal tone.
An announcement put into the air, when they turn down the last street and can see the small house in the not far distance from them finally. Not that she's much ever thought of it as home, or called it that often. Not that it looks anything like the place that still feels like home, but isn't anymore, too. And yet. She can remember going to sleep in that bed what feels like yesterday, too.
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(After thinking she was dead. For over a year. A year and change. Thinking they were all dead.)
Still, after the long, long day they've had (a long week, a long year, a long goddamned life), there is something inutterably reassuring in fishing around in his pocket, finding a key that still works, and fitting it into the front door. The door of the craftsman swings open under Luther's fingers, revealing their cozy home— exactly as it was, untouched, still theirs.
"Huh," he says, surprised. It's like no time has passed, and yet forever has passed. It feels like the whole place should be half-abandoned and covered with a light layer of dust, but it isn't; there's a mug on the kitchen table still ringed with coffee he just finished a day ago.
"Guess I'm glad it hasn't been that long back here. Dunno what I'd do if I had to room with complete strangers again."
(Not exactly correct. Luther has a good idea what he'd do: probably sleep on the floor of her bedroom if she'd let him, and immediately file for a government move once more. Reluctant and unable to let go, now that she was back. Alive again.)
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Aug. 14th, late { you would still miss me in your bones
She doesn't need to do that, but it keeps catching. Sharp, insistent, impatient, in her bones, like her skin is too tight. Like if she closes her eyes for too long, this won't be real. Not their family finding each other, and not stopping the end of the world, and not ... everything. Like she'll open her eyes, and she'll be somewhere else. Somewhere that she can't sleep without doing it.
Like opening her eyes doesn't just remind her of the bitter biting reverse, too. Of the sheer emptiness of the big bed she's in, that's missing Ray's body, warm and close, comfortingly solid. Of the blistering, empty silence that isn't being playfully, affectionately, goaded into calming down, going to sleep. Being told she's beautiful. Loved. The luckiest, best part of someone's life
She doesn't want to close her eyes.
She doesn't want to open them.
She so tired, but
that itch just digs,
regardless of reality.
Of all the laughter, and fielding Klaus and Diego, and dinner and talking through light game plans for the coming week. Of eating more familiar, modern food than she needed to and wanting to curl around the middle of herself like a snake and gestate on it forever. After these last six days, and appearing here instead of home, they deserve it.
But she can't. The silence needles at her. The silence that could make the world outside this room, this bed, anything. Like a child dreaming up nightmares in the dark, while refusing to move at all and ruffle the curtains for the world's universal night light. Because even that would be too real, would make it all feel like it isn't real, too. It's too quiet. Just. Too. Quiet. So quiet, it could just be her. Still, and alone, in the darkness, again. With only herself. Her real self. Deep in her bones. Like always.
It's the first time she reaches for it, without cringing. Maybe because she doesn't want to turn over and reach for the communicator charging on her bedtable. Like that would be giving in. Like somehow this isn't. It's not entirely surrendering. It's just ... cheating, a little, when the Mental Network box blinks to life against her vision even in the dark she's still staring into with half-lidded eyes, and she types only three letters. ]
hey
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And now here it is again, lighting up the corner of his vision with the mental network, and even that feels familiar, too.
He's awake. Of course Luther's awake. He's not sure if he'll ever be able to fall asleep tonight, with those extra months and months suddenly kicking around in his memory, stirred up like debris in the water and needing time for all the disparate pieces to settle again, to fall back into place. He keeps compulsively checking his communicator, too, rolling over to refresh the network and the directory, searching in vain for Five. Ben. Vanya. Just running through the list over and over again. Five, six, seven. It feels like some kind of cosmic joke that they've been split in half like this, like a wedge has been driven between the two halves of the Academy. The undeliverable notifications are going to drive him absolutely insane; he deletes them faster and faster each time, with an increasingly frustrated slam of the button.
She catches him during a quiet moment, though, when he's lying there motionless. ]
Hey.
[ The mental network. Familiar-unfamiliar. That strange doubling effect; he closes his eyes against it, tries to reorient himself. The ceiling of his bedroom is the ceiling in Nonah, is the barebones ceiling in the Plano Street Rooming House for Solitary Men, is his ancient childhood bedroom with its dangling airplane models, is the smooth panels of the moon base. Sometimes he forgets where he is. ]
Trouble sleeping too?
[ Duh, it's stating the obvious as he always does, and yet... there's that one word. Too. An automatic note of solidarity; understanding. ]
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Aug 17th
Not in a bad way, so much as in that everything, as expected, upended itself on a beach in Heropa the moment she walked on the shooting set, looked up from her coffee, and said, 'Morning,' for the first time ever to the crew. It was always going to. It was why she took the last two days off, after all. Before the inevitable. Before the storm of another Day One. Before she never had a single break because everyone had to talk to her suddenly.
Also, to settle into this being a thing again.
This world. This life. That still wasn't the real world, or the life she was supposed to be in when she opened her eyes from being in a circle with her siblings, again, but wasn't (and it wasn't the life she'd had the last two and a half years only four days ago). It's a strange, grey, vertigo, in between other real/not-real lives, but at least most of the day had been spent too busy to think about any of it.
Still, she was relieved to put it down. For the few hours she took after shoots for today stopped, even with that weird run-in. To hit the porter, and grab the mail on the way up, and let herself in this old-but-new-again door, calling out, only, "I'm home."
(Just don't think about the last time she heard those words,
or the fact this place had never exactly been one of those on its own.)
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It doesn't feel as familiar as it once did. This, either. Having Allison around has become a rare precious thing again, something not to take for granted anymore (as if he ever did); now, when that aching grieving loss of her feels more immediate and close-to-hand than a year-plus living together. It's taking some time to reconcile those two sets of memories, lining them up next to each other and trying to figure out where the pieces align, because they don't.
And he's settling into it. Calling up Joe again (or Jack?), getting back onto the shift rotation. Showing up at work. Running into Brandon there, unexpectedly. Checking his messages and seeing the ones he'd missed and which have piled up for him: a coffee invitation from Kaneki, he'll arrange that later.
Luther's sitting in the living room still checking the communicator when he hears the front door, his head turning, practically like a dog's ears pricking up at the sound of its owner returning. "Welcome back," he calls out. He can't even pretend to busy himself with the communicator or be distracted from her; he looks up instead, watches Allison bustle in with a handful of mail, slipping out of her high heels.
"How was the first day back at work?"
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text » backdated 10/14 @ 6:37am
You’re never gonna believe the shit that happened on my run this morning.
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[ Of course Luther's mind goes to worst case scenarios first: monsters, robots, werewolves. 'The shit that happened' is, well, a pretty broad umbrella. ]
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Late Nov { Mental Network
Do you think it’s stupid of people to choose to fall in love here?
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Literally, physically jerks in surprise in his armchair like he's been slapped in the face. They've fallen out of the habit of the mental network, so he's not accustomed to seeing it quite as often anymore; and the message itself, once he sees it, makes his heartbeat suddenly ratchet and catch in his throat and he stares at the words until it feels like they're going to burn themselves into his eyelids. He has no idea where this is coming from, and so for a moment, there's a sickening, nauseating irrational panic. Has she been falling for someone here? Who would even? Who is there even?
(
Whoever she ran off to St. Martins with?) ]What? Why?
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Gift