That quick whiplash of her answer catches him off-guard in how immediately it comes: a bee-sting, a flash of humour, a gouge of truth. Part of him is still always half-waiting for that message to pop up in the corner of his vision, wired to expect the ping of the mental network, waiting for the little pause of her having to compose her thoughts in silence, then her having to wait while he reads the message in silence, before he can actually answer. Always adding these pauses and stops-and-starts, an inevitable and frustrating time-lag. Like the delays when he'd lived on the moon base, radio transmissions coming in with just that slight disjoint.
But this time, it's immediate and all Luther can do is stand there, motionless in the center of the room, watching her and hearing-feeling the words washing over him like a wave. He can't stop smiling. Just at the sound of Allison's words again, so familiar and hummingbird-quick.
"It's really fucking weird for me," he says, that one stab of profanity underscoring the weight of it even as he's smiling, "but probably not as weird as it is for you."
The other-him hadn't even gotten used to Allison mute. But to him, now, it's still so new: her words tripping effusively over themselves, like a dam bursting and she's overwhelmed, her hands gesturing wildly, unable to pin them down in the right order now that she actually has the freedom to do so.
So after just a pause, Luther moves a little closer (and that's the habit of a year-and-change in Nonah), reaches out and catches her gesturing hand in one of his larger, gloved ones.
"Do a monologue," he says. Because he doesn't know an actor's life, necessarily, but he does know memorisation exercises and how they burrow into your skull, more by instinct than memory, automatic — they'd all done them, had all assiduously committed Reginald's favourite passages to memory, and Luther had kept going with his poetry afterwards. They could all do it. Recite on command like well-trained dogs.
Just a few days ago, Five had reminded him of this one. And so he kicks her off, starting in the original ancient Greek: "ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσε."
Luther stands there, staring at her, the frisson of Luther's personal brand of frozen she knows too well, and alarm stabs her chest, and she gets halfway through oh god, it was too much, if was too much for even Luth--, before he's suddenly crossing the room to her. Catching her hand, sending her heart off the step it was on, in a completely different, and also alarming fashion.
It's familiar. It's not. It's like the table at the BBQ joint, but it's not because his face has gone splitting in that bright grin.
Her heartbeat is in her teeth, as he's already giving her an order. All serious direction and that current of commanding steel her bones have known longer than even her name. And it's a little insane, tugging her mouth crooked. One of her rarest smiles, a little awkward, surprised, ruefully fond, unexpectedly seen.
Something no one has asked of her, known what meant to her, how much it was part of her, in years. That smile slips away just as quickly as it came. A blink and there's a wild, fast mad glint dashing across her dark eyes, from the girl who lived for a challenge, lived to prove she was never not ready, for anything, everything. Nothing could keep her down, trip her up, catch her unprepared, throw her out of the running.
Attention turning inward, mouth pressing a line, and they crowd her mind from years, a million speeches, a million lines, dozens and dozens of roles, years of options flooding her as if they'd only been waiting for her to turn toward them to see they'd always been right there waiting for her to come back to them.
But then Luther starts, and her smile cracks through at the prompt, her voice winding into his, the Greek as fluid and fluent on her tongue as it ever was:
Eyes brightening, widening, shoulders rising only with the next silent breath in her nose, as her mouth doesn't stop and something comes together finally, something so true, that it's true in both of those places in her head, knitting together so perfectly Allison doesn't even stop the impulse that has her shifting her hand, has her weaving her fingers into his without even stopping to think, grip tightening, as soon as her fingers slide into his like somehow she can pass that message even without missing a beat in the words, transfer it straight between their palms, tugging him even closer to her. Elation, and desperate relief, and gratitude so stark it's never not love.
This person she missed being in both lives.
The one she fought so hard to become, and carried silently in both places.
There's only him, and only it. His blue eyes, the brightest beacon, always seeing so much deeper into her than she ever could.
With those words flourishing, unfurling like a joyous wind filling a ship's sails, the lines of verse coming faster and faster, each enunciation sharp and crisp and perfect— it's like watching Allison come to life right under his hands all over again. Just like when he breathed panicked life into her, his fists about to slam into her body and break ribs if he had to, if that was what it took to crack her open and remind her how to breathe.
And this, these words coming back to life, it's almost as crucial. As fundamental.
For they were ruined by their respective recklessness. Even in ancient Greek, that one word sends a memory rippling through his mind, a remembrance, an inadvertent little echo. ("I mean, that's our best trait as a family, right?" "What, recklessness?" "Hope.")
And Allison's hand is entwining with his, which makes Luther's heart skip a stupid beat like it always does, like now it's his turn to flat-out forget how to breathe when she's looking at him like that, and she's also looking so incorrigibly pleased and proud of herself that he can't help but feel that warmth of pride bubbling up inside him. Filling his chest from the inside out, like a blazing furnace.
"Top marks, Number Three," Luther murmurs. Half-joking, except not. There's that answering smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
She breaks off for the quiet rumble of his voice, but her mouth can't contain itself. The edges stretching into her cheeks even when the center of her lips press flat, held the briefest beat between her teeth inside them pressing into each other, before she's shaking her head. Looking down, her other hand coming up to her face, as she mutters nothing like under her breath, "Shut up."
Except none of it sticks. The sound of those two words inflated light. Like her smile. Like the sudden warmth in her cheeks. In her veins. None of it stays. The electric unexpected release of trembling in her bones still. Bubbling on the unexpected high. Like she sprinted a marathon from not being able to walk. Like the tumbling relief after sex, or that sudden, burning, blistering clarity of life in every cell when she could finally breathe again.
And she can feel her voice for the first time, in a different way. Not that steady slow build of a barely-there whisper gaining traction day-by-day, but now, here, from sheer silent stillness to the starkly identifiable vibration that each word was, right that second, causing in her chest, in her throat, down her bones.
She can't stop it, on the heels of those two words. Allison laughs, a little helplessly, almost so simple it feels childlike in the middle of a two different, suddenly transparent, wisps of war zones not gone, and she was rubbing her eyes, as she looks back at Luther only the second later. "I needed that."
Her head shook as she looked up above him even. Because those words aren't even clear enough. "God. I've missed that. So much."
This. That. Him. Being seen. But, also. This, also. This, with him here, everything splitting apart in the right way on being able to speak, on one second something getting to be good, before it will go back to being various shade of grey and hell. She hadn't had anyone to share it with, then, when it happened in Dallas. They were glad for her, but it wasn't like this. Luther's solemn joy, Luther's full awareness of everything that having her voice taken from her, had indeed taken from her.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
no subject
But this time, it's immediate and all Luther can do is stand there, motionless in the center of the room, watching her and hearing-feeling the words washing over him like a wave. He can't stop smiling. Just at the sound of Allison's words again, so familiar and hummingbird-quick.
"It's really fucking weird for me," he says, that one stab of profanity underscoring the weight of it even as he's smiling, "but probably not as weird as it is for you."
The other-him hadn't even gotten used to Allison mute. But to him, now, it's still so new: her words tripping effusively over themselves, like a dam bursting and she's overwhelmed, her hands gesturing wildly, unable to pin them down in the right order now that she actually has the freedom to do so.
So after just a pause, Luther moves a little closer (and that's the habit of a year-and-change in Nonah), reaches out and catches her gesturing hand in one of his larger, gloved ones.
"Do a monologue," he says. Because he doesn't know an actor's life, necessarily, but he does know memorisation exercises and how they burrow into your skull, more by instinct than memory, automatic — they'd all done them, had all assiduously committed Reginald's favourite passages to memory, and Luther had kept going with his poetry afterwards. They could all do it. Recite on command like well-trained dogs.
Just a few days ago, Five had reminded him of this one. And so he kicks her off, starting in the original ancient Greek: "ἄνδρα μοι ἔννεπε, μοῦσα, πολύτροπον, ὃς μάλα πολλὰ πλάγχθη, ἐπεὶ Τροίης ἱερὸν πτολίεθρον ἔπερσε."
no subject
It's familiar. It's not. It's like the table at the BBQ joint,
but it's not because his face has gone splitting in that bright grin.
Her heartbeat is in her teeth, as he's already giving her an order. All serious direction and that current of commanding steel her bones have known longer than even her name. And it's a little insane, tugging her mouth crooked. One of her rarest smiles, a little awkward, surprised, ruefully fond, unexpectedly seen.
Something no one has asked of her, known what meant to her, how much it was part of her, in years. That smile slips away just as quickly as it came. A blink and there's a wild, fast mad glint dashing across her dark eyes, from the girl who lived for a challenge, lived to prove she was never not ready, for anything, everything. Nothing could keep her down, trip her up, catch her unprepared, throw her out of the running.
Attention turning inward, mouth pressing a line, and they crowd her mind from years, a million speeches, a million lines, dozens and dozens of roles, years of options flooding her as if they'd only been waiting for her to turn toward them to see they'd always been right there waiting for her to come back to them.
But then Luther starts, and her smile cracks through at the prompt, her voice winding into his,
the Greek as fluid and fluent on her tongue as it ever was:
"πολλῶν δ ̓ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω,
πολλὰ δ ̓ ὅ γ ̓ ἐν πόντῳ πάθεν ἄλγεα ὃν κατὰ θυμόν,
ἀρνύμενος ἥν τε ψυχὴν καὶ νόστον ἑταίρων."
And god. God. She can't stop.
Eyes brightening, widening, shoulders rising only with the next silent breath in her nose, as her mouth doesn't stop and something comes together finally, something so true, that it's true in both of those places in her head, knitting together so perfectly Allison doesn't even stop the impulse that has her shifting her hand, has her weaving her fingers into his without even stopping to think, grip tightening, as soon as her fingers slide into his like somehow she can pass that message even without missing a beat in the words, transfer it straight between their palms, tugging him even closer to her. Elation, and desperate relief, and gratitude so stark it's never not love.
This person she missed being in both lives.
The one she fought so hard to become,
and carried silently in both places.
There's only him, and only it. His blue eyes, the brightest beacon,
always seeing so much deeper into her than she ever could.
"ἀλλ ̓ οὐδ ̓ ὣς ἑτάρους ἐρρύσατο, ἱέμενός περ•
αὐτῶν γὰρ σφετέρῃσιν ἀτασθαλίῃσιν ὄλοντο,
νήπιοι, οἳ κατὰ βοῦς Ὑπερίονος Ἠελίοιο
ἤσθιον• αὐτὰρ ὁ τοῖσιν ἀφείλετο νόστιμον ἦμαρ"
no subject
And this, these words coming back to life, it's almost as crucial. As fundamental.
For they were ruined by their respective recklessness. Even in ancient Greek, that one word sends a memory rippling through his mind, a remembrance, an inadvertent little echo. ("I mean, that's our best trait as a family, right?" "What, recklessness?" "Hope.")
And Allison's hand is entwining with his, which makes Luther's heart skip a stupid beat like it always does, like now it's his turn to flat-out forget how to breathe when she's looking at him like that, and she's also looking so incorrigibly pleased and proud of herself that he can't help but feel that warmth of pride bubbling up inside him. Filling his chest from the inside out, like a blazing furnace.
"Top marks, Number Three," Luther murmurs. Half-joking, except not. There's that answering smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
A hesitation, then—
"I missed your voice."
no subject
Except none of it sticks. The sound of those two words inflated light. Like her smile. Like the sudden warmth in her cheeks. In her veins. None of it stays. The electric unexpected release of trembling in her bones still. Bubbling on the unexpected high. Like she sprinted a marathon from not being able to walk. Like the tumbling relief after sex, or that sudden, burning, blistering clarity of life in every cell when she could finally breathe again.
And she can feel her voice for the first time, in a different way. Not that steady slow build of a barely-there whisper gaining traction day-by-day, but now, here, from sheer silent stillness to the starkly identifiable vibration that each word was, right that second, causing in her chest, in her throat, down her bones.
She can't stop it, on the heels of those two words. Allison laughs, a little helplessly, almost so simple it feels childlike in the middle of a two different, suddenly transparent, wisps of war zones not gone, and she was rubbing her eyes, as she looks back at Luther only the second later. "I needed that."
Her head shook as she looked up above him even.
Because those words aren't even clear enough.
"God. I've missed that. So much."
This. That. Him. Being seen. But, also. This, also. This, with him here, everything splitting apart in the right way on being able to speak, on one second something getting to be good, before it will go back to being various shade of grey and hell. She hadn't had anyone to share it with, then, when it happened in Dallas. They were glad for her, but it wasn't like this. Luther's solemn joy, Luther's full awareness of everything that having her voice taken from her, had indeed taken from her.
no subject