[ It's strange, to be able to suddenly see and feel the ripping, suffocating dichotomy at her fingertips now. Because if he was somewhere in this room, or she was somewhere he could hear her, she knows her first words right back would have been, I hate it, all impulse-annoyance-agreement. But it's pointless to write. Would look like overblown exaggeration, right?
She has some sympathy for the her before this week.
She can see, feel, just how much it sheers her away to write instead: ]
I don't like it either.
It's not even just us. Well, I guess Diego & Vanya are still close to where they should be. But then there's you, with your extra year and change. Me, with mine. Klaus's other year before me. And those months in Vietnam. Five's forever in the future.
[ It was like, even as they came together finally, they were all being pulled further apart. ]
[ He's just sprawled in bed staring up at the ceiling, his gaze faraway as it settles on those intangible words instead, but Luther still crinkles his brow into a frown like he's seen something distasteful in front of him. Thinking the exact same thing: they're all diverging further and further from each other, even Diego and Vanya divided by a couple months. None of them are the exact same age anymore. ]
I have no idea how we're going to measure ages a month and a half from now.
[ He doesn't name the date, but it's clear: come their next combined birthday. ]
[ Count the years. Or consider the the whole party idea. ]
Maybe we just eat some cake and stay grateful we all happen to be together at all.
[ It feels stripped away and stripped down, but they wouldn't have had a party this fall anyway. The way the holidays had been small, barely-there affairs, after the party. The way there hadn't been anything in the way of holidays to mess with yet, to think about it, after everyone vanished. ]
Five's account is still deactivated. I keep checking.
[ It goes without saying; of course it's still deactivated if she hasn't heard otherwise, of course she'd know the moment their brother reappeared, since Luther would probably holler from the other room. But. He finds himself typing it anyway, needing to say it, needing to set his fears down in front of her. ]
[ It worries her. Nags at her. Is he gone for good. Is he gone, but coming back. If he does, will it be like Vanya and Klaus, or will he remember. Will he forget entirely what he so casually asked of her, even though there was no casualness really to be found within what it meant, might mean, either.
How was it they planned for time, only for her to vanish, and then him. ]
[ Now it's Luther's turn to be a broken record, just echoing the same helpless word over and over. And then, simply and without adornment: ]
I'm glad you're here.
[ Part of him is still bruised and stinging from that empty, lonely year-plus. Dallas had been bustling and full of people to talk to and befriend, landlords and employers and colleagues and local kids in the neighbourhood. It hadn't been as desolate as half-a-decade spent in a barren wasteland.
But it was a world where the rest of his family had died, and so it had been just as desolate. Just in a different way. ]
[ God. How he even manages to make that seem easy. Just four words. She lets it hover above her vision. Like it could sink into her. It shouldn't be as important as it is. It always is.]
Don't vanish on me, again, before morning, and we'll call it even.
[ As though they aren't all aware, none of them chose what had happened to them. He didn't leave her by choice. (But he had said, implied, that he thought she was gone.) ]
[ They had become so co-dependent after February: suddenly slamming back into this universe with ten years' of inextricable companionship in the City (even blurry as it is), combined with everyone else vanishing on them. Abruptly. Overnight.
And now it is, if possible, even worse. That loss felt even more sharply and keenly, like a splinter under his nail, the assumption that everyone was dead. He feels a vague discontented guilt over it, now knowing: she'd never given up hope, but he had. ]
[ Responses flip through her mind -- 'Do better,' followed by the echo of that absolutely unwavering demand of 'promise me,' so recently, ruthlessly commanded, here, not so long ago (and is that still a thing, now that they are back? After all that time? After mobsters, and underground fights, and that ludicrious name? How does she even ask about that? When?) -- but it's the not long ago that trips them up, light or heavy.
The grey space where the path doesn't seem level until each step is tested suddenly again. Where it feels like she hasn't earned all the things she had only days ago.
Or worse, that she betrayed them by an unknowing measure. One by forgetting; two by knowingly, complacently settling. ]
[ Bemused. It's obviously such a joke, this sheer impossibility of it, the childish wishful thinking of it, but there's still the smallest, faintest smile starting to curl at the edge of Luther's mouth as he reads her message. Starts to engage in the conceit: ]
How? You gonna grab Five, make him jump through a dozen different universes until you find wherever I wound up, and so both of you can strangle me yourself?
I'd have to watch my back. He's pretty good at hunting people down across time and space.
[ It's stupid and silly, but it makes it easier to breathe. Twisting it sideways. Like that first day in the office, and their checklist through all of their siblings catching up. Sometimes it is, just easier, to tilt it on an edge and touch the things that matter in no way but lightly. ]
Don't put it past us.
We never did get to see how reality manipulation affects time-travel after Five vanished. Plus, we didn't even know there were reachable alternate universes at that point. You can either be the first test case of all three at once, or you can be a good boy and just stay right where you are and not cause us any more undue stress.
[ And Luther is, at heart, so obedient and patient. Tell him to stay put, and he'll wait. Years if need be. But there's no bitterness in it for once, no reminders of something awful when he just glosses right past that connotation, and onto more teasing: ]
You say that as if I'm the problem child in this crew. At least I didn't start a cult.
[ Allison rolls her eyes, but there's the chance a laugh is trying to escape the tightening press of her lips. Anything like regret or second thoughts about forcing herself instead of doing this long since chased off. ]
I don't know if that makes it better or worse, Luther.
[ She'd sent, before a stray thought bashed from the side. ]
Right. Also. Who exactly picked out that name? [ Welcome to midnight questions she didn't ask in front of everyone. ]
[ Uggghhhhh he'd almost half-hoped this wouldn't come up again. He hadn't missed the startled questioning look that had crossed Allison's face at the television announcement, or the infinitesimal embarrassed wince that had flickered over his own. ]
[ Somehow, those don't surprise her. It doesn't engender any fondness for the man Luther decided to attach himself to. But he's not wrong, either. About not killing people or starting cults. To which can be added he didn't blow up a federal building, or end up in crazy house.
If anything, somehow, even in the pocket of a mobster, Luther had honestly managed the quietest number of days of all of them really. Still. As he never showed up or seemed to have touched any of that last week of theirs. And if that wasn't a skill. ]
Mmmhhhmm.
You just tell us if you're going to keep the change here, too.
[ For such a large man, and once the poster-child and overbearing leader of the entire Academy, he really is good at fading into the background. The world's biggest wallflower. Allison's next suggestion, though, practically makes him splutter. Even in this realm where none of this is in serious or earnest, his kneejerk reaction is complete aversion: ]
What, like a codename change???
Dear god. No. I'm still listed as 'Space' in the registration documents here, and I'm sticking to it.
Jesus. No.
[ He could suck it up and deal with the name King Kong printed on the flyers, like The Kraken blazoned across Diego's boxing posters — in part because none of the audience seemed to mind, they'd all seemed to celebrate his body, somehow, and its brutish capabilities — but the idea of hanging onto the name now, after they're all back, like a vestigial limb after it's served its purpose... No. ]
[ Every time. Every goddamn time, that sound is going to throw him for a loop and make his heart do idiot somersaults in his chest; he hears it next door like he'd once heard the murmur of her voice through the window or she'd heard the bass of his music through the walls back home, and Luther can feel something inside his ribcage grow three sizes. He's grinning like an idiot in the darkness of his room. Just at having done that, drawn out that laugh again, and made that happen. ]
I think I'm being bullied. Really unfair, for the record.
[ Even after everything, after this past week, there is something so inexpressibly easy about falling into this with her. The comfortable (and comforting) back-and-forth as if it never ended. ]
[ Had she tried to keep that quiet at first? It was hard to tell, especially as the letters sprang up into, pointing out that, whether she had or not, he absolutely could hear her. (And wasn't that novel.) all of which just caused her to snort as she easily flipped back with a few seconds of work. ]
That *is* a shame.
Then, you're really going to hate being reminded, mathematically, I can't ever be the bigger person in this equation.
[ Physically, at least, that has never been possibility in her entire life. ]
[ The familiar banter, the teasing, miraculously managing to pick up their moods out of the dust and out from the morose insomnia they'd both been languishing in at the start. Just Allison's mere presence, like this, already makes it better.
It makes him want to slide out of bed already, pad over to the bathroom in bare feet, move through it and tentatively knock at her door. Why keep using the mental network when they don't have to anymore? When he could actually be hearing her voice again, the quickfire volley of her words out loud?
But old habits die hard; those doors were always unbroachable, for so many years; so he keeps typing. ]
How's the view up there from the high road, miss 'never became a bare-knuckle boxer'? (Even Diego did it.)
Would you like me to come over there and try it now? Was killing one assassin by myself not enough for this week?
[ Plus, potentially maiming that other guy, but she wasn't going there. She wasn't perturbed by the existence or memory of either at the moment. It was just another in a very long line of things she hadn't been able to joke about. In a year. In nearly three. In four combine.
There's something heady as hell to just being able to do it. Say it. Own it. Not feel ashamed of those same things she had.]
Nope. Poker rules. Need two-of-a-kind or even better.
[ They can joke about murder like this, can joke about multiple killings because, well. That's who they are. That's the kind of people they are, who bear it unflinching, who don't shy away from the ugly or bloody. We're different than everyone else. We're special. And good or bad, that means we don't get to live normal lives. Here or anywhere. ]
And I'd like to see you try, Rumor.
[ She's thrown an unexpected gauntlet down between them, and for whatever unanticipated unexpected reason, he can't resist picking it up. Calling her out. It's not like she's actually going to come and box him — if ever there were pairs who would literally wrestle each other in squabbling competitive pique, it was always Klaus and Ben, or Luther and Diego rough-housing — and he's still not quite sure what he expects her to do with that impossible dare, but— ]
Allison's eyebrows pushed up, only a second before she's pushing the rest of her self up. Silent feet on the carpet, communicator left behind without a glance, and pushing straight through her own door, the scant handful of steps to his, and pushing straight through that one, too, fingers not even lingering on the doorknob as she invades the dark of his bedroom in just as easy, even strides.
"This is pretty pathetic if this is what I'm supposed to be afraid of facing." It's all sass, but there's no waver to the arrogance, disdain, and the current of almost laughter right under both of those. Considering him, still in a blanketed mound in the dark, on his bed. Even if he could, she has no real doubt of him. That he could. If he needed to. If someone came in guns, or fists, blazing.
But they won't. It's the middle of the night. In the middle of Nonah. And he's not going to punch her in the dark. (At least she's about 98% sure.)
Sure enough that all she does is pad toward his bed, stopping about a foot away from it, and without waiting, give a wave her hands for him to move further back, with all the serious imperiousness of someone who has a right to their directives being unquestioned. "Scoot already."
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
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She has some sympathy for the her before this week.
She can see, feel, just how much it sheers her away to write instead: ]
I don't like it either.
It's not even just us. Well, I guess Diego & Vanya are still close to where they should be. But then there's you, with your extra year and change. Me, with mine. Klaus's other year before me. And those months in Vietnam. Five's forever in the future.
[ It was like, even as they came together finally,
they were all being pulled further apart. ]
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I have no idea how we're going to measure ages a month and a half from now.
[ He doesn't name the date, but it's clear: come their next combined birthday. ]
... Probably no party this year, though.
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[ Count the years. Or consider the the whole party idea. ]
Maybe we just eat some cake and stay grateful we all happen to be together at all.
[ It feels stripped away and stripped down, but they wouldn't have had a party this fall anyway. The way the holidays had been small, barely-there affairs, after the party. The way there hadn't been anything in the way of holidays to mess with yet, to think about it, after everyone vanished. ]
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[ ... ]
Five's account is still deactivated. I keep checking.
[ It goes without saying; of course it's still deactivated if she hasn't heard otherwise, of course she'd know the moment their brother reappeared, since Luther would probably holler from the other room. But. He finds himself typing it anyway, needing to say it, needing to set his fears down in front of her. ]
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How was it they planned for time,
only for her to vanish, and then him. ]
Maybe tomorrow.
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[ Now it's Luther's turn to be a broken record, just echoing the same helpless word over and over. And then, simply and without adornment: ]
I'm glad you're here.
[ Part of him is still bruised and stinging from that empty, lonely year-plus. Dallas had been bustling and full of people to talk to and befriend, landlords and employers and colleagues and local kids in the neighbourhood. It hadn't been as desolate as half-a-decade spent in a barren wasteland.
But it was a world where the rest of his family had died, and so it had been just as desolate. Just in a different way. ]
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She lets it hover above her vision. Like it could sink into her.
It shouldn't be as important as it is. It always is.]
Don't vanish on me, again, before morning, and we'll call it even.
[ As though they aren't all aware, none of them chose what had happened to them.
He didn't leave her by choice. (But he had said, implied, that he thought she was gone.) ]
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And now it is, if possible, even worse. That loss felt even more sharply and keenly, like a splinter under his nail, the assumption that everyone was dead. He feels a vague discontented guilt over it, now knowing: she'd never given up hope, but he had. ]
I'll do my best.
[ Dry and understated humour, as ever. ]
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The grey space where the path doesn't seem level until each step is tested suddenly again.
Where it feels like she hasn't earned all the things she had only days ago.
Or worse, that she betrayed them by an unknowing measure.
One by forgetting; two by knowingly, complacently settling. ]
I'm going to hold you to that.
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How? You gonna grab Five, make him jump through a dozen different universes until you find wherever I wound up, and so both of you can strangle me yourself?
I'd have to watch my back. He's pretty good at hunting people down across time and space.
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Don't put it past us.
We never did get to see how reality manipulation affects time-travel after Five vanished. Plus, we didn't even know there were reachable alternate universes at that point. You can either be the first test case of all three at once, or you can be a good boy and just stay right where you are and not cause us any more undue stress.
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You say that as if I'm the problem child in this crew.
At least I didn't start a cult.
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She says it like there's a reason you're singled out.
That you're a problem, in spite of not being a problem child. ]
No, you got into illegal underground fight rings.
That does not leave you at the bottom of the pile anymore.
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It's not like I killed anyone. We've been fighting people since we were kids; I don't see the problem(?)
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Anything like regret or second thoughts about forcing herself instead of doing this long since chased off. ]
I don't know if that makes it better or worse, Luther.
[ She'd sent, before a stray thought bashed from the side. ]
Right. Also. Who exactly picked out that name?
[ Welcome to midnight questions she didn't ask in front of everyone. ]
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Jack. Not me. I learned to roll with it.
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If anything, somehow, even in the pocket of a mobster, Luther had honestly managed the quietest number of days of all of them really. Still. As he never showed up or seemed to have touched any of that last week of theirs. And if that wasn't a skill. ]
Mmmhhhmm.
You just tell us if you're going to keep the change here, too.
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What, like a codename change???
Dear god. No. I'm still listed as 'Space' in the registration documents here, and I'm sticking to it.
Jesus. No.
[ He could suck it up and deal with the name King Kong printed on the flyers, like The Kraken blazoned across Diego's boxing posters — in part because none of the audience seemed to mind, they'd all seemed to celebrate his body, somehow, and its brutish capabilities — but the idea of hanging onto the name now, after they're all back, like a vestigial limb after it's served its purpose... No. ]
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It's wholly possible that what comes next isn't a message,
but the sound of laughter dimly through the jack-and-jill bathroom.]
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I think I'm being bullied. Really unfair, for the record.
[ Even after everything, after this past week, there is something so inexpressibly easy about falling into this with her. The comfortable (and comforting) back-and-forth as if it never ended. ]
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That *is* a shame.
Then, you're really going to hate being reminded, mathematically,
I can't ever be the bigger person in this equation.
[ Physically, at least, that has never been possibility in her entire life. ]
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It makes him want to slide out of bed already, pad over to the bathroom in bare feet, move through it and tentatively knock at her door. Why keep using the mental network when they don't have to anymore? When he could actually be hearing her voice again, the quickfire volley of her words out loud?
But old habits die hard; those doors were always unbroachable, for so many years; so he keeps typing. ]
How's the view up there from the high road, miss 'never became a bare-knuckle boxer'? (Even Diego did it.)
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Was killing one assassin by myself not enough for this week?
[ Plus, potentially maiming that other guy, but she wasn't going there. She wasn't perturbed by the existence or memory of either at the moment. It was just another in a very long line of things she hadn't been able to joke about. In a year. In nearly three. In four combine.
There's something heady as hell to just being able to do it.
Say it. Own it. Not feel ashamed of those same things she had.]
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[ They can joke about murder like this, can joke about multiple killings because, well. That's who they are. That's the kind of people they are, who bear it unflinching, who don't shy away from the ugly or bloody. We're different than everyone else. We're special. And good or bad, that means we don't get to live normal lives. Here or anywhere. ]
And I'd like to see you try, Rumor.
[ She's thrown an unexpected gauntlet down between them, and for whatever unanticipated unexpected reason, he can't resist picking it up. Calling her out. It's not like she's actually going to come and box him — if ever there were pairs who would literally wrestle each other in squabbling competitive pique, it was always Klaus and Ben, or Luther and Diego rough-housing — and he's still not quite sure what he expects her to do with that impossible dare, but— ]
→ action.
"This is pretty pathetic if this is what I'm supposed to be afraid of facing." It's all sass, but there's no waver to the arrogance, disdain, and the current of almost laughter right under both of those. Considering him, still in a blanketed mound in the dark, on his bed. Even if he could, she has no real doubt of him. That he could. If he needed to. If someone came in guns, or fists, blazing.
But they won't. It's the middle of the night. In the middle of Nonah.
And he's not going to punch her in the dark. (At least she's about 98% sure.)
Sure enough that all she does is pad toward his bed, stopping about a foot away from it, and without waiting, give a wave her hands for him to move further back, with all the serious imperiousness of someone who has a right to their directives being unquestioned. "Scoot already."
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wrap or yours to close?
fini. ❤