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."
And this, ladies and gents, is the face of a man who has gotten in way over his head. Luther blinks in surprise, blinking away the text box that was still open in front of his eyes, having to reorient his depth perception to the sight of her actually standing there. Allison, in his bedroom. Allison, talking. His brain record-scratches for a moment, skipping and skipping and skipping, before it finally catches on something and gives him something to hang onto:
"What did I say about being bullied?" he says, but there's amusement laced in his words and he obligingly slides closer to the wall, making room for her to take the other half.
(They had done this as kids. Sneaking into each others' rooms on the nights they weren't being monitored, usually her into his, exactly like this, because it was no surprise which of them was actually the more daring and the more willing to step outside the rules. She'd always slipped away before she fell asleep, though.)
Luther's still half-buried under the covers, but in the darkness she can see the massive edge of those shoulders, a white tank top barely containing it all. He drags the covers a bit higher, a little primly.
"You said to put my money where my mouth was," is cool as it is challenging.
Like she had no time for whining if he was going to call her bluff and fold, all in the same go. It would all be perfect, if it weren't for the smile trying to tug apart her cool disdain. Making the top of her lip shift refuse to stop shifting insistently, pulling at the muscles in her cheek.
She can't miss that he tugs the blanket up a little more up his shoulder, and that's unchanged, but she doesn't expect it to be. Doesn't really have a need to take it from him. There really wasn't entirely a plan aside from showing up and proving she had always been just a little quicker and wickeder on the updraw for a dare. Even one she accidentally put into play with her own mouth.
No, she doesn't pick up or move his blanket at all, does nothing except to sit on it. One leg curling on the bed, and one hanging off, hands pressed into the blanket itself by her ankle. Feeling absolutely too old to let herself get away with the slight bit of childish this feels like, a little too dangerous to be innocent, but absolutely not wanting to go back to being an adult, in her own, empty, room, just yet either.
"I should've known better than to try calling a bluff. You gonna kick my ass now?"
Luther's wedged himself a little higher into a half-seated position, back propped against the pillows and the headboard; staying lying down would feel too vulnerable right now, and he already feels vulnerable as hell having someone in his space, where no one ever is. Not at this hour, not with the lights dimmed, not alone. (Part of him still instinctively wants to glance to the door, look for movement down the hallway. The crisp and precise tread of wingtip shoes on hardwood. Reginald's cane rapping the floor. Even now, years after the man's death, always waiting to be caught and reprimanded for finding joy in a little thing.)
But even this, it all feels so soothingly familiar even as he wants to climb out of his own skin at her proximity. Because in answering the dare, Allison's proven again that it's still her. The one who would fist-fight Swedish assassins and power mimics, who would jump to a punch even after years in hibernation, her abilities and capabilities smothered. She doesn't turn down a challenge.
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obediences) wrote2019-03-28 10:51 am
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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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"What did I say about being bullied?" he says, but there's amusement laced in his words and he obligingly slides closer to the wall, making room for her to take the other half.
(They had done this as kids. Sneaking into each others' rooms on the nights they weren't being monitored, usually her into his, exactly like this, because it was no surprise which of them was actually the more daring and the more willing to step outside the rules. She'd always slipped away before she fell asleep, though.)
Luther's still half-buried under the covers, but in the darkness she can see the massive edge of those shoulders, a white tank top barely containing it all. He drags the covers a bit higher, a little primly.
But he makes room.
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Like she had no time for whining if he was going to call her bluff and fold, all in the same go. It would all be perfect, if it weren't for the smile trying to tug apart her cool disdain. Making the top of her lip shift refuse to stop shifting insistently, pulling at the muscles in her cheek.
She can't miss that he tugs the blanket up a little more up his shoulder, and that's unchanged, but she doesn't expect it to be. Doesn't really have a need to take it from him. There really wasn't entirely a plan aside from showing up and proving she had always been just a little quicker and wickeder on the updraw for a dare. Even one she accidentally put into play with her own mouth.
No, she doesn't pick up or move his blanket at all, does nothing except to sit on it. One leg curling on the bed, and one hanging off, hands pressed into the blanket itself by her ankle. Feeling absolutely too old to let herself get away with the slight bit of childish this feels like, a little too dangerous to be innocent, but absolutely not wanting to go back to being an adult, in her own, empty, room, just yet either.
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Luther's wedged himself a little higher into a half-seated position, back propped against the pillows and the headboard; staying lying down would feel too vulnerable right now, and he already feels vulnerable as hell having someone in his space, where no one ever is. Not at this hour, not with the lights dimmed, not alone. (Part of him still instinctively wants to glance to the door, look for movement down the hallway. The crisp and precise tread of wingtip shoes on hardwood. Reginald's cane rapping the floor. Even now, years after the man's death, always waiting to be caught and reprimanded for finding joy in a little thing.)
But even this, it all feels so soothingly familiar even as he wants to climb out of his own skin at her proximity. Because in answering the dare, Allison's proven again that it's still her. The one who would fist-fight Swedish assassins and power mimics, who would jump to a punch even after years in hibernation, her abilities and capabilities smothered. She doesn't turn down a challenge.
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wrap or yours to close?
fini. ❤