for ltbrownnoser.

[obediences]

lost in time.

Comments

first meeting.

[obediences]

When the world breaks, it breaks everything.

Number Five has sheltered his siblings from the brunt of it like scooping up an armful of lost ducklings, but they're scattered across the universe as the reality storm heaves its way across existence, roiling and rippling in the wake of the apocalypse. The moon-turned-meteor punching the earth and Five ripping the timelines apart, then messily stitching them back together, isn't a neat process. It's a fist driven through a pane of glass, all the disparate pieces shattering and falling apart and that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the fabric of space-time looks like now.

Luther doesn't even know where or when the others have wound up, except that he wakes up alone, breathing the dust of their destroyed mansion, hands in the dirt and thinking, So this is what Five went through.

Over the next few hours, he digs his way through the rubble, tossing crumbled walls aside and searching for bodies, but there aren't any. He walks the whole circumference of the City, looking and looking for his siblings. Constantly convinced that he's going to turn a corner and there they'll be, all waiting for him, or that Five's going to materialise. Any moment now.

Any moment now.

But the more he searches and the more the days drag on, the more apparent it becomes that the world is shockingly, painfully empty. If there are survivors, they're not on this side of the seaboard. Luther scavenges alone, jumpstarts cars alone, drives alone, scrounges for supplies alone, and feels the crawling panic working its way up the column of his throat that he might be the only person alive in the entire goddamned universe. He's done a version of this before. He doesn't want to do this again.

(How did Five survive? How did he not just put a bullet in his own skull and be done with it?)

As soon as that fleeting thought crosses his mind, though, he knows what keeps them both going: it's hope. That dangling hope that he'll be able to find his family again somehow, that they're just in the next neighbourhood, the next city. That Five will come back for him, again, and round them all up. Again. Luther's beard grows ragged again; he gathers weapons; readies himself for a battle that never, ever comes.

—Until the day there's an unusual dark storm gathering on the horizon once more, so similar to what they saw when Five finally dragged his way home. It's time. It's finally happening.

Luther drives like a bat out of hell, getting closer to the storm before he parks dizzily on the next block, and emerges just in time to see that it wasn't a darkhaired thirteen-year-old who came stumbling out. Instead, it's a short blonde woman, furious and swearing up a storm at some kind of tech on her wrist.

It's his first sight of another human being in weeks. He still wasn't sure anyone was alive. Luther instinctively takes a step closer; his boot crunches on debris, alerting her to his presence.

[ltbrownnoser]

Sarah's next assignment is boring with a capital B. Most of them are, quite frankly, but this one is especially so because it isn't even an interesting artifact that she's meant to collect. If you asked her, a broken iPhone in the 1970s is hardly going to get noticed, given that it bloody well doesn't turn on. All the same, with a roll of her eyes and a two-finger salute, Lt. Sanders punches the coordinates into her Vortex Manipulator and takes a deep breath to prepare herself for the rough ride.

...which turns out to be much rougher than it typically is and about halfway through the seconds-long trip, Sarah realizes exactly why. Her Vortex Manipulator lights up, its screen flashing red and, rather than landing herself squarely in 1970s Beijing, the whole time-space vortex loses its brilliant purple and blue colors, shattering almost into a blue-black nightmare that dumps her clumsily out in the wrong place. When normally she would appear on two feet exactly where she intended to appear, Sarah stumbles and practically falls over when she lands on a loose rock and turns her ankle, sending up a flurry of expletives.

The screen of her interface is still flashing red, but she tries to work around it. This is a bloody wasteland, so it's going to do her exactly no good to stay. Only, halfway into re-entering the correct coordinates, the screen goes black. Completely.

"Are you fucking kidding me? You actual bloody fucking piece of goddamned junk! Come on!" she snaps at it, tapping furiously at the blank screen before finally taking the whole thing off and intending to shake it in both hands, as though that might change anything. "This is fucking bollocks, come on! Oh, you're fucking crap!" she snaps, putting it back on her wrist and taking a deep breath to centre herself before she tries with a more gentle touch.

Before she can do that, though, the sound of crunching debris in the otherwise silent apocalyptic scenario catches her attention and Sarah looks up. Immediately, her reflex is to reach for her firearm, but rather than actually pulling it, she hovers a hand over it. "Stop right there," she warns. The Vortex Manipulator powers back on with a flash of blue light and she looks quickly down at the screen which announces quite plainly where and when she is. Shit.

"Name, rank, and serial number," she calls out to the man as she looks up again. There are no people in this event. It's a fixed point on the timeline and it is so because it wipes out Earth, paving the way for New Earth. She's actually seen Earth end; it looked a lot better from the space station skybox than it does on the ground, that's for bloody sure. The only explanation for another person being here is that he's with another branch of the Agency, in which case, it shouldn't be of any surprise to him that she's asking.

[obediences]

Her fingers are fanned close to her gun, a familiar motion, and he's already doing the mental math: the blonde could easily reach it before he could do anything about it. His skin is tough, but bullets go right through him like they do anyone else.

Name, rank, and serial number. Blank incomprehension crosses the man's face before he says automatically, instinctively: "Luther Hargreeves, Space, Number One."

Because that's what he is, the neat categories he's jotted into. He's captain of the Umbrella Academy; everybody knows who he is, and that's his number. It's the closest thing he has to answering her question.

He's pretty sure that's not what she actually meant, though.

Luther's standing balanced on the rubble, sizing up this strange new arrival and trying to decide what he makes of her. She's not dressed in the clean-cut tailored suit of the Temps Commission, and that more than anything else spares her from him immediately leaping to hostilities. He falls back on de-escalation tactics instead, keeps his hands raised and his voice cool and level. Although he looks unshaven, unkempt, his clothing worn down from weeks in this harsh, blasted wasteland. It's not a place for people.

"Otherwise, I don't really know what you mean. Who are you?"

[ltbrownnoser]

For a second, Sarah just stares back at the man, her jaw slightly slackened and brow creased with confusion. "...what the fuck?" she blurts out after a long pause.

What she'd originally assumed was an aesthetic choice, she's realizing as she looks at him longer, is actually just self-neglect. So this bloke has been here for a little while. At least a week, maybe longer, she thinks as she looks him up and down. His hands are raised and he doesn't sound like a threat; he's certainly not ringing any alarm bells in her head. Therefore, sighing, Sarah drops her hand back to her side.

"Lieutenant Sarah Sanders, Time Agency," she introduces herself with a frown. "Are you a civilian?" she asks, reflexive incredulity in her tone and very clear on her face. "There shouldn't be any life on Earth right now...it's gearing toward Earth End..." she explains, moving forward slowly to get a better look at him. Once she gets a little bit closer, Sarah can see that he's not quite a human, at least not upon visual glance, so what the fuck is he doing on Earth during its ending? It's not going to implode, yet; there's a few years left before that finally happens, but it's little more than a wasteland at the mo. Anyone can see that, even without the extra knowledge of the timeline that Sarah has as an Agent.

"You can't be here, love," she adds, sounding sympathetic. "There's nothing left, yeah? Come on, then...let's see if I can get this bloody working again and get you somewhere safe," she goes on, taking her steps toward him carefully.

She finally stops when she's about a yard away from him. Well, she'd neither been planning on the detour nor the pit stop finding someone stranded on Earth End forces upon her, but she can make it work. Deadline is several days from now and, even if it weren't, that's one of the beautiful things about time travel: never, ever missing a deadline, even if she gets held up on a mission.

"Oi...big boy, aren't you, Luther Hargreeves?" she asks, looking not intimidated or uncomfortable in any way. Instead, Sarah looks impressed. "Well fit," she murmurs mostly to herself with a thoughtful little smirk and a nod as she looks down at the Vortex Manipulator with a soft sigh.

"Where and when are you from, my darling?" she asks, looking back up at him and lifting her eyebrows in question. "Only, I'll have to put in some coordinates. It's all right if it's vague; we can figure out the details later. Planet and year will do just fine."

[obediences]

At Sarah's appraising look, the admiring comment, Luther's brain flat-out grinds to a halt trying to process it. Because those words plainly don't make any sense, do they?— they simply don't track with the clumsy vessel he's trapped in, a pale shade of what he used to be—

So he just ignores it. Pretends it didn't happen. Focuses on the logistics of their situation instead, the lieutenant's actual question, his brow creasing in confusion as he tries to focus on the baffling situation. Not for the first nor the last time, he desperately wishes that Number Five were here. Coordinates, planet, year— this is the sort of thing that Five could handle, deftly and flippantly, and would likely snipe at him for being too slow on the uptake. What he wouldn't give to be sniped at by his brother, right about now.

"I'm from here," he says instead, blunt and simple. Like debriefing with a fellow soldier, because it's becoming apparent that's (sort of?) what she is. "I was born in 1989. I'm pretty sure it's 2019, and the world ended— we tried to stop it and, uh, failed."

Her blasé mention of the Time Agency immediately raises his hackles, tightens that knot of tension in his neck and shoulderblades, practically expecting the worst. But the name is slightly off. It sounds like the bureau that his brother worked for, but...

So, not without a little suspicion, he asks: "Are you a time traveller?"

It helps, at least, having a brother who has a casual attitude towards continuity. Because that's what she has to be, right? Her questions don't make sense otherwise, and how else could she be here? They've both been stranded on the wrong end of an apocalyptic event, just like Five had been.

[ltbrownnoser]

An incredulous laugh escapes Sarah as she starts to program the Vortex Manipulator. "Yeah, I'll say. You can't change a fixed point in time, love, it's fixed for a reason. But, all right. 2019 'right here,' it is." She looks up at him after a moment and beckons him closer with two fingers. "Come on, then, you've got to hang on. It's a bit of a rough ride. Don't throw up on me, that's my only rule."

She holds her hand out to him when he doesn't immediately come to her side; it isn't as though she expects him to. She wouldn't expect anyone to, really, especially someone from the 21st century, well before the Time Agency was established.

At his question, she makes a face. "I am a Time Agent, I'll thank you very much," she replies, sounding slightly offended. There are time travelers and there are Time Agents. "I don't bloody travel, that's for leisure, yeah? This is my job. I make sure the timeline is safe. Now come on, let's get out of this wasteland," she says.

Only because she's currently on the clock, Sarah shows patience waiting for him to come close enough that she can hold onto him to make sure she doesn't drop him in the Vortex. Christ, that could take ages to find him again and put it right; that happened exactly once and it hadn't been a person, thank fuck. It had still taken three weeks to find the damn book she'd dropped; it had landed several centuries and planets away from where she'd been trying to go. Never again.

When she tries to activate the Vortex Manipulator, though, all it does is flash red at her. It's only then that she actually processes what he'd said. They'd been right here trying to stop Earth End, whoever they were, so she can't travel with him back to where he belongs. He is where he belongs. Only, the history books and all of her training suggests that no one survived the blast that kicks off Earth End. So what the hell is he doing here?

Sarah sighs. "...shit..." Should she leave him? That wouldn't be right, would it? He's an anomaly and that won't do, either. "Right, I can't take you anywhere if you're right where you're supposed to be. But..." she sighs heavily, "I can't bloody leave you here, either, yeah? So...erm... What do you reckon? Any time you've ever wanted to see? Start fresh on a Leisure Planet, maybe? There's a place near Messaline where you'd fit right in. I reckon you must stick out like a sore thumb on Earth, looking like that, yeah? They're a bit hairier there but big," she assures him with a gesture at his considerable size. "What do you think?"

[obediences]

Even with Sarah gesturing him closer, the man approached like a skittish wild animal, too wary to come closer or let her touch him — the Hargreeves had never learned to be trusting, let alone with strangers. They'd been taught to be an isolated unit, to only rely on each other, closing ranks like they'd been trained down to their marrow. And he hates having people touch him in general, even through the layers, even just an innocent hand against his arm.

But. He has no goddamn clue what to do in this wasteland or how to get back.
And in contrast, it seems like she knows what she's doing.

So he lets the stranger's fingers snare in the fabric of his sleeve, while she squints down at her wrist. And at the eventual barrage of Sarah's running frustrated commentary, though, the look she gets back is just wide-eyed, perplexed. Luther's experienced no end of strange, bizarre enemies and reality-bending weirdness — it's part of the territory, being in the Umbrella Academy — but other planets are the threshold he hasn't crossed yet. Doesn't have any experience with. (Although of course he'd wanted to. He'd idolised the astronaut-hero St. Zero, who had gone as far as Mars. Not further. Not yet.)

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Luther admits, and there's a weary kind of bitterness in the back of his throat. He hates admitting when he's at sea, out of his element. He's not accustomed to it; feels that prickling ill-at-ease of not being the most authoritative person in the room. But he does latch onto one thing, like a life raft: Any time you've ever wanted to see?

"Take me back. Before it hits," he says, with a tip of his head gesturing vaguely towards where the crater hit on the other end of the world. Where the mantle of the Earth got hit like an egg being cracked, a shudder as the moon collided. "We were jumping— back. To stop it, to try again, but something must've gone wrong. Can you send me back?"

(Luther, you are just not getting it.)

settling in.

[ltbrownnoser]

It's hardly the sort of accommodations that Sarah is used to on a mission, but nothing about this mission has turned out to be routine, so why stop now? They've holed themselves up in the first house they came across that was still in one piece and, generally speaking, stable enough to stay that way for a little while and the sun is setting, leaving a fiery streak across the sky visible through the cracked windows of what was once probably a child's bedroom on the second floor. It would've made more sense to stay in whichever room was likely the master, only this one is the only bedroom with the windows still intact and it seemed smarter to avoid trying to sleep in windowless rooms, just in case. Of what, God only knows, but he'd pointed it out and she'd agreed without argument.

So now they're sat, Sarah on the child's bed and Luther on the mattress and box-spring dragged in from the master bedroom on the floor on the other side of the room, up against the door, the idea being that his considerable size being located against the door works as an effective barricade on the off-chance that they are not, in fact, the last living people on the planet and they also happen to be raided by a band of marauders or something.

Earth food is boring enough as it is but factoring in an Earth End apocalyptic wasteland in addition leaves much to be desired as she takes another spoonful of baked beans into her mouth straight out of the can after having heated it on the, thankfully, gas stove that still somehow works for the moment down in the kitchen.
Sarah reckons it won't last very long before it, too, ceases to be an option and they'll have to find a safe way to build fires. She wants very much to frown around it because honestly, she's never been a fan of any beans, never mind baked beans, but they'll fill her up and they'll provide some protein. They are, though, very bloody bland, if you ask her.

"So, it's been several years since I've talked to them. Jacob stopped trusting me ages ago because I was loyal to the Agency. They gave me a purpose, which is more than he'd ever done, yeah? I dunno where he's gone and put Mia. Somewhere in the early 2000s or maybe the late 1990s, I reckon; he's always had a soft spot for that chunk of time. No idea why," she sighs to finish her story. Luther and his siblings fancied themselves a team of superheroes, minus the one sister who didn't get in. Sarah and hers have been estranged for an age over differences in their levels of loyalty — or complete and total lack thereof — of the Time Agency and what it stands for. She doesn't know it yet, but it means she's got a lot more in common with Luther than she thinks. She'll always have some level of loyalty to the Agency, even though it's because of them that she's likely going to die passively on fucking Earth End, of all things.

"Sometimes I miss them," she confesses. "Especially Jacob. He's the oldest. I really looked up to him. I wanted to be just like him when I grew up and here am and he's nothing like the person I wanted to be once upon a time. Shame, that. And more, shame on him for turning Mia against the Agency when she's a civilian and hasn't anything to bloody do with anyway, so now she probably hates me for the same reason he does." Sarah shrugs and takes another bite. "I'm better off alone, anyway. Being an agent is dangerous. Imagine how upset they'd be hearing that I've been stranded thousands of years away on the end of a world if they actually cared about me anymore. It's better this way," she says. It's unclear whether she's trying to convince Luther of that...or herself.

Sighing and setting down her can with the spoon still in it, only about three-quarters emptied at this point, Sarah groans with discomfort and starts to unbutton her blouse again. "Right, I'm dying; it's bloody hot in here, mate. I'm taking this off. Look or don't, I don't really care," she announces as she makes her progress down the length of the front of the shirt and finally shrugs it off. It takes a bit of effort, actually, to do that since the thin sheen of sweat settled on her skin had the fabric stuck to it. She's still wearing a bra, plain and white, and full coverage, only because she'd been at work for the Agency when she'd gotten pulled into this mess. It's hardly the sort of undergarment she'd have been wearing if she'd known anyone else would potentially be seeing it, but alas.

Sarah scoots back on the bed and leans against the cool wall, looking back at him. "You should tell me about the moon. Since that's what of space you've seen and, believe it or not, I've never been to Earth's moon. Call me curious," she says, carrying on the conversation as though she hasn't just taken some of her clothes off. Sarah's done plenty of odd jobs to make money while on longer missions and she's always found that stripping makes the most money in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort, so she tended to lean on it more often than not if she could do without blowing her cover. Taking her clothes off for strangers is old hat for her, even if she doesn't take into account the myriad sexual encounters with God only knows how many people on how many planets in how many different time periods she's had, most of which had been for the fun of it. She, therefore, doesn't feel at all strange about doing it now when she's just uncomfortably hot. Why he hasn't done by now is beyond her, but to each their own, she reckons.

[obediences]

Luther's made some slight concessions to the muggy heat of a world still in flames: he's set his heavy overcoat aside, hung it neatly up in the closet, but he's still wearing so many layers, buttoned to the neck and long sleeves and fingerless gloves. He sits on the mattress against his side of the wall, and shovels down the food (the reheated beans are monotonous, but still not as monotonous as tasteless soy paste that his father forgot to send him, half the time). He's listening avidly, absolutely riveted while Sarah explains the world and life she came from. The fractures in her own complicated sibling relationships.

They gave me a purpose. There's a grinding, lurching sense of recognition that sweeps over him when he hears those words, and he can't help but picture Diego when she describes Jacob. Their constantly butting heads over Luther's rigid loyalties.

I wanted to be just like him when I grew up and here am and he's nothing like the person I wanted to be once upon a time.

He could've said that about the Monocle.

So he's chewing over those similarities, trying to sort out how much of it to admit. "I know how that feels," he finally says. "Me and one of my other brothers, we... don't always get along. I was more loyal to the team than he was." Understatement of the century, that one.

Thankfully though, blessedly, before Sarah can dig too deeply into that particular wound, she's gone and tripped them into another piece of awkwardness. Palpable startled shock crosses Luther's face, absolutely embarrassed and self-conscious where she's the opposite: Luther's gaze snaps to the side, to the darkened window although he can't see anything through it. His jaw works. There isn't enough in the room to focus on besides her, and he can tell she's looking at him again, the weight of her gaze on him.

Luther tries to answer while still looking at the wall: "It's nowhere near as exciting as your adventures on other planets," he admits, sounding tired, a stark contrast to the excitement and pride in his voice when he'd told her about past missions. It's still too raw and new, that realisation that his mission had been for nothing. Four years gone for nothing. One thousand, four hundred days, all wasted. The worst time of his life.

But she's asked. So he tries to find a safe angle, and he finally has to look back at her; he keeps his eyes riveted to her jaw and above, studiously not looking down at the expanse of bare skin and midriff and shoulders she's revealed. It functionally isn't any different from a woman wearing a swimsuit, he supposes, but he's self-conscious anyway. He's in a bedroom with a woman and she's just taken her shirt off. It might be an abandoned child's bedroom at the end of the world, but it's still so much more than he's accustomed to. He can't even remember the woman from the club; he'd fled before she'd woken up.

"It's all dusty white rock and sand. Uninhabitable, obviously, but— it could be beautiful too. My favourite thing was seeing dawn break across the moon. I'd go grab a chair and refill my oxygen and just sit out there and watch the light spill across it. Every single time. I never got tired of it.

"The thing nobody really tells you about the moon in TV shows and the movies, though, is that two weeks out of the month, you can't see the stars. The Earth's hanging right there, but there's too much light from it, so it blacks out everything else. The other half of the month, it's two weeks of complete night. Pitch-darkness. You can see all the stars but not the Earth. It's... a weird life up there. Quiet."

Ruefully: "No aliens."

[ltbrownnoser]

The vast difference between the tone in his voice when he'd been telling her about the other missions and this one, in particular, is striking and, thus, cannot possibly be lost on Sarah. It isn't, she focuses it on it with laser-like precision and she's already formulating a hundred questions she'll probably never ask. It also isn't lost that he's not looking at her but Sarah chalks that up to her state of undress more than a lack of desire for making eye contact while talking about the moon mission.

"Obviously," she laughs, a knowing smirk on her face. Obviously in this century, maybe. She doesn't interrupt any further than that, letting him go on. Until, that is, he's finished.

Sarah shifts slightly again in her discomfort, trying to find some way to keep from continuing to sweat because it's uncomfortable and it'll be worse when she tries to sleep later if she and the mattress are soaked with it. Her efforts are, so far, for naught. "Some things never get old," she agrees. "That sounds brilliant. I've been to a couple of planets that had the most incredible sunsets. I reckon they were only incredible to me because I'd never seen it before. I'm so used to a sunset being pinks and oranges and reds and yellows...but there are a couple of planets right close together just outside the Milky Way and there's something about their atmosphere that changes it. The colors filter in, in purples and bright blues and greens; and the way the light glitters... It looks more like aurora borealis than a normal sunset. I could've watched it every night for the rest of my life and never gotten tired of seeing it, so I know that feeling," she says with a smile.

Then, taking a breath and letting it out softly, Sarah shakes her head. "No aliens on Earth's moon. Not yet, anyway. Give it a few hundred more years and that'll change, but for now..." her voice trails off before she can finish the sentence, realizing how depressing it sounds after learning how long he'd been wandering around Earth End before she arrived. Just you, had been what she'd been about to say. It feels insensitive and rude on her tongue so she swallows it back and shrugs instead.

She changes tack to distract him from that slip-up, or at least in the hopes of doing so. "You've got to be roasting in that, my darling, just take some of it off. I'm not going to judge you, you know. Whatever you're hiding under all those layers, I imagine I've seen worse. I've likely fucked worse, so... You're making me hotter by proxy, just looking at you."

[obediences]

And she's gone and called it out, unflinchingly, and Luther feels himself quail like a hermit crab shrinking in on itself and retreating back into its shell. Funny, how a man so big can try to make himself seem so small.

One of his hands fidgets restlessly with the edge of his sleeve, tugging it further down; a nervous tic. And for just a second, he imagines complying, and what that might reveal, and what he'd be forced to see too: those massive rippling arms, the rough hair (almost fur) on the backs of his hands, the large clumsy fingers, the hard and leathery skin. He stares down at the back of the gloves.

It's stupid. If they're going to cobble together some kind of partnership together, here at the end of days, how is he going to wear multiple layers around her 24/7? Particularly sweltering, with that sweat slicking the back of his neck. It's miserable and he's not been letting on how uncomfortable he is, but it's miserable.

And yet, and yet.

Instead of directly answering her yet or making any move yet to follow suit, Luther says instead, "So what are some of the, uh, weirdest things you've seen? Aliens-wise."

Testing the waters. Trying to get a sense for what's out there; how it compares.

[ltbrownnoser]

Sarah lifts an eyebrow at the question. For a moment, she considers. He's not asking out of interest, given the context of the question in the rest of the conversation; he's weighing whatever she says against himself. Luther looks human in his face, but his body is very clearly not quite average human; he can't hide the bulk under his clothes. That much is clear. Whatever it is he's hiding, he's ashamed of it, Sarah can parse that much from his body language, all of the layers of clothing even in the sweltering heat, and now this question meant, she reckons, to gauge himself against.

She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a soft, thoughtful sigh. "Christ, where to even begin... Erm...well, the Sontaurans are an interesting lot. Ugly potato-faces with giant heads on well fit bodies. And then there's the Judoon with their humanoid bodies and rhino heads..."

Humming softly, Sarah takes pause again. Those aren't actually that weird, to her. "There's the Slitheen," she says, "but I wouldn't even know how to describe them to you...oh! there's the Ood! Love the Ood. They're so gentle and sweet. Ugly as fuck, but...honestly, the sweetest. Right, I reckon they're usually about your height, give or take a couple of inches and they've these pale, wrinkly faces with tentacles where their mouths would be. And then their hindbrain — oh, they've two brains: forebrain for thinking and telepathy and hindbrain for memory and emotion — their hindbrain, they literally hold in their hands and it's connected to their faces with, like, an umbilical cord. That's probably pretty weird by your standards, yeah?"

[obediences]

Luther tries to imagine someone holding their actual literal brain in their hands, connected by umbilical cord. It's a slightly horrifying image! And so he blinks, slowly, caught off-guard by that bizarre picture.

"Okay. Yeah. That's pretty... pretty weird, yeah."

One detail sticks out, though, and his blue eyes finally dart back up from his gloves and to meet hers; his expression is indescribable, but christ, but he just has to ask. "Tentacles where their mouths should be? Have you, uh......."

He trails off significantly. Already mortified for asking (where did she put that hip flask? he could probably have done with a drink before asking this), but morbid curiosity had kicked in before he could resist blurting out the question, or at least half of the question. Adding up two-and-two with I've likely fucked worse.

i think we're (not) alone now.

[obediences]

Two weeks go by, and they settle into a kind of routine.

First, it's hotwiring the car he'd co-opted, and them driving down long empty pitted highways, the windows cracked and the wind ruffling Sarah's hair. It's long walks when they have to stop and pick their way over and through rubble, expanding their search and trying to find a better house to hole up in — one closer to some semblance of supplies, maybe one where he doesn't have to sleep on the floor. They scavenge while the sun's out, and take refuge in another shelter whenever night sinks over the remains of America. The cities are eerie without electricity, without light, but Luther gathers armfuls of debris and wood in his arms, and at night they build little fires in what fireplaces they can find.

They don't see any people.

They talk. They're an odd and mismatched pair, to be sure — Luther stubbornly un-fun at so many times, and with Sarah so pushy, sometimes they grind on each others' nerves. Other times, he has to keep averting his face and biting back those smiles, always another small moment of triumph for her, at cracking through that facade and wringing a more lighthearted response out of him. They root through the wrecks of grocery stores and warehouses, pick up what they can and what's still usable, load up their packs, keep moving. They eventually find a house with a better-sized bedroom with two beds, and start turning it into... well, Luther's averse to calling it a home, but he's happy to think of it as a base. A headquarters. A safehouse. Somewhere to wearily return to at night when the pitch-black descends, Sarah cracking jokes about how she would just love a foot massage, trying to see if she can make him blush.

And somehow, it starts to feel... comfortable. A kind of reassuring predictability, falling into the rhythms of wasteland life, and although it's deathly dull at times (What the Fuck Do We Do to Kill Twelve Hours), he's still patient. He's killed far more than twelve hours at a time. Try seventeen thousand hours.

She tells him about her adventures in far-flung planets, he tells her about his adventures on Earth. They walk careful circles around the subjects that sting too much to revisit.

Until one day. They're coming out from resupplying at a grocery store, bags heavily-laden with food and water and about to load up their car, when there's the unexpected sight of rising dust on the horizon.

Movement. A pickup truck?

"Sarah," Luther says, gone still and looking off into the distance, squinting into the too-bright sun. (It took him a couple days and her insistence, but he finally stopped calling her lieutenant or Sanders.) There's a lurch of hope in his chest: could it be Number Five, back at last, roaring back in to the rescue?

[ltbrownnoser]

It's the longest Sarah Sanders has been in one place with one person since leaving home after graduating high school. While she's still certain that monogamy is not for her, she can see the appeal, now, of it, she supposes. There's a little bit of comfort and reassurance that comes from the predictability of falling into a rhythm with someone because you've been with them long enough to do that. It's only been two weeks, but it feels like significantly more, the sensation of time bent and warped in their never-ending efforts to fill it as they walk or drive or scavenge.

Luther Hargreeves is ceaselessly stubborn and stoic; it feels like a grand accomplishment any time she can manage to even so much as get him to smile. They share stories and she feels like she's known him for her entire life. It's uncomfortably comfortable. She still hasn't managed to get him to take her to bed and she's starting to wonder if she ever bloody will.

Pausing in front of the door through which Luther has already exited, Sarah stares at the lottery scratch off vending machines and mulls over breaking it open just so that they have something to do. Besides, if they do manage to get any winners, Luther can cash them out when the Vortex goes back online and she takes him to New York. Maybe he can use his winnings to start a new life for himself somewhere better than Earth.

Her name on his tongue pulls her attention away from the machines and she moves to exit the store without making an attempt to break any of them open. As she comes up beside him, an onlooker — were anyone else still alive to look — might find the gap between her tiny frame and his hulking one right next to it comical. She sometimes does, if she's honest.

Shielding her eyes with a hand, Sarah squints against the sun. "The fuck?" she murmurs to herself. It isn't that she doesn't recognize what she's seeing: it's very clearly a vehicle moving in their direction. There are no survivors of Earth End, she reminds herself and that thought shoves her back into military mode for the first time in weeks. She powers on the Vortex Manipulator for the first time since that first day and she's disappointed but unsurprised by the lack of new notifications and the persisting VORTEX OFFLINE message on its screen. But it's on and it's prepped for a spatial jump if needed. In a continuation of that smooth and instinctive movement, Sarah draws her weapon — the original one which still has a little bit of a charge and is set to stun rather than kill — it's how she doses civilians with the Retcon still in her bag.

"Do your siblings have any superpowers that would enable them to find us or would this just be an incredible coincidence?" she asks, her voice low and serious. It sounds like she had sounded when she first arrived and she'd been talking to him like a civilian. All traces of the light-hearted and playful woman she is off the clock has temporarily been lost.

[obediences]

"No," he says, and his voice has a tightness in it, too, that indicates that she's standing beside Number One now. Not Luther Hargreeves. And it's a clear and compartmentalised shift that he undergoes each time: he's no longer the socially awkward recluse who likes poetry, but rather the leader of the Umbrella Academy, a killer, a trained soldier. His body language has already shifted, standing lighter on his feet and keeping his hands free after he's dumped their groceries in the backseat of the car. The groceries don't matter anymore.

"Klaus can talk to the dead for information, but there are probably billions of ghosts now, and I don't think any of them would be able to say where we are, if they're further away."

Luther's hand still itches for a gun — they haven't managed to come across a still-intact weapons shop yet — but he supposes he doesn't actually need it anymore. His body's the weapon.

"How far's your range on that thing?" He glances at her stun gun.

It's not necessarily a given that the strangers will be threats, or dangerous. Maybe they're just other survivors, relieved to come across other people in this barren emptiness, friendly and—

No. He can't even finish that thought, quickly discards it as beside the point. Luther's thoughts always go to worst-case scenarios, not the best ones.

[ltbrownnoser]

Sarah frowns at that answer. Just the no is enough for her hackles to be officially raised even before he tacks on the bit about Klaus which Sarah files away to what-the-fuck at later. The truck is coming straight toward them and while there's still lots of space between, Sarah has a feeling this is going to be a battle. She and Luther have supplies. The people in the truck might not.

"Set to Stun? Maybe ten meters," she replies. "If I switch it to Kill, I get maybe another five. You could probably throw me further than I can shoot, mate," she adds quietly, frown more pronounced because that truck just keeps coming.

Sarah takes a deep breath. She'd always wanted to work in the field where she could put her combat training to good use, but she'd also sort of expected to be equipped properly for it when the time came. Right now, she isn't. This isn't a long range weapon and they haven't found anything else yet.

"My watch will jump us away if we get into a pinch, but I'd rather save the battery. Just how strong are you?" she asks, standing up straighter as the truck nears enough that she can actually feel see of the debris from the dust being kicked up in its tires. "Because I reckon we need to be prepared to go big or go home. I hope you're not averse to killing people because if it gets ugly, we might have to..."

For all Sarah knows about superheroes, she just sort of assumes that he'd prefer to capture and punish bad guys rather than neutralize the threats, especially given the way he'd detailed the time-traveling brother's job like it was something to be looked down upon. Therefore, she figures the warning is merited so that he can try to mentally prepare if she's right.

[obediences]

"Strong enough." A simple answer for a simple question. When she trails off, though, Luther finally shifts his gaze off the vehicle, looks at her to the side, and there's the ghost of a smile again. He'd been breaking spines in his teens. "If the body count's necessary, it's necessary," he says, and then his attention swivels back to the potential threat and doesn't go off it.

It's a strange, flexible grey sort of morality that they were raised on. But that's murder, he'd once said to Five in horror, but that was because his brother's targets initially seemed like civilians who hadn't ever done anything, and just had the bad luck to be born at the wrong place and wrong time.

Once you were a direct threat, though? All bets were off.

(Even if you're his little sister.)

The truck gets closer and closer, bumping through potholes, before it finally pulls up. The people aren't hanging out of windows and shooting first, asking questions later — this isn't, in fact, an action movie — but two men hop out of the doors while another stands in the bed of the truck, wary, a rifle on his hip. They're all grizzled, their faces sandworn and heat-blasted. They're further than ten meters away.

"Morning. Didn't think we'd see other people," Luther says, and there's a bristling caution now crackling between the two groups. A long-familiar tension in the air and prickling sense of danger that, he realises, he's missed. That gentle unease of not knowing what to expect, the looming sense of impending violence. It feels like his childhood; it feels like home. His hand flexes at his side, fingers curling.

"You've got a nice haul of supplies," the driver says back. Not even bothering with the pleasantries. The strangers' eyes are hungry, when they settle on the bags in the car — and then on Sarah.

[ltbrownnoser]

Rather than responding to him, Sarah nods to acknowledge that she's heard him and she allows herself the luxury of the relief that prickles around the edges when she knows that he'll kill if he needs to kill. At least they're both on the same page. And, with that in mind, her attention shifts to her weapon, switching it out of Stun mode before redrawing it in preparation. She won't use it unless she feels like she has no choice; it's really more of a Plan C if Plan A of talking and Plan B of fighting fail, but she doesn't put it away. She'd rather them see that she's not fucking around because that might make Plan A a little more successful.

As the men hop out of the truck, Sarah's expression flattens and her chin lifts. She doesn't like very well that there's a rifle on one man's hip as he stands in the bed of the truck like the guard dog he probably is meant to be, but it makes her glad she gave herself a little more distance by switching the Stun mode off, if nothing else.

She's happy to let Luther talk if only because she's aware of the social gender hierarchy of this century and those surrounding. They'll expect Luther to be the one in charge of this pair and bucking that expectation is more likely to raise their hackles. It's hardly worth it.

Her brow creases dubiously in the center when he turns his hungry eyes from their vehicle to her. Sarah's weapon lowers just enough to not be an immediate threat, but not enough to be a hindrance if she needs it with urgency.

"Mmm," she agrees tersely to the sentiment. "You've got a nice vehicle," she points out in the same it'd be a shame if someone were to steal it tone that she's perceived from the stranger. "And now that we've complimented one another's possessions, shall we all be on our way?" That tone is even, but certainly lacking some patience because Sarah hasn't got it. She is itching for a fight but she can compromise the fact that they haven't proven themselves an actual threat, yet.

tell me a story;

[ltbrownnoser]

There's significantly less tension between the two of them as of late and Sarah has to admit that it makes things easier. She feels less keyed up all the time and Luther's certainly unwound some, too.

"Oi, big guy," she calls to him as she nears the building. "I think it might still be standing inside."

The two of them are scavenging again but so far, they've come up a little short. Several of the buildings they've come across have been either in shambles entirely, cleaned out, possibly by the other scavengers they'd terrorized out of this area before, or had looked all right on the outside but had been in pieces on the inside. They're walking along the opposite edges of the road and looking into each of the remaining buildings of what looks to have been, once, a strip mall.

"Dunno that we'll find much of use...looks like it was a comic book store or some silly thing like that..." she says thoughtfully, pausing to wait for Luther to cross the street so they can enter together. Her Vortex Manipulator is powered on in case she needs to use the laser on it, but if she goes in with Luther, they probably won't need it. "Maybe we'll find something to entertain ourselves, if nothing else, yeah?"

[obediences]

The tension's finally cleared between them, like how the air clears after a storm, an onslaught of rain finally dissipating the oppressive heat and making it easier to breathe again. It's given way to them being less on edge around each other, with pleasantly sated evenings and objectively more interesting mornings. It's certainly one way to kill time. And Luther's normally so unbearably high-strung (Diego complained about the stick up his ass for years), but the Luther she's now getting to know is— almost— relaxed?

Plus, there's the simple fact that the world already ended. It's over. The impossible weight of averting the apocalypse is no longer sitting on those broad shoulders, sitting heavy as Luther's responsibility, the entire job and reason for the Academy's existence. There is something inutterably freeing about being past that particular event horizon. And he's used to whiling away the long monotonous days and weeks; this time, there's just the difference that he has someone to weather it with.

Once he picks his way across the street and joins her at the doorway, Luther peers over Sarah's shoulder and into the tumbledown ruins of the shop. A lot of the businesses they've combed through have been burnt-out wrecks, but this one seems to have semi-miraculously escaped the fires.

"I think we've been doing a pretty job of keeping ourselves entertained, actually," he remarks, lightly (was that another joke?). But then he cocks his head, considers the interior ahead of them. "I like reading. Let's check it out."

I like reading. A vast understatement, for a man who normally lives with teetering stacks of books piling on every available surface. He just hasn't really had the opportunity to do so here yet.

[ltbrownnoser]

Sarah laughs. "Oh, he's got jokes today, yeah?" she asks playfully, giving him a half-hearted shove, one tiny hand against his massive bicep. It's funny, she'd never have taken Luther as the type to sneak in jokes now and again because he'd been so...well, rigid when they'd first met. She finds that he does it more and more often now and Sarah reckons that must be because he's gotten used to her. Shyness looks really strange on someone Luther's size, but she's fairly certain that's what she'd been seeing until after the first time they'd slept together. Now, he's a bit more relaxed.

"I can't remember the last time I read a book for leisure," she comments off-handedly as she follows him inside, taking careful steps over and around debris as she goes. "Mostly because I hadn't the time, but still. Wonder if they've got anything in here still in one piece worth reading," she murmurs mostly to herself as she winds away from Luther to check out another part of the store once they've established that the store is, in fact, empty, thanks to her Vortex Manipulator's heat sensors. After ticking that box, she powers it back down. It's drained down to half a charge. She's not sure it'll last a whole lot longer; once it hits the halfway mark, she'd noticed in the past that the battery drains much more quickly.

"Cool, they had comic books back then…" she says with a little smirk when she notices the shambles of a display, half-burned and some untouched but rather dusty comic books and graphic novels strewn around the room.

Sarah crouches and picks up a book that looks to be in fairly good shape, blowing the dust off its back cover and turning it over to do the same for the front. Her eyebrows lift and she tilts her head, looking down at the six adolescents in domino masks in a mid-action scene. The bottom half of the cover is torn so if there was a title to this particular comic, it's been lost. The series, though, is still clear at the top.

"Luther, my darling, you said your team was the Umbrella Academy, yeah?" she calls out, leafing through the book. She doesn't see his name anywhere; they're all using code names, but not numbers. Maybe it's just a coincidence. There aren't any especially large children, anyway. "Only there's an old comic book over here from a series with that same name. I dunno that it's the same thing, though. These are children and they're all runty looking in the drawings," she adds, not quite as loudly. The art isn't really her style at all, but it does remind her a little of when she'd been a child and she used to steal Jacob's comic books when he'd finished with them, mostly in an attempt to be like him less than finding actual enjoyment in the things of their own accord.

[obediences]

He's poking through the collapsed shelves, sweeping dust off the covers, delicately lifting the occasional volume from the wreckage. He'd have preferred proper full-sized fiction, but this is better than nothing, he supposes.

And then Sarah asks that question from behind him, and he feels the floor drop out from beneath his feet. "Oh," Luther says, and turns to look back at her and the treasure she's found. He hasn't actually been in a normal shop for years. The last time was a signing maybe about... fifteen years ago, a press tour for the latest issues. Somehow, he'd half-assumed that they must be out of print by now, recycled, not gracing the shelves anymore. Who in their right mind had still been reading The Umbrella Academy in 2019, when the team's been defunct for years?

Guess some things never changed, though. Maybe the comics are considered vintage now.

Tucking a few other graphic novels under his elbow (larger ones, dense with text and thus more likely to take more time to read, plus he'd always meant to read Maus), he steps closer and looks down at Sarah's find. There's a complicated expression crossing his face: some embarrassment, some fond nostalgia. Like someone suddenly being privy to your childhood photos.

(In another time and another life, Number Five had scavenged and collected things like this. Trinkets and souvenirs and a branded lunchbox. Gathering whatever scraps of the Academy still persisted, reminders of his family. Luther can't know it, but that same undefinable yearning is now lodged deep under his breastbone.)

"That, uh. That is us, actually. When we were kids."

He reaches out his free hand, brushes a thumb across that stylised version of himself on the cover — Spaceboy all blindingly bright grin and blond hair and the levitation belt — and then he pulls back, arm hanging loosely back at his side.

"Spaceboy's me."

[ltbrownnoser]

As he looms over her, Sarah looks up at him over her shoulder, a little surprised by the sheepishness mingled with the fondness in his expression. He explains that, though, when he confirms that the comic book is actually about he and his siblings as children.

Her eyes move to follow his thumb brushing over one of the practically white-haired children on the cover. Sarah lifts her eyebrows thoughtfully when he announces that Spaceboy is him and she can only assume, having not actually read the thing yet, that the one he'd brushed his thumb over is, in fact, his own likeness.

"But he's so small, though," she counters dumbly; reflexively, shaking her head. "Sit down, you're making me nervous hovering like that," she adds. It isn't true, but she does prefer it when he brings himself back to her level when situations like this arise.

Flipping the cover open, Sarah looks down at the first pages and hums slightly. "Are these little adventures based on actual missions or just offshoots using your likenesses?" she wonders aloud, looking up at Luther again, curious.

[obediences]

It's perhaps still such a surprising sight, Luther obeying so gamely — he might be accustomed to giving out orders, but another more hardwired part of him is used to taking them, too — but he always listens. And so he just sits down on what once must have been a bookcase, but it's now mostly just a pile of wood that he can prop himself against somewhat comfortably. As she starts flipping through the comic, he sets the other books neatly in his lap.

"A mix of both," he says. The angle's right that he can still sort of peer around Sarah, see the flash of bright colours and sharp stylised angles that she's glancing at. Those domino masks, those luminous smiles. His heart twinges sharply. It's not as exact as if she'd come across a teen magazine, seen the actual photos of teenaged Luther and Diego muscling each other side-by-side to be in the shot, but it's still a remnant of the past. His childhood. The glory days.

"Is that the— oh, yeah, that's the Eiffel Tower. Does it still exist in your timeline? Ours turned out to be a hidden spaceship and flew away."

It was one of the more outlandish adventures they'd been on, and yet he delivers it straight-faced, entirely seriously.

"Anyway, it's like that. Sometimes it's actual missions we went through, other times it's, uh, filler. Made up to fill the issues." Sometimes because the real truth of the missions was too grim, too gory for their shining public images. He shifts one shoulder in something like a shrug.

"Close enough, though. All the codenames are right, too. And it was before..." He trails off. How to explain why Spaceboy is so small, and just as tiny as the others? In the end, he settles for a vague (and yet obvious): "I didn't look like this, back then."