luther "the big shy one" hargreeves | #00.01 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 12:15 am
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 12:15 amEntry tags:
for ltbrownnoser.
for
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 12:15 am
ltbrownnoser.
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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.
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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?"
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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.)
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"You'll never stop it, my darling," she tells him firmly. She's soft-spoken, but it isn't wavering. "This is the beginning of Earth End. It's a fixed point in time, like Pompeii and 9/11; all four World Wars and the Holocaust. It's always going to happen, no matter what you do. You'll never win it. It always happens. I take you back there and what? I buy you one more try; you'll be right back here where you started only I'm not going to go through a feedback loop with you. One trip. I'm still on the clock," she says.
Then, she sighs again. Perhaps she's being insensitive. This isn't her home; of course it means little to her to abandon it now. "Listen," she says gently. "Time isn't linear and it's...malleable. That said, there are fixed points in time. They're like...landmarks, I suppose is the best way I can describe it. Nothing can ever be done to change them; they're meant to be where they are and unfold exactly the way they did or will unfold. Earth End is one of them. I'm really sorry, my love, but I'm not going to waste a trip to take you back for a suicide mission. That's all it'll be."
She has the grace, at least, to give him a look of sympathy. "You gave me 'Space' as your rank...have you ever actually been? There's so much more out there than this one smoldering rock, Luther. You can go anywhere. Anywhen. Except back to try to fix this because you can't. No one can."
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And then Luther pauses, listening to her. He can imagine it. Their attempts Looping over and over and over, trying and failing, trying and making it worse, trying and failing again. And again. And again. Hadn't their own experiences confirmed her theory, in a way? Five had come back to prevent the apocalypse, but instead, they'd just wound up causing it another way instead.
So. The end of the earth is inevitable. Inevitable. The one thing they were supposed to do, the thing their very lives and existence had been crafted for, the whole purpose of them, the reason Hargreeves bought them to begin with...
His breath hitches. "You're wrong. There's got to be a way. If you just get the right factors, manage to get ahead of it in just the right way, find the right combination, there's got to be..." The man's voice peters out. His face is looking stricken, like he's been physically punched in the gut, all the breath driven out of him.
You can't. No one can.
Luther shakes his head as if he's trying to physically shake off that truth. It feels like he can't breathe. Dizzied, he snaps back in response to her question, "Of course I have. I was the first boy in space. Youngest astronaut in history."
Still a point of pride, even after all these years. It's one of the few things he has to hang onto. Not that it really counts: one cramped, lonely moon base the size of an RV pales in comparison to what she's seen. It's strangely disorienting, hearing that there's a greater, wider universe out there — and so there's more than a little longing in his voice when he speaks up again, his blue eyes re-focusing on Sarah. The woman standing in front of him like an anchor.
"Does that mean you've been to other planets? Out in the future? You've, what, met aliens?"
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She does find herself smiling at him a little when he seems proud to announce that he was the youngest astronaut in history. It's not true anymore, at least not in her time, but that's hardly shocking given she's from over three thousand years in his future. That's a long bloody time to break a record, after all.
Something in him changes and Sarah watches it shift, feeling admittedly a little endeared at the almost childlike awe in the tone of the question. Not in his voice, but in the words themselves.
"Oh, loads of them, my darling! You know, you said you're from 2019? Me?" she asks, pointing to herself. "I'm from 5052." She huffs softly with amusement at the word aliens. "They're not aliens if you're on their planet, mate; then you're the alien," she points out. "But, I've met loads of other people from other planets and times! All shapes, all sizes, all sorts. So what do you say, shall we go for a quick adventure and find you a new home?"
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And her offer is tempting. Sarah's a stranger and he doesn't trust strangers, not one bit, but it's almost unavoidable too. (Inevitable.) He can't live here forever, by himself, for twenty-some years. Simply can't. When a woman materialised to Number Five in the wasteland and offered him a lifeline out of it, he'd had taken the offer too, didn't he?
Luther looks back at the broken shattered buildings around them, and considers. "There's... someone I need to come back for. Someone I'm waiting for. If I leave forever, go to a different planet, he probably won't be able to find me. But even if we leave, you can still bring me back to this point, right? I know, it's fixed, whatever. But I could come back?" She can almost see those gears turning in his head, as he weighs the decision and considers it.
There's not a question in his mind, either, that Number Five will be able to find a way back eventually. His brother will come back for him. Number Five is too much of a goddamned know-it-all to not figure it out.
"So... okay. Yeah. Alright. Sure. Let's get out of here."
He's talking more than he ought to, words tripping over themselves in an attempt to convince himself he's okay with this. The last time he'd been shunted through time and space, he'd been together with all his family, all their hands interlinked and clutched in a bone-breaking grip. Vanya in his arms, Allison to his left, Klaus to his right. Now, though, he's forced to reach out to a stranger, but he eventually does so, one over-large hand grudgingly extended to hers.
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"Sure," she says, a little flatly, if she's honest with herself, because sure. If he really wants to come back after getting out of this, she can drop him off, and then, unfortunately, he'll just have to be on his own.
He holds a hand out to her finally and Sarah smiles, taking it with absolutely no show of surprise or distaste as to its size, the inhuman skin, or the fact that he looks like he'd really rather not be offering it to begin with. "Bit closer, darling, you'll have to hold tight. It's a rough ride, as I said before," she reminds him and she moves closer to him, letting him decide how exactly he'll feel most secure hanging on. "You don't want to fall, mate, I'll never bloody find you if you do, so hold tight," she says, more serious in tone. Only once she's satisfied that he won't drop off into the Vortex at a sudden jolt does Sarah finally punch in the coordinates for one of her favorite Leisure Planets; the one with the Midnight Tour and the best spa she's quite literally ever had the pleasure of indulging herself in.
"Right, off we go!" she announces. "No throwing up on me," she says, reminding him of her only rule, and then she taps on the screen of her Vortex Manipulator to send them off into the Vortex.
...only, nothing happens.
Sarah blinks, looking confused, and taps the screen again.
Nothing.
"What," she says flatly, sounding irritated. "Come on, you powered back on, now do your job," she tells it as though it can hear her. For all Luther knows, it can. The screen fades from its bright blue to a dull red and flashes an error message.
VORTEX OFFLINE. VOYAGE ABORTED.
"Vortex offline, what the bloody...?" she asks, mostly to herself, letting go of Luther and taking a step back to give the situation her full focus. She taps the screen again when it turns blue once more. Again, it turns red and flashes the error message.
VORTEX OFFLINE. VOYAGE ABORTED.
"Oh, you've got to be fucking kidding me...no wonder I fell of course. Some fucking idiot took the whole goddamned Vortex offline! We're both stuck, now!" she complains. "The fuck am I supposed to bloody do on Earth End with no fucking supplies?! Useless piece of shit," she adds, giving the Vortex Manipulator a dirty look like it's at fault for her being stuck here.
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But then the light on her wrist fades, and he feels his hope fade with it, even as Sarah's temper jacks upwards. There is that very small, very quiet voice at the back of his head that murmurs: Oh, shit.
"Your tech's broken?" he asks politely, standing next to her with his hands now dangling helplessly by his sides. Once again, Luther has the distinct sensation of the ground being unsteady beneath his feet, and the wrong Hargreeves brother being saddled with this woman. There's only one of them who'd know what to do in the event of being stuck in time and, well, he notably isn't here.
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...unless it is, she thinks, but quickly brushes that off. There's no way that just because he and whoever else was included in the "we" to whom he'd been referring took down the entire time-space continuum. No way.
"Right, it's okay," she tells herself aloud for both of them to hear. "It's fine. It's just a glitch; it'll come back online and we'll go. There are no survivors of Earth End, so there's no way that we get stuck here. Fixed events don't change that much."
Do they?
Clearing her throat, Sarah takes in a deep breath and huffs it out softly. "Okay, well..." She shrugs a small backpack, hidden largely from view by both its small size and the fact that the straps are thin rope rather than thick fabric, off her shoulders, and reaches into it to pull out a flask of Hypervodka. "I reckon we entertain ourselves for a bit, then." Sarah takes a pull from the flask and then lifts her eyebrows in question, holding it out to offer to him.
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"You don't think finding real supplies is more important, right about now?" There's a stiffness to Luther's voice, a faint disapproval. (Welcome to meeting the persnickety stick-in-the-mud Number One, Sarah!)
He's wearing a larger and sturdier canvas backpack, too, but he's only been gathering enough canned goods to feed one person, not two. He's got that car a block over, but no real place to sleep; he's been roaming, sleeping cramped in the backseat, moving on and on in that vain search for his family, because the alternative was just to sit down in the rubble and give up. But if they really are stuck here together—
His atrophied planning instincts are slowly creaking back into motion. Because if so, they should probably stop. Find a place to hole up, and start turning it into an actual base, a safehouse. (Somewhere Five can find him, later.)
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"Why? We're not staying, darling. It'll come back online, it's never been offline for more than maintenance; few hours at most," she says cooly with a confidence that isn't in any way earned. All those "few hours long" downtimes were scheduled, after all. There certainly hadn't been any Agents actively out on missions during scheduled downtimes.
Partially in an effort to distract him from his clear disapproval of her admittedly unprofessional behavior of drinking on the job and partially in an attempt to gauge him, Sarah smirks a little at him. "You know, I could think of a few ways to pass the time that would be a lot more fun than looking for supplies we won't need," she says, her tone intentionally smooth and edging into suggestive. Just in case she needs to be a little bit more blatant, Sarah drops a wink at him and then lifts her eyebrows in a silent what do you say? sort of expression.
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Once upon a time, twelve-odd years ago, he'd been all winking and grinning in front of the crowds, practically having to beat the teenaged fans away with a stick.
It's been a long, long time since then, though.
"You're joking," he says flatly. It's not even the unprofessional nature of it while on the clock; stripped of the Academy, he doesn't feel much like they're on a mission. It's more like some cornered animal at the back of his mind, trying to work out all the angles, convinced it must be a trick of some kind, because of course he's noticed that the time agent is gorgeous. So it simply doesn't track. Has to be some kind of malicious joke, toying with him.
"It's not like I'm— You're—" he starts, stutters, stops. Grinds to another halt. Doesn't know what to do with his hands anymore, so instead he scrubs at his face and says, "If it's a few hours, we can just wait it out."
He's patient. He can wait things out.
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Whether he's flustered or just annoyed at her willingness — under the duress of a stressful situation, mind — to drop any pretense of her professionalism, Sarah's not really sure, but either way, she gathers that he isn't interested.
Until he stammers over an addendum, and Sarah's off to the races.
"It's not like you're what, darling?" she asks. "I'm what?" She looks genuinely interested to hear him fill in those blanks and that's because she is genuinely interested to hear him fill in those blanks. Sarah's dying to know what he'd been about to say. To someone like her, starting a sentence only to abandon it, change tack, and abandon that sentence as well...? Christ, he might as well be offering her a spliff, taking it away, offering it once more, and then snapping the bloody thing in half and flushing it down a toilet. Why in God's name would anyone do something so heinously cruel and thoughtless? Honestly.
Her eyes move over him once again as he shows a more blatant display of his discomfort, scrubbing his face with both hands. "If you insist," she agrees with a shrug, letting him off the hook for the moment and unbuttoning the top three buttons of her crisp, white blouse. She looks around, wrinkling her nose. "Fuck's sake, how are you wearing that coat still. It's all fire and bloody brimstone, aren't you hot? I'm sweating, mate..."
She isn't doing it to get a rise out of him; Sarah's sincerely uncomfortable in the heat that comes with being surrounded in small, smouldering fires and being rained on by falling ash.
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So Luther takes the opportunity to choose a particularly large chunk of stone which used to be a store wall, sit down, and make himself comfortable for the wait. As comfortable as he can be, anyway. She's right, it is far too warm after the fires, so it's distinctly unpleasant to be wearing that long baggy coat and the turtleneck tugged up to his throat, but he'd never really considered loosening up. Even if he'd been by himself for weeks. Even alone on the moon, he hadn't ever relaxed that habit or bared some skin for comfort; hadn't even wanted to have it within view for himself.
"I'm fine," he says, extremely unconvincingly. His gaze follows the flick and movement of Sarah's hand, accidentally drifts down to watch as she unbuttons the top of her shirt, then his gaze snaps back to his boots and what must be a fascinating pile of rubble. He fumbles with his backpack and pulls out his own bottle of lukewarm water, takes a sip.
"Is this your, uh. First trip to an apocalypse?"
In terms of icebreakers, it's one of the weirder ones he's ever gotten to try.
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In spite of the fact that the icebreaker is weak, Sarah hardly notices as she tugs lightly on the top button that's still fastened, creating a fanning effect with her shirt. "It's not, actually," she replies casually. "I mean, well..." she pauses thoughtfully and shrugs again. "It's my first time having front row seats, so to speak. I did have box tickets for the Implosion, but...I reckon that's not what you meant. So, yeah, I suppose it is and I gotta tell you, mate, in spite of the brilliant view, 1 out of 5 stars, definitely would not recommend. I'd give it zero stars if I could," she replies and when she mentions the view, she gives a vague gesture in Luther's direction.
"How long have you been stuck on this burning rock, anyway?" she wonders aloud. She gives another gesture, this time to her own visage. "D'you always wear it like that or is that Earth End Chic?"
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"A few weeks," he says wearily. Only a few weeks and yet, with that looming steadily-growing panic that his family was likely dead or scattered across the timeline, and he was all on his own... It had felt like longer.
"And I... I mean, yeah, the environment's kinda run down my clothes. And I haven't shaved in a while." Luther scrubs at his face again, this time running his fingers along the rough-grown stubble. After a while, he'd stopped bothering to scrounge for razors and shaving cream, not finding it a necessity. It's not as bad as the wild flyaway disaster he'd had on his face after four years on the moon, gone absolutely to seed, but the beard is still messier than he'd ordinarily have liked to meet someone with. Number One was supposed to be perfectly clean-cut, presentable, dashing. A figure for the magazine covers. He winces internally.
"You were right about one thing, though. I don't think there's anybody else around. You're the first person I've seen this whole time."
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She can't help taking note of the way he's scrubbing at his face again and Sarah wonders to herself whether it's some sort of nervous tick or whether he's just used to being clean-shaven and the unwanted facial hair is itchy. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, the beard's working for you," she says flippantly.
It isn't surprising to her that there's been no one else around. Of course there hasn't been; no one survives, so why should there be? He's the anomaly, not the fact that he's alone. "How lucky for you that the first person you come across happens to be a Time Agent who can whisk you away just as soon as the Vortex comes back online!" she chirps at him with a genuine smile because she's willing herself to actually believe that she's not really going to be stuck here. She can't be.
"So tell me about yourself, Luther. What's with the Number One, hey? You explained the Space bit; call me curious. Number one what, exactly?" she asks conversationally.
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It's odd, having to introduce himself. Even if he's been in seclusion for the past decade-plus, he's always known that people knew who he was: his face on the covers, in magazines, TV interviews, in books and comic books and action figures (even if those toys no longer looked like him).
"Number One of the Umbrella Academy. You really haven't heard of us?" He pauses, long enough to see the lack of recognition on her face, then he shakes his head. Guess there's no real reason to expect their legacy to persist another three thousand years; not when the world that made them lies broken and burning. (That's where their legacy leads.)
"We're a team of six. Superheroes, with special powers. We've been raised and trained to fight extreme threats that ordinary people can't, and to save the world. We were numbered in terms of usefulness. And I'm the leader, so I'm Number One."
Is he, though? There's that twinge of self-doubt; the new revelations that despite all his years of sacrifice and dedication, he'd still been shunted to the side. Luther still hasn't had time to really process that. So he just parrots off the PR line instead, the description of the Hargreeves that comes automatically, like muscle memory. It's easier, particularly with a stranger.
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Still, even as she shakes her head and then listens to him explaining, she finds herself smiling a little. It figures he'd be on some sort of team or another to protect people — a big hulking guy like that, she'd have guessed a branch of the military, but superheroes? Sure — or generally being do-gooders.
Having no context beyond what he's just said, Sarah has no idea the landmine on which she's about to step when she jokes, "numbered in terms of usefulness? Christ, imaging being Number Six in that lineup," with a huff of amusement at the idea of it. How embarrassing to have to wear your low worth as a name of sorts; Sarah can't imagine it. "Ever have any particularly exciting missions, then?"
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He's had thirteen years to go over and over that calcified wound, though, so Luther's expression is a carefully-controlled exercise in neutrality. Trying to remember the boilerplate statements they were supposed to pull out, soundbites for the reporters about the Horror's death. Because what do you say about Ben Hargreeves? That death on Luther's conscience, the albatross hanging around his neck, the responsibility that he'd squandered and misplayed. The Monocle had pinpointed Ben as the weakest link, and he was the first to die, so maybe the man was right.
"Could be worse," he says carefully. "There's a Number Seven, and she wasn't even on the team."
He should feel guilty about that, horrid for how they all excluded Vanya, but at least it's a distraction from the more palpable guilt writhing deep in his gut over Ben. Thankfully, talking about exciting missions is easier.
"Plenty. You want to hear about the psychotic magician, the killer robots, or the designer of the Eiffel Tower?"
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"Wait, if you lot were a superhero team and she wasn't on the team, then why did she have a number? That makes no sense, mate," she points out.
For a moment, to his offer of stories, she nearly considers telling him to surprise her, but then. Well. She thinks of the Cybermen first and then, worse, the Daleks when he says killer robots and Sarah latches on with great interest, curious to find out how his team would've managed to beat out either of those species.
"Killer robots, absolutely," she says eagerly, settling down, finally, to sit on her own oversized piece of debris and leaning forward, elbows on her knees and cradling her face in her hands like an excited child waiting to hear a story.
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It's not the truth, but it's close enough for now.
He's not good at this, not good at casual conversation and socialising — the prospect of killing a whole couple hours with a complete stranger is frankly a little terrifying — but when she asks about the robots, she's managed to get Luther onto one of his favourite subjects. Nostalgia, the rose-tinted glasses, looking back fondly on adrenaline-ridden missions. Action and derring-do and a time when all his family were together, and when he had a purpose and an important role to play. The height of his life.
The best of times, the worst of times.
So the conversation is going, even to his own surprise, easier. "Dr Terminal," Luther says, and there's even a kind of affectionate wistfulness when he names one of their biggest nemeses, one of their father's enemies who haunted them over and over and over.
"He had a device on his chest that converted matter into energy, so he kept devouring things to keep himself ticking and stay alive. People, plants, buildings... it was out of control before we managed to stop him. He also developed flying robots which he called the Terminauts. They're blocky, they kinda just looked like flying buckets, but they had some wicked lasers and guns. Even after we put him away, more of the Terminauts kept coming back. They'd been programmed to attack anytime the team reformed, grouped up again. Kinda pesky, like an infestation that just won't leave. They were set to recognise the team and target us specifically."
A twitch at the corner of his mouth. "Took them down, too."
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"Flying buckets or flying salt and pepper shakers?" she interrupts but not forcibly enough to make him stop and she doesn't intend to push that, either, because this story sounds so much like the sort of thing other branches of the Time Agency would've handled. Or, if the stories of the Last Time Lord are to be believed, The Doctor.
When he finishes, he looks a little bit proud of himself and Sarah grins. It's about the most animated and pleased she's seen him thus far and she takes mental note of that. Clearly, getting him to talk more about his adventures is the way to go.
"How'd you do it?" she asks. "I always wanted to be in the field fighting, yeah? Trust me when I say my dream was not bouncing around time looking for objects misplaced in the timeline to prevent cracks in the vortex, but I evidently went down on all the wrong superior officers, so you'll forgive me if I'm living a bit vicariously right now, I hope." Her body language suggests she's rapt because she is. It sounds to her like he got to do all the sorts of things she always wanted to and never managed to. She supposes when she goes back, maybe these stories will have bolstered her enough to try again.
Her wrist vibrates then with an incoming message and Sarah startles, her focus pulled away from Luther as she scrambles to her feet. Sarah quickly rebuttons her blouse all the way up and runs her fingers through her hair, lifts her head high, clears her throat, and then lifts her arm out in front of her before tapping on the face of the Vortex Manipulator to activate what she assumes is a holocall.
What Sarah expects is for a hologram of her superior officer to project into the air from off the Vortex Manipulator explaining to her what's going on, what the potential ETA will be, and how to proceed with caution if there's actually some sort of emergency situation.
What she gets instead is an offline recording that she's never seen outside of her original Agency training. In fact, her trainers had assured the group that they'd never see it because it hadn't ever been deployed and they couldn't foresee it ever being deployed, and her stomach drops with nausea as the pre-recorded announcement starts to play in a smooth, feminine voice coupled with a static holographic image of the head of the entire agency smiling vacantly back at her spinning in place.
Hello, Agent.
We regret to inform you that the unthinkable has occurred. At this time, the Vortex has been taken permanently offline due to irreparable damage. Please prepare to remain in your current location indefinitely. We apologize for any inconvenience.
Thank you for your service.
Sarah stares blankly at the holograph, trying to process it. By the third playback, Sarah absently taps the screen to stop it playing a fourth, her hand on autopilot as she sinks down onto the rock again.
...prepare to remain in your current location indefinitely.
Thank you for your service.
Her chest heaves slightly with a shuddering breath in and back out again. Sarah still hasn't looked back at Luther so much as she's in shock, staring at nothing in particular and blinking rapidly as if trying to will her body to snap out of it so that she can think properly.
So that's why no one is permitted to travel to fixed points in time, she thinks miserably. Not because the Agency is afraid that Agents will alter the timeline...because they could be trapped there forever with alien, time-inappropriate tech.
"Fuck..." she murmurs to herself. Fuck, indeed.
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But then, before he could answer any more of her questions (with Sarah on the edge of her rundown makeshift seat, Luther on the receiving end of that mega-watt rapt attention, but he doesn't mind for once, because it's just like the interview questions he used to answer all the time...) Before he can answer, that message goes off. He sits patiently and watches in interest over her shoulder, part of his mind ticking over the tech that must be involved, wondering how the hologram itself works. They'd only had TV and radio, here. Reginald would've loved to get his hands on this and take it apart.
That blandly-neutral customer service voice, chirpy and unflappable, sits in stark contrast to the impact of what the floating head just told them. He still doesn't really know what the Vortex is, but he understands the connotations, what this means for them. Indefinitely is clear-cut enough. All of Sarah's loose cheerful demeanour is blown out the window, as she stares straight ahead in numb shock, and Luther feels a cold dread sinking into his bones.
He picks up on her tension and anxiety (he's always been fine-tuned for that, alert for a plummeting mood, walking on eggshells around their father), and so he feels his own ratchet up in return. This had seemed like a lifeline out of here, out of this lifeless expanse, a shred of blossoming hope, and now—
Shit.
"That, uh." He pauses. Tries to talk through a suddenly-dry throat. "That doesn't sound great."
Understatements, Luther!!
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