for ltbrownnoser.

[obediences]

lost in time.

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[obediences]

Five thousand and fifty two. Those numbers are clearly a surprise, and Luther seems to reel a little more upon hearing them. He's always known and half-suspected there were more things on heaven and earth, sure — but jesus, some things you don't expect. "Wow," he says, blurting out the word, some more of that stunned awe slipping loose.

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.

[ltbrownnoser]

One trip, she wants to remind him, but if it'll get them off this wasteland for her to keep her mouth shut until they've already gone, well, then sometimes a girl's gotta do what a girl's gotta do. There's no point coming back here because even if she did bring him straight back here, what of it? She's not an interdimensional chauffeur, so she'd just have to, again, leave him here.

"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.

[obediences]

Despite himself, he'd started to feel that tell-tale little flicker of hope and excitement in his chest — because at least it'd be human company again, and a ticket off this ruined planet that he feels far, far too responsible for breaking, and a potential lead on what seems like a set of time travellers (sorry, agents) who could maybe help him track down Five...

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.

[ltbrownnoser]

Shaking her head, Sarah looks up at Luther. "No, my tech is working just fine. The time-space continuum is broken," she says patiently if only because it isn't his fault that the Vortex isn't available to connect to at the moment.

...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.

[obediences]

And he stares down the line of her arm, her hand, to the bottle she's offering with its bright gold liquod. The brand and the text are unfamiliar and nothing that's been seen on Earth 'til now, but he recognises a liquor bottle when he sees one. There's a small throb in his temple, a reminder of a killer hangover that seems like an entire lifetime ago but was only... what, a day before the apocalypse? Two at most?

"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.)

[ltbrownnoser]

When he doesn't take the flask after a few seconds, Sarah gives a facial shrug and takes another drink herself before capping it and putting it back in her bag with a quiet, "suit yourself." The change in his tone would be a lot more annoying if not for the Hypervodka, so she's especially glad she'd taken it out.

"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.

[obediences]

And what she gets in return is... a long, disbelieving stare, another metaphorical blue screen of death when Luther simply doesn't know how to respond to that. Surely he'd misheard that— except then Sarah goes ahead and makes it abundantly clear with that eyebrow-waggle. It's like Klaus' most blatant, over-the-top flirtations, except suddenly directed at him like a thousand-watt bulb. (Something he's rarely been on the receiving end of, except that one time in the club, with the girl— which he can barely remember.)

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.

[ltbrownnoser]

Sarah gives him a little facial shrug. "Am I, though?" she challenges lightly, cocking her eyebrows just once more.

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.

[obediences]

He looks like a deer in the headlights when she calls him out on it (that stuttering, foot-in-mouth, absolutely out of his element because he barely even knows how to carry on a normal conversation these days, let alone—), but thankfully, Sarah lets him loose a moment later. Like a worm squirming on a hook.

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.

[ltbrownnoser]

Her eyebrows lift dubiously at his assertion. "Right, sure you are, my love," she says with just the slightest taste of sarcasm on her tongue. He must be roasting in that. It never occurs to her that he might be uncomfortable in his own skin because she's always been comfortable in her own and she can't relate to that. Besides, he's well fit, so she wouldn't be able to understand it, even if she could relate.

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?"

[obediences]

Despite his faint irritation and confusion, despite this mysterious stranger's attitude which is already leaving him wrong-footed and off-kilter— he finds that he still wants to ask her everything. To drink up all her stories. To hear everything.

"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."

[ltbrownnoser]

"Oof," comes her sympathetic and unladylike response. A few weeks is a long time to be alone if you ask Sarah. Generally speaking, most species of sentient beings she's come into contact with are social creatures and she can't imagine whatever Luther is, is different.

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.

[obediences]

Luther's still camped out on that lump of stone, backpack slumped between his legs. At Sarah's chirpiness, he tries to give a grateful smile back, but it feels wrong on his face, looks a bit too strained, and he's sure it looks horrifically unnatural. So he soon lets his expression fall back to a placid neutral.

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.

[ltbrownnoser]

To her credit, Sarah does at least attempt to look apologetic for her complete and total lack of recognition, but honestly, how can he expect for someone three thousand years in the future to know about one small team of six people living on Earth so close to Earth End? It's a bit silly, isn't it?

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?"

[obediences]

Her joke is innocent enough, but it accidentally rips him open. Another punch to the gut, and it's hard to breathe through it.

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?"

[ltbrownnoser]

Because Sarah doesn't know any better, any emotional impact her joke might've had on Luther is completely lost to her in the moment. He moves on as though there's nothing to it anyway and her eyebrows lift at the mention of a seventh who didn't even get to be on the team. Then, she pauses, those brows dipping down to crease in the center.

"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.

[obediences]

A muscle in his jaw works. "She was one of us, adopted like one of us, but didn't make the team."

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."

[ltbrownnoser]

It takes Sarah's brain a second to catch up with her ears and she blinks. The team was his family? There is so much to unpack there, but she can see the way his jaw was clenching slightly, so she reckons she ought not poke that bear at the mo. She's only mildly interested, anyway.

"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.

[obediences]

"Flying buckets," Luther clarifies, with a hitch of one eyebrow. That question had seemed... awfully specific.

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!!

[ltbrownnoser]

When Luther speaks, it snaps Sarah out of her shock enough to sink back down onto the rock upon which she'd been sitting. Thank you for your service was so fucking...final. Like she's been dismissed from the Agency. Technically, if she can't ever bloody return to it, she supposes she has been.

It takes her several moments to process what he's said and, when she does, Sarah looks up at him with a flat expression. "No, Captain Obvious, it isn't great."

Her voice is clipped and all evidence of the lighthearted Sarah who existed moments ago is gone. She's going to die on this smoldering rock with a total stranger and a prude one, at that. For a fucking iPhone. What a stupid last mission. That's embarrassing.

Sarah's hands move to cover her face as she lowers her head. She just needs a minute. She needs a minute to process and then she'll have to make it work. She'll keep checking the Vortex Manipulator until the charge runs down and she'll power it down between checks so that the charge lasts longer. It can't really be irreparably damaged. It's the bloody Vortex; it's everything.

After a long moment, Sarah sniffs, scrubs her hands down her face and lets them fall away as she looks up again. "Guess we're the last two people on Earth. God, I fucking hate the twenty-first century..." she sighs. Then, Sarah turns her eyes on Luther. "What were you saying about supplies before?" She does try to sound a bit more cheerful, but it falls a little flat in spite of her efforts.

[obediences]

There's that helpless urge, despite himself, to do... something. Say something to make it better, to bridge the gap, to pick her back up and press some steel back into her spine.

But Lieutenant Sarah Sanders is a stranger to him. Luther isn't the most comforting person by a long shot, but once upon a time, he at least knew the right buttons to press and leverage to force Klaus out of one of his funks; to make Diego swallow his bitterness and listen to an order; to talk Allison through a mid-battlefield panic attack and get her back in line.

Here, though, he doesn't know what to do or say. And even after this brief association with her, it's already strange to see the way Sarah's facade crumbles, that carefree creature vanishing right in front of his eyes. He shifts; restless, discomfited.

Behind it all, however, there's also a kernel of stubbornness growing even in the face of this disaster. If Five could survive in the apocalypse alone, then so could One.

(And at least Luther isn't alone. If he isn't alone this time, then he can handle this.)

"Supplies. We need to gather supplies," he says, because focusing on logistics and a battle plan has always been Luther's crutch. To get him through moments like this.

"There's still grocery stores, and non-perishable foodstuffs. We can get clothes, weapons, put together some kind of safehouse. Set up camp for— however long it takes— and you can keep checking in with your thing. Right?"

[ltbrownnoser]

One thing Sarah can credit herself with is that, in spite of the fact that she has every reason to, she doesn't actually feel compelled to cry right now. She feels drained and upset and she's going to miss the hell out of her life, but she doesn't want to cry. Maybe that comes from her training or maybe she's just never been a particularly emotional person, but all she takes is a few moments to collect herself and give herself a little bit of time to be generally upset and hopeless before she pulls it together. She's still the one with the military ranking; Number One of the Umbrella Academy or not, he's still the civilian and she's still a military officer which means it's still her job to be the logical one running the show.

That said, she's willing to concede that he's clearly been here longer and knows, generally speaking, what surrounds them well enough for her to defer to his expertise in the collection of supplies, at least. She pushes herself back to her feet. "I got that bit, clearly we need to gather supplies. I meant more along the lines of what have you got and what do we still need," she says, but he's already answered is, so she isn't asking again, so much as explaining herself.

Looking around, Sarah worries at her bottom lip with her teeth thoughtfully. "Yeah, I can keep checking it, until the battery dies. It's got a full charge, but a full charge only lasts 36 hours," she sighs and, with that, she's reminded to shut it off entirely to conserve that charge. "That's the doomsday message they warn us about in training but assure us we'll never have to prepare for because we'll never hear it. So, I reckon it'll be a while before there's a change. Probably should only check it once a day, if that. If the Vortex is damaged badly enough for them to feel inclined to send out that message in the first place, it's a waste of battery for me to even bother looking for the next week, at least. It should still afford me spatial jumping in a pinch if we need it, but that'll eat a little more battery than I'd like, so weapons are definitely preferable."

She's going to need a whole new weapon, she figures, since the one she currently has, while loaded, isn't going to be invented for another twenty-five hundred years, at least, so the likelihood of finding the proper charging pad or backup ammunition for cases wherein the battery for the taser and pain-ray (a non-lethal version of the death-ray her model doesn't possess) features is dead are incredibly low.

"I'll be honest, I'm not as worried about clothes as I am food and water. We can only survive for so long before resources run out, mate. Maybe a few years if we bounce around enough. Eventually, non-perishables are going to run out. Bottled water will run out and we'll have to move somewhere that there's natural water and hope that we can properly filter it. There isn't any life left, so we can't forage or hunt... The prognosis is not good," she confesses, even though she assumes he's already thought of all of this. It needs to be said so that they're both on the same page. "Did any buildings survive the blast enough to be a decent base for shelter?"

[obediences]

"Spatial jumping," Luther repeats, just echoing her words, and there's a kind of affectionate wistfulness in that, too. She really should meet Five.

But then, Sarah's next few words make him stiffen in his seat, then clamber back up to his feet — not relaxed enough to loll about on the ground, needing to look her in the eye. "Years," he says, trying to wrap his mind around it. Despite what the hologram had said (indefinitely), he'd still instinctively assumed that her agency was advanced enough to deal with it, to repair the systems. That this Vortex thing might just be down for, what, days? Weeks? Like whenever the world spun and his radio on the moon went on the fritz, ebbing into incomprehensible static. It shouldn't take as long as years. But she's already planning for the long haul, and—

He tries to take a deep breath. Considers how much to tell her; perhaps to try to explain why he feels so assured about this, isn't panicking yet: "I've got some cans in my bag, probably enough for one person for a week, but we'll need more. Most of the buildings are destroyed, but some got spared the blast. I've been sleeping in the car, but there's some shelter. But I know there's going to be enough food around. My brother already did it."

Luther shoots a glance at her. He's aware how absolutely batshit that sounds, but the woman's a time traveller, so this should be right up her alley. He rolls his shoulders, trying to shed some of that wound-up tension as he broaches the thing he didn't, precisely, want to broach. This part still feels a bit like baring family secrets.

"My brother, that's who I'm waiting for. He, uh, accidentally travelled too far into the future — past this fixed point, I guess. He lived out here for thirty years or something before coming back, so I know it's got to be possible. There's enough food and water to get by. He might even manage to come back for us."

[ltbrownnoser]

"Years," Sarah repeats more firmly. If he thinks they're going to send a doomsday message to their Agents over a bloody glitch, he's got to be kidding himself. "Mate, you can't just run in and fix the whole bloody time-space continuum with a screwdriver and a wrench, yeah? If they ever fix it, it's not going to be quick. Without the ability to travel forward in time for solutions? That level of technology just doesn't exist when I'm from. We've learned to harness the power the Vortex has so that we can travel through it, but how it works is a whole other animal, my love," she explains, her voice even and calm in spite of the fact that she feels completely shattered inside.

Shockingly, Sarah doesn't actually look fazed at all by his comment of his brother having already done it. That's how time travel works, of course. How his brother did it is the question, not whether he could.

So when he shoots a look over to her as though he's waiting for her to call him — or the declaration — crazy, she just lifts her eyebrows to prod him to go on.

"Mmm, not past the fixed point. To it," she corrects him. "It's complicated with fixed points. Some last seconds, some can last for a century. Earth End started with the moon exploding — or so I heard — but it doesn't end until closer to 2300 when the planet implodes. They sell tickets to watch it happen. Sounds fucked, doesn't it? The future is shit," she says. "Not as shit as this, but still."

In any case, Luther's point stands. If his brother can have survived for thirty years in this hellscape, then she and Luther can make it at least half as long, given that now the supplies will have to be split where his brother was only, presumably, one person.

She shakes her head though. "He can't come back. Or move forward. He'll be stuck right wherever he is until the Vortex is fixed if it ever is. It's not technology, it's literally the fabric of space and time. It allows for little tears letting people with the tech to jump through time do so. With it out of commission, you can't. Maybe you'll have tech that'll permit spatial jumping by way of particle breakdown and accelerated reassembly but you can't do it through the Vortex which is the fastest, safest way. We're stuck, darling. We just are. So we make the best of it."

She sighs, not particularly liking that, either.

[obediences]

Sarah is describing her mechanics of time travel, and he can feel himself straining slightly to hold it all in his head, to follow along a branch of science that he never actually understood himself. (He can almost hear Five smirking in the back of his mind. Keep up, Luther.)

But one detail does stand out.

"So what if it's... not tech?" he says slowly. "I mentioned superpowers earlier. His was spatial jumps. He could manipulate time and space, jump through it with a thought. He was in the middle of saving us, transporting us through time, getting us away from the moment the moon collides with the Earth. Which worked, just. Not the way any of us expected."

His faith in Five is still strong, even today. Luther had expected to open his eyes somewhere in the past, maybe back before their father's funeral, hand-in-hand with all the rest of the Academy— not breathing dust and ash on his own in a barren world. Five must have lost track of them somewhere, like what Sarah had warned him: You don't want to fall, mate, I'll never bloody find you if you do, so hold tight.

What he doesn't realise, though, is that he just handed Sarah a possible explanation for how and why the entire fabric of space-time just got put through a cosmic blender.