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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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."
no subject
"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.
no subject
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!!
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
no subject
She sighs a little bit. Luther's faith in his brother is something with which Sarah can't really identify anymore, but she can at least understand and appreciate it. As much as she hates to fault it, she—
Wait.
"Hang on," she says, holding up a hand. "What do you mean it worked but just not the way you expected? I was in the middle of a jump for a mission and I got dumped out here when the Vortex glitched."
Sarah's eyes narrow as she puts the pieces together. "Do you mean to tell me," she starts, moving a few steps closer to Luther and standing up straighter, "that this is your lot's fault? You broke the Vortex and trapped me on Earth End until probably bloody forever? That was you lot?! Because, what, your brother didn't know what the fuck he was doing, or what?!" Her voice isn't shrill, but the anger is pretty clear.
"There is a reason we train for years before we make a time jump and there is a reason we mostly only do it solo. Are you bloody telling me that you lot just...decided you wanted to change the future, so you just did it without a permit or any forethought of what kind of heinous domino effect you might cause by doing it?"
no subject
He's got a foot and three inches on her, but Sarah's still storming right up to him, which means he has to tilt his head more to look down at the woman as she fumes. His hands settle awkwardly in his pockets for lack of anywhere else to put them, as he weathers her rising anger; like a rocky promontory in the sea, a storm lashing its sides.
"Who needs a permit to save the world?" Luther scoffs; not angry himself, his temper's too slow-boil for that, but he sounds incredulous. "We did what we had to do to get out of there. It was only his third time moving through time. He did his first jump at thirteen, untrained."
It's not quite clear whether this is an excuse for Number Five's lack of practice and fucking it up, or pride in what he'd accomplished to begin with — it might be a mix of both.
"It was either jump with six people in tow or let us all die in that fire. So he jumped. It worked, as in he got us away from it. But we were trying to go to the past, to have another shot at averting the apocalypse. We were supposed to all be together. I wasn't supposed to wind up here, in the future."
There's something pent-up in Luther's chest, a heaviness weighing him down. He's too-aware of their failures and deficiencies, how they'd set out to the world only to break it instead — like being handed a precious vase and dropping it on the floor. They'd had one job, as far as he was concerned, and they'd failed it.
no subject
It's probably best that Sarah's not privy to the fact that Luther's brother worked for an organization not too terribly unlike the Time Agency because that would alert her to the fact that he'd have known that the apocalypse was always going to happen on this planet and this time and that nothing he could do was ever going to stop it, not really. Put it off, maybe, for a few days or a week, but not stop it.
In fact, the only thing that has her stepping away again and trying to regain her cool is the assumption that these self-proclaimed superheroes are little more than civilian aliens raised to think that they're humans and that they're just special rather than from other humanoid species entirely thus explaining their uncanny abilities. Trapped in a wasteland for their mistakes or not, it isn't Sarah's place to force an existential crisis on Luther and she won't. But she's thinking it, all the same. The arrogance of Americans will never cease to amaze her, though, that's for bloody sure.
"Well, fat lot of good that did, trying to jump seven people through a tear in the universe large enough to fit two, at most. Now we're all stuck wherever we are, so...great."
Sarcasm is still heavy on her lips but she shakes her head, closing her eyes and clenching her jaw to keep from saying anything else that would, at this point, be little more than intentionally hurtful just to even the score of the blow he's just landed on her with the news that this was no random glitch in the Vortex or an accident. This was he and his siblings deciding that they know better than the universe and actively trying to change the future, even though any idiot with even a passing interest in the idea of time travel knows that meddling with the past in an effort to change the future never ends well. This was Luther and his siblings intentionally breaking time because they were arrogant — or perhaps stupid enough — to think that they could play God with it.
Sarah takes a deep breath, opens her mouth to finally speak, thinks better of it and closes it once more, and finally shakes her head again, lifting a hand as if to stop either or both of them from saying anything beyond the, "forget it," that she utters more to herself than to him.
Then, she turns on her heel and starts to stalk off angrily. Right, she's just going to have to survive on her own because now she knows that this bloke is part of a team that fancies themselves somehow invincible to the laws of space and time, never mind common sense, and that makes him a liability. The idea of trying to survive on her own in this is anything but appealing, but she tells herself it'll be safer that way.
no subject
(Because only the entire world could be worth it. Could be worth those decisions. Could be worth suffocating his own little sister and locking her in a cage.)
Eventually, though, he clamps down his jaw and tries not to say more, tries not to dig his grave any deeper just as Sarah tries to get her own anger under control. Luther exhales slowly, tries to press all that frustration down and bottle it up (as he's done for thirty years, as he's always done).
But it is, frankly, typical that the Umbrella Academy would be invincible to common sense. They were taught to see themselves as gods, above the common rabble — they were raised by a meddling manipulative egomaniac to think they're better than the average human civilian. An inflated sense of their own importance, weaned on flashing camera bulbs and an adoring public. Of course they thought they could change the course of an entire timeline, drag fate off its rails and redirect it.
"Hey," Luther says out loud as she starts marching silently away. Then, when Sarah doesn't answer him: "Hey. Where are you going?"
Before he's even fully thought about it, he's already stomping after, trailing Sarah not entirely unlike a lost puppy. (It's instinctive, automatic, and he hasn't even fully articulated the decision to himself before his feet are already moving: all he knows is that he can't be alone again.)
"We can't split up."
no subject
Hearing him call after her, Sarah ignores him, rolling her eyes. But when he presses on, Sarah stops and rounds on him. "The fuck do you care?" she asks. "Your brother will be back to help you go on saving the world, right? You don't need me or my tech."
Her eyebrows lift, challenging him to try to tell her what to do and he doesn't disappoint.
"Oh no?" she asks, huffing an incredulous laugh. "They've thanked me for my service; that's a send-off, darling, so that means I'm no longer military so I'm no longer obligated to protect civilians. I'm going to look out for number one and I don't mean you," she says flatly before adding, "so watch me."
And with that, she turns from him again to start off again. Pride has gotten the best of her; Sarah has no idea where she's going or what the plan might be. Honestly, as much of a liability as he will probably be, he would also admittedly be an asset, she just isn't willing to concede to that anymore. If he persists, she'll eventually wear down when she cools off, but for now, her temper flare has left reason on somewhat shaky ground. She stumbles slightly on debris, swears, and makes her way to the road she sees up ahead. If nothing else, that'll lead somewhere. Where is anyone's guess, but at least she knows that it's meant to transport people from one place to another, so if she follows it long enough, she's liable to find something of use.
no subject
As she keeps going, he keeps following: stepping easily over rubble, occasionally clambering a little, but easily keeping pace with his long legs. He realises in a distant sort of way that it's almost darkly funny, that they'd go from being complete strangers, to arguing, to him helplessly following her like there's a leash running taut between Sarah Sanders and Luther Hargreeves and it keeps dragging him after.
But he simply can't be alone again.
He doesn't say anything more for now, though, just keeps walking after that blonde figure (her shoulders set, swearing). Luther's starting to sift through the tools in his toolkit and deciding, in a roundabout way, to deal with her like he does Diego. Let that whiplash anger burn itself out if it can.
no subject
Frankly, it's infuriating that she can hear him just following her and if she weren't a better person, she'd have pulled her gun on him just to get the fucking point across. She's had that level of reaction trained out of her by the military years ago.
Almost an hour later, she's got to give it to the guy, he's a persistent little bugger. When Sarah has to stop and sit down because her legs feel a bit like jelly — she's a bit more out of shape than she'd realized, evidently — he's still trailing after her like a stray dog waiting for her to drop a scrap or something particularly tasty. She's too tired to keep shouting at him. Instead, she just looks up at him with her expression flat with the expression of her eyebrows both lifted.
"What." It isn't a question.
no subject
When Sarah looks up at him, he doesn't miss a beat in answering: "We can't split up."
Stolid as a boulder and just as implacable, as if the past hour hasn't happened at all. As if nothing's changed at all. Before that aggravating repetition might risk annoying her, though, Luther adds wearily, "Or, well, we can. But speaking from experience, I can tell you that solitude gets to you after a while. It's not fun and it's not healthy. And besides, two sets of eyes are better than one."
He's spent the past hour considering what angle to take with her, and in the end, he leans on the practicality of it, the pragmatic considerations, in the hopes that that'll break through and convince her. And that mention of solitude was carefully-phrased, as vague as he could make it, so it could mostly sound like he was just referring to the last few weeks and not anything longer.
no subject
He doesn't disappoint. Sarah frowns and heaves a long-suffering sigh. He's right, of course, but that doesn't make it any less appealing in her state of frustration.
For a long moment, Sarah just looks back at him. When she finally speaks, she sounds too tired to be angry. "I'm still angry," she warns him, even though she doesn't sound it at all. Emotionally, she's a little too drained to have any bite left. That could change, but for now, he's got that in his favor.
"There's bound to be something on this road sooner or later, but if you already know the road, I'm open to suggestions on whether to keep going in this direction or turn around," she offers almost grudgingly.
no subject
"I don't know what's ahead, but there isn't much behind, either. There should be a big warehouse store a couple miles over that way, though." He jerks a thumb in the direction of north. "Do you know how to hotwire cars? Some of them are still running. If we can get one running, we can head out there, pick up what food we can, then start looking for well-situated shelter."
Talking logistics, making plans, all of it is just so comfortingly familiar that Luther realises a moment later that it's something of a comfort blanket. Falling back into strategising, building an approach for the mission they've found themselves in (even if it's not a mission at all). Just having someone to bounce those thoughts off is a relief, too. It's already an improvement over the last few weeks.
He shifts his weight from foot-to-foot, a little restlessly. There's an apology on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn't even know where to begin—
So he doesn't. Instead: "Ready to go?"