obediences | for ltbrownnoser.

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for ltbrownnoser.

lost in time.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grinning slightly, Sarah shrugs. "Weird is relative," she intones. For her, they're not that weird because there's no normal left when she's been traveling through time and space for so many years. But for him, sure, she imagines any of those species would sound weird, especially the Ood. One has to be an incredibly gentle and harmless creature to hold one of their brains in their hands.

His question trails off and it takes Sarah a second, but she barks out a laugh when her brain catches up with his words. "Have I fucked an Ood? No, darling. I reckon they'd have higher standards than having sex with human beings. I wouldn't've been opposed, though, if that's what you're asking. If one was particularly saucy," she replies with a shrug, still laughing a little.

When the laughter subsides a little, her smile melts into a smirk and she looks him up and down. "Why, love? Wondering whether whatever you're hiding is too weird for me to want to fuck? Whatever it is, short of multiple penises, I can promise you I like your face enough to be at least mildly interested if that makes you feel better," she tells him casually, giving him another once over and shrugging. "I've got a size fetish. You'd scratch the itch quite nicely, for whatever that's worth."

He should've known better than to prod this particular button, even accidentally; their one day together has been enough to show him that Lieutenant Sarah Sanders is shameless.

"No, I, uh. I was just curious." First Luther blanches, and then he flushes: it's quite the face journey, the surprise and then self-consciousness on his face that rearranges itself into embarrassment. His memories of the rave are practically a blank haze, smeared over by drugs and several bottles of booze, but sometimes a vague sentence floats out of the void, catches on his recollection: Huge fan of the furries.

He presses himself further back against the wall, and looks at Sarah like she's a puzzle he can't quite work out; doesn't understand how someone could take something so private and wear it almost proudly on their sleeve, tell their fetish to a near-complete stranger.

(And on some level, even with all her swearing up and down that it isn't a problem, there's disbelief in his clouded-over expression, too. Incredulity. That there's surely no way she could look at him and not see what he sees, not recoil in disgust like he does at every stray glimpse in the mirror. Because just look at her.)

The man exhales. He's teetering on the edge of a decision. Practicality and pragmatism say hell with it, that he should make himself comfortable, because it's going to be near-impossible trying to sleep in the sweltering, stuffy heat on the second floor. She's repeatedly said she doesn't care. So why not?

But he's stone-cold sober, and if she were another man, or if she weren't quite so pretty, maybe he could've. Instead, Luther shakes his head. "It's not that hot, I'm fine," he says, and it's so patently a lie. He sets the empty can down beside him and abruptly switches subjects again, with all the subtlety of a bulldozer, but there you have it: "Tell me more about your sister. What's she like?"

Sarah's still smirking when she lifts her eyebrows with amused incredulity. Based on the deep blushing, she can only guess he's feeling called out because she's right. That's something, at least, that he could be curious about whether she'd be interested. A girl's got needs after all and if he's the last other person on Earth, well… If she wasn't already interested, she would be eventually.

"Oh," she says, nodding in spite of the fact that she's doubtful at best that there wasn't more to the question. She won't press him on it, lest she cause him to clam up entirely. "Well, no. Not an Ood. I had a Silurian woman once. They've got humanoid bodies but with green and brown scales and reptilian faces. She was brilliant, too," she tells him, sounding a bit wistful. She closes her eyes in a slow blink and smiles, humming a soft sound of pleasantry as she draws on the memory for a tick before opening her eyes again.

The smile slips away, though, when Luther insists that it's not that hot even though they both know it is. Her brow creases slightly and she sighs, shrugging. "Suit yourself," she says softly and then sounds more sympathetic when she goes on, "don't go giving yourself heat stroke on my account, my love. I'd rather turn my back to you so you can take off some of those layers than be the reason you overheat and pass out…"

But Luther wants to move on in the conversation and now it's his turn to make Sarah squirm. It's upsetting to think of her sister because they had been so close but Mia and Jacob had always been closer. Sarah's all but certain he's turned their sister against her by now. "She's eight years younger than me but with time travel I've gotten a big turned around on my own age. I reckon I'm 29 or 30, so let's go with 29 which would make Mia 21. So, you know, rebellious and walking around with her head in the clouds. She always had such big dreams. I haven't seen her in a few years because of work, though, so I dunno what she's been up to lately," she confesses, clearing her throat and looking away briefly. "What about your brother? The one that broke the Vortex," she asks, her eyes shifting back to rest in Luther again.

So she's the same age as him, thereabouts. He files that piece of information away; not because it matters, precisely, but because he's accustomed to mentally logging away little details like that. A rolodex on persons of interest.

"It's been a few years since my family's all been together, too," Luther says. He'd already filled her in on the Hargreeves in general, had touched on the fact that the others had quit the team while he'd stayed, although he'd omitted the details of exactly how long it had been. He's still trying to come to grips with navigating a conversation with someone who isn't a family member, who he can't predict the same way he can the others. There's often the occasional pause where his silences go on a bit too long, his face thoughtful and distant, before he manages to pin the right words into place.

With the way they keep batting subjects back and forth at each other, it feels a bit like a tennis match (not that he's ever actually played tennis; he probably would've disintegrated the ball and the racquet upon impact). This topic's safe enough for Luther to discuss, at least. It doesn't really feel like spilling family secrets, either — the rest of the world doesn't exist anymore, after all.

"He's the one I keep wishing you could meet." Older-little-brother; it's a weird space for his brother to be in. Luther's head tips back against the wall, thinking about it. There's a wistful fondness in his voice too as he recounts this: "He's Number Five. He was an expert at spatial jumping, and grew up teleporting everywhere, all over the house, and he was lethal in combat. The rest of us couldn't really keep up with him. He's... really really smart, but arrogant because of it. He's pretty sure he's always the smartest person in the room, and odds are he's usually right. I mentioned he first jumped at thirteen? That first one was an accident. He was told not to try jumping through time, that it was too dangerous, but he wanted to prove he could do it. "

A slight pause.

"He went too far, past this apocalypse— Earth End, you call it?— anyway, he couldn't come back. Like I mentioned, he lived decades out here. Until he was recruited by an agency of time travellers called the Temps Commission, and worked for them for a few years before he finally managed to rework the equations and come back to us a week before the end of the world." He glances at her. And then, too late, he says cautiously: "The Commission. Any relation to your Time Agency?"

He'd assumed the answer was no... but he's realising he really should've double-checked this beforehand, because otherwise he's just barricaded himself in a room with the enemy.

Dang it.

Sarah's quiet as she listens to Luther talk about his brother and she doesn't ask, but makes a mental note to circle back some other time if it comes up again; he's calling that brother in particular by the number rather than the name and she wonders why.

It doesn't surprise her when she says that the first attempt was an accident. Well, it does on some level, but it doesn't surprise her that he hadn't necessarily meant to go where he'd ended up. There was a reason that everyone had to use tech to travel, including the handful of recruits who were of other biological origin and had the ability to try it on their own.

Time is tricky and time travel is even trickier. They had, at some point, managed to create a device that could link up with the Vortex so that they could pinpoint where and when, exactly, they wanted to be. Without the tech, Luther's brother was — and had again recently, apparently — simply leaping into the Vortex and letting it decide where and when to take him. No kidding that was too dangerous. One can do it, but one cannot control it. Alas, this is a lesson they've all already learned, so Sarah sees no point in articulating her thoughts.

A few moments later, Luther asks her to engage in the conversation beyond simply listening to him and Sarah gives a little facial shrug, shaking her head. "No, not to my knowledge, anyway. They could be from past me," she suggests. "Things haven't really been looking great for the Agency and there's some whispering and rumours about that they were going to disband us within the next year or so," she adds, frowning at the idea. "I reckon if those rumours were true, by the time I get back, they'll have already done it. And, I guess, if that's the case, it'd make room for another organization to be established."

She climbs off the bed, then, and stretches, considering...and surprising herself when she decides against taking her uniform pants off next and just laying on the bed in her undergarments, sprawling herself out and groaning her discomfort at the heat. It seems a bit unfair of her to keep on disrobing when her companion is clearly uncomfortable and overheated but so staunchly unwilling to let her see enough of him to relieve himself of the extra layers.

For no reason that she can necessarily put her finger on, Sarah feels like maybe if she's a little bossier about it, he'll just do himself the favour. So, her hands settle on her hips rather than falling to her sides when she finishes the stretch and lets them lower again. "Right, take off the shirt," she says bluntly. "You're making me hot by proxy and I don't like it. Come on, then. Take something off. Anything at all — except that shoes don't count, so you can take those off but you still have to lose something else. I'm dying here and I'd really love to shed my trousers but it doesn't feel right while you're over here overheating yourself because you're too damn stubborn for your own good."

Edited 2020-07-13 02:21 (UTC)

There's other questions on the tip of his tongue, a condolence to be offered — he knows what it's like when your team falls apart and is disbanded, your whole purpose for existence vanishing — but then Sarah effectively derails him again. He swallows.

"Wait, you're taking off your—"

There's the fleeting panicked thought that he should offer to just move to the room next door. Give each of them some privacy. The barricade's light as a feather to him, he can easily lift it out of the way and then... Then stay in a room without intact windows, exposed to the harsh elements, all that cutting wind and gritty sand from this barren wasteland. A room tactically unsound, potentially unsafe. All his practicality and rationality keeps running headlong into his irrationality and emotion, and the two instincts are at war with each other.

God. This is stupid. He's Number One. As much as Luther's recoiling from what she keeps asking, in some way it stings even more having his vulnerabilities be so obvious. His weaknesses exposed like she can read it in a book. So in the end, he sits there and he looks up at her, thinking over her words.

The corner of his mouth twitches. Shoes don't count? Alright then.

"Okay," he says, solemnly, as straightfaced as Luther can be (which is very)—

And then he tugs off both his fingerless gloves, setting them neatly on the floor next to him. Looks at her with an eyebrow almost half-raised. Like the kind of hedging and stalling you do during strip poker. Is that, perhaps, the first sign of a sense of humour buried deep under that straightlaced exterior?

(And yet, even that little concession did give something away. Luther keeps his hands folded in his lap, but it's now apparent that the backs of his hands are bristling with more hair than they should, the skin oddly leathery.)

It's interesting that Luther's initial takeaway from her monologue was the part where she was meant to take something off. Sarah files that away to poke at a little later. The panic is palpable, but only for a second before she catches something else. Sarah can't put her finger on it right away, but it doesn't take long for him to make his move and Sarah finds that she has, in fact, been bested.

Luther removes his gloves and sets them down beside him, looking back at her and she realizes what the twitch she'd caught at the corner of his mouth had been. He'd been catching himself to keep from giving a smug little smile.

Sarah's lips press together and she huffs out a deep breath through her nose with frustration a moment before she snorts out a laugh and shakes her head. "Fuck's sake, all right. Touché, you shit," she replies, rolling her eyes and grinning in spite of herself.

He isn't going to get off that easily entirely, but she'll shift gears and circle back in a bit. It's not lost to her that the skin of his hands doesn't match the skin of his face, but its leathery-looking texture is still skin, which is far less weird than some other things she's seen.

"Are you uncomfortable with the idea of me taking off more clothes because you don't like what you see or because you do like it, my love?" she asks, lifting an eyebrow. The tone isn't challenging or smug; it's curious and sincere. "You look like a kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar whenever I even so much as mention taking something off, and you won't look me anywhere but exactly in the eye after I do, so...which is it?"

If it's because he doesn't like what he sees, too fucking bad, she thinks. And if it's because he does, well. Perhaps they can or should be passing the time in more entertaining ways than talking about their families and mostly unwittingly picking at one another's emotional scabs as they do so.

To her credit, she still hasn't made a move to take off the trousers even though she can feel them starting to stick to her legs from the thin sheen of sweat forming on her skin. She will, eventually, but she'd rather be able to keep his focus a bit longer to get an answer. Priorities.

"Liking or not is irrelevant," Luther says, or tries to say, ducking and dodging the topic. But then there's another slight pause, a beat while he parses that. He doesn't want her to come away thinking that he's insulting her appearance, so he clears his throat again.

Spaceboy wasn't the best at dissembling even back in the old days (he's all forged from straightforward honesty, cut straight down to the bone), but he's lost the art even more over the past seven years. With no one else around, there's no one to school your expression for, no flashing fleeting reveal of emotion to suppress, no reason to bother suppressing it. So he's gone long-since-rusty in the art of mastering his face for the cameras, for press conferences and flashbulbs and headlines, to be picked over and scrutinised by an attentive public.

He's still seated on the mattress, back against the wall, neck now having to crane to look up at her. Feeling... challenged in a different way, for the first time in uncountable ages, and isn't that a refreshing change of pace? Someone to talk to, to push against, to keep him on his toes and profoundly off-balance. He can't even remember the last time someone came close to touching this particular button.

(No, that's a lie, he knows exactly when. Allison, both of them eighteen, her cocky and mouthy and pushing all the boundaries with Reginald and with Luther, the only person that neither of them could put in their place — and Luther never even wanted to shut down her insubordination, either.)

"You look great," is what he finally settles on, and there's a faint blush in his cheeks. "But I'm just, uh... not used to it. You're a stranger. You don't know me and I don't know you. You shouldn't be..."

The Umbrella Academy themselves had been more accustomed to this sort of thing; those quick costume-changes, businesslike, mustering for an alarm and hopping into uniform and helping each other zip up those combat suits.

But Sarah Sanders isn't the Umbrella Academy.

"I guess I'm just not used to strangers taking off their clothes on a dime. That's all."

Sarah's brow lifts with slight challenge when Luther speaks, but she keeps her mouth shut and waits for him to elaborate before allowing herself to be offended or further frustrated by the fact that he seems a lot more adept at circumventing questions than answering them.

They lift higher still when he trails off before telling her what, exactly, she "shouldn't" be doing.

Sometimes, Sarah forgets how closed-minded and sheltered people from the past are. Especially humans from America in the past. She sighs softly and moves a little closer to him, lowering herself into a crouch — she's still stuck in the bloody trousers, so why not? — so that she can be closer to eye-level with him than she is when she's standing and he's seated.

"Loosen up, darling. We're going to be here for the foreseeable future. You're going to have a really bloody rough go of it if you're constantly worried about what I am or am not wearing. This is nothing, mate. I'm holding back because you look nervous," she points out. By now, were she alone or with someone who seemed less like a cornered animal, she'd be naked by now. "I think we both know how rubbish clothes are when it's hot outside," she adds with a shrug. "This'll hardly be the last time it happens, so you'd do well to get used to it."

His mouth purses.

And it's a better bit of persuasion from her, glossing on that pragmatic nerve — because really, what are they going to do? Are they going to have this argument every single night, for weeks, months, years? They're stuck with each other, for better or worse; she's his ticket out of this apocalypse if her machine gets up and running again, and he's her ticket out if Five ever comes back. He's gonna have to get comfortable to sleep, sometime.

And yet that practicality still keeps colliding with a rigid and unbending instinct, one that doesn't let anyone get close to that still-raw wound; even Allison, where his hands had closed vise-like around hers and dragged her away from him. Pushing everyone away. A snap of metaphorical teeth.

It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't matter, it shouldn't matter. And even four years ago, Luther still would've been an awkward social recluse — a hermit in that empty echoing house, with only a robot mother and a butler for company anymore — but he wouldn't have had this massive hurdle to overcome, at least. Which feels insurpassable. A brick wall, a Mt. Everest. If he looks down, he'll see his bare hands. He doesn't look down.

Instead, he's staring at Sarah hunkered in front of him like he's sizing up a predator, a potential threat. Paying more attention, now, to the close byplay of expression on her face: the frustration that's now given way to patient sympathy. He can't tell if it's about to shift further into pity; he's waiting for it like anticipating a punch, a bullet to the chest. If it's pity, he's going to rip his fucking skin off. He's going to break down that door and leave and walk until the sun rises.

But. So in the end, after a long pause, Luther nods, cautiously. He reaches up and unbuttons his shirt; it's been tight to the neck. He shrugs out of the loose folds of the long sleeves, peeling himself out of it; the outer layers don't fit well, they're too-baggy to hang on his considerable bulk. When he drags it off, he reveals a white undershirt over rippling muscle: huge arms and mottled craggy ape-like skin that matches the one on his hands, except the hair's grown in patchy and uneven and he's nicked with jagged scars. Inhumanly broad shoulders that taper down to a narrow waist, proportions all off. Meticulous to the last, he folds the shirt neatly, for eventual use as a pillow in his nest on the mattress.

"Don't laugh," he warns, and there's something thin and brittle in his voice.

For his sake, Sarah keeps her eyes on his face as he unbuttons the shirt. She doesn't watch him undress — even though she's dying to see what the big goddamned deal is — because the more important part, to her, is that he isn't going to kill himself just to keep her from seeing his body. Sympathy for his discomfort is still in place on her expression because that's all she feels right now. Sympathy and maybe a touch of pride in herself for managing to get him to finally acquiesce. One thing he won't find on her face, though, is pity; there's nothing to pity, so why would he?

It's hard to miss the muscular structure, though, when he's moving to fold and Sarah's eyes slip to his arms — muscular arms are her kryptonite — and chest. Sarah wets her lips and then catches the bottom one between her teeth as she forces her eyes back to his face. Now, if he looks, that sympathy is likely being eclipsed by wanton desire, but she doesn't move to act on it.

At his warning, though, Sarah gives him a facial shrug to match the one her shoulders give as she shakes her head. "What's to laugh at? I'm just trying not to climb you like a tree right now, darling," she says with her signature blunt honesty. "Feel a little cooler, though, don't you? See? Sometimes I know what I'm talking about, yeah?" she asks, pushing herself up to her feet again and crossing back to the bed specifically to keep herself from actually climbing into his lap. He might be ashamed of what had been hiding under those layers of clothes, but Sarah just sees someone she'd like very much to have his way with her. That said, she can understand why he'd be self-conscious. It's not hard to imagine humans from his time being put off by that body. She isn't, but she's also from well into the future where the integration of humans and other species is a lot more normalized. If she didn't know better, in fact, she'd think he'd been born that way of an integrated couple. So what? He's still well fit as far as she's concerned.

She only pauses to kick off the trousers before she flops unceremoniously onto her back on the bed again, staring up at the ceiling. "It's not actually that weird, having a stranger take her clothes off in front of you, Luther. Haven't you ever been to a gentleman's club? Or a frat party?" she asks, the latter question with a twitch of amusement in the tone.

Even with Sarah swearing up and down that it's not a problem and she won't be fussed, he'd still been waiting for it. Because as much as people can claim they won't be surprised, he firmly believes they can't hide that instinctive response: all his siblings' stunned reactions the first time they saw him, the slightly-widened eyes, the double-take, the tilt of the chin as they have to look up and up, and he saw their eyes crawl over his proportions. Diego's voice. Oh, you got big, Luther. Klaus. Oh, wow, Luther. You really filled out over the years. That dawning horror in Allison and Diego's eyes when the chandelier had ripped his shirt, revealed what was underneath. Holy shit.

So he's waiting for it, still braced.

But Sarah... doesn't react. Just bites her lip and shrugs and moves back to her bed. He's left reeling again, like walking down a staircase and expecting another step, only for your foot to hit level ground. A kind of undefinable relief he hasn't felt in years. It takes Luther a moment, but then with her eyes safely off him, he combines the crumpled pillow and his shirt, shoving them into some semblance of order, and lies down himself. Looking up at the ceiling. He keeps his shoes on, in case they have to get up and run in the middle of the night. But it is better, being down to the undershirt.

I haven't been anywhere, he thinks automatically in response to her question, a kneejerk answer.

"No, I haven't. We..."

We weren't allowed to.

Luther bites back those words, and then a moment later, wants to kick himself for suppressing them. Why is he still defending their father, protecting the Monocle's reputation, even now? Even after everything? Even so, he can't bring himself to say it, so he hedges with, "There wasn't time. I was too busy with the team. We had a job to do. Not a lot of downtime."

If by not a lot, you mean thirty minutes on Saturdays.

Sprawling like a starfish, Sarah takes in a deep breath and sighs softly, letting one of her legs hang, her knee hooking at the edge of it and her foot dangling over the side. She turns her head slightly so that she can see Luther. Sarah is pleasantly surprised to see that he's laid himself out to get a little more comfortable. That's something, isn't it?

"Everybody has a job to do," she counters, but it's a casual counter because she doesn't know if it's just his way of saying he's not actually interested in taking downtime. There were Time Agents like that, she knows. Agents who went out of their way to fill every second of downtime because they lacked the social skills or, in some cases, the interest in socializing to cultivate enough of a social life to fill the downtime with things that weren't their work.

She pauses and then goes on, "I used to work in a gentleman's club. Erm, well, more accurately, I've worked in several of them. It's the best, making money doing what you love and there is nothing I love more than not having to wear clothes," she laughs, lolling her head slightly so that she can look up at the ceiling again. "Maybe if you want, I'll show you sometime," she adds, only half-joking. "I know some people think it must be easy, stripping, but it isn't. Especially when there's a pole. Back in my stripping days, oi...you could've bounced a coin off my abs they were so solid. I probably could've murdered with my thigh strength alone, yeah? Hanging and sliding on a pole, it's bloody hard work. Trying to look sexy while you're doing it is harder."

She's not really sure why she's telling him, but the words keep coming. She doesn't feel shame for her state of undress or her interest in being as scantily clad as possible because clothing is honestly for other people more than it is for her. And yet... When she stops talking, she realizes that she's justifying herself, or trying to.

Once again, Sarah turns her head and she shifts slightly on the bed so that she can look back at him and he can see that she's looking at him. "What's something you've always wanted to try but didn't have the 'downtime' to do?" she asks suddenly, lifting her arms only in order for him to see her making finger quotes.

This story explains quite a bit: how she can be so comfortable with bare skin and half-nudity, with shedding clothes so matter-of-fact and businesslike, without batting an eye. It's actually nice, too, just lying there and letting someone else talk and ramble, fill up that swallowing silence between them — Luther's never been particularly good at it himself, the small talk and the conversation, so he's content to lie there and listen.

When he hears the creak of the mattress and the rustle that means Sarah's shifted enough to look at him, he tilts his head to the side too, to look back. "Well..." he starts, clearly thinking over her question.

The truth is, there's so much. Too much. Luther's been to museums, but only to smile at ribbon-cutting ceremonies or to avert a set of thieves in the night. He's traveled abroad, but only to punch sea monsters off the coast of Tokyo, the whole team returning soggy and drenched in the Televator. Herded along from mission to press engagement to mission, their schedules and timelines fitting into Sir Reginald's rigid structure. Leave the manor, get trotted out like show dogs, then get locked up back inside it.

He doesn't know what real freedom's like. Unlike the rest of his family, he hasn't gone anywhere.

After a while, Luther's voice comes from the dim silhouette lying straight-backed on the floor, as he makes up his mind: "I've always wanted to visit the museum at Walt Whitman's birthplace, in New York. He's my favourite poet."

(... Not exactly what you might expect to hear, from the muscle-bound leader of a superhero team, who looks for all the world a hulking brute.)

"How about you? Anywhere you haven't been to or seen yet, but want to?"

It takes him a moment to consider and Sarah waits patiently. If he turns the question around on her, it's likely to take her a moment, too. The difference between their reasons is that he's seen so little and she's seen so much.

Her eyebrows lift with surprise. "My sister used to like poetry. She might still, I dunno. Was Whitman one of those ones that rhymed everything or one of the ones that did it in a way that hardly seemed like poetry to the idiots like me who never studied it?" she asks, curious.

Sarah shifts on the bed, causing it to creak again under her, and she turns onto her side facing him, propping herself up with one arm. He does, in fact, turn the question around on her and it takes Sarah considerably longer to come up with something.

"You know...I'd love to have seen the formation of Torchwood, actually. The original one in London, in the UK," she tells him. "Queen Victoria established it in 1879, but I wish I could've been a fly on the wall for whatever led up to it. It was on my bucket list, but...well. I guess that's no good to me now."

Taking a deep breath, Sarah pauses to consider asking him another question. She thinks better of it. "New York..." she murmurs thoughtfully instead. "I've actually never been, believe it or not. I've been to New New York, but that's not the same."

Another flicker at the corner of his mouth, that same expression she finally noticed earlier and which might be a smile. "The second one. Poetry that hardly seems like poetry. I think you'd like him — then again, I think most everyone would like him."

And because of course he would, Luther mentally sifts through the bits and pieces of the poems that he's memorised (there wasn't much to do at home, alone, and even less to do up in space)... he searches for something that he thinks sounds relevant enough to her, and the man clears his throat again in preparation for recital, his voice eventually coming out easier and less hesitant when he's echoing someone else's words:

"It is time to explain myself—let us stand up.

What is known I strip away,
I launch all men and women forward with me into the Unknown.

The clock indicates the moment—but what does eternity indicate?

We have thus far exhausted trillions of winters and summers,
There are trillions ahead, and trillions ahead of them."

He stops then, a mite embarrassed at having tipped this particular hand (poetry is like being seen), but it's far less embarrassment than he'd had in literally taking off his clothes, at least. Then there's a beat, as he listens to her own answer, hopelessly intrigued about what life for a far-future time traveller is like. In the end, it just spurs on more questions: "What's Torchwood?" he asks. "And what's New New York like? Is it still on Earth?"

A wistfulness in Luther's voice; not an envy, precisely, because he's gotten good at biting that down... but he does wish he could've seen all these things.

(If only she could've yanked them on out of here. Gotten him to her Agency or wherever. Recentered, re-strategised, put him back in a spot where it'd be easier to track down all the Hargreeves, scattered through time as they are.)

Uncertain, Sarah wrinkles her nose with doubt at his assessment that she might like Whitman. Frankly, she's never been very interested in the finer arts, as such. Poetry always seemed something for pretentious teenage girls and men who lacked any other way to get a pair of panties to drop. Neither of those things appear to apply to Luther and yet, he's spouting off some lines a few moments later. She thinks it should just be called storytelling or writing. To her, if it doesn't rhyme, how is it even poetry?

All the same, she's impressed that he's memorized it, whatever it is. Moreover, it seems at least mildly applicable and that impresses her more. Sarah grins a little when he finishes. "Be careful, darling, if you were here with my sister instead of me, you'd have a woman very much in your lap right now, reciting poetry you know by heart like that," she says playfully.

Then, sighing wistfully, Sarah decides to answer his questions in reverse order because the first question is the one that's more interesting to her. She's been wishing she could find a way to get her foot in the door at Torchwood, but she already knows that the London hub will fall before it gets very far; it won't even make it two centuries. The Cardiff hub isn't likely to fare much better, but one never really knows.

"Mmm, New Earth," she replies, shaking her head, "it's not too unlike, I imagine, New York City, only erm...well, the gridlock is much worse. If you think it's bad being in traffic on a road, imagine when there aren't any roads and you're still in traffic in front of, behind, and above and below your vehicle," she says, arching an eyebrow. "As for Torchwood...Christ, where do I even start...?" she sighs.

Torchwood has been her dream her entire life, quite frankly; she'd been willing to give up the future entirely for it. She still hasn't found an in.

"It's a secret organization put together to protect Earth from supernatural and extraterrestrial threats. Earth seems a bit of a magnet for that sort of thing. New Earth is much the same," she says with a shrug. "I just always thought it'd be brilliant to be part of a secret organization, especially one that let me do all that. You know?"

He snorts at Sarah's comment about her sister, a dry little noise of amusement in the darkness. Good thing he doesn't have any interest in any of that, he thinks. (Of course he notices — he's noticed Sarah Sanders quite well tonight, really — but it had never caught on his attention the same way as the others, and Number One had always seemed to have more important things on his mind. Apart from a way to market the Academy and be marketable, attraction ranked low, low, low on his list of priorities, and even before... before the incident, he only ever seemed to think of it as an afterthought. As something attached to the way a particular Number Three laughed, and the mischievous glint in her eye. When Diego smuggled skin mags into the house, Luther had mostly just shrugged at them. I don't care about any of them, he'd said, and meant it.)

What Sarah says next about Torchwood, though, is far more interesting.

"'Supernatural and extraterrestrial threats'," Luther repeats, shifting and turning again, craning his head to look up at what he can see of Sarah in the bed. A dangling leg and foot, the curve of a shoulder, her eyes in the semi-darkness looking his way.

"That does sound... brilliant." He trips over the British slang a little. "I mean, that's what the Umbrella Academy was formed for. We fought supervillains, threats to the existence of the world. I can't blame you for wanting to do the same thing. You were never able to make contact with them?"

Sarah huffs a soft laugh, amused at the sound of British slang on an American tongue, the accent and emphasis all wrong. "I liked the secret part more," she confesses. "I can do the rest at the Agency if I fuck the right higher-up, but everyone knows who the Agency is. How cool would it be to be part of an organization, though, that's above the law; above the whole bloody government? We'd have access to things, I bet, that the normies would only ever dream about. If that," she says, sounding as passionate and wistful as ever.

Lieutenant Sarah Sanders is a lot of things, but wistful is not normally one of them. She doesn't have her head in the clouds; she's not a dreamer. She knows what she wants and she goes for it. There's never been any hesitation there. If she knew how to get in contact with the Torchwood Institute, she'd already be a part of one of the teams, she's confident of that much. It's finding them that's the problem.

Shaking her head, she sighs, looking over at him. "No...no idea where to track them down. I've been trying to for years. They could be anywhere and anywhere, really. Each hub has a team of five, from what I've heard. No more, no less. If that's true, I'd have to not only find one of the hubs but I'd have to find one precisely when they're looking for someone to fill an opening, which is to say, someone has died on the job, probably, or quit and been Retconned, I reckon. Is that a thing humans in your time know about?" she asks. "Retcon, I mean?"

She pauses a moment before circling back. Sarah shifts on the bed just a bit more so that she can see him better in the new blanket of darkness that's falling slowly between them. "In another life, Luther Hargreeves, I reckon you and I would've made a pretty great pair." By which she means, if ever there were a time when she were to have any real interest in monogamy — because she suspects Luther isn't likely the type to appreciate polyamory for the brilliance that it is — she thinks maybe he's the type of person she could fall in love with. Not that Sarah knows what that feels like, nor does she have any particular interest in finding out. "When the Vortex goes back online, I'll take you to New York. Your New York, for that Whitman thing. Yeah?"

At her description of the kind of authority and autonomy she's been seeking, Luther nods in understanding, rueful, and says, "It's like being gods." Because that's exactly how the Hargreeves were raised. To stand above all the average citizens (a disdainful way to think of the normies, sure, but that was because the Academy deserved to be disdainful and superior). To know what was best for them. To steward the world for them. So, he gets it.

But then she promises him New York.

And there's a sudden unexpected ache in his sternum, somewhere on the left side of his chest, a sharp twinge. It's a hypothetical, of course, and in any other context it would seem like nothing special — everybody's been to New York, millions of tourists pass through it, even he's been there for a press conference, so it shouldn't really matter...

Except it does. The offer is a gift and it's precious. It's what he's never had.

"Thank you, I'd like that," Luther says. To his credit, he manages to keep his voice steady and it doesn't wobble.

"And it does sound like we'll work pretty well together, if there even are any more threats left out there," he continues, sounding distant and a little thoughtful — and naturally, naturally Luther's thinking about pair in terms of combat. Teamwork. Fighters. Someone to have his back in a tight situation. It's not like either of them have a choice anyway in their company, but he's not hating the partner he's wound up with. (Quite the opposite.)

"And no, I don't know what Retconning is in this context. Besides, like... rewriting the past." Like they'd tried and failed to do, only altering the circumstances of the apocalypse. "How does Torchwood do it?"

"Ehhh, I dunno, I think of it a bit more like being a rabid guard dog that the people don't know they have," she laughs. Sarah sees things a little differently. She doesn't look down on civilians and never has. Sarah's always seen it as her job to protect them, but her work and sacrifices for them doesn't make her feel in any way above them so much as just especially passionate about protecting people who don't know how to protect themselves. Less godly, more parental, ironically enough, considering she's the last person to ever consider children in her future.

But all the same, to some degree or another, she can tell that they're on the same wavelength. They might be on opposite ends of that wavelength, but it's the same one, in any case.

Given the even sound of his voice and the fact that his expression nearly never bloody gives anything away, Sarah can't possibly know how much he really appreciates the offer, so she just nods and gives him a smile, moving the leg that's hanging off the bed to settle her foot back on the mattress, leg bent at the knee. "Sure, darling," she says casually.

She smirks a little, huffing a soft laugh to herself. "I meant romantically, my love," she corrects him, "if we were in some version of life where I wasn't so averse to that sort of thing, I mean. But sure, yeah, I reckon we'd work well as a team, too," she agrees easily enough. He does make a good point by bringing it up. If there happen to be any living threats left in this wasteland, between the two of them, she's pretty certain they'll have it handled.

"Mmm, not just Torchwood," she points out. "I've got Retcon tablets in my bag. They're important for Agents, too. Something as simple as someone from the 1300s accidentally stumbling upon a piece of future tech dropped in the Vortex or left behind by another alien race on an expedition can change the whole bloody timeline, so my job was to go round picking up those sorts of things and, if anyone had seen them before I got to them, I could slip them some Retcon so they'd forget they'd seen it, therefore keeping the timeline in tact," she explains. "It isn't human tech, but we've cultivated it for our use in extreme situations. Dunno how Torchwood does it, but I know it comes in tablets, drops, and a spritz," she adds with a shrug.

Edited 2020-07-15 19:55 (UTC)

"I— Oh." A sharp stuttered exhale from Luther as he tries to wrap his mind around it, unable to conceive of someone declaring that so easily, so quickly. In the back of his head, there's the lurking Why? and You hardly know me, and then a faint self-consciousness that burns the edges of his ears. "Uh. I guess I'll take that as a compliment."

A moment later, floundering, he tries to bridge that gap a little, explain himself better: "Teamwork is... one of the most important things to me. It's what I know best. The only thing I've known. What matters most."

Trying to clarify that it doesn't mean anything less. Placing your life unthinkingly in someone else's hands— that matters. In the Academy, that had been everything.

When she describes the Retcon tablets, though, Luther finally levers himself up slightly, his elbow propped against the mattress to look up. Not shocked, precisely — he understands exactly why Sarah might have to do that sort of thing, preserving continuity, whatever, Number Five had been all about it — but he's still bemused.

"Your job is to hop around through time, roofieing civilians?"

That's interesting to Sarah, actually; that he feels teamwork is the most important thing because it's all he knows. Her eyebrows lift slightly with curiosity but she doesn't prod that particular point. Hasn't he ever caught feelings for someone, like so many of her fellow humans are so wont to do? Was he being literal rather than hyperbolic when he'd said he hadn't had any downtime for anything at all outside the Academy to which he's so attached?

"Teamwork comes in a lot of different forms, I think," she says. It isn't a counterpoint nor is it entirely an agreement with him; just some food for thought. "A couple or thruple or whatever is a form of teamwork just as much as a family can be a team in some situations or strangers can team up in extreme situations. But I get it, I think," she says.

Seeing the movement of his body, lifting himself up to look at her, whether unwitting or intentionally giving her a better view of the expanse of his chest, Sarah catches her bottom lip between her teeth again. It slips back out again to make room for an expression that's a little more illustrative of the fact that she feels mildly — albeit benignly — patronized.

"No," she says, drawing the word out slowly before taking in a deep breath and huffing it out again. "My job is to hop through time retrieving objects out of their proper place in the timeline. ...I only roofie civilians when I'm late and I fuck it up, which is why I still have tabs left in my bag," she explains, wrinkling her nose at him and picking up one of her shoes to toss vaguely in his direction. She doesn't hit him and makes no real attempt to do so, so much as give a playful show of her frustration at his clearly intentional misunderstanding of her job description. "Smart ass."

Edited 2020-07-15 20:17 (UTC)

for ltbrownnoser.

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