obediences | for ltbrownnoser.

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)

This time, the laugh when it comes is an actual audible laugh, a chuckle as the shoe misses (it goes wide, bounces somewhere off a chest of drawers on the other side of the room) and Luther lets himself sink back down to the mattress.

That part was oddly, comfortingly familiar too. Allison had always punched him in the shoulder whenever he'd been too cheesy or too intractable or gotten on her nerves; she was usually the only one who dared to push the envelope like that, knowing it wouldn't hurt him. She'd thrown her notepad at him in the bowling alley, too.

(Another ache in his chest, remembering. A cavernous emptiness, one that he takes a deep breath and bricks up and pushes past. They're gone and there's nothing he can actually do about that for a while.)

"At least you're good at your job," Luther says, and it isn't a direct apology for the patronising blip (which is far too common with him), but— it's almost one. He hasn't been good at his job for a while.

"And it sounds better than the alternative, anyway. Five's job was to go through the timeline, locate disruptive presences, and kill them."

Seeing him laugh, Sarah feigns scandalized shock. "Oh my God, he can laugh, look at that, ladies and gentlemen!" she cries out dramatically, pushing herself upright and throwing her arms up in a victory V. "Shit, do I get a prize? Was I the first person to make it happen in a while? I bet I was," she teases playfully as she lays back down again, grinning with self-satisfaction.

"Lucky son of a bitch," she mutters. "Maybe that Commission really does take up where the Agency left off. That's the branch I wanted into, but evidently I didn't suck the right dick or something and I got stuck with artifact recon," she complains. Is she joking about the sexual favour? Maybe. Probably not, but her casual tone might suggest she's being hyperbolic.

"All the best agents got assigned to Aberration Neutralization. My brother worked in that department once upon a time," she says. "He was always better at everything than I was, so I dunno why it ever surprised me that he made it and I didn't. Alas, here we are." The tone of her voice there is very c'est la vie. She's accepted it for what it is.

"I'll remind you that I've been on my own for a few weeks. So, yeah, you are."

Aaaand there he goes, right on back to answering rhetorical questions and being far too serious for his own good— except that there's actually still a subtle thread of humour humming beneath it now, a touch of ironic understatement. Compared to Klaus' freewheeling clownery, Luther's always forced himself into being serious as a heart attack, joking around being inappropriate for the team leader... and thus the habit stuck, to keep it subtle. He does have a sense of humour, but it comes out so fleetingly, so rarely, that it matters all the more when it does.

"Aberration Neutralization, huh," he says, considering. Another sign that she would've fit into Luther's group pretty well: the necessity of killing people, when you have to. Where the greater mission calls for it. Accepting that cold calculus for the greater good.

"Why did you want the other branch? Just because it's more exciting?"

"Ha ha," Sarah replies flatly, rolling her eyes but smiling in spite of herself.

She stretches again and hums softly. "Yeah...well, and more prestigious. Like I said, only the best agents get to work in that department."

A yawn escapes her and she makes little effort to hide it from him. "Christ, it's not even that dark out, yet. That's what I get for going to work on a whole four hours of sleep, yeah?" she jokes. Her amusement slips away slowly as she turns on her side again to look at him. "All right, Luther, where you are? I'm getting tired laying here in this heat. If I doze off, you're not going to fuck off on me, are you?"

Her tone is casual, but she's mildly concerned about it. He doesn't owe her anything, after all, but even with him being a stranger, she likes to think she's a good judge of character and she feels like he's not a direct threat to her. If he stays, she'll feel safer. Of course, she's not going to tell Luther that, but all the same. It's the truth.

He's settled back on the mattress now, arms crossed over the broad expanse of his chest, the outline of him like a line of cliffs in the darkening room.

"I'm not going anywhere," Luther says,

and there is something so unthinking and simple and matter-of-fact about that sentence, as if he's surprised by Sarah's very suggestion, and never would've considered it himself. Because he wouldn't have. He's predictable as the tides, he sits where he's told to sit, and if he's backing someone up— He's not leaving them. Particularly if they're his only lifeline to human contact, to not being alone, to keeping that loneliness at bay.

A beat and then, realising how heavily significant that might have sounded, he adds to make it a little looser, wry: "Besides, not like there's much of anywhere to go."

He waits a few seconds too long to lighten the sentiment and by the time he does, Sarah's already feeling reassured by the first comment. Solid, unmoving; I'm not going anywhere means I've got your back and I won't let anything hurt you. Not because Luther said it, but because Jacob used to and, for a long time, she believed him when he said the more significant things by hiding them in something vaguer; something more like I'm not going anywhere.

"Okay, good. I'll be really disappointed if I wake up in an empty room. I hope you know that," she tells him through another yawn as she rolls onto her back again.

Closing her eyes, Sarah tries to settle herself into a comfortable position on the rickety children's sized bed. "Good night, handsome. I'll see you in the morning for another round of What the Fuck Do We Do to Kill Twelve Hours," she says quietly, a weak smile playing at her lips, even though he can't see it.

for ltbrownnoser.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject