Allison can't stop the winded chuckle that escapes her mouth, even when she thinks there might be something more of a wince that she can't keep out of her expression, even here in the dark, like she can't entirely hide it behind amusement. The understatement and the ownership of it that is so very on the nose of being so very Luther and can't belong to only one of them. "No, you aren't."

Except maybe he was.
She was. They were.

So many times, they could have avoided all of this.

If he'd just come with her. If she'd ever actually reached out after.
If she'd just held on and waited, let the faith they'd come for her be enough.

A million days and million mistakes, flickering in and out of her thoughts too fast, dissolving on the nearness of his voice, the flicker of breath she could feel brush her skin at those running, rushing, tripping on themselves, words. Away, and away, and away. Scraped sore on a relief that feels more violent than soothing. Ruthless, rather than forgiving. Turning every second inside out. Taking everything back, that wasn't this. Dissolving every mask, highlighting ever lie, the emptiness and longing under every time, where she settled for less and told herself it was fine.

Except. The one thing she couldn't take it back. Wouldn't. Even as everything else turned pale with and blew down, one didn't. The most important one. The one thing worth all the rubble and wreckage of all her wrong choices. The one she couldn't even consider folding the deck back on. Claire. Important and incomparable.

Forged in the path of those mistakes, one perfect thing: her daughter.

Claire. And Luther. The two halves of her heart.
That she couldn't be complete without either.