luther "the big shy one" hargreeves | #00.01 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
obediences) wrote2019-03-08 09:00 pm
Entry tags:
for numberthree.
And I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.
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It's only thanks to the Monocle's distraction these days that the older man doesn't even notice that something's happening; that there's new life and pep in Number One's step, that he actually seems to look forward to mornings now rather than dread it with a long slow dullness. Pogo, for his part, just smiles wordlessly whenever he hands over another envelope: same stationery, same neat handwriting, as ever.
And Luther's own writing starts to open up. A sense of humour, a slight dig. The smallest hint of rebellion and being able to poke some fun at their father, at least: )
If they tried to name something like that after me, you know it'd just be branded 'Hargreeves' anyway. We all know who it'd actually be named after.
And I actually meant that that must feel pretty nice. Anticlimax-wise, I mean. Less expectations to drive you crazy, no report cards — although I guess they do still grade you on the stupidest things. We never grocery shopped before, so it's not like there was much opportunity for them to get shots of the Academy in sweatpants, running errands.
I saw some of the candids; you always still look beautiful, thouI'll keep an eye open for the show if it's picked up.
And yeah, definitely. THE CARPET MAKERS, by Andreas Eschbach. The translation just came out a few years ago but I read it in the original German, which I think is the only reason I could get it. It's a series of interconnected short stories set on a planet where citizens pay tribute to an undying Emperor by spending their entire lives weaving a carpet out of their wife and daughters' hair; it's an art that passes on from father to son. The cycle keeps going until there start to be rumors that the galactic emperor might have done the unthinkable and abdicated. Each story weaves into the next one so that by the end, the book reads like a tapestry itself. It sounds so weird on the surface but it's really, really good.
- L.
( It's a familiar thing. He's often so quiet, but whenever she gets him talking about books, it's like the dams open and all those words, rather than being pent up in his head, spill out and trip over his tongue instead with a childlike eagerness. For this particular book, he copies out a particular quote from it — then sits over the paper, considering, for the longest time. In the end, he doesn't include it with his letter, just crumples it up and throws it in the fireplace instead. )
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She's smarter now than she was two years ago;
but somehow, she still can't stop staring.
Can't stop the way her heart jumps when she's getting the mail, and another letter is mixed in. Can't stop the way she's smiling so hard there are crinkles at the edges of her eyes, and the corners of her mouth almost hurt from her smile. She swears if it weren't in writing, she could close her eyes and hear the way his voice lifts suddenly, all quick passionate intensity as talked about his new book.
So small, in so few words, she can't close her eyes to look away from to miss a single word even the first time through, but it fills her chest like it was twelve times the size of itself. The way Luther filled up every small space they squeezed into when he suddenly let go and was babbling details about books like he'd been holding his breath until someone finally did ask.
She doesn't even care about the book itself, but she rereads that one paragraph three, four, maybe even five, times before she can even look up again. For a moment, like all those closed doors weren't. And she can't remember at all what she wasn't supposed to forget. )
Luther,
That definitely sounds interesting—your type of book. I haven't read anything in a while that wasn't a script, a newspaper, or one of the far too many magazines delivered to this place. The last one doesn't even count. It was a collection of monologues suggested by one of the other students in an improv class I was taking.
I know there's a bookstore not far from here, that we pass when we go out on the block for coffee or drinks. Maybe I'll stop in over there one of these days and see if there's anything in there that grabs my interest.
As for being graded on things, you are kind of grading on everything out here.
It's a lot like home was in th--Every facet of every job you do, every interaction during that job, around it, outside of it, how the work goes over, who it was produced by, received by. Every place you go. Every place you don't go. Everything you wear and don't wear. Every esoteric detail of anything someone thinks is important. Every conversation you have with someone that could always basically be networking to someone else, or they could know people who know things, that could lead to more work.It's not monsters, but it's not easy either.
But where's the fun without a little challenge to it all, right?
Allison
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—and of course, of course he still loves her. It's been years since she left and that fact is still lodged there like a thorn in his paw, inextricable, and it won't go away. )
Nothing's fun unless it's a challenge.
What's your favorite monologue to use in auditions?
(I don't know if that's something actors actually do. I mean, I'm assuming that's how it works, and that you do have a favorite, but it could be I'm totally wrong about how Hollywood works. I learned it from movies.)
Also, jeez. All of that sounds aggravating as heck. At least we had our privacy back here — for the most part, anyway. From the outside, anyway. You gotten close to killing any paparazzi yet, or ruining their lives? I can't see you putting up with that sort of thing for too long when they get too obnoxious.
- L.
PS: I'm sending along a package of Mom's cookies, too, as promised. You can freeze some of them if there's too many for you to finish at once. (I ate some of your batch; don't tell her.)
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Did you know that there are stationery stores? Like whole stores, large as a drugstore, just dedicated to stationary in every color, every texture, and every pattern you could imagine and then just about a million you wouldn't have even though of?
Apparently, there are. I'm pretty sure I have way too much of it, but at least I can stop taking my roommates. I almost bought an address embosser thing or one of those wax seal sets that come with several colors of wax, but when am I ever actually going to send out that much mail?
The cookies were delightful, and your secret is safe with me out here in California. There are no cookies in the world like Mom's cookies, are there? I'm ruined for life again. You've ruined me.
Auditions can differ. Sometimes it's what you bring. Sometimes they give you something memorize, either a few days before or even just an hour before when you're waiting. Shakespeare is always good, but so are modern pieces. I like to think I've gotten very good at Beneatha "When I was small" speech from 'A Raisin in the Sun,' one or two of Blanch's pieces from 'Streetcar,' Audrey's
'I dream of a place where we could be toget--monologue from 'Little Shop.'I have not killed a paparazzi yet, but I may have told one or two
orof them how they could better be spending their time.What are you doing with your time now? Any new hobbies? New models? Things going on in space that I have absolutely missed knowing about again?
Allison
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And then once he does, the very first word trips him up.
One word. One simple, easy word that millions of people take for granted in their correspondence the world over, but which makes Luther have to set the card down and go for revolutions of restless pacing through the foyer, into the parlour, up to the second storey, down the hall, pausing in her empty bedroom doorway, circling around again, back down to the basement, then up the stairs again. He walks and paces and walks until he can banish that nervous energy, and he shakes out his hands like he's about to go square off and box an opponent, except the opponent this time is his nerves.
That one word. Dear.
It undoes him. You've ruined me. )
I didn't know about stationery stores, no. We only had the Academy-branded stuff here, so I didn't even really think about the fact that people had a million varieties to choose from — although I like what you've chosen for yourself. I'd wondered what was up with the 'B'. What's your roommate's name?
I'm pretty sure Dad has some sealing sets, maybe I could sneak them out of his office sometime. Seal my letters with wax and feel like an old-timey pirate or something.
Your taste is good as ever. Shakespeare is a timeless choice: Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave / My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty / According to my bond; no more nor less.
No new hobbies — not much changes here — although I've imported a Japanese model set with an orbiter and the Hubble Space Telescope, which I'm looking forward to building. I got a crick in my wrist signing a batch of signed photos for the fan club; can imagine you can relate.
Have you been to any concerts out west?
- L.
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What? I'm not. I wasn't.
Sure, you weren't, Allison.
She's not even angry when she says it. Or. If she is, it's more embarrassment, or something sourer, like shame, than the crystalline purity of anger, which makes it faster. Sharper on her tongue, even in the smoothness. It's not that she knows this isn't a ruin in the making, but she doesn't want to explain how there's nothing about this that can ruin her as much as Luther not leaving did. It already happened.
But it's not that even. It's that she's never talked to anyone about that. Never talked about him more than in passing. When people link their names, with the Academy, with everyone else. When there's a news blast, or a commercial, or a newspaper article. Not anything else. When they want details over drinks, so they can feel like they touched something special. She smiles and delights them with anecdotes. Like it's not chewing glass. Because to them, nothing else was there. Ever. At any point.
A secret kept and cast off in the same obliterating silence.
That's the real story. The one she lived, but won't ever tell.
Allison knows this can only pick at that open sore, until it's raw and oozing, more so than just emotional fodder for her acting. Knows her feet are slipping too much already, and she should stop. But she doesn't want to. She wants it. Even if all it is is pain, and inevitable disappointment, and another round of her ruin, and hating herself, again, at that end, she still wants it. Him. Maybe she hasn't changed at all in two years. She can't tell if she hates him or hates that she still can't hate him even a little when she closes her door, shoulders hard against it, and finally gets past halfway. )
My roommate of the cards is Bea, officially, but her parents named her Beatrice, and she hates it, so she changed it, and she's probably going to come for me in my sleep now that I've broken my promise never to tell after she spilled it on accident. My other roommate, Jennifer, is new, about a month now, no nickname or name change so far as I know. You'd be surprised how long the list is of what all people do change about themselves out here.
I haven't actually done Cordelia yet, but I'm sure the Fool and Falstaff, would both agree that Lear and Illyria are absolutely lost somewhere in all the madness out here. I'll keep her in mind for the next time I need to consider fresh pieces from the classics. It doesn't hurt to have new pieces to study and practice in case. You never know what might be needed at the next casting calls.
Not any truly amazing concerts, and it's more bars with bands than concert-concerts, which is sometimes good and is sometimes just a recipe for spending the other half of the night trying to get beer off your shoes, purse, self. Secret? I don't think I'm actually into most of the music being produced out here right now. It's mostly loud and annoying and whiny.
I miss the music yo-I'm being flown up to Canada later this week for some of the scenes for the early season episodes off the pilot, so I think that means things are looking really good with this show. Wish I could tell you more, but contracts I actually do have to keep. Maybe you can catch some part of it once it has a release.
Hope your wrist is feeling better,
Allison
Ps. Pirates are ~not~ the only ones who sealed their letters.
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Except nothing about this could ever feel routine. Not when these letters have suddenly jumpstarted life out of the indistinguishable grey blur it had become: unchanging, monotonous, drab, quiet, only punctuated by the occasional violent mission, all blood and bullets and getting outnumbered and in over his head, and yet he found himself yearning for the battles just to have the change of pace. But nowadays, he yearns for the sound of the mail van pulling up and the clunk of letters going into the box. Sometimes he's started beating Pogo out there in the mornings, to be rewarded with an extremely aggrieved butler, chiding Master Luther! that he's far above a menial errand like taking in the mail.
Don't worry about it, Pogo, and Luther's already tucking the envelope into the breast pocket of his blazer, like a secret. Like the worst-kept secret. The best-kept. His only secret.
Truth be told, it's a lifeline. )
Speak of the devil and Shakespeare— If somebody's already got a perfect name like Beatrice, why in the world would you legally change it? Guess there's no accounting for taste.
That's a shame about the concerts, though. I'd hoped that maybe hearing music live instead of on a record would be thrilling, transcendent, life-changing, irreplaceable, whatever. If we ever wind up at the same concert somehow, sometime, I'll try not to spill beer on your shoes. You'd have to teach me the Tinsel Town ways. I keep trying to imagine what it's like and what sort of things you do for fun and how you kill time when you're not on set — the paparazzi cover some of it, but finding out through those magazines doesn't exactly feel right. So. Tell me what you get up to?
And I'll stay tuned once the show's out.
Your number one fan,
- L.
PS: Okay, so who else? A brooding Scottish laird, maybe? We have the tartan but I don't have the kilt.
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The words blur a little, and she's too tired to even roll over and make sure it's left safely on the bed table. Her bones too heavy to even take the time to wrap her hair, and her mind only circling one exhausted thought as her eyelids gave up the ghost. It's not funny. Or cute. He's not. Even if she would give her heart, anything, anything at all, whatever he even wanted, for those four words to be true.
He's not. And it's not something she wants him to joke about like it's nothing.
Like, once upon a time, stupid and young, it hadn't been absolutely everything.
She falls asleep pretending she isn't clutching the blanket to her chest.
It's still next to her, there on the other pillow, when she wakes up. )
People have truly weird opinions about names. She's hardly the only one with a name change out here. It just seems old and outdated to her. Something someone's grandmother would be named, or the name of someone you would play on the stage. But not the kind of name to dash up in lights, and posters, to roll off all jazzy and cool.
Maybe there are concerts like that out here somewhere. I suppose I haven't looked all that hard. The places I've gone I've been mostly dragged by other people. You'd probably
already know everything about the music scene out here if you'dbe better at knowing how to ferret that out. It never was my thing.There's a lot to explore out here and there are always interesting people to meet. I've a little more free time right now than normal, but I've been toying with signing up for some more classes in the spring. I go to the gym several times a week. I'm still working my way through a long list of historical sights of past stars and moments all over this city. There's always more work than anything else.
But, I will say I take a perverse delight in watching tv, while eating takeout, in my pajamas every week or two, when I have the time, and no one has pictures of that. I almost wish they did. I'm sure Dad would hate it, and be certain I was living down to every expectation he ever had. But, honestly, it's the best.
Allison
P.S. I don't know. People. Princesses. Victorian novel characters. Long, long, long-dead people from Middles Ages Europe.
P.P.S Where do you go up to next after you've already upgraded yourself from a rogue to a noble?
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Of course he doesn't pick up on it; can't tell what's sitting between the lines, the thoughts that go rushing through Allison's head before she pens her response. Luther doesn't know, exactly, how his words are received on the other end. They're just thrown out into the ether, and then he waits for something to come winging back, while everything else in his life sits on hold until the next letter. Like the universe is holding its breath.
Luther's never been particularly good at talking, at stringing together his words without shoving his foot in his mouth, but in letters... He can take his time. He can sit at his too-small desk, thoughtfully chewing the end of a pen, and trying to make them sound right, for once. )
Sometimes I sit around thinking about what I might do, if I were in your shoes. It'd be the gym every morning, because old habits die hard, but I think I'd like sight-seeing and museums. More than the kind of visits we had before: they were always just whistle-stop tours and publicity shots at landmarks before we had to be rushed on to the next one, or showing up just long enough to wave to the crowds. (Visiting the Eiffel Tower does not count. Not like it's around anymore anyway.)
I have trouble picturing you eating takeout in your PJs, to be honest, but that sounds fun. Just relaxing, I mean.
More than 30 minutes, at leaNobody to tell you what to do anymore. You can eat all the ice cream you like, even.Next month, they have me guarding a shipment of jewellery to a casino in Vegas; it'll be closer to LA than I've been in a while. At least we'll be in the same timezone, right?
- L.
PPS: Ascending rank of nobility, and then royalty, obviously.
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She's still nursing one hell of a hangover -- garnered from a night where not even one drink she drank had to be bought by her, and only two of the uncounted swirl of dozens of colors and glass shapes, were ones she simply made a bartender hand her -- when her bedroom door is opened, and with nothing more than "mail call" she was half-dodging, half-catching the envelope flicked her way like a paper frisbee through a noise only the grim reaper would understand.
The world was rude, but she struggled to focus her eyes against the late-morning light-of-evil, as she held the card above her, looking at Luther's meticulous handwriting. Wondering just what they were doing. What this was. Why it wasn't stopping. Why she didn't stop herself from letting her fingertip trace the letters of her name on the envelope that he'd written. Or stop herself from trying to picture where he might have been when he wrote it. What time. What day. What else was going on. What had Dad said about it. Why was he still letting Luther get away with it. Whether he knew, or whether Luther had refused to stop.
The hand with the finger that had traced the ink fell instead to her chest, fingertips light and errant against her breastbone, where she still couldn't bring herself to wear necklaces except for the costuming of parts. Her other hand continued to hold the letter above her face, staring at her name, at his at the top of the return address, the closest their names had been in so long, continuing to happen.
Held out opening it, like it meant anything could be waiting inside it. )
I eat all the ice cream I want, all the time I want. It is even more magical than we all dreamed. My current favorite flavor from this shop, Lick Ice Cream, that does weekly homemade batches only, is 'dark chocolate, olive oil, and sea salt.' It is transcendent. The last love of my life before it was 'lemon lavender.'
I think you'd love the museums, and the Science Center, especially the Air and Space gallery. The Griffith Observatory, obviously. Maybe if you ever end up at them you can write and tell me about whether they are worth their salt or if it's just pretty and space-themed.
Hopefully, the jewel shipment goes easily, but I'm sure you'll make sure it all goes well if people are inevitably just stupid idiots and try anyway.
( Allison paused, pen tip tapping the kitchen table next to the paper, trying to decide. Trying, trying. Wanting. Not wanting. Especially because it felt almost too easy. Like this was slipping, each time, less and less into a distant update on unwoven lives and into something like ... a real conversation.
And she didn't know how to have a conversation with Luther,
not without talking to him the way she had all her life. )
It's all people following these esoteric written book-rules, and we all know that the only true rule in any fight is to survive it, at almost any cost, while taking out your opponent as quickly as possible, and keeping everyone else on the edges uninjured. Everything else about fitness, sports, fighting out here in the real world has this strange, tedious game-bent, award and title-winning, fascination with itself that is just so annoying and boring.
Allison
P.S. I see. And do you stop at King or Emporer? Or will you move on to divinities, after that?
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Luther had, of course, wondered. If two years away had left her edges sanded down and her teeth blunted, a wild animal now-leashed and gone tame. Every fangless comment on a cast panel — she wasn't headlining the posters and the casts, not yet — every tightly-smiling pose for the camera, every time she had to rein in her innate violence and training, press it all down into a low corner. He'd wondered if Number Three was gone, just as surely as she'd left him and he'd abandoned her.
But there she is. He's been dangling whatever little hints he can, whatever tiny rebellions he can muster, buoyed by these conversations and this contact with a world outside, a world that doesn't march to the drum of this claustrophobic manor, and she bites and the veil comes down and she's still there.
He doesn't know if Reginald suspects yet. Luther's gotten worse about hiding it, his guard dropping. Despite the fact that he is, technically, an adult now, part of him always has hackles raised and waiting for his father to storm in on him, letter held damningly in hand like a loaded gun, like a child caught with their hand in the cookie jar, and the Monocle will set fire to the entire stack of letters and forbid Number One from ever writing her ever again— a childish fear he still carries, about the door being slammed shut, just like when the two of them had been dragged away from the greenhouse and they had never gone back.
But he hasn't been caught; it hasn't happened yet.
And it's like the dam opens, the rest of the proper conversation spilling out: )
I wish I could go somedI'll tell you about them, if I ever get to check it out.
And that's never stupid. It's all you knew for so long, and it's a lot of changes to get adjusted to — I can't even imagine. Like the rest of the world is all made of paper and it's all for show and appearances, rather than the reality of it, rather than what you know so well. Stunt fighting isn't the same as fighting for real. You're a winner, but you're not actually supposed to win those fights on camera. (Have you accidentally given a stuntman a black eye yet?)
Like if it were me, I'm not sure if I'd even be able to consciously miss the punch, bypass the instinct. It's that hard-wired. Somebody comes at you with a fist, you're supposed to put them in the ground, make sure they don't get up again.
I see stories in the newspaper about Diego, sometimes. Small ones, local news, nothing like the coverage we used to get — I don't think the photographers recognize the Kraken, not without the uniform, but he's still in the city and still fighting crime. At least he doesn't have to hold back his punches, I guess. I figure part of him must miss it, too, if that's what he spends his time doing.
Nobody's exactly like us, after all.
- Luther
PS: No, unfortunately. Even kings have to answer to gods.
( Another small hint, a whisper of that bitterness he's starting to carry around with him, which is starting to curdle inside him the longer he spends alone. No matter how high he can imagine himself, there's always a higher authority here for him to answer to. The rigid hierarchy of the Umbrella Academy. Reginald Hargreeves. )
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Especially now. Especially because she opened her mouth, figuratively, and said something maybe she shouldn't. That maybe he won't answer. Or maybe he'll tell her she's wrong. It is stupid. She deserves it, and all the people who don't understand her. She left. She shouldn't have touched anything so close to that topic. To not have changed her mind when he did. As if somehow her mind hadn't been made up before Ben died even.
Long before everything broke in the doorway to his bedroom.
It's the first time she's actually afraid to open the letter when it comes. Still flat white, still with the family crest, still thin and innocuous-looking, and she hates herself all over because she knows she'll care about Luther damning her more than anyone refusing to hire her, anyone not seeming like they like her, any person she rumors into getting what she wants anyway.
She can't rumor that out of existence any more than the past.
He has so much power over her still. It's not fair. )
It's not like anyone listens to me about yet, so I haven't had to press the point to any director yet. No punching of anyone either, but I did accidentally throw my heel directly at someone's face instead of to the side of it during this screaming catfight scene once in one of the first plays I was in. That didn't go well at all, and she cut on her cheek by the actual heel part.
She wallowed for days. You can't even imagine. I don't even remember how young we were when scratches were just inevitable and routine, and no more worthy of commentary than putting our uniforms on every morning. But not out here. Where apparently, it's a death blow to someone's existence and the end of the world out in Hollywood. Even though Makeup had it staunched and covered flawlessly within twenty.
Why am I not surprised Diego is running around playing hero under cover of night. That seems so incredibly him. Getting out, but never getting out at all. Or maybe he doesn't miss it, and he took the only part of any of it he liked with him when he slipped off that night. (At least he would know how to take a punch right. The world truly must be upside down if any part of me misses anything about Diego.)
No one is like us, not even
usany of us anymore.Well. Except you. Carrying on the good fight.
Do you neverAllison
P.S. Boring. Goddess > Princess. Every time. If you are disagreeing as you read this, know that you're wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, Luther Hargreeves. The end. Thanks for playing. You lose.
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But she's ripped it down, with her previous letter. The walls are starting to come down again, the doors slamming open, and he can almost — almost but not — pretend that it's still whispered conversations through two adjacent side windows, cracking it open from where he lay in bed. Two cans and a string. Their shoulders huddled together in the greenhouse, countless times before they were finally banished. It's him and it's her and that's what matters, even if it's long patient delays and only ink on a page and letters jaunting across the continent, passed on from hand-to-hand and stashed in trucks before some weary mailman drops it off where it's supposed to go. Even with all that distance, it still sounds so much like her. He can hear Allison's words rolling in and through him, whenever he lies in bed and carefully opens another envelope with the fancy silver letter-opener he found in a drawer somewhere, and reads what he's been waiting all week to read. It's the closest thing to her he can get. It's the only piece of her he can get.
He supposes he could ask for a phone number, and pick up the phone.
Maybe.
Maybe not.
He's too much of a coward to.
And besides, it'd be harder to hide. He can write his responses in dead silence and slip them out without the Monocle being much the wiser; but Luther camping out by the derelict payphone in the hallway, his voice a low murmur into the receiver, would be far harder to disguise. )
Is it rude if I say that they all seem like a bunch of wusses? You almost lost an arm when you were thirteen, and had not one peep of a complaint about it when Mom stitched you back together. I don't really understand other people, regular people. Then again, I guess that's just to be expected, it's not like I've talked to them much besides the Q&As and meet and greets.
I don't know if I'd be cut out for the sort of thing youI don't know if
What's been the hardest thing about getting adjusted to all of that, and what's been the best thing?
(I will never tell him, just as you have to swear to never let him find out that I miss the sound of his speech exercises down the hall. I still remember them. She sells sea shells by the sea shore. I thought I saw you in the garden. Mother and Father are singing in the rain.)
The fight's boring without you.
- Luther
PS: Well, if you say so, then that must be true. I bow down to your completely irrefutable wisdom, Ms. Hargreeves.
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The hardest part is probably all the things I run into that I have no clue about. You would think that with how much time we spent studying for nearly two decades, that would be impossible. But it isn't. There are things all the time that I run into that I have no clue about. More in the beginning than now, when it seemed like I was tripping on them every direction I took a step. But it still happens.
The best thing is the challenge of the balance. Everyone and everywhere and everything expects different things of you, faces you carry, ways you act, and dress, and are. During roll call, and table reads, and up before the sun, in bed long after midnight shooting. How you're supposed to be at home, as a roommate, out on the town with coworkers, and friends, the people you're dating, in bars and clubs, and luncheons, and meetings, just as much as at red carpet opening night appearances or invited back to people's mansions.
( She doesn't know how to touch the five words that her eyes linger down on each time. She wants it to be true, so much she doesn't check that her response becomes an instant reflection of him. She wants to write that Hollywood is boring without him, too, but that's not true. LA refuses to be boring at any time of day or night, but the words still prick a truth deeper than that. It's not Hollywood. It's her.
She wants to change to her first answer to the one she could never write to him, never say. The worst part, the hardest and most challenging part of LA, wasn't LA related. It was coming to this place, feeling like only half of herself ever arrived. It was having to build a self she'd never wanted to be, never thought of becoming, still didn't know what was supposed to look like, be made of, if it would ever be good enough to fill the void around it.
But it's not something she can write.
It's barely a thing she can let herself think. )
Allison
P.S. I'm always right. But maybe if you're good, you can apply, and I will consider being your god, too. Someone has to take pity on you for you reaching your glass ceiling early.
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Dating.
Dating.
And even as it makes all the oxygen drain out of the room and makes him have to put the piece of paper down and go for another restless stewing walk through the forty-odd rooms of the empty mansion, Luther's already kicking himself for the reaction. He doesn't have any claim to this, any reason or right to have that catch his breath like it does. Despite the letters, the coy playfulness he thinks he can read between the lines. Dating. Of course she'd be dating. Her career isn't quite big enough yet for the tabloids to report on every single public sighting or suspected coffee date, so he hasn't had to be confronted with it in the pages yet, but—
Of course she would be.
But then the rest of the letter reminds him to breathe again, to pick himself back off the floor, to finally sit down and write a response. )
I feel like all of my letters are always too short — I'm not very good at this — so anything you write is fine. More than fine, even. Don't ever feel obligated.
You should rest up, after all your travel. I can only imagine the days on set are long. If there's one good thing about not needing to supervise the training of four other students, it's that I can sleep in more often. The missions are always draining, of course, sometimes I'm up for days at a time, but I can usually take it easy and rest afterwards. Mom still cooks her smiley face pancakes.
Do you travel a lot?
- Luther
PS: Huh, well. Is there any paperwork involved in applying? Do I need to propose a particular route of divination and religious devotion and ritualized worship, maybe? It'll take me a while to get all the bureaucracy together, but I'll consider it.
( Time has passed, and the weeks have turned and turned, and somehow autumn's here, the trees in the northeast changing their leaves. And then, much like the very first piece of mail from Allison that kicked all this off— there's a second envelope along with the delivery. A simple sepia-green envelope with a card inside, on off-white cardstock. It's almost October 1st, and somehow, Luther has found and obtained stationery. He slipped away during his return from a mission, stepped into an indie book shop with his uniform still ripped from the fight and a black eye blooming, and he'd first admired their books and then, secondly, found their collection of quirky cards with vintage illustrations. They had made him laugh; he'd picked one up, and then carefully written on it at home.
That smudge of the ink might be her imagination. )
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She picks it up and brings it with her, starting it as she juggling her purse, her coffee, and getting into a cab. It's shorter than she can remember. Short enough, she squints at that before reading it. Short enough, that even without comparison, she wonders if it's much shorter than his others.
Then, if she's doing it again. Talking too much when she writes to him. Allison reads it twice more in the cab while trying not to burn herself on her coffee or spill it. It ends up in her purse through her audition and the rest of that day.
It ends up in her purse, forgotten, that night, as it rolls straight from one more night spent up way too late with the girls, rolling straight into pre-dawn shooting for evening scenes, that turns into retakes on the pieces from the day before, and she's ready to fall into her bed when she gets home. Except that there's a card waiting on her bed: Luther's handwriting, but the wrong colored and shaped envelope.
She sits down, remembering the other letter in her purse -- not entirely forgotten, she'd seen getting her sunglasses, her wallet, a mirror, at different points in her busy days -- but remembering all over again she needs to pull it out, needs to answer it, as she's using her finger to rip through the sealed flap of this one.
She's smiling by the pale light of nightstand lamp, as she gets past the first words because it's a small, fast, weird slide. The not-quite roll of her eyes, without losing her smile, for reluctant superhero that slides into friend, and something of a snort at lady friend, as she wonders if it's possible he doesn't get that reference, and the other three that by the end make her laugh, before getting to his words.
Allison does take note of the smudge, but a cursory glance at the two words it's half over makes it an obvious mistake more than anything else. Because she's not Luther weakness. She's not arrogant enough to say she might fall under his regrets or mistakes, but if Luther has a main, single, one weakness it's not her. It's tied up in Academy, and saving the world, and their Dad. It always had been, and it'd been stupid of her to think she'd ever win against it. )
Where did you even find this? How did you get it?
Also, thank you and -- Happy Birthday!
Twenty-one. How did we ever get here?
(Your mission if you choose to accept it, card thief, is that at some point this year, you are required to go get a drink that is not from Dad's Living Room Bar. You have to tell them it's your birthday, even if it isn't so that, even if you still get it for free, it's for the right reason, not merely because you are Spaceboy, and then, hopefully, they choose to give you something not boring.)
I had to look up the word 'amanuensis,' but now how will I ever find someone out here I can throw it at? No one uses words like that out here. They stare at you like you might have discovered a whole brand new language. This is going to sound so weird, but sometimes I feel like the only way to make it out here is to make sure you don't seem smarter than the person directing your day or cutting your paychecks.
I also need to know how someone is writing their anatomical specimen.
It's hard to imagine you sleeping in. In my mind, you're still up at dawn, exercising, trying to make as little racket as possible pass through the walls, and still failing. How often do you sleep in, and is this really sleeping in, like closer than halfway to noon, or is it just like, you let yourself have an extra hour?
I do travel, though I'm not entirely sure if it counts as more or less than we all did. It's not across the whole world, but there's still some travel. California is kind enough to have a plethora of beaches as options for sunny, lazy days, and we do take advantage of them often. There are any number of places that are just a bus ride north or south.
I was out to Disney in my first year, but haven't been back again, yet. Bea is advocating for this train ride that stops at all the vineyards through Napa to celebrate my birthday, but I don't quite have that much time open in the next week or two, so it's just floating out there as an option.
I don't usually get to do much touring out while traveling with the show, when we are somewhere else. We're pretty tightly managed to schedules when we are there. Maybe later, when I have a better foothold in everything, and I'm needed in places longer, and there might be small breaks to be able to see things, but not yet.
Allison
P.S. You should definitely propose your plan of worship, and we will respond with your acceptance or denial in due time. Possibly in smoke signals or falling stars. You will need to be diligent about keeping watch once you apply.
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I'm a man of many talents, and we don't reveal our secrets.
(Alright, fine. I can't actually keep anything from you. I stole some time to myself while coming back from a mission — there's this one used bookstore in the upper west side that I stop by sometimes, usually to buy some new books that won't be scrutinized for 'pedagogical utility'. But they have a collection of cards by independent designers, and I saw these and I couldn't resist. Happy birthday.)
And you know me, I can never resist a mission. Challenge accepted. What do you have in mind — like, I have to go to a bar, order a drink on my own and pay for it own, and stand brooding at the end of the counter for a while? I'm sure I could handle that.
By sleeping in, I guess I mean an extra couple hours, here and there. Not all the time. You're right, though: it's hard to imagine, probably would've been unthinkable before. I'm becoming unforgivably lazy in my decrepit, withered old age.
( They're being light, and frothy, and fun, and there's actually no telling that there's some rot at the heart of the apple. Like the fact that Luther used to be up at dawn every morning, but nowadays he hardly sees the point. Every day is an unending, unchanging grey. If Pogo notices and realises and puts two-and-two together that sleeping longer is a sign of depression, well, the butler never mentions it to Master Luther. Doesn't find it his place to say anything.
Luther's finally started getting up earlier lately, though. If only just to beat the mailman out to the box. )
Anyway, since it was our day recently, I'll be thinking of you. What's your favorite drink? Maybe I'll order that, when I go brood at the bar.
- Luther
PS: Syllabus of worship to follow soon.
Although I guess we all know I've alwaysno subject
Maybe it's part of why she pushes a little too casually past the shadow-pained hamstrings in his next letter of 'I can't actually keep anything from you' and 'I'll be thinking of you,' while trying to ignore those words and where they don't match up. Let's herself cling a little too much to the other parts. To the fact this is, she doesn't know, something like a game. Where they're fine. Where this is normal.
Even when she thinks she feels less fine, less certain each time.
But she lets herself continue to put on a radiant smile and spin.
Because she can't stop smiling when she reads them anyway. )
Yes, of course, I mean, a real bar, with real people and real drinks. And, no, you are not supposed to pay for this drink. It's A Birthday Drink on Your Twenty-First Birthday. You are supposed to go land yourself a free birthday drink, by telling the bartender, it is your twenty-first birthday because bars often give people the first drink on your twenty-first birthday free. You fail if you have to buy it.
Also, maybe don't Byron it up too much while you're at it. That whole blond hair, blue-eyed thing goes so much better with things that are not moping in a corner and lamenting lost love, or tragic ennui of capitalism/socialism, or the plight of foppish monarchies/arrogant upstart new countries, or the all-consuming woe that is trying to live in the face of how we're all inevitably bound for death.
It probably wouldn't kill you to have a conversation or two with someone there who hasn't been vetted by Dad.
Maybe you'll even get lucExtra credit if you manage it.Disney was good. Still fun, but a different kind of fun, I guess? We still rode some of the rides, and ooh'd and ahh'd at every passing thing. I bought way too many shirts that I never remember to wear, but also keep not throwing away. If you weren't still too ungodly tall, I'd send you one.
See, this is where I'm either incredibly lame or hardcore, depending on who you ask.
While I won't turn down being bought a cocktail or a mixed drink, or taking one off the table from anyone who's bought a round, or has them set up at a work event, but they really aren't my thing. I like my drinks straight, sometimes with ice, more than anything. I don't feel any need to go out of the way for them to be froo-froo and taste half made of syrup. If it has to be girly, just toss a straw, an umbrella, a flower, some fruit on a plastic sword on the top, and call it done.
Allison
P.S. Good, good. We will breathlessly await.
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But what if I am lamentiYou're lucky I like a challenge. Alright, fine. Trying to get someone to buy me a drink it is. I think it'll be easier if they don't actually recognize me, either. Cross all your fingers for me that I don't run into any fans; they'd be quicker to buy me a round, probably, but I never really know what to do with them. I think part of why I'm bad at talking to people is because whenever they recognize you, they don't really see you as a person, if that makes sense — and it's always questions about everyone else in the rest of the Academy, which I can't answer, and then it's questions about what I do, which I can't really answer either. I inevitably disappoint them by explaining that I only ever train, and work out, and prepare, and study, and work on my flight certification, and that's awfully boring content for an extended conversation. Your life is probably way more interesting for them to hear about. I always have to pad out the interviews.
Especially now thatBut alright, thank you for the information. I'll order a straight whiskey on the rocks and then shove an umbrella (ha, ha) in it, and metaphorically pour one out for you. And then I'll debrief you on the mission and whether it's a success or an awful, awful failure and I wind up with a drink thrown in my face or something.
It's a tragedy that I can't wear your shirts but you could wear mine. How about that: I'm going to keep an eye open for the kitschiest thing I find in the next place I'm sent on task.
- Luther
( What is this? He's starting to ask himself that more and more often these days, because he can feel himself starting to open up further with each letter. He thinks he can spy a playfulness between the lines that he's trying not to read too much into, and yet does anyway, and bats it right back at her too. Brinksmanship. Oneupmanship, almost. How far can they go with this before it's too far.
He wonders it more and more, the sharper that pleasant ache twists in his chest as he rips open each envelope. Luther doesn't always bother with the neat silver letter-opener anymore, either: he's too impatient, he just tears his way through to get to the letter as quickly as possible, and then delicately smooths out the paper, careful to not ruin it. Drinking up her words, and knowing that she touched this paper just days ago. It's a window across the entire continent and into Allison's head, her words spilling out onto the page, a bridge being built between them.
How does that one quote go again—?
The book just got re-released a few months ago; he'd read it quietly to himself between training hours, and he thinks of it now. In the end, after long rumination, Luther goes to Pogo and asks to use the ancient stuttering photocopier, and he makes a copy of this printed page, folds it up, captions it from the source, and tucks it in the envelope behind his letter. )
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Allison's heart seizes, confusion stripping it raw, by the time she hits the second sentence of the carefully folded section Luther has pulled out of a book and inserted without comment, rhyme, or reason mentioned anywhere. Her skin tightening and prickling at the words there. The image of a closeness undeniable not defined by space, or time, or nearness. Before it got to the demands of what to bring to the blank page.
The one she sat down to each time she wrote him. They wrote each other.
It felt almost too electric, too bare a commentary. )
For the life of me, if anyone ever throws a drink in your face, you owe me that story. I will not be able to continue living without it. I can't even picture it, and at the same time, now I can't stop trying to figure a way in which that could happen somehow. Unless you've somehow changed entirely in the last two years, you're just so
sweetkindthoughtfulunabbrasivepolite, and that's rarely what makes that happen.Which makes it all the more hilarious and hard to let go of now.
I managed to score an unexpected free day off the week after our birthday, and the girls and I did head to San Francisco and take the Napa Valley Wine Train for one of their full package 'Estate Tours.' It was different. Due to our numbers, we got around the thing where they apparently mix groups together until every table on the train has four people.
It was all plush padded seats, and big clear windows to watch the vineyard that you're traveling through the whole time, and a four-course meal spread out before and after three different winery stops. The food was great, and the visits were fun enough, and I did find one or two things I liked. There's so much more to it out there than I had any clue about. It's everything to those people.
Also, there's this time called "The Magic Hour" in Napa, or at least on their train, that happens an hour before sunset, where everything glows. The mountains turn all golden yellow from the sun just sinking behind them, and clouds go pink, and it turns the grapes this golden-green. It was charming to watch as we headed back the way we came on our return ride.
Your quote has had me thinking since I opened your last letter. I'm pretty sure you'll agree I've never done anything lightly since the first time I managed to open my mouth, but I definitely haven't had a reason to write this much for any reason since
getting ouleaving the Academy. So, I guess there's to something new and different for twenty-one, too.Allison
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When he receives Allison's reply, he reads it over and over while sprawled on the comfortable sofa in the basement, the stuffing leaking everywhere, the cushions dented from years' worth of seven children camping out on it. He has room now to kick up his feet, his whole body stretched out along it, when before he'd probably have been jostling with Klaus for space.
He just marinates in her words, the images she's painting, which are so much more descriptive than anything they've handed each other until now. And so when he picks up the pen again, he really does try: )
I don't know how I'm supposedly the fan of poetry when you can write like this. That's beautiful. It's almost like I was there myself, I can picture it so well from your latter. I'll have to see if I can find any photos of the Magic Hour at work.
I wasn't trying to say you weren't trying, by the way. Just— I don't know, I remembered that quote and it happened to be on my mind, about the importance of writing and reading, and I thought it was fitting.
So, I guess it's my turn. I'm not as good at telling stories as you are, so I apologize in advance.
I told Dad that I was going out, and he said whatever for, I didn't have a mission scheduled — so I said I'd just turned twenty-one so I was heading out for a drink. He'd forgotten
ourmy birthday, of course. He thought it was a complete waste of time, and that it would interfere with my training regimen and if I got hungover I'd jeopardize my health, but I'm twenty-one and it's legal so there isn't actually anything he can do to stop me, really. Just a couple drinks, I said, and I wouldn't disgrace the Academy or anything and I'd call Pogo from a payphone if I ran into trouble. So he let me go.I tried to find someplace that wasn't too crowded or with too many people, so I went to a hole-in-the-wall on the lower east side. You have to walk down some steps, with this unassuming unlabelled metal door covered in graffiti, that looks like it leads into a basement but it opens up and turns out to be this massive brick-walled space. So dark you can't even read the drinks menu without turning on a lighter, and sticky wooden counters, cracked leather in the booths, and enough people to show it was popular but not enough that you had to be crammed in elbow-to-elbow.
The bartender absolutely did not recognize me and didn't want to give me a free drink — if I'd been a cute girl, he probably would've — but a woman down the counter took pity on me and bought me one. It was a tequila shot, with the lime and licking the salt off my hand and everything. Not exactly the same as what you'd described, but I took it anyway.
It's actually the first drink I've ever had? I play by the rules too much, I guess. It burned like I'd swallowed a warm flame going down, but I actually really liked it with the lime. And I got the cocktail umbrellas and tried some whiskey neat, and I did not vomit on anyone's shoes and I didn't get any drinks thrown in my face, so I consider the night a success.
She asked for my number, but I pretended I had aDo I get a reward for passing the challenge?
- Luther
PS: This is the most I've ever written outside of Academy assignments, too.
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That some part of her wants to keep that image, the one that he's describing, as someone who has it altogether out here. Cool and cultured. She's making it out here, and she can sound just as smart and smooth about it as everyone else. She tries hard not to think why that matters more than the absent, confused sputtering of everything when this started. Months ago now.
How did it get to be months? )
It's weird to think about, isn't it?
None of us wrote letters we chose to, and yet for years on years of our lives, we all got fan mail. All these letters people took the time to think out and write, good or bad, short or long, by themselves or with gifts, and we never actually answered them back. Or wrote letters to anyone ourselves. Letters were just things that happened to us, or happened in history books and classic literature.
You probably still don't have any, so I will tell you for the sake of the world, that the life before you realize the mailbox is mostly full of bills and ads for things you don't want is more blissful. Maybe I'd feel differently if the cable bill came hand-drawn and written and sassed me by name like it actually knew me. Or what I watched. It is to dream.
I have to say. I'm impressed that you asked dad, and somehow convinced him to let you. I assumed you'd just sneak out,
if you went at alllike all those other few times we all did through the years, here and there. Your bartender sounds like an absolute dick, but I'm glad someone managed to have some sense of commemorative spirit. Tequila is not a bad starter, either. There are a lot of people who hate it and a lot of good ways to have it.I commend you on completing Operation Birthday, acquiring your drink, not destroying anyone's shoes, and not offending anyone else's sensibilities. You have a officially had a time of it and are allowed to consider yourself twenty-one now in the eyes of the world and not just the calendar.
I wish I could'veWhat kind of a reward would you want?
Allison
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It's such an innocent question, and yet not. He reads and rereads and rereads the sentence, traces the sharp angles and curves of Allison's handwriting, and tries to imagine what tone might be infusing those eight words. If this were over the phone, he'd be better able to read it, to gauge her voice and her mood and the intended slant to that question. Was there a coquettish edge to it? He can't tell.
He knows what reward he'd want: Her. Just her. Allison in the doorway of his bedroom again, flashing him a brilliant smile, laughing that clear bell-like laugh, throwing herself down on his bed and tugging his book away. Paging through his record selection, and him letting her have that honoured position of choosing the next album. Sparring in the work-out room in the basement, her blows darting and quick like a hornet, the pair of them working up a sweat. And then the playful rewards she'd never actually doled out: a kiss on the cheek, bestowed like a boon.
He can't ask for it, any of it.
He puts pen to paper again. )
Hey, speak for yourself, I answered some of that fan mail. Or well, I guess I never really wrote letters, really, but I personalized as many of the autographs as I could before my wrist gave out.
And good point about the sneaking out. I don't know why I went straight to him, and didn't even think of bypassing it— Although I guess it's just harder, without Klaus to come up with the idea or Diego to egg me on. It never occurs to me on my own. It's actually easier these days, though, to get some things past him. He's stopped putting in as much effort now that there isn't a whole team to manage, if that makes sense. Pogo and I can do pretty well by ourselves. He's started focusing more on his research and tech
and a project onBut thank you, thank you. I'm feeling pretty good about Operation Birthday. Me conquering stingy bartenders and polite crowds = worth entering the annals of the Umbrella Academy right alongside the sortie against Mr Universe. And it was a better way of marking the day than doing a hundred pull-ups and reading a book, anyway.
Any of the rewards I'd want, though, I can't have.
- Luther
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She says maybe once she's done. But that doesn't happen.
She says in the morning. But that doesn't happen either.
She thinks it's only been two days when she picks it up, again, a little annoyed at being so busy, and skimming the words once more gives her an idea. Which sends her to pulling out an extensive portfolio and leafing through pages with a determined expression of focus and consternation. It feels a little like cheating, but at least it is something and maybe next time she will have the time to do better?
When the mail is brought in at the Academy a few days later, it is not envelope. Or it is. It is just much larger than it should be. The material far more durable than paper, and slapped with large "FRAGILE" stickers two on the front and two on the back, like someone was making as sure as they could nothing would happen to it.
When he opens it up, a single thing exists: a glossy headshot in black and white of Allison, her hair blown into an array of waves around a bare shoulders, behind her into the diffuse light. She's looking back over her shoulder out of the image, straight at the viewer, and the press of her mouth hasn't turned any direction. But there's something right at the edge of her mouth, almost impossible to point to what, that makes the whole thing feel like she's smiling all the same.
Written across the top, the careful side not on her face, and the bottom, around the mainframe of the photo, is Allison's slightly loopier fast handwriting in familiar black sharpie. The one with 'slightly more character' that she may have been practicing through the last year, as something better than her father perfectly trained printing. Especially her signature. )
Scientific tests were necessary.
Is this or is this not a letter?
☐ Yes
☐ No
All My Love & Best Wishes,
Allison Hargreeves
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He sets the photo on his cramped desk, moves the stack of books and scattered paint tubes aside, and leans over writing his response, his handwriting as narrow and tidy as ever: )
☑ Yes
The definition of letter can be pretty flexible, if you just put your mind to it. Maybe I'll dedicate myself to training carrier pigeons next, and tie some scrolls of paper to their ankles. Maybe my next message to you will be via telegram, or Morse code.
I still owe you a birthday present too, right? Here — I think I promised you a souvenir.
I was Honolulu, fighting a magma-themed supervillain on the slopes of Diamondhead. Most of my clothes literally burned up in the battle. It'd probably sound like something out of the pulp comics, like I was some scantily-clad hero out of Edgar Rice Burroughs or something, except it was so embarrassing. I had to stop at a tourist shop on the beach just to find something to wear on the way back. It got me through the newspaper interview afterwards, and I brought it home. I can't exactly wear it around the house, though, so it might as well go to a good home. You should visit Hawaii someday, if you haven't been, and enjoy it properly. I took an experimental high-speed plane back, designed by one of Dad's contacts, so I didn't really get a chance to stick around or soak up the sun.
- Luther
( With the letter comes a wrapped package: soft and clearly not as fragile, when she opens it, she finds a cheesy space-themed Hawaiian shirt. Obviously clean, because it smells of Grace's laundry detergent and fabric softener, the same scent as all their neatly-pressed matching uniforms — but he's also worn it a couple times before he remembered to wrap it up for the mail.
It might've been intentional. It might've not been. )
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