for numberthree.

[obediences]

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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[obediences]

[ A dark and stormy night in Los Angeles, in the middle of the night and that dead period before dawn, is even later in their eastern city. Klaus is haunting the downstairs bar, Five is dead to the world in the bunk bed (the man really, truly needed a rest), and Luther, too, is still passed out cold when that landline suddenly rings in their hotel room.

Alarms have always gotten him up and out of bed immediately, the klaxons at the Academy propelling him to his feet and already reaching for the neatly-folded uniform on the chair, knowing the children would be timed on how quickly they could get up and get moving. But this particular shrill sound startles him — he's not used to the phone yet, no one ever calls him — and then he's automatically reaching out for the threatening noise to stop it, almost accidentally smashing the phone for a second, before he lifts it off its cradle in the darkness and presses it to his ear, his voice a low croak. ]

Hello?

[numberthree]

[ She can't breathe — can't breathe, can't breathe, can't breathe.

She can hardly make her voice form the second sentence when the desk picks up, to saying which room, who is she, even as she blindly grasps for it. Untouchable. Fleeting. Slipping through her fingers. Fingertips become claws gripping the plastic near her ear when it's suddenly his voice, his voice, his voice and something — whatever last littlest skin to cling to — nearly obliterates entirely on those two syllables; almost sobs —

but it's too deep, too denied — she chokes,
starved from making any single sound,
on a silence trained deeper even than breathing —

for her father, for the cameras, for Ray

— and it's a scrabbling, shambling, desperate thing,
cracking the first sound she makes even as it comes out a whisper ]

Luther

[obediences]

[ That small, tiny voice in the receiver. When Allison is anything except small.
And isn't she supposed to be just next door?

There was that lightning-quick disorientation of wondering where he is, where she is, and when any of them are, but that desperate whisper scours through all of it and his memories fall back into place like a bullet in a gun. The right era but the wrong time. Hotel Obsidian. Got it.

Luther's already rolled up until his feet hit the floor and he's sitting upright, wide-awake, leaning over the base sitting in his lap and his head bowed over the phone as if he can crawl into it. ]

Allison? Are you okay? Where are you?

[numberthree]

[ His words become rapid-fire intelligence. (He can tell; he doesn't know.) Number One; snapped to attention. On the dot. On a dime. (He can't fix it, he can't fix it, he can't fix it, why did she call him? It's not his problem.) She can't let go of the phone. Can't answer that first question. Can hear him, but he doesn't feel real

That scream

You're scaring her!

Tears cloud her vision again, and there's a sharp breath in her nose, even as the only next word she can manage sticks on her tongue.
Apology. Shame. Regret. Confusion. Agony. Desperation. (She's not here. He said. And Viktor, too. She's not. Everything else, but she's not. Again. ]

LA.

[obediences]

How? Why? What?

[ Rapidfire confusion, even while he keeps his voice low and quiet enough to not wake Five. (Ordinarily, that paranoid hair-trigger man probably would've been up like a shot, but he really was exhausted.)

And then, because Luther is Luther and he has his own healthy paranoia, he keeps the receiver against his ear and carries the phone base to the adjoining door to the girls' room, and he slowly, carefully opens it and pokes his head in. There's the two twin beds on each side of the room. Vanya's small form curled in on itself under the blankets. And the other bed—

Empty, perfectly-made, and not slept in. Okay. So he's probably talking to the real Allison. It's not a voice mimickry or a doppelganger or a trap by the Sparrows. His voice is still hushed, though, and perplexed: ]

Why are you in Los Angeles? Did someone take you?

[numberthree]

I — [ Her voice shakes but it's gaining more ground. ] I had to —

[ Had to see her. Her baby. Her Claire. She'd tried calling. More than once. But it made sense that Patrick wasn't picking up; Patrick was — was married to some other woman, had some other child. The words push out with too much voice, a mini bomb voiced into light that sucks her further into darkness. ]

Luther. [ A word like a build a bridge; to dive off of the edge of. ]

She's not here.

[obediences]

[ She. Who? Who could possibly—



Oh.

And the realisation clicks, and Luther walks as far into the hotel room as he can get before the phone cord finally goes taut and he sinks down to the floor, back to the wall, head and shoulders still curved over the phone in some pretended semblance of privacy. Of course she isn't and Why would you even and When did you go and How did you go and Why didn't you talk to me first. A whole flurry of questions bubbling up before each of them is quickly discarded in turn.

Oh, Allison.

Luther cants his voice and makes it as gentle as possible. Not chiding, not being a know-it-all, not delivering an I-told-you-so. Just repeating her own reality back to her: ]

I guess she wouldn't be. It's a different world. Our lives played out differently here.

[numberthree]

[ Luther says it softly, sensibly, like it isn't any surprise to be found, like it all makes sense. The world tilts under her only further, only faster, tears squeezing hot out the corner of her eyes and blurring her vision, rattling her breath in. For a second, she hates him, hates everything, even as that shatters in on itself, too. ]

I can't do this.

[ It's impossible to say if that's to him, or herself, or if she even realizes she says it. It comes out while her face crumbles, shoulders curling. That inescapable, unbearable pressure in the back of her mind for over two years, gone, gone for less than a full day and back. It was smothering her, pressing out all of her air, smashing apart her hard-built balance to the brittle shards it's always been. Telling her she knew better than to hope, to believe, to think she deserved anything. ]

[obediences]

[ It isn’t really Luther’s fault — the Sparrows’ Reginald had been brutally upfront about how and why he never adopted the same children this time around — and yet Luther feels the sting regardless. The instinctive urge to blame himself and pile all the responsibility on his own shoulders, for better and worse.

Because he had convinced Allison to uproot her life. He had convinced her to leave a marriage and come here instead. He had practically promised her Claire, had promised that it was worth a shot, that it was worth the hope, that they could fix things. He had led her right into having this hope smashed out of her.

Can he really blame her for having at least tried? For having thought, for one fleeting night, that she could actually have her daughter back? She hadn’t pried open that box in so long, had shut it all away and compartmentalised it throughout Dallas, and now that she’d dared to open it… ]

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I wanted…

I really hoped we’d have gotten it right, this time.