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]

[ 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.