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.

Comments

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

[obediences]

CANON(ISH)

• TFLN 📱
  
• Unsent & unread letters ✉️

ALTERNATE UNIVERSES

• The birthday party (multiverse sandbox, post-S1)
  
• Teenagers:
  
  • Post-mission
    
  • Dæmons AU
    
  • Poetry
  
  
• Los Angeles, the epistolary edition:
  
  • August 2010 ✉️
    
  • Winter 2010 (the first meeting)
    
  • A few weeks later 📞
  
  
• ❄️ Holiday scenes 🎄 (MoMish):
  
  • Mistletoe
    
  • Snowed in
  
  
• Season 2:
  
  • Outtake: The kiss that wasn't (2x10)
    
  • Dallas amnesia AU
  
  
• Season 3:
  
  • Fix-it: 3.02, The phonecall 📞
    
  • Fix-it: 3.08, Wedding at the End of the World

MASK OR MENACE

• The City
  
• Outtake: Post-S2 homecoming
  
• Deleted scene: Fractured World 2020

The Epistolary Edition

[numberthree]

𝟐𝟎𝟏𝟎 𝐀𝐮𝐠𝐮𝐬𝐭



( They arrive on the same day.

One, your typical tourist postcard. The Hollywood sign in bright block letters against a perfect blue sky. On the back the handwriting is sloppy, upside-down, and at an angle, without a signature or a return address. There’s a strange pattern across one corner that looks like something purple was spilled on it, the watercolor stain of it streaking that edge, all the way to the last word on both lines.)

Everything is purple here,
and I miss you more than even it.

( The second a small white envelope, with unblemished, unmarked, flap back seal. It’s addressed to Luther Hargreeves, and there is a small neat, normal return address in the corner. Inside it is an equally small card. There is the silhouette of a yellow bird twined with a fancy cursive "B" in the right corner on the front, but the rest is simply pristine, folded white card stock. The handwriting inside, like that of the address on the envelope, is meticulously perfect.)

This is going to sound stupid, and probably weird. I think I sent you something last night, but I’m not certain. If I did, I’m sorry. Disregard it please. It was a mistake. If I didn’t, I’m sorry for writing this for nothing and there's nothing to worry about. Either way, sorry.

Hope everything is well there.

Allison

[obediences]

( It's Pogo's job to take in the mail.

Mostly it's correspondence for Sir Reginald, for the butler to sift through and vet before even daring to bother the man with any particular letter; so Pogo runs interference, handles most of the routine requests for information or scheduling inquiries, juggles the man's itinerary, keeps the insipid public from burying the Nobel laureate with letters. Et cetera. Et cetera.

These two pieces, though. He'd looked at the name and address on one, and turned the postcard end-over-end, before setting them on a silver tray and knocking officiously on the door of the only occupied bedroom in the children's wing.

Master Luther. You have some missives today.

And Luther jerks, flabbergasted — what? surely that can't be right — before he's being handed the tray, and he's picking them up with shaking hands. He reads the postcard first, because he can't help not.

And her handwriting is messy and wine-drunk, but there's similarities in those rushed angles to whenever Allison was writing quickly: blazing her way through an assignment, scribbling down her answers as swiftly as she could so she could get out early, go do something far more interesting. Written like she was ripping off a band-aid. He'd recognise her anywhere, even unmarked and unsigned. And Luther feels his heart turn over in his chest.

It feels like an unexpected gift. They hadn't even had her address, he wouldn't know how to reach her even if he'd worked up the courage to try; now, at least, the door is slightly cracked open.

So he tries over and over and over to write his response, and scraps six different drafts, before an envelope is finally sealed and goes out with the next morning's mail. Every time he wrote something and changed his mind on it, he re-did the entire letter rather than scribble out the text. But in the end result, his handwriting is just as neat and prim and tidy as hers; they've been well-drilled on their penmanship. )

Allison,

There might've been a postcard; I've never seen the Hollywood sign, so it's on my mirror now. Don't worry about it.

But it was really nice to hear from you. I didn't really think you woul
I would've thought you'd be way too busy to sit down and write. Lots of Hollywood parties to go to? How wild is it, on a scale of 1-10?

I saw you got cast in another TV
Congratu

Things here are quiet— y'know, just the usual, saving the world. Pogo looked like it was Christmas when he handed me this envelope. He'd probably like it if you wrote again.

- L.

[numberthree]

( Oh and Fuck.

They are the two words that encapsulate her entire existence.

They are the only two words that circle Allison's mind, over and over and over, and if she were the type to she'd sit down and put her head between her knees, she would. She doesn't. She may hate her father, but his training has applied far more to this new world of hers than she ever would have dreamed. She wouldn't be caught dead with her head between her knees by her siblings when she was younger or her roommates now. Not ever. No one was allowed to get the better of her. Not ever again.

She listens as well to 'don't worry' as he did to 'please disregard.' What did she write? Why is it she can impel whatever she wants from whatever's in front of her, but she can't force her mind to just turn up what it was. How bad. How stupid. How desperate. It's on his mirror, and she's picturing which side of the mirror for way too long without breathing.

It takes days. She puts it down. Picks it up. Puts it in her a bed table. Takes it out. Reads it more times than she'd admit even the first night. Horror sticks, but slipping out from it is the sore, sad desperation. That ache in her chest she did so well to put in the smallest box in the smallest room inside her head. The one that had somehow won out that night. On the town. Drinking a little too much celebrating her new job. Doing the stupidest thing in the entire goddamn world as her gift to herself apparently. More reasons she's never supposed to lose control of herself.

She hates herself. Tells herself it really is stupid. Tells herself to put it away. Tells herself his handwriting still looks the exact same, and somehow that only hurts more. Like everything else is still the same. Somewhere else. In the wrong 'where else. That just so happened to somehow still be the right one for him, even two years later. She still hates that.

Even when she still can't bring herself to hate him.

Especially now, with fingers on a paper he was touching,
holding, writing on, looking at only days ago. She's such a fool.

It takes four minutes to even remember she, of all people, has a command of words after she writes his name for the second time in two years, and the first time not just to address an envelope out of necessity. )

Luther,

Sorry, again. Really.

It is pretty go, go, go around these parts all at time. That's why this took so lo Work keeps me busier than parties do, but those can be their own version of insanity. I guess I'd rate LA somewhere around an 8 on normal days, and 200 on the insane ones, when people actually fill the top of an indoor pool with floating candles and pomegranate seeds just for decor.

How are y Are things
Are you Do you

I'm glad things are good there. Tell Pogo and Mom I send my love. That I haven't forgotte That they can write, if they want to. I'm busy, but I can find the time. I still have to come home and eat and sleep and shower like everyone else in the world.

I saw a broadcast about what you did in Mumbai. Congrats on that.


Allison

[obediences]

( The mention of Mumbai hitches Luther's breath, a little. Somehow, he'd imagined himself into a corner where she didn't pay attention or even notice the Academy news at all, didn't care about it anymore, had excised it (and him) from her life like a years-old tumor. And the repeated apology feels... different, when he pores over it. Sorry was always his M.O.; Rumor was unabashed, never ashamed, never apologised for herself. Still, he drinks up each and every word, each hint of her and what she's like and the gaps in the past two years, this aching void where she was supposed to be by his side. Interviews just aren't the same; Allison's voice never really sounds like her when she's mouthing soundbites for the cameras, or her words are pressed into magazine articles. It's slick, practiced, superficial. It's the same sort of shit they always parroted off during their Academy press junkets. It's not actually his best friend, the one he'd sit up late talking to.

And he drinks up any details she has of the outside. The manor's gotten intolerably, unbearably quiet since she was the last to leave — it makes his shoulderblades crawl, makes him pace the hallways like a leashed-up and restless dog. )

Allison,

An insanity rating of 200 but at least nobody's coming after you with knives or sledgehammers if they don't like your work. Do the stakes feel weirdly low after everything you've seen? I keep thinking it would.

Will do. I haven't told Dad that you wrote. I think Mom wants to send some home-baked cookies or something, I'll include them in a package— she's still not all that used to there being fewer people around to eat her cooking.

And thanks. The airport still got destroyed, but that just happens sometimes when robots attack, I guess.

- L.

PS: Heard you got a pilot?

[numberthree]

( She doesn't know whether to expect anything at her last. From Pogo. From Mom. From. It catches on everything she does, like the whole thing has ripped a hangnail that won't stop catching. It's not the blister that kept her from being able to breathe when she first got to LA, but the snag tears a line in her skin each time still. She supposes it's good that torture training was a childhood norm;

And sometimes right before she goes to sleep, she supposes she's grateful to the mess of herself, just for some shred of proof of his existence that isn't the zip of him across cameras, or the peerless smile and the familiar domino mask, that she can never stop herself from frowning at.

It stirs the memory of those words too close to the surface every time still when he stares directly into the camera, straight at her from the tv, to answer any of the questions, with The Monocle right behind him. Take off the mask when you talk to me. Not a question, and not a command, but one all the same. From a girl she isn't anymore, to a boy he isn't anymore either. The Boy who saved the world all the same without them, like there wasn't a difference to it without them.

But for a second, she'd gotten to touch his world again—one more time.
Even if with the worst grace she's managed since leaving that day.







It's hard to tell what is more devastating when one of her roommates tosses her the newest magazine with an article about her 'buried on 24, but I paperclipped and added highlights for you,' the bill for the electricity, and her name in Luther's handwriting. Something that touches both elation and trepidation with a swift kick.

Still, she filtches another of the paper-stock bird cards, and walks to her room.)

Luther,

All's well that ends well, at least. The people made it out, and buildings can always be replaced, right? Maybe the next one will have your name on it.

I guess it is a little anticlimactic out here when you put it like that, but the stakes rarely feel low about anything here, from the jobs you manage to get to the food people see you eating. I'm not even a big name yet, but somehow people end up with the oddest pictures of you, eating, getting coffee, going grocery shopping, and it's weirdly like having an even bigger magnifying glass here than there was at home.

Yes, to the pilot. We started shooting a few weeks back. It's sort of buddy-cop, family drama, eventual love story all rolled into one. I think it could really have legs.

That's probably smart about Dad. You know he'd just You can tell Mom I will take any and all the cookies she wants to send. No ones' baked goods have even come close yet, and there are multiple people who would be glad to pack them away for her right here.

Have you read anything exciting lately?


Allison

[obediences]

( It's starting to become a thing now: Luther hovering anxiously whenever Pogo returns from checking the mail, peering over the banister like a kid waiting for Santa Claus, then hurrying down the stairs to grab the letter out of the butler's hands. It's not exactly dignified. Luther knows it, acknowledges it, and in the end just accepts the fact.

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: )

Allison,

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, thou

I'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. )

"Your problem, Nargant," he declared, "is that your education was unconnected with the practical reality of life. You grew up believing that rules are more important than all the facts you could ever uncover, and that the slightest disobedience is deadly. Aside from that, you didn't learn much, but this duty to obey has become your flesh and bone, and on some distant day after your death, when they cut you apart, they'll probably find crystallized obedience in the place of your bone marrow."

Nargant stared at his hands, as though he were trying to see through his skin to find out if Nillian might be right.

[numberthree]

( Sometimes Allison's not positive this is real. Or, moreover, she keeps reminding herself that she knows it's not, needs not to forget that it's not. Even though she's started to keep all previous pieces in a specific stack on the side of her bed table closest the bed. She doesn't read through them as often as she finds herself staring at them, sitting there. Wondering if this is all a strange dream. Wondering when it will inevitably just cut off.

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

[obediences]

( And there she is, right there. The girl he loves: the one who sees a challenge and doesn't run from it, rises up to it instead, seizes it imperiously with both hands. He's been watching what he can catch of her career from afar, a one-woman army hacking her way into the industry like a cleaver. First off the back of her recognisable name and pre-existing fame, then on her own merits, and maybe some creative Rumoring along the way, if his suspicions are true.

—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. )

Allison,

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.)

[numberthree]

( When the next card arrives at The Umbrella Academy, it is a very faint rose-blush pink, and the inside has a card that is all pearlescent white, with a stylized italic 'A' across the center and a matching border around the edges in that same pink. )

Dear Luther,

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 or of 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

[obediences]

( It's the first time that a different envelope arrives, with a different card — Luther almost does a double-take at the sight of it, missing the yellow bird that has meant 'Allison' for weeks now. But there's nobody else on this earth who might be writing to Luther Hargreeves, so he takes in the mail with the same spring in his step, hurrying off to read it in privacy.

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. )

Dear Allison,

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.

[numberthree]

( What are you laughing about?
What? I'm not. I wasn't.
Sure, you weren't, Allison.

You know it's not smart to keep anything going on back home out here, right? It all--
I'm not.
-- just ends in ruin.
It's not like that.
I'm just trying to help. Everyone's been th--

I heard a rumor you let this go.


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. )

Dear Luther,

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.

[obediences]

( It is, almost, starting to feel normal.

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. )

Dear Allison,

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.

[numberthree]

( Days come, days go, a whole country does both, too. She's days of exhausted poured into one small package when she gets back, frowning at the pile of her mail until she finally finds it. Postdated days ago. She's tearing it open, feeling like she should be apologizing to a piece a paper, even as she leaves a strewn trail of suitcases, purse, heels, in a line toward her bedroom door. Dropping her self on her bed, and pulling the edge of the cool comforter around her even still on top of it.

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. )

Dear Luther,

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'd be 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?

[obediences]

( The delay is longer this time, and he has to keep consciously reminding himself that it's because she's in Canada. She told him so. She told him in advance and Canada is the reason he's pacing more circles into the carpet while waiting for a reply — it's not because he said something wrong, offended her, scared her off, accidentally severed this tentative, delicate, precious connection.

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. )

Dear Allison,

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 lea  Nobody 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.

[numberthree]

( Payday is one of the good days in LA. The great days. Especially when there's still money left in her bank account as the weekend start, even after her portion of the rent and bills are handed off, to decide they should all go out to celebrate a great week.

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. )

Dear Luther,

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. )

I don't ever think I made the wrong decision, but sometimes I do miss it. Is that stupid? It's so annoying when people look like I've asked to kill their puppy if I mention in passing I can do my own stunts better than anyone trained to make it looked pretend-real, and even when Trista, roommate who knows what number, from sometime last year, suggested kickboxing, that was a wreck. Same with the martial arts dojos.

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?

[obediences]

( And. There she is.

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: )

Dear Allison,

I wish I could go somed


I'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. )

[numberthree]

( It's starting to become rote, a tighter and tighter pattern, that's nearing something even close to predictability. A new piece was arriving every 4-6 days. The way she starts getting restless around day 3. The way she starts getting prickly with everything around day 5.

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. )

Dear Luther,

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 us any of us anymore.
Well. Except you. Carrying on the good fight.


Do you never

Allison


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.

[obediences]

( They'd already started to thaw in their letters, warming up past that initial hesitant wary politeness — but there had still been some reserve. Just that slightest hint of distance and caution, a defensive barrier for each of them to hide behind.

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. )

Dear Allison,

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 you
I 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.

[numberthree]

Dear Luther,

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. )

I finished up an updated portfolio shoot earlier this morning. Headshots this time. That you have to take the hundred to get a workable half dozen/dozen, and still pay for all of them is, also, annoying. There's so much that goes on behind the scenes in every part of all of this. I'm feeling tired after it all and this last week, so hopefully, you won't mind this being a little shorter.

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.

[obediences]

( That one word trips him up, makes the rest of the world suddenly narrow and turn strangling around him, everything grinding to a halt as he reads.

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. )

Dear Allison,

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. )

the epistolary edition: first meeting. los angeles, time unspecified.

[obediences]

It's the opening and dedication of a new science museum in LA. Anyone who's anyone is supposed to be there, and so of course Sir Reginald Hargreeves, Olympian, Nobel laureate and scientist, had been specially invited— in impatient disgust, however, the man had stiffly declined and agreed to send his son in his stead. The Monocle had far better things to do.

Luther had tried not to look too eager about it: jumping at the opportunity, falling over himself to say yeah, sure, I can go. He'd affected nonchalance even while his heart did its best to climb up into his throat and kill him right then and there.

It had taken so much courage and nerve for him to then broach it with Allison in his next letter, tentatively floating that he was, probably, going to be in LA in a couple weeks, and would she maybe want to get some coffee—? He hadn't mentioned details yet. When the answer came that she was out-of-town that week, he'd felt that crushing disappointment roil over him before he swallowed it. Just another bitter pill to press down and join that locked-up, bricked-up well inside him. It had already been two years away from each other, after all. So what was one more?

The first thing he realises when arriving is that Los Angeles is warmer than the northeast, even in late autumn, almost-winter. He checks in at his hotel and does the rounds the next day, meeting with some of Reginald's contacts about some project on the dark side of the moon, delivering the updates he's been tasked to send. And as the hours crawl on towards the ceremony, he has his suit delivered to his room, laundered by the hotel and freshly-pressed after how rumpled it had become in his luggage and after the plane. (God, he can't wait for the kinks in the Televator to finally get ironed out.)

Luther travels light: he has his wallet in his back pocket and his party invitation on heavy cardstock in the pocket of his coat, and that's it; they're the only things he's armed with between tonight's festivities and his early-morning flight tomorrow to go back east. At first, the thought of this trip had been a strangling hope—

But now it's just work.

Similar to hers, in fact: Luther puts on that blinding smile, answers questions, acts the cocky superhero that they all know him as. Space. He holds his drink and he holds still for the pictures, and occasionally lets a fawning fan buy him a refill (he's old enough now to drink legally, they all are), and he puts on his best face even as it doesn't touch that quieter, steadier heart of him beneath those layers and layers of PR-trained facade. He has to present the Academy in a good light; has to stand as a respectable replacement for his father, not let him nor their reputation down. (In all honesty, Luther's a far better guest than Reginald: the young man is polite and patient where his father is notoriously impolite and impatient, and Luther has a certain boyish charm that he can leverage sometimes, a weapon like any other.)

He's half-listening to one of the exhibit curators in this sparkling marble foyer, drink sweating in his hand, half-distracted, when he finally hears it.

Out of nowhere. Behind him somewhere. A laugh. That laugh. A merry tinkling bell and it's two years older but he'd know it anywhere. Luther's head pivots like it's on a swivel, his whole body turning to look back over his shoulder, across the room, through the crowd, searching for the source. And through the crowd, he sees her. In that gown. She wasn't supposed to be in town this week.

Allison.

[numberthree]

( They might have been sent together, but they arrive out of order. The wonders of the US postal service. She's headed out from an early morning call-back audition when she spots his envelope, half-covered in a magazine of coupons for a nearby grocery and two junk mail pieces. It must have come yesterday, and no mentioned it.

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. )

Dear Luther,

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.

[numberthree]

Allison would rather be sleeping.

She's been running on three-to-four hours for most of the last week, and she'd decided it was a godsend when she was informed, along with about a dozen other, all her sets were up and they were headed home a day early. The plane ride wasn't the best, continually waking her back up, making the dream of her own bed, and her own pillows, stronger each time.

(As well as the urge to get up and punch the pilot for obviously being shit at his job.)

What had not been a godsend was the post-it waiting on the front of her bedroom door when she got home that read: Call Production Now with the last word underlined four times. At least that's what the note had said. Which was, also, wrong. But determination and fifteen minutes more focus finally got her on with one of the producers who'd call for her.

Who said they'd been loving all her work, and were already sweet-talking the network into shifting in another lead role for her starting in the next season, and could she come to this 'probably boring museum opening' in six hours, where the bigwig she needed to meet as soon as possible, would be overseeing the crew doing the news coverage on it for the station.

It wasn't something you said no to, but Allison was definitely considering putting all of their names next on the death list. The one where she was allowed to just tell them all their head's popped off like champagne corks.

Fine. It probably was still a godsend, too, just not the one she was hoping for with crisp, cold sheets and soft pillows, and getting lost in them until at least tomorrow night. Only escaping that perfect cocoon for the bathroom and water and food. But she'd kill herself before taking any other option, too. She says yes, of course, she'd love to, she has nothing, forcing the smile she can't feel into her voice, with gratitudes and platitudes.

She pulls out the best dress she has. The one she had not paid for. Hangs it in on her bedroom door, and sets three alarms, before letting herself have three more hours of sleep. Then, it's up again. Showering, taking her time with her hair, and then her makeup, before sliding into the dress. Simple, shining, silky, single-colored, and skin tight.

One did not pull punches with a chance like this. They didn't come around often, if ever.

Which was how Allison found herself in the middle of a crowd of hundreds, bright-eyed and smile-ready, being scintillatingly responsive and laughing at an opening question thrown her way while shaking a hand. Later, she'll reason it might have been something deeper trained than impulse, or distraction. Something about familiarity drilled in for decades.

But there's a sharp move right over the shoulder of the executive in question, and her eyes snapped to it, just in time for her expression to freeze. Then, shift to shock so stiff it was silencing, before her hand, still in his, was touched again, a hand closing over the back of hers, while he leaned, and she had to look back at the man, utterly at a loss for what he'd started to say about some last in-production-episode sent his way. As Allison tried, if not to figure out what he meant through the sudden crackle of white noise, at least not to look away from his face again. Definitely, not immediately. Any further than the edge of her vision looking forward at him. Where she still couldn't miss it.

Where it's impossible. It's impossible.
But Luther is standing. Over there.


Staring at her.

[obediences]

There's a fleeting panic that crosses his face for a second when they first see each other, and she can see the expression skew across his features before he manages to smooth it over. An immediate, brewing worry: What if she'd lied— what if she wasn't actually out of town this week, and instead just wanted to avoid him, didn't want to see him, couldn't tell him the truth and reject him directly—

But there's something in her own shocked, stunned, blown-open look that tells him no. That even after all these years and those thousand miles and their lives walking different paths, he's still somehow convinced that surely they don't lie to each other.

(When he first said he would leave with her, he hadn't lied. He had truly believed it at the time.)

He's not being very subtle, because subtlety is not Luther Hargreeves' strong suit. He's still looking right past everyone as his gaze snags on her, tall enough that he can just look over other men's shoulders and heads. He's completely missed whatever the curator was saying about... some kind of interactive segment, some audience participation recording thing, he has honestly no idea what it is anymore. He can't stop looking and looking at her, drinking in the sight of her.

It's not the same as the magazines, or even her on camera, on his television set. She's more alive, more present, and god, that dress—

He could never have forgotten how beautiful Allison is, but the reminder of it in-person is like being hit with a sledgehammer right between his ribcage. Luther's fingers are tightening; a small spider-webbing of a crack clinks and appears around the edge of his glass, and he has to consciously force himself to relent, to loosen his grip, to remember how to breathe. How to pick up the abandoned scraps of conversation that he'd been pretending to be a part of.

They've met each others' eyes, too far away to say anything, so instead he just arches an eyebrow, raises his drink in something like a toast. Nods toward the bar counter on the other side of the room. A question in his eyes.

An invitation.

Even if she can't extricate herself from her conversation just yet, or even for a while, just as Luther won't be able to for a while either, for politeness and for appearances and for convincing this curator he should call the Umbrella Academy if some ne'er-do-well decides to rob this museum. (But she's still here, and from this moment onwards, he's not able to lose her in the crowd. Some part of him is always watching, paying attention, every part of his concentration shot, orbiting, and tumbling inwards to the swallowing black hole that is the presence of Allison Hargreeves in the same room as him, breathing the same air as him.)