Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

[numberthree]

INBOX Voice | Text | Call | Video | Surprise Me A flat computer automated voice comes on and states in monotone: "This is the voicemail box for Allison Hargreeves. Leave a message at the beep."

Luther

Diego

Klaus

Five

Ben

Vanya

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[numberthree]

[ Allison freezes briefly. Earned only by the existence of the empty room around her. Before sitting back. Staring at the bag, but not seeing them. A candy cane forgotten in her hand, in comparison to the thing she couldn't forget.

(Except when this world universe erased itself from all of them.) ]

Of course.

[obediences]

[ Choosing to do this via text was purposeful. It means he can stick to the flat, protective neutrality of text, without the vulnerability of Allison being able to see whatever the hell is happening on his face as he has to recite this. Approach the queasy nauseating desperate hope of this. ]

I'm thinking I'm going to give it a shot. In the next few days or so, maybe.

Doctor Foley at De Chima General. He's biokinetic and a healer, and can manipulate biological material on a genetic level. In his own words: "I can rewrite your body to match whatever it is you need. I've reversed unnatural mutations and regrown limbs and organs from scratch."

Obviously no guarantee that it'll work or that his powers are strong enough in this universe, but.

It's worth a try. Just in case.

[numberthree]

[ It feels. Removed. Flat. Clinical. Cold. Through the vice that's tightened around her heart, from one-second planning another surprise of Christmas to one where she can't even remember that she needs to breathe. She doesn't know why she's surprised. Or why it hurts. She'd arrogantly made him promise something he didn't want her to know in the first place. Something he hasn't mentioned once in four months now. Something she thought he might have put aside after his time in Dallas.

She stares at it for too long. She can't bring herself to lie to him that she agrees with those last words. She doesn't get a vote.
She only gets to know. This time she pulls out her device and actually types it out. Everything else was forgotten. ]

Will you tell me before you go? Whichever day?

[ It's a question, not an assumption, and she thinks -- no, she knows -- that if he'd actually shown up, actually come home and told her, in any other way than what feels like reporting to her out of as distant-as-possible a duty to that childish demand, reminiscent of a million reports to their father, she'd say she wanted to be there. And she does (there are so many if's shrinking her ribs inward with a fear she rarely feels so deep).

But he doesn't want her in even this much of it. ]

[obediences]

Yes. Of course.

[ It's uncertain if there's any 'of course' about it, though, and even Luther couldn't say whether or not he'd have told her without the promise. Like the wounded dog that crawls under the porch to lick its wounds alone, to suffer alone. He never wants wants anyone to see him in these vulnerable moments, even if it's her. And in this particular circumstance and on this particular subject: especially when it's her. ]

I'll give you the official appointment time once I have it, and give you a headsup before I go.

[numberthree]

[ 'Of course,' he says. And Allison, staring at it, those first few words for too long, thinks it might be the second closest thing to a lie, and worse because it's a duty. Not a choice. She's not a comfort. Or a companion. She's a requirement. Maybe she deserves that coldness.

Somewhere Diego's voice is still calling her 'Daddy's Girl' in that acidic little sing-song taunted-insult of the tiki bar, and even if she'd blatantly disrespected the man more loudly than most for nearly a decade, she's not sure it's not right. That she hasn't become everything like him. Always manipulating things to suit herself. Her weakness. Her survival. Her fear. Her opinion. No matter what, or whom, it broke along the way. Claiming remorse only once the shattered pieces were at her feet.

If this is just that crack along where she starts breaking this, herself, too.

Even more, she wants to find this Josh Foley and break him, instead, for everything she's feeling,
and because he thinks he has any right to touch Luther. To change him. Like Luther's want is beside the point.

She doesn't have that right.

She doesn't deserve the one that knew Luther would promise.
Or the fact he'll refuse to break it now that it's made. ]




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