numberthree | Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

To: Anathema Device (Private) From: Allison Hargreeves Anathema, I presume?

[ The baffling text goes to Anathema's inbox, and languishes for a while — she's out wrangling a friendly ghost — before she finally returns to it, in all confusion. ]

? That's what it says on the ID, yes. You're one of the Hargreeves? Did you find Klaus?

[ It takes Allison a moment looking at the poped up words, before she remembers. But there's a freeze that went with it and she realizes it more when she's blinking her gaze from the words and focusing back on Luther's suddenly focused expression -- that she can read clearer than words; choking hope warring with ready warriness for good or bad news updated -- before she waves a hand, with a shake of her head, to say it's not Klaus.

Everyone's on such high alert. With good reason.

Because it feels wrong to stop for the night. For even the necessity of sleep. But they can't find him if they can't stand up.
Yet still even with that truth, they've both been dragging their feet leaving the study. (Each other.) While one of them is already missing. ]

Sorry. My apologies for the strange message earlier. It was a mix up at your store.

Yes, I'm Allison, and no, sadly. We split into a number of parties but no one turned up anything today.
There's no chance he contacted you since this morning either?

No. Unfortunately.

[ She'd started to have some hope over the course of the day — the guy had a huge family, all of them with powers and experience, so surely someone would locate him — but at that confirmation, Anathema's stomach sinks into the toes of her pointy boots. She sinks into one of the stuffed armchairs in the parlour and shoots a look at the shop ghost, Mary. Mouths a 'nope' at her, before looking back down at her phone. ]

I heard you all found the things he left behind, though. I wish he'd said something about all this in advance.

[ It's both the prim annoyance of a colleague inconvenienced, but also an exasperated friend and what the hell were you thinking going off and doing this on your own. ]

[ There's a part of her that wants to agree, wants to warn, in an easy blase fashion that this is precisely what Klaus is like, even when the world hasn't exploded into the ghosts of people's pasts, both gory and not. Except for all the Academy, and their family, what there is of it, under that, is dysfunctional as hell, they don't do that. They don't expose each other weaknesses to others.

It's part of what made Vanya's book such a slap in the face to everyone involved.

There was supposed to be an assumed loyalty there. One no one had ever needed to be trained into even. The way Allison was willing to include cute anecdotes about her family in some interviews. Still, she never revealed personal things about them the world didn't already know, and she didn't have a single tell-all like it. She was continually turning them down around the times Klaus had OD's, or Diego was tossed in jail again, or even for good things, like Space going to the moon.

It wasn't what they did. It was an unwritten rule when they were kids, and when they'd been out, and it still held. ]

We did. We checked through a handful of locations in Jeopardy, but nothing turned up except more ghosts and some derelict touring of places that don't look like they've seen another person in them in years. Some of them really might be considered safety hazards now.

I did keep telling him to stay on top of his tetanus shots. [ Anathema's tone dryly fond, in a way that she hopes carries through the text. They really are friends in addition to just working together. ]

I've tried scrying for him -- usually my powers are pretty good for that -- but the ghost disturbances keep messing with it. They keep pinging all over the map for him, too. Which I suppose makes sense, since that's his power activating, but. It means I can't get a clear read.

Thank you for that. We really do appreciate all the help we can get.

If anything comes of it, even in the middle of the night, we'd be all ears.

Of course. Should I just text you, or Ben, or...? Any others? I got the impression there really were quite a lot of you.

[ Klaus had talked about them often enough, but often in such throwaway references skidding over the context so that Anathema lost track of the names and numbers and codenames, unless she actually sat down and started drawing up lists. Compared to her being an only child, it was A Lot. ]

Any of the above would be fine, if you have something you're more comfortable with.

Most of us are in touch often, and everyone except one of us is in the house, here, right now, trying to sleep and mostly just waiting to start again in the morning. There's a good chance there won't be a lot of sleeping, or normal work days, around here really until we have Klaus back.

[ Everything about 'playing house' in this world reduced itself to ash and rubble before one of their own. ]

Edited 2019-12-09 04:00 (UTC)

[ A wince. The slow-creeping realisation: Anathema doesn't actually have any family here that could, or would, look for her like this. She's on her own here, like she's been ever since her mother chivvied her out the door with a pentagram and a book of prophecies.

At least Klaus has his siblings, complicated as that relationship is. ]

Be sure to get your rest and rotate shifts, if you can. Can't save the day if you're falling over from exhaustion.

I hope someone finds him. I know he and I are just colleagues, but I'm rather fond.

[ It's hard to know what to tell people here sometimes. The same as home.

How they were trained to withstand exhaustion, and deprivation, and even torture, as though they were things to slide off the shoulders of children as easily as sunny blue skies and screaming crowds of fans. How they know they need rest, but there's a heightened key that puts everyone more into mission-mode with Klaus gone than anything that would lead to true rest. They'd all be more ready to run out, guns blazing, at a sighting of him, at this moment, than to bed down quietly. Peacibly. Logically.

Luther, Diego, herself, especially. And Ben --

There's the barest glance toward Luther (leaning back on the couch, not exactly ignoring that she's occupied now, but patiently, quietly, waiting her out) and she knows all too well how impossible it is to sleep when you're suddenly trying to do it on top of the loss of the person you are closest to in the world. She can't imagine Ben is sleeping at all, even if he is curled up in his bed. ]

I'm sure we will, and he'll be glad to know that. I know he's really liked working there.

[ Anathema stares at that last message, tinkers with her response for a while, trying to find the right words that won't just sound like trite condolences or empty sympathy. There's more she wants to ask, more she wants to find out about this family, the sister, but—

It isn't the time. ]

Let me know if you do hear anything. When you can, of course.

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