numberthree | Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

[ It's been ten days since they accidentally overturned that stone, ripping open a subject that he hadn't meant to confront quite so openly. Not with Allison, not with his name attached, not in-person. Maybe they're still picking up the pieces from it. But he's not the only one walking wounded, and she has her own scars both literal and metaphorical, and there is one particular date that he'd meticulously filed away as being of significance: July 16th. The court trial. When Allison lost custody of her daughter.

She'd sought him out last time, the only person she'd told about it. This year, all things considered, Luther approaches her first with a morning text, because regardless of anything else, he's here for her: ]

What do you need today?

[ It could sound innocuous, like it's just about him picking up groceries or more toilet paper for them. (Of course it's not innocuous.) ]

Edited 2020-07-19 03:10 (UTC)

[ Allison can't blink at the words that show up at the edge of her vision. She can't blink at all currently. She'd say you get used to it. But you don't entirely, even when you do, and she's been irritable. She knows why.

She wants to frown at the five words. Because they hit too close to why.
(She can't frown either. She's not supposed to move until she's told.) ]

For this makeup artist to stop trying to blind me with excess eyeshadow. You'll still break me out if I become the first person in two universes to kill someone with an eyeliner pencil, right?

Edited 2020-07-21 21:08 (UTC)

Yeah, of course. And I'm surprised you haven't done it already, to be honest.

[ They'd been trained to improvise on the fly and use whatever everyday innocuous household objects were around them as weapons; he'd killed someone with a coffee cup once.

But. ]

That's not what I meant, though.

[ Allison rolled her eyes. But it must have been something more than that because there followed a tut-tut sound being made above her and her chin was suddenly being repositioned with the side of a pinky finger. Holding still is suddenly harder, but she forces it. ]

You aren't just asking for my coffee or lunch order out of the goodness of your heart? Color me surprised.

[ She doesn't mean it. He deserves better. He means well.
She still hits send. She doesn't know if it's better or worse acknowledged.

It's not like she'd even give herself the reign to be like this with anyone currently in the building. ]

You know I'd go get your coffee order any day. [ Turnabout was fair play; Allison was a deft hand at automatically picking up coffee to-go for her family, bringing their specific and personalised orders to them. He'd learned it from her. ]

But whatever you specifically need today, I'll do that too.

[ He means well. He does. If she'd played on the oldest of echoes even in her flippancy, of no one ever holding any of them for whatever reason, that he would come for her if someone tried (and he always had in those worst times), it's not that she doesn't know he'd break into this place and drag her out through an army if they were her next words, too.

But she knows herself. She's going to be even worse if she isn't distracted, busy, and the workday will end eventually, even though she'll be desperate at that point for it not, to and the last thing she wants to do is fall apart on him again.

It's the same problem with answering the question. Any of the true answers, the ones that would solve the problem, if he could give them to her he already would have. He wouldn't wait for today. ]

I know.

[ It's too small, and more than a minute later, and she still doesn't know any answer,
but she knows he means well and that he would do it if she had some mission to give him to make ~~her~~ it better. ]

[ They're so very good at this flippancy, at batting aside these glaring wounds before they can fall into them. Pretending it doesn't matter, that it doesn't hurt. But just the acknowledgment is enough. It's good enough. Allison has work to do; so, that achieved, he lets her get back to it. ]

Okay. Good.
See you at home; message if you need anything before then.

And the rest of the day plays out.

There's no real solution to her problem, ever, just a calcifying of the wound. So Luther turns back to his own work: the mindless motions of lifting furniture, the Tetris game of stacking it in the truck, moving it from place A to place B. By the time he finally finishes the scheduled moves for the day and returns to the house in Nonah, not exhausted but at least pleasantly tired, he sees that all the windows are dark and Allison still isn't home. She's working late; he suspects she scheduled extra-long shoots and appointments for today, of all days, to fill up the time. So he's alone for a little while longer.

But. Luther has a plan, and that gives him some space to work.

So he goes about it meticulously, as he's been preparing all week with a carefully-folded flier in his pocket and supplies in a backpack (essentials gathered: a picnic blanket, snacks, thermoses of hot cocoa, bug spray—). And he putters around the house, eventually settles into his bedroom to while away the time on the network and double-triple-checking the weather forecast for the late evening. Waiting for the tell-tale sound of the front door closing and her footsteps on the stairs.

Edited 2020-07-27 16:15 (UTC)

She doesn't message him.

She thinks about it. More than she'll ever admit if he asks. But what's there to say, that he doesn't already know, that she hasn't said at some point already in the last year and a half? She doesn't want to just whine, or rage pointlessly, and staring at the cursor she can't come up with anything that isn't either of those. Even as it grows glass shards under her skin as the day progresses and every hiccup in the day just makes them feel hotter, sharper when she remembers.

When she can't tell if she's relieved she was so focused seconds earlier she'd forgotten, in being posed, in being recorded. Can't tell if she's relieved she focused hard enough to forget, or disgusted without herself for lettering herself not think of Claire on this day of all days for even a single second. Each side is just another edge of the blade.

The day goes too fast and too slow and she hadn't lied.
She willed the last hour, even though it'd gone long dark, from ending.

From returning her to that mostly empty house, and her definitely empty bed. Life.

But it ends, like all things do, and she finds herself walking in a half-fog to the Porter, and then to the new house, that isn't, but still feels like it every time she looks up at it again. The constant reminder of even more lost, and the single shreds left hanging on, and the world that still needs saving. The world where Claire is dead. Maybe she'll just drink enough to pass out and will tomorrow to be now.

The house is lit, but quiet when she comes in, and she wonders if Luther is out. Despises herself, briefly, first for the flare of annoyed-hurt that he might be anywhere else with anyone else, and then, for the fact she doesn't have the right, after ignoring the question and not saying anything for the whole day, to honestly have a say in his plans. The lights are on, though, and so she wanders the rooms trying not to hope too hard that she isn't already alone with this night.

The click of the door downstairs, the creak of floorboards, footsteps moving through the rooms. It's subtle enough — maybe some people wouldn't have noticed it, picked up on it — but part of Luther is still so painfully accustomed to silence, to empty rooms and empty corridors and the sheer silent nothingness of space pressing against his eardrums, that any small sound of habitation and life still makes him crane to attention. Glance to the side, ears practically pricked like a hunting hound.

So he goes downstairs (his own tread so much heavier and obvious on the steps), and finds Allison in the kitchen pouring herself a glass of water. Looking like all the weight of the world is on her shoulders, bowing under that pressure, but still standing. He plants himself in the doorway and looks in at her, an unreadable expression on his face.

(It's some mingling of painful sympathy; worry, that he might be overstepping bounds by hovering and fretting so much; and the usual constant affection whenever he gets to look at her. Even when he's seeing her on the tail end of a long day, tired and drawn-out and miserable.)

"Hey."

The relief at the first time she hears his footsteps coming from upstairs is brutal.

It's all too like being punched in her solar plexus suddenly, all air forced out, and she pressed her fingers into the glass in her hand, and it's still only relief. Brutal relief. The totality of how much she needed even just that one sound, though the steps don't stop. She makes herself drink her water, almost like she's afraid her breath would shake if her mouth wasn't busy.

Her expression is smooth, if not overly false, when the steps stop nearby and Luther's voice finally makes her lookup. The distant sympathy, and obviousness of how his expression is measuring her, checking her over, how she is, makes her feel irrationally guilty for worrying him (and for even considering that he would be somewhere else, not worried about her). Her mood swings a disaster just to watch inside herself, no less feel.

A finger traces part of the top of her glass.

Good day at work?

"Uneventful, but it was fine." It still didn't compare to the dull boredom of doing absolutely nothing for four years, so Luther always enjoyed it well enough. It's almost reassuringly quiet and simple; while his rotations with Aegis make up for it the rest of the time with eventfulness, with a better sense of grandeur and purpose.

But none of that's on his mind now, with his shoulder propped against the doorjamb and watching Allison hold herself together. Wondering how to broach this. He opts for something tame and easy, to start off with:

"How about you? Do I need to help move the bodies of any makeup artists?"

After all: A good friend will help you move, but a true friend will help you move a body.

His humor does what it always does, even besides the point of it not really being funny. Tug one side of her mouth and cheek upward, still somehow amused at his return to the words she'd thrown at him so glibly hours ago. An underhanded joke, and point about it being fine, and also questioning. Really, maybe, everything but not quite head on this time, yet.

It's out of sync, but her eyebrows raised, expression a little prim, as she wrote the words.

Even if it would a few more seconds before they could get to him.

If I admit to nothing doesn't that keep you from being an accessory?

"Good point. 'Ask me no questions and I'll tell you no lies', or whatever." They might have been above the law once, but here, they're not. There's that echoing twist at the corner of his mouth, the flicker of Luther's dry humour that comes out so rarely (except with her; she's always the exception, as ever).

Then his gaze drops, follows the line of Allison's shoulder, her arm, her hand laced around that glass. "Hey, so. Do you have any, uh, plans tonight? Can I show you something?"

It's a strange proposition. It's already late in the evening, too late to go to a restaurant or anything. It's late, late, and it's the worst day, so of course she doesn't have any plans and he knows it — but he asks anyway, to be polite. And there's a careful wary hopefulness on his face. There's A Plan, and she can recognise it, in that way when an idea's struck gold behind his eyes and it's taking everything he has to not blurt it out, give it away.

(Maybe it'll backfire completely. Maybe he won't be able to make her smile. Maybe she doesn't want to go. But it's worth a try. Anything to not have Allison just lying alone and trying to sleep and trying to get her mind off the anniversary and failing. Anything to chase that faint smile again.)

She never really wants to lie to him, even when she wants to lie to everyone, including herself. Even here. Which touches a sore note unexpectedly, and has her considering him. This easy humor that still is one layer over everything she discovered last week. She gets why, and she does believe that he'll keep that angrily childish promise she demanded of him. But that doesn't mean it doesn't smart, like a forgotten bruise her hand landed on.

Allison's brow wrinkled at the question.

The nervous almost formality of it, while Luther seemed to be looking anywhere but at her face. Not away from her, but at her hands, along her side. It reminds her of him as a child oddly. The intense, almost shy, hope, and uncertainty that barely ever showed except so rarely near her at times. That endearing flicker of a side of him so buried away that she's not even sure anyone else would believe had existed, next to their rock-solid sureness of Space and Number One in action. Leading the way.

Which was strange enough before you took in the fact it was late. Late enough the Porter lines were short and the streets were mostly uncrowded. Late enough most places with daylight hours would be closed. Even as he looked very certain and set about the rest of the question unsaid. Like he had a very certain reason already behind it, and not just a question of whether she was going to change and leave again.

She doesn't say the only thing she'd been considering capping off the end of her day with. Her therapist would have called saying that manipulative and passive-agressive, even if it had been true. Was still a little true. Tempting. But the same way just finding anyway not to be able to think about how much everything hurt, and how helpless she felt being stuck in this place. Even with Luther here.

There's something uncertain as it is trusting, when she settles for,
the truth, that whatever it is, is probably better than her bad plan,

I think I could pencil you in.

As though she could squeeze him into some singular, small, space in her busy schedule for this night.

His smile grows a little wider — at the implied yes, at the joke itself, at the tongue-in-cheek gallow's humour. Until a certain point last year, Luther had usually been so certain about so many things — his role in life, their father, the intricate mechanisms of the Academy — but the one thing he'd always tiptoed so carefully around was this, this delicate whatever-it-is between them.

But as soon as the affirmation comes, he's quick to move. "Come on," he says, and swings by the living room to grab the backpack that was already sitting ready, slinging it over his shoulder and going to put on his shoes and jacket. "Get your good walking shoes and a warm jacket. No high heels."

His voice is quick, firm, suddenly as decisive as if they really are heading out for a mission. Gearing up. The two last members of the Academy, operating together again. Once they get outside, he heads for a car parked along their street — which, to Allison's surprise, chirps once he thumbs a set of keys. At her look: "I rented a car," he explains; but doesn't explain much beyond that.

(Like a child carrying a surprise, something carefully-guarded and cherished, waiting to unveil it for her. A locket, clasped.)

"It'd be useful if I could still teleport like Five—" a vestige of Luther's abilities back in the City, "but I guess wheels will have to do."

It'd be impossible not to be buoyed along by the suddenly wider bit of a smile thay comes into his face at her joke, and the answer under it. Theyyes that is very likely only, at all, because it's him asking. Especially today. Tonight. On what all of this is. That he asked for with the full awareness of it. Planned for it with that in mind? She doesn't know.

Finds herself leaving the glass on the kitchen counter, still half full of water, and following after him. The sudden lighter, faster skip in his tone, both orderly directions and something pleased. She has to wonder how much he thought she'd say no, not that it wasn't a smart concern.

Allison nodded and headed off down the short hallway to her room. None of this house so larger if took long to get anywhere, unlike the big house. She found some socks, changed into sensible shoes, and grabbed a jacket.

The car, though, definitely makes her raise her eyebrows and wonder now what he would have done if she hadn't said yes. Because that's a level far about just his suddenly having picked up a backpack and doled out walking orders to her on what would be needed to come along on whatever this was.

Do I get a hint?

Maybe. Does she? Luther mulls over it as he unlocks the doors and they both pile themselves inside. It was one of the cheapest rentals on the list, which means the car is too small: he hunkers down in the driver's seat and looks oversized for it, like an adult in a child's toy.

(The plan, if she'd said no, was to simply let the rental sit quietly on their neighbourhood block and return it tomorrow. He's always half-readied for rejection.)

"We're going for a walk," is the hint he finally gives, as the car hums to life around them and he shifts it into gear. And that's the only hint he offers for a while, instead chipping away at the conversation with safe banalities: which shoots she attended, the strangest piece of furniture he had to move today (a cuckoo clock except it was all spiders; the Spider Church had its aficionados everywhere, it seemed). Whenever they lapse into silence, it's comfortable as it always is with them, except this time Luther's practically vibrating with anticipation, his fingers drumming on the steering wheel, and Allison's piqued with curiosity.

As he keeps driving, he steers them away from Nonah center. Out to the suburbs, then onto the highway, then further out, out. So their location is nowhere in town, then.

The signs eventually give it away, as it becomes apparent he keeps following the turn-offs toward the nearest North Carolina state park. Away from people, away from civilisation, out to where the stars shine bright overhead. He shoots a glance to the side, at his passenger. They never really just do this. Go for a drive.

"Thanks for letting me steal you away like this," he says. His cards aren't fully revealed yet, but at least the picture of it's getting a little clearer.

The only word he gave her as a hint plays and plays in her mind. Through the city, and then outside of it. In and out of all their conversations, and the music playing on the radio. The drum of Luther's fingers. The sheer level of excitement he seems to almost be vibrating with the further they get to wherever this is they're going.

Allison doesn't entirely pay attention to how many times Luther looks over at her. She thinks it's just going to be a thing tonight. Like how she couldn't stop staring at him last week, like he might just vanish out of sheer surprise and simmering anger if she looked away. It's the third time the sign passes that she picks it out as more than a similarly directed second fluke.

Her head rubs the seat, tilting to look over at him, still too squished in the small space of this driver's seat. A thing she'll have to keep in mind anytime they might ever need another rental. It doesn't stop her at all from wheedling for a little more, information, and over the top levity.

Are you going to make me hike a mountain in the dark? Is that your dastardly plan? Or is this like nighttime maneuvers training?

You do know I'd still try to take you blindfolded, even unable to call time, now, right?

Edited 2020-07-28 03:48 (UTC)

Another pleased twitch of his mouth, just barely visible in profile. "You sure could try," he says, and there's the smallest echo of the old Spaceboy in there: a hint of that ancient cockiness and confidence, the one that's mostly eroded these days, like how she saw him pared-down and vulnerable last week. But sometimes it comes back.

"Besides, nighttime maneuver training doesn't sound like the worst idea ever. We've got to be prepared for anything."

It could've been right out of the team leader's mouth, running constant scenarios to test the other students, keep them on their toes. Training's slipped these days now that he doesn't have Diego and Klaus to spar with, their new abilities to hone. (Mostly, it means Allison and Luther just— get to live in their house, and exist, and be people.)

'Prepared for anything' tonight, though, means something entirely different. When Luther pulls the car into the parking lot, it's entirely abandoned, no one else around. When he clambers back out, he reaches into the backseat and grabs the backpack. Hands her a flashlight, and nods towards a trail meandering off into the wilderness.

It really kind of is like nighttime training.

"Watch your step, though. Don't want you to trip and break your neck before I have my big surprise."

Her greatest weapon is gone, and she still doesn't always think about the powers this place has given her as hers. The utter uselessness of the whole beauty thing that felt like a slap in the face. The ability to tell when people were lying could be helpful, but was also annoying, when she could tell with the people she didn't care to know either way about. And, it still wasn't hers. Things that can be granted, taken, upgraded, switched out at the drop of hat.

Not what she was born with. Born to do. Can't now.
But she can still put on the bravado of that girl like a mask.

Still talk a bigger game than she could hold up. Make him smile with it.
The unshakable sheer will that kept her forever in step with him and Diego.

The car stops on an empty parking lot and the look she gives him at first actually questions if they are even really allowed to be here. If this has become an illegal not quite middle of the night operation of whatever this objective is. Not that she cared if they were, just that it as a little surprised if it was. He gets the backpack out, again, her gaze lingering on the rare article momentarily, until he handed her the flashlight.

Right. Gisly clumsy death, off the table.

She keeps typing, all the aplomb of half-distracted habit. Of not needing to hold back with Luther, especially in this new, not new at all this long in, way. Keeping the flashlight on the path in front of her, Allison followed him.

Honestly, I could never die out here, like this.
I couldn't put up with talking to Klaus from the other side about it.

The mission, this little quest, is a distraction, and he's pleased to see that it's working, based on Allison's humour creeping out from that initial walled-off misery.

"God, it would be so embarrassing," he agrees. "After everything we've been through, The Rumor is finally taken out by a rock on a trail? Klaus would never let you hear the end of it."

They sometimes still talk about their siblings as if they're still around, as if they're just— temporarily misplaced, waylaid, and they'll be back eventually. Because believing otherwise is unacceptable. Sometimes you just hang onto that dumb hope.

He picks his way down the path, occasionally stepping over one of said rocks or a tree root. Eventually their surroundings start opening up, though: fewer trees, wider plains, wide open spaces. Not as desolate and empty as his vistas on the moon; even in the pitch-darkness they can tell that there's still flowers, growing bushes, the distant sound of insects and saw-creak of cicadas.

"Did you ever do any hiking? Before?" Luther asks, and it's not actually small-talk anymore, more a point of genuine curiosity. He's always a little curious about her life after the Academy and before her return; her foray into the real world, such as it was. Did people in LA hike? He doesn't even know. (Luther obviously never got to.)

Allison missed even him. Klaus, being Klaus, always refusing to take responsibility, and ending up in the hospital with all the regularity of home. Aggravating in person, but a notched empty hole inside her in absence. But he, and the others, she could will herself to believe they were somewhere. Having come here, and gone, and come again, in Five and Vanya's cases.

But Claire was undoubtedly last on the planet where the moon crashed into it.
The one that Five all too helpful pointed out would vaporize in two seconds.

Definitely off the list.

Claire was. Vaporized. That never got easier to think. And before she'd even gotten the chance to finish her mandatory therapy and see her again. Trying to distract herself from the darkness in her head that was always worse than the one outside of it, she tried to take not of the overgrowth around them. To picture it bright green with the sunlight.

If I didn't know you better, I could assume you were aimed at the same thing. Out in the middle of nowhere. Without a single soul around. Under the cover of the night. No promise of safety.

Except the last is the biggest teased lie of all those words. She'd never not felt safe with Luther. Even when she was utterly pissed at him over Dad, or Vanya, or when he was keeping things from her last year, last week, it was never herself she felt in jeopardy from or by him. Not once. Not even when he'd only just been learning to control himself and he slipped up so many accidental times before gaining that required control more than any of the rest of them. Certainly more than her.

His question is easy and she's shaking her head even before it becomes typed words.

Not really. Nothing like the things we did before.
Not while settling into LA, and definitely not once Claire was born.

He snorts, just this small sound of amusement as he reads her message (careful not to get too distracted by that pop-up and go tumbling himself, like a giant redwood crashing to the undergrowth). "Takes too long. It's more likely me and Diego will finally snap one day and accidentally kill each other in a fight. No premeditation."

Only the Academy, really, could sound so nostalgic and fond even while joking about killing each other. It's a morbid streak that runs through all of them, even the family members who aren't dead or who don't talk to ghosts. And it feels safer to joke even about the ones who are gone; the missing Diego is less raw than the dead Claire.

Finally, they've reached a flat enough plain that Luther deems acceptable, or good enough, and so he comes to a halt. The stars really are brilliant above them: clear skies (they were lucky with the weather report) and a pitch-black expanse with sharp glittering lights, so so many more of them than they can usually see from their Nonah suburban neighbourhood. Luther rummages around in his backpack and finally pulls out—

A picnic blanket, which he unfurls and tosses down on the ground, and a large thermos of hot cocoa which he hands over to Allison. He looks down at his handiwork, then he tilts his head back to look up at the sky. It takes a little while, and he's starting to worry that the timing's not going to work out at all or maybe they're not visible from here, or...

But then, finally, there's one. A flash of light shooting across the black sky, fleeting and there-and-gone. There'll be more later. He breathes out in relief; looks over to meet Allison's eye as best he can, their faces nothing more than outlines in the darkness.

"Tada," he says. "The Southern Delta Aquariids are visible from mid-July to mid-August, and they just started yesterday." A crinkle in his cheek that might be a dimple. "It's a meteor shower. Thought you might like to see it, too."

Allison, hands unexpectedly full with the flashlight and suddenly now a large thermos, was still confused at first as Luther suddenly shook out and lay down a blanket, before staring upward at the sky. All serious stillness while a knot was starting to shape itself in her throat. Creeping toward her as she watched Luther look up, and had to follow his gaze.

The darkness and its million dots of light. That always made her think of him. Even now with him, standing feet from her, making her look over again. They had for years. The reminder of all his childhood fascinations with space, and then knowing he was somewhere up there.

She missed whatever he sees, but not the way his shoulders relax. Before his silence suddenly broke a tremorous sound and then a sudden gush of words revealing his secret plan, the excitement of what it was, the love for the sky he never lost, all laid out now that they were here, and it was ...

Sweet.
Allison didn't have another word for it. Anywhere in her head. Anywhere in her heart. Anyone else would have collected her into a car and taken her out for drinks, and maybe let her complain or eat her weight in appetizers or trash talk whatever she could get her fingers in to distract her. Anyone else might have just left well enough alone. And Luther did this.

Brought her out into the middle of nowhere.
Away from the whole of this world.
To watch to stars fall.
With him.

It's an unexpected plunge of emotion that has her almost blinking, trying to find her footing inside her head as everything washes out entirely staring at him through the darkness. Leaves her reeling to find anything that isn't the ache spreading through her chest, filling up her throat. That would absolutely have strangled any words if she could speak.

Edited 2020-07-28 23:33 (UTC)

It's a gift. It's a lonely sight, one that he'd grown long-since accustomed to watching, and yet never lost his awe of it — and this time, he gets to share it with her. Watching shooting stars with Shepard hadn't been quite the same, and even that man was gone now, too.

Luther's distracted, watching a few more of them blinking in and out of view above them. And then, as the silence stretches on — 'silence', as it were, without even the text to note her speech — he blinks, trying to clear his vision, as if the notification might have come in and he'd missed it. A crease of worry starts to furrow his brow.

"Is it— okay," Luther says, halting his way through the sentence. Is this okay. Is this alright. Do you like it. Because the thought is starting to occur to him that maybe Allison Hargreeves didn't want to hike into the middle of goddamned nowhere to sit on the ground on a cold night on the plains.

"I know it's, uh, a lot of hassle to drag you all the way out here to the middle of nowhere," he starts again, his words starting to overflow in a nervous ramble. "And there was another viewing party arranged outside Heropa yesterday, that's how I found out about it, but I didn't want to go with a whole bunch of strangers, and I thought it might be nice for tonight, with just you—"

7/16: the anniversary; again.

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