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]

[ If she has to scrub her face for a second, and she pulls her knees up, orienting to the strange glowing screen and the single sound of his voice coming out of it, filling the foreign space and shape and even weight of the silence in this strange, wrong place, seconds piecing together something like control doesn't change that what fills after that first wave of surprise is a tumult from no words to almost too many banging knees into each other.

I'm still pissed.

You're still an asshole.


And you're still wrong.


And I don't forgive you.

If it had to be someone missing...at least it isn't you.

She's a monster, and she doesn't mean it, and she does, and everything hurts too much. And she hates crying as it is. It's only a compounded jangle of raw edges, bloody and with nothing to do but hold them. And the silence. Allison rolled on her back, holding the small device up, pressing her lips hard for a second, all blinding light in the once inky black of the rooms with all the blackout curtains of the supposed vampires, finally typing a few letters. ]

Could be worse.






[ She always was good at lying, wasn't she? ]

[obediences]

[ And there it is. It's something. And that vise in Luther's chest unclenches, loosens enough that he can breathe a little easier. They've all been running hard on the heels of the apocalypse and this new world and this new tumult, and he's still on edge. Probably should've just thrown himself into bed and passed out, slept for twelve hours until he feels more human, but he's too wired. Too jumpy. This room isn't home yet; maybe never will be; and part of him is still keyed-up as if they're in the middle of a mission. Sent into foreign territory. He can't relax.

But amongst all this strangeness, there's still all the Hargreeves, all of them thankfully the same as ever and like a steadying anchor at the center of this insanity. Comfortingly familiar, even when she's mad at him. He can survive that. ]

Yeah.


I thought it was Five messing up the jump, at first. Taking us all here. Ben's pretty sure it wasn't Five's powers, and I don't see how Five could've brought him back anyway. I don't see how the government can do that either, but.


[ He's honing in on the logistics of the situation, sinking back into team leader mode and sinking his teeth into a mystery, like when he'd focused so singlehandedly on dad's monocle. Because this is infinitely easier to focus on rather than the tangled web between them. An endless Gordian knot that he doesn't know how to begin hacking through, and so... doesn't, not yet. ]

[numberthree]

[ Allison pushed her knees up, finding some way to get comfortable, wrists resting on the sides of her stomach propping the bottom of the little thing, debating a light to better see the letters on the keys, and just not moving at all, too. That even that was too much effort. That it's almost easier if she can't see everything. In the room that isn't hers. That he isn't here. That that feels weird, too, after this week.

Not as weird as how weird every breath still feels. But weird. Disjointed. At such a vast distance. Fillable. Hidable.
It almost doesn't feel real, except it's so clearly his voice. His words. The way he thinks. Always in action. ]

None of it makes sense.





[ She doesn't want to be helpful. She doesn't. She doesn't.
He didn't listen to anyone but himself before this anyway.

Definitely not her.



Still, she stops her thumb from just hovering and adds what she tells herself is only sense. ]


Five probably has theories about how and why by now. If we hadn't been dealing with all of it the last week anyway, it'd be even weirder to hear they were all somehow here a whole month now.

[obediences]

[ Wryly: ] That month-long time-shift is, weirdly, the least weird thing about all this. All things considered. But you're right, he's probably got a notebook full of ideas. I'll ask him about it tomorrow.

[ You learned to take some things in stride, once you eventually accepted that your little-older-brother was an experienced time traveller. And Five had always been the cleverest of them all, the one whose mind hummed most like Reginald's in some regards, all science and invention and physics.

There's a beat, then, a pause that's dead silence in the recording before Luther goes on. Tentatively, like probing a missing tooth and waiting for the sting: ]

Would you prefer if I typed, too? To match you. I've figured out the keyboard now.

[ Because the disparity isn't lost on him, this back-and-forth, his voice the thing she can't echo back. ]

[numberthree]

[ No.

No.

The answer is no.

And it's so immediate she wants to hit something.
A pillow. A wall. One of those guys with the guns. Luther.

Because it's not fair.

And it's a fucked up crap shoot.

She's not even sure what her therapist would call this.
But she's sure that it would involve looking down her nose,
with the arch of those brows that implies culpability in all things.


It's still a no. She doesn't want the silence. She doesn't want him gone.
She doesn't want to be swallowed by every reminder as the silence grows.

Until it feels like the room and the weight of what she can't forget smothers her. Again.


Almost as much she's not even sure what to do with him there. Not now.
Not when the only thing she can even let herself send back is: ]

Whatevers easier for you is fine.

[obediences]

[ There had been so little time. Everything was still fresh and raw and new, for these two; Allison's throat still healing, the bandage still bound around her throat, the woman unaccustomed to her new limitations. It all just happened yesterday. Yesterday. Luther finds, staring down at this too-small screen, that he doesn't quite know what to do with her response this time. Can't read her emotions from cold hard text; can't see the flicker in her eyes or twitch at the corner of her mouth that he could always read clear as daylight. They're able to communicate through silence, they've done it before, but he can't do it blind and from afar like this. She's not lying in bed on the other side of a thin wall anymore, as she had for half of their life.

And he wishes, so sorely and painfully that it's like he's been punched in the gut, that he could hear her voice again. ]

Audio's easier. [ A crack in his own voice, the first sign of the hairline fractures in that rigid mask of Number One that he'd tried to pull together, slapdash. ] I'll... probably put my foot in my mouth but at least I'm not pressing the wrong keys.

[numberthree]

[ She doesn't know if she likes this. Wants this. Even for no. Even for his voice staying, but with his own reasons. Even for her own opinion seconds ago. The one livid anger, and her own stupidity, and his arrogance, and over thirteen years couldn't put out. She doesn't know that she wants his voice to shift the way it just did. Or for it get quieter. She doesn't know if she wants this to become ... personal.

Like somehow it wasn't already. In the dark.
Alone, but not alone. Together, but nowhere near each other.

A sliding slope, with too many things she didn't want to even think of.
Maybe that's why it's almost too easy to let her first response just go: ]


As long as we both know it's coming.

[obediences]

Yeah.

[ Now, that one, he could read. It's a dig and a snipe. Not with any real teeth to it yet -- more a nip at the skin, a reminder. Luther squirms on his bed, trying and failing to find a comfortable position. Finally just settles for his back against the wall, where he has a clear view of the door. The communicator illuminating his too-large hands.

And then. Indecision, a long pause before the next message comes in. Should he even broach it. Should he keep trying to pretend— but, no, that's not working, it's patently not working, and. ]


Look. Allison. I'm sorry. You had—

A lot happened. So much had happened. But I should've listened to you. To all of you.

[ The fact that every Hargreeves had been united for once, apart from him, should've been the loudest blaring warning sign in the world -- but he'd been too blinded at the time, reeling, irrational. He was still running on fumes now, but the sheer adrenaline and panic had ebbed enough for him to start seeing that, at least. ]

[numberthree]

[ How many times could he say those words between when she woke up on that surgical table and whenever she finally passed out again? Was it supposed to somehow feel less cold each time? Was she supposed to somehow believe it more, each time, when another thing, required another apology, appeared only another few hours after each earlier one?

But if the cold hurts, digs claws into that darkness in her chest raw and deep,
Allison has always been exquisitely good with turning hurt into a razor. ]


Not good enough.

[ It's hot and it's cold,
sharp as it is merciless,
and she doesn't regret that one.

He put her on that stage, with a gun to Vanya's head.
He put her on that stage, with Vanya collapsed in her lap.
He ignored her. He refused her. Then, lied to her and used her.]

Not any of you.

'Willing to do whatever it takes.'
You all almost died for your stupidity.

[ In that she is angry at all of her brothers. Every single one except Ben. For being willing to do whatever it took, and meaning what that meant without being willing to say, even as they judged their own sister's life as less than a world. For not fighting back. For falling in line right behind Luther. Floating out in the air, dying, over the seats, together. And Allison.

Allison picked her -- believing in Vanya, believing Vanya was still in there -- over everyone. Everything.

All of them.


Luther.


Her voice.
Her health.
Her powers.


Billions of lives.

(Claire.) ]

[obediences]

[ Those words are like knives and he recoils from it, as if the communicator’s burned him. At the end, all the prodigal children had lined up anyhow. Too well-trained by Sir Reginald at the last: Save the world. Do what you must. No matter what.

They’d been pawns placed there to save the day, but it had been too-little-too-late. It’s so hard to second-guess everything that happened, because there are too many variables to juggle. Maybe if they had succeeded in killing Vanya, her power would’ve gone awry anyway, still blasted that chunk out of the moon. Maybe if Luther had chosen differently, he could have averted it all. Or if Allison had chosen differently.

But the moment they all got set on their path to that concert hall, it felt like they were locked into their grooves. Where he should have nipped it in the bud was earlier. The isolation chamber. The room that couldn’t hold her.

You have to admit that it was a reasonable risk, considering what happened—

But she did end the world—

And then there’s the thing he can’t say, can’t even let himself think because of how unthinkable it is. (You chose her, and ended the world.)


Luther stops right there, right in his tracks. Is grateful, now, for the distance of the communicator and not having to look Allison in the eye. He considers switching over to text; to be more slow and methodical and careful about what he’s saying, because this conversation is fucking painful and Allison is a powder keg and his words could be a match. If Luther’s temper were more of a spitfire thing, he might have already spat something back defensively.

But it isn’t: his anger is slow and glacial, rocks grinding inexorably against each other. He can wait her out. Always has. In the end, with the luxury of time to compose himself, he says, simply: ]


I wasn’t thinking clearly. None of us were. So many things went wrong at once. Five is a damned time traveller and I don’t think even he knows knows what the right solution should’ve been, yet.

[numberthree]

[ Frustration brews itself as seconds pass and he doesn't send anything back. As phantom fingers try to pluck at the tense flutter of muscles at her jaw, the breath coming in and out of her nose and chest too heavy laden with patience she doesn't have, the curl of her shoulders, at whether that was too much, or whether it's barely even a cent of the fullness of what she's been dying to say -- scream -- since she lost the ability to say anything at all.

Since he stopped listening.

Impatient energy gaining traction with annoyance at the tiny device. At the want to shake something. It. Him. At just not even having the faintest clue what he's doing drives it to a higher key entirely. What he's doing. Whether he's answering. Whether it matters. Says it. Thinks it at least. A backhand slide. Even when she knows it does. Even when that too clear voice in her head, slides cold fingers into it, questions just how much actually though.

The way the answer, when it comes, would be almost too easy. Just for a second. I wasn't thinking clearly. Just for a second, Klaus is standing there, again, with the bowling lanes behind him. His mouth moving too fast. Just for a second, before her shoulders tense and she shakes her head at the darkness, its own half-flinch, whole-denial, like that can dispell the hooks in it.

Some things even she's not stupid enough to say.


But without it -- and what it left to hook around an ankle, unused but refusing its drowning back -- words felt almost even further away than they did when she hadn't had any at her fingertips to start with. When all of it could have been summed up in a look at him, but he isn't there to look at, and she isn't even certain she'd want to be if he could be, only that it's a brand new level of annoying, of wordlessness, that she can't either. ]

[obediences]

[ On the other end, he stews, too, knowing this would've been so much easier-and-harder if they'd been facing each other down in person. Easier, because he'd be able to see her expression, intuit so much more from this silence than he's able to. And yet, so much harder because he probably would've said the absolute worst possible thing. Isn't entirely sure he hasn't, already.

And so Luther waits for a response. Watches the little considering icon appear, then disappear, and so knows that she's at least there and thinking. Just not responding.

God. A stalemate.

But because he's blunt, Number One is, and not above asking the basic questions— ]


You still there?

[numberthree]

[ The longer the seconds drag, the less she knows what to say, and the worse of it is anything she'd just say as the first flare of her anger fades back a touch, or even what she might say as an aside, snide or annoyed or exasperated. It gets gummed up. Having to actually write it. It's not the same as speaking. As her mouth just opening and words falling wherever they might. It's not the same at all. It reminds her too much of her therapists' office. Makes her have to actually think of her words.

Which just makes it frustrating beyond belief.
Because then she does. Have to think of them. Order. Direction. Everything.

He's not wrong, but he's not right either, and none of it is as simple as it's no one's fault. There is, he isn't wrong about one piece, so much. So much happened. So much went wrong. Didn't stop going wrong right up to the end. Hasn't stopped going wrong since they woke up here. Right now. In this place. Missing one of their number again.


She has to blink when the question appears, snapping her from the snarl of her own thoughts, frustration soaked through still trying to find the right thought to even rummage for the right words, and where even thinking about thinking on that had spun it even further. When the question is so. Middle of the road. But it's not. It looks it. But she knows him. Can feel it. What it actually is. It's a prompt. A check. It's own version of an aside.

No sweeping anything off the table. It's --



It's that moment, in the living room, earlier this week even.

Looking over her shoulder and finding him sitting there, patiently studying her, through whatever fuss she decided to throw up first. Still there. Mingled under the look of not quite being certain what to say to her after so many years, but that other thing, still. Too. That patience. A game aged as old as both of them, as any number of those moments. His patience, and her lack of it.

But he isn't here. He can't see her. Still there, laying on her bed, staring at his last four sentences like somehow she could find the right words, when she never tries to at this point, cared about right and wrong, or had to puzzle it out as a thought-out choice, has never had something between her and just letting it fall out, until this day, and never had something that was even a cent toward having her own words, her own some kind of version of "a voice," even still soundlessly, after this day of silence.


He doesn't. Know.


And some part of her can't help wondering how he could ever just not-know. Think she wasn't. Still there.

(Which just then has to ask, how she can still that transparently stupid even after what happened earlier?) ]





Maybe.

[ Is a little petty, but it's not as petty as it could be. As not saying No, when she knows she's not angry enough at this second to mean it that way, and none of this is light enough to mean it in trite fashion either. It's stupid, and a little petty. But she presses send on the single word, and still says it, says something, anything, that says she is despite whatever letters make it up. ]

[obediences]

[ That little piece of pettiness is familiar in its childish pique, like the times when they had squabbled over something-or-other. Usually inconsequential. Juice boxes or him accidentally breaking one of her music boxes, not knowing his own strength. What he wouldn't give for their problems to be of that level again, rather than this heavy and strangling thing between them.

Yeah. His stupid question was taking her pulse, as best it could across this digital divide. The best he can do. Then: ]


What do you want from me?


[ Because spilling apologies hasn't been working. He's exhausted and frayed, particularly after that heady reunion with almost all their family earlier, and he can only imagine she's even more ragged; she's not even healed up yet, still recovering from surgery. He'll listen, if she needs it. Or give her space, if she needs it. ]

[numberthree]

[ There's the press of lips, in a frown at the words that appear.

Because that is annoying.
Stupid. Passive-aggressive as all shit.


She wants him to know what's going on.
She wants him to take back what he did.

Everything he did. All of those things. The choices he made.
The ones about her, and about Vanya, and the ones she can't look at;
the ones that have nothing to do with her, because he doesn't want her to;
not without burning her fingertips and her heart on just thinking of them into life.


She wants him to make it better. He's supposed to.
He's Number One. He's supposed to.

Have a plan. Be their leader. Lead them. Make it better. Fix things.

And even more, he's Luther -- her Luther -- and he's supposed to.
Save them -- save her; their family; the world; Claire -- from all of this.

And the cut of that all those thoughts, run into with no preparation, no foreknowledge it was buried in there, a decade from touched, a decade from supposedly moved on from, to roll out from petty hurt, livid exhaustion, and all these days, so transparently faithful, and bitterly betrayed right down to the splinters gouged deep into its roots, hurts like some new part of her skin had been sliced suddenly. A razor blade splitting through the skin of her heart, her lungs, like it was tissue paper and not caring about the damage it does, or the yawning inability to unsee, to outrun, to push it away.

It hurts. Like everything else, it just hurts. Beyond the anger, still simmering waiting for another even small prick.
Beyond words. That she barely even has. And somehow has, and somehow that hasn't made slightly better.

All of it just hurts, and all she has in her to write is -- ]

Nothing.

[ That it's more reburned defeat than anger that sets that one free. That makes it true. That reminds her, with every whisper of her therapist's voice: it's not anyone else's responsibility but your to make your world better, you're an adult, that is all on you. Even if she knows it's as much truth as it so patently a lie, but one at a distance he can't see, to tell her she's full of shit, she adds before pressing need. ] I need to sleep.




[ Even though she knows too well, leaning her head against her pillow and pressing send, that he'd know that was a lie if he was here. That sleep is last thing she'll find any time soon. Not after finally making herself face that Claire is dead, and now. Now that. On top of everything else already between them. ]

And we have to figure out this place starting tomorrow, too.

[obediences]

[ Nothing gives him a searing sting, an ache. But then I need to sleep is-- in a way, what he'd been half-hoping for and expecting. They're both so fucking tired. It's been the longest twenty-four hours of their lives. They need rest.

But then that last sentence, that olive branch-- ]

Yeah. Sleep tight, Allison.

We'll all figure it out, together.


[ They're weary and bitter and hurting, and the team is splintered and he doesn't know how to put it back together, but they're all tackling it together at least. At least there's that. ]