numberthree | Mask or Menace ☂ IC Phone Post

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—"

Allison will never understand. How anyone could not love Luther. How their father did what he did. How Luther could even use that word to joke about how he felt about himself. Like no one in the world could truly see him. The way she did. Sweet, and kind, and selfless. Always wanting to make things better. Sharing the things he loved that brought him peace.

Impossibly all of those things, still, even after all those years.

All the things she'd loved before she even knew it was love, and long before she came to any terms with the fact there was no unloving him. This impossible man. Standing there, suddenly gusting out more words, and making Allison realize as they kept falling out, a ramble of justification that edges more into something like desperation, maybe even headed toward some panic, rather than his earlier excitement, she realized she hadn't said anything.

Not that she could have said any of what she had thought.

It's perfect. Really.

It's so Luther, and no one else. Which is about the time she stops looking at him like she's somehow going to bore a hole through him just by being incapable of looking away, breathing, existing without every cell in her body being certain of what it always had about him. Her cheeks annoyingly warm as she was deeply grateful for the dark. Allison looked down at her hand and lifted the thermos.

And this is?

He breathes it out like another palpable ripple of relief, his shoulders loosening. "Hot chocolate. The lid is a big cup, I was thinking you can pour yourself a cup and we can swap back and forth."

And he moves over towards the blanket and folds himself down onto it, a little ungainly and clumsy, before managing to settle in a spot where he's seated comfortably, his heavy shoulders slouched in that oversized jacket (still just a little too large for him, even a year later). And there is something so childishly simple about it all: the checkered plaid, the cocoa, the flashlights, the picnic (that they never got to have). It's not a fancy, expensive night out on the town, a typical date. It's like a pair of thirteen-year-olds heading out to marvel at something that costs nothing, something that needs just a blanket and company.

It is so very them.

The longer it sinks in the better it gets, honestly. Letting him go about sitting down first, and taking a seat in the corner next to where he'd chosen. Grateful for the fact there won't be any random imPort fans randomly popping up to pepper them with questions, asking for photos, signatures, or even people she has to bear through for orders.

No one else do deal with trying not to be annoyed or impatient with, while Luther was the one person who bore her temper, or even her being loudly angry or emotional near him, with a kind of grace that was just as improbably found with no one else. She didn't have to worry about trying to seem happy and bright. About being anything but herself.

Just her, and Luther, a bottle of hot chocolate --

Of course, it is.

-- and a sky full of stars. It's so simple for how surprisingly happy it makes her feel. It doesn't wash away the sadness and anger in her bones, but somehow, in way she can't explain, never could have even drawn into an idea like this, it feels like having a warm blanket tucked around her suddenly. When she would have said an hour ago that whole concept was impossible.

One of her hands freed by being able to set things down, she waved at the backpack.

No more surprises in your bag of magic tricks? No weapons?
I definitely remember you being better prepared the last time I invited you to a picnic.

It doesn't take long for the reference to land, for him to quickly recall what she's talking about, and for him to laugh. (There are so few memories, pressed tight within those bustling and busy years of the Academy compared to the blank canvas that came after. Of course he's gone over them often, over and over like running his hands over a familiar scar. Of course he remembers.)

"The axe is back in the car," Luther says, jokes, leaning back on his hands on the blanket and craning his head again to look up. "Just in case."

It's so many years overdue. What is it now— fifteen or so? Since the brakes had come to a screeching halt on that picnic, Reginald forcibly slamming the door shut on it both literally and metaphorically.

No one here to stop them now, though.

"Jokes aside, I've got bug spray and some chocolate chip cookies and chips in the bag, if you get peckish."

It's quiet out here — no clamouring of fans, no flashing of bulbs and clicking of camera shutters. It's peaceful.

Allison found herself caught up in the laugh that her words earned, grinning widely herself and giving a laugh, even if it was a hollower, quiet approximation of a sound. When she's glad he does remember it, even if it does seem so long ago.

The kind of long ago where she couldn't even imagine how much her younger self would disbelieve her. If she said it was only a few years until they'd part ways. That it would be nearly another half of their lives before something brought them back together. That she'd become famous, married, and have a child before that.

And it would more than not have happened in an alternative universe,
only after they'd actually failed to save the earth and several of their own.

It was like something out of Luther's books.

Allison pressed her lips trying not to smile as he listed what it really was. Cookies, chips, hot chocolate, bug spray, and a big open sky of stars. Somehow it ironically did feel like it dovetailed well into stolen sodas, a cleverly absconded with record player, a secret gift, and all the time she'd put into designing that little fort.

I definitely deserve a cookie for making it out here without badgering your surprise out of you first.

Even for the phrasing, and the request, she still looks up at the sky more than Luther after it sends. Catching her first stars that streaked across the brilliantly lit inky sky over them. Like they might be, for just a little while, the only two people in existence under the sky.

"If there's anyone who could've gotten it out of me, it's you."

There's something else lying under those words, some added significance. Luther doesn't lie to her anymore, but he does omit, or avoid bringing up subjects in the first place — earlier in this month being a key example — but the moment she'd hit on it, Allison had dragged the whole truth and full details tumbling from his lips. The moment she dislodged a pebble, it had turned into an avalanche quick enough. They've always been that way.

They fall back into another contented silence for a while, watching the streaks of light. It's scattershot; occasionally they come in a flurry, other times there's nothing for a while.

"You only stood a chance of seeing things like this two weeks out of every four," he says after a moment. "On the moon, I mean. But god, what a view." A pause, then: "But I prefer it here with you."

It went without saying. Of course he'd take her over that sanity-splintering loneliness. But it's more than that, too: take anyone in the universe and he'd choose to be with her instead. Offer him anything and he'd choose Allison, now, still, over and over and over, He'd chosen poorly the first time; Luther knew himself well enough now that he wouldn't make that mistake again.

She tries not to read too much into that. Fails probably more than succeeds, when her gaze skips from the stars to over him while he's talking, before lingering. Speculatively as the first glance of it brush away quickly enough out of habit. Out of tonight's circumstances. Out of. Well. Everything.

It's complicated. Everything about space -- and the moon -- was for Luther. The lie he'd so carefully and diligently done all of that work and made all of those sacrifices for. Those memories she'd gotten, of his hallucinations there. In that small place, barely fit for anyone to live a short time, no less a near half a decade.

Allison looked down, busying herself with opening the thermos, even as she was writing.

That's still quite a bit, isn't it?
Half a year of things like this.

Of the moon leaving him in darkness. Of the Earth rising over him, bright and blue and as far from her as the white, pale, quiet moon hung high in the sky had always been from her. She poured out the cup for herself, letting it balance on her knee briefly, before holding out the thermos for him. Briefly wondering how often this even happened here. Or at home.

Do they still look like this up there, or different?

Her knowledge of the moon still mostly circled what snatches she could remember of Luther's excitement over a decade ago more than facts, and beside it, the few facts in Claire's kids books which were so watered down for age content she knew they weren't wrong, but they weren't much help in knowing anything specific or scientific much either.

"Similar. But brighter, clearer — there's no atmosphere to interfere with the view, so they feel like they're so much closer to you. Right above you." Luther takes the thermos, and takes a sip straight from it while Allison nurses the cup. The cocoa was made from a powdered mix (the greatest chef, he still isn't), but at least he used real milk so it's rich.

The moon was complicated. The culmination of Luther's childhood dreams and the scene of his devastation, a pointless waste of four years, a lie. But it's still beautiful. That never changes. Like he'd told her a while ago: he can't fully hate it, not even now.

Claire, on the other hand, is painfully uncomplicated. He takes a deep breath. Considers the situation. He's managed to get Allison to talk about her sometimes, chipping away at it from oblique angles, getting the occasional harmless anecdote. Thanksgiving stories. Claire and the holidays. He's been successfully keeping them off the subject, purposefully not naming it for what it is, but—

"If you... ever want to talk about Claire, you know you can do that, right?" Luther says, delicately. Hating the fact that he's probably ruining the mood, but needing to address it anyway. He'd hate it even more if Allison felt like he was just ignoring it entirely, refusing to hear more about Claire, trying to sweep her existence under the rug.

"If it helps. If you want to remember. If you want to share some more good stories, at least until we can get back there and fix things." Spoken so plainly, as if it's a given that they'll do so.

"But if it makes it worse, then we can stay off it, too."

Allison studies the sky and its spray of racing stars, that aren't stars, as he speaks, glancing back now and then, but trying to imagine it. From the edges of his memories that weren't of this, and her own one day, here, up on the moon. Hypothetically, she could see it for herself. They could even be seeing this from up there. But it's not the same.

She wishes she was there, had been, and she wishes he was never there, wishes he'd left when he said he would, and she knows, with razor-edge shame, she'd never change the warped path her life had taken, leaving, Dad, The Academy, even him, because of the one thing she couldn't ever consider not happening: Claire.

She'd been made to give up Luther once already, but she couldn't even consider it with Claire. Not when they all took part in how the world ended, not when they'd survived, supposedly to stop it. Even if Allison had to agree to never see her again, but Claire'd be alive, happy, and whole somewhere, a full bright future ahead of her, Allison knew she'd take it at the cost of herself. In a heartbeat. This moment even.

It's almost like he's there in her thoughts, with her, and her guilt and her grief, when his words shift and softly, uncertainty, press down on the same place she'd gone. She kept going there with so many of her thoughts. She tried to think of even how to say anything. How did she pick a drop out a torrent, on a day where all it did was drown her harder.

He means well. Still. Surprising her.
Bringing he out here. Making her laugh.

But still not making her forget everything either.

Her gaze moved here and there, barely, in front of her, more out of consternation than any silence that ignored him. If there was someone who deserved any words she could put together, it was him, wasn't it? And hadn't she already spent the day just choosing not to say any of them to him? And he was still doing all of this for her?

Even phrasing it as only the traction that held them here until they could fix it. Would fix it. That thing she still held on to so fiercely it got under everything, in between her and everything here. Everything that wasn't Luther. And now, Five, again, too. Allison started writing even without any idea where to start.

It doesn't get easier.

I keep remembering it's not two years for her.
It's not even one. Since she's not --

It's just me. With these two years.
With all this time. Another life.

I wasn't supposed to ever have a life without her.

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