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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[obediences]

"That must've been a little weird to get used to. As a contrast to what we had." It's not like any of them had had any positive familial role models, any idea of what a parent was supposed to be like. No idea what being a child was like, either.

He wants to tell her that she did the best job she could, given the parameters and influences she was working from.
But he suspects she probably wouldn't accept it. That wound is still there, the damage she'd done to her daughter.

Luther's seated comfortably enough now, legs sprawled out as he thinks, and then admits: "Even here, in this world, when we first got here... I felt like I was wasting time? That I needed to be working out and training and practicing Diego's empathy and Klaus' telepathy and telekinesis, and that if I wasn't working then what the hell was even the point of me. It took me a while to figure out what downtime is supposed to look like."

And they'd eventually gotten better about it; the two of them could settle into those domestic rituals nowadays, just sitting around in the living room while he read a book and she watched TV. That blessed, unthinkable luxury of free time.

"At least she gets to have the room to figure that out."

[numberthree]

Luther says it in the present tense, and all she can think, for all that it damns her, is that Claire isn't in the present tense. It makes her mouth tightens and she doesn't allow herself the reign to even breathe out this time. For a moment her teeth touch, and she swallows, and then lifts her cup and drinks the thin powdered hot chocolate, letting the rest of his words sort out on her.

Looking up at the stars. The mostly fixed million stars that were different here, but still the felt the same as ever to look up to, as they ever had when she was out on in LA.

As weird as it might sound, I think I took to it more like Klaus, of all people.

I knew what I wanted when I left, and that never changed, obviously, but everything was new and exciting and distracting. I wanted to try so many things, do so many things, that I'd never even thought of until they were there in front of me, and I was so ready for everything and anything that wasn't Dad.

Somedays there weren't even enough hours for it all.
Sometimes I could even almost let myself forget in it all.

She's not sure she was wrong, or even that she'd undo those years. She'd done so much, and learned quite a lot, but she'd also used anyone she needed to survive, then. Especially right at the beginning. She'd had even less context, then, for what asshole's people really could be under even the friendliest veneer. She learned at least as much by slamming face-first into doors as using her power to open them.

It wasn't anything like regret, even looking back at it now. Staring with dull disgust at the primrose path she walked all the way through the decade that would give the most precious thing, she truly treated for its worth, and took it away again. All of the dominoes. All the way that far back then. Long before Patrick, and the red carpets.

[obediences]

That present tense is a purposeful thing; a piece of stubborn and intentional hope, even if it makes Allison's breath catch. But when she starts writing, what Luther isn't prepared for and isn't expecting is how it suddenly makes his own heart twist sharply in his chest. Envisioning it.

He'd always imagined what she was up to, of course — ten years of being something like a matchstick boy with his face pressed to the window, getting only glimmers of her life second-hand, third-hand, filtered through tabloids and headlines — but somehow it feels all the more impactful hearing it in her own words. Allison describing that excitement, a kid in a candy shop and with all the independence she could demand and seize and take. That freedom. Even if it led to heartbreak in the end.

He takes another sip of hot cocoa, stares down at his hands. Weighing over an admission that he's been biting back for so long, that he'd never actually voiced, although she'd seen it on display after he touched the Chalice.

"I wish I'd been there with you," Luther says. It's a quiet and frank statement, the sound of a conclusion that he's gone over again and again and again and doesn't even need to think about it anymore. Doesn't have to question it.

"Getting to see all of that with you."

[numberthree]

It's the last thing Allison expects Luther to say, and it almost feels too real, and too fragile, that it's not even just that it's the last thing she expects him to say, it's not a thing she would ever need him to actually say out loud. She wants, irrationally, to take it back from the air and the forest hearing it even. Her surprise has her looking at him, through the dark, before she realized she'd forgotten the stars entirely.

The deep night-shadows on his face and the curl of his shoulders, and the way his face is tucked downward, at his hands, or the thermos, or his lap, she can't entirely tell. The details don't matter. Her heart aches at any part of his feeling he had to say that. And maybe a little because unlike knowing he regretted that day, her heart hammered a sore-sharp, thrilled, guilty, sad note for the way both of those end with 'you.'

Answering a question she would never ask. Could never ask.
Not even for all that she goaded him about anything else.

They can't change time. He can't change that choice any more than she can change Claire being vaporized. But they can go forward. It's what they have. And they have each other this time. The thought of which turns her mouth a little.

You're here now.

That's more important.

And she means out here under all these million stars, on this sad day.
And she means out here in the middle of a strange, alternate universe.
And she means now in her life, the only person who still understands.

end

[obediences]

His chest aches, but it's a familiar feeling by now: just the usual radiating warmth and flutter of pleasant butterflies lodged somewhere in his belly thanks to Allison, everything Allison. Offering so much in just six words. He's here, with her, after a detour of so many years which had their paths diverging from each other. Here, in this universe, where almost everyone else bar Five has left them. Here, tonight, on this blanket.

"Same goes for you," Luther says quietly, offering her a smile that he's not even sure she can see in the dark. And he cranes his head again, turns back to looking at the meteor shower above. (And he realises, a moment too late, that he did technically just voice a wish under that streaking light himself.)

For a moment, it feels like all those countless times they'd snuck away upstairs and jammed themselves into that attic window together, shoulder-to-shoulder and balanced in that frame, looking out. It's different, of course: they're older now, arguably wiser, he's much bigger, and they're maintaining a casual couple feet of distance between them on opposite sides of the picnic blanket.

But it's him and it's her and it's them, still a united front on this awful day, and that's what matters.