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]

[ She doesn't need to hear him to know that tone.
To know how much deeper it goes than that even.

The last line actually makes her eyebrow twitch.
Her lips press, because that's not happening.

Nice try. But it's not. ]

No. He's not. And he's the last person who gets to judge anything you do or are anymore. You just survived a whole year in the past, and even longer here, with the insanity that is always going on here, and we just saved the world from an Apocalypse, very likely two. Together, all of us, and with no help from him in the slightest either time, from either end.

[ And. And. Her thumb hovers, throat catching.

She wants to touch the other part. But she doesn't know how.
They don't. They haven't. It's not. The Monocle is still so wrong.

But he gave Luther only more ammunition against himself.
To add to every opinion, he so rarely is willing to show.
The hate and disgust driving his stupid plan.

Why couldn't he just stay dead?
Have been unfindable. ]

[obediences]

[ And for a moment, Luther is ferociously, painfully relieved that she doesn't touch on the other part. He doesn't even know or where to begin with that either. It had been too sharp, too perfectly-cutting: Reginald, as always, somehow intuitively knowing and finding exactly, exactly the right angle to shear right through Luther's (already feeble) defenses and flay him down to the bone.

Grotesque. ]

Apocalypses that we keep causing, and which wouldn't be a problem if it weren't for all of us.

But. Yeah. I guess.

[numberthree]

No. Not true. He is still at fault for both of those. Everything he did to Vanya is still HIS fault first and foremost. [ Even if Allison can still feel in her bones how much she doesn't entirely agree, or believe that. How unlikely it was he could have managed how it at all started without her. Her power. How it might have gone differently the first time if anyone had just listened to her every time she said no. ]

And she got to actually do more than just be a bomb that he left ticking to explode finally. She was one of us out there on that last day. Where she always should have been, and would've been if it wasn't for him.

[obediences]

It was him at the start, sure, but it was all of us at the end too. I fucked up. I played a role. We all played a role.

[ It isn't easy for Allison to gain traction on this particular angle. Luther's had too long to himself to think about it. Once the adrenaline and panic passed, once he'd gotten a full night's sleep and wasn't running on fumes and with the memory of Allison's blood on his hands, once he was stranded by himself (or so he thought) with an endless span of time in which to lick his wounds, mull over his decisions, and see precisely where he'd gone wrong. A year's worth of lonely self-flagellation, without even the distraction of his family and Aegis, like he'd had here. ]


Just glad it didn't happen again and that we managed better second time around.

Does that mean third time's the

[numberthree]

[ Maybe there should be more of a reaction to it for her, but it feels ( and is in some ways) something she was fighting for anyone to acknowledge over three years ago. When they wouldn't, and didn't, for anything that could be pointed at someone else, slipped under some other excuse, well-intentioned or just as messed up by their dad at the same time.

It doesn't entirely help that she can't tell, on those flat black little letters, if the whole part about Vanya's actual earned and acted on autonomy received no direct reference for a reason. Or is supposed to be just tucked into that last sentence there. She lets it set, but she comes back to only the same thought a few times. ]

I wish she was here.

[obediences]

Believe it or not, I do, too.

[ For Allison's sake, mainly. He'd been scared to death of Vanya, the last time. But seeing her in Dallas— it had blunted some of that fear. It had given them a reprieve. Had meant the pair of them, One and Seven, usually opposites and at such cross-purposes, had surprisingly been able to carry on an actual conversation without that old baggage weighing them down.

(Those text messages blowing up his phone, and which he'd still never told anyone about.) ]

[numberthree]

[ She doesn't think he's lying. She doesn't even need to hear it to know that. Everyone had been knit together at the need of necessity in that last two days, and even before that around Vanya without any memory of them. It wasn't the same thing she felt. That empty space in her with Vanya's name -- like Luther's, like Claire's -- that hadn't filled up with anyone else in those two and half years, even as she spoke Vanya's name just as-never as everyone else's. But she does believe he wants her here. It's a step.

But, sadly, it happens at the same time as people are moving though.
Which shifts her first response to being different. ]

I might have to vanish shortly.
Waiting forever might finally be over.

[obediences]

It's almost like you have a job to get back to or something.

[ That light touch of dry humour. Sometimes grateful for this veil of the mental network, even as it distances them. Luther almost types out another apology for taking up her time, distracting her while she's on call — but he erases it before sending. Even he can tell, sometimes, when he's tripping over himself too much for comfort. ]

Don't get fired, and thanks for the talk. I'll see you at home?

[numberthree]

[ It's not something she's going to comment on, but gaze hooks on the 'thanks for the talk', thinking how entirely, strangely roundabout this whole thing is, that he's ending somewhere near there, after showing up to check on her Wedding Anniversary, on her. She only studies it a second before pushing through. ]

Pretty sure they wouldn't let me go even it I quit at this point.

[ It's been a few years (and it hasn't), but she still remembers exactly what it looks like when someone is seeing her as a monetizable asset more than herself. She was the best kind of unexpected good press and future bankshot. They were going to milk it for as long as it lasted and as much as it turned out she could do. She knew that; and even more, she knew what she could do.

If she continued to put her mind to it,
to carve even more and more time out for it. ]

And, of course. I might be later than normal.
Depends on how long this runs, but I'll be there.