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 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. ]