Allison Hargreeves | #00.03 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
numberthree) wrote2021-10-10 06:56 pm
numberthree) wrote2021-10-10 06:56 pm
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[Day 1, Before] ☂️ and began again in the morning
Morning finds her on a plane, staring out the double-paned peephole of a window. Dawn is too bright, even behind the sunglasses she hasn’t taken off, and with her fingers wrapped around the second cup of coffee, she’s had since leaving her house. Reporters outside the gates of the small house. Reporters at the airport. She hasn’t said ‘no comment’ this many times since the news about Patrick and Claire broke. Not even a year ago.
Before that — she’d had to squint and count — it was five years back to Vanya’s tell-all.
The god-awful level of a media circus that had brought on the whole year for her.
She hadn’t slept, except in fits and starts, but it’s been like that most of the last half-year, and it’s what the best of the best in makeup production exists for, because, aside from the sunglasses, her hair is still perfectly crimped and her skin is glowing, and her outfit relaxed, but classy. She has no regrets for buying out all the seats in First Class aside from the three purchased before her call. The last thing she wants is to make polite chit-chat with people she doesn’t know.
Which feels doubly preposterous, woven through the throbbing of her temples, because the exact words might as well fit any of the people she will or won’t see again once she lands and makes it to The Academy. Her brothers, her sister, mom, Pogo. Her family. Ostensibly. On paper. On the screen. A handful of people whose worst tabloid exploits have touched her job but who haven’t even touched her life themselves in the last more than a decade.
Who never called or came through California. Weren’t at her wedding and never met her husband, no less her daughter, even though Claire knows all their names and childhood exploits by heart. Her whole childhood was one night after another of just wanting to learn more about her mother’s life before the life she had now. Of never knowing that she had more free time in one year of her life than her mother had in all of her first nineteen.
Not that Allison ever called them either. Never sent condolences to Klaus’s newest billionth OD in a hospital; never offered to pay bail for Diego’s latest lockup; never sent congratulations for Luther’s mission; never said a single thing, good or bad, about Vanya’s book that wasn’t scripted out before the interview cameras went on or a journalist’s pen clicked in bloodthirsty readiness.
Allison knew when she left; she wasn’t coming back.
That she’d waited too long and that she couldn’t wait any longer.
She hadn’t believed she’d be last. After Vanya was shipped out, and Klaus was kicked out, and Diego vanished in the middle of the night (she thought if she just waited, was patient enough, then Luther—). She’d been young and naive and unaware how truly, stupidly, young and naive she was. Until LA was only too glad to let her run face-first into the bricks of real life and all of their father’s lies and all of the strange, heartless, unknown realities of the real world outside those walls he never thought essential to teach his store-bought superheroes.
She’d mastered Hollywood, even though the beginning hadn’t been anything like easy or kind, and she was on top now, even with a messy divorce and messier custody announcement. Roles and appearances around the globe still lined up for endless miles and months. Everything she could ever want — everything except the one thing (one person) she did want; her daughter, Claire, who she'd never deserve even if she earned the right to be her mother back — and yet her stomach was a knot that only compressed tighter as the miles counted down the closer and closer the plane inched toward its destination.
Allison leaned her temple against the plastic wall of the plane and repeated the words to herself again. Get there. Take part in whatever might be planned. Close the door on her ‘Father’ forever. Don't get involved in any inevitable drama. Get back in time for her court-mandated session in three days and the fall photoshoots in five. That was it. Straightforward and simple.
Before that — she’d had to squint and count — it was five years back to Vanya’s tell-all.
The god-awful level of a media circus that had brought on the whole year for her.
She hadn’t slept, except in fits and starts, but it’s been like that most of the last half-year, and it’s what the best of the best in makeup production exists for, because, aside from the sunglasses, her hair is still perfectly crimped and her skin is glowing, and her outfit relaxed, but classy. She has no regrets for buying out all the seats in First Class aside from the three purchased before her call. The last thing she wants is to make polite chit-chat with people she doesn’t know.
Which feels doubly preposterous, woven through the throbbing of her temples, because the exact words might as well fit any of the people she will or won’t see again once she lands and makes it to The Academy. Her brothers, her sister, mom, Pogo. Her family. Ostensibly. On paper. On the screen. A handful of people whose worst tabloid exploits have touched her job but who haven’t even touched her life themselves in the last more than a decade.
Who never called or came through California. Weren’t at her wedding and never met her husband, no less her daughter, even though Claire knows all their names and childhood exploits by heart. Her whole childhood was one night after another of just wanting to learn more about her mother’s life before the life she had now. Of never knowing that she had more free time in one year of her life than her mother had in all of her first nineteen.
Not that Allison ever called them either. Never sent condolences to Klaus’s newest billionth OD in a hospital; never offered to pay bail for Diego’s latest lockup; never sent congratulations for Luther’s mission; never said a single thing, good or bad, about Vanya’s book that wasn’t scripted out before the interview cameras went on or a journalist’s pen clicked in bloodthirsty readiness.
Allison knew when she left; she wasn’t coming back.
That she’d waited too long and that she couldn’t wait any longer.
She hadn’t believed she’d be last. After Vanya was shipped out, and Klaus was kicked out, and Diego vanished in the middle of the night (she thought if she just waited, was patient enough, then Luther—). She’d been young and naive and unaware how truly, stupidly, young and naive she was. Until LA was only too glad to let her run face-first into the bricks of real life and all of their father’s lies and all of the strange, heartless, unknown realities of the real world outside those walls he never thought essential to teach his store-bought superheroes.
She’d mastered Hollywood, even though the beginning hadn’t been anything like easy or kind, and she was on top now, even with a messy divorce and messier custody announcement. Roles and appearances around the globe still lined up for endless miles and months. Everything she could ever want — everything except the one thing (one person) she did want; her daughter, Claire, who she'd never deserve even if she earned the right to be her mother back — and yet her stomach was a knot that only compressed tighter as the miles counted down the closer and closer the plane inched toward its destination.
Allison leaned her temple against the plastic wall of the plane and repeated the words to herself again. Get there. Take part in whatever might be planned. Close the door on her ‘Father’ forever. Don't get involved in any inevitable drama. Get back in time for her court-mandated session in three days and the fall photoshoots in five. That was it. Straightforward and simple.