𝕚 𝕙𝕖𝕒𝕣𝕕 𝕒 𝕣𝕦𝕞𝕠𝕣. . .

Oh you're in my veins
And I cannot get you out

Oh you're all I taste
At night inside of my mouth





Allison Hargreeves loves her life.

She loves the power that hovers at the tip of her tongue, ready to spring into any words she might need it for. She loves being The Rumor. She loves saving the day, and taking out the trash of the world and putting it where it belongs. She loves the dazed and doting faces that peer at her and her brothers, pushing, shoving, beating signs as their father’s car returns them to the Academy.

She loves the simplicity, and straightforwardness of it all. She loves the hard fights, that light up every nerve in her body, when her foot or fist or elbow connects with the solidness of bones, and men twice her size crumple in the wake of a pain she washed away paying attention at the age when other children were learning to tie their shoes and write in cursive letters.

She loves the moments when she stands there, a swish of skirts or a gliding shadow of perfect fitting leather, while it’s only the whisper of words that brings a crowd crashing to its knees. Flung to her bidding like the breeze stirring the leaves in the trees. She loves the seamlessness with which all her siblings breathe in and out of each other on a battlefield, less individual people and more like breathlessly synchronized thoughts.

She loves the way that Luther goes first, first in all things, and always, and stations himself at the door, holding it for them, as her brothers slide out of their seats, all neatened socks and straightened ties, most blood and stains wiped away between being picked up in costumes and emerging again in uniforms. The only one of them who truly has trouble with that one, at times, is Ben.

She loves the feeling that anything and everything is possible, is at her fingertips, laced into her fingers, when saving the world is child's play, and they are the only children, though they are far from being just children anymore, who can. Who do. Who can't be stopped. Who are begged for the mercy of the grace of coming to their rescue the world over.

But what she loves most of all, sliding out last of the car, in reaching up so easily to catch her weight and help her stand with the help of the top of the car door, is letting her fingertips glide just so against the edge of Luther’s hand, briefly catching like a skipped stone on two of his last knuckles as her hand falls away with the need for the door, while she gives him the flick of a dangerous smirk, part dare, and part promise, and all reckless heady fearlessness, that anyone else watching might simply find vaingloriously pert.

Before she passes on by, turning her smile on the crowd like a returning queen. Dark fingers linking behind her back, lighter than the black of her jacket, and the smallest floated-skip to her matched and measured Mary-Jane steps, falling in line behind her other three brothers as the car door closes behind her and she knows Luther will fall in right behind her, too.