He hitches a breath, a sharp intake as he reads those words and feels the answering ache in his chest, a bruise like an injury that just hasn't healed at all right, like a broken bone that grew in crooked over the past four years.

This family is bad at communication on the best of days, abysmal at it other times. Luther's almost always abysmal at it. But there is more to it, here. It wasn't her because of course it couldn't be her. Allison was the whole problem. Was the lynchpin on which everything else pivoted, the collapsing sun at the center of his issues, swallowing up the air in the room: he wouldn't care how he looked if there wasn't someone he cared what he looked like for.

So he just shakes his head. Unable to find the right words for this one in particular, because—

There's a pause as he reads and rereads her message, his gaze a little distant. When his response finally comes, it's like shoving a boulder up a hill. Ripping off a band-aid. Forcing air through his clenched-tight lungs, a throat gone constricted, to try to force some kind of answer out, rather than just shoving her away from this entire topic like he'd done before. (A hand on her wrist, a vise.)

"How do I even start that conversation? Over coffee one day, hey, good morning, how's work, and by the way I hate myself?" Luther's trying to make light of it, but instead he just sounds pitiful. He's not good at that cutting humour, not the way she and Diego are. "There's no good time to bring it up, and the whole thing just felt— hopeless. It still feels hopeless."