maskormenace | text. anonymous.

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text. anonymous.

Is there anything about yourself that you would change, if you could?

And do any of you have the ability or powers to change people's physical bodies? Like with magic, or something.

Not science.

[ Science has already let him down. Science led him here. Luther doesn't much savour the idea of another brilliant person with brilliant inventions trying to get beneath his ape-like skin, when he and his father already tried and failed.

There is something to be said for acceptance, and coming to terms with yourself and your new capabilities or lack thereof. Luther isn't there yet. And he has too many memories now, of an entire decade in the City without this albatross around his neck, this anchor around his ankle. Every time he thinks he might have readjusted to his malformed body again, this world delivers him another goddamned reminder of what he's lost: accidentally remaking his own form when dreams became real; his siblings winding up in others' bodies; waking up looking like his teenaged self, from a far simpler time. It rankles; makes it harder each time to feel comfortable again.

So. He asks the question, finally. ]

& ooc: I don't want to permanently 'fix' Luther, but if your character can do it, I would absolutely be open to a change backfiring or working temporarily! Feel free to plot ICly, or reach out OOCly to hash out some details!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

What? No.

[ Even anonymous, even with neither of them knowing who the other party is, she has a way of chipping at his walls, eroding his foundation. ]

There can be smaller demonstrations. Showing their capabilities in a controlled environment. I'm assuming some people have long-term experience with their powers.
I don't know.
I'm not even sure if I'll-- do it. I'm just exploring options.

[ There are several words that give too much away, and Allison presses her lips, rolling them together, flat, back and forth, against her teeth, as she narrows her eyes at those words. Rereading certain parts. She can't tell if it's arrogance. Or obliviousness. Or desperation. ]

So, it's not small then.
Whatever you're asking for.

[ Or all three, as it so often is with Luther. ]

No.

Is yours? If you have one.

[ It's a stab in the dark — but a guess at why this faceless voice on the network, who doesn't know him from Adam, who shouldn't even care why the hell some person in the network does what it does, might still have reacted so strongly to his idea. So viscerally. ]

[ Allison's heart spikes suddenly. Viscerally. Leaves her grimacing at the words, muscles gone taut and something sharply displeased about being called out. She's said nothing about herself. Nothing.

(And yet. Her hands tense to keep either from lifting.
But it makes the shot back all that much faster, too.) ]

Presumptuous much.

This not-a-tattoo change of yours, how big is big?

Edited 2020-07-17 04:10 (UTC)

Big.

[ Two can play the monosyllabic game, anon!! ]

[ Seriously? ]

Noncosmetic?

[ That... is a good question, and gives him pause.
Is it technically just cosmetic? It's not a handicap, it didn't prevent him from flying a space shuttle, doesn't stop him from entering combat. But it is, still, a physical change, one that leaves him clumsy in his own body... ]

Sort of?

[ She should just put down the phone. But the silence drags and finds herself watching her message space. She knows better, but there's just something about it. It gets to her. Even less does she expect the answer that comes. Her brow furrowing. It's an amazingly straight forward question from a girl whose career field basically defined the question. ]

What does that mean?

Let's just say it's more tangible than a scar.

[ He's loath to go into any more detail than that, particularly in public, particularly with a commenter who's been so... not exactly combative, but challenging. So he's just leaving it at that, for now. ]

[ One would hope, given the severity and stupidity of the subject. It rubs a sore note, but one Allison can at least see coming and ignore easily. As much as the 'helpful longterm advice' from every makeup artist and director she's had here. Her choice is a choice. Not an easy one. But nowhere near a willing helplessness. ]

But science & tech is out? You have seen this place, right?
What with the teleporters and basically having their own Lunar Disney.

Already tried science back home. It's a part of me now, so I don't know if there's much they can do about it. The nanites just... repair what's there.

[ Allison's brow furrows at the words. There's ... something. Something about it. Something she can't quite put her finger. Something that even though it shouldn't makes her put a breath out of her nose as she reads it over a second time. ]

If it's already part of you, why do you think it'd be any different at the hands of someone here, then?

Because people's superpowers and magic don't really operate by the normal restrictions of what's possible or impossible.

Are you new? Have you missed how much it messes up around here, too?

[ Or does this person just not care at all. Is the desperation just that much bigger than the sense. At least on some level science had proof, magic had what? Faith? That you couldn't even rely on because this was all shooting blinding in the dark for anyone who responded at all? ]

And sometimes it accomplishes the impossible, too.

[ A chalice, a daughter, a courtroom, a memory. A pristine old body spun up out of nothing. ]

She'd been loosely following the whole post for this person the last while, but it's in reading down a few more of the conversations that feeling, the one biting at the back of her neck, becomes more of a pummeling. Straight into her stomach. Her chest.

Not science. My team. The world.

Already tried science back home.

I don't feel human anymore.

My responsibilities.

It's part of me.

Big.

It comes at her more sickening than sense, but sense isn't what suddenly floods her when those pieces, still floating just enough apart, start to put together an image she can't handle. When she pushing up from her bed, not even letting herself think about it, that the newest message flashes into her vision, and she would swear if she could swear.

But she does the only thing she can.

Marches straight through the jack-and-jill bathroom between their rooms, throwing the door forcefully open, even as she slammed that message back to the anon, praying, praying to all that she didn't even believe in, she was wrong. That she'd be startling him awake, confused, wrong wrong wrong.

Tell. Me. This. Isn't. You.

But worst. Worst is that she doesn't think she even needs him to confirm it, to know it's right. To know it's him.

Edited 2020-07-18 01:17 (UTC)

The door suddenly slams open, bouncing on its hinges and hitting the wall just like he'd done to her door so many weeks ago, the only difference being the dent is smaller— and Luther's at his desk, suddenly jolting away from his boxy laptop like he's been caught doing something wrong, looking at something he shouldn't. An irrationally guilty look flashes across his face, because he'd just had enough time to read that latest message, to catch a brief glimpse of it before Allison came barging in. Fuming in his doorway like a stormcloud.

He scoots back in his rolling chair, hands away from the keyboard. Looks up at her, as his own version of realisation clicks and tumbles into place. He'd recognised Five already, tipped off by that casual mention of the Murder Magician, but he hadn't known—

"Hey. Allison," he says, abashed, and it— isn't an answer. Because he can't lie. He can't lie to her anymore (she can always tell), and he doesn't want to, either. Even about this.

Luther nearly jumps away from his desk, from this laptop, like it'd burned him, bitten him, moving faster than he ever did. Does. Lets himself. Except in a fight. Because there was always too much damage Luther could do to anything, anyone, if he reacted too quickly. Only an epic deviation in his focus can take it from him.

That thing punching the inside of her chest, like a second heartbeat, gets its hand around her throat, taking all of her air and a good portion of her vision in one rush. As she watches Luther, in the dim light of the late-night bedroom, and how his expression slides fast into guilt and straight through it into something like shame.

But he doesn't answer her. Doesn't defend himself.

And she can't even stop herself. She'd never. She hadn't thought.
It flips in a heartbeat. Because this isn't for public fucking consumption.

YOU CANNOT BE SERIOUS

It's a sudden turn on a dime — a shout in the only way she can shout anymore, all furious capslock in a way that she's never actually done in all these months on the mental network. He doesn't even need to hear her voice to know how angry she is: it's written there in her face clear as day, in the pull of muscle and the curl of her mouth and that furrow in her forehead.

And he isn't following that turn. Can't track from A to B to Z, and so his own brow furrows in— confusion, maybe a bit of defensiveness.

"Why not?" Luther asks, monosyllabic like they'd been earlier, and there's a little defiance in his voice that wasn't there before. (Because the alternative is to simply crumple and crumble, run away from this whole goddamned thing, from the fact that he dared to opened up for the very first time and her fury is what's come of it.)

It would be so much easier if she could yell. Her teeth knit, throbbing at the sudden force of it, and she hates how much concentration it takes to write even when she isn't paying attention to it. Hates how much it isn't like talking. Isn't like yelling. Can't convey more that a silent echo of her current suddenly choking anger. The desperate drilling need -- fear? -- need to know if she missed more of these before this one.

Especially as he just. goes. on. sitting. there.

A writ without denial, becoming a note of defiance in his own voice, she recognizes even small. And the fact it pops out, both that she can hear it and because it's every proof of the fact she can't do anything like it, she can't even keep herself from crossing what's left of the room at him, and the small rolling desk chair he's wedged into

-- Big. That single word echo's like a solid door, metal and feet thick; untouched but never unknown --

and Allison can't even. She doesn't even know it's coming before she's doing it.
Reaching out to backhand his shoulder with the force her voice can't give her.

Because you're not putting your life into the hand of some idiot here!

Luther doesn't recoil from the strike; it bounces off him as it's always done, her frustration boiling over and only able to express itself in Allison smacking his shoulder. In the past, it's been occasionally playful, mocking, Number Three the only one who would ever dare to touch their leader like that because she knew it wouldn't hurt him, wouldn't do a single thing, so it was a safe vent— This time, though, there's such real frustration simmering beneath it. He raises his own hands, palms splayed, more as if he can defend himself from the words that keep popping up in the corner of his vision. A volley of letters.

"It's not like I've even made any plans yet!" he protests (but there is that one word, yet, that has all the weight of possibility behind it). "I'm just— exploring options. Just in case."

It won't hurt him. It never can. The only way she ever could have made Luther stand still or stop in the past was her power, but even that's gone now. And the fact it only glances off him, and she knew it would, only makes her want to him again, harder. Especially as his hands go up, and she thinks about shoving them, too, even though there's nothing she could do.

She hates helplessness with a passion. It's not what she is, was born and trained to be, and even if she's nothing she was born and raised to be anymore, she refuses to be it right now, right here, with Luther. With this supremely ludicrous, dangerous idea that is made of insanity.

YET? IN CASE?
Do you even hear yourself?

You wouldn't even be asking if you weren't serious

And. Just like that. His expression and his self-control both shatter at once: normally Luther is in such iron-clad control over himself, terrible at concealing any of his emotions but he always bites down on them anyway, shuts down the conversation, refuses to engage whenever it skitters too close to something like this.

But now, finally, something splinters. His face is split right open and vulnerable, his composure immediately ruined. "Why wouldn't I be serious?" he demands, and his voice is louder than he likes it. More expressive than he likes it. "Why wouldn't I try?"

We never talk about it. We never talk about it.

"If there's a way— just a few weeks ago I was young again, like it never happened, and I was myself again last year too— if there's a way to fix it permanently, why the hell wouldn't I take that option?"

Allison doesn't flinch back or move when Luther finally starts shouting back. When she can watch that thing in his eyes that she could point to, knowns by sight, but could never name. Is too big, too complicated, too untouchable. Even by her.

(It's there still. The way he'd jerked away from realizing she was touching his hand. The way he'd grabbed her by the wrist and held her away. From him. From the topic. How they still barely can talk about it, barely touch, and nearly never casually, and mostly only in the worst of the worst moments this place can throw at them. It's never been something she could push. She knew that.)

But apparently letting random strangers into that part of him was fine, and letting who the hell even knows get the right to pull him apart like a puzzle and design him anew however they felt he was supposed to be was fine, too. She hates it. She hates all of this.

But she hates nothing so much as the sucker punch of four words in there.
The way everything else becomes a background hum, louder, but blown apart.
Everything tightens, and maybe even far more worrisome than it had gotten to.

You're still yourself.
You haven't stopped being yourself.

Not even their asshole father could take that from him.

Edited 2020-07-18 03:12 (UTC)

He's still rooted in that seat, hands now clutching the arms of the chair and his body forcibly rigid — because if he gets up, he's going to loom, and he is always so, so careful to try not to loom or intimidate where it comes to her. (To anyone, when he doesn't have to.) And if he gets up, he might just start walking and never stop, walk right out of this room and leave this conversation behind. So Luther forces himself to be a statue, even though it grinds along all his muscles strung taut, his jaw gone tight.

And those words from her... should be a comfort and a reassurance, maybe.

But he can't believe them.

Like he'd said in private to the other anonymous commenter, the ghoul: They can swear up and down that it doesn't matter, but it's not normal, so of course it does matter.

So: "No," Luther says simply, and his voice is softer now, weary and so, so tired. "I'm not. We grew up on the front pages, Allison. I know what I'm supposed to look like."

Edited 2020-07-18 03:28 (UTC)

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