text. anonymous.

[obediences]

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!

Comments

[obediences]

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."

[numberthree]

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

[obediences]

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?"

[numberthree]

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.

[obediences]

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."

[numberthree]

Allison hates that, too. Hates the way his hands dig into the chairs and his shoulders go rigid and he holds perfectly still. Like if he wills it harder enough she'll just vanish from where she's standing and he can go right on shutting her out of this. Even though she somehow ended up right there, right where he didn't want her to be. Even when she didn't know it was him.

Has she ever not known who he was?
Maybe not. Especially now.

(How did she know? Because. It's Luther.
She knew him even when she was blind.)

She knows him. Like breathing. Like there wasn't half a lifetime between those years and this last one. She knows they've lived, changed, but he hasn't, they haven't, too. She knows who she expected to find when she came home that day, and that she never expected what she saw in the foyer the night of that fight.

But she also knows, so deep her bones can't rip it out, that he's still the person, right now, today, sitting right there, that she'd trade the whole of the moon for. Once. A dozen times. A million. This face. This voice. The strength, and the rare guileless gentleness under it. That she's as terrified of losing him to the gatekeepers of this place as she is about forgetting even the smallest things about Claire as time drags on.

So you want to put your life at risk for vanity now?

She'd been so late. That night. That morning. So late. She'd almost lost him, for real and for good. So many years earlier. She'd never even known until then, and even then her only question had been why hadn't it been her. Then, it was no one, and now, it was everyone else who found it worth five minutes of their scrolling time.

[obediences]

His temper's already ebbed, that near-shout quietened in favour of a steady look as he just stares at her across his bedroom. Both their body languages tight and closed off, retreating in on each other. Vanity. Noncosmetic?

"It's not just vanity, Allison. I don't— feel— right. In this. I don't move the way I used to." He'd used to be quick, light on his feet. How was it he'd described it to Rikki again, during that one loose sleep-deprived night over tea, when everyone was swapping bodies?

Do you just not feel like you in there, or something?
It's not... me. It just isn't me. Nothing feels like me. The balance is off. My center of gravity. The spaces I can fit into. Everything.

(I used to be handsome.)

Luther shakes his head. Tries to pick through and find the right words to explain it, even when talking about it, out loud, in person, where she can see every last flicker of emotion on his face, is damn near the last thing he wants to be doing. Let alone with her. Especially not with her.

(When that chandelier had ripped him open, bared him to the world, Allison and Diego and Vanya had all seen— but Luther had only had eyes for one. Had stared and stared and stared at Allison across the foyer, frozen like a deer in the headlights, waiting for that gut-punch of her expression shifting, waiting for the horror and pity and disgust and revulsion, before he'd finally just turned tail and run away.)

"Think about it this way. What if it was someone from Aegis? A registered hero. Like Finn, helping Vanya and suppressing her powers. They were trained to do that. Experienced. If there's someone else out there with experience, who knows how to do this sort of thing..."

He exhales, half-frustration, half-bleak laugh. "I don't even know if the right person exists who can do it. Maybe they don't. It's probably all a lost cause anyway. But I— it's been a year. It felt... worth asking. Just once. Why not."

[numberthree]

It's not just. Because part of it is, then, too. She's at no lack for being vain, and in their own way, they'd all been vain, preening little monsters, mugging for the cameras since before they even knew what that meant. In a way, she hates that, too, because it might be all she has left to her, and even that is a thin, poor shadow its predecessor.

She even hates that's it's hard to stay mad. When he finally says some of those things. That he hasn't adjusted to in at least half a decade. It would be easier to stay mad. Mad is always easier for her to hold on to. She always knew how to point it. Use it. Abuse it. It was a weapon all it's own. But weapons are for hurting people, and even if she does want to hurt him.

She doesn't. She knows she doesn't. Even more than that.
She never wants to hurt Luther. She hates the idea it's been this bad.

That he didn't tell her. That she just didn't know. That she could apparently pick him out without a name or a face or a voice, but she could look at him every morning and every night and just not know. That he wasn't always okay with it. Sure. But not that it was this bad.

Why didn't you tell me?

If it was this bad. Bad enough for -- whatever. People. Powers. Taking any risk at all that it might not even work out. Why didn't you tell me?

She doesn't even know (even when she writes, and deletes a line swearing and referencing their Father) if she means at all about this. If it's not just stupidly and sheerly transparent. Why wasn't it her? Why hadn't he called the first time, and why did she have to find it out, again and newly, this way? In the middle of a conversation, she would have thought was impossible twenty minutes ago.

It's selfish. That's selfish. It's not about her. None of this is. But he'd already seen her worst, and she'd come to him when it hit a year. Without Claire. When she couldn't bear to do that entirely alone anymore. Even just hold it.

Just like Luther had finally hit, apparently.

Why wasn't it her. What was so wrong with her.

[obediences]

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."

[numberthree]

Luther's breath pulls in sharp, but he says nothing. Staring hard at the air. Not looking at her. Not answering her. The way his eyes move being the only give that he's reading it again. Building an answer out of that empty air, so that he can finally look at her again, while she holds her breath. Like they are some balance she can't fight being even now.

When she's suddenly afraid of the answer, of any answer that will tear whatever she has, had, imagines is left in her hands not gone. That will put her finally in her place. Where she belongs. With the nothing she deserves to still have. But, again, his words are a violence she never sees coming. It feels like being stabbed. No. Worse than being stabbed. Worse than having an arm pulled off. Worse than feeling herself bleeding out, dying, as she lost consciousness.

Don't say that

She doesn't reread it. Doesn't think.
It's the only words, and she can't stop them.

She couldn't hate Luther if her life depended on it.
Not over their father. Or staying. Not even over Vanya.

The fact he can even say those words, tries them as a joke. She can't.

[obediences]

The fact that they're even talking about this at all, that he's let the conversation go on this long, is in and of itself a testament to what they once had, have, will always have (we used to tell each other everything). Even though he never wanted her to see, still, anyone else wouldn't have gotten this far while barging into his room. Number One is the leader and he's not supposed to show any weakness. Isn't supposed to bare his throat, reveal those vulnerabilities, show any possible crack in the foundation that might lead to building collapse. A loose pebble that turns to an avalanche.

But he's caving in on himself now, a hand scrubbing at his face. He looks to the side, breaking eye contact, unable to tolerate that searing stare from her.

"I've already said too much. Nevermind. Forget I said anything."

Like a hermit crab scuttling back into its shell.

[numberthree]

Allison knows it's the wrong words even as soon as she's hit send. Because they were too rash. Because it mattered too much. Because it's joke. Exaggeration. Or it's not. It's really, really not, and she just told him to shut up after the first thing he said once she'd asked why he hadn't, because she couldn't handle it.

If she could have chosen worse words, she's not sure they exist. And she gets what she absolutely deserves from them, when Luther reaches up a hand and rubs at his face, looking away from her, and there are the words that basically are the door slamming.

No. No, don't shut me out now.

Instinct wars with panic with fear of what he could do (has done) if she lets it end here. If she's not allowed to know, not allowed to hear, if he thinks she refused him at the first thing he threw out, no matter how potentially bitingly, bitterly, hyperbolic. Where he might go. What he might do. Who. How. How bad.

She can't stop the race of her heart, or her thoughts.

There's no putting it all together.
It just keeps coming. In new message pings.

and then,

I'm sorry.

and then, even as she's stepping closer, and she wants to reach out, her hands even float for second, too smart even for the desperation chasing movement, wanting, needing, but remembering all too well, what too much is, especially at too far past unwanted already,

Talk to me

and then,

please

[obediences]

It's a chaotic peppering of messages, flung out as quickly as she can think it and type it, and Allison Hargreeves almost never says please.

Their whole lives, she always demanded. She took. She never asked. She never had to. If she'd gotten into better habits in her normal life, out and about the real world, Luther was never around to see it — he knows of her as imperious, demanding, and he's spent his entire life unthinkingly complying even when she wasn't using her power. He'd give her anything, he'd give her everything.

(Except, apparently, he hadn't given her this.)

He doesn't shove himself backwards to get further away from her, but he watches the near-approach of her hand like a rattlesnake in the grass. Feels the distance shrinking between them like a tightening and shortening leash, while his shoulders tense up.

She came to him about Claire. Her lowest and her most vulnerable moment, her most painful. Shouldn't he repay the favour? Shouldn't that be an easy consideration?

(No. It isn't.)

"I would be responsible about it," he finally says, suddenly banking into an earlier facet of the conversation. Not quite following up on what he'd just given away a moment ago. Still focusing on the how rather than the more important why. "I wouldn't be stupid about it. I'd research anyone who responded, and talk to them in-depth. There's a few different healers, someone who can manipulate biological material. I wouldn't go in half-cocked or rushed. If that's what you're worried about."

(He is so stubbornly blind to this. Because that's part of it, sure, but it's also not entirely it. What she's worried about, plainly and simply, is him.)

[numberthree]

Even though she'd already stopped herself as fast as her hands had lifted, it's the way that Luther's eyes snap to the movement, a stillness so sharp, tense, reticent it might as well have been a cringe, and Allison crosses her arms again. Not the same way as earlier. Lower, under her chest, for a moment, both sets of her fingers hooking her elbows.

Even at their best, even occasionally casual, it's never quite normal.
And it's even less acceptable in not normal. (How is it she only wants to more, now?)

Her fingertips press light into the bones jointed there, under such thin skin, as Luther doesn't say to just go, that's he's still done, and she finds herself swallowing. Hopeful for even a partial tenuous inch of the same words not just restated. That he doesn't get up, jut watches her at first.

But then he does start talking, and Allison can feel her heart restart somewhere under the breath she pulls in. Not promised anything specific, any length or depth, but not sent away again either. But he's talking and for a moment she tries to hold her tongue. Curb any impulse. But it's already shifting. No. Shifted.

When it was someone else, anyone else, it wouldn't have mattered.
What happened to them. If they hurt themselves. Even died in the process.
But it's not someone else. Anyone else. It's Luther. It's. Luther.

Suddenly everything matters. Deeper than words. Anchoring her down with his voice -- rough, familiar, always more level and logical than emotional; at least on the surface, the part he made for everyone to see -- even when it's the words in that voice that make everything twist tighter and tighter in her core, too tight. Logical, but.

His earlier words keep stabbing back into her. Making her hold.
Was it a joke? Was it? She can't stop looking at his face now.

The place his word's end though, causes a shift in her expression. A press of her mouth and a quirk of her eyebrows. As though his protocol is her greatest concern. As though every detail hasn't turned a millionfold. Concern is not the tactic to take with Luther like this. Even if it is the thing sinking its teeth in, bloodying her skin. Her heart.

Allison has always been smart, but ruled by her emotions.
It takes a few seconds to land on a question that feels safe.

When did you start looking?

[obediences]

The slight raise of an eyebrow; nowhere near the sardonic looks she's mastered, but still a flicker of half-incredulity half-bemusement from him. "Uh, you saw it," Luther says. "Today."

But even that isn't the full picture, really. The real question is: how long have you been thinking about it?

Every day. In constant futility back home, the one thing he'd asked and demanded and pleaded his father to fucking fix, and Sir Reginald had been unable to. Every damn day for four— no, five years now. Reinforced and amplified every time this world served him up another reminder of what he'd been.

He crosses his arms, too, unintentionally mirroring Allison's body language. It's easier than wondering what the hell to do with his hands, whether or not to stand up, or if he's still going to be stuck in this chair with his chin tipped up forever, looking at her.

[numberthree]

At first, she can't tell if the relief or the incredulity is larger, even as Luther settles her with a look that almost seems confused and like he can't believe she asked it. Maybe, because there's no way it started tonight, and she doesn't know if she can believe she's that lucky.

But she doesn't actually believe he'd lie to her. No.
Not even like this. Not even about this.

Not tell her, yes. But lie?
She doesn't think so.
Hopes not.

But there's. She doesn't actually doubt it, does she. The expression he has, that keeps rowing back and forth between too much and too little seems too real itself. A little chagrin even at being caught, at having to do this in person. With anyone. He'd chosen to not do it as himself to being with, hadn't he.

She's the only person who knows this part. That it is him.
She wishes she didn't feel like she had to steal that to claim it.

Allison hates that anything can make him want to be less than who she knows he is. That this makes him feel like he is. Isn't. Himself. The only person that the whole of her universe revolves on here. One of the only two points that define what is good and right in her whole life.

She turned, willing herself patience. Without asking anymore at this moment than she might have if it were any other day and she'd walked in on him working, Allison sits down careful, not entirely casually, on the bottom corner of his bed. Trying to think past every part of her still yelling this was wrong.

I still don't think it's safe.

But.

You said people wrote you back?
That there were possibly options?

She hadn't been listening. She didn't really when she was yelling. Apparently, even when she was doing it without making a sound. Words just became weapons to catch and throw back. Fury was always easier than fear. She wasn't taught to be afraid, and if she had to be afraid, she was taught to use that as a weapon, too.

How did those things never come out them when they grew up?

Her expression was a least ruefully calm. Trying to listen. Without lying either.

[obediences]

When she sits down, some of the tension ebbs out of him, too, his shoulders loosening; looking a bit less like he's about to bolt out of that seat and out of the room. (He'd done that before, back home, fleeing the foyer.) He hates having Allison angry at him. Hates it. It saws on his nerves, makes them sing in strained jaw-clenched unhappiness. This rueful, logical rationalising is better: Luther knows how to deal with this better.

It's almost like talking about mission parameters. Logistics. Safeguards.

Not emotions.

"There's a couple people who— have experienced something similar." He breathes in, breathes out. He doesn't explain that it's nice to have that unexpected solidarity, a thread of simpatico even with total strangers. Maybe it goes without saying.

"And then one person said they can manipulate biological material on a genetic level. I'm asking them for more details, because that sounds promising. Another said they can heal injuries and illnesses — anything from puncture wounds to heart attacks to poisons to hypothermia to comas, but I... don't think that'll work for me. It's not an injury."

Despite himself, Luther's gaze automatically drifts down the line of Allison's jaw, to her neck. The healed scar there. His jaw works, chews over the question that's suddenly on the tip of his tongue, a pivot of the topic right back at her:

"Have you ever considered...?"

[numberthree]

It's not hard for Allison to keep her expression whatever she wants it to be. That's been honed over that last decade. She can laugh until her eyes are sparkling even when all she wants to do is cry. It's not the same thing. But there's carefulness to her expression, even as she tries to dissect every bit of his and his voice while he speaks.

Listening to him explain more than what was left out there publicly.
Making her wonder what more might exactly have been said. Where. To who.

Even more so, what might have been said by Luther. To someone else. Somewhere else. Somewhere private. Locked away. All the words that might be like the ones he threw right back at her. With someone else who might have understood. Or take advantage of it. That didn't even understand how hard it was for Luther to drag anything out into the light from behind the mask.

Did it hurt more now, thinking about with all the details in rows,
or was it just that she didn't have the anger to throw that hurt into now.

She doesn't expect the question, but she should have, throws her right back to

It's not small then


No. Is yours?

She looks away, without even thinking about it until she has. The end of the bed. The wall. Not sticking a landing anywhere her gaze lands. Feeling suddenly self-conscious, all the feeling in her body seeming to rush to her throat, where the skin prickles and she nearly wants to rub the skin, but she won't move now either.

The answer is of course and it probably shows, but what she writes instead is,

Not like this.

[obediences]

Luther's gaze sinks in turn, dropping away from Allison and down to his own arms, his fingers splayed across one oversized bicep. As ever, he doesn't like what he sees; he rearranges them, hands settling restlessly into his lap. Even indoors, even while relaxing at home, he still wears those fingerless gloves. Hasn't ever stopped. He only peels them off at night, when he's brushing his teeth and changing clothes and getting ready for bed. (That in itself should've been a sign. It's as much to shield himself from the sight as to shield others.)

The urge is still there, to slam the metaphorical door shut and just bail out of this entire thing. But he owes it to her, he owes it, he owes it. His best friend. The person he's been closest to in this world and the next, in three different universes now. So he pushes himself. Makes himself talk, even if he can't meet her eye just this second:

"It's... the only way I could do it," he admits, his voice low as he looks down at his lap. Soft and miserable.

[numberthree]

It's strange how for someone who can't make much noise, the quieter it gets the edgier she feels. Like somehow, even though he's still talking, this could all just start slipping through her fingers if she doesn't make sure he keeps talking. About this thing they never talk about. Don't even entirely talk about when this place is messing with bodies, minds, and ages.

Barely. Scraps here and there. Never returning to that night, or his telling her the next morning. About as even and logical as he could try and make them. Then, and now. It's not the same. His asking about her. He ended up here by nearly dying while saving the world. She couldn't begin to claim something that noble. If someone deserved the better of how they go to here, it wasn't her.

It's nearly battering at her teeth to write the words, you almost died. Like it's some unrecognized thing. He didn't. But he almost did. And they sweep it under the rug like it's just another of every time someone got brought back needing to get stitched up by Mom. Except it wasn't that easy. This happened. This saved him.

This ... makes him feel not-real. Not himself. Like he might hate himself.
And Allison still can't even think that word without tension. It's so wrong.


It's hard to find the words. The ones she doesn't think he'll throw out. But, also, the ones she wants to know, to ask for, without somehow pushing too much, when she wants to push for everything. When she wishes he could even see a quarter of how she sees him.


Tell me about it?


It's not like I've never noticed anything.
But I never thought it was this bad.

Does that make her the worst best friend?
She's not certain she's ever been a good friend.



But she's always been his.

[obediences]

And he wants to ask. What she's noticed. Which tells he's slipped and given away, even as he knows how horrifically obvious it feels too. As if she couldn't tell from the turtlenecks, the gloves, the heavy layers, the dreamstuff that brought him his old body just as her dreamstuff brought her a Claire, of sorts—

But that thought isn't all that prominent either; when Luther thinks over it, he realises he doesn't feel bitter that she hadn't realised. He's relieved, mostly. Relieved that he managed at least some semblance of hiding it.

"I didn't want you to know," he says. And then a moment later, realising how that might sound wrong, like a kind of rejection: "I didn't want anyone to know. I'm not supposed to... I'm supposed to be Number One, Allison, for god's sake. Impervious."

Another breath. The only way this is easier, doable at all, is because it had already come up a little with Jane, hot on the heels of the City.

Leaders are supposed to have faith in themselves. What a shitty one I am.

"But I haven't felt like him in a long time. Even before... before finding out about my mission."

(Even now, a whole year later, he can't quite bring himself to say those words and name it for what it is. Finding out about the moon. What Dad did. The sham of his life. The waste of his life.)

[numberthree]

It lands. Even if he didn't mean it to, and it shows a second later, and Allison for can't tell if it's supposed to be better or worse that it goes from not her to her just being part of anyone, everyone else. Either way, it lands, and she tries not to press her lips.

But it smooths away into something utterly otherwise at the words that come after it, softening her expression, with a shake of her head.

You're not impervious.
You don't have to be.

You're human. Like the rest of us.
You get to make mistakes,
and not like things.



Even if that involves yourself.


He was always Dad's Best Little Soldier. Even when he was taller than all of them. Even when it was only him. First, brightest, and best so far back she doesn't think she remembers a single part of her child where that wasn't a fact. Even before their friendship became what it was. Still that, staunchly that, even when it wasn't anymore.

But that wasn't the person she'd missed. The person she loved best. Not that she hadn't loved that, too, before she even knew it was love. But it wasn't the mask of Number One or Spaceboy that she'd stayed in love with for the second half of her life, when he wasn't even there to be those. When it was everything under them, that made up who he really was, that she compared every other person to.

[obediences]

Luther reads over those words, over and over, and he silently shakes his head a little. Automatically doubtful, disbelieving.

Because it doesn't track. Doesn't fit with the other twenty-nine years of his life, the poison he drank even after everyone else had been weaned off it, after the others had taught themselves to leave it behind. He's the leader; he's not supposed to make mistakes. How else can he be worthy? How else do you measure someone's value? How else had he ever been able to draw Sir Reginald's attention and notice and approval?

Only in this: in being rigid and perfect and inhuman, without a single visible crack in the foundations, no quaver in his voice, no weakness, no hesitation in his obedience or duty.

He's aware in a distant sort of way that those considerations don't work anymore; that they fell apart the day he was discarded like so much trash. (like dad didn't just use you like a drill and toss you aside once the battery was dead)

And he's been trying to learn a better way.

But old habits die hard. And their father did such a goddamn number on them.

As he looks away from that hovering text, and back to meet Allison's eye, there's another thought turning itself over and over in his mind. Remembering: I think maybe you're the only person who really knows who I am and still likes me anyway.

He swallows; tries to choose the right words to ask what he wants to ask, finally settles on: "Is that... speaking from personal experience?"

[numberthree]

Allison watches him wrestle with the words. The shift of his eyes over it again and again. And again. The faintest washes of almost-expressions on his face. The near imperceptible way his shoulders, his whole upper body, almost moves but doesn't.

Fallibility was never a thing Luther believed in. Still isn't. That's the whole reason she's sitting hereafter only somehow stumbling on what he'd finally decided to do. Because he didn't want her, or anyone, to even know that this existed. And would she have, if she hadn't been aimlessly scrolling? Would she have been too late?

Was she? Or was it all beginning still, right here, right now.

A tenuous vine, trying to wait through his silence, even though she'd probably have added more words if speaking was an option. But she already threw enough at him -- or too much, she didn't know. She sat on the thousand words circling, more so after the recklessness desperation of moments ago. But he focused back on her, and she stopped curving one of her manicured nails inside the other in her lap.

She didn't know what her expression was for that.

All of her worst moments, her worst mistakes, the sins she got to carry, she did that to herself. She chose those things. Did those things. Said those words. It wasn't the same. He -- hated? -- what their Father had done to him, in the course of saving. She hated herself often enough, for things only she was responsible for.

Except it's not that simple either. For all that they don't talk about it, what they've seen since coming here, Luther's greatest regret, whether it had to do with her or not, was not leaving that day, that morning, when she came to get him. Was a stab of culpability lain blank and bare, almost too?

He chose to stay. Chose their Father. Even after deciding not to.

Didn't we start there?
In the family room. Only days after getting back.

It's been a year and half, but it's impossible to forget so many of the moments from that week. Even for all the truly horrific things then, she can't forget the worst things she said to Vanya because of Patrick, or about implying with no subtly to Luther that she was broken and unfixable. And this place had taken him beat by beat through every red-handed reason for it.

You always could get me to say more than I meant to.

Not the angry words. The real ones. The true ones.
The ones she hid so well from everyone else.

[obediences]

It's probably unfair. She's been so honest with him, confided in him (and he hadn't even had to work that hard on it back home; just a few words from him and she'd spilled her heart out). While Luther still held so much back, unaccustomed to having someone to talk to again, having his best friend back, a partner he can trust in. He's bottled it all up instead. And Allison exposed her worst parts, the things she'd done, her deepest shame— meanwhile, he'd almost died years ago and hadn't even called her. It hadn't made the headlines, not like the usual heroic near-misses that the press reported on the Academy; Reginald had buried it.

Even up to today, Luther had buried it.

"I'm sorry."

He's said it before even realising he was about to say it. Because there's another litany running in circles now: You hypocrite, Luther. You absolute hypocrite. She'd done it. So why couldn't he?

"For... not telling you. I don't... I still don't even really know how to." He exhales. Tries again, although wrenching out more words is, as ever, like squeezing blood from a stone: "That age thing a few weeks ago. It made it worse."