[open] get knocked down over 7000 times.

[obediences]

WHO: The Hargreeves + Guests
WHERE: Various Cities
WHEN: Month of July
WHAT: Mass log of idiots to keep from flooding others. A log for all things Hargreeves, their Adventures, and those trying to befriend them.
WARNINGS: Obligatory CW for: drugs, alcohol, mentions of death and child abuse.

"Judah & the Lion - 7000x (Visualizer)" (Watch on YouTube)

Comments

July 5th { Locked Family Text ☂ Vanya's Return

[numberthree]

[ Shortly after this. ]

I don't know where everyone is right now, but Vanya is back.
She's at the house with Diego, and Ben, and I, but she doesn't remember anything.

[deadlycurves]

I think we've hit most of the hardest, important beats of explaining this place to her, at least.

[the_horror]

( ﾉ ﾟｰﾟ)ﾉ♡yay!♡ヽ(ﾟｰﾟヽ)

[hellogoodhigh]

good to hear she's back!
if you want me to join you let me know, but i kinda think it's better i give her space...

[ You know. If her last memories involve him just walking away from her while she's locked in a soundproof room? Now is not the time to start that conversation. ]

[obediences]

[ He pauses over the text -- not entirely certain how to respond -- because like Klaus' message above, it really is better for Luther to give her space, too. But. It's still good news. Even if he can't be there for it, doesn't know how to work on that gaping chasm between them, it's still a good thing to have Vanya back. ]

Glad to hear it.

Locked » Diego | Luther

[deadlycurves]

You okay?

[Look. He is the first one in line to give Luther shit for every single possible thing imaginable. But it doesn't mean he doesn't care about his brother. He knows how awful and awkward this is, he's already fucked up with Vanya a number of times in the course of explaining this place to her with Allison and Ben when they found her. And it has to be a level above the rest for Luther, all things considered. So. Checking in, it's a thing.]

{Feel what you feel, down into my bones » Luther » Hargreeves House, Diego's bedroom » July 6th

[deadlycurves]

Almost as soon as it had been suggested, Diego had taken Luther up on the offer to start trying to train this new power of his. They had already tried a handful of times with absolutely no success-- and at least twice that Diego had managed to overwhelm himself and pass out. That didn't get less embarrassing the more it happened, in fact, he's pretty sure it just got worse every time. He hates every part of this, but he's determined to get a handle on it, some way or another. The gym downstairs might be the kind of place that makes more sense for physical training, but this? He'd rather keet it quiet, and less likely to be interrupted easily and insisted on keeping it to their bedrooms. At least there, they're alone; at least there, he can pretend there's some modicum of privacy. Luther suggesting the training hadn't been a shock-- a bigger shock would have been if the moment passed and he hadn't-- but there's something completely different about this particular brand of it. The attempt to actively seek out (and shut out) Luther's emotions means he's opening up a whole new level of vulnerability to the sibling most likely to use whatever he finds as a weapon at a later time, whenever it may suit him just so. Diego isn't sure if that speaks to Luther's sense of duty as a leader or to some kind of trust he has in his Number Two. And he's even less sure which one he would rather it be. He's sick of having no luck with this. He would much rather be doing some kind of physical training, deck the hell out of his giant-mountain of a brother for awhile. Don't judge him-- it's not like it would actually hurt him, probably? Diego had never had this much problem with his trajectory powers; that had been simple to get a handle on once he understood the concept of them. Emotions are much trickier to understand, to manage, and to handle. Diego doesn't really know how to deal with having this kind of issue getting a grip on his powers. No. Not his. These aren't his powers. The ones forced onto him, by this place and the porter and the government here. He waits in his room for Luther, anxious and agitated.

[obediences]

Apart from Klaus and the insidious presence of the ghosts, none of the Hargreeves were used to powers so invasive: something that sunk its claws into their minds, blurred what they could see and think and experience. Luther and Diego's powers were always satisfyingly tactile, back home: sheer strength and raw power, the elegant slice of a knife curving through the air. Clenched fists and blood.

This, though.

Luther had briefly considered not making the offer, for his own protection. With Klaus and Diego both, it's subjecting himself to their getting further into his head and heart than he'd ever welcome or invite or accept, cracking through the protective, aloof shell of team leader. Untouchable, inviolable. But they've all seen what came of Klaus never getting a grasp on his abilities, and Luther believes -- with every last struggling fiber of his being -- in the importance of training.

So he goes to Diego's room, and knocks on the door. Can hear his brother pacing on the other side.

[deadlycurves]

He pauses in his pacing, frozen where he stands suddenly as he stares hard at the door. Shit. He wasn't ready. Would he ever be? He huffs an annoyed sigh at himself, drops his hands to his sides and crosses the room to throw the door open.

"Think it's gonna be any different than all the other times?" He asks, that easy edge of annoyance ever-present in his voice, even as he turns and walks further back into the room. He hates this, Luther, so much. His real powers had never been so invasive, this grates on every closed-off, cagey part of him.

July 8th { what could be an anchor here, with a storm on the rise

[numberthree]

[ There hasn't been a bi-weekly coffee morning in over a month, and Vanya doesn't remember that, and none of them even know if they were or weren't the same person. If it's a rewind, or a restart, or a glitch of amnesia. In the end, it's not the details that makes Allison have to do it.

It's the fact, no matter what the details are, or how the dominoes fall down was, Vanya is back.
And in some part of her mind, she can't help the thought. It is coffee moring, and she's back.

Even if she can't remember, Allison can't forget, which is eventually why she stops fretting and hits send. ]

Hey.

[gigue]

Hi

[There's a good gap, where Vanya types and deletes, types and deletes, before settling on the most basic thing to send. Simplistic is easy - easy to think about, and easy to type while she's still curled up in her bed in Maurtia Falls. It's been a long night, and she's been up for hours, just wishing her brain would shut off for a while.]

What's up?

[It feels necessary to say something more, but she winces the second she hits send. What's up, like she didn't almost kill Allison twice. Like she didn't end the world they came from. Jesus Christ.]

[numberthree]

[ It's still a relief when Vanya's cursor appears, and even if it takes time, she writes back. Doesn't just stare at it and then not answer. It wasn't easy the first time around, but there'd been some kind of pattern by the end of two months. Even if it was shakey and uncertain and just barely becoming something like it. The relief is a bubble, that comes, pops, and turns nebulous nervous again as she types. ]

I thought I'd check in and see how you're doing.
I know the first week here can be pretty rough.


[ And that was without everything they'd had to tell her. ]

July 11{ You don't ever wanna step off that roller coaster & be all alone » Vanya

[hellogoodhigh]

[ He isn't quiet whenever he finally stumbles home.

Three drinks at Hux's house during their little conversation and another full bottle of bottom-shelf, 180 proof vodka from the liquor store mean he's a little bit drunker than he's been in a month. So much for 30 days reasonably sober.

The door slams behind him, and he clatters into the kitchen, fumbling for a coffee cup and leaning his head against the cabinet door as he tries to figure out what the hell he's doing here.

What the hell had he been doing all along?

He'd been an idiot, seeking solace the moment someone gave him an iota of attention, chasing away the memories of his dead and dying Dave by trying to find comfort in someone else's arms. Running from his remorse, his regret, his heartbreak like the coward he always was.

Easy fucking mark, he supposes. He's going to have to tear his room apart to make sure there isn't anything hidden in it, that Hux hadn't been trying to use him like Harold Peobody or Leonard Jenkins or whatever his name was had been using Vanya.

And speaking of...

His coffee cup clatters to the floor and he hisses in annoyance as the edge of it chips, the handle breaks off. Shattered into pieces.]

Fffffuuuuck... [ He groans to himself, kneeling down to start picking up the pieces off the floor. ]
Just my luck, god dammit...

[gigue]

[She doesn't live here. It makes letting herself in through the front door feel...weird. Not quite like walking back into the Academy for the first time in years, but...close. Very close. Maybe it helps that it's night, late - everyone is probably asleep, assuming any of them actually sleep these days. Vanya doesn't really know why she came, just that she was tired of staring at the ceiling in her room in Maurtia Falls #007.

Maybe it's a sign she should take up Allison's offer and move in, but - frankly the thought of potentially running into Luther nearly kept her from coming at all. The prospect of seeing him daily is way too much to stomach.

She's quiet about it, letting the door shut inches at a time, just in case it squeaks. When she stands there on the doorstep, all is quiet - quiet enough that she exhales, and moves toward the living room. For a moment, she sinks down into the couch, not turning any lights on; if she could see the room, it would look too much like her first day here. In the dark, it's easier. she could be anywhere. More importantly, she can close her eyes, and just be someone else for a little while.

The sounds of something breaking jerks her back to herself, though, and for a moment she just turns to look toward the noise. Someone is up. She should leave. Vanya gets up to do it, but her feet lead her forward, into the kitchen, where she hears her brother muttering to himself.

Leave, she thinks, and shifts her weight back. Leave now!

Damn it.]

Klaus?

[She whispers it, inching forward.]

Are - are you okay?

[hellogoodhigh]

Vanya?

[ He jolts up, staring wide-eyed like he's been caught, deer in the headlights style. Honestly? He hadn't expected her to be here, given... well, given the fact that Luther lives here. And Diego. And him, with intermittent frequency. ]

Oh, oh hey, sis, um...

[ He looks down at the little ceramic shards, then back up at her. ]

Doing great, you know-

[ She doesn't remember anything. That's what Allison and Diego had said, right? Which is why he's been avoiding her, because that's what he did for Vanya before. Give her some space. Let her set the terms of their relationship. After he'd abandoned her, left her in a cell just as small and as terrifying as the mausoleum? He didn't deserve her kindness or care. ]

You, uh, you move in, or...?

I believe you, liar » Powers training » Allison

[obediences]

[ Sometime after this. ]

Klaus' telepathy. Diego's empathy. Allison's lie detection. Luther's... bizarre televator thing. This world keeps handing them new, strange abilities on a platter, ones they haven't had a lifetime practicing, and Luther can't decide if he's sick of the unpredictability or appreciates the extra weapons in their arsenal.

The single grinding pebble in his shoe, though, the thorn in his side, is how much training with half of them would mean planting himself squarely in their sights and metaphorically cutting himself open: you can't practice telepathy/empathy/detection without someone else to bounce them off, to vet what they were sensing. He gritted his teeth when it came to letting Diego in past those carefully-constructed walls, but with Allison, it's easier. He's used to her seeing right through him anyway.

(The one time he'd lied to her, she'd swallowed it whole, because the concept of Luther Hargreeves lying to Allison is almost unthinkable.)

Compared to other potential powers, they don't need any special setting for this either: no padded exercise equipment, no fireproof targets. So for all intents and purposes, it just looks like a mundane breakfast, except it isn't.

"So... Lie detection."

[numberthree]

Allison is halfway through a sip of coffee, and its another one of those moments she's rather annoyed she can't make a sound. It'd be the perfect place to slide in some noncommittal noise. Lips still against the cup. Generic, something like hmm except more generic than an actual question. She didn't miss the words he said, nor was she not privy to an idea of at least a hundred things he might want to know or ask or suppose or test about them.

She'd managed to stave off the night of her return. Exhausted. Frustrated. Wanting to see that everything else, and everyone else, that was still supposed to be here, was still here. Even the ones of them not living in the hall of rooms upstairs. She can't make a single noise, and so she settles for letting her gaze raise, just that. A lookup, with something of a slightly wary half-question of where specifically he was going with those two words first.

Anniversary { i made a mistake in my life today, everything i love gets lost

[numberthree]

Allison can’t sleep. Half the time she can’t see. Her nails dig into her pillow, or the skin around her mouth, as though any sound could betray her muted body now. It doesn’t stop the wild swings between tears and utter stillness. All of it hellish. She made it through the day, but each new minute of the night feels like it exists to slice into her, now that there is no one there to lie to, to stand still for, to exist as whoever Allison Hargreeves is supposed to be to them. Not that she thinks she’s lied well or much at all to her family in the last few days. She’s been quieter than normal, sharper than normal, when not needed by Vanya or Luther.

But all of that has dissolved. All of that isn’t real. And if half the time Allison can’t let herself think of it, now she can’t stop. It was never supposed to get to this point (not a year), and not in this way (and not a quarter of it all but entirely dead). She grits her teeth. It doesn’t help. She thinks about asking Klaus for some of whatever he has in his stash that might induce sleep. But she doesn’t go. She's desperate, but not that desperate yet.

The silence is so deafening. The one inside her. The one around her. The one that imprisons her.

It feels like she might fall apart entirely, and there wouldn’t even be a pin drop to mark it. It just goes on and on. The night. Her silence. The razor pain that marks what today is. That reminds her so much of the dream. All of it is so clear all over again. Every word. Every face. But she can’t outrun it. Outthink it. Unfocus it. The voice. The memories. All the memories. Thousands of memories.

She has to get up and use the bathroom at a point. Wiping her cheeks and making her breathing slow, inside her closed door, before she goes through it. Too many of her siblings having nights they don’t sleep or nights they're out, or nights they bring people home now.



It’s when she’s coming back to the hallway with all the bedrooms side by side in it that she ends up looking at the door that isn’t hers. That comes before hers. Stopping at it even though it isn’t. Hers. She knows that. Solid shadow in shadow and she has the urge to put her fingers on the center of the door — her forehead against it. But doesn’t. 

But, also, finds she can’t walk away from it.

She knows she shouldn’t. Knows she has no right. It’s inappropriate. Especially now. She’s not a child. She's an adult now, that cold, imperious voice of her therapist whispers; barefoot, in silk pajamas, acting like a child. But her fingers find the doorknob, and she turns it slowly, silent, too, and lets herself in, leaving it cracked instead of having to close-and-open-and-close it again. 

Allison knows, so sharply it could cut glass, why she’s here when she can finally make out the large shape on the bed. When it feels like the shards of that too blinding knowledge makes ribbons of her skin, catching her breath.



Luther has always been stronger than all of them put together.
Not just his powers. Luther. And not just years ago.

Luther, who stayed, who endured, when none of them could anymore, even if it meant he was alone nearly half his life. Luther, who almost died, but didn’t, and survived beyond the terrible challenges of that. Luther, who spent four years abandoned on the moon, with no one else, in pure and total darkness for 26 weeks each of those years.



One upon a time, he’d been hers, too. A foundation of it. That strength. In the field. In the living room. In the attic. In her best moments. In her worst. The silence under every word spoken and left spoken. He’d survived through all the worst things in his life without any need for that, too. 



Her inability to last even this long, in far better circumstances than all of his, is shameful, and when she lets herself sit down by the side of his bed, resting her back against it, like maybe if she doesn't look at him she can believe she's not doing this, she pulls her knees up but doesn’t put her arms around them.

Only closes her eyes and wills herself to gain even an inch of that strength — that ability to endure even what no one should ask of any other human being, no less their own child (no less someone who deserves their punishment) — from his nearness.

[obediences]

He's abruptly awake at the sound of the door clicking open, lurching back into wakefulness with a start; it's still an unfamiliar house and he's not yet accustomed to its creaks and settling, no less the sound of someone entering his space. Luther's always been a light sleeper besides, ready to leap out of bed at the shrill noise of the alarm, being summoned for a mission, mechanisms on the moon base trilling. And once he recognises the silhouette slipping her way in—

They'd used to do this, before. All those long years before. A rap of knuckles at the door and then sometimes not even asking, just coming in, for company, for late-night whispered talks. (For his whole body buzzing like a live wire, at her closeness.)

But she doesn't say anything, and instead just settles on the floor beside his bed. Luther can just see the line of her shoulder, her hair falling into her face, the set of her knees.

"Allison." He levers himself up onto an elbow. He's in rumpled blankets, sweatpants, an oversized t-shirt. "Everything okay?"

Family Text: July 21st

[the_horror]

Five's device is disconnected.
I've brought Rebecca back to the house and put her in his room.

[gigue]

What?

[She sends it before she can consider how dumb that is as a text: it's not like she can't read. But then, she's not really giving herself a lot of time to consider anything.]

What do you mean it's disconnected? Who's Rebecca?

[deadlycurves]

Shit. Not again. [Something occurs to him after a moment and he sends another one-- ] Did mine disconnect when I was just gone that one day? When they gave me the new power?

[numberthree]

[ No. Not again.

How was it they couldn't go weeks without another of these.
Not Five. Not after they only just got him back again.


Even if he might be home.
Might be still there, just on the other side.
It slams into her like some part of her was cut off. ]

Diego & Ben > House Afternoon-ish

[the_horror]

After his visit with Vanya, Ben decided to wait until later to come back to the house with the crate of booze bottles. Most of which were half empty but he didn't need all this at his place. There was mixes a brandies, scotch and vodka, all kinds of free bottles from friends, from bars or from shopping trips. Though he and Vanya had made a dent in it yesterday, he intended to see if others wanted them here. this family was good for a drink at least.

Grabbing a full bottle of tequila, he took out a note and wrote 'For Diego' on it, sitting it aside for his brother. Unopened and untouched. There were a few bottles of it but this one was still full.

Speaking of Diego. He needed to talk to him still.

Ben stood there, frowning at the bottle and then... opened a mental network to his brother.

To: Diego Hargreeves
You home?

That was it. If he was home he'd talk to him now. If not, he could wait, he supposed, for another time. While he waited he started to put bottles away in a cabinet that had one bottle already in it. Anyone in the kitchen might hear the clink of bottles one by one.

[deadlycurves]

Most of Diego's recent time has been spent at work, training with Luther, and avoiding approximately nine million feelings he didn't want to feel (and a good majority of them weren't even his own to begin with). The handful of weeks with this empathy thing under him have left Diego a lot more raw than usual, and he has tended toward staying home more than not when he didn't have some specific reason to be somewhere else. He feels too much of a liability otherwise. He is, at least, becoming accustomed to the gentle ebb and flow of it in his own house. With his siblings. He's doing exactly nothing of import when a message flashes in his field of vision suddenly. There's a soft thud as a knife embeds into the wall he'd been aiming at in his room. Target practice, he'd say if asked, even if he really didn't need it at all. He doesn't bother responding to the message. He'll use the Mental Network when it's necessary, but it's still so weird to him, and invasive in ways he really doesn't like. He likes that it gives Allison a way to communicate, even if it's nothing like talking, but it still is not his favorite thing. It's only a few minutes and he finds himself downstairs and wandering into the kitchen, watching with a curious glance as Ben unloads a box of booze. "Did you rob a liquor store on your way here?" He perks a brow, eyeing the mass amount of it starting to fill up previously empty spaces.