Klaus Hargreeves (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
hellogoodhigh) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2019-09-12 12:34 pm
hellogoodhigh) wrote in maskormenacelogs2019-09-12 12:34 pm
hellogoodhigh) wrote in maskormenacelogs2019-09-12 12:34 pm
no subject
That makes Allison actually look up from her magazine as much to his voice as the words that were pulled together with it. She hadn't expected that (as much as some part of her always knew it was coming, it was in there; in Luther). Vanya. The topic they had most disagreed over months ago now. Even staring it suddenly down, uncertain she wanted to know, she hadn't expected him to ever wait this long either time she was here.
Which didn't change the tension that threaded her muscles, never quite ready for something that might lead toward outright arguing with Luther, but, also, already turning it sideways, to what, to why -- why now. There was a carefulness, at least as much artifice as not meaning for it to happen. Gracefull stillness, her gaze considering him, tying it to all his restlessness, inability to sit still, to read, to speak before pricked for it.
Did something happen?
Thinking over all her last interactions with Vanya.
Thinking that he hadn't hesitated to answer when she asked.
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But now she was sticking around, and the invitation for her to move into the house still stood, and so there was unfinished business to wrangle.
"No," he says quickly. A reassurance. "Everything's fine." A beat, a correction, "So far. And that I know of, at least."
Luther pauses by the seating area -- clearly seems to consider the other end of the sofa Allison's on -- but then settles heavily on one of the armchairs instead, fingers laced together, elbows propped against his knees. Unconsciously slipping back into the mask of concerned team leader, more than a family member or a friend at the moment. Allison knows his tics and moods and shifts better than anyone else on this planet or the other one. She can tell when his face goes serious, when the subject is Official Business rather than the lightness and levity that only really slips out around her.
"You're probably the one in best contact with her, out of any of us. What do you know about her powers, or her use of them these days?"
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Severe enough he's acting like there needs to be some serious line in the sand between them for him.
Which makes her at least sit up the rest of the way and close her magazine, setting it flat on her lap.
The question is nearly the same as the one he'd asked last time, wasn't it? The second time he'd decided to bring anything up. She couldn't quite remember, but it feels like it. Or it's the fact that this is the subject they don't talk about, so it feels like all of what Luther has to say about their sister: it's only revolved around one or two things. For this whole time. Not that she's tried much -- at all? -- in that realm, this on, with him either, which is why she considers only a second before starting her typing.
Not a whole lot. Less this time than last.
Given she came from earlier, this time when she came in and had less time here, she's been quieter.
More distant from everything. We see each other, but not as often as we were before she vanished.
But that wasn't it, either. They were. Allison wasn't sure what to put it into. They'd started talking a little more, too. In a little bit of a different way again. Their last conversation had left Allison feeling so much lighter. A little silly, a little giddy. Just over a normal, incredibly short exchange of words, that amounted to most of nothing and trying out a new bar together the next night. Things felt ... good. Hopeful.
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So he chews over that description, scant as it is. It didn't really answer half of his question, did it.
"But you don't know if she's been practicing her powers at all," he adds. Like a thoughtful nudge.
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Understanding it doesn't make her stomach not twist. It doesn't make it any more comfortable. Any less conflicted. On both sides. About Luther. About Vanya. About being stuck in the middle. About not being willing to be anywhere else in the equation either. About the fact, this is the one thing that is a big enough fault line between them that it really does require this. Of both of them. An impassable space to delineate an impassable divide, where all the sand is separated, and they are, too.
No.
But I'd be surprised if she is at all.
For as much as I can tell, she's trying to stay as far away from anything related to what happened right before she came.
I think she knows well enough that no one entirely believes she doesn't remember what happened, but she's avoided everything about it and what happened. For as much as I can tell, she's not even playing. When she was first here, she was still giving lessons. But this time, she's staying away from everything, even though it's been months now.
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And at her answer, Luther sighs. A long exhale, more from the weight of the topic itself rather than the information, because it's not entirely unexpected. It's a good thing that Vanya's been successfully keeping it under wraps, he supposes, but...
"Same thing I said to you back in May, when she was here the first time: for what it's worth, I want her to practice." Luther's leaned forward over his knees, elbows propped and hands woven together. It keeps him from fidgeting restlessly or bouncing his foot against the floor.
"I've said it to Diego, but they're not on the greatest of terms, so now I'm saying it to you too. I don't know if she's avoiding it because it's frightening — which it is — or because she thinks we wouldn't want her to," because she thinks Luther wouldn't want her to, "but that's what led us into the problems last time. A lack of practice. Lack of control. And I... I can't be the one to say that to her."
There's a slight crack in his voice in that last sentence, a tremor in his usual steadiness. He hates broaching this subject with her. Hates it. But he's put it off long enough, too. He can't just shirk this particular aspect of being Number One, just because Number Seven fucking terrifies him.
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Not an order. Or a meeting. Or a conversation.
So you want me to.
She doesn't look away from Luther for the five words. Doesn't need to. For writing them, or sending them. Doesn't shift from the position she's been in basically since he started. Doesn't look down or away. Because she's saying what he's beating around the bush at, without actually saying it out there. That he wants something he thinks only she can do. That he wants her to bring up something Vanya hasn't wanted for months. That he wants her to do it, because neither he or Diego has the sense of a gnat sometimes, aside from knowing neither of them should tell Vanya what to do now.
She knows why -- why he's set it up like this, and why he's waited so long, and why he's entirely uncomfortable, talking to her about it, implying the things he can't say, about Vanya, about why he couldn't even start this conversation with her, and nearly drove her mad with it for the last hour -- but it doesn't entirely mean she wants to make it easier on him.
Maybe if he hadn't chosen the other side of the room. Maybe if they'd ever talked about it before now.
Maybe if ever didn't come up feeling like it was a line she was straddling,
where she was choosing everyone, but losing everyone else. Every time.
Maybe she wanted to leave it there. At the fact, he was asking her to do the dirty work none of them could. Because of the Icarus. Because of the house. Because of the cell. And because of all that? He had to ask Allison -- Allison, who was starting to have a relationship with her sister she cared about losing -- to do what he couldn't, and what had the power to throw a wrench in what she had potentially.
And maybe, even if she agreed with the sentiment he was explaining, that Vanya does need training, like any of them, did when they first started using their powers, it didn't mean she didn't want him to feel exactly as uncomfortable as it (he) made her.
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And yet, unfortunately, he still instinctively falls back into Number One mode when it comes to something like this — because this topic falls under the purview of team leader, and he's still used to bossing everyone around like a shadow of Reginald when it comes to their powers. Their training and capabilities. Accustomed to the others listening to his orders, and taking them. Even if he knows by now that where the others fall into line, Allison no longer does so automatically.
Not where it comes to this, to Vanya.
"If you agree, that is," he says, after a beat, and it's probably coming a couple minutes too late. "What do you think about it?"
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That it's not worth the effort doesn't mean she doesn't want to say it. Doesn't feel it like ants in her veins.
Especially when he suddenly adds the note of it being 'a choice,' 'her choice,' and she doesn't even hesitate in the look she throws him. Sharp, and sudden, and uncompromising. Because it's not a choice, and he knows it, and it's bullshit even to add it in. Especially at the last second. Like she needs to be sweet-talked into this being her choice to make. Because he's right about it, and because she was right about all of this all along from the beginning, and 'choice' isn't a part of any of it. Choice stopped being a part of it months and months ago. Options stopped being optional. Vanya needs training. That's not a yes or no conversation.
It's not an option. It's not a choice.
But Luther pretending with those words she has one,
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A distant awareness, in the back of his head, that he probably fucked this up somehow — didn't handle it as he should've — probably said something wrong, or did something wrong. That voice has been self-doubting himself more and more. It's small and timorous, and just honed enough to tell him when he's made a misstep, but not how to fix it nor how he could've done it better.
He's still learning.
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He doesn't think he should do it,
but he hasn't ordered her to do it.
Maybe understands how badly that would go.
Except that she can't. Say no.
Terrible trite thoughts about how she can't say anything at all, that creep knife-sharp and self-sabotaging. But she can't if they want to have any chance of it working. Because she can't even imagine Luther and Vanya in a small space having that conversation, while both still don't know how to handle even talking about each other with her. And Diego is a radioactive nuclear option.
And it will be one of them if she says no.
If she tells Luther she won't do this either.
And then it might never happen.
And she knows. She does. She's been putting it off. Selfishly hoarding the moments of just getting to be Vanya's sister with her, instead of anything like the keeper she's become between her and the others. They'd gotten just to be themselves, as much as either of them knew how to be. To get drinks. To go to that spa with Ben.
But it wasn't good enough, and she knew that. She always had. It had stayed buried under her skin, especially every time Vanya shied away from any admission of remembering what she had to given how she'd arrived and how her reactions read during any time it came up. How she was refusing even to play her violin or be involved in anything related to music. Eventually, it was going to have be handled. She kept thinking that.
And somehow, now, eventually had caught up with her.
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Because otherwise she would've spoken up by now, would've just said no and he would've had to accept that.
But he's being pragmatic here, because Luther doesn't have the same relationship with Vanya to jeopardise. He's already on rocky footing with her. And terrible as that is, it also affords him the distance to be painfully clear-eyed: he sees the threat and assesses it and what they should do to ameliorate it.
So, in the end, he just clears his throat again. He's not relishing doing this.
Training is still better than Vanya being locked in another cage. Training is better than just handing her over to a power nullifier. Training is what Luther's dead set on doing better than Reginald did. The bomb that their father hadn't actually defused properly, and had instead just carelessly discarded for them to trip over and detonate years later.
(He was still angry with him, for that. For so many things. He would likely be angry forever.)
In the end, he asks: "So?"
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Still. It grates worse than sandpaper, and even being stabbed. She doesn't want to let go of what they've been building.
And how fucked is it she isn't sure that what she and Vanya are trying at will survive that conversation?
Sometimes she really hates this family. This life.
The fact she has too many examples of how this isn't how things are supposed to work in the real world. (But the real world doesn't have powers; the real world's mothers weren't pregnant for only minutes; the real world couldn't blow itself up without meaning to; the real world wasn't raised by a heartless, manipulative megalomaniac; the real world wasn't taken to court for being the exact same.)
It just all shoves up under her skin, like her blood is biting her veins, and she tosses her magazine down on one of the couch seats he specifically didn't choose near her. Fine.
Fine, she'll do what she's supposed to do.
Even if it costs her one of the two truly good things she might almost have here.
And makes it so she really doesn't want to be near the other one at the moment either.
end, or yours to end?
He wishes they could just stay Luther-and-Allison all the time, the carefree friendship that they'd managed to carve out between everything else— but that isn't the reality they live in. Sometimes they have to be Spaceboy and the Rumor, numbers one and three, dropping semblance of family and instead turning to the hard things that needed doing.
"Thank you," he says, and he just sounds tired. He rises to his feet and dusts off his knees, feels the tension knotted tight in his shoulders, the back-breaking weight that hasn't been alleviated. Probably won't ever be.
She'd discarded her magazine, but Luther folds his book shut and lets it dangle from a hand as he reaches the doorway to leave the basement den; he pauses there, as if he's on the verge of asking her something, saying something else, an apology maybe. But he knows this was the right thing to do even if he didn't go about it the right way, and he's already asked for enough.
So he just leaves, saying at the last, "I really do appreciate it."
☂ End
She thinks if she had her voice, it'd happen.
She'd say, Just go.
But she doesn't. And she doesn't even consider writing it. Doesn't look at the door. Or him. Doesn't want his gratitude before or during or after what this might do. Doesn't want any of the exhausted, agitated, almost apologetic, gentlenesses it was said with. All the space around it, and the fact he felt he had to stop and say something still, and the very, very few words it is.
Is she supposed to just drop this in a text? In the middle of drinks next week? At their party?
Show up at Vanya's doorstep after sending some stupid 'we need to talk' message?
She listens to his steps go, listens until they are too far away, are just silence, and she hates herself for that, too. For the great divide that this is. That it feels like the half of room accented, and every step further and further away, after giving in, just points out. Hates the divide that cracks in her chest as she leans back on the chest.
The part of her screaming that she doesn't want him to go.
The part of her screaming that she doesn't want him nearby.
She hates that they are so divided. Hates that this empty room makes her feel just as lonely as this whole thing is. It's the one thing she doesn't have him at her back, her side anywhere even near her, for. That she knows she can't go tell him the good parts of; even though all the bad parts are laid out like chess pieces for them to step on in moments like this. The most she has is absolutely unspoken sort of cease fire no man's land of what isn't acceptable where it comes to her about Vanya -- and Vanya, herself.
She hates it.
She hates this.
This constant war that seems like she has both of them --