☂️ All you sinners stand up

[hellogoodhigh]

WHO: The Hargreeves + Guests
WHERE: Various Cities
WHEN: Month of September
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.

Comments

[obediences]

It's a position he desperately regrets placing her into, but it's an unfortunate necessity. It's better than him barreling straight at Vanya about it either, like a bull in a china shop. Allison's the buffer, the shield; they all know that now.

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.

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't interrupt him. Not that she really could open her mouth and do it, but maybe because in some part she's waiting to see if this is a conversation, or it's just a presentation of facts leading toward what she's pretty sure it will, but has to be seen out. Luther almost entirely more uncomfortable in his stillness, pouring out the words he'd been keeping in, keeping himself over there. Sighing, and shifting, and leaning in. Like this is some huddle, that it, also, isn't.

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.

[obediences]

"Yeah. Yes. If you can." Now that it's out in the open, Luther's agreement sounds like a confession; at least he isn't disagreeing or shying away from the crux of what she's named.

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?"

[numberthree]

One of the things that being muted hasn't changed is the urge to be testy. Sure, it's entirely sidestepped and fucked up. It loses itself between her mind and her empty mouth and writing words, having to see her perfected pettiness in letters, unless she's furious enough to fling it at the words and the world angrily. But it doesn't change that it's there, and Luther probably knows the expression bleeds into her features, and her posture, well enough. The way it presses her lips, and she looks to one side, flattly, teeth a little too tight, jaw a little too tight.

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,

(the way she's been pretending Vanya has the time to wait, to have one, too)

is just a little too much.

[obediences]

But he can wait her out. Like he always does. Luther notices that shift to her expression (how could he not? Allison is painfully emotive when she lets herself be; she was an actress, after all), and feels her anger like a knife nicking at his skin, but his fingers just tighten in their interlocked cage between his knees, and he waits. His whole body still knotted tight with tension, but he manages to keep his expression level and patient as he watches her.

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.

[numberthree]

Luther ducks his head and tightens his fingers and waits. Allison looks away and then looks back and hates that it makes her take a breath in, gives her nothing new to take in, and shoot back. She ends up blowing that same breath back out her nose. Because she gets, even as stupid as it is, that in some part it's very sidelined attempt to say it is in her hands. Or, maybe, also that he might let her say no.

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.

[obediences]

She isn't anywhere near as transparent as he is, but Luther knows Allison well enough that he can watch her resolve slowly ebbing; like a timer ticking down as she grits her teeth against this truth, and grudgingly starts to accept it. He can't know for sure, but he has a pretty good idea that's the direction it's moving in.

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?"

[numberthree]

The look that finds him when he clears his throat is still annoyed, still edged, but there's more to it, too. Reluctance, a touch of bitter even volatile regret, maybe even a slight turn of anger more for it, even as she's giving, even as it's not anger at himself so much as shifting to being angry, disgusted at herself for letting it happen (and god isn't she so good at that now), for trying to choose something that wasn't the shit they had to deal with, and for his being the one to call her on it. Even if he isn't, he is. He is, she is. Same question as months ago. It could have been days. But he didn't.

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?

[obediences]

It's a slight exhale of tension from him, but not a complete relaxation. It's not a happy conclusion, but it's at least an agreement. It's what he was aiming for.

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

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't have to look after him to know Luther's stopped at the door. It's not even, entirely, just that there is an amount of noise that is Luther moving or the weight of his steps that creak the floors and rustle carpets. She knows. Somehow else. Something in her bones that makes her hold still when he goes still. That isn't so much a cringe as that narrow line of freeze that turns into reaction and easier, faster, defensive anger.


She thinks if she had her voice, it'd happen.

She'd say, Just go.

Just go already.

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 --

-- and yet makes her feel like she has nothing at all.