number1_himbo | (no subject)

Luther holds on for a little over a week before he hits his limit.

It's longer than a week and a handful of days, of course. It's been months since the Hotel Oblivion got crammed into his head, a whole tangle of realizations and plot twists and feelings he's only barely attempted to put in order.

Any attempt to work this knot of fucked up Hargreeves shit leads to Dad, not Dad ripping him open and bleeding him out, which is a shitty thing to remember, to burst back into the waking world with phantom pains. And should any attempt get any further into the tangle, enough that he sets his death aside, he's left with the very worst thing, the thing he can't touch at all.

I heard a rumor you stay.

The knot won't stay tied like it used to, tight enough to keep everything about Allison on the inside. And there's no reason it should be coming undone now. No fucking reason.

I heard a rumor you want me.

It almost tears out of him at the breakfast table, and no amount of exercise burns off the excess feeling. He takes it instead to a local junk yard where the owner doesn't mind him busting shit up.

That, at least, feels good. Appliances crunching into blocks of concrete, rebar spearing massive rolls of carpet, a totaled out care thrown overhead at another.

Luther loses time, hands scraping up, muscles aching, bits of glass clinging to his arms, and none of it erases the feeling of Allison's struggling body against the pool table.

He starts to tear apart blown-out tires, aware of the sun starting to sink in the sky-- too easy. Back to the blocks of concrete then, huge broken chunks that Luther throws and hammers into one another, his ears filled with his own breathing and heartbeat.

Not gone enough to miss he's not alone in the clearing of wrecked shit he's made. "What," he says, almost dully, fully expecting to be told he needs to leave.

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While it's safe to say Luther never stops expecting Sylvie might thwack him at any given moment, he's still caught off guard, and even moreso by the statements that come with it.

Okay, he gets this, in a very I read a couple of pamphlets way.

"I know," he says, and even he can hear that's not true. "I mean. Fuck, I don't know. I just-- if she hadn't been able to break the rumor, I would have hurt her and how the hell do I live with that? I'm so tired of being a tool to hurt my family. Dad used me for it so much I hurt Viktor on my own, and Allison was going to use me to hurt herself." His voice is getting louder, angry and panicked, his hands opening and fisting again. "I just want to make my own fucking choices. How could she fucking do that?"

"You don't know, I can hear as much in your bloody tone," Sylvie answers, a bit snappish, though she's not angry with Luther. She's angry with his entire family, even the ones who probably aren't to blame, even the other one she likes, but not Luther.

"She shouldn't have done that to you. It's selfish and cruel and..." And evil, she thinks. Sylvie has done a lot of things in the name of revenge, she's hurt a lot of people, she's dipped into their minds and driven them mad, but she tells herself it was all in the name of freeing them. Ultimately, she had only wanted to fix the timeline, make it better for everyone.

That's what she tells herself. The truth is, she's just as evil.

"It's awful," she says instead. "I'm sorry."

Sylvie's anger comforts him, feeds a dark little part of him that feels weirdly resentful of his family's reactions before they've even happened. It's good, it feels good to imagine Sylvie raining down vengeance on his behalf.

Maybe, he finds himself considering, that's part of the attraction. However else holding that level of anger has shaped Sylvie, she fights against the injustice done to her. He's fought giving into it, against being turned into Dad's fucking lackey, his literal monkey, and for what--

Luther lets out a ragged breath and leans forward, forearms on knees like he might need to keep his head low. A tremor runs through him at Sylvie's words, and he nods. "You were right. It was better to say it."

"I usually am," she answers, though the words lack their usual arrogance. She's too caught up in thinking about what he's said, the horror of it all. At least she's never done that, she thinks, as if it somehow absolves her. It doesn't. Maybe she's never raped someone in that way, but Sylvie has taken bodily autonomy from plenty of people in her time.

"Are you going to tell your brothers?"

They should know. It Allison ever arrives here, they ought to know. If Luther won't tell them, that's his choice, but if this woman shows up in Darrow and the rest of them treat her as if she's welcome, their beloved sister, Sylvie will tell everyone.

"I think I have to," Luther murmurs, rubbing at the back of his head. "Not just for me, but-- what the hell has she become? I think she might have been working with my dad. Who fucking killed me. And Klaus."

He sits back up, seeking Sylvie's gaze.

"If she came here, ever, could you keep it from happening? I mean, if she tried to rumor me, is there some kind of magic you know that would keep it from working?"

Hopefully one that doesn't just involve blowing Allison up, as he suspects would be the easiest.

"Am I forbidden from killing her?" she asks.

From anyone else, the question might have been rhetorical, a vicious attempt at a joke in a terrible moment, but not from Sylvie. If Luther doesn't want her to immediately eviscerate Allison, should she ever arrive, he'll need to tell her. To love someone is to do everything to keep them from pain.

It's foolish and impossible and after losing Thor to the TVA, Sylvie will destroy anything and anyone who threatens to hurt the few people she cares about.

"If I am, then... yes," she says with a slow sigh. "Not my own, honestly, but I could put her into an endless memory loop while we figured out something else. There are other people here with powers different than my own." Wanda, she thinks. This is something she needs to talk about with Wanda.