number1_himbo | (no subject)

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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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Luther always has a smile for him. For everyone. Where most of the Hargreeves frown, grimace or mask, Luther pulls mirth and enthusiasm from seemingly nowhere.

It's becoming clearer to Viktor that his reserves, whatever and wherever they are, are running dry.

No sweet, unassuming tone. No smile in anticipation of companionship. Just what. After his glassy-eyed breakfast and what Viktor suspects are a few sleepless nights, he thinks about how he might have feared rejection at a time like this -- and how he doesn't now.

"It's me," Viktor clarifies, since Luther doesn't seem to be turning to look at him. He watches him with quiet sadness. "Thought I might find you here."

Luther almost misses the voice, the furious crunching of concrete roaring in his ears.

He doesn't, and wouldn't, miss the presence of his smallest brother, who sometimes thrums with power. Instead, he drops the rubble in his hands, rubbing his fingers together to feel the powder and grit on them. Luther's not necessarily surprised by the arrival, especially when it's Viktor.

If any of them are going to understand, it'll be Viktor.

"Hey," he says, tone muted, not bothering to deny he's up to something. "Yeah. Here I am."

"I see that," he replies, easy and light. A few seconds tick by when Viktor considers Luther, the setting, the very air around him. The smallest Hargreeves takes a deep breath of the brisk evening air, waiting.

When the quarry isn't immediately filled with the sound of Luther pouring his soul onto the pavement, Viktor gently follows up. "Are you okay?"

Luther huffs out a sound of bitter resignation, sharp at the edges and dampened only for Viktor.

"No, I-- I guess I'm not," he admits. Denying it any further seems exhausting, and he can't really think of a reason to do it anymore. "I tried really hard to be okay, but I'm not."

Admitting his exhaustion only makes it worse, and he sinks down slowly onto a concrete slab, one he hasn't gotten around to destroying yet.

"There's something I didn't tell you. From the time we were at Hotel Oblivion. I didn't tell any of you. I'm not really sure how."

"I'm offended you're smashing things without me," Sylvie answers, not the truth, but something to say when she doesn't know how to confront the swirl of emotions surrounding Luther. She doesn't even need to be emotionally sensitive to feel it, it's all so bloody obvious, and it sends tremors of discomfort through her own emotional being.

She doesn't know how to do this. How to help someone, even someone she cares about.

As if to drive her stupid point home, she sends out a strong blast of green that shatters a concrete block near to Luther, but far enough away the chips of cement won't fly against him.

Luther's so deep in his feeling about another place and time that Sylvie's appearance startles him; anxiety rears up at the idea of all these areas coming together. He's done a good job at keeping it relatively separated: Darrow and the Hotel Oblivion, and the world eaten up by oblivion, the one where he'd loved Allison so desperately and alone.

And Sylvie, one of the best parts of any of those-- he has the thought of dropping to his knees at her feet, surrendering to something he can't define. Luther doesn't regret a word he said to her at Kagura, under the mistletoe, but he's found himself furious at times with Klaus.

And then at himself.

"I'll give you a call next time," he tells Sylvie hoarsely. "Just... needed something to clear my head."

"Just watching the free entertainment."

Slowly, I picked my way closer, careful not to get inside his destruction zone, in case another washer went flying. I'd come out to deal with a pick up that never happened— someone with a truck was meant to come out to the restaurant and haul out an old gas range in the back but never showed, but when I'd heard all the noise, I'd gotten curious.

The last thing I'd expected was Luther, throwing what looked to be an epic tantrum.

"Were you not expecting an audience?" Loki said, brow arched as he deftly scaled a pile of broken cinder blocks, putting him at a rare height advantage over the other man.

"Whenever I put on a show like this, I made certain there was at least someone around to witness the theatrics."

"And has it worked?" she asks.

It doesn't seem as if it has. There's something about the way he's speaking that puts Sylvie on edge, not because of anything Luther is doing, simply because she truly doesn't know how to help him. That she wants to help him is a feeling she's still struggling to come to terms with.

But she understands the instinct to destroy something in order to find peace. She had destroyed everything for some semblance of peace, which of course she'd never found.

"What's wrong?" she asks. Better to be plain.

Luther snorts at that, making his fingers release the chunks of stone in his hands. His arms and chest still prickle with anger, and while he's not dumb enough to refer to Neil as delicate, the idea of any friendly fire hitting the other man makes him sick.

Because he doesn't hurt people. Not-- not when they don't deserve it.

"If I'd known I was putting on a show, I'd have tried harder," he says, but his voice sounds scraped raw, hurt.

Luther gives his head a shake, trying to combat the adrenaline still thudding in his veins.

"If I wanted to put on a show, I'd check out one of those underground Fight Nights." Honestly, not a bad idea. "Not a lot of places out there where you can just... I needed to wreck shit. I don't, usually. Have to be careful training, even if there's nothing to train for."

His thoughts just crumble at the end, and he sinks to sit on a large, still whole slab of concrete. The chunk in his hands gets squeezed and worked until it turns to chalky dust, eventually drifting free.

"Nope," he answers the first question, even if he doesn't have to, not with his whole frame locked tense and his blood beating hard in his ears. There's a chunk of concrete on the ground next to him; he grinds it into the dirt with his heel.

When Sylvie asks what's wrong, he folds his arms over his chest, and then almost immediately drops them, trying to shake the tension free.

"Something from home. Or from the last timeline. Thought maybe if I didn't think about it, it might go away. Or at least stay quiet."

"That never works," she says, which they both obviously know. Sylvie had gone the opposite route, had thought about nothing but the things she hated most, the things she wanted to destroy because of how they had destroyed her.

That hadn't worked either.

"Nothing that bothers us this much ever stays quiet," she continues, not quite looking at him as she speaks. Meeting his gaze would make it more difficult. "Do you want to tell me?"

Luther remains quiet for a few seconds as he considers it.

As a truth, it obviously wants out; holding it in, at times, fills him with the same bleak anger he'd known on the moon. Worse, maybe, because deep down even he knew Reginald Hargreeves was never meant to love any of them.

He thinks he and Allison still love each other, in some fractured way. Too dangerous to touch.

"I do," Luther finally says. "I haven't figured out how to tell my brothers. The ones that are here, and I'm sure if I ever see the others again. It's about my sister. About Allison."

"It's harder to speak about certain things with family," she says and shrugs. "At least, I assume it is."

It hadn't been for her. Then again, she had been far too young to have anything truly difficult to speak of when her Asgard was erased. At the time, she had still been young enough that she had told Thor nearly everything, every thought that entered her head, every silly plot, every bit of chaos she wanted to engage in. Nothing that really mattered.

"You can tell me," she offers. "Maybe then you won't have to tell them."

At the brittle tone of his voice, I frowned, drawing closer until I was just short of being able to reach out and touch him. He was covered in dust and slick with sweat, and he smelled hot and earthy even at a distance.

"Next time, I'll call ahead," I said, eyes searching his face. "What's goin' on, man?"

"Forgive me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't seem to be having the desired effect," Loki observed, hesitating only for a moment before taking a seat at Luther's side.

"Would you prefer something that can hit back?" He suggested, brow arched.

"Most families are different than mine," Luther says, "but... yeah. Easier to talk to someone outside of it. I did right away, after the memories popped up, and I thought it would leave me alone." He rubs the back of his neck. "It keeps coming back at different times. I saw a woman who looked like Allison on New Year's. Not even one of those doubles, just looked like her."

He's quiet, his body swaying ever so slightly, like he might run.

"So the thing about Allison, her power was about words. She could make people do things by saying them. Just tell them, I heard a rumor and I never saw anyone resist it."

Something feels right about Neil being here, in this moment, like a sort of walking catalyst that leaves change in his wake. Maybe it's just the thing about Neil being his first real time, some kind of wandering cherry popper.

But in a good way.

And probably not since he's settled down.

"Some shit from back home," he says honestly. "I thought I dealt with it, but here I am. Shit I should have told my family, but that seems even more fucked up. They deserve not to have to," and no word seems to fit. "We've all been through enough."

"Nope," Luther agrees, popping the 'p' as he picks at the grit on his hands. "Just isn't the same."

The suggestion of something that can hit back catches him slightly off-guard, his own eyebrows going up. Would it help?

"...probably," he admits. "It's not exactly a healthy coping mechanism, but if I wanted one of those, I'd go to therapy."

How is it, she has to wonder, that she keeps finding herself around men with a troubled relationship with mind control? A woman like her, someone who needs to just barely touch a person to slip into their mind and find their memories, manipulating them with ease. These men don't deserve to be near someone like her. Someone willing to do the thing that seems to have so hurt them.

"That's a dangerous ability," she says, which she knows from experience. Sylvie doesn't need to say a word, but physical connection matters.

She doesn't know which one is easier.

Luther watches her with care, but definitely not out of any anxiety.

"Yeah, it is," he agrees. "Dangerous. Dad taught her to hurt people with it, even if it was under some weird moral code. Taught her it was like any other tool at her disposal. When she left home, it was to go to Hollywood. She was successful, she had a family, she..."

Thankful there's a massive slab of concrete nearby, Luther seats himself with a dull thump.

"We weren't normal, growing up. We were a family but we weren't. We all knew he bought us. Dad didn't raise us; he trained us. And out of everyone, I was closest to Allison. I loved her." He looks up at Sylvie. "Everyone knew. She knew. It turned into just background noise in our... fucked-up family, I guess."

"I'm in love with a variant of myself, I'm hardly in a place to judge," Sylvie points out as she comes to sit beside Luther, their thighs pressed together. Purposeful comfort is still incredibly difficult for her, she just doesn't know how. Simply sitting beside him, though, contact between them, she can do that.

"So what? So you loved her. Love her?" Maybe that love has never faded, she doesn't understand the complexities of how love comes and goes, she's only ever felt true romantic love within the past two years. "Is that why you're tearing things apart?"

She has a bad feeling that isn't the only reason. He wouldn't have brought up the power otherwise.

Viktor glances at the floor instead of his brother's outline. Sensing Luther's misery doesn't make it any easier to hear. The Hargreeves keep breaking and fixing the world for each other -- for harm and help. Fiercely, dangerously codependent, and Viktor no longer on the sidelines.

He walks over and perches next to his brother, no regard for sweat or space. Something tells him he's going to want to sit down for this.

"Okay," Viktor says cautiously. It's not hard to remember how fraught their relationship was, how their bullshit ended the world. He's not worried that Luther will hate him, he's worried he did something that he doesn't remember. It would be no stranger than waking up with a head full of new memories.

For a few seconds, Luther's so grateful for Sylvie that he almost breaks the moment to kiss her square on the mouth.

"I was," he acknowledges. "It wasn't healthy, but not because of the thing most people would probably think. She left the Academy while I stayed behind to try and hold it together. She got married, had a kid. Got married again when we all ended up in Dallas for a couple of years."

The firm press of Sylvie's thigh against his helps anchor him to the moment.

"So this last timeline jump, we got back to what was supposed to be home and it was all wrong. She was in a bad place, without her husband and then her daughter's gone in the new timeline. I wanted to support her. I wanted to be there for her, but she wanted a distraction."

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