for i am born to be what i must be and i must be.

[obediences]

WHO: Luther Hargreeves & you!
WHAT: A government enforcer, obedient to the wrong people because at least they weren’t as bad as his last authority figure.
WHEN: Catch-all for throughout the plot, will add prompts as needed
WHERE: In the streets, at government facilities, with his team of fellow enforcers, at home, wherever.

[ RATIFICATION CELEBRATION | OTA ]

After a decade in the City, Luther Hargreeves knows how this dog-and-pony show goes.

The meta known as Space is a steady and reliable appearance at public events throughout the month: he smiles politely for photos, he haunts the Archangel Gabriel’s side as a bodyguard, and he parrots the right words, the PR lines he’s been drilled into saying, the party line. Order and stability is more important than ever these days, now that the Porter’s spewing chaos back into their well-ordered life.

Or so they say. Or so they tell him.

You can find him working security, most likely, or watching the celebrations with more hawk-like attention than cheer (probably keeping an eye open for trouble). Parades, parties both public and private, his schedule’s packed with them all.

[ GOVERNMENT TEAMBUILDING | OPEN TO OTHER ENFORCER PALS ]

The truth is, though, that they’re stretched thin. Pulling long hours, doing the usual work of hunting the resistance, but also trying to track down new metas now, all the ones who slipped through their net when the Porter started working in overdrive.

His teammates can start to sense the change in the air when Luther’s stomping around the government complex, glowering at their map on the wall with pins of known resistance activity, or throwing himself into obsessive training and punching the punching bags a bit too hard until they spill stuffing all over the floor. Even the Ratification streamers hung (in an obligatory sort of fashion) around the office don’t improve his mood much.

[ WILDCARD ]

get @ me! i'm on plurk at quadrille if u wanna plot or if you want me to add a personalised starter for you :> will match prose or brackets, too.
also of note: he’s still 6’5”, but looks human in this AU and doesn’t have his half-ape physiology!

Comments

[obediences]

Her other half had been clumsy with his new Porter-granted power, once upon a time — but Luther's long-since mastered the teleportation, the disorienting way he darts and blips across the battlefield. It made him a faster combatant, lent him speed to match that terrifying spine-snapping strength.

"On your left!" Luther shouts at one point, and Allison knows to duck under a flying volley of telepathically-flung knives (that, for a second, reminds him unnervingly of Diego, and he presses that memory down). They move with an easy synchronicity that came from so much time fighting together, knowing each others' limits, how far to trust each other to handle their own in the fight.

The Rumor's reputation as an interrogator has spread, over the past few years: some of the people they fight refuse to be taken alive by her, since they know they'll crack open and spill their secrets once her power gets to work on them. So some of the rebels fight until there's no choice but to put them down; they put themselves into comas; sometimes they bite down on poison.

The Hargreeves should be hauling their quarry in alive — it's more useful — but the Academy-trained soldiers don't often pull their punches. It's faster, easier, to just lay devastation in their wake. The Monocle had never taught them to have a gentle hand, and at the end of the day, with countless new metas now flooding the City and destabilising everything, their bosses have stopped caring quite so much about the collateral.

[numberthree]

Allison drops into a crouch without a breath or thought. Already curled in a balance, one arm hooked around a knee and the other on the ground, tilted that direction, before she's even looking in the direction of what was warned was coming at her (knives), and then the place they end up (slamming hard through windows and denting into the sides of a car door not far behind her).

It's not concern, or even gratitude (one of them breathes in, the other breathes out), but anger at the audacity that swings up for the jugular really as her gaze flashes back the direction they came from, but Luther is already there. Appearing in that familiar cut of blue and inverted space, and that person is dropping as fast as a sack of broken bones, and potatoes, both do.

"You'd think they'd figure out at some point they aren't winning."

[obediences]

He barks a rough laugh, temporarily standing close enough for her comment to carry across the street. It had been too loud earlier, when the cars overturned and exploded — the screech of tortured metal, the roar of flames — but it's getting quieter as the battle mops up and starts to peter out. A good number of their enemies are fleeing now, living to fight another day. Wise of them.

"They've got bigger numbers now, thanks to the Porter," Luther says, sounding almost conversational, as if a van isn't sitting upside-down behind him, as if he isn't standing over another shattered corpse. "Probably makes them bold."

The City had been stable: no one in, no one out, and the meta population frozen at a particular number. For years. No more unnerving Port-outs, no more lurking itching fear that his loved ones — loved one — might vanish overnight. He finds himself irritated by the fact that it's started up again, and taking it out on others; as if it's the fault of these rebels on this highway, in this fight. It isn't. He knows it isn't. And yet.

[numberthree]

"Is that the new word for stupidity these days?"

It could almost be conversational, and it could almost be a dig. At anyone else on the planet, it'd have nails and be a blatant disregard, but somehow for Luther, and only ever for Luther, there's an air of almost coy mocking that runs a ribbon right at the bottom of those icy, sharp, steel nails. She doesn't love the stupid lawlessness and rebels thinking they have any more chances now than they did a week ago, but there's a part of her that thrills at it, too.

Having more to do. Having another reason to be back out in the street.

It's twisted, but she's never made any complaints about what she is. (At least not in the last decade.)

"The Porter isn't making an army, the Porter--" Allison says with the grandiose grace of her other day job, on-screen, with a wave of her hands and arms, as though gesturing to a vista and not a street full of low flames and bent, broken bodies. Other people like them picking through the wreckage, or running off after the few stragglers trying to make a break for it without cover. "--is just making a mess."

[obediences]

"Yep. Pretty much," he agrees, sounding more bemused than anything else.

One last, desperate, hopeful rebel takes another swing at Luther, and this time he just throws the other man, who goes sailing down the highway to disappear somewhere into the wreckage. Like a ragdoll discarded, no longer of use. Luther watches to see if the figure climbs back up to their feet, but they don't.

And that's that. As quickly as it started in that howl of noise, the world is quiet again and the battle's over, even as that old adrenaline and savage joy still chases its way down his veins. He can feel it in his fingertips, thrumming through his body, the trained delight of using his body the weapon. Of fulfilling his function. The thing he'd been taught to do since birth; he's just answering to different authorities, now.

At the end of it, Luther limps a little when walking across the field and past the burning cars. Someone got a lucky bullet in. He goes to Allison before he goes to their handlers, because the government has their priorities and Luther has his.

“All good?” he asks. Still a little distracted. There’s a smear of blood on her cheek; he has to restrain himself from reaching out to wipe it off for her. They’re in public.

[numberthree]

The doesn't miss the limp as he makes his way any more than she misses the glance once, and then again, at the side of her face. The smallest, faintest, probably not noticeable to anyone else tic in just his facial features, and she knows its something. She's either got something on her, or she's starting to shine up a bruise. A long time ago, she might have huffed and told him she didn't need looking after, and then, only much later, in a dark empty room, savored that notice.

But that's so long ago, and it makes the edge of her mouth quirk. A little less guarded than him, and she doesn't really care. Anyone else nearby can decide it's just because she liked the fight. People have said worse of what she does for Gabriel without lifting a finger. Besides, she does like it, and she allowed to. Has been for so long.

Those little seconds where Luther reminds her his world, his focus, orients to her. No matter the other details.
It makes her a touch even more viciously proud of the fact whatever it is is there.

Which is maybe what makes her words light, as she turns booted feet toward the people they'll have to check-in with, falling into step beside him, just near enough to not be touching and only the smallest clip under normal to make Luther slow himself for whatever's clipped him, even if he probably can't feel it. (Especially because of that.)

"I'll probably have to get my nails redone before I can go back on set again, but all in all? Four out of seven. Not the worst roll out, and not the best. Somewhere in the middle." He was right, too. The Rebels were getting bolder, and their numbers were swelling in a way they hadn't in a few years.

Weaving in and out of both with too much lifelong ease. "How bad do you think its looking out here?"

[obediences]

They fall into line beside each other, numbers one and three going to report for debriefing. "Not great," Luther answers. Where Allison has her dayjob to eat up some daytime hours, Luther spends more of his time in the government facilities, weathering meetings and maps and files and tracking the spread of seditious activity. Last month had been quiet, but this month... isn't.

"Porter's still going strong and there's no damned sign of it letting up. We're not really equipped for an influx of this size."

Just as they notice everything about each other, he sees her slowing her steps to account for him, and Luther reaches out and rests his fingers against the small of her back, just for a moment, as if he's helping guide her steps through the wreckage of the highway. But it's just an excuse to touch her, a wordless gesture of appreciation for the kindness. They're a private pair, close-lipped about their personal lives, but little pieces still slip out in a way they never had back home.

A decade is a long time.

He glances to the side, smirks over Allison's comment about her nails. (They're looser, freer, more vicious and more quick to laugh in this world than they once were.) "How do they handle it on set when you come in with worse injuries? Just create a nightmare for your makeup crew?"

[numberthree]

Allison doesn't straighten any when the pressure, so slight but so eternally unmistakable (unmissable), graces the lower part of her back. The surprise is nothing like it might have once been, years and years back, which isn't to say there isn't any. Just that it isn't one that makes any part of her stiffen or any part of her steps stumble. If anything, everything in her centers there more clearly than her vision helps her keep step-in-step winding through the carnage with him.

Makes something in her unwind. Knots tightened to blanching sliding toward loosened loops. Bringing her focus back from the place where everything is a weapon, and everything else is only a few steps from eradicated. Where the only thing she wants is someone to pop out and give them another reason. And another. To keep doing the very thing she is best at. And yet. It (Luther's touch) makes her breathe in through her nose, and if it's a reaction of only seconds, there's a look that slides Luther's direction, without even turning her head, while listening to him talk about the circumstances, though she does already know them.

Her expression doesn't betray much. The faintest tick at the edge of her mouth, or her eyes, might be a commentary, but it's a soft point. Not that it would be easy for anyone who didn't know it was there to find it. Especially when she doesn't weave any closer, or let her elbow brush Luther's side, or do anything but tips her head next second, with tilting in both directions as she answers. (But she lets him, and that's more than anyone else could claim in all of these years.

And more than anyone else would get, it's so much more than that. Luther always is. They are.)

"Depends on how bad it is, and what kind of film we're working on at the time. The action ones are easiest because then they can shift the lineups and film for things after a fight scene, where it'd be easy to get something like it."

[obediences]

"Method acting. They must be real happy about that." There's a twinkle in Luther's blue eyes that only Allison's really privy to, in this world or the next or the next. "So since it works for action movies, I think this just means you need to take fewer romcoms."

[numberthree]

There's a glint in her eyes. Sly more than amused, not that all too many would be able to pick out the difference of the subtle shade change of her expression. But it's there, and it's own brand of shameless, in a completely different way. Eyebrows lifting and looking at Luther sideways, speaking the words, even as she fought the edges of her mouth from trying to pluck upward (but not that hard).

"I think--" She starts it right on the edge of that look, very specifically mimicking his own words just spoken. "--that you are biased. I think--" Again. Specifically. "--you just don't like kissing movies."

[obediences]

Goddamnit. Called out, so very easily. He almost misses a step in his laughter, but rights it at the very last moment and keeps up an easy stroll.

"You might have a point. I like the ones with explosions in them, can you blame me," Luther says, his voice canted to that careful lightness as well, amusement simmering underneath the words. He knows what she means. She knows what he means, and they're toying with the very edge of it. He's had a decade to grow even more possessive of her, for the two of them to grow together like a tangled vine. For Luther to want to rip the head off anyone who even tried to get too close to her. He didn't ever have to share; she was already his.

[numberthree]

Allison always loves that. Forever and ever, since her earliest memories to this moment. Making Luther laugh.

"Mhmm." Is the first sound -- because they needed no one to gauge, had no one to guard them, and the world had given them little reason to pause for over a decade -- while her eyes went one way, looking decidedly more amused, and her face went the other, with stoic and mocking disappointment. "Like all the other little boys and their toys. So disappointing."

When it was anything but. When this might be a joke, but that's all it was, too. They were both possessive of each other, of the life they'd carved out here. Both doing this and when the days were done, and all the costumes could be put away. They might have been possessive, yes, but they'd never found a real reason to be jealous. Luther had known even before they came here that not only had she dreamed of acting, she was already good, with only their father in her way.

In a way, Luther never had been. Ever would have been, or ever would be. Nor that she'd ever want him to feel a need to. That it made her happy was all he'd ever cared about with it. There might have been a half dozen fabricated love stories her face was a part of, but she'd never so much as even considered any of those men -- even when they'd made it abundantly clear they would like to be -- since the first time Luther had kissed her. Though, honestly, it went back further than that even. So far back, she couldn't even say where it began. How long before they'd ever even hesitated at a touch, broken childhood rules.

(But, even then, even when it did happen, she told him. Usually, the same day or so.

It wasn't even that she told him because it might evoke some response from him, that day or any other later. She told him, because they didn't have secrets, and they both told each other about the great and small things that happened in the few days or hours they were ever actually apart, even though they still talked during at times. Because he was the love of her life, but he had started as and would always be, her best friend and confidant, too.

Both the person who could be told without ever wondering if she was tempted, or trying to manipulate them, but also who would listen in case the coming weeks meant it might become silted and unbalanced on her sets, or even, in the worst cases, a frustrating impediment at her job or to public appearances for the films depending on how that person took their brushoff, too.)

end

[obediences]

They're ambling along comfortably, bantering. They eventually reach their handlers, the agents standing on the street beside an armoured van and another overturned truck, conversing amongst each other with some muffled chatter over the walkie-talkies. Space and Rumor line up, rattle off their battlefield report. Backs straight like they'd once reported at the Academy, a familiar rigidity in their military-perfect composure and discipline — but with the difference that, unlike back home, as soon as it's done they relax.

Like a pair of big cats no longer on the prowl, all languid grace and coiled power but knowing that they no longer have to use it. Letting themselves come down off that bloodied adrenaline, the buzzing in their veins of another fight done and survived and excelled. This world doesn't do do-overs. They don't have Five to rewind the clock, they don't have a working Porter to undo death. It means each battle is particularly ferocious, another championing over death. They're not kids anymore — they're old enough and wise enough, they know they're not invincible — but god, it's still so easy to feel that way when they're by each others' sides. Unstoppable.

At least this one, they won.

Home? he mouths to her, an eyebrow arched.

And so. They go home.