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]

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.