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

[cantgetanyworse]

"You expect me to believe you wouldn't enter an eating competition again if they asked you to?" she challenges with another laugh. It's a safe topic, an innocent one, and there are precious few of those in these times. Luther isn't to know just how few, or how closely Jane guards what she says to him.

Yet, it's still difficult to not think of him as a friend, even while knowing he would turn her in if he knew.

"The news about the Porter is getting everyone very excited, isn't it."

[obediences]

"If they told me to, sure, I would. Hoping they won't, though." He takes another cheerful chomp out of his food. He doesn't sound bitter about it like others might, at the prospect of trotting along to the government drum, needing to obey them when they come to call over something even as innocuous as a PR stunt.

When authority figures tell Luther to jump, he simply salutes and asks how high.

"'Excited' is one word for it, yeah. It is strange, though, for it to suddenly spin up after so many years." He glances at her. "You met any of the new arrivals yet?"

It's such an innocent question. Should just be an innocent question, without any guile behind it. And there probably isn't— but then again, it's so hard for Jane to know anymore what's safe to discuss. Even with him. Especially with him.

[cantgetanyworse]

She shakes her head, measuring how quickly she does it. This song and dance has become a staple of their peculiar friendship, and Jane sometimes wishes she didn't have to guard herself so carefully with Luther. It causes a rift that he doesn't even know about but that she feels yawning out between them like a black chasm.

"No, I haven't."

Jane lies.

"I expect they were rounded up quickly, once it was made clear what was happening," she adds somberly. "Do they have any idea what made it start up again?"

[obediences]

He should probably guard his words more carefully, be more careful about slipping potential government information like this. But some things haven't changed across universes, and one of them is that Luther remains hopelessly blunt and open. He doesn't have a duplicitous bone in his body. He just obeys the wrong damned people.

So he shakes his head. "No idea," he says. "Just one day nothing, and the next day..." A gesture of both hands, opening wide. "Bam. Working on overdrive. Nobody had been working on it or anything. Really wish we knew how to turn it on or off."

[cantgetanyworse]

He probably should, but part of Jane's guise is that she puts up the front of being a bubbly, charming young woman that anyone should feel safe talking to. Even if that someone is a government agent. Jane uses her youth and her innocent demeanour to her advantage - something she learned to do long before she learned to throw a right hook.

"You mean you don't know how?" she asks, all wide-eyed, gobsmacked curiosity. "I thought that there had been reams of research done about the Porter. One would have thought they would have at least learned how it turns on and off."

[obediences]

Careful there, Luther.

"Well, if they do, then they haven't told me," he admits with a laugh, wiping off his hands after making such quick work of the hot dogs. "I'm not exactly the first person the science team calls when they've figured something out."

'Need to know basis,' Callahan had taunted him earlier in the week. You were always a lot better at brute work than thinking. What rankled most was how right the other man was.

"You got any theories? You're more of a researcher than I am, after all."

[cantgetanyworse]

She finishes her own hotdog in short order, managing to not get any more of the filling on her face (or her clothes, thankfully) and she licks the grease off her fingers while they sit there. Her head tilts slightly in his direction, listening, and she chuckles as he points the metaphorical spotlight back at her.

"Oh, I wouldn't like to speculate," she hums. A complete lie, and one so brazenly told that she knows he'll recognise it as a joke. The chuckle turns into a laugh, then she presses her lips together and daintily shrugs one shoulder.

"It's hard to say. It might be the sisters again. We've no reason to believe they'd disappear for good."

[obediences]

"Yeah. I guess nothing's forever." There's a low, contemplative edge to Luther's voice as he says that, thinking out loud. A bit of regret tinging his tone: "This one just seemed more 'for good' than most. Six years, the Porter's been quiet. Ten years I've been here. Thought that meant something."

The topic's shifted slightly, perhaps turned a bit too bittersweet for a celebratory public barbecue. He also sounds genuinely regretful about how things have changed. That's the hardest thing about this government, really: when they don't need to condition or brainwash their people. Someone can seem like a nice, decent guy and still have swallowed the poison.

[cantgetanyworse]

It's a dangerous set of topics to start to stray into, and Jane falls quiet rather than giving another flippant response. It's a tricky situation to be in. Jane likes Luther and has never sought to use him for more than what was needed to keep the rebels safe, but she doubts he would feel the same way if he found out which side of the line she truly sat on.

"Things will always change," she says eventually, finishing off the last bite of her hotdog and wiping her hands on the napkin she'd been holding it with. "It's just one of life's constants. Come on, let's take a walk."

& wrap!

[obediences]

This enforcer is the furthest thing from a traitor, but he's given things away, over the years. Little hints or indications of what direction the government is moving in, words carelessly let slip to Jane because he can't conceive of Jane Porter being anything but a normal citizen. That guileless faith of his will probably get them all in trouble, someday.

"Yeah, let's," he says, and gratefully accepts the shift in topics. They go walking, and in time they drift back to safer subjects, steadier ground.

It won't always be that way, of course.