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Waking up to the sound of screaming is a usual occurrence for Luther, now.
He jerks awake, already sitting up from his small mattress on the floor. In his line of sight, Allison is also awake, rubbing her eyes and propping herself up from the couch with one elbow. Neither of them needs to turn on the lamp – the streetlights and the glow of the moon filter in through the thin curtains enough for them to see each other well. From the bedroom, there is the familiar sound of crying.
He fumbles for his watch and squints at it. Four thirty-seven am.
“You go back to sleep this time,” Luther croaks, but Allison looks worried, especially as the windowpanes start rattling. They only just got those fixed. He tries to be reassuring. “We got it.”
“You sure?”
He lumbers to his feet, yawning, and pats her on the head. “Yeah, Allison. It’s okay.”
“If you need me…”
He nods. “I know.” It’s better if they don’t have to call for her, but Allison insists on staying. Just in case. Luther knows that she feels incredibly responsible – he does too.
She mumbles something he doesn’t catch and smiles gratefully, rolling over.
When Luther gets to Vanya’s room, pulling his dressing gown around him, Five is already there, of course. Luther pulls the door gently shut behind him and sits on the end of the bed, waiting, scrubbing a hand over his face to wake himself up. Sometimes Vanya doesn’t want him there, and sometimes she does. He knows she has nightmares about the vault – the cage, whatever you want to call it. Other nights it’s Allison or Harold Jenkins, bleeding out, or Five, stabbing the table or running at her in a theatre with the intent to do whatever it takes to stop her, or the FBI, strapping her to a chair and electrocuting her, or Luther, wrapping his arms around her and squeezing until she—
Luther swallows. They’re not really nightmares, though, are they? These are something different. They all know it’s worse than that. Sometimes when Vanya wakes up, entire decades are missing from her memory. Other times, she wakes and it’s all happening to her at once, over and over.
The light fixtures and picture frames are still shaking.
“I didn’t – I didn’t—”
Five holds her shoulders firmly. “Vanya, it’s okay. Take deep breaths.”
“I didn’t mean it,” Vanya sobs, wrapping her arms around herself. Which thing she is talking about now, Luther isn’t sure exactly. Her hair starts to float in that dangerous way it sometimes does. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m—”
“Vanya,” Five says. “Breathe. Everything’s fine. You’re in your apartment.”
“I don’t… how are – what—”
Five waits patiently while she stutters and chokes on her words, her face twisted and wet in the moonlight, and then he says, very quietly, “Luther, turn on the light.”
Luther gets up and does what he’s told, and Vanya gasps. “Luther?”
“Hi, Vanya,” he says, sitting on the bed again, a little closer this time, trying to smile and not sound too sad.
Vanya grasps for him, and Five reluctantly moves out of the way to let Luther gently take her hand. “How are you – where—” She seems to dissolve again, the recognition fading. She looks down at her hand and snatches it away. “Oh, God, I’m so sorry, I—”
Five’s expression is deceptively calm, for Vanya’s sake, but Luther knows that this hurts him. A lot. He takes over when Luther fails to say anything. (There’s a lump in his throat – the guilt swallows him whole, sometimes.) “It’s okay, V. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I – killed – you,” Vanya sobs, with sharp, painful intakes of breath between each word. “You were – hanging – it hurts,” she wails, curling in on herself. “I’m so sorry.” She seems to have forgotten he’s there.
She forgets a lot of things now.
Last week, it was everyone’s names. She called them by their numbers for a whole two days, and they all had to pretend it wasn’t excruciating. Luther didn’t mind so much, but he thought Diego was going to start punching walls.
Vanya clamps her hands over her ears.
The shaking of the room worsens, to the point where plaster dust starts falling. Usually, it’s not this bad. Helplessly, Luther considers maybe calling in Allison, but sometimes, on really bad days, that makes everything worse. He wishes tonight was one of Klaus’ nights to sleep here. He’s better at this than Luther is.
“Hey, hey, Ven,” Five is saying quietly, in a far softer, more fragile voice than Luther is ever used to hearing from him, and finally the cracks of emotion start to show. He wraps an arm around her and gently stokes her hair with a shaky hand, saying, “Everything’s okay. You’re in your apartment. You didn’t kill anyone.”
Well, not anyone important, Luther thinks.
“No, no,” Vanya moans, shaking her head. “I did something, I can’t – I can’t remember –”
“You didn’t do anything,” Five says, a bit too forcefully to truly be calming, like he’s reminding himself, too. Five loves Vanya, but sometimes it becomes clear that he has very little experience comforting people in distress. “Nothing happened, I promise. I’m here, see?”
Luther wonders about the morality of lying to someone who can’t remember the truth. But things start to settle down – Vanya’s breathing begins to even out.
“Five?” She mumbles.
“Yeah. See?” Five says again, his voice sounding a little strangled. He pulls back and carefully brushes Vanya’s sweaty hair out of her face, forcing her to look him in the eyes. “Everything is fine. Would I lie to you, Ven?”
It’s the wrong thing to say.
“You promised you wouldn’t leave without me,” Vanya snarls, and all Five’s work is undone as a fresh wave of hatred floods her expression, twisted and broken and wrong. Luther has to look away, it’s so powerful. Across the room, a new crack appears in her mirror – he hears it splinter.
He feels like he doesn’t belong here – and like it’s him who Vanya should be directing her hatred towards, not Five, who currently looks seconds away from bursting into tears.
“I’m sorry, V,” Five says in a very small, hopeless voice.
Right. Luther gets up, making the bed creak. “Move over,” he tells Five, who glares at him. It’s not very effective, and mostly he just looks exhausted, and desolate.
“I’ve got this,” Five snaps. But he can’t quite seem to look at Vanya, for which Luther can hardly blame him, as she’s still glaring at him with burning resentment. So Five shuffles over anyway.
“Sure, sure, just give me a second,” Luther says lightly, and then takes the Boy’s place, but doesn’t get too close. He doesn’t think that Vanya, in any state of mind, will ever want a hug from him, and he doesn’t blame her. Not after what he did. “Vanya? You with me?”
“Luther,” Vanya says, sounding confused. That’s not out of the ordinary. The anger drains from her eyes, and she opens and closes her mouth. “What are…” she trails off, expression going a little vacant. It’s scary when that happens. Luther takes both her hands as casually as he can manage.
He has to put aside all his emotions, and tries to use his most normal voice, which is challenging. But he has to. Five looks like he might actually dissolve into a puddle, and Luther’s job is, and always has been, to be the strongest, and most sturdy – so he steels himself. He gives her a smile.
“Hey, Vanya. Did you know that the moon doesn’t actually emit light? It reflects it from the sun. That’s why we can see it.”
He feels Five tense beside him, when he mentions the moon. But Vanya blinks. “Yeah, I… everyone knows that.” He smiles for real this time.
“Okay, well, do you know the diameter?”
Vanya looks confused again, but a different, less frightening kind of confused. “No, I don’t.”
“It’s almost three and a half thousand kilometres. So, about a quarter of Earth.”
“Oh.”
“You know I lived on the moon, don’t you?”
Vanya furrows her brow. “Yes, you did. I did know that. I mean, I do.”
“Sometimes I miss it,” Luther admits. “It was very peaceful, and beautiful.”
“I can imagine,” Vanya says, staring at him, and he notices that the shaking of the apartment has ceased. “But… also cold?”
“Often,” Luther chuckles, and feels Five looking at him. “And lonely. You wanna know what I missed?”
“Um, Allison,” Vanya says, and he worries very suddenly that her name might trigger something, but she seems lost in thought, the tears drying into salt on her cheeks. “And – your music. Your pop music. And – helping people. You like helping people.”
He smiles, all wobbly and emotional. “Yeah, I missed those things. But I also missed you, Vanya.”
Vanya blinks herself back into the present. “Me? Why?”
“I missed hearing your violin around the house, and the way you always worried about us. I missed seeing your face peering out from behind the banisters, at the top of the stairs, when we would get back from missions.”
“I remember,” Vanya says. “I remember that. And I would – bandage.”
“Yes, that’s right,” Luther agrees happily. “When I was too embarrassed to tell Mom that I hurt myself, because I knew she’d tell Dad.”
“And then I cleaned your cuts and put plasters on them,” Vanya says slowly. “When I wanted to be a nurse.”
“Do you remember when we were fifteen, and I thought you were a burglar in the kitchen? And I snuck downstairs—”
“I do!” Vanya laughs, very abruptly, and it’s like she’s a completely different person. “I was making a sandwich, wasn’t I?” Her expression goes fuzzy. “Yeah, I was making a sandwich…”
“For Five,” Luther reminds her, quietly.
“Oh. Right.” her brow furrows. “But... the kitchen is gone, now, isn’t it? I destroyed it. I destroyed everything. And I – I killed Pogo,” Vanya says, her lip trembling. Her breathing quickens. Five twitches, looking between them anxiously, frustrated, but Luther carefully doesn’t turn to him. “And now – and now—"
“And now we’re here,” Luther says, quietly. “Because we fixed it, didn’t we?”
“Did we?”
“Yes, we did.”
“I can’t remember,” she says miserably, tears seeping down her face again. “I don’t remember that.”
“That’s okay,” he says, shrugging. “We’re still here, aren’t we?”
Vanya hesitates, looks at her window and back. “Yeah. We… are.”
“And look,” Luther says, his voice almost breaking, “Five came home.”
Vanya turns her head sharply towards Five, and Luther lets go of her hands. Her jaw drops. “Five?”
Five swallows, and stares openly at her. Then he blinks, and manages a smile. “It’s me,” he says eventually. “I’m – home. I came back, V.”
Vanya starts crying again properly now, but a happy, confused kind of crying, and to Luther’s relief the building stays stable. She grasps at the front of Five’s pyjama shirt – he hugs her immediately, tightly, burying his face in her shoulder. Vanya is the only person Five will initiate a hug first with, it seems. Perhaps because he knows she’ll always hug him back. They’re both so little, Luther thinks, the thought surprising him, and he looks away politely. “I can’t believe – you’re here.”
“I’m here,” Five says into her hair, almost to himself. “I made it, V. I’m here.”
After just a few quiet minutes of almost-incomprehensible mumbling and reassurances and more tears, Vanya falls asleep, the two of them tangled together. Luther very carefully gets up from the bed, trying not to rock it too much. Just before he turns off the light, Five cracks a tired eye half open and mouths, thank you.
Luther just nods. He flips the light switch and leaves them there, closing the door silently. His emotions are too difficult to unravel and make sense of, so he doesn’t try.
He shuffles down the hall back to the living room. How long was that? No more than half and hour, he thinks. Not too much sleep missed.
There is a bone-weary tiredness etched into all his limbs, but there are still a few hours until he needs to get up. Tomorrow, Allison has her court-mandated therapy session over the phone, so he’ll need to make breakfast for them all, to make sure Five eats something, and then drive back to their apartment when Diego comes over at noon to swap Vanya shifts, and… and then… he’s too tired. It’s okay. He’ll remember tomorrow.
“S’okay?” Allison mumbles, half asleep, as he edges past the couch to get to his little mattress.
“It’s okay,” he assures her in a whisper. And for now, he decides – it’s true.