The awkwardness of it - of him pointing out that being his favorite did Luther no favors, and Vanya struggling to believe that based on how she remembers their childhood - makes her fall silent. She cups her coffee, staring into its depths like there's some secret answer in there. How To Talk to Your Siblings, a life lesson from caffeine. She's pretty sure she'd be better off with a beer for that.
When the apology comes tumbling out, though, Vanya jerks her head up to stare at him again. She presses the tips of her fingertips hard into the side of the mug, feels her knuckles ache with the stiffness and doesn't stop.
"You think?"
It's all she can drag out, at first, struggling to find - if not the right words, then at least better words. She hates how this feels, so stiff it's like she's perched on the edge of a cliff staring straight down, but so appeased by just one apology, just one little I'm sorry. She wanted to hear those words for years, and though she wants to say it's too late now, it's not. And the fact that it's not leaves her at war with herself.
"You weren't keeping me safe by not asking me to play games with you."
It had taken him a while to come to terms with the way their missions had always been phrased as playtime, vicious cats toying with their food, having fun with the armed robbers they killed. Number One had grown more serious about the missions as they grew up, as Ben died, and started treating them with the gravity they deserved -- as superheroes, as soldiers.
But. The realisation. There were all the other games too, the ones that weren't supposed to be games because they weren't allowed to play, but they found ways to do it anyway. To mask it behind academy training. The timed races up and down the staircases, Reginald with that stopwatch in hand. Luther and Diego wrestling in the backyard. That one time Klaus climbed onto the roof and Luther had to shout to get him down. All the bonding time between academy soldiers. All those little moments Vanya had been excluded from. The non-mission ones.
Luther bites down on his words, and his fork drops. He doesn't really have an appetite anymore.
"Ah," he says, and she can see that realisation sweeping through him and his too-obvious, too-transparent expression.
He might as well have written it on his forehead in sharpie. She can see it, and her jaw clenches, and her finger tips start to really hurt from how hard she presses them against the mug. That doesn't make her stop.
There were so many ways they excluded her, so many parts of their lives that she just wasn't welcomed in. Sometimes she could slip in, hold a clip board, watch them get to do the fun part. All it amounted to was watching missions progress with Dad, until she stopped asking to attend at all.
(Maybe he stopped allowing her to come, first: she's blocked it out, to save her heart just a little.)
"Yeah," she says, and though she wants to spit it at him, she can't make her voice do much but be slightly less flat. It feels like he's hit her, thrown her clear across the room, because having to puzzle out what he means, when it's clearly not what she meant, leaves her reeling. Of course he saw missions like games, early on: of course even training was. He had a power. It was easy for him.
Somehow, she finds the courage to add more: "There were games too, you know. When you would play tag, or hide and seek on Saturdays." The schedule didn't matter as much for her, as long as she was where Dad wanted her to be, when he wanted it: her free time was spent the same as her work time, always practicing, always picking away at one composer's life work or another, while she could hear them running throughout the Academy, laughing, calling out to each other.
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no subject
When the apology comes tumbling out, though, Vanya jerks her head up to stare at him again. She presses the tips of her fingertips hard into the side of the mug, feels her knuckles ache with the stiffness and doesn't stop.
"You think?"
It's all she can drag out, at first, struggling to find - if not the right words, then at least better words. She hates how this feels, so stiff it's like she's perched on the edge of a cliff staring straight down, but so appeased by just one apology, just one little I'm sorry. She wanted to hear those words for years, and though she wants to say it's too late now, it's not. And the fact that it's not leaves her at war with herself.
"You weren't keeping me safe by not asking me to play games with you."
no subject
It had taken him a while to come to terms with the way their missions had always been phrased as playtime, vicious cats toying with their food, having fun with the armed robbers they killed. Number One had grown more serious about the missions as they grew up, as Ben died, and started treating them with the gravity they deserved -- as superheroes, as soldiers.
But. The realisation. There were all the other games too, the ones that weren't supposed to be games because they weren't allowed to play, but they found ways to do it anyway. To mask it behind academy training. The timed races up and down the staircases, Reginald with that stopwatch in hand. Luther and Diego wrestling in the backyard. That one time Klaus climbed onto the roof and Luther had to shout to get him down. All the bonding time between academy soldiers. All those little moments Vanya had been excluded from. The non-mission ones.
Luther bites down on his words, and his fork drops. He doesn't really have an appetite anymore.
"Ah," he says, and she can see that realisation sweeping through him and his too-obvious, too-transparent expression.
no subject
There were so many ways they excluded her, so many parts of their lives that she just wasn't welcomed in. Sometimes she could slip in, hold a clip board, watch them get to do the fun part. All it amounted to was watching missions progress with Dad, until she stopped asking to attend at all.
(Maybe he stopped allowing her to come, first: she's blocked it out, to save her heart just a little.)
"Yeah," she says, and though she wants to spit it at him, she can't make her voice do much but be slightly less flat. It feels like he's hit her, thrown her clear across the room, because having to puzzle out what he means, when it's clearly not what she meant, leaves her reeling. Of course he saw missions like games, early on: of course even training was. He had a power. It was easy for him.
Somehow, she finds the courage to add more: "There were games too, you know. When you would play tag, or hide and seek on Saturdays." The schedule didn't matter as much for her, as long as she was where Dad wanted her to be, when he wanted it: her free time was spent the same as her work time, always practicing, always picking away at one composer's life work or another, while she could hear them running throughout the Academy, laughing, calling out to each other.
They never called out for her.