“I don’t know,” Luther admits. Honest, at least, in this simple confusion. Disorientation. He’s staring down at the table as he absentmindedly shreds off a piece of donut, pops it in his mouth. Chews. It tastes absolutely delicious, but that might just be because he’s still drunk. He’s going to order pancakes in a moment, too, because he’s ravenous and his metabolism’s always been a wild thing, even before… this, what he is now.
“There’s just a lot of things I’m looking back on and thinking about how the rest of us never had it, and— school was. One of them.” I never had any friends. Not one friend. It’s a strange sinking realisation down to the soles of his feet, that Vanya’s seen more of the world than he has, lived more than he has. (Not knowing, of course, how gray and dulled those experiences had been. Reginald took that from her, too.)
“Not that I’m saying you had it better,” he cuts in quickly, his words looser and quicker now, desperate to not put his foot in his mouth. (He is so very good at doing that.) “Just that I… I don’t know, I understand better now, though it took me a while. A long fucking while.” A strangled laugh in the back of his throat.
This really isn’t the Luther she’s used to seeing: he’s unpinned, untethered, miserable. But that, at least, means he’s closer to getting it than he’s ever been.
She is reasonably certain he could eat a couple doughnuts whole and she would probably struggle holding two in one hand. But it was always a little like that, even when he wasn't...well, closer to Pogo than he used to be. This is just part of being as strong as he is, she always figured that.
A strange sensation settles over her, annoyed and vaguely guilty and entirely unsure as to how to process it: why is she annoyed, that - God, is he saying that he'd rather have high school than the Academy? Rather have being talked about behind his back than being a part of something bigger, or--
No, he's not saying that, at least not exactly, and Vanya hides her exhale with a quick drink from her mug. It needs more sugar, and that gives her something else to be busy with. Something besides him to focus on, so she can process what he has to say without staring him in the face. Without, more accurately, worrying that he'll read what she thinks on her face.
Did she always take so long to reply? It feels like she's biting her tongue, now, trying to hold onto words she wants to say, words that might hurt him. It's an odd battle, not wanting to pour salt in his wounds but being so incredibly tired of not saying what she wants to, when she wants to, for fear of saying the wrong thing. It's not that different from his quick corrections, really, and V finally lets out a long breath.
"Well I would have traded with you any day, so. Maybe it took me longer to figure out than you thought."
"--Huh," Luther says after a beat, and that little stopgap showcases his own struggle to find the right words. It's hard. He can't quite remember how they used to talk; he could count on both hands, probably, the sheer number of times that Numbers One and Seven actually hung out together one-on-one. They were divided by such a stark and glaring gap, father's favourite and the least, the largest and the smallest, supposed most- and least-useful. Sheer opposites. She had been such a tiny wisp of a thing (still was): to be protected, to be kept out of the fray, guarded from the Academy's missions even if it meant shutting her out. He'd never wanted anything bad to happen to her.
But that didn't mean, of course, that he knew how to talk to her. Or confide in her.
(But they're trying.)
"When did you realise?" he asks. Flags down the waitress again, puts in his order for a double-stack of pancakes, gestures at Vanya to order anything she wants, too. "That he was an asshole."
Because there had been all those years that she'd trailed along in their wake, Sir Reginald's quiet shadow, clipboard in hand. Like the world's smallest personal assistant. Luther can't pinpoint when that shifted, because of course he hadn't been paying close enough attention. Back in their teenaged years, it had just felt like he'd blinked and looked up only when everything was already fracturing between the siblings, late, too late, too late for any of them.
There haven't been a lot of people in Vanya's life that she could talk to, and fewer she could confide in. Pogo, really, and Mom, at least while she was still at the Academy. After Dad sent her to school, what few connections she had just seemed to dissolve out from under her.
That's not fair, really: it takes two to make a relationship. Or ruin it. She didn't try.
"God," she says, lets it out like a tired laugh. Her buzz is fading, and she can't remember if they have a liquor license, here. Probably best not to ask. "I don't know." She pauses long enough to order - a bagel and cream cheese, because Vanya's never been much of a big eater, just another way they were different - and when their waitress leaves again, she slouches back in her seat.
"I think," and it starts slow, because this is something she hasn't touched since she last saw her therapist, a little under five years ago: "I think after he told the news he only adopted the six of you."
That was early days, though, and feeling the first hint of something awful coming doesn't mean you know enough to get out of its way. "But for a while I just...convinced myself that if I was good enough at anything, he'd come around." She reaches instinctively for her pocket, where there's usually her pill bottle; but she's been unexpectedly out of them, hasn't had the time (or energy) to get a refill. She wishes she had, now: it would make this conversation a lot easier.
Luther had written Vanya off so often and for so long -- as someone too different from him, unapproachable, a particular lost cause after her book -- but that last sentence is like a little sliver working its way under his skin and he actually laughs a gruff laugh, startled. By that odd synchronicity. Like catching a glimpse of your reflection out of the corner of your eye, when you're not expecting it.
"Convinced myself that if I was good at everything, he'd come around. You know what? Me. Too." His voice gets harder on those last two words, as if driving the point in. Furious. Not at her. At Reginald, for once.
"I know I was Number One, I know, I get it, but -- you could've described me, just then." They'd all been pitted against each other, jockeying for their father's favour. It had only gotten worse after the rest of them had all left, and Luther had been the only lightning rod left to catch Reginald's displeasure, his impossible standards, trying to fulfil six-man missions on his own. Christ.
He's been looking at Vanya too long (why had it taken him so long to realise they were more alike than anyone ever could've expected?). Luther busies himself with his coffee again, before it can drag, become uncomfortable.
His laugh surprises her, but the hardness in his voice makes her withdraw, just a little. Not scared, not of him or any of their siblings, ever - but any hint of anger is enough when you've trained yourself to be wary of disappointment and anything close to it.
But he's not angry at her, at least, she's pretty sure of that. (She needs to get her pills refilled.) So she gives him a small smile, and hears him out, tries to hear past all the things she wants to say - about sitting here with him, talking about Dad, about this, and why didn't they do it sooner--
That's just the very last of her buzz, she thinks, and exhales slowly. Everything is uncomfortable for her, and it's always been like that: she notices him watching her a second in, and fiddles with her coffee cup, because holding his gaze is too much to ask without some of her medication to fall back on. When she realizes he's finished, she breathes out a laugh, as apologetic as his was gruff.
He'd already made his way through so many bottles to even make a dent in someone his size, with his durability and metabolism, but the coffee and food is helping him sober up, too. Clarifying some of that muzzy angry blur from earlier in the evening, leaving him cold and exhausted.
"I was," he says, "but turns out that doesn't actually count for much."
Because if so, who sends away their favourite like that? Like a broken toy that's immediately discarded, packed away in a box and shoved out of sight. A prize horse shot after breaking a leg. No longer of use.
"I'm sorry we left you out of things." It's a sudden blurting-out, so many years too late. "It was-- I remember thinking it was for your own good. For your safety. He always told us you couldn't keep up, that you couldn't be on the team. I got blinded by that, I think." Obedience was so hardwired in him; he hadn't even thought of defying or contradicting Sir Reginald's opinion back in those days. Wouldn't have dreamt of it.
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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“There’s just a lot of things I’m looking back on and thinking about how the rest of us never had it, and— school was. One of them.” I never had any friends. Not one friend. It’s a strange sinking realisation down to the soles of his feet, that Vanya’s seen more of the world than he has, lived more than he has. (Not knowing, of course, how gray and dulled those experiences had been. Reginald took that from her, too.)
“Not that I’m saying you had it better,” he cuts in quickly, his words looser and quicker now, desperate to not put his foot in his mouth. (He is so very good at doing that.) “Just that I… I don’t know, I understand better now, though it took me a while. A long fucking while.” A strangled laugh in the back of his throat.
This really isn’t the Luther she’s used to seeing: he’s unpinned, untethered, miserable. But that, at least, means he’s closer to getting it than he’s ever been.
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A strange sensation settles over her, annoyed and vaguely guilty and entirely unsure as to how to process it: why is she annoyed, that - God, is he saying that he'd rather have high school than the Academy? Rather have being talked about behind his back than being a part of something bigger, or--
No, he's not saying that, at least not exactly, and Vanya hides her exhale with a quick drink from her mug. It needs more sugar, and that gives her something else to be busy with. Something besides him to focus on, so she can process what he has to say without staring him in the face. Without, more accurately, worrying that he'll read what she thinks on her face.
Did she always take so long to reply? It feels like she's biting her tongue, now, trying to hold onto words she wants to say, words that might hurt him. It's an odd battle, not wanting to pour salt in his wounds but being so incredibly tired of not saying what she wants to, when she wants to, for fear of saying the wrong thing. It's not that different from his quick corrections, really, and V finally lets out a long breath.
"Well I would have traded with you any day, so. Maybe it took me longer to figure out than you thought."
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But that didn't mean, of course, that he knew how to talk to her. Or confide in her.
(But they're trying.)
"When did you realise?" he asks. Flags down the waitress again, puts in his order for a double-stack of pancakes, gestures at Vanya to order anything she wants, too. "That he was an asshole."
Because there had been all those years that she'd trailed along in their wake, Sir Reginald's quiet shadow, clipboard in hand. Like the world's smallest personal assistant. Luther can't pinpoint when that shifted, because of course he hadn't been paying close enough attention. Back in their teenaged years, it had just felt like he'd blinked and looked up only when everything was already fracturing between the siblings, late, too late, too late for any of them.
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That's not fair, really: it takes two to make a relationship. Or ruin it. She didn't try.
"God," she says, lets it out like a tired laugh. Her buzz is fading, and she can't remember if they have a liquor license, here. Probably best not to ask. "I don't know." She pauses long enough to order - a bagel and cream cheese, because Vanya's never been much of a big eater, just another way they were different - and when their waitress leaves again, she slouches back in her seat.
"I think," and it starts slow, because this is something she hasn't touched since she last saw her therapist, a little under five years ago: "I think after he told the news he only adopted the six of you."
That was early days, though, and feeling the first hint of something awful coming doesn't mean you know enough to get out of its way. "But for a while I just...convinced myself that if I was good enough at anything, he'd come around." She reaches instinctively for her pocket, where there's usually her pill bottle; but she's been unexpectedly out of them, hasn't had the time (or energy) to get a refill. She wishes she had, now: it would make this conversation a lot easier.
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"Convinced myself that if I was good at everything, he'd come around. You know what? Me. Too." His voice gets harder on those last two words, as if driving the point in. Furious. Not at her. At Reginald, for once.
"I know I was Number One, I know, I get it, but -- you could've described me, just then." They'd all been pitted against each other, jockeying for their father's favour. It had only gotten worse after the rest of them had all left, and Luther had been the only lightning rod left to catch Reginald's displeasure, his impossible standards, trying to fulfil six-man missions on his own. Christ.
He's been looking at Vanya too long (why had it taken him so long to realise they were more alike than anyone ever could've expected?). Luther busies himself with his coffee again, before it can drag, become uncomfortable.
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But he's not angry at her, at least, she's pretty sure of that. (She needs to get her pills refilled.) So she gives him a small smile, and hears him out, tries to hear past all the things she wants to say - about sitting here with him, talking about Dad, about this, and why didn't they do it sooner--
That's just the very last of her buzz, she thinks, and exhales slowly. Everything is uncomfortable for her, and it's always been like that: she notices him watching her a second in, and fiddles with her coffee cup, because holding his gaze is too much to ask without some of her medication to fall back on. When she realizes he's finished, she breathes out a laugh, as apologetic as his was gruff.
"I just always figured you were his favorite."
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"I was," he says, "but turns out that doesn't actually count for much."
Because if so, who sends away their favourite like that? Like a broken toy that's immediately discarded, packed away in a box and shoved out of sight. A prize horse shot after breaking a leg. No longer of use.
"I'm sorry we left you out of things." It's a sudden blurting-out, so many years too late. "It was-- I remember thinking it was for your own good. For your safety. He always told us you couldn't keep up, that you couldn't be on the team. I got blinded by that, I think." Obedience was so hardwired in him; he hadn't even thought of defying or contradicting Sir Reginald's opinion back in those days. Wouldn't have dreamt of it.
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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."
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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.
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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.