Chapter Text
She’s choking.
Blood fills Allison’s throat, hot and coppery, blocking her airways, and she’s choking on it, she can’t breathe, and Vanya- where did she go? Allison tries to look around her, but black spots are crowding her vision. The room is full of her shallow, wet gasps, and then the sound of the door opening, and footsteps, and words, but she can’t understand what they’re saying because her throat-
For a moment, she thinks to herself, in perfect clarity: Oh. I’m dying.
Luther is holding her, she thinks, she can hear his sobbing, saying her name, and she wants to tell him that she’s sorry, but she can’t.
Her eyes latch onto a face. Klaus. He’s crying, too, but silently, hands pressed up against his cheeks tightly, and his eyes look too big on his face. He shakes his head. Utters one, almost silent word: No.
More noise. The sensation of being scooped up in her brother's arms, warm and safe, and the pain is going dull and distant.
Then darkness.
Birds chattering.
Light flashing against her fluttering eyelids. It’s grey, not a hint of the sharp red that should be everywhere. Nothing hurts.
A flash of white.
She wakes up.
“Shit!” Allison yelps, pressing down on the brake, her car skidding slightly on the road. She’s lucky; the road is deserted, except for her, and nobody sees her come to a sudden, jerking halt.
Her heart thumps unevenly in her chest, and she sucks in a breath, hand pressing against her throat. She thought-
What was happening?
Shakily, Allison pulls the car off onto the side of the road.
Did she fall asleep at the wheel? She has been driving a while now, and she is exhausted, but she doesn’t remember falling asleep. She must have, though, because she remembers dreaming. A nightmare. Vanya and yelling and blood, too much blood. She shivers in her carseat. It seems like too long a dream for a moment of dozing, but dreams can be funny like that.
Allison tilts her head forward until it knocks against the steering wheel. She feels like an idiot. If there had been another car on the road, she could’ve gotten someone killed. At least she feels awake now, the adrenaline making her blood crash in her veins, the urge to move, to run, making her twitch. She won’t be falling asleep anytime soon.
She switches the radio to something more upbeat, and starts driving again. This time, she takes it slower, stays carefully under the speed limit, even though it’s approaching dawn and the roads are still empty. At the nearest 24-hour diner, she buys herself a coffee. It slows her down, she reasons, but she can’t help Vanya if she crashes on her way there.
Eventually, she hits traffic.
The delay makes her stomach twist anxiously. The longer she waits, the more Vanya is in danger, and if something happens to her because Allison was too slow, she’ll never forgive herself.
The line of traffic leads up past a crime scene. The police tape is whipping about in the wind, but the place seemed abandoned, no officers around. Something about that seemed… wrong. She shakes herself. It is just nerves, she firmly tells herself, and boredom. No need for dramatics. Crime scenes always look a little creepy, but it doesn’t mean anything. Allison averts her eyes, focusing on the road ahead.
When Allison eventually pulls up outside the house, her gut twists with deja vu. The house looks so similar to the one in her dream. It was dark then, but the porch is the same, the windchimes swaying gently, the same exposed wood paneling. Her heart squeezes. It’s too identical, disconcertingly so, as if she’s been here before, and panic makes her throat hurt. How did she-
Wait.
She laughs to herself, embarrassed. Of course she knew what the property looks like; there was a photo in the police file, wasn’t there? God, she had gotten all worked up over nothing, freaking herself out. Just because the cabin looks like a horror movie scenario, that doesn’t mean that this is a horror movie. It’s just a house. Malicious as it looks, it’s just a house, and Allison is a grown ass adult. She knows mixed martial arts, and she has a mean right hook. There’s no reason to be afraid. (Except the Leonard is a murderer, and he has Vanya, and Vanya could be hurt, could be-)
Centering herself, she walks up the porch. If she listens carefully, Allison can just about make out sound from inside. Hopefully it’s Vanya. Instead of sneaking in through a back window like her instincts tell her, she raises a hand to knock on the door.
Only for the door to swing open before she makes contact.
Vanya pulls short, a laugh dying on her face as she catches sight of Allison. Behind her, Leonard - Harold - puts a hand on her shoulder, and she has to hold back the urge to tear it away from her sister. One of his eyes is covered with a patch.
“Hi,” says Allison, pasting a smile on.
Cautiously, Vanya says, “Allison. Hi. What are you doing here?”
She licks her lips. She can’t tell Vanya everything, not with Harold right behind her like a vulture waiting to swoop in. “I need to talk to you,” she tells her sister.
Vanya narrows her eyes. “What about?”
Allison hesitates. “I need to talk to you in private,” she clarifies.
This seems to be the wrong thing to say, because Vanya stubbornly says, “Anything you want to say, you can say in front of Leonard.”
“Of course,” Harold says with a slimy smile.
Shifting her weight, Allison weighs her options. She doesn’t want to escalate the situation, doesn’t want to provoke Harold, but she can’t just let Vanya go either. In the end, she says, “Vanya, it’s important. Can you come back with me? I can explain everything in the car, I promise, just- please.”
“Tell me now, and then I’ll decide if I want to go with you,” Vanya says, jaw set.
“You can’t stay here,” says Allison, voice tight, “it isn’t safe.”
“Safe?” parrots Vanya. Her eyebrows rise with disbelief. “First off it’s not safe for me to stay at the house, then it isn’t safe for me to stay somewhere else? What do you want, Allison?”
Allison feels desperation rising up in her chest. She’s losing control of the situation, and Vanya isn’t listening, and she doesn’t know what to do without using her powers, but she promised herself she wouldn’t do that. “Vanya, please,” she says weakly.
“I want you to leave,” Vanya says, pushing past her.
“Where are you going?”
“It’s none of your business!” retorts Vanya as she stomps away towards the treeline. Harold shoots Allison a smug look as he follows behind.
Frustration bubbling up as she chases her sister, Allison cries, “So what, you’re going off into the woods with a guy you just met? Real smart!”
Vanya doesn’t stop walking, just throws back, “At least Leonard cares about me!”
“And I don't?” challenges Allison, wobbling slightly as her heels sink into the mud.
Finally, Vanya whirls around, and snarls, “You never cared about me.”
The rage on her sister's face makes Allison take a step back. She’s never seen Vanya so emotional, and despite her tiny frame, something instinctive tells Allison that she should be afraid. The dream niggles at the back of her brain like a warning. “Vanya, you’re my sister,” Allison says around the rising panic.
“We were never family! Stop pretending,” Vanya barks out, hands fisted tightly at her sides. As if sensing her anger, the wind stirs, dead leaves whipping across the forest floor.
Raising her voice to be heard above the sound, Allison says, “I’m not pretending. Vanya, I love you!”
“Stop! Just, stop it! I’m finally, finally happy, and you’re ruining it!”
The anguish in her voice makes goosebumps rise on Allison’s skin. “It’s not like that,” she begs her to understand. “Leonard- He isn’t who you think he is.”
“He loves me,” Vanya refutes.
Harold is standing right behind her, and the greedy, joyful look in his remaining eye makes Allison want to claw it out. She takes a step forward, not sure if she wants to go to her sister or get Harold away from her, but the wind, which has been building stronger with each second, pushes hard enough that she falls back a few steps, air knocked from her lungs. “What’s happening?”
Vanya looks at her coldly, her hair flying madly in the air, like the tendrils are alive. “It’s me,” she says, tone somewhere between proud and uncertain. “It’s my powers.”
“Powers?” Allison echoes numbly.
“Turns out I’ve had them the entire time,” Vanya says.
Allison tries to push the two concepts together in her mind, but they repel each other. Powers and Vanya just don’t go together. Right?
Right?
She squeezes her eyes tight. It’s as if understanding is so close, but as far as she stretches, her fingertips just brush against it uselessly. This all seems so familiar. She’s been here before, but she hasn’t. Vanya and powers. Powers and Vanya.
Five words:
You did this to me?
Oh, God.
“I understand now,” Allison breathes out.
Vanya looks at her, eyes wide and dark and uncomprehending. “What?”
“Dad, he- We were four years old, and I didn’t understand… He told me to rumour you. To make you think that you were just ordinary,” Allison chokes out. “He made me an accomplice.”
For a long moment, there is true silence. The wind abruptly stops dead, the leaves falling to scatter across the ground, and it seems as though the forest stops breathing. Everything, waiting. Vanya looks at Allison, expression unreadable. Then, she says those words that Allison knew she would say. “You did this to me?”
Allison has no answer. She never did.
“You knew? This whole time?”
“No, no! I didn't really understand until I came today, until I saw it,” Allison denies, fighting to keep her face from crumpling with tears.
A vicious sort of smile takes up residence on Vanya's face. “Well, now it all makes sense. This is why you never wanted me around!” Allison shakes her head, but Vanya continues on, “You couldn't risk me threatening your place in the house, your- your dominance.”
Allison thinks: Oh, God, no. Not again. Not again.
“Please, Vanya, don’t do this,” she tries, taking a shaky step forward. “Please, please just listen-”
“No! I’m so tired of listening, I’m done listening. You destroyed my entire life! You-”
It’s all falling apart. Allison is holding water in her hands, and no matter how hard she holds, it continues to run down her wrists. Her words will fail, just like they did last time, because there’s nothing she can say that can undo what she’s done, but she has to try, doesn’t she? Doesn’t she?
“Vanya,” she says, taking another step closer, hands reaching out, because maybe her words aren’t enough, but she has to do something-
“Don’t touch me!” shrieks Vanya, and then something hits Allison’s chest, something huge and powerful, like a percussive blast, and she is flung backward through the air.
She doesn’t have the time to feel afraid before her body hits the tree.
This time, it is quick, at least.
Light across her eyelids. The smell of grass.
She wakes up.
A scream in her throat, she hits the brake reflexively, and the car skids across the empty road, coming to a jerky stop. She gasps a shuddering breath, pressing her hand to her chest, which seems uninjured, despite the memory of her ribs breaking under force.
She doesn’t know what’s happening, but Allison is certain of one thing:
That wasn’t a dream.