Chapter Text
Luther thinks, as he gawks - frozen in place - at the screaming girl crumpled on the asphalt in front of him, that maybe he had forgotten just how violent Five’s temper really is.
Absence makes the heart grow fonder, as they say, which could be why over the two years the other boy was gone, Luther’s mind has glossed over some of the worst memories of his teammate and his rage, replacing them with nicer, more sanitary ones.
This is a pretty good reminder.
“Oh my fucking God, Five,” Diego shouts, over the ear-shattering roaring of the crowd around them, “why did you do that?”
Number Five doesn’t answer, as like Luther, he seems rooted in place. A kind of cold rage is burned onto his face, eyes darkened, fists tightened at his sides. Luther can’t really tell from where he is standing, but he thinks his teammate might be literally quaking from anger, and his whole body is tensed up as if in the midst of battle.
The girl is still screeching, and Luther feels himself become so stressed that he can almost hear the blood rushing in his body. He wasn’t trained for this. But he has do – something.
You can’t just hit a civilian. You – don’t. You don’t do that. Why did Five do that?
Luther knows that he should be doing something – he is their leader, after all. But the girl on the ground – a lanky, normal-looking teenage girl – won’t stop screaming, and everyone is yelling at them, and Allison looks so confused, and Ben is seriously scared, scared of what the crowd will do now, and he can’t move. Klaus, somewhere to his left, laughs wildly, the sharp sound reaching Luther even over the noise of the mob.
Where is Sir Reginald? Surely he would have seen what happened? There are about twenty cameras trained on them, it seems, each one an inky black eyeball staring into Luther’s soul, pressuring him to move, do something, say something. The sun feels hot on his face. The domino mask is making it kind of hard to properly see where Sir might be. His gaze catches, instead, on the ridiculous yellow piece of paper the girl had been holding, which now lies discarded on the ground, crushed under one of her feet. It has a hand-drawn picture of an umbrella inside a heart on it.
Allison is yelling, “Hey! Hey!” To whom?
He finally breaks out of whatever trance he was under when people start to cross over the fence, still yelling. He snaps out of it, he has to – he backs away, pushing Allison behind him protectively. He notices, feeling a rare surge of approval, that Diego is mirroring him, moving to stand defensively in front of Ben and Klaus. He thinks Diego catches his eye; he nods, hoping his fear isn’t too obvious. God, where is Sir Hargreeves? Where is he?
“Please calm down,” he tries to say, and his voice is weak. Too weak, like always. He attempts it again, raising his hands in what Grace taught him is a placating gesture. “Okay, everybody just—"
Five doesn’t move, still, unaffected. He just clenches and unclenches his fists, teeth gritted. The girl finally stands, helped up by a civilian – it occurs to Luther belatedly that he probably should have done that before. She is crying, and her whole face is covered in blood and snot, the front of her shirt stained pink. “What the hell!” She wails, hand over her shattered nose. “What the hell?”
“Luther!” Someone, maybe Diego, shouts. But Luther isn’t built for this, and he just stands there.
“A member of the Umbrella Academy just assaulted a girl!” A reporter screams into a microphone, and she is far to close for comfort – he flinches away. Somehow her shrill voice is way more threatening than that of any gruff criminal he beat today. “It’s unclear how severely – paramedics have been called – this is – this was completely unprompted—”
Unprompted? Luther looks at Five again.
His teammate now has his hands – one of which is bloody – stuffed into his pockets, and his face is tilted to the sky, completely ignoring the accusations being spat at him from all sides by the crowd.
He looks tired.
Luther grimly decides to hold that thought, as he and Diego edge closer, Allison huddled up against his back. They’ve never been yelled at like this by a horde before. As long as he stands in front, it will be okay. He just has to shield the others until Reginald gets there.
He will fix everything, he’ll show everyone it was just a mistake, a misunderstanding.
Yes, Sir will know what to do. He always does.
Luther tells himself that, and as the crowd pushes closer, spitting, yelling, he takes Allison’s hand and holds it, and closes his eyes behind the mask because no one will see.