Work Text:
Happiness hit her
Like a train on a track
Coming towards her
Stuck still, no turning back
Run for your children, for your sisters and brothers
Leave all your love and your longing behind
You can't carry it with you if you want to survive
-Florence + the Machine, Dog Days Are Over
I heard a rumor you only had one sister.
It’s the only way to get out of town. The one way to make dear ol’ Reggie forget that he has a daughter. Allison has to leave, to get her own life, to get her own freedom. She has to leave behind her siblings and everyone she has ever loved—
Except, no. That’s not how the story goes, is it? It can’t be. No, how the story goes is this:
Allison Hargreeves leaves town, but she takes her siblings with her.
---
I heard a rumor you forgot you had kids.
It’s the only way to get out of town. The one way to make dear ol’ Reggie forget he has children.
They’re all fourteen. Five is gone. Ben is dead.
And Allison can’t handle this anymore.
She goes to the mausoleum. She goes to the training room.
And she collects her siblings, one by one, and tells them that if they don’t make it out of this fucking town, they’re never making it out, so c’mon. Take a chance. Let’s burn this shit down and get out of town—together.
Klaus comes easily. All it takes is opening the mausoleum door and reaching out a hand for him to run from his ghosts.
Diego doesn’t even have to be asked. He just looks her up and down, sees the piece of paper crumpled in her hand, and smirks.
All it takes is promising Vanya that they’ll get the meds she needs replaced once they get to California.
But Luther? Luther doesn’t want to leave. He refuses to turn his back on their father, even though Reginald Hargreeves has never done dick to help Luther and has done so, so much to hurt him, to cage him, to wreck him.
And so Alison puts her foot down.
“I’m fucking tired of dead brothers,” Allison says, “If you stay, you’re gonna end up one more fucking ghost for Klaus to have to deal with. You’re coming with me to California, with Diego and Vanya and Klaus, whether you like it or not.”
“You can’t force me,” Luther hisses.
“Just fucking watch me,” Allison says, and Luther surges to his feet, but silver eyes flare as she begins, “I heard a rumor—"
---
Maybe it’s a cruel thing to do, to rumor him into leaving, but Luther still packs up his things, at the end of the day, because Allison Hargreeves is fourteen years old and fucking tired of watching her and her siblings getting chopped up and chewed up and spat out by their father’s idea of what heroism is supposed to be like: a perfect group of six superpowered teenagers with masks on their faces, not a name between them because to the man in charge, they have only ever been numbers, with a seventh child on the side not even deserving of acknowledgement.
---
While her siblings are packing their things up, Allison heads to her father’s office.
She has no regrets as she spins one last rumor into being here in the Hargreeves mansion, at the center of the Umbrella Academy.
Reginald Hargreeves forgets that he has five living children. He forgets that he had seven to begin with. He forgets that there is an Umbrella Academy at all.
(Maybe there’s more that he forgets. Maybe he forgets his identity, what’s keeping him on earth, what’s keeping him in that big house in the middle of town that everyone in the city thinks is haunted by the ghost of that little boy that disappeared last year. Maybe he leaves the city, too. Maybe he sticks around.
Allison doesn’t know. She’s leaving and never looking back.)
---
Pogo is Rumored, too, just in case, but Allison rumors him after she rumors their father, and she thinks that there’s some level of sympathy shining in his eyes.
Who was Pogo before he worked for Reginald Hargreeves? Who was he before he wore a suit and a tie?
Allison has no idea. She sets no goals into his mind save for him to follow his dreams, whatever they might be, as long as he forgets about five teenage wrecks in the process.
(Later on, she’ll see stories about a monkey leading a biker gang and think good for him. Klaus will agree, and send Pogo some dvds in the mail.)
---
It’s hard to get Diego to agree to leave their mother behind, but Allison promises him that someday, if he wants, he can come back for her.
But as for those that are coming with them—
The others aren’t sure about bringing Vanya with them. She doesn’t have superpowers. She can be ordinary anywhere, after all.
And Allison gets it, truly. She really does. There is some part of her that thinks—Vanya isn’t like them. She doesn’t have powers. If she stays behind, their father might not fuck her up.
But at the end of the day, she’s their sister.
She’s their sister, and that means that Reginald Hargreeves is going to forget her, and Allison doesn’t want her to be left behind.
So they get in the car, and none of them are old enough to drive, but that’s not stopping them. Allison knows for a fact that both Klaus and Diego have already learned how to hotwire cars when father hasn’t been watching.
So they take father’s car and they make for the coast.
When Luther pukes his guts up in a motel bathroom, heaving with fury about being rumored, some small trickle of shame pricks its way through Allison’s chest—though she can’t find it in herself to regret what happened.
Luther is here instead of back in that mansion. He is safe. He is theirs, not Father’s, and she can’t help but be proud of that fact.
She got him out. She got them all out.
And she refuses to feel bad about that. She refuses to be made the villain for finally doing what none of them could do for themselves before this point.
But there’s one thing that she didn’t predict, though. One thing that none of them could have predicted.
When Vanya hums a lullaby to try and get Klaus to sleep his way through withdrawal, the world begins to glow and spin.
And nope, it’s not just as a metaphor.
No; Vanya Hargreeves has powers, same as her siblings.
Because once they’re out of town for long enough, the furniture in their motel room—taken care of by Allison’s Rumor, because she refuses to let Klaus sell his body for them all—starts moving to the tune of Vanya’s lullaby, tables and tv and fridge and the like spinning above their heads, threatening to crash down—
Luther is still in the bathroom vomiting. Diego is looking at Vanya like he’s not sure whether or not to pin her sleeve to the bedsheet with a knife or to hug her. Klaus is too out of it to do anything.
In sum total: this family is a hot fucking mess.
But Allison reaches out and takes Vanya’s hand in hers, and Vanya looks up at Allison with bright, wide eyes, terrified as can be, aching for reassurance—
And the furniture starts to descend.
---
At the end of the night, they’re all splayed across the two motel beds and the pull-out couch that Allison managed to Rumor for them, Klaus’ head in Vanya’s lap, Luther leaning slumped against an exhausted Diego, Allison sitting on the sofa staring at them all, feeling the swell of the sun in her throat, California calling her name.
Luther is the one who speaks up first and says, “Welcome to the Umbrella Academy, I guess, Vanya.”
“The Umbrella Academy doesn’t exist anymore, dipshit,” Diego says, and Luther growls at him, an irritated glare in his eyes.
But Allison can see what Luther is trying to say. You’re one of us, now, Luther is saying, and we protect our own.
“Dad must have been drugging you, then,” Klaus says casually to Vanya, conversational as anything. “Glad to hear he fucked us all up.”
Luther opens his mouth as if to argue, to protest, to say that they're not all fucked up, but considering the fact that they're all sprawled out in a single motel room heading west with nothing but the uniforms on their backs and the backpacks all tossed in a pile in the corner of the room, nothing but the open road and the general West Coast as a goal ahead of them, structureless, aimless, free, there's a lot to be wished for, even he has to admit.
Allison, on the other hand, reaches out a hand to Vanya as Allison says, "We're all a bit fucked up, whether we have powers or not. But since you do, too—we can help you figure out what it's like to deal with this shit. And maybe we can all un-fuck it a bit, tomorrow."
Vanya takes her hand with a small smile, Klaus smiles up at the ceiling, and Diego nods in agreement, but Luther won't look Allison in the eyes. He's pissed at her for one reason or another, she knows, and until he's not, he won't look Allison in the eyes.
But she knows that one day, he’ll look at her and he’ll know why she did it.
Why she hoarded them close like a dragon, because there is nothing more precious in the world to her than the siblings that she has left.
---
It takes a few days to make it fully out west. A few days filled with squabbling and stealing from gas stations and all of them making sure that Klaus doesn’t use the “tricks of the trade” he’s learned from getting his drugs or Diego threatening people with his knives in favor of Allison using her Rumor to get them the gas and food that they need.
(Allison can’t help but notice that over the course of the trip, Diego and Luther get more protective of Klaus. More understanding of everything that he’s learned to turn himself over for, just for the sake of keeping the ghosts at bay, just a little bit.)
But then, god—
---
Then, they hit the coast.
They hit the coast, and maybe the first thing that you’re supposed to look for when you reach a new place is shelter, a place to stay, a place to be safe—
But when you are fourteen, and coursing with freedom for the first time, you chase the sun, don’t you? You head straight for the light, for the water, for the air, like a moth to the flame.
California is as sunny and full of palm trees as Allison always dreamed, but what is better than she ever could have imagined is the beach.
The beach, which is brighter and sunnier than the clogged, rainy beachfront back in their hometown on the East Coast, with the summers that never seemed to come and the showers that never seemed to end and which they never got to go to anyway, save for a mission that Klaus nearly drowned in once where they had to deal with some smuggler that made Reginald look like a hero for stopping.
The beach, which they all run for the moment that they manage to park the car, spilling out of the tight vehicle in a wave of cramped limbs and bristling egoes and a need for sun.
Luther is a grump, of course. Nothing like the kid that gave her her necklace when she was a kid. Nothing like the brother that she once thought would be her entire future. He refuses to look at her, refuses to engage with her, but he splashes back at Klaus, nearly drowning him, when Klaus splashes at him.
Klaus bounces back up with a wink to him, because even though Klaus is paler than ever because of the ghosts and withdrawal, he is still the first to throw himself into the jaws of the situation, the first to allow himself to feel something that proves that he is alive.
Vanya is grinning from ear to ear as she shoves her toes into the sand, Diego finally trades away dark colors and gleefully chucks his uniform into the dumpster in favor of a Hawaiian shirt, and Allison, well—
Allison needs oil for her hair and a bonnet to make sure that it doesn’t get drenched with salt water, but she can’t help but smile and get into a volleyball match with her siblings and some strangers, her necklace glittering in the California sun.
And for a brief moment in time, the star halts itself in the sky. The breeze is blowing off of the ocean, tangling their hair and arresting the worst of the heat from their skin. The sand is getting stuck in places that it shouldn’t, but hey—that’s how pearls are made, right?
For one afternoon, they all get to be ordinary teenagers, absolutely free for the first time in their lives, and that is a prize that Allison wouldn’t trade for anything.
---
They find another hotel room for the next week, but by the end of seven days, Allison has her first gig.
Allison wants to become an actress, so she does. Simple as that.
When you have a Rumor, when you have a way to restructure the world at your whim, when you can whisper a word and have your will exerted on people, when you have siblings who need to be taken care of, then you do what you need to in order to make sure you get what you want.
Allison gets her first job, and she knows that she should feel bad about using her rumor to convince the casting director to give her the lead, but she has four siblings to provide a roof for, and she knows a thing or two about fairytales. Mother told them all the stories to help them sleep when they were babies, after all, before father found out and banished it from her source code.
She remembers the story of the Pied Piper. The stories of sirens. The stories, over and over again, of people with magic on their tongues drawing the heroes to their bloody deaths.
Well, Allison’s not killing anyone.
And if her father is allowed to drug her sister because he thinks it’s right, well—
Can’t Allison do the same to keep her siblings safe during the night?
So she gets them an apartment to share, and it’s a childhood dream formed into freedom, but it’s better than anything than they ever had before.
---
It’s not easy to go from being superheroes to going to school, to figuring out how to afford a house on their own, so for awhile, it’s the five of them splitting a one-room apartment together, and it’s not perfect. They end up fighting more nights than not, Diego and Luther most of all.
There’s one night when things get really bad, where their yelling gets the couple who lives beneath them to pound on their door and Allison has to Rumors the neighbors to forget that a bunch of teenagers are living on their own together, and Allison is sorely, sorely tempted to use the rumor to get them to stop fighting, to get them to just fucking listen, to thank her for saving their sorry butts from Reginald Hargreeves.
She could do it so easily. Snap of a fucking finger.
But she looks at Luther, and she remembers the smell of vomit in the restroom and she remembers how silent all of them were under their father, save Five, who literally blinked himself out of existence just for the chance to make his own decisions, because he was roasting like a frog inside of a boiling pot of water and he had to get out of that fucking place, no matter what it cost him.
And she thinks—
We’ve gotta have the chance to be free. To fuck shit up. To make our own decisions.
So she lets them fight. She lets them fight, and she thinks—
I’m not the Pied Piper. I’m not stopping them. I got them out, and we’re here, we’re in fucking Los Angeles, the city of angels, the city of second chances, and we’re never going back to that fucking silence.
---
They do eventually get a house of their own—two bedrooms, but bedrooms of their own, and that's worth something, even if it's a bit outside of the city and requires more memorizing of bus routes—and in celebration, they get drunk one night, age sixteen, off of some champagne that is sent their way, because it’s supposed to be their sweet sixteen, all of them and their shared birthday, and so they celebrate as they want, with what they have.
So, of course, they end up doing the world’s worst karaoke with a thrifted machine in their living room, and they take a bunch of polaroids that Klaus takes it upon himself to attach to the doorjamb of their little house with bits of string.
The storms back in their hometown would such a decoration down in one night, but L.A. has less storms than the East Coast. It is a land of fire instead of storms, a land in which they can all burn, yes, a land where they can all get consumed, but that’s what was going to happen to them in the black hole that was the Umbrella Academy, and at least here, in this place, they have the chance to shine. A chance to be warmed instead of dying in the mausoleum, in the training room, on a fucking mission, torn apart by their own powers—
After the karaoke is over and they've all screeched their way through some trashy pop songs (though Allison would like to think herself a bit more tone-accurate than her siblings), Luther puts on the music for them all to dance.
Now, Luther still has his tendencies to force his will out. To argue with them all. To exert his status as Number One in a way that has Diego snarling at him because “we’re not fucking numbers anymore, Luther, get that through your thick skull, we’re fucking people.”
But there are so many days when he actually feels more like a sibling than a leader, nowadays, like tonight, when he dances with all of them—save Allison, and it scratches at her, it fucking aches, they used to be closer than any of the rest of them, and now Luther won’t even look at her. Meanwhile, he dances with Klaus and Vanya easily—well, it has to be said that Vanya’s a bit awkward, still. Allison wonders if Vanya will ever be comfortable in her own skin or if there will forever be something about her that doesn’t sit quite right underneath of her flesh. If she will always walk like she’s itching at something that cannot be touched.
But still, there is something in Vanya that is beautiful as the music plays and Vanya hums and the objects spin through the air, yes, but unlike the hotel, where they spun without intention, without rhyme or reason, right now they glitter in the air like makeshift disco balls, dancing alongside everyone.
Luther even gets into a dance competition with Diego, and yeah, sure, they’re competing, but they’re laughing at the end instead of trying to dig each other’s eyes out, and that’s an improvement, right? That’s a victory.
(There’s even a moment where Allison thinks that she sees a flicker of Ben, a glimmering, glittering blue, in between dancing with Diego and Klaus and Vanya, evidence of a power finally laid free from the mausoleum that tormented Klaus so terribly.)
And Luther's smiling. They’re all smiling.
And Allison falls into bed at the end of the night tipsy and warm and smiling herself, because these are her siblings, and they’re free, and they’re happy, but—
But Luther won’t look at her.
He won’t look at her, and he won’t dance with her, and it’s a mosquito pin-prick bite to the senses to accept, that the brother she was once closest with won’t look at her. It itches beneath the skin, where she can’t properly scratch it—and if she does scratch it, then it’ll blow back up in her face.
That’s the thing about summer, isn’t it? It brings the mosquitoes. It brings the fire.
The trick is making sure that you don’t end up the fly getting sucked into the buzzing light to get zapped at the end of it all.
You’ve done everything you can to escape; you can’t get trapped again.
---
They all find their own niches here in Los Angeles. Their own places to call home.
And along the way, they fuck up. Of course they fuck up. That’s what you fucking do, when you’re a teenager with superpowers with no parents to tell you what to do, and you and your siblings are trying to figure out who the fuck you are in this world.
---
Diego becomes a fiend at the local high school for javelin throwing and shot put, but it’s not enough, to whet the competitive ache in his bones, the part of him that has spent his entire life in second place jostling for first.
So Diego tends to be the last one home in the evenings, because he spends his loose time hustling guys at the local axe-throwing bar. People around here think that he’s some sort of redneck prodigy, and he’s smirking when he comes home, but it’s still not enough.
Diego needs something that will let him anchor himself. Something that will let him feel like he’s not flying through the air trying to find his target to finally land.
For all that Diego has always protested, he’s the one of them who most desperately wanted to be part of a family. Who wanted a place to call home. He was the one of them that was the closest with Grace, and he misses Grace, Allison knows. He wants nothing more than to reconnect with some sort of family.
After Ben died, he clung to the idea of justice when Luther started to sign himself up for just being their father’s best soldier.
But now that Klaus is sober enough to start summoning Ben into semi-corporeal form every so often, Ben gets to talk to him. He gets to tell them how much he missed them, how much he's happy to see them again, and they can't touch him yet, but Diego gets to see his brother. He gets to have some sort of connection to the boy that they all lost.
And thus, Diego’s need to get justice, to lash out, is assuaged, just slightly.
And he starts to find other ways to be loyal to the family.
Thus, to the surprise of some, Diego decides he wants to learn to cook.
(Hey, for a quarter-life crisis, there are so many worse options someone could go for.)
She finds him out late one night talking to the little old abuelitas who run the place by the waterfront, burning his hands on the pans, learning how to make homemade tortillas and mole and the like.
And he’s smiling in a way that not even axe-throwing could give him.
He’s proud of the burns. Of the chance at connecting with himself, with his past, with something that he can call his own. Of being able to bring tortillas home, a bit overburnt but improving each day, and show off how he can provide for the family, but also himself.
Someday, he'll reconnect with their mother, Allison is sure. She never Rumored Grace, after all.
But for now—Diego is still someone who can flip on the edge of a knife, but his stutter is improving, out here. He’s learning how to cook. He is finding some part of himself.
They all are, really.
---
Klaus goes to parties. Gets into both the good ones and the bad ones. Ends up in the local queer scene, where he learns how to experiment with wearing dresses and skirts and sequins and the sorts of things that Reginald Hargreeves never would let him.
Allison and Diego end up catching Klaus on a date with his first boyfriend, who he's been sneaking around with, half for the fun of it, half because he's not quite ready to bring him home, but Allison doesn’t blame him for not bringing his boyfriend home. For all that they’ve been trying to grow, they’re still growing in fits and starts, path aching when they try to cross it. There are days when siblings fight, when the house feels more warzone than home, and there are days when the addiction hits too hard.
Klaus was only on drugs for about a year, but that’s plenty of time to develop habits, especially when the main trigger is still there and will be forever. The ghosts will never stop haunting him, after all.
But that’s what they’re here for, as his siblings, as his family, even though they're all a bit fucked up in their own ways. To help with his urges, to remind him what it’s like to be touched by the living, to hug and to cuddle and hold his hands.
There are some nights when Allison comes home from set late to find Vanya playing the violin, a habit she’s picked up lately as the one instrument that soothes rather than flares her nightmares, and there are dishes swirling through the air, and it’s a reckless thing to do, dangerous, even, the presence of all of those dishes hovering over their heads, bound to make a fucking mess.
Allison knows that Reginald Hargreeves would discipline the children for acting out of turn, but Klaus is shaking, his fingernails digging into his palms to stop him from turning to substances that he shouldn’t as he murmurs about the ghosts that he sees, and his eyes are following the glimmer of the dishes under the lamps and lights in the house as if they’re haloes of the angels that are keeping him anchored, and Allison thinks—
I wish that man was fucking dead, except if father was dead, then he would haunt Klaus, and like hell am I gonna let that happen.
It would be so tempting to Rumor Klaus to forget the ghosts entirely.
But there are flickers of a corporeal Ben out of the corner of Allison’s eye, a tentacle sliding from the back of his leather jacket to push Klaus’ hair back from his sweaty forehead, and when Diego comes back from night school, he’s there, too, to distract Klaus with shiny objects, to cook dinner for him, to distract the bite of craving with the bite of chiles and the comfort of tortillas and queso, and Luther is even there, as well, because he’s been reading books on addiction, he’s been pouring all of that Teacher’s Pet energy into making sure that his siblings are taken care of.
Klaus made a vow to himself and to them to get sober. To leave the drugs behind. To make the choice, himself, to make sure that things get better. That he could hold off, that he could learn himself on how to battle addiction, because he's determined to find better things to throw himself into.
And so Allison doesn’t do it, she doesn't Rumor him, because yes, it would make things easier, but she can’t do that without asking.
As a matter of fact, looking at all of them, feeling Klaus shaking against her side when she herself slides in to take her turn cuddling him, she makes a promise to herself: she’ll never rumor them. She’ll never take that choice away from any of them ever again.
When Allison wakes up the next morning, it’s to Klaus passed out with his head on Diego’s stomach on the living room floor, both of them surrounded by Vanya and Allison and Luther and a pile of blankets and pillows that the three of them had picked up, because even though she managed to buy a house with two bedrooms with bunk beds for the boys (they’d requested them) and twin beds for her and Vanya, she can’t remember the last time that any of them slept alone save Luther.
Ben is sitting at the top of the pillow, looking down at all of them with that ghostly blue glowing smile, and some part of Allison thinks—
I think this is what a miracle looks like.
---
Luther’s still somewhat of the head of the family, opposite Allison. He’s the one that makes sure that they all are getting their G.E.D.s, even Klaus, even though they all know that Klaus has every plan in the universe other than to go to college.
There isn’t anything really enforcing his rule, though. They aren’t numbers anymore. They are people, with names, and they don’t have to listen.
And it chafes at Luther, Allison knows, that she has the mechanic to get them to listen and he does not, that he has no power or authority left save what they give to him.
But she thinks that it might be satisfying for Luther, to finally have people listen to him because they care instead of because he’s forcing them to.
(At least, Allison thinks she might be learning the same thing herself. At least when it comes to her siblings. Everyone else—they feel separate, almost. But when she thinks about Rumoring any of her siblings, something inside of her protests, and protests loudly.)
Still—it’s different, outside of the family, for Luther. He thinks he still has the respect and power and protection that being a superhero gives someone, but here, they don’t have domino masks and the prestige of Reginald Hargreeves’ name and their own reputations behind them. They just have themselves, and their family, and what they make for themselves.
And that can’t protect you from everything.
Hell, it can’t protect you from much at all.
Luther gets his heart broken by a starlet he meets when he visits Allison on set one day, and let it not be said that Allison is not a supportive sister.
Allison might have promised herself not to Rumor her siblings, not anymore, but that rule doesn't apply to others. Allison Rumors the girl into slipping and falling on some fake blood on the ground, because no one fucks her brother over like that.
And Luther says that he doesn’t approve of it, but he was sobbing his heart out the night before and tonight he’s smiling, and he still won't look at her, and something in Allison’s heart crunches, because she wants to know that her brother loves her, that she hasn't destroyed everything between them, but for now—
Well, for now, she's done what she can to help Luther. And that has to be worth something.
---
Vanya is still figuring out who the hell that she is.
As a matter of fact, it turns out that Vanya is more he than she.
Allison greets Viktor Hargreeves with wide arms, with the only suggestion that if Viktor’s choosing a new name, why can’t all of them choose a better last name?
But Viktor makes the point: The thing about the name Hargreeves is that it’s the one that Reginald gave them all to take ownership of them, but it’s also the name that binds them together as siblings. DNA wouldn’t do such a thing, but what they choose? The ties that they vow to bind? That's something that makes them a family, through thick and through very, very thin.
So their last name is something about them that is theirs despite, not because. It's theirs because they dig their nails in, because they care and will be damned if they get separated from each other.
Viktor is far more comfortable in his skin, now. He hasn’t worn a skirt since the day that they ended up in California, able to shed some part of their former lives, but there is something breathtaking about how much easier he breathes now. Sure, he’s a bit schlubby in how he dresses, but other than Klaus, all of her brothers are, and Allison would rather have more brothers than lose a sibling entirely, that’s for sure. She doesn’t love Viktor any less than she loved Vanya.
When Viktor comes out to Allison, Allison wraps her arms around Viktor’s shoulders and tugs him in and says, “I’m glad I got you out of that fucking place.”
Viktor grins into Allison’s shoulder and it’s all Viktor, not Vanya, that says, “So that I could keep annoying you forever?”
“Sounds like a great plan to me,” says Klaus, their resident expert on eternity and the pace of forever, the way that death can look a little bit like life when your best friend is a ghost that you just chill with.
Diego and Luther are just as supportive, it must be said, embracing their new brother with open arms. Months in L.A. have gotten them all used to each other, more loyal to each other, each other's only foundation in a city far away from everything that they all know, and to see each other happy is the most that they could ever ask for.
(Allison has a slightly less rosy view the first time that her brothers come home from shooting off fireworks in a quarry about an hour away, half-drunk, the edges of hair singed off, especially since half of the fireworks were just Viktor and Diego having fun with their powers, but she supposes that it’s far better that boys will be boys like this rather than shoving shit down and repressing it until it boils out like all of them used to do.
To see all four of them laughing with each other is the most that she could have asked for when she got them all out of that fucking haunted house.)
---
Allison gets cast in a somewhat risque play when she’s eighteen. It’s the perfect way to expand her image, she thinks. The perfect way to open up a whole new world for herself beyond the Disney-teenage-star mold.
She ends up in a room with a producer that is way too touchy-feely, a hand lingering on her shoulder for far too long, trapping her in the corner of the stage where she can't move out of the stoplight. They’re in front of a crowd of cast and crew, and yet, he’s okay with doing it, because he knows that she can’t move, and she plans on getting out of that fucking hellhole as quickly as she can, but she can't get him to stop, she wants out of this fucking place, and she thinks—
It was fucked up, what I did to Luther when we were younger. That I took away what he wanted. That I stopped him from moving.
Allison’s throat locks up. She can’t use the Rumor. She can’t do this. Not again—
Something flies through the room and smashes the actor in the head. He gets out and his understudy replaces him and Allison looks up to see Viktor standing there, arms crossed over his chest, one of those ragged denim-jacket-hoodie combos that he loves so much slouched over his shoulders.
"You want me to do something about that asshole?" Viktor asks, and Allison thinks about the furniture flying through the air in a motel room, about how much it felt to finally feel free for the first time, about the ache of feeling trapped.
And she thinks—I don't regret getting us out, but doing that to Luther, trapping him—
"You've done plenty," Allison says, and offers her brother a smile. "Thanks, really."
"No problem, sis," Viktor says, offering her up an awkward fist bump, and Allison returns it, because she's happy to have her brothers like this at the end of the day instead of the constant competition and resentment that they had back in the Academy.
---
Allison goes home and she sits down opposite Luther and she says, “I’m sorry, y’know.” It's the first time that she's ever apologized, she thinks, and certainly the first time that she's meant it.
Luther arches an eyebrow. "For what?" he asks, "If this is about what happened last week with the alcohol, you know that I know that it was Klaus and Diego who tried to set off that rocket in the backyard—"
How much have they grown, that Luther isn't freaking out and trying to tell some authority figure about an incident like that.
How much have they grown, that this house is one without an authority figure, unlike schools and theaters and the like.
"For the Rumor," Allison says.
And Luther swallows, hard. "Which one?" he asks, but it's clear that he knows which one that she's talking about.
"The first one," Allison says, "The one that got us out here. I can't regret bringing us out here, but I—I should have tried to ask, more. Done something else to get you out here. You needed to be here, with all of us, to be free, and I never would have forgiven myself if we'd left you there, but I—no one deserves to have their ache trapped like that. Manipulated that."
Luther looks at her. Really looks at her, staring hard into her, gaze piercing in a way that it never was sitting in that tent together as children, finding some tiny sliver of solace in each other. "I hated you for a long time, y'know. I hated you for taking it all away from me. For stealing who I was out from under me. For taking my very thoughts away from me."
And the fact of the matter is: "I do know, actually," Allison says, voice quiet.
"But I—" Luther swallows. "I don't forgive you. And I don't know if I ever will." Allison's heart crunches at that, but she knows that she needs to listen. That she needs to let Luther speak. And something inside of her heart surges as he says: "But I get why you did what you did, back then. Because I wouldn't have left. I wouldn't have done anything but follow father to my doom. And these last four years, living with everyone, getting to know Viktor and Diego and Klaus—we never could have had that, back in father's house. And the idea of living without this mess of a family—I can't imagine it without feeling cold, deep down."
Allison swallows. She knows that she isn't owed forgiveness, not when she hurt him like that, but maybe, going forward, this can be something better.
"So...we try to build something from now on out?"
Luther nods, and it's a hard thing to work through, but they're eighteen. They're still so young and yet so old and so haunted at the same time. It feels like they've been through so much, and yet, they still have so many years to figure stuff out. "With both of us talking things through?"
"We're going to have to, with the siblings we have to work with," Allison says, but she's not able to keep the fondness out of her voice.
But then again, Luther is smiling, too, and when she offers out a hand, an olive branch, a peace offering, he takes it.
---
One night, Viktor sneaks them all up the hill to the Hollywood sign.
It’s highly illegal. Totally dangerous. Pretty much guaranteed to get them all caught and arrested.
But there’s something kind of extraordinary about the fact that none of them use their powers to make it up here.
As kids, they were forced to push themselves up the staircase, chasing each other, competing with each other, cheating to win their father’s affection—
Viktor puts all of that work shaping his body to his own vision of himself into getting up the hill himself. Diego still has strong arms from the axe-throwing and the tortilla-kneading. Luther helps Klaus up the mountain, pushing him forward. Ben is standing at the top of the mountain, smirking at them all, a shining beacon of stubbornness for all of them.
And Viktor reaches out a hand for Allison, who is still strong, but who can ever turn down a hand like this?
They make it to the top and Klaus pulls out a tattoo gun. “I was thinking about turning the umbrellas into something better. Getting something that Viktor could have, too.”
And Allison thinks—this is the life that they never could have had, back in their hometown, under their father’s roof.
Sure, they’re making mistakes. Sure, they’re fucking up. They’ll never stop doing such things. It’s kind of the MO of the entire family.
But when they’re fucking up, at least they’re making the decisions themselves.
So she's the first to stretch out her hand, offering up her wrist and the offending tattoo to Klaus. "Do your worst," she says, but it kind of sounds like do your best, because she believes in Klaus and his best.
---
Five pops back into their lives when they’re all eighteen.
He says that he’s twenty-five. That he’s been stuck in the apocalypse for twelve long, long years without them. That he’s to protect them, to make sure the world doesn’t end, that they don’t die before he can see them again—
Klaus immediately yanks him into a hug, Diego tosses the food in the oven because Five is small and skinny and needs some meat on his bones, Luther turns the music on, Viktor grabs out the milk to have with Diego's cooking, Allison grabs out the pillows and blankets, and Ben pops into being in order to also wrap Five in a hug—tentacles included as extra arms in the group hug.
Five protests—he’s older, now, he’s their older brother, they have to listen to him—but Allison grins because she knows that no one will listen to him and let go.
Because this is what matters—holding onto your siblings. Making sure that they know that they are loved and that you aren’t going anywhere. That as much as you want to leave, to fly, to escape, you will always stay with them, for them.
Allison doesn’t need a Rumor to make sure that her siblings are together anymore. She knows what it takes to keep a person close, and it’s not rumors, it’s not power—it’s the sort of reckless, chosen loyalty that comes from digging your nails into the people you love and hugging them close and letting them know that you’re never going to leave them.
In the end, it’s a cuddle pile, all of them sprawled over Five, even Ben glowing bright, neon blue, and Five’s complaining and protesting like an old man wanting the kids to get off his lawn, but he’s smiling.
Allison is sure that Five is as fucked up as the rest of them, but if there is something that the past four years have proven to her, it's that they all know how to make life work even when they're straining at the seams. There is always a coast. There is always a breeze coming off of the ocean.
There are always fireflies where one once only saw flies bursting against the flames.
What matters is that for the first time in eighteen years, Allison’s siblings are all together and here and free.
I will survive the wrong
I've done. All the love
that didn't serve me.
My youth used up worshiping mercurial
myopics. I've cried a lot
very briefly. This sorrow has helped
make my career. Yes, I'm a difficult person
to endure, I hardly manage.
Oh hum, the rest of my life
keeps coming. It feels just
like I knew it would.
-Leila Chatti, Goatsong