1960

Ben was leaning against one of the pillars out of Klaus's line of sight, listening in half-horror, half-grudging amusement. He'd considered being distracting and trying to disrupt the holy prophet's sermon—which was a group of words he'd never thought he'd have to string together in relation to his brother's insanity—but he was tired today.

He'd been noticing he felt things—sensations he hadn't felt since he was alive—more and more in the last few months. Ben didn't have any misconceptions, of course. He knew it was all tied to his brother's abilities surfacing the longer he was off the drugs.

"My baby don't mess around me, because she loves me so. And this? I know for sure…" Klaus's voice drifted lyrically from the back parlor.

Ben bonked his head—as much as he could—against the pillar. Klaus wasn't even trying to switch up the cadence. He wasn't doing anything but spouting nonsense and bestowing Y2K era "blessings" on Mrs. Randolph and her debutante friends.

"And what's cooler than being cool?" Klaus finally asked, beginning the closing call and response. "I can't hear you, what's cooler than being cool?"

"Ice cold." The solemn voices answering during the closing benediction was a far cry from listening to "Hey Ya!" on Diego's Walkman in secluded corners of the house. Rocking out in snatches of moments away from Dad and training and schoolwork.

Ben fell into step beside Klaus as soon as his brother swept around the corner, power-walking back to his room in the flowing white robes he'd recently adopted. His Pete Wentz occult persona had shifted into a benignly spiritual, Jesus-but-actually-white this-time look. His hair was getting longer too, curling more languidly from the crown of his head. He hadn't seemed to notice yet.

"Don't say anything." Klaus shut the door before Ben could enter after him.

Having to walk through it only served to annoy Ben more. Which was why Klaus had done it. But Ben strolled in coolly anyway, temper still kept carefully in check. "Are you talking about the continued lying or the fact that you just desecrated one of the masterpieces of our youth?"

"La, la, la, la…" It was a good thing Mrs. Randolph was used to Klaus talking to himself by now. "Can't hear you!"

"Your head is empty; you couldn't block me out of you tried!"

"Are you sure? Cuz I've had the worst case of earworm the past few days. Something about a Mr. Cotton Eye Joe?"

"Don't." As if their generation hadn't been scarred enough by that song already.

Klaus waved him off with a gloating smirk and went about settling into a yoga pose.

Ben couldn't remember the last time Klaus had been so consistently dedicated to deflecting. And it was starting to not sit right with him. His brother hadn't spiraled back into drugs or drinking, Ben knew that much. Which left the uncomfortable truth between them.

"You're still unlocking more of your powers, aren't you?" They'd talked at length the first few weeks here about what Dad had said to him that night Klaus had been mowed down and hit his head so hard he'd woken up in a strange black and white world. Klaus hadn't taken Dad's comments very seriously at the time, not even after manifesting Ben in the theater.

But he was starting to now.

"You know, I kind of like it." Klaus didn't bother to open his eyes, fingers pinched together on his knees in meditation. "Who knew one could get used to and successfully wield the powers they've had since birth? Fantastico."

But Klaus didn't know what he was doing. And if it was true that he was standing on the tip of a very large iceberg of potential power that he didn't understand, Ben could imagine his brother finding other self-destructive ways to block it out.

"It's okay to admit you're scared."

"Pass." Klaus only outright laughed when he was backed into a corner. He was laughing now. "And I'm not scared."

"Keeping up with this, lying to these people, it's not going to make it better. You're going to find things out about yourself that you don't like either way." Ben hesitated, but ultimately decided it was worth it to add, "Unless you go back to your old habits, this isn't going to stop. You need to figure out a way to get used to that. You have the choice to explore this on your terms this time. It's gonna be okay."

Klaus sighed, eyes still closed. "Where did you come from? Where did you go?"

Ben stalked back through the closed door before Klaus could get the song stuck in his head.

He went instead in search of Mrs. Randolph and her guests and took an empty seat in their midst. They'd retired to one of her more formal living rooms and were gushing about the "service" they'd just been a part of. It was nice to know that Klaus's benefactor genuinely cared about his well-being. Ben spent quite a bit of time among their group and was pleased that so far, at least, her patronage was sincere. She honestly believed that Klaus had special gifts, and her friends had nothing but the utmost respect for him. A man who was currently running for governor was expounding on how amazing it was what she'd done for Klaus. "An impressive, wise young man, truly ahead of his time…"

Ben snickered despite himself.

Like most things that Klaus did, this had already gone way too far, and they still had a long way to go before they reached the other side of it. And as Ben sat back and let the conversation drift over him, he couldn't help the nerves that told him this wasn't going to end well.

000

1961

"You can't come." Odessa threw her cardigan over her arm, dressed to the nines, one eyebrow raised in anticipation. She'd been trying to sneak out of the house without being noticed. It hadn't worked.

Allison waved her hands in a way that said, Why not?

Her throat had stopped aching all the time, even if it sometimes still hurt to drink water. And she couldn't talk yet, but she could wander around Odessa's salon and sweep up hair. So she was, in theory, well enough to go walk down the street with other people.

"Because you're angry." Odessa crossed her arms.

Allison had been here two months already. This was the first protest Odessa was attending since the night they met.

Allison made another And? motion. Of course she was angry; they all were!

"No, you want to be out there to be angry. But this is a peaceful protest." Odessa didn't look moved by Allison crossing her own arms in annoyance. "Just because you're trying to hide it from me doesn't mean I haven't noticed. I can see it in your eyes. You're not ready to keep it in check yet. You still need some time to cool down."

No, she needed to be out there helping. In fact, this was the one time in her life that Allison felt like she actually could make a change for the good with her powers. Sure, she was still mute. And she may or may not have been channeling her restless energy at night into thinking of all the ways she could rectify what was going on in Dallas with her rumors. But Odessa and her friends had welcomed Allison into their lives and confidence, and Allison hated what she was hearing from them.

She was beginning to realize that maybe she'd never actually had friends before. Her relationship with her siblings was different, and Hollywood was…well, Hollywood. Odessa had just decided that she liked Allison, and there was no end to her support and love. Allison wanted desperately to return it.

She was also really, really mad.

"Just…rest," Odessa's tone turned placating. "I'll be back soon. We can talk more about this then, okay?"

Allison did not like this idea, but she'd also had another bad morning of suddenly, heart-wrenchingly missing Claire, and her emotions were giving off little sparks all over the place. She hadn't realized how close she was to bursting into tears until right then. So she pursed her lips and nodded, suddenly willing Odessa to leave faster. When the other woman didn't move, Allison did a gentle shooing motion with her hands and breathed a voiceless sigh of relief when the door closed and she was alone in the house.

000

1962

Luther finally gave up debating with himself and just left the note on the twin bed nearest the bathroom. Neither of them had really officially chosen which one they would take, but he wanted to make sure Vanya saw it when she came out of the bathroom.

Then he grabbed his key and headed out. They needed to eat again. It was past lunchtime, and Luther could feel that it had been hours since breakfast. His head was pounding from the fall and all the walking and given how Vanya had dove into those pancakes earlier, she was probably getting hungry too.

He'd insisted she take a shower first. The brilliant white of her suit coat and pants had been thoroughly stained gray from the rubble of the disintegrating theater and rainwater of the alleyway and she looked miserable. His clothes had fared better, plus he was less likely to be bothered out on the street. Nobody wanted to take him on once they got a good enough look at him.

And as he stumbled down the sunlit street, trying to think on his feet while his head continued to spin, Luther imagined Five's dense, sudden rage like a star going supernova, and sighed. They'd gotten themselves into some pretty deep shit this time.

Or, maybe, actually, Luther might have.

My fault, Allison had said. Well, technically written. She'd been telling him the same thing, consistently, after she woke up. But Luther hadn't wanted to believe her. He'd still been trapped in the loop of Allison sprawled on the floor. Eyes open. Her blood sticky and cold and all over her chest…

It wasn't like he'd felt good about putting Vanya into that room and watching her crying on the other side of the glass. His actions hadn't been about revenge or anger but rather a response to the horrifying information that Pogo had told them, the scent of which had still been all over his hands and definitely still caked under his fingernails.

Sometimes leaders needed to do things they didn't like and didn't want to have to do. And putting Vanya—temporarily—into the one place they thought could hold her safely had definitely been one of them.

So he'd been more than a little shocked to open his eyes in the alley and see Vanya huddled a few feet from him. She'd looked exhausted and scared, and all he could think, at first, was that he couldn't believe she was sitting there. Even saying her name out loud and watching her pull her eyebrows together in response hadn't done much more than deepen his confusion. He'd been intent on protecting Vanya in the few moments between falling through the portal and passing out in the rain, but the fact that she'd awoken before him and then hadn't run, had stayed with him…

The last time she'd been conscious, she'd been actively trying to kill them all. But in that alley, she'd been calm. Nothing like the cool, raw power she'd displayed in the theater. Nothing like the anger that had ripped through their crumbling home. The anger that had bodily lifted Pogo and forced his chest through the antlers over the mantle.

Luther flinched despite himself as he ducked into a plain mom-and-pop grocery store a few blocks away from their hotel. He'd briefly pushed watching their caretaker die to the back of his mind in light of everything else. He hadn't been prepared for the image to go through his mind again or the confusing and conflicting feelings that went with it. He wanted Pogo to still be alive, obviously. But from there…Luther didn't know what exactly he was feeling. He'd thought Pogo, at least, had loved them. That he'd loved Luther and wanted what was best for him. They'd gotten close once everyone had left home, closer still after the monstruous effects of the healing serum.

But the truth was, Pogo had been lying to them all these years, and then he'd thought he could just…could just take over staying with Allison? No way. It had hurt, but Luther had realized in those moments that he didn't trust Pogo anymore. And not even just because of Vanya, but because of all of it. The sham moon mission, the assisted suicide, and only now coming forward with vital information after one of them had almost been killed.

Pogo had the perfect chance to make things right after Dad died. He could have told Luther what had really been going on rather than waiting in the wings for him to discover the stash of unopened bags under the floorboards himself. Luther would have forgiven him immediately; that was the worst part. He was fairly sure that Vanya would have felt similarly about her own secrets. Vanya, the last person Luther would have ever imagined would do what she had done in response.

But Pogo was a liar who was also now dead, and he'd taken the whole world with him. And Luther couldn't remember the last time he'd had this specific clenching in his stomach, the anxiety telling him that it was important now more than ever that he get this right. Which probably also included hashing out that disastrous twenty-four hours pre-jump with Vanya. When she'd crossed over into a place that Luther didn't understand and didn't know how to access. After he'd… Well, after he'd done what he'd done. For as much as Luther hadn't meant to hurt her, and was really just trying to buy some time to figure out her intentions and what in the hell was going on with her lately, it wasn't lost on him that she'd gone off the deep end after their "hug" in the foyer.

The sound of Ross Geller desperately yelling "Pivot!" had echoed intermittently through his mind since he regained consciousness. Per usual, Allison had been right and he'd been wrong. And rather than allow himself to be swallowed by the leviathan worry that opened its jaw over his head about where Allison was and what might have happened to her, he forced himself to remember Vanya back in the hotel room. Vanya who Allison had believed in. Vanya who had turned around and still believed in him.

Luther knew he wasn't a genius by any stretch of the imagination. But he was smart enough to know that Vanya had deliberately made a choice last night. And she'd chosen him. Besides Dad designating him Number One, nobody had ever consciously chosen Luther over something or someone else. Not when it was all said and done. And certainly not after he'd done something to cross them.

So while he wasn't anywhere near ready to completely abandon his wariness, Luther wasn't going to make the same mistake twice. And this time, he was going to choose Vanya back.

All hail Katie, beta queen.

Also, a quick rant session because all the character bashing is driving me crazy—Luther Hargreeves is a big, dumb himbo who loves his family way too much and doesn't always make the best choices because of it. I think he has just as much of a rich and complex character arc as the other siblings, and I wish the show would have gone more into the fact that, as Diego says, he's such a "sensitive bastard." And I love that for him because it drives his character development more than anything else. That's also why I think he could actually be a really good brother now that he's not trying to earn *Reggie's* love. —Thank you for reading my rant.

And, as always, thanks for reading in general!