Pretty heavy mental health stuff in this chapter; please read at your discretion.

Also, this chapter's actual title is 3-1=2. Apparently FFnet is fine with the minus sign in a chapter title but not the equals sign?

1961

It was an accident. Allison felt like that was all she'd been writing for the last hour.

Ray's music professor friend was frowning at her severely, and Allison wished, not for the first time, that Ray hadn't had a class to teach. In hindsight, dropping her off with Miss Sheila and disappearing off to some lecture hall with a wave and a smile wasn't a good idea. He'd looked surprised but pleased when she knocked on the doorframe of his office an hour ago. It had made her feel like she was doing the right thing by following up. Now, Allison was facing down a stranger in an empty choir rehearsal room and seriously starting to worry she wasn't going to be able to half-truth herself out of this one. So much for this being the right decision.

Sheila was staring back at her like Allison was only digging herself deeper with this piece of scratch paper and pencil. It took a hell of a lot of her acting skills just to stare back defiantly. As if Allison wasn't piecing her story together as their conversation unfolded. As if they both didn't know that.

My voice is starting to come back. I need help, though. Allison kept her face neutral as she held the paper up.

Sheila's chin lifted slightly. "I'll help you. But I want the truth first."

Allison glared back this time. Trying to explain to Sheila how she'd managed to sever her vocal cords was already a challenge. Allison hadn't been ready for it when the flashbacks started. The more Sheila pressed, the worse they got and faster they ran through Allison's mind.

Sheila knew that her pointed questions were eliciting a response, of course. That was why she kept asking. Allison was sure the other woman could see it in the tense set of her jaw and the occasional hand tremors as Allison wrote out her curt answers.

"This isn't a negotiation," Sheila added.

I don't want to tell you. Allison flashed it at her like a warning sign.

"Yeah, I know."

Vanya had moved so quickly Allison still didn't have a clear concept of what had gone down in that moment. There had been a searing, swift pain across her throat, and then she was trying to scream but nothing was coming out. Her hands had reached for her neck of their own accord, and the slick, thick flow of her own blood washing over them and down her arms was about the last thing she remembered clearly. Allison was pretty sure she hit the floor soon after; then it was all brief flashes of light breaking through a claustrophobic darkness. Her ears rung incessantly in the nothingness, and she'd heard screaming that wasn't hers, and something was shaking her body. Of course, within minutes even those sensations faded out into the blackness beyond.

She'd woken up to a nightmare of silence and cages after that, and now her mind flashed to being in the basement again for the first time in twenty-five years and shoving at Luther with all her weight, trying to get him to move. Her throat aching in time with the movements…

And Vanya…she'd been falling apart in that room… Allison hadn't been able to save her.

Allison blinked a few times involuntarily and came back to the bright choir room. Sheila was watching her, still waiting for her to answer, taking in Allison's silence and panic with knowing eyes. "Was it your boyfriend? Husband? Is this why you left New York?" And before Allison could even think about how to deny all of that, Sheila added, "You aren't going to lie to me; if you're running from someone, if you need some protection, that's step one. Don't think you're going to come in here and get your voice back and disappear to handle this all on your own. The truth. Now. I won't help you without it."

If Allison wasn't already so strung out, Sheila's demanding worry would have been touching. But in light of all the missteps that had led her to this point, someone else's blatant concern for her well-being just made Allison feel like she wanted to curl into herself and try to scream.

It was clear that she didn't have a choice though. She needed her voice—the end. You can't repeat this to anyone. Not even Ray.

Sheila immediately nodded.

Reluctantly, her hand shaking slightly, Allison started to write. It was my sister. We got in an argument, and she lashed out. She cut my neck on accident, and my vocal cords were damaged. Our brothers found me and got me medical care. We were all separated soon after, and my sister still thinks I'm angry. It was all a big misunderstanding. I'm here in Dallas looking for all of them, but especially her. I'm worried about her, and I need my voice back so that I can find her. She needs me.

That definitely hadn't been what Sheila was expecting based on the vacuous silence that followed as the other woman's eyes swiftly scanned the lines.

It was an accident. Allison wrote it again and underlined the words. Then added, even though every word hurt, I love her, and she really, really needs me. So I need you.

Sheila read those words in silence, eyed Allison for another moment, and then nodded. Her whole demeanor immediately shifted from severe and doubtful to severe and businesslike. She motioned for Allison to follow her. "Alright then. Let's get started."

000

1962

This time, Luther was walking through the dark house and the floors wouldn't stop creaking under his feet. There also didn't seem to be any light switches in the usual places, and as Luther made his way into the shadowy upper gallery, he put his hands out instinctively to feel for the banisters.

Ahead of him was a big empty space, blacker than the air around it somehow, and he was being drawn toward it reluctantly. (He shouldn't have been surprised; this was the way it usually went.) And he was horrified but not surprised to reach the walkway that overlooked the foyer and see the massive chandelier on the ground, its shattered pieces glowing so brightly from the busted lightbulbs that he had to squint and shield his eyes.

"Number One." His blood ran cold at the voice. (Yet another common theme.) "Come down here at once."

And Luther was moving again, drawn down the stairs, back into the dark shadows and headed toward the light at the bottom. When he hit the foyer, he came face to face with himself. Three layers of heavy clothing, yesterday's five o'clock shadow, his oversized hands balled into tense fists. His pale eyes staring back with a dead look.

And, just as he'd suspected, when Other-Luther opened his mouth, Dad's voice came out. "I have a mission for you. Report to my study when you've changed out of those rags you're wearing."

Another chance. Maybe this time. His voice still broke on the words. "I-I don't w-want to."

Other-Luther's expression didn't change. But his tone matched Dad's easy, manipulative style of questioning perfectly. The kind that always seemed to reach into Luther's skull and squeeze until his mind was a fog. "Why not?"

"Because…I can't—" And then his voice cut out. He'd messed it up again. He could; he was just refusing to, plain and simple. And every time Luther failed to admit it during these Dad-centric nightmares, his voice choked off shortly after.

Now, Luther stared expectantly back at not-himself, waiting for the inevitable.

"Number One, you have disappointed me—"

I know, he wanted to say amidst the twisty feelings waking up in his gut.

"—I expected better."

The feelings got worse. And for the first time since Luther had started experiencing this particular recurring nightmare, a moment later it actually was Dad standing in front of him.

It was hard not to flinch. Luther had forgotten how small his father was, how fragile he'd looked even four years before his death. Before his suicide. As soon as Luther corrected himself, Dad smeared sideways for just a moment, ribbons of skin peeling back to show the muscle and bone underneath, and then they glitched back into place and Dad was fixing him with that penetrating stare he reserved only for his Number One. "I raised you to fight and to lead—"

"I did what you asked me to do." His voice was a pathetic whisper. He was surprised he'd even been able to say anything at all.

And as the world around him started to shake, Luther stared down at his last face-to-face memory of his father, the one that he'd carried with him up into space. This version of Dad, in this dreamworld, was nothing more than a corpse. Luther knew it intuitively the way he knew this was the end of the dream and he was about to jolt himself awake again. And as they stared at each other in one long moment of desperation, at least on his part, Luther felt his expectations sink again.

Even now, they were getting nowhere. It didn't even matter that Dad was gone out there, in the real world beyond Luther's closed eyelids. The truth was, no amount of old age or his children's fear and adoration would have ever driven their father to change. Not even the apocalypse he'd ended up setting in motion himself.

It was over.

And Luther jolted awake back in the dim hotel room.

His heart was pounding and his head hurt, and he must have been moving around in his sleep because his shoulder felt like a million pins were digging into the muscles. And when he tried to readjust, he realized his right arm had gone to sleep. Now it was sending pinpricks up and down on that side.

It was all he could do to roll over, stare at the ceiling, and wait for the nerves to stop crawling under his skin. At this point, he had enough experience from trying to figure out how to live in this altered body to know that he was just going to have to ride the discomfort out. It was easy to lay the wrong way and cut off circulation; he'd woken up many times in the lunar capsule with weird sensations in random parts of his torso.

The faint sound of water running in the background was reassuring. It meant that Vanya was in the bathroom and hadn't just seen him startle awake like an alarmed Chihuahua. It wouldn't have been the first time.

Ten days into this and Luther was more tired than he had ever been in his entire life. With Vanya's request to delay training, even his minimal plans had come to a standstill. The knowledge that he should be doing something wove itself through the uneven sleep and wake cycle he was caught up in. Even when he slept, he didn't really sleep. It felt more like walking in a foggy circle forever.

The bathroom door opened quietly, and he closed his eyes as Vanya's soft footsteps padded over the carpeting. Her covers rustled a few seconds later. Half a minute followed before the silence was broken by the loud crunch of an apple.

This was the flip side of the nightmares. He knew Vanya's sleep schedule was just as shitty as his, but that was about it. She mostly seemed to exist in the background, floating just out of reach while he spent his groggy waking hours listing off the ways in which he'd failed his family. Luther knew there was still something deeper going on with her, but he hadn't quite figured out what it was yet. Mostly, though, he just slept and tried to give her the space he'd started taking for himself.

He knew things objectively, of course. Like how he should feel ashamed that it had been over a week and the most productive things he'd done were re-upping their room reservation and making another grocery run. He should feel like a failure for not being able to stop the apocalypse—for pushing it forward, actually. All his years of training and leadership had culminated in this mess. His mind went over and over and over what he could have done differently, but none of the alternatives actually sunk their teeth in.

He thought about Dad often. And Pogo too. (But not nearly as much as he dreamed about them.) He mulled over the months post-accident when just walking around was enough to give him vertigo, and rewound to stolen moments pre-accident when he'd been briefly, searingly conscious of the overwhelming loneliness. It had been most noticeable up in the lunar capsule, but if he was being honest, it had always been there. It was the one void Luther hadn't been able to mold their father to fill.

Then were was Allison. Luther probably thought about her too much. He was lukewarm worried, halfway mad at himself for his stubbornness after finding her in the cabin. And maybe just a little bit betrayed too. She was the person he'd been closest to growing up. Being around her felt like something deep in his chest caught fire, burning and burning, reshaping the stress and fear and weird situations of their childhood until the craziness was bearable. Then she'd left home without him—they hadn't even talked about it before she just up and went—and he'd realized how fragile their relationship was. Probably how one-sided too. So being around her unexpectedly with fresh grief and half-forgotten memories between them had been hard. He'd been tempted to confront her about it, confess the feelings they both knew he hadn't been able to starve out, and be done with it. The fallout couldn't have been any worse than sitting on the moon, thousands of miles away from earth, and only being able to think about her. Now, though, even these feelings were fuzzier the closer he got to them. He saw them clearly at a distance, but every time he tentatively reached out to connect, they broke apart and vanished in a puff of smoke.

Lastly, Luther also knew that, deep down, he was annoyed that Vanya lashed out and then just left. Allison indicated again and again that Vanya had reacted to something she'd said or done, that Allison had been the one to push too far. But if Vanya had really been concerned, why had she left their sister there to bleed out alone? Shouldn't she have still been there when they arrived? Again, he knew in the back of his mind that it didn't add up, much the same way her current behavior didn't.

For the millionth time, he laid there and turned the thoughts over in his mind, already knowing that the pieces were all from separate puzzles and ultimately weren't ever going to fit together. He eventually lost interest again, and Luther let it all go and rolled over. For now, it was enough to lie in bed and drift in and out of consciousness.

000

September 2, 1963

"…ask what you can do for your country…ask what you can do for your country…ask what you can do for your country… ask what you can do for your…"

It had been a long night.

But as the sunrise flooded over the buildings of downtown, Diego knew where he was now. And he knew when he was.

With that basic information secured, he had a lot to do. And he knew exactly what he needed to do first.

Big oof. I was not expecting to take this long to update. And, unfortunately, my schedule is still pretty busy, so it'll probably be a hot minute before I'm back with another chapter. But I'm working on it, I promise!

I couldn't resist putting a Big Bang Theory reference in here if anything sounded familiar. Sheldon startling awake and Leonard's "It's like living with a Chihuahua" line lives rent-free in my head.

As always, thank you to Katie and Jess for beta-ing!

Thanks so much for you review, Anonymous00! Sorry for the wait, and I love reading your thoughts!

Thanks for reading!