A/N: We're back!

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Disclaimer: Blargh!

Luther groaned, wishing more than anything that he could will himself back to sleep, but no matter how hard he wished or how long he kept his eyes shut and his body as determinedly relaxed as possible, sleep would not return.

Four years ago, in the bad old days of his time in this awful new reality, he'd have probably resorted to drinking just about anything remotely alcoholic just to get another precious hour of sleep, just to let him forget the fact that Sloane wasn't sleeping next to him – that she was gone forever, and he would never see her again no matter how desperately he searched or how feverishly he planned. And the drinking would have carried on through the day after that, and the day after that, until he finally ran himself into the ground and ended up back in rehab. It had happened before, and it could happen again; as long as he still remembered Sloane and the brief happiness they'd shared before she'd been snatched away from him, there'd always be that chance for a relapse.

And the relapse would always be disastrous, because he kept forgetting that he didn't have the benefit of his former body or his powers, so he didn't have the same alcohol tolerance that had allowed him to walk on after drinking his way through most of Reginald's cellar. How he'd ever end up missing his huge, clumsy gorilla body was beyond him, but somehow, it had become yet another sign of everything that had been taken from him.

By rights, he shouldn't have even started drinking again after what had happened the last time: he'd never forget that charming morning after, when he'd woken up with the mother of all hangovers, lying naked next to a complete stranger who assumed that he'd been wearing a gorilla costume with a hole in the crotch, and Klaus had started ringing a town crier's bell and congratulating him for popping his cherry.

But with Sloane gone, the world gone to hell, and nothing they could do to stop it… well, it seemed simpler and easier to just keep drinking until he was too numb to feel helpless.

Once, after he'd run out of money in the aftermath of a family reunion, he'd even resorted to chugging kerosene in a desperate attempt to knock himself out, and he would have tried even worse things on that long, miserable night if Klaus hadn't caught him in mid-binge and enlisted Diego's help in subduing him. Now, after no less than six consecutive shots at rehab, his apartment was completely stripped of anything remotely intoxicating: the fridge was empty of everything stronger than diet soda, his medicine cabinet restricted to aspirins, band-aids, and toothpaste. It was a bit frustrating that Klaus was able to identify just about every single substitute drug that Luther could find at a moment's notice, but then again, it wasn't as if it came as a surprise.

Now, once a week, one of his brothers would stop by to make sure he hadn't backslid, usually take a couple of notes on what he was up to, ask how the construction business was treating him, cook him something relatively healthy, and then leave to report back to the others. Klaus was the most common visitor, having seen how personal experience and trademarked sarcasm paid off, but Diego would also stop by to crack the whip and deliver the odd inspirational insult, and sometimes, even Viktor would show up, clearly doing his best to be optimistic despite the thunderous edicts on the PA system outside. Meanwhile, Lila was usually too busy with work or her daughter to stop by, and Five was still in jail. And Allison…

…well, the less he saw of Allison, the happier he'd be.

From somewhere outside Luther's window, there was a dazzling flash of light that cast an unearthly golden glow across his bed for perhaps a split second before fading away. Luther ignored it: the drones patrolling this neighbourhood loved flashbangs, especially when they were sent after the young vandals, and even if it wasn't a drone at work, it still was none of his business. Nothing was his business these days. He simply rolled over in his bed and buried his face in the pillow, refusing to pay any attention to the lights and sounds rippling across the street.

But despite his best efforts, the commotion outside could not be overlooked. Wearily, he flicked on the lights and began slowly progressing through his usual list of late-night precautions, his only tried-and-true method of warding off the hunger for alcohol when it struck at these terrible late-night hours. By now, he was almost four months out of rehab and no longer needed the chemical measures to keep him from going out of his mind, while anything remotely drinkable and intoxicating had long since been sold or poured down the drain, so now all that remained was to make sure he wasn't tempted to go out and get more. Of course, curfew meant that all the liquor stores were closed at this hour, along with anywhere that stocked his usual substitutes, so now the temptation would be to break into someone's house in search of a stocked drinks cabinet – or possibly just a bottle of rubbing alcohol.

So, to keep him distracted until the worst of the longing was over, he had a list of things to do, his emergency standbys, and the first and foremost of them was his mantra.

"Sloane is still out there," he told himself. "Just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone. Sloane is still out there; just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone. Sloane is still out there; just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone. Sloane is still out there; just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone."

Back when he'd first taken up that mantra, he'd barely been able to get through it without breaking down in tears. Now, it was one of the few things keeping him from losing his mind in these mind-pummelling hours of the night.

And the second thing on the list was a thorough check of the map of the city on his wall, each block he'd checked for any sign of Sloane marked down in red; by now, he'd crossed almost half the city, put up missing persons posters on every street corner, and asked just about everyone he could ask without getting tasered by the secret police. And the hell of it was that he'd only managed to get this far over the last five years, thanks to a plethora of drunken mishaps, arrests, and stays in rehab.

Oh yes, and the rehab was another thing that nearly drove him crazy. In this world, there were essentially two kinds of rehabilitation centre: one was basically a private clinic, not astronomically expensive but definitely too pricey for the average addict; Luther had been there for about five of his six rehab visits, and it had required just about every single member of the family to chip in to pay for his entrance, with Klaus providing the lion's share of the money.

The other kind of rehab centre was essentially a glorified prison for addicted offenders, and they were essentially free, though the easiest way to get in was by having a few too many whiskeys at the bar and then getting lost on the way home during a curfew. Inmates were given a concrete slab for a bed, a glorified coffin of a room, were fed prison-standard nutraloaf, and washed with a firehose. You stayed just long enough for the physical symptoms of addiction to vanish, mental symptoms be damned: if you survived withdrawal, then you were given a certificate and thrown out onto the street, almost certain to be frogmarched right back through the gate once you were finished trying to drown your traumas in scotch – exactly as management intended, because the goal wasn't rehabilitation, but to keep unproductive members of society from becoming a burden on public affairs. Luther had only been to that kind of rehab once, the first time around, but that had been more than enough for him.

The other rehab visits had taught him the more productive methods of keeping his addiction under wraps… though he'd still ended up relapsing anyway. And he could tell that the rest of the family were getting fed up with this routine, except perhaps Klaus, but it wasn't as if he wanted to fail. He'd wanted to shake off the addiction, to be clean and without the need to numb himself to the world around him, because he could tell that he was slipping back into the same annoying guy he'd been back when they'd gotten together for Reginald's funeral all those years ago – the same lonely, dysfunctional, obsessive misery he'd been when he'd just gotten back from the moon, taking everything too seriously and getting people hurt because of it. Life in Dallas had improved him, taken the edge off his attitude, made him more optimistic, even cheerful at times, and Sloane had given him a sense of exuberance he hadn't known since he'd turned fourteen. He couldn't keep going back to the bad old days, especially when it seemed alcohol had become a magic potion that could send him back in time to said bad old days at a moment's notice.

But it was hard to stay on the straight and narrow: he needed to remind himself that Sloane wouldn't want to see him this way, that he needed to keep his wits about him to find her, that he needed to have hope that he would see her again… but thinking about Sloane too much threatened to bring back the depression and remind him of how lonely he was in this cheap apartment – and after those terrible thoughts came back, seeking numbness seemed the simpler, more logical alternative to being sad.

"Sloane is still out there. Just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone."

After the mantra and the map, there was exercise, and thanks to the rest of the family, he had the equipment for it: a treadmill, a set of weights, a rowing machine, a punching bag… frankly, this stuff was the only reason why he'd been able to stay in shape after all the drinking. In fact, he'd have liked to have tried a career in sports instead of the middling job as a construction worker he'd wound up with, but those doors were firmly closed in this world: the legitimate world of sports was under strict corporate control and wouldn't have dared lower itself to accept a recovering alcoholic; as for the world of unlicensed boxing, everyone in the family had gone out of their way to talk him out of trying that, reminding him that he wasn't able to take the kind of punishment that he had been back in the days when he'd been working for Jack Ruby.

As frustrating as it was, he had to admit they'd had a point, and not just because of the whole power thing. He vividly remembered that final match, where he'd not only let his resilience slip away but had all but demanded that his opponent beat the shit out of him in a mad fit of self-destruction.

And that had been over discovering that Allison was married.

Now he was dealing with losing Sloane, being trapped in a corporate police state, recovering from chronic alcoholism, and occasionally living in fear of Allison coming back for him. Under the circumstances, Luther didn't want to know what crazy shit he'd pull in the ring under that kind of stress.

Would she come back, though? Would Allison be crazy enough to try again, even if – as Klaus had assured him a thousand times over – she was as powerless as the rest of the family? Luther shook his head and did his best to suppress the thought. It was a stupid idea, overblown by paranoia and a sleepless night, and he couldn't afford to fall back into his old anxieties. That'd be a very short route to breaking into someone's apartment in search of a beer.

"Sloane is still out there," he told himself, trying to get a grip on his mind. "Just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone."

He looked to the map again, trying to convince himself that it could still be possible.

"Sloane is still out there," he repeated. "Just because you haven't found her yet doesn't mean she's gone."

Oh god, what the hell was he even doing awake? What had woken him up? What had gone wrong with the evening to leave him in this godawful state? For ten minutes, Luther wracked his brain, irritably thumping his head on his pillow as he struggled to think of what had happened… but it wasn't until he remembered the phone conversation that it all came flooding back to him.

Yes, the park – the weird park they'd all gone to by letting the giant flesh thing eat them. So far that was the only thing he could remember about the whole thing, for by now, a sleepless night of frustrations and anxieties had long since eaten away his memories of it.

But then, it wasn't as if he wanted to remember it or even to see it again.

After all, Sloane hadn't been anywhere in the dream as far as he could recall, least of all the park, so why would he care enough to remember?

Reginald thumped the control panel.

He should never have made that deal with Allison: her terms of the bargain had undermined everything he'd worked for, and now because of the effect that the deal was having on Luther's mind, his efforts to induce the Umbrella Academy to follow his directions had ended in total failure. If he'd known then what he knew now, he'd have just killed her instead of bothering to fulfill the terms of their agreement.

Bad enough that the damnable woman had killed him and nearly ruined everything in the previous reality, even worse that the conditions she'd requested had threatened the stability of everything he'd worked for, but now Allison's petty streak of vengeance had made psychic coercion impossible for Luther, at least for the time being.

Still, there was always another night, another chance to implant dreams and steer them in the necessary direction. He just needed to wait. In the meantime, he could give the machinery a rest.

Switching off the console, he let the array of borrowed gadgetry slowly wind down until the room was once again dark and silent, and every last bank of machinery was utterly indistinguishable from the walls of his executive office. Then, brushing some errant dust from his lapels, Reginald turned and made for the door-

-only to find himself staring into the unsmiling face of Abigail Hargreeves.

"I take it that your experiment was a failure," she said coldly.

Reginald, hearts hammering beneath his human disguise, contrived to look as nonchalant as he could. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're talking about, my dear," he said innocently.

"Please, Reginald, let's not lie to each other a moment longer. We need to discuss this utopia of yours, and the children you created to make it a reality… and most importantly of all, we need to talk about why you felt it was so important for the family you built to commit suicide in order to prevent it from unravelling."

She offered a catlike smile. "Now, follow me to the drawing room, if you please: Pogo can cancel your appointments for the morning, and I'll have Grace make us some tea."

Reginald, who'd already been left completely adrift by the realization that Abigail knew everything about his work, could only splutter in disbelief at this last sentence.

"Pogo?" he all but shrieked. "Grace? They… how did you know about either of them?! They don't even exist in this reality!"

That catlike smirk again. "They do now, Reginald: they came into existence about a week ago, both of them blessed with all the memories of their counterparts from the predecessor timelines, just like you. And that's part of the problem, isn't it? Your so-called utopia is a shroud thrown over the corpse of every timeline that came before it, but as bad luck would have it, that shroud is full of holes… and it's all due to the Umbrella Academy."

A/N: Up next... ?