Archive of Our Own ^beta

You are eleven years old, and you have a very important job. 

Your role as the leader is something you take a lot of pride in. You take your work seriously, because the lives of those around you depend on it. Some may say that this is too much pressure, but you’ve always been very strong. You can handle it. 

It's not just about protecting your team on the field. It’s about supporting them everywhere. So when you notice that Six is dejected after training, you catch him outside of the locker room. 

“Hey, Six,” you say, and he looks at you with a slight frown. You try not to let it get to you. “How did you feel about training today?”

He wraps a careful arm around his midsection. “It was fine, I guess.”

“You look upset,” you reply, somewhat blunt. You’re not very good at connecting with your siblings. It can be hard sometimes. Like you’re on opposite sides of an invisible glass barrier, and only one of you knows how to break it. (And it’s not you.)

Six shrugs. “Dad keeps telling me to use my powers during training.”

Oh. So that’s what this is about. “Don’t worry, Six. We still have two years before our public debut. That’s plenty of time to master your powers.”

“I can’t,” he responds. The two of you have made it back to the hallway with the bedrooms, and you follow Six into his. “I can’t control it. I don’t even want to bring it out. It’s too dangerous.”

You wince. His power is volatile, he’s right about that, but surely Dad can do something? “Just keep working hard in training,” you say, and Six gives a halfhearted nod. “And we won’t let anything happen to you. That’s what teammates do, right? We’ll protect you.”

Six goes pale, like he’s about to be sick. “It’s not me I’m worried about.”

That’s cryptic, but you don’t have time to think about it before the bell rings for dinner. You go back into your room to get changed into something cleaner. Even the cleanliness of your fresh uniform can’t distract you from your brother’s terrified face. Suddenly you are faced with the brutal realization that there is much about your siblings that you don’t know. 

As you watch them carefully during dinner, you resolve to find out. 

Allison is leaving. 

She’s not the first. Technically, that had been Five, way back when you were thirteen. Then Ben. It hurts to think about that.

“Allison,” you say, pleading, and she turns around to face you. Her fingers are still clenched around the handle of her suitcase, and she’s only one step away from the door, but at least she’s looking at you. “It doesn’t have to be like this. Please. Come back inside.”

“I want to leave,” she says boldly. Allison never did anything halfway. 

“What about the Academy?” you ask fruitlessly. “What about the team? You can’t just abandon—”

“There is no team,” she spits, with more vitriol than you’ve heard from her in a while. “There never was. I don’t know what the hell we are, Luther, but we’re not a family.”

It feels like your heart stops, although that can’t be possible. You choke on your words but force them out anyway. Anything to get her to stay just a little longer. “How can you say that? What about saving the world?”

Allison shifts uneasily on her feet. For a moment, you think you’ve convinced her. “There’s a whole world out there. Real people. Ones without powers and training and missions.”

“We’re real people,” you say, but your voice trails off at the end. It’s hard to believe it sometimes. 

“I don’t know what we are,” Allison says again, and you get the feeling that this is something that’s been bugging her. For a long time, probably. You hadn’t even noticed. She’s your best friend, and you hadn’t even noticed. 

“I know I haven’t been a good leader. I know I’ve let you guys down.” Your voice breaks a little. You try to steady it. “Dad was right. After Ben—there should never be a next time. I can’t lose anyone else. I can’t let the team fall apart.”

Allison’s mouth twitches like she wants to frown. “It’s not about you, Luther. It’s not about the Academy or anyone else, okay? I want more than this place. And I hope in time that you do, too.”

She opens the door and you follow her onto the front steps, but she leaves without you. It’s dark outside; the stars twinkle above like millions of sparkling diamonds. You wonder what’s up there, if there’s anything at all. You wonder what it’s like where Allison is going, or where Diego ran off to, or where Klaus sneaks out every night. Maybe Allison’s words hold some merit. How are you supposed to save a world that you’ve never been a part of?

You open the door and step back inside. 

It’s not until everyone has left that you realize how big the Academy is. 

You’ve always known the Academy is huge, obviously. It takes up an entire city block, and you don’t even have to look very closely to see the crude seams where buildings used to be closed off until they were opened up to create the cavernous hallways. But it’s so much bigger without anyone around. 

You spend most of your day training. If you’re not running laps in the courtyard, then you’re doing push-ups in the foyer or practicing strategic defense maneuvers. It’s monotonous, but it keeps you exhausted enough that when night comes, you’re asleep as soon as your head hits the pillow. You don’t even have to miss the sound of Allison’s vocal warm-ups or Diego practicing with his knives or Vanya’s violin. 

Occasionally, you go on missions. Dad will give you the briefing and you apprehend the criminals. (He doesn’t even ask how the missions go anymore. You try not to let it get to you.)

You’re at breakfast one morning when something weird happens. Mom places the plate in front of you with a bright smile, before saying, “I’ll go get the rest of your siblings for breakfast. They must be tired this morning!”

She sounds so cheerful that you can barely speak up, but you do. “Mom,” you say, and she turns back around. 

Her smile is still frozen on her face. “Yes?”

“The others are gone,” you say. Your voice sounds oddly gravelly even though you’ve had years to get used to this fact. “They moved out. Remember?”

“Of course,” she says, and you’re relieved for a moment. “Well, they will be hungry when they return! I’ll make cookies.”

You don’t have the heart to stop her this time. She hums genially around the kitchen as you eat your breakfast, but curiosity plagues your every thought. “Mom? Have you ever wanted to leave?”

She pauses. “I don’t understand.”

“Leave the Academy,” you clarify. “Go somewhere else. Like the others did.”

“Of course not, silly,” she replies, just as you suspected she would. “Being your mother is the greatest gift of my life. I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“You’re not curious about what’s out there?”

Her smile flickers, if that’s even possible. “Why would I be?” she says after a moment, just as bright. “Everything I need is right here.”

You wonder, briefly, if that’s how you sounded to your siblings all those years ago as they were leaving. Like a wind-up doll, repeating the same message over and over again. Or like a robot. 

The mission alarm blares. You drop your fork and it clatters onto the plate. 

You take the thoughts about Mom and swiftly shove them away. There are more important things to deal with now. 

You finally did it. 

You got out of the Academy. You hope that somewhere, Allison is proud. She probably doesn’t even know you’re up here, but still. If she did, she’d be proud. You think. 

The moon is beautiful. It’s one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever seen, although you haven’t seen a lot. But it’s cold, even in your insulated space suit. And it’s lonely. There’s no one up here, and that’s one of the things that makes your job so important. 

You collect another sample of moon rock and seal it away to send to Dad. You like to imagine him down on Earth, receiving the sample and peering at it with great fascination before scribbling notes down in that red notebook he always had. 

Part of you thinks Dad is glad you aren’t hanging around the Academy anymore. Your new body is grotesque and unwieldy. Not just for you, but for anyone who has to look at it. Maybe Dad got tired of looking at it day after day. Maybe Dad got tired of watching you fail. You always fail, in the end. It happened with Ben; you said you’d protect him, and you didn’t. You swore you’d never let the team break up, but now everyone’s spread across the country. 

But not this time. Now you have a new mission. And it’s one that you can’t fail. 

You won’t. 

The unopened research from the moon makes you sick. 

You truly think you’re dying. That’s the only explanation for why your heart is constricting in your chest. Why your breath is labored and comes out in wheezing gasps. You used to listen to records on various medical emergencies, and now it feels like you're having one. It had been the only noise at the table your entire childhood. You can almost hear the skip of the needle as your mind catches up to your body. 

All of that research, untouched. All those years on the moon. And for what? For nothing, apparently. 

You’d wanted to see what’s out there. You wanted to know why your family was leaving. You wanted to make them see sense, to realize that abandoning the Academy was not the solution. You were the one who needed to see sense, apparently. 

The overwhelming clarity is making you nauseous. You see it now. You start to understand why Allison ran off to Hollywood. Why Diego vehemently opposed anything to do with Dad. Why Klaus turned to drugs. Maybe they were all on to something.

Your father is a monster and you are officially the last to know. 

You don’t know what to do with yourself after that. You think about going outside and exploring the world, but where would you even go? You have no friends, no money, no one to follow. No one to lead. 

There’s one excruciating thought that you can’t shake. You were supposed to be the leader, and yet here you are, a twenty-nine year old man sobbing on the floor over something that your siblings have been telling you for years. You are the last to catch on. Far from Number One. 

But that was bullshit, too, wasn’t it? Those numbers didn’t mean anything. They never did. Just another thing in your life that’s been rendered useless. 

Klaus is the one who finds you, and it’s strangely fitting. He figured out all this stuff years ago, long before even Allison and Diego did. If there’s anyone who can help you, it’s Klaus. 

God, isn’t that weird to say? 

“I want to be like you,” you tell him, before you fall apart.

Living in Dallas, 1962, is not what you envisioned when Allison suggested you leave the Academy. 

Life in the 60’s is unlike anything you’ve ever known. No one knows you here. They don’t know about Dad or the moon or anything else. You’re free to just be whatever and whoever you want. 

And it’s fine. Really. You have a place to sleep and something to eat and some money. It’s not much, but you don’t need much. 

You think you see Allison one day. Well, it happens a lot, actually. More than just one day, then. You see the others, too. Once, you heard the metallic sound of a knife being ripped from its holster, and your mouth almost opened to shout Diego’s name. It hadn’t been him. It was just another fight between two drunk men at the bar, and you got those all the time. You’d take Diego over the overzealous drunkards any day. 

(Although you’d never let him hear you say that.)

It’s only fitting that by the time your family is back together again, you’ve done the one thing you all do best: cause mass destruction. 

Five tells you the world is ending, and you say, “I don’t give a shit.” It’s not a lie. You’re tired of saving the world. Let someone else do it, for once. 

It’s pretty damn hard to not give a shit when you’re all in the same room again. You keep a close eye on Vanya but Diego is spouting some bullshit about the president and Klaus is talking to himself and Allison is there. So, yeah. Maybe you do give a shit. 

And then you risk your lives (like always), mess up the timeline (what else is new?), and find out that Dad has adopted a new crop of superpowered children and has effectively declared you obsolete. 

You don’t mind as much as you thought you would. You’d disown him, too, if you could. 

“The moon,” Sloane gushes again. Her laugh is so pretty. You could listen to it for hours. “It sounds beautiful. I bet you missed your family, though.”

You shrug, pulling her close. “I did. But we weren’t really much of a family at that point.”

It’s the night before your wedding. The bachelor party has ended and your siblings’ singing still rings in your ears. None of them are particularly good singers, but it was the best music you’ve heard in a long time. You think, briefly, that you could die happy now. If the world ends and humanity is wiped out, you’ll be satisfied with where your life has gone. 

“Neither were we,” Sloane says, and you reach out to comfort her before realizing there’s no more reaching out you can do; she’s already so close. “I don’t even know if we loved each other.”

The last part hangs in the air: and now I’ll never find out. 

“I’m sorry.” You wish you could come up with something better to say, but that’s never been your thing. “But you’ll always be bonded by the experience, you know?”

She looks up at you, hopeful. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Like whenever I want to slaughter Diego, I just think of the time when we were eight and we tried to convince Klaus that Pogo was his biological father.”

Sloane laughs again, a bright, twinkling sound. “Did he believe it?”

“For about three seconds,” you say. “Then Five showed up and said there was no way that could be true. Something about DNA, I don’t know. I was eight.”

She sighs happily. Her body fits right into yours like they were made for each other. Hell, you don’t know a lot about the universe these days, so maybe they were. It’s the first time you haven’t felt grotesque or out of place in your skin. This feels just right. 

“Are you ready for tomorrow?” Sloane asks, voice slurred with exhaustion. “The wedding?”

You don’t even need to say anything. She already knows. 

You’ve never been more ready for anything in your life.