wake from your sleep, the drying of your tears (today we escape)
Summary: Allison never did know how to take no for an answer. She isn’t about to start when her sister’s freedom on the line.
Notes: Because Allison is smarter than the show gives her credit for.Title from Exit Music (For a Film) by Radiohead on the Spotify TUA playlist. Part 1 out of 2. Part 2, Here.
Allison wakes again to the acrid smell of rubbing alcohol and the sound of distant shouting. Her throat throbs with pain and she swallows reflexively, only to realize what a terrible idea that is when the saliva surges, white hot, against her stitches. She tries to sit up but her limbs immediately protest and she just ends up slumped over again. Everything is fuzzy around Allison, and the light is too bright overhead. A pounding headache alternately makes her hearing too sharp or too muffled.
The fighting downstairs doesn’t stop once in the time it takes Allison to haul herself out of the medical bay and down the stairs, nearly tripping headlong at the landing. (Since when did they have a basement?)
It sounds like Diego and Luther, back at it yet again.
The yelling grows in volume. A third voice joins the fray- Klaus. She recognizes that high-pitched, wheedling tone he gets when he’s trying to convince someone to go along with a hair-brained scheme. Allison is still fuzzy, grasping at her thoughts which slide, smooth as silk, through her fingertips. Where are they? Where is Vanya?
Vanya.
Allison latches onto that well enough. Distantly, she remembers training sessions about fighting through pain, how Sir Reginald had warned them that their thoughts would swim, that they’d be hard pressed to focus and get the job done.
“You must keep a clear mind,” he’d commanded, as if he’d know anything about throwing himself into a dangerous situation for the good of someone else. “Keep goal-oriented at all times. Let all else fade away.”
Keep goal-oriented, Allison thinks.
Vanya, Allison thinks. Vanya. Vanya. Vanya.
The ride down in the elevator is freezing and too dark and too damp and she can feel her ears popping as she descends. Her stomach seems to have preceded her by a few floors as the shouting gets worse.
Vanya.
The elevator clatters and groans as it lands with a jolt. Allison is scrambling out in seconds, thumping her shoulder hard against the wall and careening a few feet forward before she is able to right herself against the basement (cave, dungeon, prison) wall. She leans on the unshakably cold support and follows the familiar sounds of a familial dispute.
Vanya.
“- terrifying, really, to discover that you can do something that you never thought you could do!” Klaus sounds imploring in a way Allison has never quite heard before.
All three of them have their backs to her as she struggles forward- but that tone, the dim lights, something in the way Diego’s back is tense, sets her nerves on edge. She finds she doesn’t need the wall half as much as she did a moment before.
“Look, if what Pogo told me is even half true, then she is not just a danger to us.” Luther replies, tone firm and unyielding, the way it would only ever get when he was carrying out his father’s orders.
Oh, God, Allison knows exactly what she’s going to see when they turn around. But against all hope, she wishes she’ll be wrong.
Vanya.
Her foot slips, her balance gone for but a moment, and that resulting thump is all that is needed to draw the attention Allison so long thought she deserved. She wishes it would all go away now, that she could fade just like Number Seven did when they were kids.
Luther’s eyes soften the moment they land on her, but she’s not interested in his face- not when Allison is looking into the terrified eyes of her little sister, stuck behind a foot of reinforced steel.
Vanya.
Vanya is sobbing, banging her fists on the thin glass window (it’s probably bulletproof). She is dwarfed by the cage they have her in, looking small and meek and so very desperate. Allison recognizes the signs of a panic attack when she sees them. But Vanya stops, mouth open in the middle of a passionate plea, when she locks eyes with her sister. The devastation in her eyes breaks Allison’s heart.
“Allison, what are you doing down here?” Luther draws her attention away. “You should be in bed.”
She fumbles the pen in her hands and tries to put all the feeling she can’t express into the words LET HER GO.
“I can’t do that,” Luther says, and he looks affronted at the idea that Allison won’t agree to locking their sister up like an animal. “She hurt you.”
Allison never suspected that she would burn with hatred at Luther’s protective instincts. But the lump rises in her throat all the same and hot shame floods her gut. He was always so in tune with her, so attentive to his sweetheart- and when had he ever protected anyone else?
And hadn’t she basked in it? Hadn’t it made her glow, knowing that she held the strongest man in the world’s heart in her palms for so many years? And hadn’t she gloated that Vanya could never hope to be that loved, to be that adored? Hadn’t she sneered at the thought?
MY FAULT.
Please, she wants to cry. Let me see Vanya. Let me love her like I was supposed to. For God’s sake, Luther, if you ever loved me you’d let me hold my sister.
Vanya, she wants to argue, is the most vulnerable out of all of us, and look how we hurt her.
Vanya, she wants to beg, would never have done to you what you have done to her.
Vanya, Allison wants to scream, loves us. And this is how we repay her?
Vanya is renewing her efforts, trying to break herself out. Trying, Allison hopes with the knowledge that she herself is delusional, to get to Allison.
“I’m sorry, but she’s staying put,” Luther shakes his head. He is so, so self-righteous that it turns Allison’s stomach.
She shakes her own head, feels fierce for the first time since she lost her voice, and pushes forward. Her other brothers- her real brothers- step aside almost instantly, parting like the Red Sea before her broken-down Moses. But Luther catches her against his chest. Allison’s skin crawls where he touches her.
“Just until we know what we’re dealing with.”
He ignores her feeble attempts to push past, and Klaus looks like he might cry. “She stays put.”
Like hell, Allison thinks.
Vanya, Allison thinks. Her sister is screaming. Her brothers are turning their backs. And Allison?
Allison has always been smarter than her brothers give her credit for.
She locks eyes with little Number Seven, and blinks away her own tears. Vanya’s mouth forms words that she can’t hear, that she doesn’t want to hear, that she hasn't deserved to hear since she was four. Her sister’s nails are starting to bruise with the force of her strikes against unyielding metal.
Allison shakes her head at her and waits until Vanya seems like she’s all there- as there as she can be, imprisoned in the place of her biggest trauma as she is. Allison's lungs constrict at the thought- how long has she been down here? How long did Sir Reginald keep her here?
Wait for me, Allison mouths slowly, hoping Luther thinks the shift of her head and shoulders is from tears. She has never been more thankful for how well her thick hair obscures her face. She presses more tightly against him, trying to press the words forward with her body if not her voice, trying to get as close as possible, for her sister to feel her heart beating only for the thought of rescuing her. Wait for me.
I’m sorry, Vanya is saying, but Allison shakes her head.
I love you. Wait for me.
Vanya hesitates. Allison can feel Luther tugging her back; he’s saying something to her but it’s inaudible, all her focus drawn to the person she should have protected the most.
Vanya nods, just slightly. It feels like a weight lifting off of her ribs. Luther pulls Allison away, but in one last act of defiance she keeps her eyes on her little sister as long as possible. When even that link breaks it feels like her heart does too. Or maybe she leaves it down there, in the dark and the cold.