westwhere | i've spent all of the love i've saved { open }

[Allison opens her eyes, and she immediately knows something is wrong.

She had expected things would be different. She pushed a button to reboot the world. Of course she was going to look up and possibly see a sky she didn’t immediately recognize. But the problem is, in fact, when she opens her eyes and sees the skies of Serithca above her, she recognizes it all too well. She knows exactly where she is, and it isn’t the world where she gets her daughter back.

It’s not the world where she gets Ray back.

And all at once, she’s spiraling again, losing her focus and letting her sense of time and place spin away from her all over again.]

No.

[She scrambles up to her feet, head whipping around as she tries to place exactly where she is. She’s not far from the beacon. Maybe she can get them to power it up again, send her back before it’s too late and she can get back to the life she was promised.

By the time she gets there, Karsa is gone (for the best), but Allison can be seen getting into a fight with some poor NPC, trying to explain to Allison that the magic is spent and that there’s no turning it back on. With each denial, Allison’s voice rises higher and higher, that bubble of anger bursting until her eyes glow gold as she shouts the command.]

Get out of my way!

[The poor NPC’s eyes go white as Allison’s power washes over them, and immediately they step to the side. Allison then returns to the beacon, trying to figure out of she can turn it on herself. She looks as though she’s gone completely feral, dried blood on the corner of her mouth, a more extensive wound on her left arm, tied off with what looks like a t-shirt. Eventually the desperation turns to frustration turns to defeat, and the anger is unable to sustain her further. She steps back, and just screams into the distance.

And when that’s done, she has nothing left to do but cry.]

[When the feelings fade, and she’s swung around from denial to acceptance that she’s not going to get home anytime soon, she knows that Wrath needs to be her next stop. She doesn’t want him to find out about the change in her powers from someone else, and think that she was intending to keep it a secret. The reason their relationship works is because they trust each other, and after spending most of her time at home burning all of her bridges, she’s realizing she can’t do that here.

Especially not with someone as powerful as Wrath.

She stops by his apartment when they’re all in the process of packing, when she knows that her brother is off elsewhere dealing with something else. She knocks lightly against the doorframe, hoping she looks a bit more put together than she had when she arrived, and that her initial rage has subsided some.

She can’t hide the outward appearance, however. The bruises and bloody lip, the injured arm, the torn knuckles. He has every right to be worried about her, but she’s determined to also not make her home problems his problem.]

Do you have a minute?

[In a lot of ways, the fact that they have to earn their keep is good for Allison. Having a job to do every day keeps her mind on the present, rather than what she feels she has to get back to, and as much as once upon a time she would have considered the manual labor beneath her, it gives her a chance to exhaust herself to the point that she rarely dreams as the night passes.

She could be seen cleaning, scrubbing floors and washing windows. She offers self-defense training to the residence, putting some of her fight skills to use.

She even charms her way into the good graces of the bridal party, offering manicures and hair stylist services if they’re interested. After all, who doesn’t want to get pampered right before their wedding?]

[ One look, that's all it takes for Lila to know what is happening. Allison has spun out completely. She doesn't quite know where the other woman comes from, whether it's somewhere in that week of fuckery or on the other side of the reboot. Either way, there's still a lot that the ex-assassin hasn't told Five about their future. Even Lila could see that there was a shit ton of weight on his shoulders, and adding all of that would have just broken him.

Everything about that single weight was too heavy for the majority of the Umbrellas to carry alone. It's why Lila held her secrets as closely as she ever has. Here is the proof that she's not the only one to know now. Truthfully, Allison is the one person that Lila had been worried about the most, learning about the future. Knowing that she was already spinning out at the loss of her husband and child in that timeline.

So Lila doesn't approach right away, not wanting to be caught in the storm that is Allison's pain and grief upon waking up in yet another place without her two important people. Only approaching when the hurricane has become a smaller rainstorm. She situates herself a couple of steps away, putting herself out of physical attack range. ]

Looks like you're all caught up now. Or maybe I'm the one lagging behind.

[ With all of her closely guarded secrets, no one knows what exact point in time Lila came from. Even her outfit upon seeing Allison was one that had appeared upon entering the dollhouse, so no hints there. ]

Edited 2022-12-07 02:16 (UTC)

( Disorientation is the name of the game, the clean, bright halls of Starfleet Medical traded out for... wherever here is, unknown sky, surroundings, everything. He'd think he was accidentally beamed across Yorktown, but there are no Escher-like habitation rings banding the skies, no crafts in the air except for ancient zeppelins, and the surrounding city is... is... familiar, as if from a long forgotten dream.

McCoy turns an unsteady circle, in disbelief. )

My God...

( shock and rumination's gotta wait though, cut through by a piercing scream of abject misery that tears his gaze from the skyline. )

Hey- ( God, okay, he's a bit shaky legged, but he can stagger his way toward the sobbing woman, pushing past the NPC to reach her, with only the thought to help on his mind. )

( ...a man, distinctly ill at ease with notions of:

1. domestic service

2. the chuckling and laughing trill of women orbiting him like misplaced satellites, moths to the flame of his inadequacy

3. cosmetics, start to bitter, green-brewed end.

And yet, here Lan Wangji is, adrift in his borrowed robes, coarse and ill-fitting linens meant to endure the toil of harvesting peace and prosperity at the inn. He woke to carry water, advanced his morning with paltry tasks of transporting kitchen wares, improved it with calligraphy and now, head bowed where Allison and he loom over a parade of merrymaking women, he —

...is pouring washing water to bathe their hair. The room's drenched with excess heat from braziers, fragrances spilling in wild, cloying wafts. Thrice already, Wei Ying has warned Wangji possesses perhaps too... strong a hand for this service. The woman who's just interrupted the rolling susurrus of her gossip to cast him a frightened, owlish glance, seems to agree that the roots of her hair might not be made for raking. He pulls at the locks in hand all the same, neglecting shallow hisses and waving Allison forward to pour down her cleansing salts, while his victim suffers the agony of attention from a handsome man.

It startles him, when the sea of murmurs resumes, when the women rally in taunts and teasing of the would-be bride, when they neglect their attendants as if Allison and he were invisible, inconsequential — )

...you have shorn your hair.

( This to Allison, tongue slack, clumsy. And they say he has no social graces. )

[She remembers what Lila told her about the future, how vague and almost hopeful it had been. If Lila had come sooner, she might have gotten an earful for giving her false hope, for letting her think that she could go home and things would be fine, but by the time the other woman gets there, she knows that she didn't ask the right questions.

And honestly, if she had just lived through her, and all her choices over the past week, she might have kept that to herself too.

One hand comes up to swipe at her cheeks, trying to figure out how to even explain it all.]

Dad is dead. Again. I hit the button but I woke up here.

I was so close.

[Something in her sags and her legs go with it, the adrenaline of the last few hours giving out on her now that it was no longer needed. She lets herself sit on the ground, and wallow in her misery because she has nothing else, ignoring the red seeping through from the wound on her arm, tied off haphazardly with a t-shirt. Her knuckles are torn and bruised, and there are other assorted wounds from her battle with the guardians, but she doesn't seem aware of them, or of McCoy, really just staring past him into the middle distance.]

I was so close and now I'm fucking back here.

I needed a change.

[Which is really the lightest way of explaining her Traumatic Haircut. Not that it's wrong, exactly. She did need a change. But it's one thing to head to a salon and get things done by a professional.

It's another to hack your hair off after trying and failing to rumor yourself while dealing with the loss of your daughter, quickly becoming more and more permanent by the moment. She's stuck in that shock-filled space between rage and despair, trying to keep herself teetering between the two with an emotion that feels a bit more like an even keel.

She tips the party guest's head back gently, starting to work the shampoo into her hair with smooth, comforting circles.]

I think I like it. For now, anyway.

( He goes with her to his knees, hands out in case she should pitch onto her head, taking in her various injuries with a quick survey, injecting calm professionalism into his voice as best he can. )

Yeah? And where is "here"? ( it's meant to be a question for cognition, but there's a definite need to know for himself. Bones casts a look around them again, and breathes a sigh of relief when his eye catches the battered medkit roughly where he woke up. A sharp whistle at the NPC draws their attention – "bring that here!" – and he turns back to... Allison, his memory supplies, impossibly. )

I'm a doctor, alright? You're safe for right now. Can you tell me your name and the date?

( ...a change. One she approves of. He dallies, struck by the impossible understanding that he faces beauty contorted, knowingly besmirched. That some part, alien and deranged, of Alison Hargreeves thought this an improvement on the natural grace of her carefully manicured curls.

Below, even the woman suffering their combined ministrations settles evenly under Allison's hands, only to squint when she overhears the epiphany. To trust oneself to a stylist who willingly performs this to her hair is —

Gently, Lan Wangji draws both hands shackled to his back, stepping aside. You're on your own, madam. )

It is... ( Coarse. Distressing. A beacon of aesthetic despair. ) New.

( So sayeth his uncle, speak plainly, speak kindly, speak the truth, or hold your tongue. Let it not be said that Lan Wangji is forever the only one among them bereft of a teaspoon of social aptitude. )

You entered the beacon. Reunited with your husband?

( The same she has previously intimated might perhaps wait for her. )

[The commotion had drawn Wanda's attention. Self-preservation isn't entirely high on her list, and the curiosity she feels is a nice change of pace. So, she makes her way to this burst of noise and power (of some sort), and frowns when she finds what she assumes is the cause. A weeping woman.

Wanda can't say she hasn't been there.]

What happened to you?

[That's one place to start. Asking if she's okay would be absurd.]

[ Five had been looking for her. Like always, he's just a little too late. He told himself there was no way she'd use the beacon, or disappear on him like the rest, but he knows how tempting it is to jump at the chance to get out of this hellhole. To say nothing of the way he's felt his siblings losing what little faith they had in him, more or less since he inserted himself back into their lives. Why not roll the dice with some faulty mystical relic instead? Allison would just be the latest to give up and go her own way.

Her shouting grabs his attention, but by the time he circles back she isn't alone. The haircut throws him, and another time he'd let himself believe that was all she'd gone off to do. Leave it to Allison to think about appearances in a time like this. If it wasn't for the injuries he can spot even at a distance and the devastation that rolls off of her.

Comforting his siblings has never been a strong suit of his. Something terrible might have happened to her here, but he has reason to think it's worse than that. He watches and waits until she's alone again to get her attention, and even then, he's slow to approach. ]

Allison. [ A terrible sense of dread sticks in his throat and he swallows it down. ] Where were you?

Serithca? I think?

[She can't remember specifically which side of the divide the Beacon was on, or of it was outside of Serithca proper, but that's the general vicinity last she checked. It certainly looks familiar enough.]

My name is Allison and ...

[Well, the date throws her. Fortunately she didn't go through a huge amount of time back home. The Hargreeves tend to go from zero to the end of the world in about a week. But a week is still a week, and she doesn't know how long it's been since the beacon was activated.]

I can't remember. It's been like a week for me back home, but I don't know how long it's been here.

[Yes, it is new, but there's not much she can do about it now. Wigs and extensions aren't so much a thing here in undead land. But it also is something that she feels suits her for the moment, if nothing else.

At the mention of Ray, however, she grits her teeth and swallows the flare of anger she's been trying to smother.]

No.

[That's all she really wants to say about that.]

[It's a startling question, especially from someone she doesn't know. She doesn't know, yet, how alike her and Wanda's stories actually are.

She's not quite as alone as Wanda is. Most of her siblings are still alive. But in Allison's mind, the world begins and ends with her daughter, and she doesn't know how to get past that.]

I was inches away from getting my daughter back, and before I could do it, I woke up here.

[There's less confusion with that, as this is a situation she's found herself in before.]

And of course the fucking beacon that sent me home in the first place has decided to no longer work.

Where do you think?

[Sorry, Five, she doesn't have the patience for questions you already know the answer to. Because she thinks it should be obvious enough. Nothing in Serithca could have made her this angry, except maybe finding confirmation of all of Five's paranoia and finding Diego's body dead in a ditch somewhere. But given she is sans a corpse and trying to destroy the beacon with her mind, because it's clearly as useful as a pile of rubble, that is not the case.

But before he can yell at her for jumping the gun and using the beacon as a shortcut:]

I really don't want to hear it.

[ He flexes his jaw, but manages to disguise how deeply that stings. She went back. If he hadn't been so gun shy about getting answers from Lila, he might already know what she's angry about. Maybe then he would have been able to warn Allison of what they'd be facing back home to dissuade her from making any rash decisions.

There was just too much going on and he couldn't afford to be distracted. It was stupid. He should have asked the first time he saw Lila. Now he's the one in the dark, trying to catch up. ]

Okay. [ He gestures to her arm. ] You want to tell me what did this?

[She takes a deep breath, because that's a more complicated story than she can answer in a sentence but she's going to try:]

Dad has a reset button for the world in a space ship attached to Hotel Oblivion.

[Yeah. That makes sense.]

This was from one of the guardians. It's dead now.

[Allison isn't the only one crying about the state of the beacon. Kamala is devastated this didn't work out for her. She'd been so sure she'd be going home after doing the right thing with the others. It's more complicated than that; it always is. Doing good doesn't mean you automatically get what you want most.

She isn't the exception to that. It's the scream that brings Kamala running. Is any kid prepared to see the adult they idolize fall apart so completely? She's tempted to walk away at first or call Five.

Unsurprisingly, she stays. She will always choose to do good when it counts. Good is staying. She approaches cautiously.] Allison.... [She wants to say it's okay, but it's not. Her face is swollen and puffy. Allison is crying. They're very not okay.]

I miss them too. [She settles on. Kamala keeps approaching until she stops short of her. She won't hug her yet, but the temptation is so real.]

[ From the look on his face, not one word of that made any sense to him. Although it really shouldn't surprise him that Reginald is still alive, or that he has a spaceship. He did send Luther to the moon. The rest of it though...

He kicks the words around in his brain, trying to find the logic behind them, until he abruptly snaps back at her. ]

What do you mean reset button?

[She takes a deep breath before scrubbing at her face, and tries to find a way to put all of this into a cohesive story. She's not sure she can - she doesn't have enough of the pieces from Reginald beyond what he told her, but she's going to try.]

There's this thing called the Seven Bells. It's one of those stories that just gets repeated over and over again, constantly changing but it all says the same thing in the end? Find the signs and you can get whatever your heart's desire granted to you. And it's guarded by these three guardians that we had to distract while Dad was trying to find the Bells.

But he needed certain things in order to make it work. Seven ... sacrifices, with the particles that give us our powers. That's why there's always been seven of us.

[Seven children, seven sacrifices. The math adds up, though not until she was looking at it with all the details.]

Anyway, Dad found it, built the Hotel around it to protect it, and started collecting everything he needed.

[ Five opens his mouth a few times, but no words come out. He always suspected their father had plans for them that were bigger than saving the world, he just thought he was a man of science. He can't even picture him saying the words 'whatever your heart's desire' unless he was mocking one of them.

There's a more important point lodged in the middle of that story. He has to ask before he can move past it. ]

He sacrificed us?

Kind of.

[It was most of them. It wasn't her, but she knows now that that was only because he had spare children to use as options. She knows she needs to start at the beginning.

So she starts at the beginning.]

When we got back to 2019, it wasn't to the Umbrella Academy. It was to the Sparrow Academy, and we were no longer Reginald Hargreeves children. Ben's also alive, by the way, but he's kind of a dick.

[Granted, they're all dicks, in their own way, so that's probably the least surprising thing.]

[ 'Kind of' isn't the answer Five was looking for, but before he can press the details she drops another string of startling revelations. He fucked up. In the '60s, he insisted on seeing Reginald, and now... obviously their meddling didn't go well.

Ben's alive. That's one bright side he hadn't thought was possible. ]

We changed the timeline. [ That much isn't a question, but something he really should have paid closer attention to. Why sparrows? ]

There were seven of them too?

i've spent all of the love i've saved { open }

a broken heart is all that's left | ota

my mind feels like a foreign land | for wrath

i'm still fixing all the cracks | ota

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