{Hazy sunshine over the hill

[deadlycurves]

WHO: Hargreeves + YOU

WHERE: Krakoa; various

WHEN: Varies, specified by thread

WHAT: Varies, specified by thread

WARNINGS: Warnings will be updated where necessary

Comments

if our ship does sink, we will follow it like stones / from the wreckage build a home.

[obediences]

The first times the Hargreeves had ever started this tradition by themselves, Luther had instinctively gone for his habitual spot at the dining table.

Not at the head of the table, but to the immediate right-hand side of it. (He knows who's meant to be sitting at the head of the table.) Automatically reaching for his designated chair across from Allison, with Diego to his own right-hand side. And Luther had frozen like a deer in the headlights, staring at his hand on the back of the chair he'd been about to pull out, and at the shape of the seats he'd been about to steer them all into, as if the configuration had been seared into their marrow. The seats they'd sat at for every single meal for almost two decades, breakfast-lunch-and-dinner, always at the same scheduled time down to the minute, Grace setting out the plates and Reginald ringing the bell.

If he turns his head to the left, he imagines he can still see the glint of the chandelier light on the man's monocle.

But of course, Diego had elbowed him, the spell had broken, and then Luther had consciously forced himself to take a different seat. Disrupting the layout and feeling it sit ill-at-ease beneath his skin, like something undefinably wrong.

Over the years, however, that sense of dread had faded and faded, until this was the new normal: Luther planted on the other side of Claire, so that he and Allison bracketed her and either of them could feed her or clean up the inevitable messes. The others didn't all take the same seats every time, either. It varied, changed, depending on who grabbed their food first. The Hargreeves didn't hew to a strict order anymore.

And it all started to feel like home.

It's been an oasis in the middle of everything, but they can all feel the apprehension tonight, sawing on the edge of their nerves. Luther can be oblivious about so many things, but he'd always been sensitive to tension within the home: hyper-aware when something in that finely-tuned gyroscope had fallen out of joint, when something was brewing. The difference was that back when they were teenagers, there wasn't anything he could do to fix it, to stop it all from crumbling. Nowadays, though, they were stronger along those glued-together faultlines.

Perhaps this is all living on borrowed time, though. When Five falls quieter than usual, Luther glances over at him, but doesn't broach the subject — they all know what's coming, anyway. The end of the night is Five clearing the table and setting the dishes in the kitchen, Luther thanking him, then going about the washing up, while that clock ticks ever closer to the end of the day. He bundles a sleepy, yawning Claire into his arms and carries her to her room, while Allison fields yet another council-related message on her communicator. There's a cheerful hug from Klaus, Luther's clap to the shoulder to Diego, as his brothers all slip away from the house, all of them dispersing to their separate homes to wait out the last few hours before they all set off together in the morning.

Tomorrow, then.

[deadlycurves]

Breaking out of old routines had been one of the biggest orders of everything between them as a unit when they were first starting out in those earliest days of Krakoa. Shattering the old, hard-wired defaults and shaking up the only norm they had ever known, building a new one that didn't stick to a strict order of any kind. It was awkward in those first beginning stages, sat wrong in the way it filled his chest with tension, forever waiting for a scolding for breaking rank that would never come. Because they weren't in that house any more, and it was honestly the best thing to ever happen to them as a family.

Luther and Allison's feels as much like home as his own not all that far from here, in a different part of the island; as much as the island as a whole itself. It was the central hub for all things Hargreeves, in a way that felt right, somehow. Tension becomes a sharp knife-cut into the thread of the family when it shows up this harsh, this choking in this house. Impossible to ignore. Diego hates the way the feeling fills him up, carves out a space in his chest and burrows down to make a home there. He understands why, and knows what it's from, but it's a discomfort he doesn't like.

At one point in the evening, Diego's broken himself away from the huddle of his siblings in the living room, opting instead for a chair in the backyard. He's leaned forward against his knees, head tucked down, fingers laced at his neck, trying to breathe. He's more used to it now, all these years into owning the power, but sometimes empathy at the level he feels it, is still too much. Some emotions are stronger than others, and tonight, everyone's is like cymbals clashing in his head.

There's a shift, subtle, but there; it's familiar, the low, steady drum that always surrounds his brother. It's comfortable, more than the cymbals from inside the house, and he can't stop the slight quirk of his mouth at the familiar, steady feeling that takes root just at his presence somewhere behind him.

"Luther." His voice is a little thick, still trying to shake off the stray remnants of all that tension inside. He doesn't lift his head yet.