Viktor Hargreeves (
fifthbeatle) wrote2021-10-21 08:20 pm
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For the first time in Darrow, Vanya needs to get away.
In their very special, fucked up way, her family is perfect. Seven precious gems forged in pressure and darkness. Sorry - five. Diego's never been here and Ben is gone. She has no remaining brainpower to process the grief of missing Diego. There's too much that's happened without him and not enough pleasant history to hang onto. She loves him, she would be ecstatic to see him, but she can't seem to miss him the way she feels like she should. Not like she misses Ben. And now Allison.
Hargreeves House feels more like it is home to a ghost than when it was. They're down two bodies now, and the halls feel nauseatingly spacious, like the sprawling walls of the Academy - the ones Vanya brought down without a second thought. It's a dangerous association, but she's been lucky. So far the worst of her grief has manifested as nothing more than a day of unseasonable, pouring rain. That is not an accident. Vanya keeps herself firmly in check, sacrificing sleep and sometimes human contact altogether to reduce the risk of an Incident. She's bereft of both, but only because she can't bring herself to be without people right now, and she can't keep crawling into her siblings' beds in hopes of finding sleep and expecting them to tolerate it. Especially when she wakes up feeling like she is about to scream. Like tonight.
It's late when she decides to abandon pursuing sleep, but she knows someone who is usually around late. He may even be out and about - a thing that would lessen that pang of guilt from bothering someone so late. Not that she bothers him, he says. She even believes him.
Hey, where are you?, she texts him before layering up: hoodie first, then coat. If Sam isn't up and around, she'll just walk. She can't be here tonight. It feels too much like what they left behind.
In their very special, fucked up way, her family is perfect. Seven precious gems forged in pressure and darkness. Sorry - five. Diego's never been here and Ben is gone. She has no remaining brainpower to process the grief of missing Diego. There's too much that's happened without him and not enough pleasant history to hang onto. She loves him, she would be ecstatic to see him, but she can't seem to miss him the way she feels like she should. Not like she misses Ben. And now Allison.
Hargreeves House feels more like it is home to a ghost than when it was. They're down two bodies now, and the halls feel nauseatingly spacious, like the sprawling walls of the Academy - the ones Vanya brought down without a second thought. It's a dangerous association, but she's been lucky. So far the worst of her grief has manifested as nothing more than a day of unseasonable, pouring rain. That is not an accident. Vanya keeps herself firmly in check, sacrificing sleep and sometimes human contact altogether to reduce the risk of an Incident. She's bereft of both, but only because she can't bring herself to be without people right now, and she can't keep crawling into her siblings' beds in hopes of finding sleep and expecting them to tolerate it. Especially when she wakes up feeling like she is about to scream. Like tonight.
It's late when she decides to abandon pursuing sleep, but she knows someone who is usually around late. He may even be out and about - a thing that would lessen that pang of guilt from bothering someone so late. Not that she bothers him, he says. She even believes him.
Hey, where are you?, she texts him before layering up: hoodie first, then coat. If Sam isn't up and around, she'll just walk. She can't be here tonight. It feels too much like what they left behind.
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Late nights weren't exactly unusual for Sam, so it didn't occur to him at first that it might be strange to be getting a text from Vanya at that hour.
In the bunker. What's up?
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Two things: Vanya is disappointed he's not out and about, and she's disappointed that she's disappointed. Her hands itch to get out of her skin, a certain type of restlessness that keeps her on the wrong side of feeling safe. What was she hoping for? That he'd be out in the middle of a fight responding to a text? Or that her stupid magic hearing would pick up some sort of tip and she could power-slap a cursed tree or something? Like he's her fucking phone-a-friend when she forgets what it feels like to be a human being.
(And which would be taller: Sam or the tree?)
Yeah. She needs to get the fuck out.
Asking for this kind of help still feels like an intrusion, but she's determined to keep that less visible. Being powerful and feeling like a waste of space are not notions that comfortably coexist. Nothing about who Vanya is can be called right. And who has paid the largest for it the most? Five, who is losing it. And Ben, who is gone.
Need to get out. Mind if I stop by?
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He frowned. There was a whole lot he could read in that text. Things unsaid. And maybe he was just projecting. Maybe it was just a case of having been where she was, and assuming it was exactly the same for her when it clearly wasn't. Still, he kind of doubted he was off base.
I can meet you halfway if you'd rather?
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I'll come to you if you really don't mind.
She doesn't want to be around other people - save for Lisbeth. It's her home, after all, and Vanya likes her quite a bit.
By the time she reaches Sam's, it looks like it may rain. Vanya wonders if it's her fault, arriving at the answer that, if she has to wonder, it's probably not her doing it. She knocks.
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"Hey," he said, stepping aside to give her room. "Come in."
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She's never been in the bunker before. It's... huge, and would be sort of eerie if it weren't for Sam standing there in the middle of it. Her eyes catch symbols and cameras and -- no, it's still pretty eerie.
By the time she realizes she's behaving more like a tourist than a gracious interloper, she's been gaping for a few seconds. She closes her mouth and returns her gaze to Sam.
"Thank you," she says, shoulders dropping gratefully, like the door closing means she's successfully escaped something terrible on the other side of that blast door. She's sure she wouldn't be the first.
"I hope I'm not interrupting anything."
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"So, uh. This is it," he said with a wince of a smile, knowing just how strange the place was. "I can show you around, if you want."
It wasn't quite the place it had been back in Kansas, considering all the storage had been stripped bare by the time it showed up in Darrow, but he'd still put together a pretty interesting collection. Or, he was trying to, anyway.
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Does she want the tour? Hell yes, but she is wary of showing too much enthusiasm about such a thing. They've talked a lot about family and duty and identity. Also, she would never want Sam to think he is a curiosity to her. Whether he knows it or not, Sam's been an integral part of her (slow-going) acclimation to this new world -- this pocket dimension, by Five's estimate. If it weren't for Sam, she may have been in Darrow jail before she'd been here even 6 months.
Which reminds her--
"Oh, I got you something," she says. She drags her bag to her front by the strap across her chest. "A wedding present." A small, black box is produced from the bag, she hands it to Sam. Inside is a pair of silver cufflinks, clean and simple.
"I got them at the magic shop -- uh, one of the magic shops." She corrects. "The person at the counter said they're imbued with a powerful protection spell. Actually, I got it for you before you and Lizbeth made it official." A new sort of wry smile curves her lips, kind as always, but with a more comfortably air of familiarity. "I don't know why I thought you were the ceremony-type, but I figured, the next time you're... hesitating, it'll keep you safe. In a place that requires you wear a suit." It very clearly strikes her how dumb this is. She laughs uncomfortably, hands dropping to her sides in light-hearted self-deprecation.
"Anyway, congratulations. And thanks."
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He'd had enough experience with cursed objects to always be a little weary of magic shop trinkets.
But they were beautiful, and he could tell how nervous Vanya was about the whole thing.
"I had a wedding, once. Ceremony, tuxes, white dress, the whole thing," he admitted, carefully nestling the cufflinks back into their box. "Turns out, it was because of a love spell and the last thing I wanted was to get married to this girl." He huffed out a sheepish laugh. "Lisbeth and I just decided we were, uh. Better suited to City Hall, I guess. Both of us."
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Still, she's grateful when Sam changes the subject. Kindness comes easy, but siting with the vulnerability of its acknowledgement is inexplicably harder to process. At least she can laugh in assent when he identifies himself and his wife as better suited for less ceremony.
"A love spell?" Vanya asks after a moment. What may come off as doubt is quiet disgust. That's mind control. Sometimes it's a rumor, or a lie -- other times, a spell. She couldn't see Lizbeth doing any of that shit. Even a white lie should be scared of Lizbeth.
"How did you break it?"
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He grimaced.
"It turns out she was kind of lashing out because, uh... God had just broken up with her. Or Chuck, as we all knew him then. It's... complicated, and as I'm saying it, I'm realizing how stupid it all was. But, uh. I think maybe it's turned me off of weddings, a little."
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"Sure," says Vanya. She aims for empathy and lands somewhere around wry acceptance. She knows he's not lying. What else is there to say? That was batshit even by Hargreeves standards. There's no way to unpack all of that.
"Weddings are overrated," she adds. The second time, she sticks the landing on empathy, lips crooking into a half-smile as her hands tuck into her pockets. "Most celebrations are. At least, I think that's what I think." How would she know? It's not like she was ever allowed to be seen enjoying herself, save for their collective birthday. Not quite the warm, big soirees the rest of the Hargreeves crew had to stun and smile through. She remembers the jealousy: a thing that hardens to resentment. A thing that got her to a pretty dark, apocalyptic place.
Sam gets more honesty than most about the gaps in her memory, the huge schism between who she is and who she was told she was. She knows he cares how she feels, that he sees her. For a man with occult tattoos, a bunker and a host of cameras, he's extremely trustworthy.
For a second, in a flash, Vanya wonders if Five had thought the same thing about Elliott in Dallas. Another casualty of hurricane Hargreeves; a storm that only blows because she summoned the wind to do it.
"Luckily, I don't think there's so much marriage in the Hargreeves future." She summons a smile for this, though she aims it at the floor in a guiltstorm.
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Watching her talk to the floor wasn't an entirely unfamiliar occurrence. He knew that look, had felt some of what she was feeling, and he smiled faintly, even if she wasn't looking at him to see it.
"I think life kind of has a way of surprising you."