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Viktor Hargreeves ([personal profile] 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.
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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2021-10-27 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
Sam had been busy cataloging a small collection of curse boxes he's procured from a sketchy peddler of magical artifacts, who hadn't had the first clue how dangerous they were. Procured was a nice way of putting it. He'd maybe sort of scared the hell out of the guy and demanded he take them off the guy's hands at a majorly discounted price.

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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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2021-11-02 01:20 am (UTC)(link)
Of course.

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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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2021-11-09 03:08 am (UTC)(link)
He'd opened the garage doors after her text with a push of a button, and the cameras Lisbeth installed told him the moment she'd stepped into the building. So, when she knocked, he was already halfway up the metal stairs of the crows nest, the heavy bolt drawing back with a clang and the bunker's door swinging open.

"Hey," he said, stepping aside to give her room. "Come in."
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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2021-12-09 03:07 am (UTC)(link)
"Hey, no. It's fine," he assured her, leaning against the stair rail as he gave her a moment to take it all in.

"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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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2021-12-15 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
"Oh, yeah, wow. These are great," he said, letting the cufflinks spill into his palm. They were weighty silver, which held its own kind of power. He didn't tell her that he would probably check the spell out before he considered wearing them, just to make sure it really was what had been advertised.

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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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2022-01-05 02:07 am (UTC)(link)
"My brother. Plus, uh, she had to keep giving me doses, and the demon who was making the potion for her started upping the price, so."

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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[personal profile] greatest_sin 2022-01-11 03:23 am (UTC)(link)
"I always knew we had weird lives, and I used to want normal so badly, but it just... I don't know. I didn't want to believe that we were doomed to be alone, just because we were hunters or because we were us, but I just knew it wouldn't look the same way as what other people had, you know?"

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."