APOCALYPSE MAIDEN

** villain / hero || accepting ↪ @bornbreathless 

“Which part?” Honestly by now she should have been used to this. The utter chaos she’d happened to stumble into on her way back from work. The sheer amount of antics this family got itself into and yet here she still was, panic still in her voice and the handle of a bucket in her hands. 

beep beep how’s my portrayal?  || accepting  ↪ @space-time-and-coffee

“That’s not possible with the way you three stomped up the stairs,” Luther remarks, his voice restrained due to location and the late hour. He lives a life on high alert, training himself and his senses to be attuned enough with their home that he’s up and ready should he hear any disturbances. 

The drunken destruction of his siblings hadn’t been the Big Bad he had been anticipating, but it stirred him from his bed none the less, and broken sleep will mean slightly decreased responses and reflexes tomorrow which is enough to make his jaw set. Not Two, nor Four and certainly not Seven knew the depth of scrutiny that came with being Number One. 

Luther’s not so out of touch with those at his heels that he doesn’t know what they think of him – golden-haired Golden Boy, ever present at their father’s right hand – but it’s a hard-won space he occupies and he would do anything required to ensure he doesn’t fall from grace. 

( He’s yet to learn that the only difference between Olympic gold medals and dog collars that glint in the sun are intent from those who present them. ) 

“You reek of alcohol, do you know how embarrassing the three of you make us all look when you act like this?”

He only ever truly considers them a unit when he’s found something to berate, otherwise he’s more comfortable identifying them as a pack that he leads. 

Luther wasn’t one to drink, that would require actually leaving the Academy, which was something he rarely did without cause. He would quicker run towards an active crime than a willing good time, which he assumes is why they never extend him an invite. 

This sort of scene from Klaus is expected, from Diego is unsurprising but from Vanya it jars him. The world beyond the mansion was curated by cruelty, situations easily soured, what true defense did she have without him around? 

He tries to be his sibling’s shield, but with Vanya he can easily be mistaken for a sword aiming directly for her. 

His hand let’s go of his hold on her, but he can never quite let go of anything that transpired between them, and his hand raises to point down the hall towards her room, his expression stony and unforgiven. 

“We’ll finish this discussion at a normal hour.” 

She doesn’t bite back when he comments on the way the bar still lingers on her skin, doesn’t object to say that she’d been slipped on. She’d still drank and she knew that would enough for him to dig his father-filed claws into. It’s easier just to be quiet, just keep your mouth shut and he’ll lose interest. 

Isn’t that how it always worked with her? 

Vanya prickles when she’s called an embarrassment, deciding that was just a new synonym for ordinary. In this family, it was all the same. How could the plain, mundane mousy little brunette in front of him ever dream to compare to the statue of virtue she called a brother? But she still manages to stay quiet.  Klaus would have laughed she thought, he’d bring out that baby voice he does whenever he’s in trouble to disarm and break tension with his own flamboyance. 

Diego would have fought, he would have bit back harder and harder until one or both of them stopped moving. 

She lacks the posturing of the first, and the right hook of the other. 

“Sorry,” She mutters in the space between them. Which is admittedly smaller than she’s used too. Divided in stance, in status and in name. 

And he flaunts it in the way he points, his arm raised clean over her head effortlessly, down the long hallway to the smallest bedroom. As though he is disciplining a small child, that she feels a bubbling low in her chest. A simmer she can’t quite hold in her hands. “Okay,” Her tone turns, taking on a more disbelieving tone. 

She tells herself it’s not worth it, and it’s not. 

For all of five steps. 

          Of all the things she’d worn that night, from Klaus’s stolen leather jacket, a pair of Diego’s sunglasses, the crowds affection, and even some assholes drink. This was the one she’d never expected to adorn her body that evening was Luther’s hand on her elbow on the way up their steps. Just past three in the morning and number one was still playing happy leader.

Some people are just never off the clock. 

Diego is helping a very drunk Klaus into his room, and flashes her a ‘sucks to be you’ gaze before he disappears down the hall. Knowing just as well as she did that Luther couldn’t yell after him. 

That would wake Dad, and even his golden boy status wouldn’t save him from that holy reckoning. Turning on her heel, Vanya looked up at her older brother. His light blonde hair glimmering even in the little light of the moon. He looks tired, and even uses his free hand to rub the palm of his hand against his eyes. But under that thin veil of sleep, she can see he’s annoyed. Even worse, he can see that she’s holding back a drunk laugh to hide just how genuinely nervous she was. 

She’d never been in real trouble with Luther before, Diego or Klaus, or even Five back when more than his ghost lingered in these halls, were her usual shield that allowed her to slip into the dark unnoticed. 

Now it’s just him and her. Leaving her stomach to flip like an over-anxious pancake. She doesn’t give him the chance to bite before she barks. Summoning up all the vibrato she can muster to blurt out in her best Diego impression. 

“ The best you thing you can do is just to ignore me. ”

Smoking is a relatively new habit, she’d never really gotten into it the same way Allison or Klaus had in their youth. She was a drinker, if anything. Whiskey, sweet and smoky like her father’s liquor cabinet. Something every one of her siblings knew, and knew well. 

So to have her sitting on the edge of the roof probably wasn’t what he’d been hoping to find at this time of night. Her silhouette outlined in moonlight. Coloring the fresh air he was seeking with the smell of nicotine, farm air and a long worn off perfume. 

Pathetically, it wasn’t the smoke she’d been addicted too. It was the excused to sneak off to the barn and get a fix of something so much more compelling. The brushing of finger tips, and lingering stares. It got her every time after all. 

He doesn’t even get the chance to ask before she answers the question that sat silently as a statue between the two of them. 

let me ramble about stuff || always accepting  ↪ @boyancient 

*taps mic* okay, welcome to my second ted talk on the luther and vanya dynamic. today we’re going to attempt to tackle a couple things but I’m going try and keep this as stream line as I can because I do have a lot of opinions. but if it gets rambly, sorry in advance.  

let’s start at the beginning shall we? you can’t talk about luther and vanya without discussing dear ol’ dad and the way he effected each of them. now, I’m not going to say diego through ben all had the exact same experience with him, but we can all agree luther and vanya’s experiences with him were decidedly different from the rest.  where luther got the ‘golden child’ affection as a form of manipulation, vanya got isolation and willful neglect which was preserved as preferable treatment. both are valid forms of trauma. they just perform differently. everything about luther is meant to tower over his other siblings, and everything about vanya is meant to shrink her down and keep her small. (even look at the camera angles in season one versus season two with these two. it’s all meant to emphasis this presence and physicality or lack there of.) 

he’s number one, he’s the leader, and in my opinion that’s on purpose. honestly if we look at the siblings? five much better fit reginald’s desires for an academy leader, he’s decisive, he’s efficient, lethal and logical. and in some cases (albeit only a few), he does manage to wrangle his siblings together in spite of their differences. so why not pick him? he’s unpredictable. notice none of them are shocked at five’s outburst at the dinner table in season one? outbursts are a huge no-no in reggie’s book as we’ve seen time and time again. but you know who isn’t prone to outburst (atleast not as a child anyway)? someone just as logical and just as capable? luther. 

you know who is so prone to outburst he literally puts her on medication to cut her off from her emotions at four? vanya, whose outbursts are also the most destructive with the least effort. and a thing to note about reginald is this man micromanages his children’s lives in SUCH detail when they were young that he: only give them a very limited period a week of free time, ran tests on them while they slept and that instead of just letting vanya eat anything other than oatmeal: he just built a nanny that was impossible for her to get rid of. that is how important it was for these kids to obey. that is the type of person we are working with here. 

so these two are kept under his thumb in polar opposite and singular ways, and this? allowed them so see sides of him the others didn’t. 

luther talks about their dad’s favorite spot, he got bits and pieces of affection, he got to know him more, he gets to sit on his right hand side at the dinner table because he’s literally his right hand man and vanya in her othering and isolation from her siblings got to see him when he’s observing on missions, she got to keep notes for him while he trained the others. vanya lives in a world where she is kept on the outside looking in and reginald never lets her forget it for a second. but in doing so, still tries to keep her in his peripheral vision. (and a part of me is kind of curious how luther took this, because we know the others took it as favoritism in a way but luther knows he’s the favorite so....curious.)

and how does reginald repay both of them when they lash out? he ships them into the cruelest forms of time out possible. vanya with her locker/vault/chamber/cage and luther to the moon, luther thinks of the moon with the same sort of twisted affection that he views reginald’s treatment of him in my opinion. and upon rewatching it’s not shocking that the second the white violin destroys her literal cage, her metaphoric cage of the house, and the people who aided in that pain that the last thing she destroys is luther’s cage as well. 

in the moment of her greatest rage, her total breakdown, she takes everything. not just her trauma touchstones but luther’s too. 

now, reggie deserves his own post one of these days but he’s just the preface for these two’s dynamic as a whole. the foundation, if you will. but there’s a lot more here. so, I want to talk about how luther views vanya in season one as a whole. and the short answer is: she’s irrelevant or at the very least that is how it comes off. the only time I can remember him actively addressing vanya is in the vote scene. 

In the vote scene, she had already attempted to stop a fight between diego and luther, and now they are both looking at her to pick a side. trying to seek her opinion on something for the first time and she understandably freezes. but luther looks at her like well??? as if he expects her to just agree before diego pops in with she doesn’t get a vote. in this scene, he doesn’t actually care about what vanya thinks, he just needs her vote to break a tie. and I think that’s the theme of vanya for luther in season one, she just doesn’t matter all that much until she does. like even when the gang is collectively says “hey we’re going to save vanya” he says he’ll pass until he knows allison is in danger. he doesn’t care enough to be openly hostile to her, he doesn’t care enough to worry. he just, isn’t interested, he mirrors reginald’s neglect in a lot of ways and that makes sense. reginald set the bar for how to treat vanya, and they all took it on in their own way. 

and then the accident happens, allison a person he loves so dearly could have died at vanya’s hands. what he did was so wrong, and it was a betrayal to vanya and yes, she should get to be angry about that. she should get to be angry at all of them but that’s another topic. what we have to realize is that, luther is doing exactly what reginald would have wanted him to do in that situation. that’s not an excuse but to not recognize reginald’s influence in that feels like a disservice, we even have the direct visual parallel of the two standing in the same spot outside of the cage. 

there is understandably a lot of damage between them in at the end of season one, and while I don’t think everything was solved in season two between them. I think they took a lot of steps in the right direction. while i am a little irked, about luther bringing a gun to meet vanya. once he actually sees her smile wide at him, he does apologize, he does take responsibility (and this isn’t the last time he does it) and he is willing to let her go if that’s what she wants. 

it’s not what she wants though.

reginald calls vanya out on not really wanting to remember, and honestly? I don’t blame her? I play it that her memory was foggy due to the fall and getting hit by the car, but as she starts to dig she doesn’t like what she starts to find so she just...keeps it locked up. and why wouldn’t she?

in season two without the burden of her memories she gets to talk to luther. she gets to take care of him, she gets to sit as his bedside and clean his wounds after a fight. and when he asks why? she just gets to say because he’s her brother. it’s simple. it’s so easy. 

this is a family of people who love each other imperfectly. broken puzzle pieces trying to fight together again without getting caught on each other’s rough edges. and it’s hard, but one of the big lessons of season one was:

some things just take time, some things stay broken. 

in my opinion a lot of season one was about the ladder, but season two? it’s all about the former. with her memory back I feel like there’s going to be some sticking points between them, moments where it’s going to be awkward and uneasy. (I personally hc that vanya is kind of uncomfortable with touch between them for a while) but the cards are on the table. luther has shown he’s actively making changes to try and redeem himself from those actions. and they have so much potential for such an amazing arch, where they they can both fully grasp the places they were slotted into by reginald. I think the pieces are already starting to form with just how much luther stood up for her in season two, but I think it was a little too easy and I think with her memories back they have to regress a little in some areas to gain more forward motion.

coming to terms with your sibling locking you in a cage and attempting to kill you is, difficult to say the least  no matter the intent. that’s really heavy, and adding in the fact leonard predicted it would happen is salt in the already deep wound. but the ladder is something he shares with every sibling except allison. which is why the zuko and azula comparison is perfect, because at the core of it all: zuko loves azula, and vanya loves luther.

this post is so lengthy already so I’ll leave you with two points:

in season one vanya tells leonard, upset and exasperated that she wants her siblings to be proud of her and standing in the barn at the end of season two as they smile down at her and she smiles up at them? there is no doubt that they are.