"You ripped a hole in the universe and shoved seven people through. Kinda makes sense that you'd be hungover." Luther's smile is rueful, grateful.

He doesn't have the same kind of knife-sharp intellect and book smarts as Five, or Diego's cutting wit, or Allison's ability to wrap an entire room around her finger with charisma alone — but Luther knows his team. Watches them, and used to know how they tick, how far to push them and when they're struggling. It had been his job for a decade-plus, keeping the delicate moods of the Academy tuned enough to function in the field. It had worked until it hadn't.

"How old did you say you were again?" he asks, after a pause. "You mentioned, in the middle of everything, but." It's hard to wrap his mind around, trying to parse the fact that little Five is so much older than him now. Although Luther's room is oddly trapped in the past, too, despite the fact that he'd lived here longer: model airplanes still soaring overhead, dangling from the ceiling. He'd hung onto them even into his twenties, when he did live here. Still can't quite articulate why.