[Dreams: Young Avengers Side Story] Freeze Frame
warnings: more Young Avengers (and some X-Brats), Earth-339. world-go-boom. character death. language: pg-13 (for g**damn).
pairing: background Billy/Teddy.
timeline: 2019, the day of the Big One. let's call it...late September?
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters. or the assorted objects of pop culture reference.
notes: 1) poor neurotic Billy. he really is a champion worrier. 2) the four X-Men guarding Utopia are Alani, Noriko, Sooraya, and Ororo. not that it matters just yet. 3) Teen Titans. i imagine that by 2019 it's a fondly replayed old show (like the ancient Tom and Jerry crap that kept showing up during the day on Cartoon Network). 4) EMP = electro-magnetic pulse. due to the nature of explosive reactions, they all disrupt electronics to varying degrees, but atomic blasts cause an especially strong electronic disturbance. out to at least MSD, any unshielded active electronics would fry. 5) twin bonds are weird and cool. there have been instances of one twin feeling pain when the other was injured, of twins calling each other on the phone at exactly the same time, of twins separated from birth growing up to have uncannily similar spouses, jobs, or homes... i wonder if a magic twin bond would be super-weird and super-cool.
Freeze Frame
Billy worries. It’s something he does often and well. His husband says he’s a champion at it. His mother-he still thinks of Rebecca as his mother, because in spite of knowing that he’s technically Wanda Maximoff’s child, there’s still the fact that she had nothing to do with raising him-tells him that everyone worries, and he shouldn’t think of himself as abnormal.
Today, Billy actually has what other people will admit is a perfectly legitimate reason to worry.
He and Teddy, along with four X-Men, have been tasked with defending Utopia while their closest friends help evacuate the east coast. Until the seven carriers and their escorts return to Utopia, it’s just the six of them looking out for more than three hundred mutants and their families.
And across the country, a war is about to kick off.
There’s no way to save everyone, he knows that. Some people are too stubborn or too stupid for their own good. Some people are too afraid of change to move forward. But he also knows that some of his friends are too idealistic to easily accept those facts.
Hope can’t possibly accept it, at least on an emotional level, but she has two big stern fathers to keep her out of trouble. Cap is probably on the verge of sulking from being unable to save everyone, and Stark’s martyr complex must be in full-swing. Mr. Parker will be going nuts right about now.
Billy has a deep and stubborn sense of foreboding about today, a bone-deep dread of an unidentified something.
“You’re gonna wear a hole in the floor,” Alani says. “Sit down, willya? It’s almost time for Teen Titans.”
“I’m sorry,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Just put up with it a little longer. It’s almost the deadline.”
Teddy snorts from his position behind one of the couches (Nori has recruited him to rub her shoulders). “Bill, it’s not like they’re going to call up right at the deadline and say, ‘Hi, it’s us, the nukes landed and we’re all fine.’”
“EMP would scramble transmissions for a bit,” Nori agrees.
“Not helping,” says Alani.
“I can’t help it,” Billy groans, pacing faster. “It’s that bad feeling again, the one I got when Tommy first made me promise to come here.”
The timer on his watch beeps, and he looks at the blinking zeroes for a moment.
It’s stupid.
He doesn’t even know what he’s waiting for. Teddy was right, it’s not like they’ll be able to just pick up a cell phone and dial his number. Nuclear explosions have a habit of taking out cell towers, for one thing.
Once again, a neurotic freak-out for no reason. Total false alarm.
He closes his eyes and heaves a thick sigh.
Then the world stops.
Frowning, he looks around.
Nothing moves. Nori and Alani and Teddy are caught between one heartbeat and the next. The TV screen is a freeze frame of five cartoon superheroes.
He has just enough time to think okay, that’s weird before strangeness eclipses it all. A painful, suffocating press around him, pale sky above, and people are screaming, but he’s so proud right now.
His vision cuts to blackness, and an awful sense of loss knocks the last of his breath out of his lungs.
Suddenly, he knows. Tommy is dead.
It hurts when his knees hit the floor-they’ll definitely be bruised-but he barely notices the physical pain. Some small part of him is mortified to realize that he’s crying like a baby.
“Billy!”
The world must be moving again. He can hear the waves outside the window, and the chatter of the TV, and the scramble of his husband coming to see what’s wrong. Strong hands touch his face.
“Are you okay? What happened?”
His throat feels thick. He can’t see through the tears. He has to swallow before he can talk. “He-he’s dead. I told him to be careful, I told him…”
Teddy pulls him close and hushes him. “No, you don’t know that. I’m sure everybody’s fine.”
But he does know it. He wishes he didn’t, but he does.
For the first time in years, he has to fight the instinctive urge to fix things.
Wanda tried to ‘fix’ things. Dr. Strange had been quite clear: there is nothing good down that road. Rearranging reality is the number one no-no, and reversing death is number two. It sounds like a dumb TV trope, but it’s the truth. Bringing people back (or making people who didn’t exist to begin with) screws up the dimensional fabric.
Yeah, he could save Tommy if he tried, but there’d be all kinds of nasty consequences.
Sometimes, Billy wishes he wasn’t such a goddamn goody-two-shoes.
.End.
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