fic | FENCES | Young Avengers (AU)
Fandom: Marvel > Young Avengers
Title: Fences
Rating: pg-13? Just to be safe?
Characters/Pairings: Eventually all the YA and some background New Mutants and Avengers Academy, but in this part it's just Billy and Teddy.
Word Count: 1044
Notes: AU. All the mutants/aliens/whatever have been rounded up and put in mutant prisons. :(
Teddy stumbled into the exercise yard, his legs all pins and needles from sitting for so long. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he was last let out. It could have been a week, but it could also have been a month. The days ran together inside, and Teddy had given up on trying to keep a tally on the wall. It was hard to even know how long a day was, with no natural light in his cell, and no set lights out time. Sometimes he got the feeling that it was the middle of the night, but there was no way for him to know, not even based on the food schedule. A better idea might have been to count meals, if he could figure out how many there were in a 24 hour period - four, maybe? But there was probably no point in starting, since he hadn’t kept track from the start.
He ambled around the perimeter of the yard, the blood slowly coming back into his legs. It was always the same people with him - some halfheartedly playing basketball, some uncoordinatedly skipping rope, and others just walking. They weren’t allowed to touch, weren’t really allowed to talk to each other. Every so often someone would start a fight, or try and climb the fence and somehow get past the barbed wire and the twenty foot wall. The people who tried to escape would disappear for a few days or weeks or months, and when they came back they always looked... different. Broken. Hopeless. The people who started fights disappeared altogether. The guards told them they had been shot, but Teddy was pretty sure they had just been switched to another rotation. He didn’t know how many rotations there were, but there had to be more people than this in the camp, if what the guards said about there being no mutants at all left outside was true.
He got to the place where he started and reversed direction, trailing his hand along the fence. It was twenty feet high or so, with just some razor wire at the top, but Teddy knew that the fence and the wall weren’t the only thing between the occupants of the camp and the real world. There had been rumors of a force field all around the facility, and sometimes at what he guessed was night Teddy could hear dogs barking. Vicious sounding dogs. And even if a person managed to get past those, the desert would take care of them. Teddy’s best stab at their location was Death Valley, but he wasn’t entirely sure that they were even in the United States anymore. They could be somewhere in South America, or even in the Middle East.
Teddy shook his head to clear it. It was way more likely that they were just in California or Arizona or something. Establishing a mutant camp in a foreign country was probably a political nightmare, and an absurd length to go to, even for what passed for government these days.
He almost missed the dark-haired boy passing him for the first time, he was so distracted. Every time they were let out to exercise, Teddy would walk once along the fence, switch direction, and then the dark-haired boy would start walking, going the opposite way. They usually passed each other between six and eight times before they had to go back inside, and Teddy always smiled at the other boy. At first he had just looked nervous, like he thought the guards would figure out their little game, but the last couple times Teddy had caught the barest hint of a grin.
* * *
Billy hunched up his shoulders a little against the dusty wind blowing across the yard. It might be getting towards fall, if Billy’s counting wasn’t too far off. The blond kid was there again today, and Billy watched as he paced the perimeter of the yard and then switched direction. Even after being in the camp for almost a year (Billy had figured out how to keep time using the meal deliveries), the blond kid had this certain way of walking, like he hadn’t given up entirely. It was nice, seeing someone who wasn’t shuffling along like a zombie, and it always made Billy stand up a little straighter and try to smooth the wrinkles out of his gray jumpsuit. The blond kid somehow managed to look really attractive in his hideous uniform, which was quite a feat, since they were the shade of gray that just makes everything around it look duller and more depressing.
They passed at exactly the halfway point of the fence, each walking at exactly the same speed. The blond kid flashed a grin at Billy, and Billy smiled back. His lips were dry, and the smile cracked the skin, but he just wiped the tiny bit of blood away with the back of his hand and kept counting steps. Thirty across the short sides, fifty across the long sides. He always passed the blond kid at exactly the twenty-fifth step. Back home his room had been six by four steps, his brothers’ seven by five, his mom’s office five by three...
He got so lost in his reverie that he nearly missed passing the blond kid, who smiled again and leaned in, whispering “I’m Teddy.” Billy didn’t have time to answer before he was gone again.
Teddy. His name was Teddy. Short for Theodore, probably, which seemed much to long and academic for such an easy going person. Billy had thought about what his name could be, random guesses in his head as they paced around the courtyard. His top guesses had been Luke, Max, and Jake, but none of them had really seemed right. He was definitely a Teddy though, through and through.
The next time they passed he leaned in and whispered “Billy, Billy Kaplan.” Teddy smiled his big easy smile and Billy tried not to melt into a puddle of mutant goo on the spot. It was pretty much the worst time possible to develop a crush, but that seemed to be the way his life worked.
Title: Fences
Rating: pg-13? Just to be safe?
Characters/Pairings: Eventually all the YA and some background New Mutants and Avengers Academy, but in this part it's just Billy and Teddy.
Word Count: 1044
Notes: AU. All the mutants/aliens/whatever have been rounded up and put in mutant prisons. :(
Teddy stumbled into the exercise yard, his legs all pins and needles from sitting for so long. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he was last let out. It could have been a week, but it could also have been a month. The days ran together inside, and Teddy had given up on trying to keep a tally on the wall. It was hard to even know how long a day was, with no natural light in his cell, and no set lights out time. Sometimes he got the feeling that it was the middle of the night, but there was no way for him to know, not even based on the food schedule. A better idea might have been to count meals, if he could figure out how many there were in a 24 hour period - four, maybe? But there was probably no point in starting, since he hadn’t kept track from the start.
He ambled around the perimeter of the yard, the blood slowly coming back into his legs. It was always the same people with him - some halfheartedly playing basketball, some uncoordinatedly skipping rope, and others just walking. They weren’t allowed to touch, weren’t really allowed to talk to each other. Every so often someone would start a fight, or try and climb the fence and somehow get past the barbed wire and the twenty foot wall. The people who tried to escape would disappear for a few days or weeks or months, and when they came back they always looked... different. Broken. Hopeless. The people who started fights disappeared altogether. The guards told them they had been shot, but Teddy was pretty sure they had just been switched to another rotation. He didn’t know how many rotations there were, but there had to be more people than this in the camp, if what the guards said about there being no mutants at all left outside was true.
He got to the place where he started and reversed direction, trailing his hand along the fence. It was twenty feet high or so, with just some razor wire at the top, but Teddy knew that the fence and the wall weren’t the only thing between the occupants of the camp and the real world. There had been rumors of a force field all around the facility, and sometimes at what he guessed was night Teddy could hear dogs barking. Vicious sounding dogs. And even if a person managed to get past those, the desert would take care of them. Teddy’s best stab at their location was Death Valley, but he wasn’t entirely sure that they were even in the United States anymore. They could be somewhere in South America, or even in the Middle East.
Teddy shook his head to clear it. It was way more likely that they were just in California or Arizona or something. Establishing a mutant camp in a foreign country was probably a political nightmare, and an absurd length to go to, even for what passed for government these days.
He almost missed the dark-haired boy passing him for the first time, he was so distracted. Every time they were let out to exercise, Teddy would walk once along the fence, switch direction, and then the dark-haired boy would start walking, going the opposite way. They usually passed each other between six and eight times before they had to go back inside, and Teddy always smiled at the other boy. At first he had just looked nervous, like he thought the guards would figure out their little game, but the last couple times Teddy had caught the barest hint of a grin.
* * *
Billy hunched up his shoulders a little against the dusty wind blowing across the yard. It might be getting towards fall, if Billy’s counting wasn’t too far off. The blond kid was there again today, and Billy watched as he paced the perimeter of the yard and then switched direction. Even after being in the camp for almost a year (Billy had figured out how to keep time using the meal deliveries), the blond kid had this certain way of walking, like he hadn’t given up entirely. It was nice, seeing someone who wasn’t shuffling along like a zombie, and it always made Billy stand up a little straighter and try to smooth the wrinkles out of his gray jumpsuit. The blond kid somehow managed to look really attractive in his hideous uniform, which was quite a feat, since they were the shade of gray that just makes everything around it look duller and more depressing.
They passed at exactly the halfway point of the fence, each walking at exactly the same speed. The blond kid flashed a grin at Billy, and Billy smiled back. His lips were dry, and the smile cracked the skin, but he just wiped the tiny bit of blood away with the back of his hand and kept counting steps. Thirty across the short sides, fifty across the long sides. He always passed the blond kid at exactly the twenty-fifth step. Back home his room had been six by four steps, his brothers’ seven by five, his mom’s office five by three...
He got so lost in his reverie that he nearly missed passing the blond kid, who smiled again and leaned in, whispering “I’m Teddy.” Billy didn’t have time to answer before he was gone again.
Teddy. His name was Teddy. Short for Theodore, probably, which seemed much to long and academic for such an easy going person. Billy had thought about what his name could be, random guesses in his head as they paced around the courtyard. His top guesses had been Luke, Max, and Jake, but none of them had really seemed right. He was definitely a Teddy though, through and through.
The next time they passed he leaned in and whispered “Billy, Billy Kaplan.” Teddy smiled his big easy smile and Billy tried not to melt into a puddle of mutant goo on the spot. It was pretty much the worst time possible to develop a crush, but that seemed to be the way his life worked.