Absent But Not Forgotten [IC]

[alderwitch]

Phantom dropped into the mansion, feeling more like one of the ghosts in it rather than a flesh and blood woman. She was back to not knowing what day or time it was in Prime. She had to check both the clock and calendar as that last 'quick jaunt' had turned into days and days. "Jack... honey?" She called as she floated through the house, peeling off her mask. The laceration on her face healed as she phased through walls, looking into the rooms her family usually occupied. "JJ...? Hello?"

Eventually, she found the note. From the baby sitter. Her shoulders slumped and after looking at herself in the mirror, she gestured, changing her cloak and cowl into a faded sweater and jeans before blipping to the park, where she squinted in the day light like she was the creature of the night. Eventually she spotted Erin and her son out on a picnic blanket and headed over. It took her longer than usual to fade into existence, almost as if she was forgetting how.

[Electra]

Erin had brought her lunch along on this little jaunt, packing up JJ into the stroller with his sunglasses, hat, and sunscreen all carefully in place. It was a cloudy day, and under the trees she'd let him pull off the shades, but there was no point in taking chances. Still, it was probably one of the last really nice days they were going to have this year, now that October was draining away rapidly into winter. It would be a shame to waste it. Plus she liked watching Jack Junior pushing up on his elbows to look around, or rolling over to find some especially interesting leaf or piece of grass. "Good job, JJ!" she congratulated him as the baby reached out and grabbed hold of a nearby twig. "You got it! When you get bigger, I'll teach you to hit things with it!"

Even as she spoke, Erin became aware of a presence near them. Her head immediately came up as she looked around, checking for any potential threat. She was both relieved and surprised to see Mrs. Faretti coming towards them. It had been quite awhile since that notable had been around, one reason why Erin had been making so much money lately. She waved, picking JJ up so he could see. "Look, it's Mommy!" she said encouragingly. "Wave hi to mommy!" With some help from Erin, the baby sort of waved his arm in Taylor's direction.

[alderwitch]

Taylor stepped forward and went to her knees on the blanket, her smile sad but genuine as she watched the baby roll and gurgle, flashing sharp little fangs. "My little boy... He gets bigger every day." Or I'm just missing so much it seems that way. How long has he been rolling? What else am I missing? Taylor repressed the urge to yank her baby away and instead reached out one finger for him to latch onto, flashing identical dimples as she returned Jack Jr.'s smile.

"Hey, Erin. Long time no see. How are you doing? Thank you for the note, by the way. It saved me some time." Scrying would have taken at least a few minutes of looking. And how sad would it be to have to scry for your own child?

[Electra]

"I'm good," Erin replied, passing JJ over to Taylor without being asked. "The park thing was sort of spur of the moment, he was restless and it's a nice day out. He really likes getting out on the grass and watching the people and stuff. I didn't realize you were coming back today, or I'd have stayed home with him. How was your mission... thing?" she asked politely. It usually wasn't explained to her what Phantom was doing on the trips that took her away so often, but it had to be pretty important. Nobody would want to miss so much time with their kid, right?

[alderwitch]

Taylor took her son into her arms and cuddled him close enough that he squirmed a little. She laughed at that and then relaxed her grip to help him sit on her lap, turning her face up to the cloudy sky. "Long. Too long. And oddly pointless. It's fine. The more he gets used to the sunlight, the better really. It's too easy for him to have bad habits develop early. Getting him on a daytime schedule is a constant effort... which you probably already know."

Taylor smiled and looked down at his fuzzy head. "How was your summer, Erin? I didn't get the chance to ask earlier. And it's already over. Time really does fly." Especially when one wasn't even on Earth.

[Electra]

"Uh, it was okay," Erin replied with a half-shrug. Summer seemed like a million years ago by now, with the fall quarter already under her belt. "Been keeping pretty busy with school and Young Freedom and all that, plus babysitting. And I guess you probably heard about the dimension stuff we got sucked into lately. Hey, don't eat that," she told JJ automatically, taking the twig out of his mouth before he could more than dampen it. "He's teething," she told Taylor, "he's chewing on everything."

[alderwitch]

"Oh," Taylor said as she watched the babysitter pull the twig away and blinked at the exchange. "Working on more than just fangs. It was bound to happen eventually." Taylor slipped her hand in her pocket and rummaged until she managed to find something that was safe to chew on and nothing even JJ's teeth could tear apart. She pulled out the thin, cool disc with symbols etched on it and provided for the baby to wave and chomp on. "Picked that up for him when I was out. A month ago. I think."

She shook her head and determinedly turned the topic back to Erin, "What sort of dimensional stuff? There's been a lot going on lately it seems and I can't be everywhere. Even when I'm trying."

[Electra]

"Well, the way it went was we were trying to help Mrs. Harcourt put up the dimensional defense net at the school," Erin explained, "and at the same time, the people in the dimension next door were doing the same thing. When both of them went online at once, we got sucked through into their dimension, Edge and Midnight and myself. The people there were a lot like us, only reverse genders. We just hung around there for a day or so, till Mr and Miss Harcourt figured out how to fix it. So that was okay."

Erin hesitated, breaking up the twig in her fingers before she went on. "Then last month we got switched with our doubles from, well, Edge called it Anti-Earth. Me and him and Midnight and Kid Cthulhu and Rift, all at once. They came here, we went there. I don't know if you've been there," she told Phantom, "but it was pretty bad. We eventually managed to get back, and... and our doubles went back to their world. Well, my double was like me, from a different world that wasn't evil, but she got pulled back anyway. Nothing's happened since then, we're hoping whatever was weird with the dimensions has stopped now."

[alderwitch]

"Mmmhmmm..." Taylor agreed looking thoughtful for a moment. She wiggled the leg under the baby to bounce him a few times, her fingers held by his chubby hands. "It is partially my fault for being absent from Prime but there has been a lot of dimensional fluxing lately although I haven't seen much cause for it, just an increase in anomalities. It's strange."

[Electra]

"I think the second one was Rick Lucas," Erin admitted, a little uncomfortable to bring Mark's family into this. But still, Phantom was the dimensional guardian, and it was her job to know this stuff. "Or Evil Rick Lucas, actually. Like a challenge, to see which team was better. It was really weird. I don't even know who won, but eventually the Not-Evil Talos who is over there helped us get back on our own." She ran a hand over her hair and fiddled with the diaper bag, rearranging things to make sure it was neat to give back to Taylor. "Have you ever been there?"

[alderwitch]

"Anti-Earth? Where evil is good and vice versa? Once or twice. I try and avoid the near earth dimensions where I can. It's disconcerting when you see the faces of people you know and they're nothing like the people of your world. I find it especially strange since I don't really have doppelgangers. Taylor Faretti does, but not Phantom. If any other iterations of me have powers, it is not from being the Chosen of Heshem. It's a little disconcerting." Taylor admitted, she had glanced up at the mention of Rick Lucas but only seemed to make a mental note before she looked back down at the baby, "It's disconcerting for everyone, though."

[Electra]

"Yeah, I guess so. I've met so many versions of myself, it usually doesn't even bother me anymore," Erin replied, tucking away diapers and toys into their proper pockets. She was quiet for a minute, then decided to change the subject. "Are you going to be back for awhile now?" she asked. "I mean, with the holidays coming and all, and JJ's six month checkup, stuff like that coming up." She tried to keep any censure out of her tone, but when Erin had had a mom, her mom had always been around for the important stuff. It was hard to think of moms not being that way.

[alderwitch]

"Erin..." Taylor said, and then bit back the urge to jump down the girl's throat. She sighed. "Of course I'm going to try to be here for the holidays and all of that. I really don't like being gone so much. I just haven't had much of a choice, unfortunately. If there was any way I could make time, I would. It isn't easy, but sometimes we don't get to do what we want to do. Not even with all the power we have, sometimes there are responsibilities you just can't get away from."

Taylor shrugged and bounced her knee again to soothe the baby who was starting to crane his neck to stare at the tense tone coming from his mother. She forced her voice calm again, "I'm sure you know that. You must feel the strain of being a teenage super hero."

[Electra]

Erin backed down rapidly when her question was obviously not well-received. The last thing she needed was to make trouble and lose her major source of income, not to mention maybe leaving Jack Jr. in the lurch. "Yeah, I understand, of course," she said hastily. "I just meant, um, I have some field trips and stuff coming up, and school stuff around the holidays, so if you have to go places, you might need a backup sitter. And it can be kind of hard to find people because they go places for Christmas."

She dug into the diaper bag again, looking for a distraction. "Oh, here," she told Taylor, pulling out a few folded sheets of printer paper. "I knew you guys are both really busy, so I um, did some research on what people say are the best toys for babies JJ's age, in case you got into a crunch and needed to buy presents, or tell people what to buy. It's just, you know, for ideas."

[alderwitch]

"Thank you." Taylor said after half a second of reminding herself that it was a good thing to have JJ attended to by someone who loved him, even if that someone made Taylor feel like the worst parent ever. "I know we're not getting him a puppy. I don't think we really need to encourage the stalking instinct tendencies and that sounds like a recipe for disaster."

She nodded her head and tickled the baby's tummy until he giggled, smiling automatically in response. "If you need time off, just let us know and we'll schedule it in the calendar. I'm sure that we'll have holiday plans to take the baby too. We celebrate Christmas... in our own way." Last time it had been with drug runners. The memory made Taylor smile.

[Electra]

"Oh, that'll be fun," Erin agreed with a nod. "Babies are really funny at Christmas, with the lights and the toys and Santa and all that. I'll try and get my schedule to you soon so you can plan around it." She hesitated, wondering if she should just stop while she was ahead. She'd had the question in her mind for awhile, but hadn't encountered Phantom to ask it. Now might not be a good time... but if she didn't ask, who knew when she'd see the dimensional guardian again?"

"With all the dimensional stuff we've been doing lately, I started wondering," she began. "I know sometimes people who come to Prime are allowed to stay, and some have to get sent back to where they come from. I was wondering what the rules for that are. Is it that if someone's not dangerous, they can stay, or if they have someone to look after them to make sure nothing bad happens because they're around, or if something bad would happen if they went back?"

[alderwitch]

"The rules..." Taylor sighed and flopped down onto her back, shifting the baby so that he was laying on her stomach and could start smacking on the Eye of Heshem that hung around her neck, leaving sticky fingerprints on it. "The rules say that no one should stay, everyone goes back. It's cold and cruel but the rules are hard and fast. It's a very big multiverse, though, and sometimes we can look the other way but that mostly has to do with how much weight the person puts on the walls between the worlds. Some have very big footprints and some have very tiny ones but too much and holes tear. More of an art than a science."

[Electra]

"How can you tell if someone is going to leave a big hole?" Erin asked, folding her legs under her. "I mean, I guess you'd probably have to look with your magic or something, but if say someone was already not native to the dimension they were living in, and there wasn't a big reality rip because of that, could that person probably move to another dimension and stay there without causing any more problems, dimension-wise?"

[alderwitch]

"It's a gamble. It's always a gamble." Taylor said, tickling JJ's sides as she looked over to watch the girl and asked baldly, "So, who is it? We've gotten too specific for it to be hypothetical. Who are you thinking of rescuing and where do you want to rescue them to? You never have easy questions. Last time it was the layout of the that hospital and this time its a dimensional refugee."

[Electra]

"It's still... it's just an idea," Erin said uncomfortably, tugging on the ends of her hair. "And it's nothing to do with Omega or the Terminus or anything like that. I haven't really worked out all the details yet, or most of the details, even. I just don't even know if it would work, because I don't know the rules about dimensions. I can't... If I tried and then you had to come along and send her back, it would be even worse than if I'd never done anything at all."

She blew out a breath and spilled the beans. "When we went to anti-Earth, I saw the double of me that they have there. She's not from there, she didn't start out evil like they do there. She was a split from me, from my world. I guess maybe it had to happen that way, for symmetry or something. But they found her, and they tortured her, and they made her crazy. And they're still torturing her. She lives in a little box half the size of JJ's nursery, and they play images from our world for her to make her upset, to make her cower or fight. And she's never going to get away. I know she has to be locked up, she's very dangerous, but even being in prison here would be a million times better than being there." She looked over at Taylor to see what kind of reaction that would get.

[alderwitch]

Taylor didn't say anything for a few long minutes as she played with her son and stared up at him and the dappled canopy above him. That wasn't unusual. The mystic was prone to long silences, especially if the question was difficult, and this question was certainly that. On the one hand, the rules were clear that the girl should stay in place. On the other, it was a cruel life to keep her in. But one girl would lead to two and then ten. There were countless beings suffering torment and the lines were hazy. Too hazy sometimes.

She floated JJ up a few inches and then let him drop back into her hands, smiling faintly as he squealed and shook his fists, arching his back for more play. He was going to be a flier someday. Taylor could just tell.

"Would a prison that she has no hope of freeing herself from beat a prison that someday might let her break free?" Taylor turned her face to Erin finally, answering a question with another question. She continued on, "I'm not trying to lead you to the answer I want. I'm trying to make you think. You were brought here for a reason. She was brought there for a reason. Someday, she might help free that world from the evil that has a grip on it, and here she would only ever be another monster in a cage. It's a gamble. It's always a gamble. You choose what you can live with and you pay the price for those choices in the cost it takes from you. Neither of those are good options. Being a hero, it usually means finding a third path. It's not easy, but that's what sets us apart. Not metahuman ability, its the ability to find the right path. That's what Summers is teaching you, really."

[Electra]

"Mark... I mean Edge told me that at places like Blackstone, they can rehabilitate villains, give them treatment and get them better," Erin said, hope warring with uncertainty. "And they treat people humanely, feed them and give them medical care and treat them like human beings. Maybe rehabilitation's a longshot chance, but it's some kind of chance, anyway. She's not going to be anybody's savior. They use her to kill people, I think they... you know Psyche, on my team? I think her double gets into my double's head and makes her see all the people, the rebels who are trying to fight back, as zombies. And so she kills them, because she's terrified, all the time. She's so out of it that when she saw me, she didn't even recognize me. She called me Mom, like she was a little kid or something."

Erin hitched up her legs, wrapping her arms around her knees. "I don't think she's going to last very much longer," she admitted. "I wouldn't want to live that way, and I don't think she does either. I watched her fight. She fights like I used to, when I didn't care. She's hoping that something takes her out. And I guess that's the only other answer for her. Nobody would want to live that way," she said again.

[alderwitch]

Taylor sighed and gave her a disappointed look at her defeatist attitude. She looked away again planning out her next woords very carefully. She was not going to encourage bringing another interdimensional refugee. Taylor moistened her lips and said slowly. "Well, that's a possibility but that sounds like psychic conditioning more than malice. I don't know that much about that arena but you might at least examine the option before settling for prison or death. You have to think outside the box if you're going to take on the ills of the multiverse."

[Electra]

"I'm not very good at ideas," Erin admitted glumly. "I asked Edge, because he always has these crazy ideas that tend to work, but he couldn't think of anything either. He just changed the subject like he usually does when he doesn't want to think about depressing things." She tugged on the edges of her hair, looking upset in a repressed sort of way. "You really think there's nothing I can do for her except hope that somehow she can fix her own brain, or somebody there takes care of her?"

[alderwitch]

"Or someone could fix her brain for her." Taylor responded quietly, putting the idea out there before she went to change the subject and silently hoped that it was the right choice as she provided the idea of sneaking into one of the more near earth dimensions for a Hail Mary attempt. It nagged her conscious both as Phantom and as a mother but the children - barely children anymore - and certainly they'd earn the right to call themselves heroes. "So what holiday plans do you have? Any winter formals at school or does Claremont not do that?"