ic (IC) Father's Day

[Avenger Assembled]

"I don't know," Richard confessed. "Everything's different here - the people, the cities...I guess we're heroes or something?" He fidgeted in a barely perceptible instant of hesitation that meant quite a bit of indecision for a speedster - then reached up to remove his helmet. The link between them blazed up again - not like the one she shared with her own Richard, a golden road of psychic connection blazed by decades of mental contact, but an echo of it, this Richard's mind just that much out of sync with the man she loved. "If you look close enough, you can see it. I've got blocks on what's really sensitive. If you're really Paige, anything at all like mine, you won't try and break them down. And I guess if Junior here is our kid, he can read minds too, so why not bring him along, huh?" That attempt at cocky self-assurance wasn't as convincing for her as it might have been for someone else. 

 

Paige and Will looked - 

 

And found a mind that was indeed a shadow of Richard Cline, but distinctly different - many memories were vastly different, usually for the worse, and others were protected by tight psychic brick walls that reminded Paige of her own mental defenses viewed from the outside. A shadow of her mind had been in this one before - many times. 

 

Looking far, far back, they found themselves somewhere else entirely. 

 

It was 1976 and Richard was thirteen years old. Two days before he'd kissed pretty Paige Psion on the mouth and it had been the best damn thing ever. He was thinking of ways to do it again sometime, sitting along in the room in the Psion compound where he was staying for the summer to pay off a debt between Clock Queen and Professor Psion, when suddenly he felt the uncomfortable sensation of the professor's psychic 'call' in his head. 

 

He and Paige arrived together, her from her room, wondering for a moment if they were about to get a lecture about fooling around, a lecture that got worse when they entered the Professor's private study and found him in animated conversation with Anna Cline! Well, Psion was animated - looking almost giddy with anticipation in a look Paige had hardly ever seen on her father's face. Anna Cline was smiling and holding up her end of the conversation, but her knuckles were pale against the arms of the chair, and she gripped Richard's arm tight the moment she saw him. 

 

"Children, Richard's mother had returned early with some exciting news for us! Anna, would you like to do the honors about the new world?" 

 

Anna spoke, and though she was smiling, Richard was old enough to know the storm of emotions ranging behind her eyes as she and Psion told them what had happened. There had been a bomb - a big one. More were on their way, but not very many - and the important thing was who they were targeting. "With the destruction of most of the American military and the strongest members of the Freedom League, there will be nothing to stand in our way. This really is a glorious day. Paige, you are exempt from your studies for the remainder of the week - I want you to watch the news reports to prepare you for..." 

 

Richard had largely stopped listening after that. 

Other things had happened in the years that followed. There'd been war, first to gain territory, then to keep it against dangerous enemies. Then ruling, the right-hand man of Anna Cline, then a new sort of alliance with a refugee he'd never really stopped thinking about, and then - 

 

There were too many memories, and too many strong emotions behind them, most of them buried behind mental blocks carefully erected by another Paige Psion-Cline, a world away. 

[KnightDisciple]

Thoughtspeed had closed his eyes behind his helmet, joining in the link between his mother and The Impostor. He fake-retched in his mind at the "kissing Page Psion" bit, though his mother detected hints of the admiration her son had for the still-present love she and Richard shared. But then it all went wrong. So much wrong. Death and destruction and tyranny and he was a part of it?

 

With a sensation like a man ripping free of a wrestling grip, Thoguhtspeed pulled away from the mental link, taking a few stumbling steps back, his hand going to his head (the helmet having pulled back seemingly on instinct), tears leaking down his face even as he gasped for breath. Then he looked up at Richard, the not-his one, his teeth gritted, his hands clenching open and closed. His voice sounded in the ears and minds of all 3 people there, a storm of emotions echoing behind the words.

 

"You aren't my father.You never will be. I want my father back."

[Electra]

"Shhh, baby." Suddenly Paige's hands were on Will's shoulders, her mind brushing against his as it had all his life, soothing, comforting. Behind it he could feel the echoes of her own turmoil, but it wasn't the same as his. Paige wanted her husband back, but what disturbed her about this doppelganger was not his alienness, but how plausible his story might once have been. "We all want him back. We'll get him back, get this fixed up." She looked over to Phantom for confirmation, not quite able to look at the other Richard straight-on at the moment. 

[Avenger Assembled]

"Yeah, well, you ain't my kid either," said Richard, putting his helmet back on with a brief, odd look of what was almost grief on his face. "We gonna do this thing, or what?" 

 

-

 

The other reality was indeed quite different from the one they'd left. The lake looked off, its waters slightly discolored in a way that reminded Paige of what the Great Lakes had looked like before decades of pollution control on her own world. The nearby buildings of Green Bay looked the same; not as if they'd traveled back in time but as if people had simply stopped building new buildings sometime in the past. 

 

Behind them, the unmistakable, albeit slightly tarnished face of Anna Cline in her Clock Queen days looked down on them from the beach's public access way. The sign for the beach now said "WELCOME TO CLINE BEACH - YOU BETTER LEAVE IT LOOKING NICE!" Which was, come to think of it, exactly what Anna told Will about the guest room at her house when he was staying over. 

The magic here was off, in a way that wasn't exactly unsettling for Phantom but was certainly unwholesome. Someone was protecting this dimension - and they weren't doing it in a nice way, or a good way, or a way that wasn't stained with blood. If this universe had a Master Mage, it sure as hell wasn't Adrian Eldritch. The walls were patchy, as if said guardian had gotten sloppy - or had never been terribly good at paying attention. 

 

[alderwitch]

The trip through Phantom's cloak was blessedly brief, with only the impression of endless black streaked with white lightning in the endless void. As the Clines left her cape, Phantom let the folds settle around her body once more as if there was some comfort in the familiar weight of her cowl. With her face averted to allow what privacy she could, Phantom turned her attention to the flavor of this dimension. "I see why you might have slipped through. The walls here are very thin..." Phantom commented as she reached one black gloved hand up to tease out the strains of magic here. "Blood magic is never good at keeping things out. Or in for that matter."

 

She dropped her hand to one side, hoping that her companions had composed themselves. It was always unsettling to look into what might-have-been and Phantom wasn't unsympathetic. However, she was well used to that particular hazard of dimensional jaunting. "My magic is likely to draw more attention - can you sense your husband?" 

 

Phantom hoped this would be quick - not because she was overly worried about trouble. Trouble was part and parcel with what she was, but watching a family working and fighting together... well, it made Taylor realize just how much more lonely her costumed days were now. Unfortunately, retirement wasn't an option for Heshem's Chosen.

[KnightDisciple]

Will's shoulders trembled under his mother's touch, but his face became as stone once again. With a slight twitch, his helmet folded out again, covering his face in blank, black, reflective material, separating him from the world, even if his connection to his mother was still as clear as day.

 

"Yeah, let's go."

 

He followed quietly through the portal to the other, wronger Earth. He took in the sights of the lake, the city, the whole thing, and rolled his shoulders, his head slowly scanning back and forth, like some like of silent sentinel. Only Paige heard his next words.

 

'Mom, should I try searching for Dad? Or just broadcasting to him, even?'

[Avenger Assembled]

Will heard something, an impossibly-fast pitter-patter of feet, and suddenly Richard was yelling "Friendlies! Friendlies!" 

 

And then the other person on the beach stopped running. Her face was hidden by a helmet too, one that seemed to match Richard's, but her jumpsuit was black with red insets - no, her jumpsuit was red and the black, inky writhing energy moving across her body and into the one-handed sword she wore in her left hand was clearly entropic radiation. "You could be contaminated." Her voice wasn't Holly's through the helmet, too old and too throaty, but she could have been her sister. "Clone Mom, fry your brain, send you in to take us all." 

 

"Even Parker's not that fast, honey. And if yer suspicious, the best thing to do is take us back to yer mom so she can scan us, right? And where's Parker gonna get a magic lady who doesn't dress like an Egyptian hooker," said Richard patiently, who really did sound like their Richard trying to talk Holly down from one of her Ideas. "You had another me here, right? C'mon, he told you what happened..."

 

"Oh, he's telling Mom everything," said the girl defiantly, but she lowered her blade. "He's not being tortured," she added after a moment's hesitation, taking the measure of the other group. "We just had to be sure. You scared the Hell out of everybody." As she stepped around the group, careful to stay out of reach, the sand sizzled where she walked, and looking backwards the others could see a trail of glassy footprints where she'd been running. 

 

"Phantom, Hologram, Thoughtspeed, this is Adze - she's our youngest. And these people came a long way to get here, so let's take them to their Richard and get 'em outta here, huh?" Adze, for her part, was staring fixatedly at Paige, evidently taking seriously the reality that this was another universe's version of her mother.

[KnightDisciple]

Thoughtspeed was on-edge when this strange not-sister zoomed onto the scene, crackling not with benign kinetic energy, but instead the energy of the Terminus. On the one hand, he knew several people similarly empowered, including his mother, but on the other hand, years of his mother being reluctant to use that power ingrained a certain...caution...into his mind. Perhaps it was the strange not-resonance he felt in the back of his skull. His hands twitched, eager to form blades. Some instinctual part of him longed to prove himself against this not-quite-doppelganger. 

 

When he noticed Adze staring at his mother, Thoughtspeed blurred to stand between them, no weapons in his hands, but arms held loosely at his sides. Clearly trying to break line of sight, and send a message. 

 

"There a problem here?"

[Electra]

Paige was not a frequent traveler between dimensions, and the transition was always something of a shock to her powers. The shock was even greater here, where the entire psychic atmosphere was strange, echoingly empty where there should've been noise, subdued and streamlined where there should've been chaos, and fear and despair hanging like a pall over everything. It took her a minute just to get her bearings. "No, honey, I'll look-" she began aloud, only to be cut off by the arrival of the young woman in red. 

 

For a minute, all Paige could do was stare. The girl could've been herself thirty-five years ago, or Holly five years from now. Or she could've been, except for the roiling temper visible in the taut lines of her body and the radiation she was freely displaying in a way Paige never would've allowed. Her daughter, she knew instantly, a daughter she'd never had in her world. She thought back to the difficulty they'd had conceiving Will, how she'd given up on the idea of another child when her father had sent them on the run once again. If she hadn't, if she'd kept trying despite the odds, maybe that would've meant another daughter, this daughter, in her world as well. But no point thinking about that, that way just lay madness. 

 

Once again she put a restraining hand on Will's shoulder. "Come on kids, play nice," she encouraged, a sardonic thread in her voice. "We're not looking to cause any trouble, and I don't think they're looking for any trouble from us, either," she insisted with a meaningful look in Not-Richard's direction. "I'd feel a lot more comfortable if you just went ahead and brought Richard back here, honestly. We need to transit from here anyway." 

 

 

[Avenger Assembled]

That got her an outright stare from the other Richard. "You'd really just let me...?" He had evidently not expected this offer. "...All right. All right, Adze, honey, let's head for Bedlam and pick up the other me." 

 

Adze had looked ready to fight, or at least scrap, with the alternate version of the brother she'd never had - but she pulled away and listened to her father, albeit with one more glare at Will. "Pretty boy," she sneered. She really was quite a bit like Holly! 

 

With that, the two speedsters vanished off over the horizon, leaving the trio alone on the deserted beach in a world that was clearly not their own. Overhead a trio of jets was flying, a triangle of fast-moving contrails far above in a sky that was now almost painfully blue. 

 

Pause. Pause. The time it takes speedsters to have very fast conversations. 

 

And then - 

The group that crossed the horizon now was a good deal larger, with the other Richard, and Adze, the latter carrying a baby in a bjorn, and a man who had the blazing-fast mind of the correct Richard Cline. Without saying a word at first, he put his arms around Paige and kissed her on the lips. "Thank God!" he declared a moment later. Things are tough. They're friendly - but things are tough. I knew you'd find me. Hey boy, hey Phantom. I hope you don't mind," he said, shooting a glance at the others that was somewhere between friendly and wary, "but the party wanted to come with me."

 

"This, uh, is somebody that my mother wanted you to see. This is Andrew Cline, my nephew." Andrew was a balding baby with a faint fuzz of blonde hair and eyes that were as black as marbles, wrapped in a blanket monogrammed AMC. 

 

"He's our first grandkid," said the other Richard with quiet pride. "His mom 'n dad are down by the border, but Paige wanted you to see more of the family." 

[alderwitch]

The noise from under the shadows of Phantom's cloak was to dry to properly be considered a laugh, "Of course they did. He's an adorable baby. Everyone is more reluctant to attack when adorable babies are involved." Her tone was sardonic and the folds of her cloak rippled with the restless movement of the woman beneath them as if impatient with the nuances of meeting doppelgangers. She'd likely have been more patient but she respected the Clines too much to act like this was their first rodeo. Phantom fixed the younger Clines of both dimension with her gimlet gaze for a long moment before turning.

 

"I'll just make preparations for our departure then," Phantom intoned like it was more than a thought to zip back across to the other world, turning towards empty space with her hands sketching out arcane sigils that set her fingertips to glowing. If she was going to be here a while, might as well make certain that this dimensions protections were a little less slipshodily handled, tutting softly under her breath. 

[KnightDisciple]

Will shivered at the "pretty boy" comment but his mother could tell it wasn't really fear. His rambling voice in her mind reinforced this.

 

'Okay, no, ew. No. Ugh. I'm sorry I know she was trying to be tough or whatever but just no. Besides, I could take her.'

 

When his father, his real father, came racing back across the horizon, Thoughtspeed visibly relaxed, crossing his arms over his chest and affecting the attitude of a disinterested young adult, at least somewhat. 

 

"Uh. Yeah. It's a...a nice baby. Yeah."

 

He definitely wasn't craning his head to get a better look, no sir.

[Electra]

Paige paid little attention to the rest of the group at first; her eyes were solely for her husband. As soon as he got within range she literally leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs around his and trusting him to catch her as they kissed. The skin-to-skin contact let all her buried emotions pour into his head, fear-relief-love-anger-joy, in a rush that would've been overwhelming if he hadn't been used to three decades of Paige running tame through his mind already. ~I missed you so much. I was so scared. Are you really all right?~ A brief mental tingle as she rifled his surface thoughts, checking for pain or undue stress. She wouldn't go any deeper without his permission, but the light touch was enough to reassure her. 

 

With a little bit of reluctance, she peeled herself off Richard and turned her attention to the rest of the "extended family." "Nice to meet you all," she said with distracted politeness. "We have no interest in attacking you, your dimension seems to have enough problems of its own, and getting involved with the internal politics in other dimensions is a really good way to drive yourself crazy. Just don't steal my husband again and we're fine." She tried her best not to look at the baby with its button-black eyes. Surely that didn't necessarily have to happen.