Billy Kaplan | Demiurge (continuityerror) wrote in the100, @ 2015-06-03 20:19:00 |
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Waking up in another world wasn’t unusual. Waking up in another world alone, without Billy or any of their friends nearby -- that was. For a brief moment after he woke up, Teddy nearly hulked-out in panic and fear, assuming that whoever had brought him there had done so with malicious intentions. Why would he have been taken away from the people who loved him if they weren’t going to hurt him? Teddy wasn’t stupid, even though sometimes people thought so. They saw his size and equated that with a lack of intelligence, or thought his kindness was born out of naivete. If asked, he’d say Billy was the smart one of the two of them, but Teddy wasn’t dumb. He knew that there must be enemies out there that he didn’t even know about because of who his parents were and because of everything he and the Young Avengers had done. It was only a matter of time - when, not if - before someone surfaced. So, really, he thought it was fair that he was defensive at first. Who wouldn’t be? When he settled down, Teddy tried to come to terms with his situation: if the people hadn’t kidnapped him, then he should try to make nice, and the doctor told him that people he knew might be there, too. The doctor wasn’t wrong. Seeing Billy’s name pop up made Teddy’s heart skip a beat or two, but it wasn’t enough to prove that it was true. Teddy had to see it in person. If it was true, Teddy was going to hold on as tight as he could and not let go. The mountain wasn’t hard to navigate, and Teddy found his way to the residential area easily enough, where he hoped he’d find his boyfriend - no, fiancé. "Teddy?" Billy'd been waiting outside his room, conflicted between simply teleporting to his fiancé and, well, a more measured response. He'd seen some pretty weird things, both here and at home. Could it be another one of those pancake hallucinations? Nevermind that he'd given up pancakes for life, or that none of those people had been on the network. But what if the silly spell with Kate had worked and this wasn't Teddy? It was just a fairly convincing, dimension-eating parasite, who somehow seemed to occupy a room in exactly the same way that Teddy did. In a way that made him feel like a bundle of nerves, and uncertainty, and excitement all rolled together. He'd been here two months. Two whole months. Had it been as long for Teddy? And if so, what had happened in his absence? "I can't…" He just needed to know that this was actually happening. That the boy in front of him was the one that he'd left back in New York. He ran to pull Teddy into his arms. "This just can't be real." From Teddy’s perspective, he’d just seen Billy not even five seconds before he woke up, so he didn’t quite understand Billy’s confusion or his desperation. Of course it was real. Why wouldn’t it be? It took a moment for Teddy to remember all the reasons why it might not be, which was stupid, because he’d immediately assumed it was when he should have known better. What if it wasn’t real? What if it was a trick? Was the person in front of him even Billy at all? In retrospect, they should have come up with secret questions and answers to prove that they really were who they said they were, like Order members did in the Harry Potter books. Teddy wished he’d thought of that earlier. The second Billy was in his arms, though, all the doubt flew out the metaphorical window. He eased his arms around Billy’s waist and tucked his head against his neck for a moment. “It feels real to me.” He had wrapped his arms just above Teddy's waist, oblivious to his own desperate need to just know. Was this reality, or just another stupid trick? And, yea, in retrospect, there was a probably a spell for that. But holding onto Teddy, breathing in everything that made his fiancé, well, perfect and his and amazing... That seemed a pretty good test as well. "Yea, it kind of does." His voice was a lot more breathless than he'd expected it to be. Maybe because he was standing with his super attractive fiancé in an underground fortress. Actually, he wasn't sure what the fortress had to do with anything, as it was all very mines of Moria, and that wasn't romantic. Really. "But I'm still really, really hoping this isn't a dream." “Me too,” Teddy agreed. Although if it was a dream, it really wasn’t a bad one. It was just as weird as dreams usually were -- a strange community living all underground, in a world that they said had gone through a nuclear war. Waking up alone, talking to people who looked familiar but had different names (was that really John Stamos as a doctor?). And now there was Billy. Teddy breathed in deep. Any second now, he expected he’d wake up. Any second now… But nothing changed. He was still standing in the dimly lit hallway with his boyfriend in his arms. Puzzled, he pulled back. “I was going to say we should have come up with secret questions to ask each other, but if this is all a dream, my subconscious would know all the answers already…” Teddy wrinkled his nose as he tried to figure out what was going on. “Where are we? Why weren’t you guys there when I woke up?” Reluctantly, Billy let Teddy pull away. As much as he wanted to drag Teddy into his room and kiss him senseless, a much more rational part of him knew that they needed to talk. Waking up in an alternate dimension was fairly old news for them. But waking up in an alternate dimension that they couldn't escape? That was different. In fact, all of this was a whole new level of different. "It's kind of hard to explain… It's like an alternate version of Earth, except not. And there's a whole bunch of weird things here." He looked up at his boyfriend, unsure how to answer the last question. He should have been there when Teddy arrived. He should have cast some sort of locating spell to alert him the moment it happened. But he hadn't. The idea that his fiancé might show up and that he was actually here just seemed so…unreal. "Like, my mom's here, but she's not. And Uncle Pietro. And all the Avengers are from some other dimension." He paused again. He was aware that he'd been talking almost as fast as Tommy. And that they were still standing in that dimly lit hallway. And that dimly lit hallways weren't conducive to lengthy explanations or pretty much anything else going on in Billy's head at that moment. And since he no longer wanted to be in the hallway, he no longer was. He had teleported them both to his room. It was a simple trick, one that could have just easily been accomplished by walking. But this was Billy. He was too busy worrying about Teddy to consider doors or traditional modes of transport. Teddy barely had enough time to process what Billy was telling him before they teleported into what Teddy assumed was his fiancé’s room. He understood that there was an alternate version of Earth -- how many different realities had they traveled to in the Multiverse after all? - and that things would be strange, and different. He understood that there could be realities where people they loved still existed, or moments in time where they were still alive. He knew how tempting it would be for someone like Billy to try to find that again, to bring people he loved together and try to fix something that went wrong. The only thing he could think of - the only reasonable explanation for the Avengers, and Billy’s mom and uncle, to be there but not be the ones they knew - was that someone had tapped into another reality. Had Billy? “Hey,” he started, his voice gentle. He lifted a hand to cup Billy’s cheek. “Slow down, one thing at a time. I’m not Tommy. Your mom’s here, but she’s not… your mom? Is she from another dimension?” He paused. “How did we get here?” Apparently he had just as many questions. Billy forced himself to focus. Like Teddy had said, one thing at a time. He took a deep breath and looked at Teddy. "She's the Scarlet Witch, but she's not the one we know. It's the same with Cap and Iron Man and everyone. I think they're from some other dimension where we… where we don't exist yet." He didn't expect the idea of dimensions converging to surprise his fiancé. That was sort of Billy's area of expertise and, well, he'd been known to dabble in places he didn't belong. Like, interdimensional travel. Still, interdimensional travel was one thing. Unexplained interdimensional travel was another entirely. "But -- none of us know how we got here. It's, like, one day you're at home, doing whatever, and then you wake up in medical here.. I've…" He sighed. "I've been here two months, and you just got here. If I were doing this, wouldn't I know? Wouldn't I have brought you with me?" “Two months?” Teddy croaked. But he’d just seen Billy. How was it that Billy had been gone for two months? Almost immediately, Teddy’s mind started spinning with theories that would explain how Billy had been here without him. After everything they’d seen - well, it was confusing, but they’d seen a lot of things that shouldn’t have made any sense at all. Hearing that there was a Scarlet Witch and a Quicksilver and a Captain America and an Iron Man that weren’t from their universe wasn’t really a surprise, in the end. Hearing that they probably didn’t even exist in that other universe yet - that wasn’t a surprise either. It was exactly how Billy described it: one moment they were together, and the next moment he was waking up in a strange hospital bed with no recollection as to how he got there. Teddy knew Billy was capable of altering reality, but… “I hope you would have brought me with you.” Not that he doubted Billy’s love for him, of course, but Teddy knew neither of them could predict every single possibility. He did think that Billy was talented enough and knew enough about his abilities to know if he was behind it or not. If Billy wasn’t behind it… “Did your mom-- did the Scarlet Witch do this?” Billy shook his head. "She's younger than we know her. I don't think… I don't think she knows what she's capable of doing." Not that such a possibility had ever really precluded Billy's own potential disruption of the universe. But he had met with the Scarlet Witch of that other world, and he knew she wasn't anything like the Scarlet Witch he'd met in Latveria. "But she didn't do this. She only got here a little before you." He placed a hand on Teddy's arm. He had almost forgotten how much he just missed being with his fiancé. He just wished that he could get them the hell out of here. Even if it had improved slightly, now that Teddy was here, this world was still missing a lot. "Look, it's crazy, but it's not beyond our usual crazy. We'll figure it out. And…if we don't, at least we're together. You don't know how much I've missed having you here." If Wanda hadn't done it, and Billy hadn't... Teddy wasn't sure he liked those implications. Who was responsible for it? Things like this didn't just happen. But it was reassuring, at least a little, to know it probably was real. Or if it wasn't, they were all seeing the same things. "Probably as much as I missed you when I was gone," Teddy murmured, leaning in to kiss Billy's cheek. That time had dragged on and on, and he could imagine how much worse it would've been for Billy now, after they'd been back together again. "I'm here now. And we're together. And Kate's here, and Cassie..." That still took Teddy's breath away. The situation didn't make much sense, but he knew they'd get through anything. They had before; this would be a piece of cake. "Nothing can stop us." Billy almost pointed out that that was incredibly optimistic. Especially when the Earth could just send an army of two-headed deer after them, and he'd probably surrender. But, lost in the general glow of being with his fiancé, he wasn't in the mood to argue. "Come on," he said, reaching for Teddy's hand. "Cassie and Kate probably want to see you. And you need to meet Kate's new boyfriend, who definitely looks like Thor." He was glad that Teddy was here, and that they were finally a team again. Just like they were always meant to be. |