InsaneJournal

Tweak says, "The force is strong."

Billy Kaplan (actualdemiurge) wrote in somerealityrpg,
@ 2020-03-03 18:43:00

Entry tags:

inactive: billy kaplan, inactive: cassie lang

WHO: Cassie Lang & Billy Kaplan (and Teddy Altman & Tommy Shepherd)
WHERE: Various locations
WHEN: After this
WARNINGS: N/A
RATING: Low, maybe swears
SPOILERS? None

Cassie was alive. It was running through Billy's head like a mantra: she's alive, she's alive, she's alive, she's alive. He had to get to her quickly, had to get to her before someone else did, had to see her himself to make sure she was okay. He'd heard rumours that maybe she'd come back when realities have shifted again but she'd never gotten into contact with them and it wasn't as though anyone in her family would let her get back in contact with the people that killed her or anything and-

He was spiralling.

He took a breath and closed his eyes, doing a quick locating spell and feeling his power moving through him like a wave. She pinged quickly on his radar and he lifted his hands as he glowed, space folding in around him as he teleported himself to where she was, a few feet away from the bench she'd settled on so that he didn't startle her.

Cassie was alive. She was alive and she looked just the way she had before she'd died. The way she'd looked when he'd watched Ant-Man cradling her body after having been pulled from the timestream. After Doom-

He could feel his chest tightening a little, the world spinning around him slightly in the familiar threads of panic. He didn't have time to count five things he could see but he could just barrel forward and process how he felt later when he was in the safety of his own room, the safety of Teddy's arms.

God, she looked so young.

"Cass," he managed, voice breaking a little even as he cleared his throat to try and hide it. "Hey." Lifting a hand, he wiggled his fingers to get her attention. "I, uh, probably look a little different than you remember, huh."

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miniaturize
2020-03-03 07:52 pm UTC (link)

She felt a little better communicating with people since she knew her friends were there, that things were okay. There was a lot that didn't make sense, but she was starting to get used to things not making sense. It was kind of nice, waiting on the sidewalk, scuffing her feet on the ground where she sat on the bench, aware that Billy would be there soon.

There wasn't a battle to fight, no one to train, nothing bad going on aside from being pulled from a moment in time to another one. She'd get the explanation later.

Hearing her name caught her attention away from the network and whatever people were saying, turning a bright smile to Billy who--- yeah, looked a bit different. "Hey, yeah... Have you... Have you been here for a while or something?" It seemed like this place had existed for a while, that people had been here and others just came in. Maybe Billy got pulled in earlier on than she did, time travel was weird like that. She'd know, she just pulled her dad into a future he hadn't been part of.

Bouncing up out of the bench, Cassie slipped the device away, "You look so grown up." And god, that made her feel young.

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actualdemiurge
2020-03-03 07:59 pm UTC (link)

When she spoke, Billy was rocketed back five years to Cassie and Kate arguing that they should be part of the team too, a slap-in-the-face flashback to a time when they'd thought - briefly - that they were invincible. Before he could stop himself, he closed the distance between them and tugged her into a fierce hug, careful not to hurt her but tight enough to be felt. His throat definitely felt tight, his eyes were burning and he just hugged her for a long moment without catching himself until he realised if he didn't let her go soon he'd be sobbing and that wasn't easy to explain.

"Me? No, I-" he leaned back and pushed a hand through his hair. "No, I'm just older. I come from further in the future than you."

Not that time had dulled his memory of the event, or really helped assauge the guilt of what happened. It echoed in his chest louder than it had done in years, bouncing behind his ribcage in a staccato that he'd thought he would forget.

"I'm, like, twenty now, Cass."

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miniaturize
2020-03-05 11:03 pm UTC (link)

The hug was somewhat out of the blue, but Cassie wasn't one to refrain from hugging, least of all her friends. Her arms were tight around Billy, ignoring the weirdness of this world just now and appreciating that she had something familiar there to ground her. It let her get some bearings too, although she wasn't overly sure about how all of this was possible if people were saying Doom and Wanda didn't do it.

"Oh, so you got pulled later in the time stream? Okay." There was a frown tugging at the forehead, it felt like she was missing something, and it seemed important too. "Wow, all grown up now. Guess that means you'll just be a normal Avenger huh? No more of that Young stuff for you?"

It was another piece of weird with all the rest. It had been one of the constants for them, even when they all came from different backgrounds, they'd all been roughly the same age doing all these crazy things together. Sure, she sometimes felt she was trailing the cooler kids, but then they'd pull together and she'd remember they were a team, it didn't matter that some of them were late with their homework, they were still superheroes.

"Is Teddy the same? Tommy?"

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actualdemiurge
2020-03-07 10:06 pm UTC (link)

Billy watched Cassie for a moment, watching her trying to piece together what he was saying and make sense of it. He wasn't great at hiding things and if she asked too many questions he'd crumble. He kept his arm over her shoulder, tucking her against him as he started the walk back towards the apartment building. Maybe if they were moving, he'd find it easier to answer her questions.

"Yeah, we're from further in the future," he said because that was an easy one. "And no, we didn't end up joining the Avengers. Teddy and I joined a new AIM team for a while - when they weren't being big jerks about everything - but we quit that. Because they were big jerks."

He watched the clouds drift overhead in the distance, unable to believe that she was really, truly here. That she was alive and he was touching her and God. It was his fault.

"Same as me? Yeah. I mean, Tommy's always the same as me." His lips quirked up into a half smile. "Or maybe I'm the same as him, since he's convinced he's the older twin. And Teddy too, yeah he's- Teddy's still Teddy, if that's what you're asking. But we're all older than you, yeah. Sorry, Cass."

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