InsaneJournal

Adam had never wanted to be king. In the days before he’d discovered the Power, he’d known it was inevitable, but would have much rather done anything else. What Adam had always wanted, more than anything, was to find a set of people to which he belonged, not ruled over. He’d had trouble making friends as a child. All the other children had deferred to him to his face and had made snide comments about him behind his back. And so most of his friends had been a good deal older than and deferred to him nominally only, or had been from another dimension and therefore didn’t need to bow and scrape to him, like Orko, or had been Cringer. Even Teela, when they’d been very young, had taken the part of the other children more often than she had Adam. It hadn’t been until their teens that they’d grown closer.

Once Adam had discovered The Power, he hadn’t wanted to be a king because he thought he could do much more good as a hero. He’d found his people, and he’d found his place with them, and he had never wanted to upset that balance.

And now… now he was king. Adam found that he didn’t hate it as much as he’d once worried he had. The good he did for people was different than the good he’d done as He-Man, but it was still important. Dare, He-Ro, had taken on the mantle as the hero of Eternia, and Adam could not be more proud of him. Someday, too, he’d take over the mantle as King of Eternia, and Adam hoped to leave him a legacy for which he could be proud.

It helped that his mother and father were still there and could help advise him. Adam and Randor were two very different people, and Randor’s advice wasn’t always the sort that Adam followed, but it was good to have his perspective. And sometimes a course that Adam would initially reject would be explained, patiently and calmly, by Randor, and he would see why it was the best course even if it wasn’t one he particularly enjoyed.

And, of course, having Teela ruling at his side made even the most unpleasant of tasks bearable.

In the last few years, Adam had grown as king, and he thought he was making a pretty good job of it. Some days were a lot, but for the most part, he was proud of the way Eternia was developing. He enjoyed the work more often than not, and much, much more than he’d originally thought he would.

That didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to take full advantage of the holiday he and Teela had been given.

He hadn’t remembered Vallo these last twenty years, but when he’d woken up that first day in Castle Grayskull, it had all come back to him. It had been a pleasant surprise to see Adora and Catra as young as they still were, Catra pregnant with their first child. It had been delightful to play with Cringer and Clawdeen’s cubs, cubs that wouldn’t be born in Eternia.

And it was definitely worth it to get to visit the amusement parks of Vallo. Amusement parks that didn’t exist in Eternia. He wondered why he and Teela had never made a trip to Blizzard World during their original stay in Vallo. “Remind me when we get home, dear, to assign a Royal Cotton Candy Maker,” Adam said, pinching some of the pink, sugary floss from the cloud of cotton candy in his hand and tossing it into his mouth. “We’ll make a royal proclamation about it.”

“Oh we will, will we?” Teela grinned, reaching over to pinch off a piece of pink fluff for herself. She couldn’t deny that, for some reason, the stringy sweet candy was delicious. “I think that may be going a little overboard, honey. And we know for a fact we won’t remember when we get home, but I’ll do my best.”

It was strange to be back in Vallo, to feel a familiarity settle into her bones despite having lived a whole life in Eternia, entirely unaware she’d been here at all. Everything had gone so differently back home – their relationship, their reunion with Adam’s sister, their lives as a whole, the battles they’d fought. Remembering their lives here alongside their life back home was an oddity even for someone whose mind contained the entire history of their home universe.

She’d resolved to enjoy it while they were here, though. Their younger selves were still figuring themselves out, but she and Adam didn’t have that problem. Twenty years they’d been together – and it hadn’t always been fun or easy, they’d had their trials and personal battles, but they’d made it through. They didn’t have the angsty that had come from Adam’s secret and his death looming over them.

For them, Vallo was a wonderful, if unexpected, vacation.

“I wish Dare had come with us,” she sighed. Their boy was sixteen now, nearing adulthood, already out in the world as He-Ro, helping those in need like Adam had done at the same age as He-Man. But he was still her little boy, and he would have been delighted to spend a day somewhere like Blizzard World.

“We will. The best cotton candy in all the land. People will travel from all over Eternia just to try some of the delicious Royal Candy Floss,” Adam proclaimed in his Kingly voice, not caring at all about the stares it was attracting.

He popped another pinch of cotton candy into his mouth, and then let his arm fall around Teela’s shoulders.

“And I wish he could too. Dare would love Vallo. He’d probably love to meet the younger Catra and Adora too. And the cubs, definitely.”

There were a lot of things Adam could give Dare: the unwavering surety that his father loved him. His support, and his compassion. But he couldn’t give Dare the peace that Vallo brought. The peace that sometimes settled over Eternia was tenuous at best, and always temporary.

“Yeah, he would,” Teela agreed with a smile. They were as close to Adora and her life as could be managed while living on entirely separate planets, but it was a shade different, a touch more formal than it was here. They knew Catra and Adora, much more deeply than they did at home. No matter what, they were family, but here, those bonds were unbelievably strong.

“I’m surprised your mother never put in amusement parks,” she mused. Marlena was from Earth, a place Vallo was heavily similar to from what they had come to learn. “You’d think she’d pitch it, if only to keep you from crashing the jet crawler through walls.”

“Me too,” Adam said, thinking. “I guess there was probably never a good time for it. Or there wasn’t anyone willing to engineer one.” Most of the inventors and the like that he knew preferred to put their talents towards fighting the forces of evil, and he knew that that particular task had been even more consuming when he’d been young. “Besides, maybe she liked having me drive through walls. Spicing things up a little. Keeping things interesting.”

“Sure, you keep telling yourself that,” Teela laughed, slipping her arm through her husband’s and giving it a squeeze. Marlena had always certainly been the more forgiving, but she was sure that particular incident had been frustrating to deal with, if only because Randor’s reaction had been clear displeasure.

“Alright, what’s next on your list, vacation master? Roller coaster?”

There were times that Adam wished he was taller than his wife, and this was one of them. But he settled on giving her cheek a quick kiss in lieu of the top of her head like he’d have preferred.

“Oh, absolutely a roller coaster. There’s nothing like careening through space and time at breakneck speeds.” He tilted his head to the side and frowned thoughtfully. “Do you think I still have the jet crawler here?”

“Most likely, given the point in time we’re at right now,” Teela agreed. “But let’s stick with the roller coaster, alright? I love you, but you have gotten only about one percent better at driving that thing than you were at 23.”

“One percent is all I need, baby. I’m a great driver.” He finished this rather bold, blatantly false, statement with some finger guns. A memory suddenly returned to him, and he tried to hide the grimace. He decided that he would not tell her about the disastrous race that he and Adora had once entered. “But as my queen commands, we’ll first let the roller coaster hurtle us through space at dangerously high speeds.”