revivalproject | Public Network Video - (Plus Two Private Messages)

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Public Network Video - (Plus Two Private Messages)

Public Video - [Posted During Ship Lock-Up]

[The video comes on and there's Tommy, a touch blurry around the edges. The background changes behind him constantly. One second he's pacing in what was clearly the dorm of the ship he's on. The next second he's in a mess hall, the protein paste machine in the background. Then the hangar. Then the bridge. Back to the mess and dorm and mess. This will be true for the whole video. There is no denying that he's very agitated, like ready to run up the walls. Or through them if he could.]

Dudes, who in the world decided this was the best plan that there was? Like, seriously, this plan? It's bogus. Being locked up on a ship is one thing. I wanna go to space. Space is fucking cool. All the stars and planets and traveling and that shit. But here, on the fucking ground, and there's like no way to go and travel between them and the space is small and itissosmallandthewalls are everywhere andican'tgetthrough

[He's shaking harder now, as he comes to a stop. This is miserable.]

Yo, Agrii or whatever. I don't fucking CARE about making friends. I can do that on my own time. But I want the fuck out. Let me go back to the greenhouse. I swear I just found a door that led to a whole section of a floor that was just fucking MINT. I like mint. Let me at the fucking mint.

justletmeoutofhere!

Private Message to Billy - October 13th

[He's calmed down a bit at this point, and it's important that he does this. That he seems calm for this. Because Billy deserves it.]

Yo, happy birthday, bro. Was gonna make you this whole salad with things from the Garden. But some ASSHOLES in charge here absolutely decided to blow birthday plans. I'm sorry this all sorta got blown up. Who you on wherever you're on with? I'm with Wanda. Which, you know, awkward. You know where V ended up? Whatever, not like it matters. Just be okay, right?

Private to Vision - October 13th

[This one has a more nervous looking Tommy. Like he isn't even sure he should be sending this.]

It's today, right? You sorta said that the math would come out to today, yeah? So you know, I don't hold it against you. Forgetting. And not, you know, doing the whole thing you said you would. But it's fine, right? I get it, that you'd want to. So don't worry about me, okay? Just make sure you wish Billy a happy birthday. This will probably be the first time he has to celebrate it without his family or friends or all that. It would mean a lot, I think, for you to reach out.

Because, you know, it's a good Dad thing to do. And he's used to having a good dad. So, you know Vision, do your best. We're nineteen now, so I guess throw that in too?

[OOC: If anyone of Tommy's cohort wants to run into him while he's recording messages, that's cool too. Just hit me up at

churbooseanon and we can set it up.]

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"Our old machine was better. It made more textures, you could pretend that it was something different...and Vision found a way to freeze the chocolate gel so we could have ice cream sometimes." It had been a surprise for her unwanted birthday, and one of the reasons it hadn't been as bad as it could have been.

"If we put some fruit in it maybe you can pretend that it's a strange chocolate pudding?"

"I like chocolate pudding," Tommy agrees after a moment. To throw her a bone. He considers her briefly, watching. Trying not to be sad for her.

Trying not to ask about the things he saw.

"That sounds like a plan. You want some too? I could help cut things up."

"I could eat a little. Choose any fruit you think would be good with chocolate." She doesn't recognize all of the produce in the fridge, so she'll defer to his judgment. In the meantime, she'll get a big bowl of chocolate protein gel and start stirring it vigorously. If she can get the texture to not be so weird...

If she keeps moving she can try not to focus on what she'd seen in the nightmare. Not all of those rooms had been familiar to her...but she could easily guess exactly what they were for.

"Just be careful. I don't know how good these knives are."

Worst thing about those rooms? After what Tommy saw, if she asked, he'd tell her. No one else has ever seen the rooms, to his knowledge. No one else can look at him and call bullshit if he told them it was nothing. And... and she'd get it. Which was sad.

So he sighs and heads into the fridge to consider options. And pulls out what looks exactly like a pineapple. Bless.

"Pineapple work for you?"

"Is that...really a pineapple? Or is it some kind of..." Words. Help. "...space pineapple?" She shrugs helplessly. The Agrii didn't exactly label anything for them. "We can try it."

She glances down at the bowl she's stirring. Should she? Is it even her place when she's the one who made it worse in the first place?

Wanda swallows hard and glances back up at him. "Do you want to talk about it? Or do you want to be distracted?"

"Yeah, really a pineapple," Tommy answers as he carries it over and starts looking for a knife to cut the top off. And when she asks the question, the important questions, Tommy freezes.

"I... Talk about what?"

Evasion? Yeah. He's scared she won't like him as much if she finds out how he ended up there."

Wanda glances away again but presses on. "The nightmare. I know they're frightening. And I don't think we would have been dreaming about...about that if the Agrii hadn't done this."

She just doesn't want to make it worse.

Oh. Damn. He wasn’t crazy then. That really was something they had absolutely shared. Which she remembered. Damn. He had called her Mom. Shit.

“I... it was where they put me, when part of my powers manifested and hurt some people by mistake. I went to a special jail. Billy and his team busted me out. Which was a confusing time for all.”

"No. They kidnapped you. That place...no one deserves that. I'm so sorry." If this isn't an uncommon occurrence in his world, why weren't there places dedicated to helping children learn to control their powers? It's hard not to judge her other self for letting her cousin(?) get packed off to a place like that, but then again her other self isn't a psychic. Maybe that's where the sarcasm came from, that she cares now but there wasn't a Wanda there for Tommy when it mattered.

"I'm glad you got out. And I hope they paid for it."

"They didn't kidnap me," Tommy counters, and he's angry to hear it suggested. "That was jail, Wanda. Juvenile detention. I blew up part of my school. This place could contain me. My birth parents, in their overwhelming wisdom, decided to sign me over to their loving care."

And so everything that had happened to him.

"Billy busted me out, with his team. And I ruined that place later."

Wanda goes pale. Having not lived through being thrown in the Raft, she can barely process a betrayal on that level. "They took advantage of you. You needed help, not...not that. Anyone should have been able to see it."

Did you want a hug, Tommy? Because he's getting one, tight as if Wanda could bodily shield him from the past, from the horror of her own powers. If people in his world are as scared of other-her as they are in her world, they never would have dared hurt her family like that if she'd been present. She should have fought for him. Why didn't she?

Wanda's never going to understand her other self - their lives are too different. All she can do is just try harder to be better and make up for what she's already done. "I'm so sorry. I'm not going to let this happen again." It's understandable that Tommy really doesn't want her in his head after this, so she can't completely prevent him from having nightmares about his past. She's just going to have to be more careful in the future about when and where she sleeps until they're freed.

There is a lot that can be said about Tommy. A good part of it is that Tommy does NOT let anyone hug him unless he wants it. Advantages of super speed. So when Wanda embraces him he wraps his arms around her and buries his face in her shoulder. Because she feels like Mom. She smells a little like Mom too.

Fuck, he didn’t know he could miss that.

“Wanda in our world never would have let it happen either. Or Pietro. But no one knew. The Avengers all broke up and the X-Men didn’t have some of their tech. No one knew.”

He doesn’t want her to feel bad.

She is noticeably smaller than his Wanda, but Tommy's still gained a fierce protector. She lets him hold her as long as he needs to, rubbing soothing circles on his shoulder just like she would have for Pietro, or Vision, or anyone else she cares about.

"They should have brought you to Pietro. You must have been scared...I know that he was, even if he tried to pretend so that I wouldn't worry." A beat. "I hoped that it would be better for people like us in your world. But some things never change."

"They... they couldn't," Tommy says. Because he knows something now that he didn't know back then. "There was an incident. Pietro lost his powers."

So taking him to his Uncle would have been useless. But by the time they had found Wanda, he'd had his powers back. Don't ask Tommy how that worked. He sure as fuck didn't know. Doesn't even know now, after all this time.

"Billy's family took me in after that," Tommy shrugs. And they did. The Kaplans were good people like that. Took in their son's boyfriend and a guy that looked JUST LIKE their son. It was all weird.

Wanda's just not going to ask the obvious questions of how and why. It's late, she's exhausted, and she can barely wrap her mind around all of this as it is. And she's pretty sure Tommy doesn't want to get into all of these explanations - it seems like she's always left with more questions than answers when it comes to this other world.

But wow does this family tree make her head spin.

"And the two of you are safe now?"

Wanda knows, logically, that even when this is over she can't go fight the people who did this to him or might want to do it to him in the future.

...but the desire is definitely there.

Safe is such a fucking relative term when one person is dealing with situations like, well, being heroes. The whole 'Mother' incident had been something bad, right. Not like he knows how to explain that.

"As safe as you can be when you're an Avenger," Tommy admits with a shrug. "Billy's fiance has his back, and his parents too."

Which doesn't say much about the status Tommy is in.

"Our Wanda and Pietro know about us now. I imagine Petey would have our backs if we really needed it. And Wanda..."

How does he talk about his mom? It's complicated. Tommy sighs and leans back against a counter, across to it in a second as he thinks. He doesn't know where he stands with their soul-mother. Their origin. It's complicated.

"She loves us like family. It's nice."

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Public Network Video - (Plus Two Private Messages)

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