[Closed] Heritage Connects Them

[doubled_speed]

WHO: Tommy Shepherd, Billy Kaplan
WHERE: YA HQ
WHAT: Deciding To Celebrate the Holiday
WHEN: [Backdated] Morning of Tuesday the 12th
WARNINGS: None

It's been a hard few months for Tommy. No one who knew him would argue it was anything else. Wanda gone. Kyle gone. Powers out of whack. Finding out that Beck had been using him the whole time like his first instincts had said but he had been convinced away from.

It was hard on Tommy, and it ultimately meant that the man was doing a lot less right now than he had been before. No more engineering work, his latest project of building a second coffee pot abandoned in his bedroom. No more studying the papers Kyle had given him, spelling out important terms, practicing his writing. No more Tommy laughing and running and exploring. Just get up, tend the greenhouses, start preserving for the next winter, cook meals, and any time not doing those, he was crashed out on the couch he'd hauled from Space Target to their home months and months ago.

IT didn't count as abandonment when the world took people away from you, or when someone wasn't even yours in the first place. But it still hurt.

And Tommy wasn't managing to haul himself out of his pit of moodiness at all. Almost sad, Really, when Tony tried to stress that people liked Tommy for Tommy. When he needed them, he was sure putting distance between himself and others.

Comments

[wearingthestars]

It wasn't exactly hard to miss Tommy spiraling. It was a less dramatic spiral than previous ones, taking longer to pan out, but the result was the same. All the progress Tommy had made was gone, and Billy was struggling to find a way to give him hope again. After all, this place could literally snatch everything away again in an instant. He couldn't promise it would all be all right.

Billy paused in his tidying, looking to his brother with a thoughtful frown.
"Hey Tommy? Vision and you were good with figuring out a sort of calendar, right? Do you know when-...ish we are?"

[doubled_speed]

Honestly, at this point, Tommy was expecting his twin to poof away any second. That Billy was even there was one of the last comforts he had. So he laid there, not even paying attention to Billy tidying until his brother spoke.

"Vizh was good at it," Tommy corrected. He just tried really hard to keep track of what his father had taught him. And then, with Kyle's help, he'd started trying to calculate the calendar for observances too. It had been part of his lessons, learning the months and undrestanding that the calendar for the faith was based on the moon and all that.

"April-ish? Somewhere around the 11th or 12th I think."

Near as he and Kyle had calculated, it should be 11 Nissan. But he hasn't been asked that yet.

[wearingthestars]

That's...shockingly exact, and Billy laughed. April-ish was good enough.

"Well I thinking, since it's spring, and Passover was coming up, maybe you'd wanna hold a Seder? I don't know when it would line up exactly, but I think it's the spirit that counts," he added with a small, "You know...when you're on an alien planet. I don't think they accounted for any of that when they started these things."

[doubled_speed]

Listen man, Tommy may not always run at the same speed as other people, but he's still got a decent concept of time. And maybe he's been marking it all off somewhere. Okay, so he's totally been marking it off somewhere. Shut up don't judge him.

"Yeah, your Rabbi sure seemed to point that out at the wedding," Tommy agreed. Still, Billy's not wrong. It did count. But did he... still want to know that part of himself more?

"You really want the two of us to try and do a Passover Seder together? I don't know any of the worlds. I remember some of the stuff on the plate from all the years Rebecca and Jeff had me over, but... I don't remember all of it."

[wearingthestars]

The Wedding that hadn't happened yet. Billy half shrugged and smiled, rolling his eyes.

"I mean, neither do I, and I grew up doing it. It's written down for a reason. Different families do it different ways. It's not about doing it correctly, it's about...remembering. And sharing the stories with the next generations," he offered.

[doubled_speed]

Dude, it's happened for one of them, and he grinned stupidly as he watched it. Both Times.

"Wait seriously? Those booklets you guys had at the house aren't, like, just something they made for guests? Figured they had us all use them because they didn't want me to feel awkward."

Sharing stories with the next generation. Tommy gets a pensive look at that, then sits up and looks seriously at his twin.

"You mean like Pietro does, when we meet for coffee? He tells me a lot about the Maximoff family line. And where they grew up. And all the little traditions and how they mixed with other big traditions."

He even taps at his ears.

"He even got me thinking about getting my ears pierced. It's apparently a whole thing 'in the old country'. But that's always been your territory."

[wearingthestars]

"No? I mean, maybe in some houses? Or with more orthodox families? But no. We have those every year," he assured.

Billy looked a little surprised to hear Tommy had gotten together with Pietro. It sounded like a regular thing almost. He'd definitely not had that kind of one on one with their uncle before.

"I don't own it," he promised, echoing Teddy's reassurance when Billy had first wanted to do his.

[doubled_speed]

Huh. That's a lot to think about for Tommy.

"No, Teddy owns it, and you own half by, like, US law or something, Probably not by Alliance law."

[wearingthestars]

"You think you'd handle it okay? With the needle...thing?" Billy asked, "It's pretty quick. For...most people at least." Tommy couldn't really do the close his eyes and it'd be over in a second trick.

"But if you're interested, you definitely should. Wait, did Pietro have pierced ears?"

[doubled_speed]

“No clue if I could do it or not. I mean there is a chance the pain would make me speed up which would only make it last longer.”

Which was true of a lot of his wounds. But maybe he would consider it. And make Pietro do it.

“Apparently he used to? Like, before the Brotherhood. Stopped putting them in when him and Mags started arguing over Brotherhood shit.”

[wearingthestars]

"Oh...yeah, I guess you wouldn't want to have metal piercings around an angry Magneto, huh?" He winced a little. Their often violent relationship made Billy...uncomfortable.

[doubled_speed]

“Yeah,” Tommy agreed. “The whole ‘fuck authority’ vibe is more awkward when Mags is the authority I guess.”