revivalproject | June-July Storm and Calibrations

WHO: Tommy Sheperd, OTA
WHERE: Around Temba, Calibrations Waiting Room, Tommy’s Calibration Room
WHAT: The lead up to and time around Calibrations
WHEN: June 2nd to July 10th
WARNINGS: CW: Tommy’s Calibrations room potentially contains depictions of child abuse and neglect, deprivation of food to a minor, bullying, and possible references toward unintentional property destruction.. It depends on what you touch (each will have warnings in strike-through attached). One happier memory does occur, though.

Helping Hand (Around Temba - June 2nd, the 36 Hours - OTA)

The message comes and a few things happen. First, Tommy freezes. The storm had been bad the last time. The lack of powers, the way he fractured his ankle, the way he’d seen people he’d lost, the way he’d wanted to hide and never come back. The idea of it happening again scared him more than anything. Add in his new issues with lightning and it got more complicated, not less. Of course while he freezes forever, it’s actually only a minute, and then he’s moving.

While he hasn’t been to his home since things went wrong, he moves immediately there and starts packing a box with all of his things. And after a moment of thought, his brother’s things, and Teddy’s for good measure. Some clothes for them all, a few personal touches to feel comfortable. The painting Vision made for him happened to go into a box too. And once that is all left off in the mouth of the tunnel, he’s back in the city.

He stops at the Greenhouse and spends time harvesting every last thing that’s ripe that he can get his hands on. They’ll need food if they’re going to be there for a while. Then it’s off to the ships. Grabbing anything loose and useful on the ship is the goal to get things back. He then moves around the city, racing up to anyone he sees and stopping to ask an important question.

“Is there anything I can do to help you? Anything you need carried? Hell, I’ll carry you.”

Safety matters, and he’s a hero. It’s going to happen.

Calibrations Waiting Room

Here

Calibrations [CW: Tommy’s Calibrations room potentially contains depictions of child abuse and neglect, deprivation of food to a minor, bullying, and possible references toward unintentional property destruction. It depends on what you touch (each will have warnings in strike-through attached). One happier memory included.]

The room is different than the waking hours, but not much. It’s not actually emptier but it somehow manages to feel it, in an abandoned sort of way. Instead of a queen-sized bed, there’s a twin mattress on the floor, next to which there sits a half-eaten package of off-brand poptarts ~~cw: neglect and deprivation of food~~. The mattress itself is resting under a window so dirty and dusty that it’s almost impossible to see out through it. Instead of the drawers there’s just a closet, open and mostly bare save for a pillow in the corner. And across from the pillow a beat-up bookbag ~~cw: bullying~~. Hidden up on the shelf in the closet is a dusty high school yearbook ~~cw: explosions, property destruction,~~ for a school in New Jersey, Go Pumas! The last object of any real note in the room is a discarded belt ~~cw: child abuse~~. Okay, no, there’s also what looks like a picture pinned to a wall, seemly drawn by a child. It’s on that level at least, it’s made of crayon, and depicts people in very colorful costumes, with something scrawled under it. Welcome to the Young Avengers it reads.

In the middle of it all, metaphorically, is Tommy, looking around the room in disgust.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Wanda feels like she should tread extra carefully. She doesn't belong here - Tommy's one of the few people who's explicitly told her to stay out of his head. But unfortunately, she knows from experience that there's nothing she can do about it. Whatever the Agrii got from the Atroma has made her just as powerless.

Wanda shuffles awkwardly and fiddles with the ends of her sleeves. "...sorry."

Wanda. Tommy looks up and sees her and his face falls. This is going to be like Billy, he thinks. His brain won't let her out without seeing something serious.

"It's alright. It was bound to happen, right?"

"I can't control it. Whatever they've done to us...I can't make myself leave." She shrugs helplessly. "Unless you want to just wait."

Tommy sighs and stands, moving to her side.

"There's not good things to see here," he warns her. "But it's not like you haven't seen my fears already."

Wanda casts her eyes around the room until they fall on something harmless: the pop tarts. Wanda laughs and kneels to run a finger over the box. "You know, I made ice cream sandwiches for Thor with these."

Surely this can't be anything important...right?

"You sure?" And they aren't in the room. They're in terrible kitchen, a lot of the pantry doors looking like they're falling off or otherwise dirty. And there's a young kid there, black hair and Tommy's green eyes,

Also in the room is a woman, about Wanda's age. She doesn't look a lot like Tommy at all, except maybe something about her cheeks. She's making a pot of macaroni and cheese.

And there's Tommy as well, Tommy from now. Watching and glaring openly at the woman.

"You're not going to like Mary."

Well, Wanda did grow up in a war zone, so she's not one to judge their surroundings. Still, it's always jarring to see something like this in America. Somehow she'd always thought poverty like this was much rarer than it is in reality.

"She is your birth mother?" Wanda asks, a little too calmly. Tommy's not had much opportunity to see her truly angry, or to know her tells of incoming cold fury, but they're there: a slight tilt to her head, tension in her fingers like she's about to (try to) summon her power. Wanda doesn't know what to expect, but she knows enough about Tommy's birth parents to hate them. Good parents would have fought and done anything to prevent their child from being taken to that place and they just...

It makes her blood boil. And above all she hates that there's nothing she can do to protect him from this. This isn't her world.

"Yeah, that's her," Tommy sighs as he watches the woman drain the noodles, mix in the butter and the milk and the cheese powder. The boy watches attentively as it all goes into a single large bowl.

And the woman plops a spoon into it and walks out of the kitchen.

"What about me?" the boy, he can't be more than six, asks. His face is sad and his stomach absolutely makes an unhappy noise.

"What about you?" Mary asks, voice sharp as she looks back at him.

"What do I get for lunch?"

The woman narrows her eyes at that. "Who said you get lunch? you're little, you don't need lunch."

"But at school," young Tommy protests, and he can't be in more than kindergarten, "they give us lunch every day. And snacks."

Mary just scoffs and heads out toward the dingy living room.

"When you work and bring money in, you can have lunch."

Older Tommy just glares at the woman, arms wrapped around himself to keep from lashing out pointlessly at a memory.

Wanda takes an instinctive step forward, as if to go rescue little Tommy or give Mary a piece of her mind, but it's useless sentiment. Hunger is an old acquaintance, but Wanda and Pietro had been the victims of circumstance, not their own family, and they hadn't been all alone or that young.

Honestly, what is wrong with everyone in this world? She knows this happens every day, everywhere, but she's never going to understand why the other Wanda and Vision don't get over whatever discomfort they have to at least give Tommy somewhere to go.

She glances back over to the real one and can feel that familiar burn of helplessness in her chest. There's so little she can do, but she can at least wrap him in a tight hug. "Hey. You don't have to watch this."

The hug is good, Tommy gives himself to it as the kid gets up and moves toward the fridge. And even as he moves to open the fridge there's a shout from the other room.

"You touch a damn thing without permission and I'll tell Frank!"

The boy cowers at that statement and slinks away toward an open door. Through the open door is clearly the same room that was Tommy's mental room, though it's a bit nicer in tha the things in it are not as worn down by another decade of use with no replacement. There's even a sheet on the bed, how nice.

"I hate her. I hate her so much."

Frank...his father? Mary's boyfriend? The way little Tommy cowers just from hearing his name is both extremely worrying and infuriating. If either of them ever show up here, they're going to have a lot to answer for. And if the other Wanda is content to let things remain the way they are...well, even Steve and Vision together wouldn't be able to stop her from teaching them a lesson. Tommy's had no justice and it's not right.

Luckily he can't see the dark expression on her face as she gently rubs his shoulders. "I know. I'm so sorry. You didn't deserve any of this."

"Fuck if I don't know that," Tommy says, pulling away and following after the boy. The only new thing in the room is a colorful backpack, too big for a boy his age. Far too big. It's the same one in the closet in Tommy's mind room, therefore probably having gone through his whole school career with him.

And the little boy opens the bag as older Tommy watches, fetching out off-brand packages of poptarts. Clearly ones he got from school. The child is very careful as he opens a package and breaks one in half. And... then breaks it in half again sadly before sitting down in his closet to eat.

"It was worse... after my powers. The hunger never stopped, it was always there, wearing at me."

Wanda's expression falls further each time little Tommy breaks the pop-tart smaller. That's not enough for a snack, much less lunch. It's so wrong, and Wanda wishes more than anything that she could just reach through reality and snatch little Tommy away from his so-called 'parents.'

"You must have been so scared." Clearly Mary and this Frank person didn't provide the supportive environment a young mutant deserved. "It must have been even harder to learn how to control it."

Tommy almost laughs at the very concept of how scared he was when his speed came in. It was worse than scared. It was terrified, pure and simple. He watches himself but younger hide in a closet and eat the poptart-piece, off brand of course, one small bite at a time, like he's savoring it.

"It was bad. Worse than bad to be honest. The hunger and stuff, those changes set in before I tapped into the speed. I didn't know. I felt like I was starving every minute of every day. I started... I started stealing things. Guess that's where it started. But the first time I used my speed..."

There's a darkness hanging over his eyes. A serious one. He remembers that day too well.

June-July Storm and Calibrations - OTA

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CW: Neglect