#I let Billy say fuck and Liam says 'holy moley!!' because he's adorable and small and baby

[pegasister60]

NO. 22 PICK YOUR POISON

Toxic | Withdrawal | Allergic Reaction

(In the end I did not end up talking about the homes Billy’s been in in detail. You’re getting this instead.)

--

You don’t really remember the Before if you’re being honest. That was always your brother’s to carry.

You’ve been with Liam for as long as you can remember. You’re twins, technically triplets if you count Mary. (And of course you count Mary, you’ll never stop looking—)

You’re not sure which of you came first, but you know you’ll always be the older twin anyway. Liam’s always as young as he’s ever been and you’ve never found that odd. He’s still your little twin brother that you’ll throw hands for.

And you have. Multiple times.

Not all of the foster homes you've been to were garbage, admittedly, but they were never right for Liam. The older you and the body you shared with him became the more strained your foster parent’s relationships with Liam would get.

That, and your foster siblings could be mean as hell. 

Thinking about the amount of times you’ve had to pull Liam away from their bullying to throw hands in his stead still gets a rise out of you. Nothing about those situations struck you as fair at all, but at least they never lasted.

Between Liam’s “oddities” and your aggression, you went through homes like tissues for the better part of a year. Your social worker did try, but she didn’t understand. 

You didn’t really understand it to be honest. You were aware that none of your foster siblings shared a body with anyone, much less a sibling, but it also never bothered you. You didn’t need words for it or to know how it happened (though you did try looking it up once). You had everything you needed.

You had a sibling no one could take from you. Not Uncle Ebenezer, not the state, no one.

And you’d be damned if you let anything happen to him.

So you protected him however you could. You’d hide him away whenever things would get rocky with your foster siblings. You’d take all the not-so-nice memories from the foster homes you lived in and tuck them out of sight.

The memory thing in particular helped so much with keeping Liam safe. It also made for some epic sibling bonding whenever you’d have the time to ask Liam about Before.

You don’t remember your mother’s face or your dad’s laugh, but he could remind you. Liam’s memory is for all the good stuff, you’ve found. And you let Liam believe that all the bad stuff just pours out like a strainer. There’s literally no reason to tell him otherwise.

-

When you turned nine you were shuffled into foster home number eleventeen and you kept the bar low. Liam was excited to meet your new siblings but you convinced him that he should hang back for a little bit. They shouldn’t overwhelm their new foster family too soon, yeah?

Best decision you’ve ever made. That was the house that convinced you that you could do a better job raising Liam and yourself than any of those people could. You got up in the middle of the night, broke the lock on the pantry, and shoved as much food as you could carry into your worn Superman backpack to take with you for the road.

You didn’t make it more than a week, but that didn’t matter. You left the very next home with a deeper resolve to look after Liam by yourself, a mouth full of someone else’s blood, and four hundred dollars in small bills. You’d learned, you were willing to adapt, and you’d survive. 

For both of you.

-

And then the subway thing happened.

The Wizard, Shazam, said you had a pure heart. You were eighty-five percent sure he was talking about Liam, because your heart didn’t feel very pure with how desensitized you’d become to committing petty crime (it’s always been for survival’s stake).

When he started to actually describe what he was asking of you though, you straightened up. Because it did sound like he was talking to you. Protecting the source of all magic, fighting to contain horrors that should never see the light of day, throwing hands with beings who mean you harm? It all sounded right up your alley even if the scale of the problems you’d face terrified you.

The Wizard assured you that you’d be granted the powers of six gods. The Wisdom of Solomon, the Strength of Hercules, the Stamina of Atlas, the Power of Zeus, the Courage of Achilles, and the Speed of Mercury.

You politely did not point out that some of those weren’t gods, though mostly because his confidence had you second guessing at the time. 

And in the end it wasn’t much of a contest. The Wizard chose you, your only hang-up had been addressed, and you had nothing else going for you besides looking after Liam. And with the powers of Shazam’s patrons you’d certainly be able to do a better job of it.

And you were right about that, just not how you imagined.

Because all that power? It was heavy. Too much for you to handle and it had nowhere else to go. Something had to give.

So something did. And suddenly the body felt different and your headspace was crowded and you had no idea what the fuck was going on–

And then the headmate you’d later come to learn was named Solomon got to work immediately. He tucked Liam somewhere further back and less stressful, got you acquainted with Achilles who helped with your panic, and started explaining what the fuck just happened.

He also explained it to the Wizard, who had apparently never seen that happen before. First time for everything, hooray!

-

It took a while for everyone to find out what was working and what wasn’t. In the early days you bounced between co-fronting (the word you learned when Solomon gave you your first taste of the Wisdom of his namesake) and looking after Liam. Though Liam was ecstatic to have more people to hang out with and clung to your new headmates like a baby possum, you supervised those interactions very closely for fear that they wouldn’t like him back.

That fear wasn’t unfounded but it was put to rest. Every single one of your headmates would kill for Liam without hesitation and learning that filled you with so much relief. You started spending more time in front again while your headmates that almost never fronted looked after your twin.

And it’s a good thing you did. Turns out that when a Champion of Magic is chosen every malevolent magic user and their mother shows up wanting a piece of the Rock of Eternity’s magic. There were non-magical villains out and about, yeah, but the fact that they were even weirder than the magic users sometimes was not comforting.

And then there were the trips to hell and the natural disasters and all the things that make you very fucking glad that Liam rarely ever fronts anymore. Courage of Achilles or no, shit gets fucked up sometimes.

And for a little over two years that was your life. Being a part of Captain Marvel, making sure enough food got in your smaller body to keep you going between bouts of crime fighting, and moving from sleeping place to sleeping place.

-

You thought that joining the Justice League would be like the day you held those powers for the first time: a lot of adapting, awkwardness, and compromising but ultimately the weight you all carry together would be spread more evenly. That you’d become part of a greater whole capable of so much good.

It was sort of like that. You definitely carried your share of slack and then some when it came to magical problems; your teammates helping you fight the Monster Society Of Evil in turn. You went on off-world missions to face threats you never would’ve even heard about if you weren’t in the League. So in that respect it was similar.

The big difference was one you didn’t really anticipate: you couldn’t get close to these people. Or, more accurately, you refused to let them get close to you.

With your headmates there are no secrets. There’s information withheld from you, yeah, but that’s mostly because you’re not able to handle it all the time. And you in turn have been withholding information from Liam since forever, so you understand why it’s necessary.

With the League, you’re not lying by omission to protect them. The secrets you’re keeping and the truths you talk around could’ve been laid bare to them the day you got recruited. But you decided not to tell them and it’s left a one-way wall between you and your teammates.

They’ve opened up to you over time. Hell, you know some of them so well they gave you their names. And it’s not the trust they’re giving you that’s odd, or even that they want to get to know you.

You got to know your headmates. You learned that Mercury is a skilled musician, that Marvel remembers several lifetimes, and that Achilles will go on and on about Patroclus if given half a chance. They’re your headmates, your people, and you care for them all so much.

And you care for the League, really you do.

But you didn’t give them your name, you didn’t tell them about your small form, and you’ll never elaborate on how your powers work.

It’s not their business. They’re your teammates, your coworkers, but not your people. You would go on a week-long space mission with them despite the consequences your small form would face, but you’d never let them take care of said small form afterwards. Not when you’d rather let Mercury and Marvel take care of it instead.

You trust them with your life but not with your life. And it’s coming back to bite you the way you’ve known it would.

You can’t bring yourself to regret it even now. You were doing what you thought was best to keep your people safe. You would do it again in a heartbeat. You’ve done worse than hold your tongue to protect the people that matter to you, and you’ll probably have to start biting again if you don’t get some fucking space.

--

Whumptober: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, ALT 12, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, ALT 1, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31.