#and they bring forth a lot of complicated emotions for her surrounding her childhood and her own parents and all that

[multishipper-baby]

More adult Goldami thoughts... Specifically about when they're preparing to have kids. Because I feel like they would have a lot of discussions about it and make sure they're both ready for that commitment before going through with it, but Cami would still have absolute dread as her first emotion when she does end up pregnant. She just has a lot of shit to deal with still, you know?

[bigskydreaming]

How old was jason when he died? And when he was resurrected?? And that time he spent dead make him crazier than Ra's when he is under the pit's effect?

The general consensus as far as I’m aware is that Jason was fifteen when he died, and he came back to Gotham in Under the Red Hood about five years later. There’s a couple different versions of the in between time, but most common I believe is that he was resurrected due to multiverse bullshit (like, the official explanation is that an evil teenage version of Clark Kent punched the dimensional walls of the place he was trapped outside of normal time/space so hard that the ripple effects of him breaking through like, caused ‘hiccups’ or anomalies across various universes - one of these being Jason’s resurrection. Yeah. I’m not making this up. LOL).

ANYWAY. The go-to version of the timeline I believe is that this happened about six months after Jason died, which was right around the time Tim started trying to convince Dick to come back and be Robin again and ultimately ended up becoming Robin himself. When Jason dug himself out of his grave, he was largely catatonic and unresponsive, and here’s where it tends to be most vague. After some period of time, which could have been anything from days to weeks to months, depending on who you ask, Talia was in Gotham for supervillain shenanigans or whatnot, came across him and realized who he was, and took him back to the League with her. 

Where again it depends on who you ask, after some period of time, ultimately Talia convinced Ra’s to put Jason in the Pit to see if it would restore him to full consciousness and heal the remaining physical after-effects of his death. And also, her reasons for doing this tend to be subject to your own personal interpretation of Talia. Some view this as her doing it for Bruce’s sake, some view it as her just wanting to use Jason as her pawn against Bruce, etc.

Personally, I view it as somewhat in between, though again this is just my take. I ignore ‘Talia the rapist’ characterizations in both regards to her actions with Bruce and Jason, so I mean, I’m just not here for Morrison or Winick’s take on her in that regard. BUT I also kinda....highly object to the ‘soft’ characterizations of Talia that kind of make her the ideal parent that highlights how crappy Bruce is in comparison? Like, its no secret that I’m hugely critical of Bruce’s parenting, but I just....personally am not a fan of acting like Talia is amazing at it and noble and selfless either. I don’t like the outright vilification of Talia - especially when she ends up coming across as worse than Ra’s, which, no thank you - BUT I don’t like...blunting all her edges either, for lack of a better phrasing. 

I tend to view her as someone who is extremely ambitious, ruthless and uncompromising in her own ways. I think a huge part of her dynamic with Bruce is that they mirror each other in so many ways, even if they’re not always on the same page. She’s often used as a narrative foil to Bruce, but I disagree - I think Selina and Bruce are the ‘opposites attract’ whereas Talia and Bruce are the ‘like calls to like/their bond in large part stems from how well they understand each other, even though they have different goals and aims most of the time’. 

But point being, like......I don’t like shallow, two-dimensional interpretations of Talia where she’s just evil and has no shades of gray to her, but I also don’t like the flip side of that and her being viewed as the lesser of two evils compared to Bruce. Like, sorry not sorry, I think both of them need to take some parenting classes. Unless you drastically change Damian’s entire backstory and characterization by the time he arrives in Gotham, and/or insist that Damian’s upbringing was all entirely due to Ra’s control and Talia at no point in ten years had the option of arranging for her son to end up with Bruce or somewhere else where he didn’t spend his childhood being taught that affection was a sign of weakness and how to murder his nanny in six hundred different ways and show his work plz, like......I have trouble with the super!mom Talia takes.

All of which is just to say....I don’t believe Talia brought Jason back with her and put him in the Pit out of the goodness of her heart, but I don’t think it was entirely absent of positive intentions either? If that makes sense? I just mean...she’s a SUPER complicated woman in my take, and that’s what makes her so much more interesting than she’s usually reduced to being in a lot of stories. Talia is not as stone cold as she often comes across as a defense mechanism - I think she is someone who feels things deeply, but she shuts that down even harder than Bruce. She’s a very pragmatic individual, and I think she tends to justify a lot of even her most emotional-driven choices by finding an advantageous spin she can put forth as her ‘real reason’ for doing things.

So....I think her feelings for Bruce DID have a lot to do with her taking Jason with her. She does love Bruce in her own way, she always keeps an eye on him so she absolutely had to have been aware just how badly Jason’s death was affecting him, and so I think when she first saw Jason and realized who he was....I do think on a gut level, her motivations were like, she felt a need or want to take him with her and see that he was well cared for, for Bruce’s sake if nothing else.

BUT....I think the complication is she has trouble justifying that to herself, even, let alone to her father or subordinates or any of the others who constantly seek an edge over her within the League’s inner power structures and hierarchies. So I think that’s where the pragmatic side of her took over, and once she DID see to Jason at least nominally being taken care of....that’s when she started to look at it in terms of how she could play this to her advantage as well.....and whether that ultimately was in pursuit of convincing Bruce to join her side, and using Jason as leverage there, or just hurting Bruce for rejecting and hurting her and her chosen path, and using Jason to accomplish that.....tbh, like I said, I see Talia as an extremely complicated person and IMO the most likely take is that even SHE probably couldn’t say which she truly wanted or intended.....or perhaps it just changed at various points, and more than once.

My point with this tangent is I think there tends to be a very narrow focus on Jason’s return and Talia’s role in it as opposed to just the Pit in general. As much as Talia did help Jason, I think it doesn’t get acknowledged enough that as long as her own motivations and agenda were AT ANY LEVEL behind her choice not to reveal he was alive to Bruce....that’s something that I think could use more scrutiny in fandom, because that is a selfish choice, even if she did nominally spin it as being in Jason’s best interests. I just mean....it was a complicated situation, she’s a complicated person, you can’t add that up and still walk away with the simple narrative “Talia helped Jason after he came back to life and everything she did was to his benefit and in his best interests’ you know?

The thing is, the Pit’s influence aside, we have NO idea how things might have gone if Bruce, Dick and Alfred had ever gotten the CHANCE to get to Jason immediately after his submersion in the Pit and try and help him through it.....because Talia and Ra’s didn’t allow for them to ever have that chance. And that is a hugely critical plot point I think, that’s gone largely unexplored. There’s a lot of attention paid to how Jason felt upon learning that the Joker was alive, that there was a new Robin....but not a ton of attention paid to the HOW of Jason finding out all these things, and just how exactly this information was delivered to him and in what framing and context.

Because again, Pit influence aside....just sheerly in terms of the massive trauma and disorientation Jason had to have been going through upon having his full cognitive faculties restored by the Pit.....like....Jason came back to Gotham as an adult, ultimately. But at THAT stage of things....he was still likely only sixteen or so. VERY young. VERY traumatized. COMPLETELY isolated from all previous existing support networks.....and all of that adds up to being VERY. VERY. Impressionable.

And this is the part I wish got more focus. Just how much influence Talia, Ra’s and the League in general had over Jason’s thought processes, morality and ethics during that period he lived and trained with them....in the wake of a massive traumatic ordeal and with zero effort paid towards helping him cope and recover in any way other than what they laid out for him there. See, whatever Talia’s actual motivations for bringing him back and putting him in the Pit were....there’s not really any denying IMO that once that was done, she still took advantage of the opportunity Jason’s impressionability and gratitude for what she’d done (and just the interest and care she’d demonstrated in his eyes merely by doing it)....like, she still took advantage of the...influence this gave her over him.

Like.....Under the Red Hood? Eight heads in a duffle bag as Jason brutally slaughtered some of the key members of various crime organizations in Gotham and used that to gain the attention and fear and/or respect of various crime lords and organizations?

That didn’t come out of nowhere. And personally I think there’s too much focus paid to Jason’s potential for violence before his death, the murkiness surrounding Felipe Garzona’s death, and the effect the Pit still had on his mind when he returned to Gotham.......and not enough focus paid on WHERE AND WHO HE SPENT ALL HIS TIME WITH IN BETWEEN THESE THINGS.  

Because as brutal as Jason could be at times as Robin......eight heads in a duffel bag is still a LONG way away from that. What its NOT a long way away from, however....is League of Assassins training, methodology and worldview.

Like, literally everything Jason did in Under the Red Hood came right smack out of the League’s playbook, so I’ve always just been like....forget the Pit for a second, guys! What about just....examining what effect being surrounded and trained by League assassins for three or four straight years in the wake of massive, life-altering trauma and circumstances that make you feel both INDEBTED to said League and BETRAYED BY all your previous loved ones who weren’t there for you....because they never had the opportunity TO be there, given that they weren’t the ones that ran into Jason while he was on the streets after digging himself up and like, even in the DC universe AT THAT TIME ‘hey wonder if he might end up resurrected somehow’ was not like, something that was at the forefront of anyone’s mind as a likely possibility?

LOL. Anyway. So that’s my hot take on Jason’s return.....yes, the Pit undoubtedly played a role, but I would love love love to see more of a role given just to looking at the sheer INFLUENCE the League and their teachings had over an isolated, traumatized and impressionable teenager.

As for the Pit itself.....that’s a topic for another day, probably, lol, but like...I have a LOT of thoughts about the Pit and how its used in various narratives, canon and otherwise. Because the thing is....its effects STARTED out as being brought into stories about Ra’s as kind of a moral fable. Like, essentially, the effects of the Pit in early stories were like....IMO more intended as a cautionary type narrative about the dangers of greed and being power-hungry, seeking to control even life and death, etc? I just mean like.....it originally came off as more of the idea “there’s no such thing as a free lunch” or in essence...everything has a price, and with something like immortality, the price is steep. There was a lot of focus initially on the idea that Ra’s was the man he’d become...only after centuries of using the Pit’s power to remain young, vital and alive. Power corrupts, essentially.

However, the problem I have...is that narrative becomes a wholly different thing when the Pit affects someone who DIDN’T seek to use its power, who wasn’t using it for selfish gain....nor like in Jason’s case...did they even have a choice about using it at all! This is the same issue I have with keeping Dick as a Talon in Court of Owls stories, and certain ways Cassandra’s story is told and her body language skills are used and discussed: I have a deep dissatisfaction with the idea of abuse inflicted by others, being like...the origin story or source of someone’s powers....when its paired at the same time with consequences that the person never asked for, would never have asked for......but the powers themselves tend to be the only thing focused on, rather than the drawbacks, with the overall takeaway ending up being that like.....the person should be grateful that the abuse happened in the first place because now they have these powers see, and isn’t that the most important thing?

So to correct myself, it isn’t quite the same thing, but I mean....the issue I have with Jason and the Pit here, in comparison, is that....Jason had no agency in choosing to go into the Pit. So to me.....its a big, BIG problem to have him ‘benefit’ from that in the form of look, he’s alive and well again, he has a second chance.....IF equal scrutiny isn’t being paid to the price he is stuck paying for the ‘gifts’ of the Pit, that second chance.....when he never asked to pay it in the first place. 

And I don’t actually think I’m the only one who has that problem, I think most people just don’t spell it out to that degree....because what I mean there is......the Pit’s effects ever since Jason’s return like....aren’t viewed in the context of being a morality narrative anymore. At least not in regards to him. People rarely write the Pit as ‘corrupting’ Jason the way it was once suggested to have corrupted Ra’s, because like....Jason was a victim, not a person motivated by selfish desires for immortality. And people want him to be a hero (or at least an antihero) rather than the villain that DC has at times tried to make him instead....and I think even unconsciously, we’re all aware that it doesn’t really work to have a character like that ‘forced’ into a villainous role because of exposure to a mystical corrupting agent they never asked to be exposed to.

SO. The end result of THAT is that.....the way people write about the Pit has shifted, both in canon and fandom. And now the Pit’s effects are viewed less as a cautionary morality fable and more as like...a heightened form of PTSD, a metaphor for the extreme and beyond-imagining trauma of being brutally killed and brought back to life again.

And that is where things get murky for me again, because you end up with an unintentionally confused/skewed narrative where writers and readers often aren’t even sure themselves if they’re writing this mystical McGuffin as being an external force of corruption that makes people ‘worse versions of themselves’ OR whether its a PTSD/trauma metaphor that highlights the hurt/confusion/paranoia/intensity of tangled emotions that survivors of great traumas experience. And the problem there is, without actually intending to....I think you inevitably end up dipping into a lot of really problematic ableist ideas that reinforce some pretty negative impressions of mental illness, bad survivors and recovery in general.

Oops. Tangents happened again, huh. Oh well. Hope your answers are in there along with everything else I stuffed that response full of, lol!

[serenlyss]

Don’t Thank Me Yet Chapter 5

Rating: M (violence, blood, guns, murder, torture, PTSD, trauma) Pairings: ritshou Summary: “Alright then. I’m Shou,” he says, introducing himself more properly this time. “I’m an esper, like you, the first in existence to be forcibly awoken by Claw’s crazy torture machines. They kidnap kids with potential latent psychic powers and break them, over and over, until either their powers emerge or they die. It doesn’t matter either way to them.” His expression hardens as he speaks, clear distaste and outright malice evident in his tone. “I could really use your help here, you know. A partner of sorts, someone to watch my back. What do you say?“ Ritsu hesitates. He isn’t a fighter by any means, and the psychic powers now churning beneath his skin are still very new and frightening. It’s all very overwhelming, but Ritsu can’t help but feel a sort of sickening hope at Shou’s promise for revenge. It did have a sort of dark draw to it. In which Claw is a lot worse than they seem and Shigeo isn’t able to find his brother after he’s kidnapped. Crossposted to AO3: Chapter 5

Chapter 4 // Chapter 6

We've finally made it to my favorite chapter. I'm really excited for you all yo read this at last, I put a lot of work into making sure it had the biggest and best impact it can. I really hope you all enjoy this chapter and the rest of what I have in store. If you all want to ask me questions or anything you can send me an ask or a message here or leave a comment on my ao3! I love hearing from you guys!

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Ritsu’s mind goes blank.

The words sink in slowly, painfully, pressing down on his shoulders and squeezing his heart and lungs until he can’t tell if he’s breathing anymore. His fingers dig into the wood of the table until his knuckles turn white, arms quivering. He feels like he might vomit.

“What do you mean it’s on fire?” Shou yells, a bit quicker to process the news than Ritsu is. “They can’t have gotten there already, it hasn’t even been a day!” He stands up in a hurry, face contorted in a rage Ritsu’s rarely seen. He clenches his teeth tightly together, his whole body shaking in unbridled anger.

“It’s as I said. I was doing my rounds and noticed the smoke on my way back.” Ootsuki’s voice comes over the speaker with practiced calm, though there’s a sense of urgency in it as well. “I didn’t see anyone go in or come out, and the crowd around the house is way too thick to see if any of the Kageyamas made it outside. I only got a quick look, but one of the first-floor windows had been shattered. There was no glass on the outside.”

Shou slams a fist on the table, startling Ritsu. His glare is near-murderous as he hangs up the call and shoves his phone into his pocket. “Damn it! Someone must have broken in. How did they get a team out so fast?” he curses. He’s already rushing around the room, scooping up his backpack and tugging on his shoes. As he’s zipping up his jacket, he turns and fixes Ritsu with his intense gaze. “Let’s go, we’re taking the car.”

Ritsu’s tongue feels thick in his mouth, and he barely manages to choke out, “What?”, before Shou is hauling him up by his elbow and shoving him toward the door, snagging the car keys from a hook on the wall.

“Hurry up, you heard what Ootsuki said! We’ve gotta run if we’re gonna save your family!” Shou snaps, throwing open the house’s front door so fast that the doorknob leaves a dent in the wall.

Shou’s words break the spell Ritsu’s under, and he hurriedly steps into his shoes, not even bothering to tie them as he chases Shou out the front door. “Do you even know how to drive?” Ritsu sputters without thinking.

“Of course not, but that’s not really important right now, is it?” Shou replies over his shoulder haughtily, but that doesn’t stop him from sliding into the front seat of the car and shoving the keys into the ignition.

Ritsu barely has time to get himself into the passenger’s seat and close the door before Shou’s pulling the car jerkily away from the curb. He hits the gas far too hard, sending the car lurching forward at a nauseating velocity. Ritsu’s hand snaps up to cling to the handle affixed to the car’s ceiling, feeling his heart plummet into his stomach. “This is a terrible idea!” he cries.

Shou takes a sharp turn, barely hitting the brake at all as he does. “Got a better one? Please do tell!” he snaps back in irritation, swerving back and forth to avoid parked cars and other would-be deterrents as he heads for Ritsu’s house. “You can’t fly, unless you’ve been practicing behind my back, and I sure as hell can’t carry four people once we finally get everyone out. Five, if you count Ootsuki!”

Ritsu has no better ideas, so he falls quiet. It’s only once they’re on the wide-open main road that he finally feels like he can loosen his iron grip on the handle, but now his hands shake against his will and his chest tightens in a familiar way as the situation truly sinks in. With it comes world-crushing dread and guilt, filling him up in a second and overflowing in the form of tears that streak down his face. “This is all my fault,” he groans, burying his face in his hands.

Shou sighs softly. “Come on, dude, it’s too early to break down. At least wait until we get to the house and figure out what happened to your family,” he chastises, gaze fixed firmly on the road in front of them. His hands are hot-glued to the wheel as he does his best not to hit anyone else.

“What if they’re gone?” Ritsu asks, ashamed at the way his voice cracks. “What if they’re hurt? Shou, what if they’re dead?”

He glances up at Shou, searching for something, anything. He feels stressed and lost and so, so scared, like he’s a kid again, running to his mother after a bad day and crying into her arms. He searches for that warmth now, that familiar comfort that feels so out of reach, and instead finds himself cold.

“We won’t know until we get there,” Shou murmurs, and the realism of it just knocks Ritsu deeper into his worries. He wants Shou to tell him that everything’s going to be fine, that it’ll all work out in the end, even though he knows that neither of them have any way of knowing how things will turn out.

Ritsu spends the rest of the drive struggling to pull himself together, reaching for his rampant emotions with outstretched hands and shoving them back into his skin where they belong. He dries his tears on the sleeve of his jacket as Shou zig-zags down the familiar streets of his hometown and wonders if this is how Shigeo always feels, the weight of too many complicated emotions strangling his heart. He can see the plume of smoke rising before they even turn onto his street, staining the blue sky a dark, murky gray.

When he finally lays eyes on his childhood home, Ritsu momentarily forgets how to breathe. The left side of the house is engulfed in flames already, the blaze creeping its way slowly along the roof and the wall where Ritsu can see his old bedroom’s balcony. The living room window has been completely shattered, as Ootsuki had relayed over the phone, and flames pour out of it like water from a tap, angrily singeing the tulips in his mother’s flowerbed. He scrambles out of the passenger-side door as Shou pulls to the car to a halt across the street, ears filled with the crackle of fire and the anxious murmurs of the crowd gathered outside the front gate. Distantly, he hears the sirens of fire trucks being deployed.

Shou moves before Ritsu has a chance to, shoving his way into the crowd and vaulting the gate without even pausing to open it. Ritsu’s quick to scramble after him, ignoring the shocked cries and warnings thrown his way by the crowd of bystanders. He doesn’t even look to see if anyone he recognizes is here; it doesn’t matter, because an aura is radiating from the house like a beacon, even brighter than the fires that threaten to bring the house down around it, and even though Ritsu’s never sensed it before, he knows it can only belong to one person.

Ritsu doesn’t give himself the time to process that his brother is still here, still alive, as he lifts one foot and kicks the door in without a second thought. The burned door gives way too easily under his weight, the lock protesting in a loud screech of metal on metal before falling apart entirely. He sprints down the hall and forces open the door that leads into the combined family room and kitchen, and hears Shou right on his heels, already breathing hard from the smoke that’s filled the entryway.

Ritsu recoils, raising his arms to shield his face as a rush of hot air nearly blows him off his feet. He feels his unbuttoned jacket being ripped back by the psychic wind that whips through the whole room, stronger than any summer storm. He takes a step over the threshold, then another, eyes darting around as he takes in the scene before him.

The entire room is on fire, hungry tongues of it lapping at the carpet and gnawing on the wooden beams that hide behind the drywall. The ceiling is entirely obscured by the thick cloud of smoke that hovers there, like an ominous, poisonous fog. Shattered glass covers the floor from the blown-in window, and the television lays in pieces at the far end of the room. The dining room table has been cracked down its middle, splinters of it covering the kitchen floor as the fire reaches greedily for them. There are dents in the walls and in the kitchen cabinets, and the ceiling fan hangs at a diagonal angle, as if barely holding onto its place.

There, in the middle of the blaze and shattered glass, stands Shigeo, surrounded in a bright blue aura that drips from him like water. Despite the house’s state of disrepair, he looks almost calm, his feet firmly planted on the ruined carpet and one hand held out in front of him. The wind in the room whips off of him in frighteningly strong gusts, lifting the hem of his shirt and causing his hair to stand straight up. His brow is furrowed in fierce determination, fiery red eyes fixed on a pair of nasty-looking espers. Ritsu’s quick to pick them out as Scars, the angry red marks on their faces a dead giveaway that it had indeed been Claw who had attacked this place. One of them is down on one knee and looks rather battered, as though he’s already put up as much of a fight as he could, and the other doesn’t look much better, blood dripping from a wound on his head. Their parents are nowhere to be seen.

“Shige!” Ritsu cries, fighting to be heard above the noise of the tiny storm Shigeo has managed to conjure within the house’s walls. He doesn’t even care about the Scars at this point, doesn’t care if he’s giving away the element of surprise or whatever other advantage he may have. He just wants his brother.

Three pairs of eyes turn to look at him immediately, but Ritsu can only stare as Shigeo’s head snaps around and he finally, finally meets Ritsu’s gaze. His eyes go wide, and he stumbles back a step as though he’s been pushed. The storm around him ceases instantly, shards of glass and splinters of wood clattering harmlessly to the ground around him. His mouth falls open, lips forming Ritsu’s name, and then suddenly he’s gone.

One of the Scars moves with a speed Ritsu isn’t accounting for, and his fist sinks into Shigeo’s cheek with an audible crack that sends him careening back into the fireplace. The brick structure collapses on top of him, throwing up a thick cloud of dust and ash leftover from cold winter nights that were never swept away.

Before Ritsu can even understand what’s come over him, he sees red. He hears himself scream, aura bursting from under his skin as he grabs the Scar tightly with his telekinesis and pins him up against the far wall by his throat. His blood roars in his ears, the noise of it drowning out everything else. He clenches his hand into a tight fist and takes a sick sense of pride in the way the Scar fights to breathe and reaches for hands that aren’t there. His mind goes blank, his aura overflowing and filling the room in a way he’s only felt once before, on the night he’d first awakened his powers.

At his side, Shou reaches for the other Scar and lifts him up with his aura without hesitation. He grits his teeth and pushes, hard, and the Scar flies into the house’s wall and then breaks through it, hitting the ground somewhere outside with a crash.

Ritsu clenches his teeth and tightens his grip even further until the Scar can’t even gasp anymore, his face turned purple and red. He feels a maniacal grin pull at the corners of his mouth, a sick satisfaction filling him as the Scar stops struggling and his arms fall limp at his sides.

A hand grabs him by the shoulder and whirls him around. “Ritsu! Drop him, he’ll die!” Shou yells, knocking away his outstretched hand with a loud, backhanded slap. Ritsu loses his grip, and the Scar falls to the ground in a heap, unconscious. Shou grabs his face with both hands, staring up at him with wide eyes filled with worry and desperation and fear. “Let’s get out of here,” he pleads. His hands tremble slightly against Ritsu’s skin, too warm in the overheated room, and his breathing comes quick and raspy from smoke inhalation. The air is thin and filling with more smoke by the second, turning their surroundings hazy and monochromatic.

“You’re not a killer,” he whispers.

Ritsu gasps, feeling the murderous intent drain from him in a flash. He blinks, as though waking up, his whole body going stiff and motionless as he fights to wrap his mind around what had just happened. He swallows, holding Shou’s gaze for a moment before he whips around toward the fireplace, tearing his face out of Shou’s grasp. “Shige!” he calls, stumbling to the pile of bricks and falling to his knees next to it. He pushes them away with his hands, desperate to unbury his brother before the Scars come back to their senses.

Shigeo groans and sits up in the wreckage, rubbing the back of his head, and meets Ritsu’s gaze once more. His eyes no longer glow that intense, angry red, back to their usual dark shade of gray, and his hair lays against his forehead once more. For a moment, he just stares, shaking hands reaching out as if to touch but retreating before they can, and his lower lip wobbles as he searches for words to speak with. “Ritsu?” he whispers like a prayer, quiet and vulnerable.

Ritsu’s never been happier to hear someone say his name. He throws himself into his brother’s arms, squeezing him tightly, and Shigeo doesn’t hesitate to hold him back. He forgets that Shigeo is still half-buried in bricks and ash, forgets that the house is still very much on fire around them. He’s too relieved and overwhelmed to care about anything other than the fact that Shigeo is here, Shigeo is alive, Shigeo is real and solid and just as gentle as he remembers. He buries his face into his brother’s neck, not even bothering to hold back the tears that come this time. Shigeo has seen him cry too many times for him to start feeling ashamed of it now.

Shigeo doesn’t say a word as Ritsu clings to him, just settles his hands against his back and pulls him closer, but Ritsu can tell he’s crying too from the way he shakes in his arms.

Ritsu only pulls away when he hears the sound of voices nearby, drawing him out of the relieved trance he’d fallen into. When he extracts himself from Shigeo’s grip and looks over, he sees that it’s Ootsuki, speaking with Shou, and the reality of the situation comes flooding back to him. He glances at the Scar he’d choked, sees that he’s still unconscious on the ground, and then he stands, pulling Shigeo with him by the hand. “We should go,” he says, casting a glance at Shou and wiping at his eyes with his free hand. “Shige, where are Mom and Dad?”

Shigeo lets himself be pulled, bricks clattering to the ground around him as he finally frees his legs from them. He’s covered head to toe in soot and dust, and he coughs into his hand, wincing. Ritsu can feel the smoke burning his lungs, too. “They’re not here. It’s their anniversary this weekend, so they went away on a trip and left me at home, just for a little while,” he manages, voice hoarse. “They won’t be home for a few more days.”

Ritsu can’t help but be surprised that his strict parents were willing to leave Shigeo home alone for such a long period of time. “They didn’t take you with them?”

Shigeo shakes his head. “I told them not to. It took quite a bit of convincing, but I wanted them to have a nice vacation without having to worry about me… I guess that ended up being a bad idea, huh?” he glances regretfully around the ruined house as he and Ritsu head for the door.

“Enough chatter, let’s get out of here,” Shou says sternly, giving Ritsu’s shoulder a little shove as he crowds them out of the burning building. He tosses the car keys to Ootsuki, who catches them deftly. “You drive, I’m underage.”

Ritsu bites back the urge to point out that it’d been Shou who had driven them here in the first place, letting him hustle them out the back door.

Shou breaks away from them as they reach the door, casting Ritsu a glance and nodding at him, then reaches up and takes Ootsuki by his forearm. Immediately, the two of them blink out of sight, surrounded by Shou’s light-reflecting barrier.

Oh, Ritsu thinks, I guess we can’t let ourselves be caught by the police, they’ll ask too many questions. He follows Shou’s lead, flashing Shigeo a small smile as he throws up a field of invisibility of his own.

“You have psychic powers!” Shigeo gasps in shock, and the awe in his voice is enough to make Ritsu laugh out loud. He’d really, really missed his brother.

He holds a finger to his lips with a sly smile. “Quiet, we’ve gotta be sneaky now,” he whispers, grabbing Shigeo by the hand and tugging him around the house and toward where the car is parked. He feels like a giddy little kid playing hide and seek, crouched under the kitchen table while his mother pretends not to know where he is. Just for a bit, it’s like the mission doesn’t have life-or-death consequences. He slips into the back seat of the car with Shigeo while Shou takes up the shotgun seat, and the car rumbles to life.

Fire trucks are parked in front of the house now, and Ritsu can hear police sirens close behind, but by the time anyone’s noticed that the car has started, they’re leaving the curb and speeding back to their headquarters.

For a few minutes, all four of them sit in silence, and the giddiness and excitement Ritsu felt at finally reuniting with his brother fades, replaced with the apprehension and anticipation that comes with knowing that he has a lot to explain. He can practically hear Shigeo’s thoughts racing despite the impassive expression he wears, and Ritsu doesn’t feel much better, his own mind scrambling to figure out exactly how he’s going to explain his four months of absence to his brother.

Ritsu swallows, and decides to break the silence first. “Ah, I should probably introduce you, right?” he says, his voice coming out painfully awkward. “Shige, these are my friends, Shou and Ootsuki. I’ve… been staying with them for a few months now.”

Shou flashes Shigeo a grin, turning around in the front seat and propping his elbow up on the back of it. “Nice to meet’cha, Ritsu’s brother. Sorry to keep you in the dark for so long,” he says, his words painfully casual in contrast to the tense atmosphere.

Shigeo manages a smile. “Oh, um, it’s nice to meet you too. You can just call me Shigeo,” he murmurs in response. His gaze flickers to Ritsu momentarily, questioning.

“I promise, I’ll explain everything, I just… give me a little bit of time to get my thoughts together,” Ritsu says, hearing Shigeo’s unspoken question as though he’d said it aloud. It’s a small, but very real, reassurance that they can still understand each other despite their time apart.

Shigeo offers him a closed smile and nods. “It’s okay, take your time,” he says, and Ritsu knows he’s going to be eternally grateful for his brother’s understanding nature.

“Thank you,” he says, turning to look down at his knees. Shigeo’s leg and shoulder press softly against him, unconsciously gravitating towards him despite the fact that there’s plenty of room for them both to stretch out in the car’s back seat. Ritsu takes comfort from it, relishes in the fact that they can finally be together again after so many months of being unable to see each other. He imagines Shigeo must have had an even harder time than him, having no idea where Ritsu had disappeared to or where he’d been. He wonders how often Shigeo had thought about him, how many times he’d considered the possibility that he might have been dead the whole time.

“I’m really glad you’re okay.” Shigeo breaks the silence this time, drawing Ritsu out of his thoughts. He turns to him and offers him a small, kind smile, but there’s sadness behind it, too. “Hanazawa and I tried to find you after you disappeared, but it was really hard just to find the place they took you to. By the time we managed to track it down, it’d been abandoned and demolished. We kept trying for a while afterward, but eventually… we had to give up.” He speaks softly, defeat in his gaze as he stares down at his hands. “I’m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I was born with incredibly strong psychic powers, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t even protect one person.” Ritsu sees the way his expression hardens regretfully and his hands clench into fists. “I’m sorry,” he says again.

Why is he apologizing? Ritsu wonders, finding himself speechless in the face of Shigeo’s regret. He almost feels like laughing; of course Shigeo would blame himself for what went down. “It’s not your fault, it’s… it’s no one’s fault,” he says, even if he feels like he should be shouldering at least some of the blame for not going home when he could have. “It was a tough situation. We all did what we thought was right.”

Shigeo reaches over and pats Ritsu on his knee in reply. They don’t speak again until Ootsuki pulls into the driveway of the old house Ritsu’s called his home for the past four months.

Shigeo’s head had fallen to Ritsu’s shoulder somewhere along the drive home, and as Ootsuki shuts off the car, Ritsu reaches over and gives him a little shake. “Wake up, we’re here,” he whispers. The sun has long since gone down, a few stars visible through the bright, iridescent street lights. “Are you tired?”

Shigeo lifts his head with a sleepy hum. “I’m fine,” he assures, but he has to hide a yawn behind his hand. “I can stay up a bit longer. We have a lot to talk about, after all.”

Ritsu swallows; he knows that Shigeo doesn’t mean it in a threatening way by any means, but he can’t help but feel chastised anyway. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly, pushing open the car door and sliding out of the seat. Shigeo follows behind him, stretching his arms over his head as they walk up to the front door and step inside.

Ootsuki’s quick to excuse himself, saying something to Shou about how Fukuda and Higashio had returned while they were out, which leaves the three younger boys to themselves in the house’s main room.

“Are you guys hurt at all?” Shou asks, gaze flicking to Ritsu with thinly-veiled concern. He hangs his jacket on the coat rack, exposing his arms.

Ritsu shakes his head. “I’m fine, just dusty,” he replies, and turns to look at Shigeo. His brother has his eyes fixed on the many scars that litter Shou’s arms, snaking up and under the sleeve of his T-shirt.

“I think I’m okay, for the most part,” Shigeo says after a moment, tearing his gaze away from Shou and giving himself a quick once-over. There’s a scrape on his cheek from when he’d been thrown into the fireplace, Ritsu notes, but aside from that he looks unharmed.

A smile tugs at Ritsu’s lips; it’s likely the only hit the Scars had gotten on him during the entire fight.

Shou nods, shuffling on his feet with an uncharacteristic awkwardness. “Well, uh, if you two don’t need anything-”

“Could we have a minute to talk?” Ritsu asks. “I know that this changes, uh, everything, I guess, but it’s late and I just…” He pauses, taking a breath before he rambles too much. “I need to talk to my brother for a while, alone.”

Shou nods, offering Ritsu a rare, understanding smile. “Yeah, of course. I’ll be in my room, just holler if you need anything,” he says, and disappears down the hall.

Shigeo turns to face Ritsu as Shou leaves. “Do you need more time?” he asks.

Ritsu smiles; it never ceases to amaze him how considerate Shigeo can be. “No, that’s alright, I think I’m ready,” he replies, then pauses, a thought coming to his mind. “Actually, there’s something I want to grab from my room before we start. Uh, I’ll be right back.” He turns and heads to his own room, catching Shigeo’s murmured “Alright,” as he does.

He slips inside and heads to the little shelf in the corner of the mostly-bare room, crouching down to the very bottom shelf and picking up a bag. It’s plain-looking, with a zipper on top, the kind that had probably, at one point, been marketed as a bag for keeping makeup in. In Ritsu’s possession, though, it holds something with a bit of a deeper meaning to it.

Bag in hand, Ritsu makes his way back to the main room. Shigeo has taken a seat on one of the two couches in the house’s common area, and he looks up as Ritsu returns. “What’s that?” he asks, eyes drifting down to the makeup bag in curiosity.

Ritsu sits down on the floor instead of the couch and waves for Shigeo to join him. He unzips the bag and upends it on the floor, revealing a handful of colorful bottles of fingernail polish. “I’ve been collecting these over the last couple of months,” he explains. “Sometimes I paint my own nails, but I haven’t done it much since I… went away.” He decides to sugarcoat for the time being, knowing he’ll be explaining the whole situation soon anyway. “We used to do this all the time whenever we had to have serious talks.”

Shigeo looks surprised at first, leaning over to pick up one of the bottles and turn it over in his hands as he sits down cross-legged with Ritsu. “I’d forgotten,” he admits, a smile coming to his face. “It’s been a long time since we’ve had a talk like that.” He scoops the pile to the side and sifts through them for a minute before picking out a pastel green bottle and setting it aside for himself. Then he picks out another, a midnight blue. Ritsu resists the urge to laugh at the fact that Shigeo had intentionally gone for his favorite color. It’s nice to know that he still remembers.

“I’ll do yours first,” Shigeo offers, and reaches out expectantly for Ritsu’s hand. Ritsu moves to give it to him, then freezes when he realizes he’s still wearing his gloves. He draws his hand back, hesitating for a moment, and Shigeo frowns, head tilting ever-so-slightly as if to ask what’s wrong.

Ritsu bites his lip. He can’t hide his hands from Shigeo forever, he knows, even if he really wants to. He undoes the adjustable velcro straps keeping the gloves in place and slides them off, then holds his hand out to Shigeo once more, palm skyward.

Shigeo takes it in his own, gaze flicking down to stare at it, and Ritsu hears the way his breathing hitches in his throat when he lays eyes on the myriad of scars that cover his palm and fingers. Many of them have faded somewhat after four months of healing, but none of them have disappeared, and Ritsu doubts they ever will. They’re bright white and obvious in the dimly lit room, laid atop one another with no obvious pattern. Some of them are long, spanning the length of his palm, while others are shorter, like he’d been stabbed rather than slashed. “What happened?” Shigeo asks softly, cradling his palm with one hand and reaching out with the other to gingerly trace the lines with his fingertips.

Ritsu tells him. He doesn’t get into the details, still unwilling to reveal the full extent of his kidnapping and torture with anyone, but he doesn’t leave things out for Shigeo’s sake, either. He describes the dark cell he’d slept in for only a single night, how the cold had crept through his skin and settled into his bones until he ached. He tells Shigeo about how he hadn’t been able to sleep for that night because the wounds on his hands and arms had hurt too badly to let him. He talks about the threats to his life, the other kids he’d seen leave and never return, the ever-present anxiety and fear that the next test would be the one that would kill him. He describes the way his powers had exploded in his moment of greatest need, how he’d been so drunk on it that he hadn’t even realized what had happened until he’d lost the strength to move properly anymore.

He talks about Shou, appearing out of nowhere and giving him somewhere safe to fall back to, recounts how he’d tended to his days-old wounds with a touch that was confident but gentle and spoke of the number of times he’d done the same to himself. He tells Shigeo about the meals they’d eat together, and about the nights when he and Shou would fall asleep on the floor of Ritsu’s bedroom, nights where they’d stay up talking about nothing and everything at the same time, both of them too comfortable and content to bother going to their own beds. He describes the long nights spent staking out Claw bases, huddled together in the bushes, always on edge but just a little less scared than they would be separate, and as he does his shoulders lose some of their tense squareness and the crease in his brow smooths over.

He talks and talks and lets his thoughts fall from his mouth without much consideration, and part way through Shigeo finishes the first coat of polish and just holds Ritsu’s hand lightly in his. His hand is soft and smooth where Ritsu’s is rough and calloused, a reminder of the very different paths they’d taken.

Shigeo listens in silence as he finally says the things that he’s so far shared only with Shou, and all the while his brother stares down at the scars on his palms and runs his fingers over them. They don’t hurt, not anymore, and they haven’t for a long time, but he can’t help but feel the need to pull away. Ritsu isn’t used to the way it feels for someone to touch his scars like this. No one’s touched his bare hands since he’d left the Claw base, and that isn’t a sensation he’s willing to relive.

Then, quietly, Shigeo turns his hand back over and reaches for the nail polish once more. His lips are tightly pursed, and Ritsu doesn’t miss the way the hand holding his shakes and tightens its grip ever-so-slightly. His anger is not so intense that Ritsu worries he might explode, but it’s still there, simmering dangerously beneath the surface. “It sounds like you’ve had a really hard time,” he says, his voice carefully calm and expressionless. If Ritsu hadn’t known his brother as well as he does, he probably wouldn’t have noticed the little angry tells at all.

Ritsu just shrugs as Shigeo moves to apply the second coat of paint to his thumb, some of his apprehension melting away now that Shigeo isn’t focused on his scars anymore. “Yeah,” he agrees quietly, “but it hasn’t been all bad. There’s good things, here and there, like meeting Shou.”

“You care about him a lot,” Shigeo says. It’s not a question, but a statement that he says like he’s listing a fact.

“He’s my partner, my best friend,” Ritsu replies immediately, nearly startling himself with how quickly and earnestly he says it. “I mean, is it really so surprising? We’ve been working together for these last four months, basically around the clock. He knows me better than pretty much anyone, and he understands what I’ve gone through more than anyone else ever could…” he trails off, glancing down in embarrassment at his rambling.

Shigeo just chuckles softly. “I understand,” he assures, fixing Ritsu with a knowing look.

Ritsu rolls his eyes, feeling a blush creep up his neck, but it’s hard to fight the smile that tugs at the corners of his mouth. “I missed you a lot,” he admits after a brief moment of quiet, voice dropping in volume as though he’s telling his brother a secret. “Mom and Dad, too. I wanted to go home as soon as possible, but with Claw still looking for me, I couldn’t risk it. I didn’t want you to end up involved, too. Guess that didn’t work out so well, huh?” His voice takes on a bitter edge as he speaks, shoulders slumping.

Shigeo drops Ritsu’s hand, nail polish now long dried, and presses the pastel green bottle into his palm in replacement. “It’s not your fault, Ritsu, you did what you thought was best,” he assures, and Ritsu can hear the emphasis he puts behind his words, how much Shigeo really wants him to believe what he’s hearing.

“I got your note,” Shigeo continues, reaching into his pocket and drawing out a folded piece of paper. “It was so vague, it took me a few minutes to realize it was even from you in the first place.” He smiles fondly down at it, then holds it out for Ritsu to take.

Ritsu does, turning it over in his hand a few times before he opens it up. He clearly remembers writing this note just that morning, hours before his house had been attacked. It’s scrawled on a piece of lined notebook paper in black pen, everything Shigeo needed to know packed into a few words.

“See you soon,” the note reads, in Ritsu’s careful, neat handwriting. Beside the meager message, he’d doodled a few seemingly random pictures: the model airplane Shigeo had levitated when they were kids, the spoon Ritsu had kept on his person all through middle school, and the student council armband he’d lost in the fight the day he’d been kidnapped. It had been his way of signing the note without using his name, just in case someone other than Shigeo had managed to get their hands on it.

Ritsu chuckles softly, folding the note back up and passing it back to Shigeo, but there’s a bitter edge to it. “It was just meant to let you know that I was alive, and that I’d be coming home eventually, but all it really did was tip off Claw that you were there. They must have finally realized that they’d mixed us up, and that’s when they decided to attack our house,” he says, then moves to unscrew the cap of the little green bottle of nail polish. He takes Shigeo’s hand in his and gets to work. “I’m sorry it took me so long to reach out, and that I got you involved in our fight. I know this… isn’t the ideal way for us to reunite.”

Shigeo just smiles that soft and calming smile and says, “It’s okay, Ritsu, I forgive you. It might not be the best outcome, but we’ll figure it out. I’m just glad that we’re together again.”

A weight lifts off of Ritsu’s shoulders, his brother’s words comforting in a way they wouldn’t have been coming from anyone else. “Yeah, me too,” he replies earnestly, feeling his chest warm contentedly.

That night, they fall asleep on the floor of Ritsu’s room with painted nails and clearer consciences, huddled under the same blanket the way they used to do when they were only half as tall and half as old as they are now, and for a single night, everything is calm.