#delightfully I don’t remember any of the puzzle solutions

[cleolinda]

Heads up, this is a really fun game I’ve also watched several times, about a night-shift DJ roped into preventing/solving murders by a killer ~Back from the Dead and ALSO it’s set in the ’80s with a legit full soundtrack of records to play. Just delightful, and under $10 on sale; I’m finally going to play it myself when I have a moment.

[tysonrunningfox]

Ripped: Part 16

Ao3

“People who do this don’t look at pictures of it like that.”

The plain-faced supposition of Hiccup’s innocence in Eretson’s office after Dave’s murder flashed back into Hiccup’s mind the second that Grisly saw Tuffnut.  Hiccup had looked at those crime scene photos with a shivering, pale-faced feeling of dread, something more instinctive and paralyzing than fear.  With a slow spreading numbness in the center of his brain, somewhere between clinical detachment and an abstract refusal to accept the reality of the gore.  

But when Grisly saw Tuffnut and smiled like he was imagining a duplication of the horrible scene in the alley, Hiccup wondered instantly if that’s what Eretson meant.  What if people who murder and mutilate their victims look at the pictures like Grisly stared down Tuffnut?  More than predatory.  Not a hungry lion but a bored housecat holding a trapped mouse by the end of its tail.  

Astrid’s right, it’s a basket of leaps, but leaps based on a gut feeling that gets deeper the longer that Hiccup tries to shake it off.  

He knows that theories are supposed to be based on facts, and he tries, really, but usually his theories are based on flippant comments that connect two things with a random click. A joke that amounts to pulling two random puzzle pieces out of a thousand-piece box and finding a mysterious miracle fit. The first click is enough to make him curious and that’s when he shifts to more systemic tactics, looking for corners and edges and working inward with obvious patterns until a picture starts to form.  

Johann’s ads got huge, so he must have been making money, and in comparing the dates of his biggest ads to the dates of the murders, a blurry but cohesive picture emerged. It’s eternally unfinished though, a puzzle in an elementary school library, some pieces pocketed and some chewed up and hidden away or just plain lost.  

All the pieces of this puzzle are still here though, it’s only three quarters unwrapped, and Hiccup happened to slip two miracle pieces out of the side of the box.  Grisly looks at people like he knows what’s under their skin, but wants to visually confirm.  And as Eretson glared over Hiccup’s shoulder out that bulletproof window, the corners started to take shape.  

Grisly wedges himself where he doesn’t belong.  Grisly works for the condos that do the same, muddling the character of Downtown Berk into something new and clean that just doesn’t fit.  Grisly hired Heather, who enhances unfinished puzzles from cryptid pictures of a real solution to high definition snapshots, like a thesaurus fueled scientist on CSI.  

He doesn’t want it to take shape, necessarily, but at the same time he can’t stop dwelling on it, finding grains of fact in the space of it.  Pieces craving one or two matches attach to the bigger, truth shaped possibility. And with Snotlout stuck on traffic duty, Hiccup can’t go research at the station without looking more suspicious. But then again, a few sepia toned pixels from a half-ruined older version of similar events might provide insight to the shape emerging from cool alleyway fog.  

That’s half the reason he goes to the archives two days after finding Gruffnut’s body.  He never spent that much time on the Elizabeth Smith murder, probably because no one questions a beginning.  Well, no one but Astrid, with her theory that her apartment isn’t involved at all, rewriting the root of the narration in an attempt to distance herself from it.  

He wishes that tactic was working better for her.  

The other half of his reason for visiting ticks up to an easy seventy five percent when he’s halfway down the stairs and hears Astrid’s voice, hovering just past the cusp of irritated above the sound of rustling papers.  

“…being ridiculous, Fish,” she snaps, setting something heavy down on what Hiccup assumes is her desk.

“I’m no Grimborn-ologist—”

“Not what it sounds like.”

“It’s simple pattern recognition,” Fishlegs’s arms are crossed when Hiccup comes around the corner, and Astrid is elbow deep in a dusty box of paper scraps, a brown smear across her scowling eyebrow.  “All I’m saying is that there’s reason to believe there will be a murder at your apartment in the next week and a half, and I have a guest room—”

“You’re looking for somewhere to stay?”  Hiccup blurts and they both turn to look at him.  Astrid tries to wipe the streak of dirt off of her forehead and leaves a larger smudge behind and Fishlegs sighs heavily through flaring nostrils, moustache barely budging in the breeze.  

“She’s not looking, she has one.”  

“I’m not looking because I don’t need one,” Astrid corrects him, going back to sorting through her box, “what are you doing here?”  The question starts out harsh and ends flat, but she shoots him a genuinely curious look and he shrugs.  

“I was hoping to do some research,” he says cautiously, edging a step closer to her desk to try and see what she’s looking at.  “And maybe see you, if that’s ok?”  

“I don’t know, have you done your taxes?”  Fishlegs rolls his eyes.  

“I didn’t realize I needed to pay taxes to talk to Astrid,” Hiccup tries to drag a laugh out of the room, but it doesn’t work, the air as stale and tense as the centuries old contentions in the papers around them.  “If so, is there a special form?  Or a student loan balance exemption—”

“What are you looking for?” Astrid abruptly pulls her hands out of the box, wiping dusty handprints on her jeans and gesturing back at the stacks.

“I was going to umm,” he thinks briefly about lying, given the conversation he walked in on, but thinks better of it with her paralyzing blue eyes staring straight through him. “I was going to brush up on that first Elizabeth Smith article, actually.”  

“Sure,” she waves him along after her and he follows down an unfamiliar, narrow catalog of books to the left and through a door into a dingy back room full of boxes.  

“It smells like my dead great aunt’s attic in here,” he comments, running his finger over a dusty letter box that threatens to crumble under the gentle touch.  

“Maybe she donated something,” Astrid stacks two dirty boxes on top of each other and wipes down a table with a dust cloth.  “This is the new arrivals room, but Fishlegs said if I shuffled things around, I could make it the Grimborn room.  I already moved some of the Grimborn things in here after I caught people trying to sneak out with them in their coats.”  She picks up a carefully folded but newly wrinkled newspaper and sets it down on the clean section of table, “Elizabeth Smith paper, have at it.”  

Then, with a casually familiar but all too brief pat on his shoulder, she walks back towards the door.

“Wait,” he turns around and she stops, looking at him expectantly, “I was kidding about using you as a tax loophole, I actually did come to see you.”  

“I know, but I’m working,” her lips twitch into a small but sincere smile as she shrugs and leaves the room and he can’t help but remember her kissing him goodbye after their date. He wanted to walk her home, but it felt like bad luck, just more time to peek into alleys and have another moment ruined.  He got the feeling she silently agreed and they both ended up calling rides, much to Snotlout’s instant disappointment.  

And Hiccup’s slightly delayed disappointment.  

It was the first time their dare-he-say romantic interaction didn’t get smothered by a new murder discovery or accusation in the next twenty-four hours. No, this time there have been no tours full of prying questions or alleys full of gore or faces full of suspicion, just empty hours to think about Astrid.

One time he stopped responding to a girl after three unremarkable but overall decent dates after she mentioned being the fifth wheel on a ski trip with two of her coupled up friends.  It was June. Just the thought of tying himself to a potential weekend months in the future with a girl he barely knew made him back off, even though she’d tagged along on a tour and handled meeting Snotlout with a surprising amount of grace.  

On a first date with Astrid, he offered to be her date to a family wedding at some point far in the future.

He tried to pawn it off on the fact that Eretson spent their entire interview looking at him like a perfectly healthy dog abandoned at a high kill shelter for being ugly, but being a more-than-potential murder suspect isn’t affecting his decision making as much as it probably should.  The fact of the matter is when Astrid started yelling theories down at him from her window, she did what he’d always banked on being impossible.  She made learning about the past make him think about the future. She gave him something to look forward to, to depend on.  And then she had to take over his tour with an impossible picture and kiss him surrounded by history and anchor him again and again when things kept turning for the worst.  

For the first time in five years, he’s desperate for forward motion.  And more than that forward motion towards something.  Someone.  Even scarier, with someone.  

“Finding anything?” Astrid’s voice breaks his concentration and he blinks twice at the paper he hasn’t even started to read.

“What?”  He shakes his head, watching her set down another heavy looking box and start digging through it.

“I asked if you were finding anything,” she smiles at him, a fond minimal smile he definitely hasn’t done anything to deserve, “sorry to break your deep concentration.”  

“No, you’re good, I wasn’t concentrating on the right thing anyway.”  He laughs and it feels more like a lie when she nods bemused and turns to leave, “or I mean I was, actually, concentrating on something more important than reading this old thing again.”  He smacks his knuckles on the edge of the table when he gestures at the paper and she raises an eyebrow.  “Can I help? It looks like you’re sorting through things, I could help with that.”  

“I thought you were here to research.”  

“I’ve got nothing but time,” he shrugs, “unless you don’t trust me not to pocket any of this delightfully dusty paper.”  

“I trust you,” she says it like it’s a phrase in a foreign language she’s just learning, “I just found all these boxes under that table where we were displaying some of the Enquirer correspondence, I have no idea what’s in them.”  

“Have you informed Area Fifty-One that you’re on the cusp of a big discovery?”  He asks seriously as she opens the box and she elbows him a little harder than necessary on the way to set the old lid down.  “Ok, I get it, don’t diss the Enquirer, you don’t have to break a rib.”  

“You know how I feel about the Enquirer,” she teases, voice dipping, and Hiccup’s heart jumps in his throat remembering his too big hat on her head and how fiercely beautiful she is when she’s trying to convince him that she’s right.  

“Right, it’s the clandestine shrine to the preservation of the everyman’s most rationally thought out theories about their place in the universe,” he talks too fast, like always, but Astrid keeps up, narrowing her eyes and shoving a heavy manila folder at his chest.  He promptly nearly drops it, barely saving a scrap of paper from drifting out the bottom. “This could be a priceless piece of history—”

“I’m working,” she turns back to the box and squints to decipher a handwritten date at the top of a page of notes.  “Stop.”

“Stop what?”  

“Flirting.”  The red on her cheeks is more obvious when she holds another clipping up to the light and pointedly avoids his eyeline.  

“What?  I’m not flirting,” he relishes in even the tiniest second that he has her unbalanced.  And it’s true, he didn’t think he was flirting, he was talking about the Berk Enquirer, that’s not flirting.  

Maybe Astrid thinks that’s flirting.  

“I’m working,” she repeats and Hiccup turns around to lean back against the table, studying her like she’s studying an old dusty letter.  

“I can see that.”  He cocks his head at her and she spares him a glare, the heat rising further in her cheeks when he doesn’t flinch.  

She has a face made for smiling but she holds it like she resents even the implication of that decision being made for her.  Maybe it’s because she knows he’s watching her, but the line of her jaw is tense, working quietly as she knits her brows together and sounds out an unfamiliar word to herself.  She’s all contrast, upright spine in a comfortable sweatshirt, hair in front of her ears escaping a neat ponytail, fundamentally kind eyes bristling at his persistent attention.  

“I thought you were going to help,” she breaks, setting the letter down gently with frustrated hands.

“Am I qualified to sort through the Enquirer?”  He touches a folded paper in the box, using false reverence as an excuse to step closer. “Or can you point me to some sort of bullshit subtext interpretation certification?”  He takes a notebook out of the box and starts skimming through it, carefully avoiding disturbing a century old folded corner on a page. “Some kind of supply manifesto? Doesn’t look like a big ship, maybe a private merchant?”  

“On second thought, I don’t need your help,” she takes the notebook from him, dusty fingers grazing over his hand.  Her eyes flick to his lips, almost a glare, and it would be funnier if it didn’t make the dingy room feel so much warmer.  

“Sorry,” he says even though he isn’t, backing up a step and giving her what he hopes is an at least half-convincing apologetic smile, “I didn’t believe that you actually considered making fun of the Enquirer to be flirting.  I had to check.”  

“That’s not—what is your thing with visiting me at work anyway?”  She huffs, sorting things into nonsense piles without reading them.  

“You visit me at my work every night.”  

“That’s because you bring your work to my apartment,” she says slowly like she’s disappointed she has to explain something so obvious to him.  

“Here I was feeling flattered,” he shakes his head, letting her get back to reading before continuing, “I do have a reason to visit you though.  I’m worried that too much time with Fishlegs might bring you to his side of the historic copier blood feud we have going on.”  

She snorts, “so you came to annoy so much it shoves me in that direction, ok.”  

“I was just thinking that it absolutely doesn’t bode well for me if you’re staying with him while,” he pauses, trying to think of a half-decent way to say this, “you know, your apartment is…while you’re waiting to see if—”

“If there’s a fourth murder,” she stands up straight and dares him to argue with her, “I’m not scared, or even if I am, I’m not going to run just because Fishlegs thinks I can’t take care of myself.”  

“Who said anything about running?”  Hiccup gestures at himself, “all I’m saying is that I know what it’s like to be constantly inconvenienced by where these murders keep happening.  It makes sense to umm, lean on someone who gets that unique complication, I think.  So if you need some place to stay because Eretson’s creeping you out by glowering at the chalk outline on your living room floor all day, I get that.”  He waits for her to respond but she’s just staring at him, apparently confused, all of that righteous anger fading into something tired that makes him want to hug her.  “I don’t have a fancy guest room with all the…I don’t know, little soaps and stuff that Fishlegs probably has but—” He yelps when she punches his arm, “what—”

“I said stop flirting with me while I’m working,” she tucks her hair behind her ear, “and inviting me to stay with you when you don’t have an extra bed is definitely flirting, you don’t need to double check that one.”  

“Oh, I didn’t—I can see how you—not that I don’t want, I mean, I’ve finally had a little time away from murder to clear my head and you’re so—”

“Then what did you mean?” She asks the right question, bouncing him back to the root of the issue even as he’s still trying to swallow his foot.

“I don’t like the idea of you being involved in whatever’s going on more than you already are.”  He reaches for her hand and she lets him, her stubborn expression falling slightly, “I hate feeling like I’ve involved you in this, I hate that you have to be my alibi, I—if anything else is going to happen, I want both of us, but you especially, to be far away from it.”

“I don’t think you have much say in how involved you are,” she says quietly and he hates that his heart stutters when he realizes that she’s worried about him.  It shouldn’t make him happy, especially when he’s saying how much he hates that she’s involved, but it does anyway.  

“That’s fair, given how this has gone so far, but digging a foxhole and hunkering down in your particular apartment right now doesn’t seem like a way to disentangle either of us.” He squeezes her hand and while she doesn’t back down, she seems to remember that it’s a thing she could be capable of, with much conscious effort and determination.  “Plus, I was going to offer you Snotlout’s bed, I thought you’d really appreciate all of the Patriots posters and the signed football in a glass case—”

“No,” she laughs, shaking her head, “absolutely not.”  

“Framed tickets from some big game—”

“Over my dead body.”  

00000

“Gruff’s is open?” Snotlout sits bolt upright on the couch, jerking Hiccup out of his book.  Viggo Grimborn Solved: The Admiral Haddock Connection is even better after Astrid returned it with comments, mostly half coherent swearing about how stupid it is on little blue sticky notes, because she wouldn’t write in any book, even one she thinks is this stupid.  

“I can think of one really big reason that’s not possible,” Hiccup hunkers down further in his father’s chair, carefully holding a sticky note aside to read the words underneath it.

“Just got a text from Johnson, they just broke up a fight there, it’s totally open.”  

“I don’t see how Gruff’s could be open, dude.”  He’s halfway through a sentence when Snotlout snatches the book and grabs his wrist, yanking him unwilling and stumbling to his feet.  “Give that back—”

“Astrid’s…not even dirty notes,” he wrinkles his nose in disgust, “will be here when we get back.”

“My back’s killing me, I don’t want to walk all the way down to Gruff’s just to find it predictably closed, as usually happens when bar owners are murdered.”  

“Then get an Uber,” Snotlout is undeterred, tossing Hiccup’s shoes at him, “unless you spent all the money you made with those big-ass tours on some lame book or something.”  

“I don’t know when I’ll be able to start tours again, this money might have to last a while.” Hiccup is glad that the original floor plan of 324 Harbor Road he ordered yesterday hasn’t arrived yet, even though it only looks expensive because it’s old paper.  In reality, finding something that specific and having it shipped overnight would usually cost way more than the couple hundred dollars he spent on it.  

“You could get a normal job—”

“Fine, I’ll come look at the locked front door of Gruff’s with you,” he starts putting on his shoes, “just leave the concept of a job out of it.”  

So Hiccup hasn’t been having the easiest time of it lately and he spent some time trying to find the shift between his original holding pattern and the quick descending chaos of the last couple months.  His mind immediately jumps to Astrid and her toothbrush and the midnight tour that entangled them in something bigger and more horrible than he could have imagined, but if he thinks a little deeper, his trouble started way before her.  

Hiccup’s life took a turn for the dismal when Snotlout started having frequent opportunities to say ‘I told you so’.  

Gruff’s is definitely open. If anything, it has more than its usual crowd and Hiccup spots a few people in Ripped Tavern shirts around a booth when they first step inside.  Of course, Gruffnut’s murder would have caused a real increase in a certain kind of business, but as seedy as he was, Hiccup can’t see how he would have managed to take advantage of it.

When they finally make it through the crowd, there’s a split second where Hiccup thinks that Gruffnut has miraculously done exactly that, but then the doppelganger behind the bar tries to twirl a bottle like Tom Cruise and when it shatters on the floor, he breaks into an unmistakably authentic grin.  In years of coming here, Hiccup never saw Gruffnut smile.  

“If this is your bar, that’s your gin you just threw on the floor, idiot,” Ruffnut is leaning on the bar and pleading with who Hiccup obviously must accept is her brother, even though it’s still really creepy.  

“I’ll get the hang of it,” Tuffnut assures, picking up another bottle and starting to throw it.

“If you’re just going to smash that, can I have it?”  Snotlout tries, sliding onto a stool beside Ruffnut and holding out his hand.  

“No,” Ruffnut chastises him, “at least pay for it.”  

“Here you go,” Tuffnut sets it on the counter with a couple of shot glasses, “it’s on the house. I’ve always wanted to say that.  I don’t know who calls a bar a house though, that’s never made sense to me, you can’t live in a bar.”  

“That means that the business is eating the cost of the drink,” Ruff groans, but she doesn’t think twice about accepting a shot from Snotlout.  

“Good, down with the business.”  Tuffnut pours himself a shot out of the bottle and clinks it with Snotlout’s, “and the man and the establishment and—”

“Tuff, you are the business. That’s your money now.”  Ruffnut points to an official looking piece of paper that was recently on the bad end of an attempted bartending trick involving blue curacao.  “You have to sell this place.”  

“Sell?”  Hiccup sits down, leaning on the bar to relieve the aggravated ache in his lower back.  Just leaning doesn’t do much and he accepts a shot from Snotlout, who seems to be doing more actual bartending than the person behind the bar.  “When did you buy it?”  

“Like five years ago, apparently,” Tuffnut shrugs, wiping the filthy bar with a rag and refilling a glass someone brings him.  “Do I look cool or what?”  

“Gruffnut put it in Tuff’s name,” Ruffnut tosses a shot glass at him and it misses, shattering on the floor, “look over here, Tuff, I mean it.  Look at what that asshole did to your credit score.”  

“Uh, you already showed me that, my credit score is perfect.  Beautiful bastard had one more gift to give me.”  He pauses to wipe a fake tear, absently glugging vodka into someone’s highball glass as they come up to the bar to order again.  

“Um, can I get a well whisky, neat?”  The would-be paying customer asks and Tuffnut rolls his eyes.  

“Well, whisky is pretty neat, but this vodka is fancy.”  

“How much?”  They look dubiously at the mostly full glass of alcohol and Tuffnut shrugs.  

“On the house.”  

Hiccup reaches in front of Snotlout and grabs the piece of paper, a bank statement of some kind, and raises his eyebrow, “your credit score is 420?”  

“Nice,” Snotlout holds his hand out for a high five and Tuffnut narrows his eyes.  

“Aren’t you a cop?”  

“Yeah.”  

“Oh,” Tuffnut claps his hand to Snotlout’s over the bar and pours another sloppy round that Hiccup decides to sip rather than knock back all at once, “I didn’t know you guys were in on the code.  Hip to the lingo, as it were.”  

“Did you come with Astrid?” Ruffnut asks, looking genuinely concerned when Tuffnut makes sloppy change for a tray of beers and struggles to slam the register door shut.  

“No,” Hiccup instantly wishes he’d changed his shirt or looked in a mirror before leaving.  In his defense, he thought he was going to a bar that was closed due to murder, but that doesn’t matter now.  “Is she coming?”  

“She said she was on her way.”  

Hiccup isn’t really used to panic.  His first reaction to a problem is usually more along the lines of breaking it down or figuring it out.  And he knows he doesn’t have proof, he doesn’t have anything but a gut feeling and the memory of feeling chilled to the bone when Grisly looked at Astrid at the archives, but thinking of her walking alone still makes the hair on the back of his neck stand on end.      

“How long ago?”  He tries to sound buoyantly curious but Ruffnut sees through it.  

“A little early to be keeping tabs, isn’t it?  You two have been on like one date.”  

“He was reading her dorky little notes in his book all afternoon,” Snotlout snorts, “he’s probably wondering if he has time to go get it so they can discuss.”  The last word is in Snotlout’s favorite, completely inaccurate nasal tone and Hiccup rolls his eyes.  

“They’re over here!” Tuffnut shouts in the vague direction of the door from the other end of the bar, all while pouring beer and spilling most of it on the floor when he uses a full glass to point towards Hiccup.

“So it’s true,” Astrid fights her way through the crowd a second later, catching herself on Hiccup’s shoulder when someone jostles her, “this is exactly what I would have guessed Tuffnut playing bartender would look like.”  

“I’m winning bartender, thanks,” he gestures at the shelves behind him, “or I will be when I figure out how to reach the bottles on the top shelf.”  

“Keep giving those out for free,” Snotlout nods and Tuffnut points at him.  

“Good call, why should I use storage I can’t even reach?”  He turns around and starts staring at the liquor shelves, “does not spark joy…”  

“Does he know that’s all his now?”  Astrid leans in close enough to ask Hiccup in particular, her breath cool against his ear in the over-crowded bar.  

“There have been attempts to explain it to him, I don’t think any have sunk in.”  He laughs and she leans a little harder on his shoulder, “so Gruff had the bar in Tuffnut’s name?”  

“Apparently,” she shifts, lips nearly against his ear when she speaks again, “a letter showed up at the twins apartment earlier with no return address and a copy of the deed inside.”

“No return address?” Hiccup frowns and turns to face her, momentarily preoccupied by the mystery enough to fend off being overwhelmed by her proximity and the tickle of her hair against his cheek, “did you recognize the handwriting?”  

“It wasn’t Comic Sans,” her smile is tight and not quite comforting, teasing and oddly protective at the same time.  “If that’s what you’re asking.”  

“Not in so many words.” He scrambles when Astrid half falls into his lap, half catching her and flinching when she pushes herself back upright with a hand on his head.  

“Snotlout, oh my god,” she snaps and Hiccup can hear Snotlout rolling his eyes.  

“I’m just trying to hand you a shot, get the rest of the way onto Hiccup’s lap if you’re so clumsy.”  

“I’m not clumsy,” she fixes her shirt but keeps her elbow on Hiccup’s shoulder, “and it’s Wednesday, you know that, right?”  

“We’re celebrating the fact that this bar doesn’t suck anymore without Gruffnut being a dick to cops,” he shoves a shot into her hand and half of it sloshes onto Hiccup’s leg, thankfully cooling the idea of Astrid on his lap.  He’s doubly thankful for the sudden chill when she shifts behind him to let someone through, her fingernails almost habitually raking across the nape of his neck.  

She pauses and he wonders if she caught his shiver, but then an unmistakably familiar voice attached to partially familiar biceps next to them announces itself.  

“What do you mean Gruffnut Thorston didn’t get along with the police?”  Eretson leans on the bar, almost unrecognizable in a black tee-shirt with the sleeves ripped off.  Almost, except for the absolutely familiar, business-like scowl he’s directing at Snotlout.

“Oh come on,” Snotlout throws his head back but still manages to slap Tuffnut’s hand when he sets a free high ball glass of something from the top shelf in front of Eretson, “don’t serve him—“

“This is Gruffnut Thorston’s bar, isn’t it?”  Eretson shakes his head and does a double-take when he catches sight of Astrid out of the corner of his eye.  “And you’re here.”  He looks at Hiccup and then pans past Tuffnut to Ruffnut on Snotlout’s other side, “you’re all here.”  

“I am,” Ruffnut nods, “but your sleeves aren’t, and I have to ask, are those guns standard issue?”  

“Come on,” Snotlout groans, spinning on his seat to face Eretson and nearly jabbing him in the chest with an intentional but thankfully hesitant finger.  “What are you doing here?”  

“Some friends invited me,” Eretson sounds almost bashful, like he’s not supposed to tell suspects that he has friends, and maybe he’s not.  That sounds like the kind of protocol Snotlout wouldn’t mention breaking.

“Now you’re bragging about having friends—“  Snotlout starts but Eretson stops him with a clap on the shoulder firm enough to at least attempt to anchor him back to his sensibility, that is if he had any.  

“Wait, how do you all know each other?”  

The pause is long enough that the initial awkward silence fades back into the indistinguishable din of the crowded bar and Hiccup clears his throat.  

“So, again, I gave a Viggo Grimborn tour to Astrid’s apartment and Snotlout is my cousin and at some point he went by Astrid’s place and met Ruffnut and—“

“Shut up,” Snotlout hisses, kicking Hiccup a little too hard in the shin.  His left shin.  The metallic ringing echoes in Hiccup’s ears and he waits for Eretson to hear it.  For the air in the room to shatter.  

“My office. Eight o’clock tomorrow.  Be on time or I’ll send officers to collect you.”  Eretson slaps the bar and turns around, disappearing back into the crowd.

[easyhairstylesbest]

What’s Happening In 'WandaVision'? Here Are The Most Likely Theories.

By the end of 2020, the Marvel Cinematic Universe had started to feel a bit…stale. Part of what makes the superhero genre so universally captivating is its capacity to go where other mediums can’t. But by the end of Avengers: Endgame, the MCU was closing the door on a chapter that, no matter how wildly successful, had followed a series of predictable patterns. While that doesn’t make watching Tony Stark save the world any less satisfying, it does make it less nerdy. And no matter how mainstream superheroes get, there’s always a part of the genre that deserves its place in the realm of the geek, where fan-fueled calculus thrives.

Now, with the explosion of new MCU series rolling out on Disney+ (at least four by the end of 2021), the superhero empire is reigniting fan theory fervor. When WandaVision dropped on January 15, the sitcom-turned-horror-show experiment heralded a bold new path for comic-book narratives. Turns out, superheroes can make for pretty hilarious sitcoms! But, most importantly, WandaVision—at least initially—seems intent on not spoon-feeding fans a story they’ve seen before. Which means, of course, that the fan theory machine is running hot.

WandaVision takes place after Endgame, and it stars Elizabeth Olsen and Paul Bettany as a delightfully well-matched Wanda Maximoff and Vision, basking in newlywed (?) bliss in the quaint 1950s-era suburb of Westview. They don’t exactly know how they got here, or what they’re doing in the 1950s. But they roll with it: befriending neighbors, hosting talent shows, nearly spoiling dinner with Vision’s boss, and trying not to wither under the critical eye of local Karen, Dottie (Emma Caulfied Ford). But increasingly, Vision gets the sense not all is right in this cookie-cutter suburb.

New episodes drop every Friday, and as the puzzle pieces come together, we’re gathering the best fan theories from around the internet. Here, we’ll try to make sense of what’s happening to Wanda—and why it matters for the next phase of Marvel stories.

Marvel Studios/Disney+

Theory #1: WandaVision is a spin on the comics arc House of M. (Confirmed.)

If you’ve spent any time digging around Marvel fan forums, you’ve probably already stumbled on this theory, and after episode 5 aired on February 5, it’s virtually confirmed.

Here’s the background: In 2005, Marvel Comics released a storyline called House of M, written by comics legend Brian Michael Bendis, in which an insane Scarlet Witch (aka Wanda Maximoff) has a mental breakdown and attempts to recreate the universe. You see, she’s lost her two children, Billy and Tommy (sound familiar?), as well as her grip on reality. The other Avengers and X-Men (in the comics, Wanda is a mutant) realize they must consider killing Wanda, because her reality-shaping powers pose an enormous threat to humanity if she cannot recover her sanity. (Again, we’re seeing hints of this in WandaVision.)

Hearing the news of her pending execution, Wanda manifests a new world, an almost-perfect utopia where her children are alive, her superhero teammates are happy, and mutants rule the world. But it’s a dangerous lie, and when Wanda realizes what she’s done, she decides the solution is to rid the world of mutants like her. (You might have seen a comic panel circulating of Wanda whispering, “No more mutants.” It’s very meme-able.) At that point, the majority of the mutant population lose their powers.

House of M

Brand: Marvel amazon.com

WandaVision can’t and won’t mirror House of M exactly because, at this point in the MCU, the X-Men and Avengers’ worlds have not yet collided. But it certainly seems that Wanda has created her own version of Westview out of grief. If you remember the events of Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame, you’ll recall that Wanda is forced to kill Vision while extracting an Infinity Stone from his forehead. He does not return to life in Endgame, and she tells Thanos, “You took everything from me.”

Given the revelations we witnessed during episodes 4 and 5, this all makes sense. When Monica Rambeau (Teyonah Parris) is sent spiraling back into the “real” world, she whispers, “It’s all Wanda.” We know Wanda’s behind the “hex” surrounding Westview. What we don’t know is how much of it she’s controlling.

Theory #2: Wanda is the show’s villain.

By the end of episode 3, “Now In Color,” we’d watched Wanda “rewind” or “snap” her sitcom reality multiple times. It happens first when she watches a mysterious beekeeper rise from a manhole in episode 2, and again when Vision gets the sense not all is normal in Westview. Then, at the end of episode 3, Geraldine/Monica is banished from town after gently reminding Wanda that her twin brother, Pietro, died at the hands of Ultron in Avengers: Age of Ultron. As episode 4 reveals, Wanda didn’t take kindly to this reminder and physically threw Geraldine out of the suburbs. After, she reminds Vision she has “everything under control.”

We now know that Wanda is perfectly aware of what’s going on, and she’s orchestrating most—if not all—of it. She knows there’s another world beyond Westview where her brother lived and died, and where Vision similarly lived and died. And she would prefer to stay in her sitcom world. Anything—or anyone—who seeks to threaten her fake reality is…well, removable.

Interestingly, in an interview with ELLE.com about WandaVision, Olsen mentioned, “With our show, you don’t know what the villain is, or if there is one at all.” It’s clear the S.W.O.R.D (Sentient World Observation and Response Department) team that’s set up camp outside of Westview think she’s that villain. Vision is starting to get that sense, too. But the pieces don’t add up.

Here’s why: Wanda is tortured by her own grief, by the mistakes she’s made since the Sokovia disaster in Age of Ultron. The likelihood that she’s blatantly disregarding human life for her own gain seems like a trap she wouldn’t allow herself to fall into again—not easily, anyway. (Remember that, in episode 5, Monica says, “I don’t believe this was a premeditated act of aggression.”) That said, Wanda’s desperate, and we all know what they say about desperate people. She might have allowed something supposedly harmless to become brutal by striking a deal with the wrong person.

That’s where we bring in Mephisto.

Chuck Zlotnick

Theory #3: The series’ big bad is Mephisto.

Now let’s get deep into the weeds. WandaVision has given us little to no clues as to its major antagonist this season—except for, of course, Wanda herself.

But it could also be Mephisto. His character has been around since the 1960s, and he’s based on the Mephistopheles of German legend. Basically, he’s a demon-like creature, oft confused for Satan, who can shape-shift and alter time. Once upon a time, he served Thanos, much like Ronan and other big bads. Perhaps he’s manipulating Wanda, but it seems more likely the two of them made a pact—a deal with the devil, if you will. Perhaps, in return for her own sitcom-verse where Vision is alive, Wanda agreed to enter Mephisto’s domain and become trapped under his rule.

Here’s why this theory holds so much weight: In episode 5, Wanda stresses multiple times that she doesn’t know “how any of this started in the first place.” When Vision confronts her, she seems horrified by his accusations, mystified that he thinks she’s capable of controlling everyone in Westview at all times. Sure, she could be bluffing. But there’s likely an element of truth to her defense. Perhaps something outside of her—maybe Mephisto?—is controlling her ability to control.

Theory #4: The Westview citizens know they’re being controlled. Maybe they can do something about it.

Regardless of who is pulling the strings, the Westview denizens have some inkling of strange goings-on about town.

In episode 4, we learn that these kind folks are being “portrayed” by real humans. Darcy Lewis (an astrophysicist you’ll recognize from the Thor films) and Jimmy Woo (a S.H.I.E.L.D.-turned-S.W.O.R.D. agent we met in Ant-Man and the Wasp) assemble a bulletin board covered with profiles of the characters and their real names: Norm is Abilash Tandon, Phil is Harold Proctor, Mr. Hart is Todd Davis, etc. These characters probably didn’t volunteer to perform imaginary lives in Wanda’s sitcom-verse, so they must be—to one degree or another—under her thumb.

But they’re somehow self-aware. In episode 5, Agnes asks Wanda if she wants to “take it from the top” after Vision refuses to accept her questionable babysitting skills. Later, Wanda doesn’t seem concerned about Agnes witnessing her and Vision using their powers—it’s as if hiding doesn’t matter anymore. And at Vision’s office, Norm and Vision intercept an email from Darcy about the “Maximoff anomaly.” Norm laughs it off: “It’s a joke. Can’t you tell? None of it is real.” Then, when Vision clears his mind, he reveals, “She’s in my head. None of it is my own. It hurts.”

We’re meant to assume that “she” is Wanda, of course. But does she know she’s hurting them? And is it possible the Westview residents know more than they’re revealing? Agnes, in particular, seems to have more information than she’s sharing, even if it frightens her.

Chuck Zlotnick/Marvel Studios

Theory #5: Billy and Tommy are the only children in Westview. That’s purposeful.

At the end of episode 3, Wanda gives birth to twins Billy and Tommy. In the comics, these cuties are Billy and Tommy Maximoff, aka Wiccan and Speed, who have superpowers similar to Wanda and Pietro’s—hex abilities and super-speed.

Billy and Tommy are stupendous characters in their own right, and they eventually become leaders of the Young Avengers, another popular franchise that Marvel might have plans to cinema-tize. But they also have complicated origins: They’re actually created from fragments of a demon’s soul, and that realization is part of what originally drives Wanda insane during House of M.

What’s most interesting about Wanda’s relationship with the twins in WandaVision is that she can’t seem to control them. She can’t make them stop crying as infants. She can’t stop their rapid age progression. And they seem to know more than she wants them to—like, for instance, that she “can fix anything,” as Tommy stresses after their puppy, Sparky, dies.

Wanda responds, “I am trying to tell you that there are rules in life. We can’t rush aging just because it’s convenient. And we can’t reverse death, no matter how sad it makes us. Some things are forever.”

But we know from episode 5 this isn’t true. Wanda resurrected Vision. S.W.O.R.D. has proof. She’s rushing through the decades. And the twins can rush their own aging, which seems to imply they’ve inherited their mother’s powers.

What this doesn’t explain is why there are no other children in Westview, something Vision points out during a heated argument with his wife. Did they disappear? What if Wanda can’t control children, as evidenced by her inability to control Billy and Tommy? What if, somehow, the Westview kids have already escaped Wanda’s reality? There are too many missing pieces to understand the implications of that possibility yet. But it sure seems likely.

Marvel Studios/Disney+

Theory #6: Monica Rambeau already has her superpowers. That’s why she’s uncomfortable with mentions of Captain Marvel.

By now, you know, of course, that Geraldine is not, in fact, “Geraldine.” She’s Monica Rambeau, and she disappeared during Thanos’s snap in Endgame.

If you haven’t already googled Monica’s name in a mad fervor, here’s what you need to know: She first appeared as a little girl in Captain Marvel. She was the super-cute daughter of Carol Danvers’s best friend Maria, remember? Lieutenant Trouble? Well, a few years have passed since then, and it would seem Maria went on to found S.W.O.R.D. Maria raised her daughter in the hallways and control rooms of the organization, and Monica went on to become a respected agent in her own right. But, as we learn in episode 4, Maria contracted cancer, and she died during the time Monica disappeared in the “snap.”

In the first moments of episode 4, Monica re-materializes after the Avengers reverse the snap, and she rejoins S.W.O.R.D. But she’s temporarily “grounded,” meaning she’s assigned to lowly earthly tasks. That leads her to the doorstep of Westview, and eventually to Wanda giving her the boot.

Then, in episode 5, she awakens on the S.W.O.R.D. base to discover her lab results are mysteriously blank. The medic requests another blood draw, and Monica refuses. No explanation is given.

If we had to guess, Monica is hiding her own superpowers. WandaVision has yet to reveal if this adult Monica has any abilities, but in the comics, she has skills similar to Danvers—photon blasts, flight, the works. Over the years, Monica has claimed multiple aliases, including Photon, Spectrum, Pulsar, and even—yes—Captain Marvel. An Easter egg in episode 4 reveals that Maria, in fact, used “Photon” as a nickname at S.W.O.R.D. And in episode 5, Monica requests Darcy’s team build a “10,000-pound fallout shelter comprised of lead for photons.” It’s doubtful that’s a throwaway reference. I’m willing to bet Monica is gearing up to unleash her powers.

So, why does she look so remiss when Jimmy mentions Captain Marvel during one of their briefings? We can’t know for sure. But we can assume it has something to do with ’90s-era Danvers leaving Earth to spend 23 years exploring Outer Space. Maybe Maria or Monica had plans to become Earth’s version of Captain Marvel after the real one seemingly jumped ship. It would make sense.

Marvel Studios/Disney+

Theory #7: Pietro’s return opens the doors to the X-Men universe.

If we know anything about the MCU, it’s that the creators aren’t afraid of ambitious storylines. Plus, more franchises = more $. And the X-Men franchise is a money-maker.

Disney owns the rights to X-Men, which is why you’ll see those films on your Disney+ queue. So it’s probably not absurd to assume the Avengers MCU and the X-Men universe will eventually collide on the silver screen, as they do in the comics. WandaVision could be what makes that happen.

By far the biggest reveal of episode 5 is Pietro Maximoff’s return to the screen. Wanda’s brother shows up at her doorstep, completely unexpected—and, apparently, not by her design—when the doorbell rings, she tells Vision, “I didn’t do that.” The door swings open, and there’s Pietro…except not the one from Age of Ultron. This is Evan Peters’ version of Pietro, who first appeared in X-Men: Days of Future Past.

This is the first time the worlds of the X-Men films and the MCU films have collided. Does this mean WandaVision‘s Pietro is from a different reality? Is he aware of where he is and how he got there? Might the mutants finally become a part of the MCU? We’ve got more questions than answers right now. But I’d be shocked if this isn’t a precursor for an enormous crossover.

Theory #8: Agnes is really Agatha Harkness.

Here’s one that requires you to know a bit more comic lore. You first met Agnes (Kathryn Hahn), Wanda and Vision’s deliciously wry neighbor, in the WandaVision pilot. Sure, it’s possible she’s merely a quippy side-character, but I find that doubtful.

Several fans think she must be Agatha Harkness. In the comics universe, Harkness is an old (like, was-alive-before-the-sinking-of-Atlantis old) witch who escaped the Salem Witch Trials and went on to master mystical arts, later teaching them to a young Wanda Maximoff. In other points throughout the comics, she serves as Wanda’s antagonist, and she’s also the one who, after Wanda gives birth to twins Billy and Tommy, reveals to Wanda that the children are not, in fact, hers, but were born of more demonic origins. We don’t need to unpack all of that, but the point stands that Agatha has an important role in Wanda’s life—so it makes sense she’d appear in Wanda’s TV show.

Another interesting detail? In the comics, Agatha has a son named Nicholas Scratch. And the name of Agnes’s bunny in WandaVision? Señor Scratchy.

Marvel Studios

Theory #9: The “missing person” is Mephisto.

In all the excitement of episodes 4 and 5, it’s easy to forget that Monica and Jimmy first showed up in Westview because of a missing person case. But don’t let that detail escape you. It could be a huge clue.

The missing person they’re after—a male—is in the Witness Protection Program, and none of his known associates or relatives have even heard of him.

Bettany mentioned in an interview with the “Lights Camera Barstool” podcast that he works with a special mystery actor in WandaVision: “So many things get leaked, but there’s this thing that has been completely under wrap that happens. I work with this actor that I’ve always wanted to work with and we have fireworks together—the scenes are great and I think people are going to be really excited. I’ve always wanted to work with this guy and the scenes are pretty intense.”

Obviously this is an important character, and there’s a reason he hasn’t been revealed yet. Many fans think this mystery man is “Ralph,” the husband Agnes mentions frequently who has yet to appear onscreen. Others think Ralph might just be Mephisto.

Marvel Studios/Disney+

Theory #10: S.W.O.R.D. started all of this.

We know Mephisto is a solid guess for the show’s villain. But Marvel also loves to reveal how corrupt people in power are the bad guys more often than demigods and mad titans. So what if, like in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the real villain is someone we’ve already met?

We see in episode 5 that Wanda retrieved Vision’s corpse from a S.W.O.R.D lab. If you look closely, you can see he was in pieces, completely dismantled and likely being experimented with. It’s possible S.W.O.R.D itself was violating Vision’s will and attempting to recreate him, so Wanda stole his body and resurrected him in order to rescue him.

If that’s true, that means S.W.O.R.D. might have had a hand in Wanda’s creation of Westview. And Director Hayward might know more about it than we’ve been led to believe.

Theory #11: WandaVision will tie directly into Doctor Strange in The Multiverse of Madness. (Confirmed.)

This theory is less about if than how. Marvel Studios president Kevin Feige confirmed WandaVision will tie into the film, and Olsen will star alongside Benedict Cumberbatch in March 2022’s The Multiverse of Madness. So, what does that mean? Well, the theory of Wanda creating her own alternate reality within the multiverse could be true. And if she shows up in the next Doctor Strange, someone must pull her out of the sitcom-verse—and it could be the Master of the Mystical Arts himself.

Theory #12: The folks in the WandaVision commercials are Wanda’s parents.

Let’s tackle those fascinating commercials, shall we? Each promises a different Marvel Easter egg, and already, fans are dissecting screenshots for clues.

All the “commercials” different couples advertise different products. The first is a Stark Industries toaster, the second is a Strücker watch, the third is “Hydra Soak,” a specialty bath product, and the fourth is a paper towel brand called “Lagos.” If you’re an avid MCU fan, you’ll of course know Stark Industries is Tony Stark’s company, and Strücker is the last name of Baron von Strücker, the Hydra leader who recruited Wanda and her brother Pietro before Age of Ultron and gave them their powers.

Why is this significant? As one fan pointed out, the ads seem to be revisiting Wanda’s trauma: A Stark Industries bomb killed her parents, and Strücker corrupted Wanda and her brother, recruiting them for Hydra. Lagos is a reference to the town in which she accidentally destroyed a building, killing a number of residents inside.

But who are the man and woman in the Stark Industries commercial? One Twitter user suggested they could be Wanda and Pietro’s deceased parents, alive again in her pseudo-reality. Does this mean she can bring others back to life, such as Vision himself, or perhaps even her brother Pietro? Or is she simply imagining all these ghosts of the dead?

Marvel Studios/Disney+

This story will be updated each week after new episodes of WandaVision drop.

Watch WandaVision on Disney+

Lauren Puckett Lauren Puckett is a writer and assistant for Hearst Magazines, where she covers culture and lifestyle.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io

What’s Happening In 'WandaVision'? Here Are The Most Likely Theories.

[ohlawsons]

vidcalls | 01

[ RE: THE SOUND OF YOUR VOICE IN THE DARK ]

SUMMARY. Business might keep Sophie and Reyes separated after the conclusion of their work on Kadara, but that doesn't mean they can't take time for the occasional message or visit. Or: some f!Ryder/Reyes interactions post-Kadara, because Bioware didn't give us enough in-game. Spoiler warnings will be marked at the beginning of each chapter. NOTES.  i still haven't finished the game but after the archon's flagship mission and doing the 3rd/4th parts of the ryder family secrets, i had no choice but to let sophie vent about some plot stuff. mission: ryder family secrets, the fourth unlocked memory also pls note i'm pulling stuff out of my ass for reyes' past bc all bioware gave us is """destroyed records""" with no helpful info LINKS. [ AO3 ] [ FFN ] [ sophie’s tag ]

She didn’t go see Scott like she’d planned, or Captain Dunn, or even Kandros.

When Sophie left SAM Node, she went straight to the Tempest, waving off Suvi’s greeting and Liam’s concern and shut herself in her quarters — lights off, windows closed, with only the soft glow of SAM’s interface to light the room. She cried — a good, hard cry like she hadn’t had in years — until her eyes hurt and her head pounded and her throat was raw.

It hadn’t occurred to her until that morning that she hadn’t ever properly mourned her mother’s death. At the funeral, Sophie had been so furious, so angry with Alec that it consumed her; he’d always treated her mother like a puzzle — especially as the disease worsened — and watching him stare at the casket in disappointment, like his failure was more of a tragedy than her death, had been the last straw for them both. She’d only spoken to Alec in the Milky Way once, after that, and it had been about the Initiative.

But watching it all over again, seeing herself with red-rimmed eyes and tousled hair as she clung to Scott, hearing the exhaustion and grief in both of their voices — it was almost like losing her mother a second time. That hadn’t even been the worst, though; Sophie had always suspected how Alec had felt, then, but actually experiencing it, feeling the wheels turning in his mind and listening to his insistence and excuses when all Ellen had wanted was a goodbye, had been enough to reignite the years of rage she’d harbored against him.

And what was she to do now? Talk about it? Drink about it? Continue to sit in silence and sulk over it? Any of those options required dealing with the issue — to varying degrees — and it was so much easier to just ignore it.

So that’s what she tried to do.

Pushing herself to sit upright, legs crossed, Sophie leaned against the headboard of her bed and pulled a tear-soaked pillow into her lap. She squinted against the light of her omnitool as she keyed in a familiar frequency, and as she waited for the connection to stabilize it occurred to her that she must be quite a sight, in her sweats with the hood pulled up, with nothing but her orange glow of the omnitool for light.

“It’s four in the morning, Ryder.”

She couldn’t make anything out on her omnitool’s screen, and assumed Reyes was in just as dark of a room as she was. Sleeping, probably, rather than having a minor crisis. “Damn. And here I was hoping you’d have time to get really drunk and have lots of sex.”

Sophie hadn’t missed the way her voice had wavered, and apparently neither had Reyes; there was the muted sound of shuffling from the other end of the call, then a light clicked on and Sophie was treated to a view of Reyes, without a shirt and with his usually carefully-styled hair looking delightfully mussed and unruly. “I’m not normally one to turn down an offer like that, but…” He trailed off, yawning. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” She fidgeted with the sleeve of her hoodie, and her resolve crumpled even without any prompting from Reyes. With a sigh, she leaned over to the panel on her bedside table and flicked on the light. “It’s stupid.  I mean, I’d be over it before I even got to Kadara, anyway.” Sophie had wanted to avoid the subject, and here she was prepared to talk through it with Reyes; she hadn’t ever done anything like this with him, and found herself wondering at what point she would have to pin a label on their thing — it wasn’t really a relationship; they weren’t really a couple —if they continued this trend of being about more than booze and sex and distractions on a hostile planet.

But Reyes was still waiting for an answer, and Sophie had more pressing things on her mind.

“It’s… Look, I’ll give you the short version because I don’t even know how to give you the long version,” she began, hugging the pillow in her lap with her free hand. She bit at her lip as she thought, not sure where the hell to even start explaining her enhanced link with SAM. “My pathfinder implant is more… complex than the others. Courtesy of my father, who apparently thought he was immortal and no one would ever have to deal with his own fucking—” With a hard sigh, Sophie let her shoulders drop and shook her head. “Not the point. Anyway, I can… see, I guess, some of his memories. Experience them.”

The hand that Reyes had been holding up, shielding his eyes from the light of his own omnitool, slowly moved so he could look at Sophie. Brow furrowing, he was quiet for a minute. “I’d like the long version of that, at some point. I think.” He frowned.

“You’ll have to get it from someone else, then, because I don’t understand it. Anyway, I…” She trailed off, teeth pressing harder into her lower lip. There was a reason she usually went to Gil or Liam when something was bothering her; Liam was just so easy to talk to — and their talks always began with him handing her a beer — and Gil had a knack for knowing when they needed to talk and when they needed drinks and a game of poker. It would be easier, she reckoned, if she was there with Reyes, instead of just on a vidcall, but then again the drinks and sex excuse might have actually worked. “SAM showed me a memory this morning, and… it was the last time I saw my mother.”

“Sophie…” Reyes pulled himself up so he was seated, rubbing the exhaustion from his eyes. The crisp white sheets pooled at his waist, but Sophie was too distracted to properly appreciate the view; either way, she was more focused on the concern etched into his features, a rare display for someone normally so suave and charismatic — rarer still that it was directed at Sophie. “Tell me about her.”

Not about it, not about the memory, not about the way her anger at Alec had overshadowed her grief at her mother’s death.

No, Reyes wanted to know about her, about Ellen, about the woman whose loss Sophie could still feel years later and a galaxy away.

“She was… kind. Above everything, she was kind. She was a glass-half-full type, but she had this thing about fate and acceptance and letting some things just happen. She used to always say… to say that—” Sophie took a shallow breath, feeling that familiar lump in her throat — one she’d thought she’d worked past, thought she’d trained herself to ignore when she talked about her mother.

But it was back, and all of a sudden her room felt too small — the whole ship felt too small — and she was faced with the fact that Ellen Ryder had died over six hundred years ago and Sophie had fled the galaxy where her mother was, and all she wanted was to claw her way back through dark space to Brazil.

“The first time Alec forgot mine and Scott’s birthday was when we turned seven,” she said, trying to pull herself back to the present conversation. “Scott wasn’t ever bothered by that stuff, not even then, but I just wanted us to be a family. I remember curling up in her lap and crying for forever.” Clearing her throat in an attempt to hide the shakiness that was beginning to creep into her voice, Sophie watched as Reyes studied her over the vidcall, taking in every word she spoke.

It felt good to be so openly wanted, and while Sophie had relished his initial one-track-mind sort of interest in her physically, Reyes’ recent earnest and eager desire to learn about her, about her life and her past, was something of a novelty for her. The relative openness they’d shared since Sloane’s death was… nice, and Sophie had been trying her best to embrace it.

“I was fifteen when I learned that he forgot their anniversary most years, too,” she continued. “I got right up in his face about it, yelling and saying all sorts of shit. Scott actually picked me up and carried me outside to calm down. I started buying her flowers every year — Mothers’ Day, Valentines, her birthday, anything that Alec could forget about.”

“That’s a much simpler solution that I would’ve expected from you,” Reyes commented, voice still rough with exhaustion but softened by admiration. “Then again — you are still single-handedly trying to patch up the galaxy’s problems.”

“Tell me about your mother,” Sophie suggested suddenly, pulling her knees to her chest; she was beginning to get restless, the way she always did when the conversation turned too personal and too open, but this time she had no desire to change the subject or end the call. No secrets between us, Reyes had said, hadn’t he, all those weeks ago in the aftermath of the Collective’s takeover of Kadara. While Sophie had thought she wanted to leave the Milky Way behind — let everything from that other life fade away —  with as much as she’d been thinking about her mother and São Paulo lately, she found herself with a fledgling interest in Reyes’ life, too.

He gave his head a little shake and laughed, a low, quiet sound that pulled a smile from Sophie. “You would have liked her, I think. She was always doing something, always working or cleaning up after us kids. There were four of us, and we each had our own way of causing trouble.”

She rested one cheek on her knees, a little surge of warmth spreading through her at the soft, distant gleam in Reyes’ eyes; she hadn’t expected nostalgia from a man like him. “Big family.”

“It’s easy to feel… lost,” he admitted, looking away as his smile began to fade, “with three older siblings. Like everything’s nearly run out by the time it makes it down to you.”

“You miss them?”

“I left them long before I joined the Initiative. But… yes.”

Their call fell into silence, and Sophie felt a pang of loneliness. She missed her mother, and she missed Scott, and in a way she missed Reyes — missed being close to him when all she wanted was to curl up beside him and sleep until her head stopped pounding and her chest stopped aching. “I’m gonna go see if Gil wants to grab something to drink before we have to leave the Nexus,” she decided, already dreading her decision to end the call. “And… Reyes? I know you’ve got Kadara to run these days, but when Scott’s up and walking again, I’d really like if you’d come visit.”

The corners of Reyes’ lips slowly curled up into a small smile, and when he spoke his voice was filled with a sincerity and honesty that Sophie was still getting used to. “Promise.”