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amongsnot · 17 days

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the first thing jimmy ever learned how to do was to tie his shoes.

his father had sat him down on the living room carpet one evening, placing a pair of his new kindergarten big-boy shoes in between the two of them, and he had told jimmy that they were going to learn how to tie them.

he grabbed the ends of the laces and held them in between his pointer and his thumb, letting the rope fall and tighten as he pulled sightly, hissing like a snake. jimmy laughed when his father rubbed the aglet against the skin on his ankle, and his mother laughed from the hallway when his father tackled him in a tickle fight.

and his father gave him a pair of his brand new shoes and taught him how to tie a know. and then his father gave him a pair of his brand new shoes and showed him how to make bunny-ears. and then his father slipped a pair of his brand new shoes onto his feet and taught him how to tighten and tie his shoes.

it was the first thing that jimmy had ever really learned how to do. it was the first thing that made jimmy realize that he wanted to learn more.

his parents just looked so happy.

they cooed and clapped their hands as he walked down the hallway, boastfully taking large steps in order to show off the way his shoes stuck to his heel and the arch’s blended willingly with his foot.

they continued to compliment his knot-work for the next month before they left the house, praising the tightness and the perfectly round loops. his parents told jimmy that they were so proud of him, and jimmy went to bed happy.

he wanted his parents to always look happy. especially when they were looking at him.

the second thing jimmy learned how to do was his multiplication tables; and it only grew from there.

the third thing jimmy learned how to do was fix the family’s ac after an especially hot winter. the fourth thing jimmy learned how to do was create his own self-functioning flight device. the fifth thing he learned how to do was build a fresh water filter, which he sold to the government in hopes that they could help people he couldn’t.

and after the second thing (third thing, fourth thing, fifth thing) jimmy’s parents twirled him around in the air and gushed over the way that he was “their perfect little boy.”

and jimmy was.

he was the perfect little boy who got college letters from ivy league colleges while the rest of his classmates made pasta art. he was the perfect little boy who joined his parents for their perfect little meal as they talked about their day. he was the perfect little boy who tied perfect little knots on his perfect little shoes.

maybe if he was a different person, with different parents, he would have a different life.

he would have looked at the difficult puzzle that were his unknotted laces and would have looked at his parents, who has left him alone with his shoes to go do other things, and he would have tucked his laces inside his shoes and dealt with the blisters on his heel and the pain in the arch of his foot.

(there is a boy that is a different person, with different parents, who had a different life, who still walks the planet with his laces tucked inside his shoes and goes to bed while massaging blood red feet)

but he is not a different person, and jimmy’s parents look happy.

a myriad of positive feedback and different inventions later, and jimmy has found that he throws himself head first into his makeshift lab because he wants to.

he doesn’t want to make his parents happy (though that’s a cool side effect). he doesn’t want to boastfully show off his tied knots (though he probably still will). he doesn’t want to receive things from colleges or receive keys to the city.

he throws himself headfirst into his lab because he wants to. because he’s been raised to be curious.

and a myriad of new discoveries later, jimmy meets a boy his age.

the boy reminds him of his father, with the way that he grabs onto jimmys inventions and pretends that they’re snakes. with his stupidly humorous wit and sharp brown hair.

the boy reminds him of his mother, with the way that he sees the way that jimmys in danger and stupidly jumps in to save him. with his aura of power and magical ability to summon anything jimmy’s looking for.

the boy reminds him of—well—jimmy. with the way that he curiously pokes at the way that the machine buzzes in his lab. with his odd physical features and his loving relationship with his parents. the way he hugs the hologram with pink hair and mooches off the hologram with green hair’s food.

(the boy reminds him of jimmy in the way that his laces are tucked loosely inside his shoe.)

jimmy asks him about this, because he’s curious, and his curiosity had only ever been met with a positive response.

(“why are your laced untied?” jimmy asks. they’re older then they were when they first met: they met friends and they came close to dying and they lost friends.

“what do you mean?” the boy asks, running a tongue against his large front teeth.

they’re sitting in the back of the boys truck, which he got from his holograms as soon as he turned sixteen. they got take out from the mexican restaurant they went to and are sharing a place of chips while staring at the stars. jimmy has already told the boy that the stars are more impressive when you look at them from space. the boy agrees.

“your laces,” jimmy repeats, gesturing towards the end of the truck, where their feet lie. “they’re untied. why?”

“never learned how to tie them,” the boy says with a shrug. it’s not a big deal to him—he’s a different person, with different parents, and a different life.

“really?” jimmy asks, eyes wide.

“yeah.”

“why didn’t you ever replace them, then?” jimmy continues, even though he’s known the boy for almost five years, and he knows the way that his voice is curt and end on a high note. he knows that the boy would rather drop it, but jimmy is too curious for his own good.

hes always been too curious for his own good.

“replace them?” the boy asks, his eyes going wide. “with what?”

“velcro exists for a reason,” jimmy says, shrugging his shoulders again. “so do slip-ons.”

“huh.” the other boy responds with.

and that is the end of their conversation)

and a myriad of late nights jimmy spends laughing until his side aches later, and the boy comes to him with a pair of shoes in his hand.

he tells jimmy that he never learned how to tie his shoes. he tells jimmy that he just got used to the constant blisters of his feet while jimmy looks through his closet for his old pair of big boy shoes. he tells jimmy that he never really thought that he could learn how to tie his shoes past the age of ten after jimmy sits him down in his living room.

jimmy is patient with him—he tells him about the snakebite of the smooth aglets and the knots in his memory. he tackles him when he manages to finally pull the loops tight, and he laughs when the boy slides them onto his feet and tries again.

the boy does is again and again throughout the day. he makes excuses to take off his shoes just so he can tie them again. he sits down on the ground and he slowly mumbles the steps to himself before he finishes and looks up at jimmy with an expectant smile.

jimmy applauds every single time.

later, the boy will sit on jimmys bed as he shows jimmy the places on his heel where he bled so bad it scarred. jimmy runs a finger against the white mark and looks at the boy with a concerned frown.

the boy tells him not to worry.

the boy tells him that he never has to worry about bleeding heels again now that jimmys here.

and the boy looks so happy.

just like jimmys parents.

#this didn’t end where i thought it was going to tbh #also it talks WAY too much about feet for my presence #typed on my phone #like always 🫡#timmy turner #nicktoons #jimmy neutron #nicktoons unite #jimmytimmy #is implied #my fics #the fairly oddparents

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thetomorrowshow · 2 months

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intruder

backstory of why jimmy and scott moved out of the super neighborhood in my empires superpowers au!

cw: murder (in SELF-DEFENSE) of an unnamed character, blood/violence, like a decent bit of it, injury, dissociation

Scott’s been missing for two days.

Scott’s been missing for two days, and Jimmy isn’t going to wait around doing nothing.

The news had come in the form of a knock on the front door, around 3pm on the first day. Jimmy doesn’t officially live at Scott’s house, but he spends a fair amount of time there, and now he pushes back from the kitchen table and heads to the front door, snapping on the mask that hangs on a hook by the entrance.

“Oh, hi, TJ!” Blossom says when he opens the door to find her on the step, flowers actively winding around in her hair. “Is Major around?”

Jimmy frowns, checks his watch. “Um, he left for work this morning, around eight? He shouldn’t be back until four, at the earliest.”

Why would Blossom be asking him this? Don’t they all have some sort of hero group chat?

“Are you sure?” Blossom’s smile drops. “Did he say he was headed somewhere else?”

“Just to work,” says Jimmy. “Why? What’s up?”

Blossom bites her lip, the flowers in her hair wilting. “He never showed,” she says. “He isn’t responding to messages.”

That’s enough for Jimmy to shut the door and run back to the table, grabbing his cell phone. Then he returns, pulling it open again. Blossom is still there, looking a little surprised.

Jimmy pulls up his contacts, clicks on the one labeled ‘scott :) - super’ and hits call.

“You’ve reached Major, I’m probably winning a battle right now. Send me a text and I’ll get back to you when I have a moment.”

Straight to voicemail.

That can’t be good.

“Try the Mad King,” Jimmy tells her. “I’m still working until four, but keep me updated. Do you have my number?”

But Blossom never texts him any news.

And Joel tells him, that night, that Scott’s officially missing, and they’re moving Jimmy to a safehouse.

So it isn’t even 8pm when Jimmy finds himself in a small apartment downtown, the dim light of the setting sun half-illuminating the single room.

And Jimmy stays there all night, staring at his phone, as his worry crescendos over and over again, blowing out lightbulbs and spoiling food can by can.

They still haven’t found him in the morning.

Jimmy can do nothing but sit, alone, in this cheap, unused apartment of Joel’s, waiting for some message that his boyfriend has been found.

But there’s nothing, and Jimmy isn’t going to wait around doing nothing when Scott could be getting tortured right now.

Because that’s it, really. When Jimmy went missing, it was because some horrid, insane villain kidnapped him and ran experiments on him and treated him like an animal—

One of the blades on the floor fan comes off, crashing to the bottom of the fan cage.

Jimmy takes a deep breath.

He can’t continue to sit here on the ragged carpet (because there’s no furniture other than a single folding chair and a mattress) while Scott could be going through the exact same things that he had been subjected to.

Or worse, he thinks, pushing back a sickening memory.

So Jimmy packs up his little backpack that he hasn’t actually unpacked yet except to get his toothbrush, grabs the mask he’d left on the kitchen counter (which he balls up and shoves in the pocket of his jeans), and leaves, ready to find Scott.

Where does Scott usually go first?

He covers all of the city, but rarely ventures away from the most densely populated areas. Downtown is one of his favorites to frequent, as well as the pier.

Good thing Jimmy knows downtown like the back of his hand.

He catches the bus like it’s second nature, the schedule practically tattooed on the inside of his eyelids (despite the fact that he rarely rode the bus for fear of causing an accident. He learned it in case anyone ever asked him the bus schedule). He hasn’t spent much time out and about on his own, but he can get around and he’s lived with Lizzie long enough to know how to go somewhere by himself. That doesn’t mean he isn’t careful: he sits at the back of the bus with his back pressed against the window and watches everyone, careful to sort them into threat categories and keep tabs on everyone.

It’s exhausting. It always is.

It isn’t long at all before he leaves the bus at one of Scott’s favorite places—right across the way from the elementary school. Scott heads here first thing most mornings, keeping an eye on the children as they arrive at school.

The mask is scrunched uncomfortably in Jimmy’s pocket. He wishes he could put it on. He hates going out in public—not without at least a baseball cap.

It feels like everyone at this park is watching him.

Any of them could be in league with whoever took Scott. Any of them could have been one of the thugs that worked for Xornoth. Any of them could be someone he hurt in the past.

Every time someone walks past him, Jimmy automatically tenses. That woman could attack him. That man could crush his skull. That child could be a distraction. That man could grab him and pull him into an alley.

Jimmy shoves his hands in his hoodie’s pocket so that he doesn’t have to look at how they tremble. This is why he doesn’t go places alone. This is why he works from home right now.

This is why people need to not get kidnapped. Specifically the people that can help him not panic about being kidnapped.

Right, now, does he usually patrol around the school? Or just wait out front and watch the kids go in?

If he was Scott, what would he do?

Scott would probably patrol. He likes to be moving, likes to show off his skills.

So Jimmy hikes out of the park and crosses the road to the school, following the sidewalk all around the building.

On one side is an alley between some run-down apartments, and Jimmy passes through, keeping a close eye on anything out of place. Any knocked-over trash cans, any smears of dirt or dried blood on buildings, anything that could be the signs of a struggle.

He feels more and more anxious the further down he goes, swallowing back the thrumming of his power within him, the scar at the base of his skull burning.

He can’t cause an accident here. He's next to an elementary school, he can’t risk it.

Can he?

What accidents can he cause here?

Jimmy’s never really reached out with his powers before on purpose—not in a long time, not in a searching way.

But his powers can cause terrible things to happen, things as far away as inside the school, and if his power can know that there’s things that far away to ruin, then can’t he know, too?

So he reaches out into the surrounding buildings.

There are a lot of people here.

That’s the first thing he feels.

There’s hundreds of children in the school, and one of these buildings is an apartment complex, and Jimmy can’t see them or even really sense them? He just . . . knows that they’re there, in some kind of . . . sixth sense?

There are so many other things that he knows are there, but can’t verbalize. He simply knows, to an overwhelming degree, the contents of everything around and maybe there’s a reason he’s never done this before because he thinks he’s going to be sick—

“TJ!”

Jimmy flinches, hears something crash in the distance. He wheels around—this could be it this is the moment he’s kidnapped—, only to find fWhip standing at the mouth of the alley.

“Why are you out and about?” fWhip asks, moseying over, hands in his pockets. “Don’t you usually stay home from the cool parties?”

Right. He knows fWhip. Kind of. fWhip is nice, right? He helped save him.

Jimmy isn’t wearing his mask. Which is fine. It’s fine to not be wearing it, because fWhip recognized him anyways and his secret identity isn’t contingent on a mask anymore.

“Um, I’m looking for Major,” he says, head still spinning a bit. “He usually goes here every morning, and nobody saw him for his whole shift, so if he got kidnapped it was probably near—”

“Wait, Major’s missing?”

Jimmy frowns. “Yeah, did you not hear? He disappeared yesterday.”

fWhip checks over his shoulder, adjusts his goggles. “Okay. Not good. And if Major’s missing, why aren’t you in a safehouse?”

“Well, I was,” Jinmy says, looking down at his feet. How has he been caught already? He just barely left!

“But you couldn’t stick around when Major could be . . . being tortured?” guesses fWhip.

Jimmy shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah,” he says dejectedly. “But I can go back. The Mad King would—”

“Nah, don’t do that. I’m not going to make you do anything you don’t want to. Do you need help looking?”

And before Jimmy can so much as process what he’s said, fWhip is reaching up to the window in the building beside them, testing the latch and finding it open.

“Let’s check out this place,” he suggests, shoving the window open and grabbing the sill, pushing himself up and into the window in an impressive show of upper-body strength.

Jimmy blinks.

He didn’t expect to be joined in his search.

Let alone by fWhip.

“Okay, nobody’s here,” fWhip calls out the window. “You coming?”

“Is there a door?” Jimmy asks halfheartedly.

fWhip shrugs.

Jimmy sighs, grips the windowsill (a bit lower for him than it had been for fWhip), and heaves himself up, legs kicking for purchase on the wall and arms trembling under his weight.

He falls back once, arm scraping a bit against the sill, then manages to pull himself up the second time, his ribcage pressed in painfully against the windowsill, where he hangs for a moment before tipping over and landing in a heap on the other side.

“Try to roll when you come in,” fWhip advises as Jimmy picks himself up. “It’s easier. And way more cool.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jimmy grumbles, brushing the copious streaks of dust off his hoodie.

“So we’re looking at an abandoned first floor of some office building, I think,” fWhip says, flipping a switch on his goggles. “See anything?”

Jimmy looks around. It’s a fairly large space, the concrete ground scarred by the torn-up carpet (some of which still lies in an awkward heap against a wall), a single dead office chair sitting in the middle of the room. Otherwise, there’s some brightly-colored papers in a corner, and—

The front door slams open.

“TJ,” comes a suspicious and familiar voice.

The Mad King is standing in the doorway.

“Rats,” fWhip says, frowning. “Did you follow me?”

“You and Mythics are always up to no good,” Joel tells him dismissively, before turning back to Jimmy, arms crossed. “Why are you here?”

“Um . . . looking for Major?” Jimmy tries.

Joel raises an eyebrow. “With fWhip? Come on, TJ, if you were going to break house arrest it should’ve been with someone respectable.”

“Hey!”

“Come on, back to the safehouse.”

“But—”

“TJ,” Joel says firmly. “We aren’t arguing about this. I’ll keep looking for Major, yeah? You need—”

“But I, I can help!” Jimmy insists. This isn’t fair, he shouldn’t be locked up when his boyfriend could be going through the worst experiences of his life—

“Jimmy,” Joel grits out. fWhip makes a ‘yikes’ face, turns to start going through the neon papers in the corner.

“Since Major has been kidnapped, they will want to get the people he cares about the most—you,” Joel stresses. “They will want to hurt you to get him to give up whatever information they’re looking for. That’s why—”

“I know, I know, but I can defend myself,” argues Jimmy. “It’s—it’s Sc—I mean, it’s Major. I have to help. And I know—”

“You’re helping by staying safe,” says Joel. “I’m not arguing about this, okay?”

“Who would have a bake sale and then put the signs in an abandoned building?” fWhip murmurs, examining one of the said signs.

Which is stupid.

This is stupid.

How does Joel expect him to just sit there?

How can he tell Jimmy to go hide and let Scott get hurt?

But there’s no point in fighting this.

“Maybe there’s some way you can help from the apartment, okay?” Joel says placatingly, and Jimmy rolls his eyes.

“Sure. Fine, take me back, officer.”

“Don’t get an attitude with me, young man,” Joel warns, sputtering jokingly, but Jimmy’s stomach squirms just the slightest bit.

He’s not a child.

“fWhip, I’ll be back here in half an hour, okay?” Joel says. “Let me know if you find anything.”

Then he strides out the door, Jimmy reluctantly following along behind.

Joel finds Scott the next day.

It’s a small place, a closed mechanic shop, near the East side of the city, where this particular gang of villains decided to keep him.

Joel finds him by checking the security footage of the elementary school. He sees, in the corner of one of the cameras, a couple of neon signs hanging on the side of the building fWhip and Jimmy had broken into.

Backing it up a little bit, Joel finds the car that carried the people who hung up the signs (something they did several hours before dawn).

And when he tracks down that car, he finds Scott.

Jimmy receives the text that Scott’s been found and instantly calls Lizzie, begging her for a ride home. Lizzie agrees, and when Joel and Scott come through the front door, Jimmy is there waiting, a frozen pizza in the oven.

Jimmy drops everything, his stress releasing in a little burst of power that crashes his phone and knocks all the cushions off the sofa, hurrying toward Scott.

Scott looks absolutely exhausted. His suit is torn here and there, his hair tangled and greasy, his eyelids drooping. But he gives Jimmy a small smile and acquiesces to a gentle hug.

“Glad you’re safe,” Scott murmurs. “I was worried.”

Jimmy chuckles, pitched a little high with nerves. “You were worried? Imagine my state!”

Scott pulls away, plants a small kiss on Jimmy’s lips before tugging off his mask, mouth twisting in a grimace.

There’s a large bruise on his cheek, and a small line of them down his jaw, but he otherwise doesn’t seem to be in very bad condition. Still, Jimmy frets, hands twisting anxiously.

“Where are you hurt? Do you need to get checked out? You really should go to the hospital, just in—”

“I’m fine,” Scott cuts him off. “Just some bruises. It’s all right.”

Even so, Scott stands there patiently, as Jimmy takes in every part of him.

He seems to be telling the truth. Nothing looks broken or like it’s bleeding too badly. He’s holding himself a little gingerly, though, that could be a broken rib—

Jimmy prods at his chest and Scott steps back, hands over himself.

“It’s not broken,” Scott says, teeth gritted. “Joel already tried it. Just a deep bruise.”

“Probably the worst kidnappers I’ve ever seen,” Joel calls from the kitchen, where he’d gone after pushing past the two of them in the hall. “Didn’t even know how to torture him properly.”

Torture? “Scott, I’m so sorry—do you need anything? Should I schedule you a therapy appointment?”

Scott bursts out laughing. “Thank you, baby,” he says. “I’m fine. I promise. Just tired.”

“And an idiot,” adds Joel. “How’d you manage to get kidnapped by such an incompetent lot?”

“Their signs said homemade croissants,” Scott moans, walking into the kitchen as if nothing ever happened (though his arm is still wrapped around his ribs). “You know I love supporting small local businesses.”

“’Twas your downfall,” Joel intones, snickering. “Sorry, mate.”

Jimmy follows awkwardly, not entirely sure how to behave.

Scott’s . . . fine?

He hadn’t even considered that as an outcome. He hadn’t dared to think that Scott might return without severe injuries, without being traumatized by the torture and greatly needing help returning to the real world.

Like Jimmy had been.

He doesn’t know what he can even do.

How can he help Scott when Scott doesn’t need help?

So Jimmy just kind of hovers, near Scott, as he sits there and eats pizza and jokes a little with Joel.

Then Scott leaves to go shower, and Joel shoots Jimmy a sympathetic smile.

“He’s fine,” Joel assures him. “He may be a bit clumsy for a while—his hands were zip-tied pretty tightly together—but he’s really fine.”

It’s hard to believe him.

But Jimmy just nods and resolves to not treat Scott strangely. He’s fine, after all.

If he’s fine, then so is Jimmy.

That night, there’s something wrong.

Jimmy wakes up quite suddenly, the odd sixth sense that he’d probed at the other day ringing with the notice that something is off.

He doesn’t know what. He doesn’t know what’s changed in their surroundings, but he knows that it’s not quite right and he needs to be aware of it.

Jimmy blinks open his eyes, glances over to Scott to reassure himself that his partner is safely there.

And leaning over Scott, a knife gleaming in their hand and poised above Scott’s chest, is a person dressed in black.

Jimmy reacts immediately.

He dives over Scott, knocking the man’s arm just as he sinks the knife down—Scott wakes with a cry of pain, the knife carving a jagged line in his chest and up his shoulder as the man is knocked off course.

Jimmy rolls off of Scott, faces the intruder for a brief second.

The intruder spits out a curse, then barrels into Jimmy, brandishing his knife.

Jimmy moves on instinct. He grapples with the man, twists his wrist with the knife—the man slashes at him, but Jimmy twists further until his grip loosens on the hilt, and then he takes the knife.

He spent hours and days and weeks training with Xornoth in knife work and he knows exactly how to attack to injure, which spots are the most painful without being fatal. He stabs the knife into the attacker’s upper arm, then into his side when he howls and twists away, and Jimmy can’t help but show off a bit as he flips the knife to his other hand and drives it into the man’s knee.

The intruder falls to his knees, and Jimmy’s head is pounding with the adrenaline, and he can’t move his focus from taking this man out entirely because he tried to kill Scott—

Jimmy spins around to be behind the man, hands on his throat—the man grabs at his wrists, nails scrabbling against his skin—and sends a burst of power out.

Under his sweaty palms, knife still tucked between the fingers of his right hand, Jimmy feels the man’s neck break. Not just the bone: his vocal cords snap—his muscles fall loose—his throat collapses, and so does the man, falling heavily to the carpet.

Jimmy stands there, panting.

Scott wheezes in pain.

Jimmy fumbles on the bedside table, grabs Scott’s hero phone with fingers slick with blood. He presses the emergency button on the side, holds it down for a solid five seconds.

Then he drops it back on the table, opens one of the drawers to pull out Scott’s mask.

“Jimmy,” Scott gasps, sitting up, clutching his arm over the slash in his shirt. “Are—are you okay?”

Jimmy nods, then he clicks on the bedside lamp, bathing the room in low, yellow light, and surveys Scott.

There’s a sheen of sweat over Scott’s bruised face, his eyes pained and confused (and concerned, and very very worried), but Jimmy barely registers that as his eyes find the wound.

His nightshirt is soaked in blood, spreading out from the slash, and it only takes one glance at the wound for Jimmy to know that it needs a professional to take a look at it. He doesn’t know near enough about injuries to know anything other than that it looks bad.

He leans over Scott (Scott flinches back) and pulls the mask over his face, carefully holding the knife pointed away from him. His hair catches a bit in the eyeholes and Jimmy doesn’t do anything about it.

"Major?" calls a voice from below, and Jimmy spins around, knife held out, as he hears the stairs creak with running footsteps. Was there back-up? No matter. There won’t be, soon.

A pajama-clad Blossom pushes open the door from where it's half-open (Scott always closes the door when they go to bed), her hands flying to her mouth when she takes in the scene. "Oh my gosh—Major, TJ, what happened? Should I call an ambulance? I'll call one—"

"Hello? Is everything okay?"

More footsteps, then Gem appears, mask pulled over tangled hair.

"Hi, we need an ambulance—the address—"

"What happened?" Gem says, echoing Blossom's words as Blossom turns away, one hand covering the ear not pressed to her phone.

Scott pushes himself up further, grimacing. "Intruder," he manages, nodding toward the body on the floor. Gem glances at it, before her eyes fix on Jimmy.

"TJ, sit down—where are you hurt? Where do you guys keep your first aid kit?"

"It's not my blood," Jimmy says, his voice too loud in his ears. He gestures with the knife toward the motionless body, the neck appearing kind of . . . squashed. "I'm fine. Check Major."

"Shoot, the attacker," Gem mutters. "Blossom, tell them that there's two or three people that need—"

"He's dead," Jimmy interrupts. "Don't worry about him. Check Major."

Gem blinks.

Meets Jimmy's eyes.

"Okay," she says after a moment. "I'll check Major. Did you kill him?"

Jimmy swallows.

"He was attacking us," he says stiffly. "He stabbed Major. I acted in self-defense."

Gem moves around and climbs onto Jimmy's empty side of the bed, still keeping an eye on him even as she checks out Scott, pulling away his shirt and asking quiet questions (to which Scott responds, his breath shallow and words faltering).

"The ambulance should be here soon," Blossom says, moving toward the foot of the bed. "TJ, you're covered in blood—set that knife down, let me help you."

"It's not my blood," Jimmy says again. "I'm fine."

"Okay, then—"

"You help Major," Gem says, slipping off the bed and coming back over. "I'll help TJ wash up. C'mon."

Numbly, Jimmy follows her out of the room, checking over his shoulder to make sure Scott is okay. Scott waves him on with the hand that isn’t held to his chest, and Jimmy continues down the hall, into the bathroom.

"We'll have to make this quick," Gem says. "Sit down. And give me that knife."

Jimmy doesn't want to give her the knife. He pulls it back to his chest when she reaches for it, thumbs the blade protectively.

"I need the knife to give it to Major, so that when the police get here we can have a convincing story without you in it. Make sense?"

After considering, Jimmy nods. It makes sense.

And that means he needs to not be here.

He hands over the knife. "I killed him," he says. "If they ask, Major stabbed him three times. Then he fell and broke his neck."

Gem shakes her head. "Okay. Wow. Okay. You know we don't normally kill people, right? Never mind. I'll go give this to Major."

Jimmy glances in the mirror as she steps past. There's blood spattered across his face, more in splashes on his nightshirt and shorts and arms. His eyes, cold and wide, peer back at him out of his pale face.

He needs to get out of here.

Gem returns after two or three minutes, handing Jimmy a jacket (one of Scott’s, he distantly notices).

"Zip that up over the blood, rinse off your hands, and let's go," she says. "We'll head to my place. Blossom will ride with Major in the ambulance. It doesn't look too bad, so he should be okay."

Jimmy obeys, letting Gem turn on the water so he can stick his hands under the cold spray.

For a moment, he's back there—just trying to scrub the blood off his hands from his first intentional murder in the sink with the broken handle.

Then he blinks, looking down at the sink, at the red running off his hands.

"Good enough. Let's go."

Joel joins them in Gem's dark kitchen after about two hours, stripping off a pair of gloves. He's fully dressed in his supersuit, his hair unbrushed and his posture stooped, looking more exhausted than ever.

"Gem, you have anything caffeinated?" Joel asks, opening a cupboard.

"Yeah, there's a pot of coffee already made. Mugs are in the left cupboard."

Jimmy watches as Joel finds a mug, fills it up with coffee, and then takes a swig of it black.

"Thanks," he says, face scrunching up at the taste. Joel doesn't like black coffee. Jimmy knows that. He always adds cream and sugar.

"Major's okay," Joel informs them, pulling out a chair at the kitchen table to sit across from them.

Jimmy's been here more or less in silence for the past hour and a half, staring at the wooden table. When they'd first come in, Gem had sent him to wash his hands and arms and face better than he had before, but there's nothing they can do about his sleepclothes, so he's just been sitting here in a blood-spattered t-shirt for a while. Gem had joined him after pulling a hoodie over her pajamas and starting the coffee maker, and has since sat beside him, working on a crossword puzzle.

"Major's okay, he and Blossom are at the hospital now. The intruder was pronounced dead on site. Major identified him as one of the men who kidnapped him."

Jimmy doesn't feel anything.

No sense of satisfaction at knowing that the man truly deserved it, no fear at how close they had been to getting killed, no guilt for his actions.

Nothing.

"TJ," Joel says hesitantly, "how are you doing?"

Jimmy shrugs.

He's still covered in the blood of the man he murdered.

"They say killing is like riding a bike," Jimmy says after a long pause. "You never quite forget how to do it."

Gem sighs. Joel winces.

"Right. Well, we don't really kill people, as a general rule. It's kind of, like, against the law."

The law.

As if the law applies to heroes and villains.

Jimmy's not really sure which one he is right now.

Neither, probably. Which means the law should apply to him, even if it hasn’t stuck in the past.

"I've never really been one to follow the law," Jimmy says.

"Sure, but as a person—"

He isn't a person. If anything was to prove that fact, it would be tonight. He hadn’t thought, he’d just acted, and even now the first feeling that he can even register is the feeling of not feeling. He isn’t a person.

He's a weapon.

He's a pet.

That's the word that triggers his therapy brain.

"I'm in a bad headspace," Jimmy interrupts Joel, using words that he'd rehearsed with Nora. "I don't feel like a person right now. I might be dissociating."

"We have to talk about this," Joel insists. "We can't run away from hard conversations—"

"I promised I would never kill again," Jimmy whispers, and, ah. There’s the panic. Detached and not quite real, but panic nonetheless. "I can't escape it. I'm not—I can't. I'm a weapon, I was made to be a weapon, I—"

"Stop that right now," says Joel firmly. "You are a person, and you just saved someone from being killed. It was self-defense, not mindless."

Jimmy almost laughs, because to some extent, it was mindless. He acted entirely on instinct, following the training Xornoth had given him, whether or not it was self-defense.

He doesn't like hurting people.

He never wanted to go back to being a villain.

It's not even that he's upset about killing that specific man. Screw that man, he tried to kill his boyfriend.

He's really just afraid that now that he's killed one person, he'll keep doing it. It isn’t like anyone can stop him. Nobody can stop him, not even himself, and he wouldn’t even care if his current state has anything to say about it.

"TJ," Gem says carefully, "why did you kill that man?"

Jimmy frowns. Why? "To protect Major."

"Do you have any desire to kill people outside of defense?"

Does he?

He's never had the desire to kill.

Not even when he was getting rewarded for it. Killing was something he did to survive, to escape severe punishment, or accidentally.

And here, he killed to protect. To save his boyfriend. He didn't get any satisfaction out of it. He certainly didn't enjoy it. He doesn't want to do it again.

That cuts through the foggy panic in his mind, the fear that he might keep going, that he wouldn’t be able to stop himself.

"No," he says, then stronger, "no. I never want to kill. I hate it. I only do it when I have to."

Joel lets out a breath of relief. "Thank goodness. Okay, next issue. You and Major clearly aren't safe here. Do you want to try to stick it out, or should we start moving you two as soon as possible?"

Jimmy hadn't even thought about it.

Of course they aren't safe here—he hadn't been safe alone, when Scott was kidnapped and he had to be moved to the safehouse. Why did he think that things would magically change just because Scott was here? Every villain in the city knows where they live. The rest of the gang that kidnapped Scott could show up on their doorstep at any time, even more angry than before.

Anyone could show up at any time.

Jimmy doesn't feel as secure as he used to feel, surrounded by superheroes as they are.

"We'll move," Jimmy decides. "As soon as Major is back, we're moving. It just isn't safe here."

They’ll move.

Then he’ll deal with this numbness.

"Hey!" Jimmy calls, running into the kitchen. "No! You aren't allowed to lift anything more than ten pounds, put that down!"

Scott sighs with an over-dramatic roll of his eyes, sets the box back on the counter. "It's not that heavy. And it doesn't even hurt right now."

"Just because it doesn't hurt doesn't mean it isn't injured, Mister," Jimmy tells him. "You don't want to pull out your stitches."

"You haven't let me help at all. Pearl already handled the actual heavy stuff, let me do something."

Jimmy shakes his head and picks up the box. "That's your own fault for getting stabbed right before we moved."

"We're moving because I got stabbed," Scott points out. "It's not like any of this was planned."

"You should have thought about that before you got stabbed, then."

Scott groans, then reluctantly laughs. "I guess I should have. Can I at least drive?"

Jimmy lets out a very put-upon sigh. "I suppose, since I don't have a driver's license, you can be allowed to drive. But only if you behave yourself."

Scott giggles again. "You're adorable," he says fondly. "You know I'm the Primary Protector of the city, right? I don't think you'd be able to stop me."

"And I killed a man last week," counters Jimmy. "I don't think you want to be on my bad side."

"Oh," Scott says after a moment. "Are we joking about this now?"

Jimmy shrugs. "We're in the laugh-or-cry stage. I'm trying to laugh about it right now."

Scott looks at him. Really, truly, looks at him.

Then he laughs. Just a little bit, but still a laugh.

"I love you," he says. "I'll help you hide the body next time."

Jimmy laughs a little, too, but Scott pauses.

"There . . . isn't going to be a next time, right?" he asks uncertainly.

"Oh, absolutely not. Not unless it's entirely necessary."

Scott nods several times. "Good," he says. “Yep. Cool.”

Jimmy turns back toward the door, box in his arms, and waits until he’s out of the house to huff, shaking his head (though a smile plays on his lips).

They’re okay.

He pushes away the numb feeling that threatens to seep into his brain and thinks and remembers and knows that they’re okay.

That’s good enough for him.

#empires smp #empires smp fanfic #jimmy solidarity #scott smajor #flower husbands #mas writes #empires superpowers au #esh au #this one is a fun one ngl #like it sounds angsty on the tin but it really isn't that bad #anyways shout out to jimmy for working a from-home customer service job during this fic #he has worse problems than whatever this is. and those problems are ppl yelling at him on the phone :(#ummmmmmmm enjoy #lmk what yall think #love you guys

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