#same goes w if his kid came out as trans (but probably w a bit more violent transphobia tbh)

[mattiebluebird]

Jack seems like the kind of parent who would be homophobic until his kid comes out, then he'd just Pointedly Ignore it until they start dating, at which point he'd start making incredibly hamfisted attempts at supportiveness and probably get into a fight with a homophobic coworker.

[fandomshatelgbtqpeople]

mod a’s lgbt musicals

Hi there! I’m a big theatre kid so I thought for pride month I’d put together a list of LGBTQ musicals. Despite its association with queer people, musical theatre is not known for its amazing representation. I’ve put together a list here of musicals I know of with queer characters. I’ve tried to avoid those where the queer characters are incredibly minor roles or those where the representation is just not good enough to be salvageable (*side eyes Legally Blonde*) I know there are many musicals I will have missed out but these are the ones I am most aware of. Feel free to add more! So without further ado, here it is.

Fun Home

The big Tony winner of 2015! Based on Alison Bechdel, a butch lesbian cartoonist. At the age of 43, she looks for new material by trying to explore her past and her relationship with her closeted gay dad. Looks back at a version of herself when she was 10 and a “tomboy” and at 19 when she came out and got her first girlfriend. Has very cute lighthearted moments as well as very sad moments. Has a beautiful song where small Alison sees a butch deliverywoman. Problems in that since the original broadway cast, Alison’s costume has got less butch. Content warning for suicide.

Here’s their Tony performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMAuesRJm1E

The Color Purple

Based on Alice Walker’s novel about black women in the 1930s. Follows Celie who has been abused by men her whole life who discovers she is a lesbian but also makes a journey of self discovery and learns to love herself. Her love interest is a bisexual woman. Won best revival at the Tonys in 2016. Content warning for discussion/implied sexual abuse.

Here’s their Tony performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k2xzQyT2bk

Everybody’s Talking About Jamie

A teenage gay boy in Sheffield wants to be a drag queen and go to prom in a dress.Also a nice touch that is does not focus on him having a relationship (since he is sixteen) and him having to come out as he is already out. Focuses on his close relationship with his supportive mother. Has a diverse cast. Jamie is currently played by a black actor and his best friend wears a hijab and has a very diverse ensemble as well. Unfortunately has a part where Jamie responds to a homophobic bully by calling him a bunch of ableist and classist slurs.

Here’s a clip of the most popular song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7C3FuFWDdw

The Prom

Emma is a lesbian teenager in Indiana whose prom is cancelled by the PTA after she requests to bring her girlfriend to it. A group of Broadway actors come down to help her campaign to be allowed to attend prom, as well as styling her, helping her work on her confidence and educating the town’s people. What ensues is basically a two hour musical episode of Queer Eye. Cheesy and fun with so many musical theatre references crammed in. My one issue is that the show is rather harsh on people who are closeted since Emma has conflicted with her girlfriend Alyssa because she is not ready to come out.

Here’s a clip of their Tony performance: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lGcG_r5xv3E

Rent

Probably the most well known on this list. Artists in New York during the AIDS crisis. Two of the main couples featured are queer: Maureen is bisexual and in a relationship with Joanne who is a lesbian, and Angel is a transgender woman of color in a relationship with Collins, a presumably bisexual man. However, she tends to be played bi cis men and there are instances of her being misgendered by the main characters uncritically. In Rent Live (2019), all instances of her being misgendered were removed and her gender identity was confirmed. She was played in this by Valentina, an nb drag queen and has also been played by Pose’s MJ Rodriguez, a trans woman. Very diverse with Jewish characters and people of colour and in the live show, only 1 of the 8 main characters was white. Has been criticised over the years, mainly for its biphobic portrayal of Maureen who is promiscuous and implied to cheat, but in the 90s did a lot for the LGBTQ community and is more progressive than a lot of media even now.

Here’s a clip of Maureen and Joanne from Rent Live: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=06oCfKYYPTY

And here’s some Angel and Collins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hl-M94o_x8

Falsettos

Marvin comes out as gay in the late 70s but decides to move his ex wife and son in with his boyfriend. Addresses AIDS crisis in Act 2. Has “lesbians from next door” in act 2. F Revived on Broadway in 2016. All of the characters are Jewish. Unfortunately, in revival casts, very few actors tend to be Jewish.

Here’s the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjnAHOdMQVk

Come From Away

In the aftermath of 9/11, 38 planes are diverted to a small town in Canada called Gander. Shows people of different races and nationalities bonding in a scary time. Addresses Islamophobia. Has one song called Prayer where prayers from different religions overlap. Has an interracial gay couple called Kevin and Kevin. They break up in the end but are very important characters. Won best direction of a musical in 2017. The Broadway production starred Jenn Colella who has referred to herself as ‘mostly gay’.

Here’s a clip of Jenn Colella singing a song from the musical: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8ukgH6U-d0

Head Over Heels

Honestly I don’t quite know what this musical is about, even by reading the plot summary and listening to the soundtrack. I know it’s set in a Tudor fantasy world and that there are wlw couples as well as an explicitly non binary character, played by Peppermint, a trans woman, and that there are interracial couples and plus sized actors. It is a jukebox musical using songs by the Go-Gos and yes the wlw anthem that is Heaven is a Place on Earth is one of them. The soundtrack is fantastic even if you can’t follow what is going on.

Here are some show clips: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wx2qQ7QAPm0

Spring Awakening

German school kids in the 19th century discovering their sexuality. Two of the schoolboy supporting characters, Ernst and Hänschen, have a romance when they have a reprise of an earlier song in Act 2.  A BIG content warning as it has graphic discussions of rape and songs about it and a sex scene with very dubious consent. However there was a very wonderful 2016 revival using deaf actors and sign language.

This is another one you can very easily find the full show of on YouTube which I won’t link. However here’s the Tony performance for the revival: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSagsMcak4Q

If/Then

A woman named Elizabeth (originally played by Idina Menzel) moves to New York after a divorce and contemplated how different her life would be if she took two different paths. Four supporting queer characters. Her ex-boyfriend is bisexual and played by Anthony Rapp (who is bisexual in real life) and he gets a boyfriend in one timeline. Another of her friends is a lesbian called Kate who marries her girlfriend in the musical. Problems occur as in both timelines, cheating goes on in the lesbian relationship although they stay together in one. Elizabeth also says she doesn’t believe in bisexuals, a view no one ever challenges her on, however Lucas is very clearly bisexual which is some proof for the audience that she is wrong.

I’m not going to link it here but there are many very high quality bootlegs on it on YouTube if you want to watch,

Ghost Quartet

A bit of a weird one. This is more of a concept album. There are four performers who each play instruments and they tell the stories of many interconnected timelines. It is very hard to explain but there are souls travelling through time who keep being reincarnated as different people with different relationships to each other which usually end with one woman killing the other. In the song Soldier & Rose, the ghosts Rose and Pearl are lovers as Rose seduces the soldier for her honey.  In the song Four Friends, for one chorus the men sing “I like to put my hand on a pretty girls’s knee” and the women sing “pretty boy’s knee” and then they switch for the next chorus so they’re all bisexual. In general, a lot of fun if you like weird musicals and I mean really weird.

The full show is online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJSaEJm8pCE

Mean Girls

Yes there’s a musical of it. I was not looking forward to it when it was announced but have actually grown to quite like it. It’s hardly lyrical genius but the songs are fun and a lot of the problematic aspects of the film have been fixed. Damian is more explicitly gay in the musical and sings about an ex boyfriend in one song. Janis is heavily implied to be a lesbian (confirmed by actress offstage) and she doesn’t end up with Kevin Gnapoor. She is played by a queer actress in the tour cast. Both queer characters are much bigger roles than in the movie and get several songs each. I’d consider the musical to be quite white feminist but it does address issues such as the sexualisation of teenage girls and the notion that to be ‘sexy’ is ‘empowering’.

Here’s a clip of one of Damian’s songs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-zM6QKkxEQ

& Juliet

An English jukebox musical about what might have happened to Juliet in Romeo and Juliet if she had not died at the end. I haven’t seen it but I’ve listened to the soundtrack and it is mainly comprised of 21st century songs by women. One of Juliet’s best friends is non binary although is played by a cis man as far as we know. Also I went to the same school as one of the actors which is a bonus for me. Very diverse cast.

Here’s a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dm2k9nS3o20

In Transit

A capella musical about several people’s adventures on New York public transport. Two of the main characters in this ensemble cast are an interracial gay couple where both are pocs. They are engaged but one of them is having trouble coming out to his mother. I found it refreshing in that his fiance for the most part was not upset with him at his struggles in coming out and they were both able to live fulfilling lives despite this. I am always astonished by the talent of a cappella singers.

Here’s a trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhvik6qoass  Another one where the bootleg can be found very easily on YouTube

Firebringer

Remember A Very Potter Musical? Well, the company that did that are still putting out new pieces of theatre on their YouTube channel. In 2016, they put out their ridiculous comedy musical Firebringer, about a group of bisexual cavewomen. I won’t spoil the ending but trust me, it’s great. You may know it from the viral clip of one of the main characters singing ‘I don’t really wanna do the work today.’

You can watch the full musical here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmVuNlu0LCk

Special Mentions

Company

Musical by Stephen Sondheim about a man unable to commit to a relationship, surrounded by his friends who are all in couples. However, the award-winning 2018 West End revival chose to change the genders of some of the characters. The main character Robert became ‘Bobbie’ (although all of her love interests were gender-swapped as well). One of the originally M/F couples became an M/M couple. It opened on Broadway for about a week before the Covid outbreak so that will be one to look out for.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtDK03y4gT0

In the Heights

A musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda about the Latin American community living in Washington Heights in New York. The original theatre production has no explicitly queer characters. However, in the upcoming movie version (that was meant to be released this summer but has been pushed back to next summer) it has been confirmed that the characters of Daniela and Carla (Daphne Rubin-Vega and Stephanie Beatriz) will be explicitly a couple.

I absolutely love this musical and the trailer for the movie looks beautiful check it out: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0CL-ZSuCrQ

[faunusrights]

The scarlatinas are a big family with aunts and cousins visiting a lot right? Have you got an idea of how their house looks? (also could you release the Scarlatina family descriptions you gave me to the public?)

well, really the scarlatina family isn’t big in the, uh, family tree sense; it’s not like Velvet has 100+ cousins and that sort of stuff, but they’re big in the sense that they all live together, hjdshkjfsd. so it’s a big household! sixteen people! it’s nothing to sniff at! so the aunts and cousins dont visit, really, because they literally live next door, lmao.

the scarlatina homestead is split into two houses that keep getting added to every once in a while. the bigger one (aka the first) has georgette, rajah, taffeta, ash, chiffon, velvet, satin and hickory live there, whilst the second (rapidly growing) house has cotton, tenné, hawthorn (+ hawthorn’s wife, saffron, and their kid, fir), ramie (+ her wife, auburn) and birch. that said, the houses pretty much act as one, and people tend to drift in and out of either of em at will.

the houses are similar in terms of their footprint, since they sorta both evolved abt the same time for the same needs (oh shit a kid oh shit a marriage oh shit ANOTHER kid), and save for two smaller second storeys for storage/spare room needs, almost the entire thing is on the ground floor (heat rises, baby). they share a big old shed/workshop which ash lingers in CONSTANTLY, as well as two little gardens where they grow their own produce. they also have some solar panels and a huge windmill out front, both of which usually power their houses since they don’t typically draw a TON of energy, though they do have a generator that runs on fuel as a backup.

okay if we’re describing the whole family im gonna shunt this under a cut this goes on for a while dsfjhgjhskfgd

GEORGETTE SCARLATINA: the matriarch of the family! well, sorta; she’s let her own daughters sort of have run of the place in her stead, because she’s “retired” now and that means she mostly sits back and enjoys not Working all the time. back in her heyday the woman was an absolutely powerhouse, 24/7 on the grind, but even now she’s very… well, she’s still a force to be reckoned with, really, and whilst she isn’t uuuuuuuh Strict, per se, she’s very disciplined, and no matter what her kids and grandkids choose to do, she expects them to really throw themselves into it. weiss is both terrified of her and desperately wants her approval, which isn’t hard to get, but weiss is, how they say, dumbass. georgette is also the reason why taffeta and cotton are… Like That. like what? stubborn loud fuzzy taking zero shit, etc,

RAJAH SCARLATINA: scarlatina women seem to always land themselves timid men and nobody is sure how, or why, but georgette wasnt the first to start this trend and shes def not the one to end it. rajah is pretty mild-mannered, but like georgette, never rested when people needed help. he and ash (and tenné) get on real well because they’re happy enough to mind their own Fuckin Business whilst their wives barrel around with all the grace of rampaging bulls. still, rajah’s also very much a product of his time as an early settler to menagerie; he’s never really… happy with everything, because they lost so much leaving for this shithole, so he’s always kinda… mildly sad about stuff, but the same can be said of any faunus his age tbh.

COTTON SCARLATINA: the older of the two Scarlatina Daughters, cotton is… manic. full of energy, always looking to burn it off. she’s an optimist at heart since she and taffeta came to menagerie when they were ten and therefore are more accustomed to the island, and her primary objective is making a good home and a good start for the family. she’s not too interested in politics or revolution, mainly because she’s the type of woman who plans by meals and mouths to feed, if u get me. she’s also pretty smug because her side of the family are rly growing up (TWO wives. a GRANDKID. its ALL COMING UP COTTON) and it means she gets to spend more time doing stuff she’s passionate abt!!!!!!! nice!!!!!!!!

TENNÉ SCARLATINA: i put an accent on his name and i regret it every day of my life. anyway. tenné isn’t entirely sure how he ended up with just The Most scarlatina, but he did and, well, there’s no backing out now. tenné‘s a deer faunus and was around cotton’s age when he and his family moved with the scarlatinas to menagerie, so he and cotton have always been close. he’s very patient and doesn’t always have a lot to say, but he and cotton are a great team when it comes to managing the entire homestead together. again, he’s not a political type, and just wants to keep his corner of things safe in uncertain times. he always pretty rarely leaves the homestead for anything, so he’s also kinda reclusive, but so is cotton! it all works out!

HAWTHORN SCARLATINA: i won’t go into the partners lest i Die but hawthorne is the eldest child of cotton and tenné. got antlers like his da, and he’s a pretty big fellow by scarlatina standards (that is to say, not thin enough to fly away in a stiff breeze). hawthorn is… well, long and short, he’s a himbo, but he’s also a pretty devoted homesteader (this is a trend! watch this space). his wife, saffron, was from desert sands and they’d been dating for a While before they got married, and they’re the first to have kids of all the first-gen* scarlatinas. he’s got cotton’s love of the family and tenné’s sort of quiet offset nature, though he was pretty rowdy as a kid (he grew out of that once velvet broke his nose tho).

RAMIE AND BIRCH SCARLATINA: twins! twins! oh my god! twins!!! fraternal twins!!!

ramie is the older of the two (my friends who were w/ me when we played the RWBY ttrpg will Remember Her) and she’s. well she’s surprisingly enough like taffeta that cotton jokes that clearly she’s gone and had the wrong kid. she’s very Firm abt things and has a way of naturally corralling people to follow after her, if only because this bitch has enough common sense for herself and, like, five people. she was also voted Best Lesbian Cousin five years in a row, and she and auburn get on like a house on fire. they’re also very into PDA, don’t mind them.

birch is the younger of the two and ramie always calls them the emo one. they’re not really so much into people as they are into their crafts and their plants (their bedroom looks like a greenhouse dont mind them) and they have tenné’s nature and georgette’s focus on working all the goddamn time. they’re good company is you strike up convo in the areas they have interest in, but sometimes it’s like talking to a brick wall. ramie is very fluent in their noncommittal grunts of disinterest, though.

FIR SCARLATINA: he’s one year old. he’s a baby. idk shit.

TAFFETA SCARLATINA: here’s the bitch we’ve all been waiting for

taffeta is like georgette if georgette was somehow more like herself. whereas the other half of the family are more core to the values of the clan, taffeta’s a tribe woman, and when she wakes up in the morning her focus is always on the wider community. taffeta’s very much just a machine of intent; she farms, she builds, she repairs, she trades, she gives, she travels, she does SO much and she’s very much the face of the family at present (which is why ppl hear the name ‘scarlatina and go ‘oh god’ w/o realising the other half wont bother u even slightly djsfggjsdfh). she’s STURDY she’s FLUFFY and she has zero qualms abt putting u in a headlock if u deserve one. dont test her. that said, taffeta’s a very reasonable woman; i’ll eventually go more into that at some nebulous point in the future hdjsgfjghksfd

ASH SCARLATINA: it’s everyone’s favourite da! i’ll TRY and keep this short. ash (MUCH LIKE THE MEN SO FAR) is just. so chilled out. can everyone PLEASE be quiet. well, he didn’t used to be – ash lived in kuo kuana before meeting taffeta and had such severe anxiety abt crowds that the boy could barely put a sentence together, let alone much else, not in the scarlatina household, he’s very calm and hard to ruffle. ash really just likes to do his thing, which is everything taffeta doesn’t do; he cooks, he watches the kids, he fixes stuff in the workshop, and he’s big into photography of the family, which is where velvet gets it from! ash is basically taffeta’s counterbalance, but being with her means he’s also become pretty well known about the town (if not for. entirely the reasons you think,)

CHIFFON SCARLATINA: the eldest of ash and taffeta’s kids! chiffon is a weird one; she takes a lot after ash in that she’s pretty reserved and doesn’t let a lot bother her, and when stuff does bother her, she expresses it pretty quietly. also, unlike her cousins who are all homebodies, chiffon was the first kid to actually leave the homestead for kuo kuana to work on the docks during a biiiig overhaul and extension of the boardwalk. she wanted to get out and see the world, but human tourists really out her off the idea, so after about a year and a bit she ended up returning home where she’s stayed ever since. after taffeta retires, she’ll probably be the next face people know and relate to the name scarlatina, tbh.

VELVET SCARLATINA: do i. do i have to say anything about her. you KNOW this bitch. anyway. velvet’s got taffeta’s stubborn sense and ash’s compassion, wants to travel like chiffon, has enough determination to just keep going when it gets her down. extremely stupid. herbo energy. trans jock. has fists will punch. fluffy. fuzzy. hot. dumbass. seriously, do i have to say anything else?

SATIN SCARLATINA: it’s a baby! just kidding, she’s 11. satin is pretty young but she’s at that age where she’s tryna figure out the world for herself. she’s already shaping up to be a lot like taffeta – bold and brash and determined – and much like her older siblings, politics is already playing into her interests. satin really wants to see vale and her tribelands, but after what happened to velvet at uni, taffeta’s trying to… well, not talk her out of it, but encourage her, gently, to reconsider. it’s not working. she and chiffon get on spectacularly well, and she and velvet get on ever better.

HICKORY SCARLATINA: okay, NOW baby. well………. okay, yeah, he’s 7. hickory is a little dreamer, never really in the present. he’s super into making stuff and helping out the adults around the homestead, and he’s not really noticed enough to be infuriated like satin, so he’s got that youthful, uh, innocence, let’s say, that means right now? life is GREAT! eventually he’ll find out that no, it’s not all that great, tbh, but right now he’s a champ at feeding the rabbits, pulling up veggies, and finishing his plate. good job hickory!

AND THAT’S THE FAM (save for the inlaws). theyre great and i think abt em all the time. could u tell? could u tell, sharkie,

*so i looked up the whole ‘generations’ thing to check if i was right and it turns out both first-gen and second-gen have incompatible definitions (thanks america) but for the sake of not going nuts, all of cotton’s and taffeta’s kids r first gen and fir is second-gen. u could also argue cotton and taff are first-gen on account of being pretty young when they came to menag but honestly it’s too complicated. lets just leave it at that sdfjhgksdf

[trinitykitten]

BNHA Ideas. Angsty and Gay.

Okay! These are some BNHA Au’s and little ‘skits’ I came up with and have had for a while. I have two more that are far more thought out. I don’t really plan on writing out any of these so feel free to use the ideas! I’d love to see them come to life! I’ll post the other two if people want them.

*Bakugo and Uraraka fighting*

Tsuyu to Todoroki: Unstoppable force meet immovable object.

Midoriya: Both of you stand down now.

*Uraraka and Bakugo grudgingly comply*

Todoroki to Tsuyu: Unstoppable force, immovable object. Meet undeniable order.

———

Angsty one:

Midoriya records the stories of all his classmates and friends.

And a lot of there deaths.

Yeaaahhhhh fucking morbid, but hey. He’s preserving their memory.

Also even better if he becomes a villain.

———

Animatic:

Girls/Girls/Boys

Tsuyu Ochako Izuku

I think this one explains itself.

———

YUTS Midoriya plays a prank on Endeavour he calls the “Christmas Carol” prank.

He gets Hino to be past, Nana present, and Rei future. Christmas Day Endeavour gets a special visit. Todoroki is informed, probably after he notices his father panicking, that this is a Christmas present from the ghosts and Midoriya.

OKAY BUT HOW DID NO ONE MAKE THIS YET ITS TO PERFECT.

———

Kohei Horikoshi as a BNHA character.

Quirk: Guiding flame

His quirk allows him to manipulate the world and people around him as if he were writing them in a story. Limitations are that the “rewrites” have to already be possible and he can not change the past no matter how much he may want to.

Horikoshi seems to like fire quirks a lot so I put a nod to that in naming his would be quirk.

———

1-A fights for Deku’s love but Shinsou pops up and joins in.

They set up a tournament style thing with trivia and obstacle courses. Eventually they all just start arguing over the results and how it’s unfair and doesn’t mean anything.

Then Deku, who has been trying to get there attention this whole time, is told to decide who gets to be his boyfriend/girlfriend and he just yells “IM AROMATIC YOU IGNORAMUSES.”

They are all shocked the precious bean called them dumb but more saddened by the knowledge they never had a chance to begin with.

———

“Todoroki you bitch get back here!”

Uraraka “W-was that??? DID DEKU JUST CALL TODOROKI A BITCH??”

Todoroki running for his life “Can we PLEASE focus on calming him down?!??!!??”

Uraraka “If even Deku is cursing you out you probably don’t deserve being saved from his wrath.”

Bakugou hiding under a couch “Bitch your on your own try not to fucking die.”

———

Soulmarks AU:

People are connected with soulmarks which are pictures of animals like bunnies or deer and such. To differentiate between different ‘Clans’ all people within a group have the same animal with the same colors. It is possible to be apart of several groups though it’s extremely rare to be connected to more than three groups. Groups consist of ‘Watchers’ and ‘Followers’. Watchers take care of their followers physical and mental health and followers are extremely loyal and protective of their watchers.

Watchers are not necessarily stronger or older than their followers but they are often empathetic, or have leadership qualities. Many clans stay together or stay in touch most of their lives. Some even work together as heroes or in gangs.

———

Todo, Deku, Uraraka, Iida, and Bakusquad are hanging out in the dorms. Bakugo went to bed at 8:30 like the nerd he is.

Ashido: Hey Mido, why does Bakugo seem to hate you so much? What happened?

Deku: Oh I think it’s mostly because I dumped him.

Denki: Wait, WHAT.

Uraraka: You dumped HIM?

Todo: You dated him?

*Iida, Ashido, and Hanata in shook silence*

Kirishima: Dude you need to explain a bit more than that.

Deku: *eyes shining with manic glee* Middle school was fun.

Kirishima: Maybe be a little more specific?

*Text from Baku* : I sense a disturbance.

Everyone starts freaking out while Deku just starts texting back : I was wondering, does your dislike of me have anything to do with getting absolutely overthrown in middle school?

Baku: Fuck you. No. I’m not that petty I just wanna destroy the competition.

Deku: I’m competition? I’m flattered!

Baku: Whatever nerd. When you gunna ask out IcyHot?

Deku: When you gunna stop hitting Kiri and just ask him out?

Baku: NIGHT BITCH.

———

Trans!Bakugo

His parents are fashion designers in canon so to add a bit to that they make more androgynous cloths and things like sports wear including some top of the line sports bras and jackets.

———

Midoriya attempts to get Aizawa off coffee onto hot chocolate instead. (With help from Mic and Midnight)

He starts bringing coffee to Aizawa in the mornings at the dorms because ‘I made to much and figured you want some’ he just keeps doing this until it’s expected. He also slowly starts changing what he brings to be more hot chocolate than not. Mic and Midnight help this along by swapping Aizawa’s own coffee out with a mixture Midoriya made of coco powder and coffee grounds.

Eventually after like three months he walks up to Aizawa in the teacher dorms and hands him a big hot chocolate with wiped cream and says “here’s your coffee.” In deadpan while the other teachers giggle in the background.

Aizawa who immediately figures out what’s happened just takes it and says thanks. Making Mic start laughing like a maniac.

———

Midoriya

Quirk: Split.

It lets him ‘split’ himself creating clones of himself that represent different sides of himself. This includes ‘Sunshine boy’ ‘Deku’ ‘Villain’ ‘Hero’ and ‘Nerd’.

‘Sunshine Boy’ or Midori is the child like caring side that gets the other sides to get along.

Deku is the depressed one that, after meeting his new friends at UA starts to basically turn into Amajiki.

Villain who goes by Midoriya is like Monoma and is kinda crazy. He’s also the second smartest of the group.

Hero responds to Izuku and ‘HELP ME’ (hehe jokes) he’s the super determined one that runs at danger without realizing to save anyone. He’s kinda an idiot.

Nerd likes to be called Izu and is the smartest and the one that generally keeps the others in check. He is analysis and knows everything there is to know about every hero and villain he is aware of. Which is basically all of them.

They sometimes only come out a few at a time which lets the others influence change their personalities slightly.

An example being if only Deku and villain ‘came out’ they would be really chill. Deku just being a bit shyer than Midoriya usually would be and Villain having a shorter fuse.

- Villain (Midoriya)

Is a huge dork and would rather cause wide spread inconvenience and petty theft of snacks rather than actually hurting anyone due to the efforts of Midori and his therapist. Midori is pretty much the only one he listens to and is the one who first got through to the big old tsundere.

———

Deku does a flip off the roof and starts haunting Bakugo to make sure he becomes the number one hero. That his punishment. Atone you don’t have a choice.

Everyone else can see Deku when he wants to be seen, he chooses to let Bakugo see him most of the time. Turns out broccoli boi had a quirk. That quirk is called haunt. It lets him hang around some and keep track of his mother and the Bakugous because they where the only people he really knew and cared about when he was alive. He hangs out with his mom some times when he can but mostly he sticks to watching Bakugo and his new friends.

When Bakugo gets kidnapped he’s pretty sure Deku will just float around and watch to see how it goes like normal but instead he flips out. He wasn’t teleported with Bakugo cause he flitted off to help Kota, this lead to him not being able to get through the portal in time. So he makes himself known and basically drags Aizawa and All Might to where he is. He goes to Bakugo ahead of the heroes and frets and fusses about his precious Kacchan severely confusing the villains because “Why can’t I hit this kid?!??”. Deku had been becoming more protective of the class but after that basically decides 1A is now his adopted family and devotes himself to keeping them out of trouble.

———

Deku is a mob boss but runs it really well and takes care of his employees. Then on the side he’s taking out super villains and dealing with media drama. He’s got different people running different things; Todoroki, Bakugou, Uraraka, Iida, and Tsu help take care of organization, distribution, security, and resources. While the rest of the class has slightly lower and more specialized roles but are still in charge of their respective programs. Some by themselves while others work in groups of two or three.

1A are all apart of ‘security team A’

Most of them have other jobs they do within the mob but some, like Bakugo work full time in the security team. The A team work as bodyguards for the ones in charge while in public and they all work together to take out strong villains and especially villain organizations.

So there working on taking out the Eight precepts of death and they decide they’re gunna need some outside help with it. So Izuku, being the all knowing people person that he is in this Au calls Aizawa up on his phone and asks if he wants to help destroy a villain organization. Aizawa thinks it’s sketchy as fuck but he goes anyway and is extremely confused when this LITERAL CHILD. Yes a FIFTEEN YEAR OLD BOY. Just walks up like “Hello my name is Midoriya Izuku.” And Aizawa is even more confused because This is apparently the guy that owns most of the fucking city. Izuku is having none of the “your a literal child how are you CEO of so many businesses” and he just replies with “When you own the mob the mob does things for you.” And turns around to walk down the street towards where Bakugo and Todoroki are waiting with a tinted window car and fully decked in suit tie and so many god damn weapons it’s ridiculous you can’t actually see any of them. So of course Aizawa is n o t getting in the car with a bunch of shady fifteen year olds that may or may not be affiliated with the mob. “Alright what do you want from me.”

Izuku explains Eri’s situation and somehow convinces Aizawa to help and he eventually just kinda joins the mob as an unofficial babysitter for all of them.

———

The “Midoriya saved us from low key pedophile villains” club

It’s just Bakugou, Kota, and Eri.

———

Let her go

Post BakuDeku

Baku sad cause Deku is either dead or a villain.

———

Symphony of... Delay idea

In an exercise both classes are apart of everyone gets into pairs of two, trying to last as long as possible against the rest of the two classes. It’s basically a giant man hunt in one of the bigger training areas. However, to make it more fair on the pairs that have to run away and defend themselves, the classes where given two weeks to prepare a strategy and gear. Todoroki and Midoriya of course team up and come to the brilliant conclusion they’re going to become a dark souls boss and totally screw everyone over.

They recruit Mei to make them extra warm winter outfits that still let them fight. Then they get to work on making Todoroki’s ice more precise with Mido boosting it. They also ask Recovery girl about the energy gummies she has after checking they could bring snacks. After asking Aizawa if he had any suggestions as to where they could practice a particularly large and blatantly obvious “Move” they where trying to perfect Aizawa got them a pass to one of the training grounds that weren’t being used at the moment. Aizawa was (though he’d never admit it) kinda exited to see this play out. It was going to be hilarious.

The day of reckoning. Todo and Mido went last. Everyone was given breaks in between each persons turn which lasted from a minute to ten minutes each. Though the breaks weren’t particularly short, they had been doing this all day and where getting tiered by then. A couple people where cocky due to the last pair seeming distracted earlier. Someone had seen the two arguing and it made it even easier to doubt them.

That was a mistake.

Todoroki and Midoriya’s plan included this:

- Act like they’re not working together properly.

- Go in to the area as far away from the starting point as possible.

- Midoriya boosts Todo’s ice and they frost the entire area.

- Ice palace.

- Todoroki sitting on a throne in the main hall with Midoriya on a balcony behind him playing the Boss Music which consists of different boosts he can use on Todoroki the ice king : New Dark souls boss.

- Midoriya of course snacking on energy gummies and using offensive music against anyone who gets to close to his perch.

Chaos ensues.

———

Midoriya, Shinsou, and Todoroki’s spirit animal: Scotty Sire

Mido: Mister Glassman

Toshi: awkward

Todo: Notice me

[anthropwashere]

of all the things that might have been: ch. 7

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

AO3

FFN

(Later than I meant it to be because I fucking swan-dived into ~30,000 words worth of FMA WIPs, honestly just save me from myself. I’ll be doing Camp NaNo in April so don’t expect another chapter ‘til May, sorry and thank you!)

=

It's such a relief to be around the familiar again. Cars and houses and restaurants and streets, all of it almost exactly as he expects Amity Park to look. Sure, he might have ended up in the year he was born, but with how far he's traveled a couple decades is barely worth noticing.

With familiar territory, it’s so much easier to set up shop. There’s plenty of food that’s plenty easy to steal, decent enough medical supplies, and good clothes are an invisible flight through a department store away. Most importantly of all, there’s camping gear. Big, practical, brightly colored camping gear. And it’s fall now, just cool enough to warrant cozy layers but not cold enough to regret sleeping out in the woods like the homeless freak he is.

He can almost pretend like he’s on vacation!

There’s cause for all this, of course. He remembers this year, these two months living on the outskirts of his home town. Normally he prefers to hop from hotel to hotel, overshadowing clerks long enough to mark a room taken and paid for so he can sleep as long as he likes. Clean sheets, hot water, all the garbage continental breakfast he can eat-- an errant time traveler’s paradise. And here he is, stuck with sleeping bags and canned food instead. Ugh.

Past him better be grateful he’s doing all this for him, if he has anything to say about it.

In the failing afternoon light, he appraises his little camp built for two and nods, satisfied. It’s not the prettiest or most high tech setup he could have gone with, but then, pretty and high tech isn’t what he’s aiming to teach, is it?

He grins. Him? Teaching? This’ll be good for a laugh-- on this side of things, at least. He doesn’t remember laughing much, the first time around.

Him? Teaching? Ha!

Crouching, he stokes the campfire with a branch stripped of its yellowed leaves. He hasn’t started up the stew yet since it��ll just boil over once he has to rush pell-mell into the forest. He’ll have time, later. As he feeds dry twigs to the fire he thinks of FentonWorks, and of the young couple that’s only a few years older than he is now. He hasn’t even been been born yet, in this timeline. He’s still not used to it; unable to step foot in the house he grew up in.

Not for the first time he misses his mom’s cooking, his dad’s boisterous laughter, his sister’s coddling. He misses coming home-- after beating up the ghost of the day, more often than not-- to the smell of burgers or pasta or the dreaded Leftover Nights. Good, hearty meals he didn’t have to make himself from stolen ingredients, shared with a family that he could still call his.

He laughs, tossing the branch aside. Now isn’t the time to get all wistful. He’ll have his hands busy with blood and tears soon enough, but after-- yes, after he’s handled his past, he can look to the future again. He’ll fix this, no matter what his future self had to say about it. For now, he’s waiting--

“Nngh!”

Sudden pain cuts through him like a knife, taking his breath with it. He staggers back from the campfire, gasping, clutching at his aching chest. For one terrible instant he thinks he’s wrong after all, that he’s doomed to die here, that no younger self will appear after all. But-- no. No. He has to be right. He knows.

He stands tall, his sternum clicking its protest, and he waits.  His past self will show up far from him, that’s fact. There was no way for him to recognize where his past would appear, so he’d just picked a clearing near the stream and called it home. What’s one fallen tree in a forest, right? He evens his breathing, waits for the smallest flash of blue light to leak through the undergrowth--

There!

He’s off at once, running so quickly he doesn’t quite touch the ground. It’s long, awful seconds before he hears the first scream, bitten ragged with pain. He forgoes the pretense of running at all, blurs away from one second to another, and then there he is.

One look and he regrets not grabbing his first aid kit. Distracted, anxious, not thinking clearly. Idiot. He knows-- remembers-- that it isn’t as bad as it looks, but it’s still a worrying amount of blood.

Past Him is fetal in a burnt-black clearing, the smell of vaporized dead leaves and rainwater and pine smoke heavy in the air. Past Him is younger, years younger, and he’s wearing brand new clothes and there’s a bulky bag beside him that must weigh as much as he does-- not saying much, since god, but he’s skinny. His face is a twisted mess of snot and tears and pain, which makes sense, considering he’s got a tree branch stuck right through his forearm. Phased, rather than pierced, and all the more brutal for it.

“Hey,” Danny calls out over his past self’s screams. And again, “Hey!”

Past Him hiccups shock, twitching away from the tree and only succeeding in wrecking his arm a little bit more. He goes white as a sheet, mouth yawning for a scream that gets tangled up in his throat. Danny winces in sympathy, holding up his empty hands to get the kid’s attention.

“It’s okay,” he says, trying to speak calmly though his own heart is racing. “It’ll be okay. I’m here to help you. I just want to help.”

It takes Past Him a few tries to make a coherent sentence. “W-who-- hhgk-- are you?”

“I’m you,” Danny replies patiently, and rolls up his sleeve to display his own forearm. It's been years now, but he still has two faint circles there, noticeable even at this distance. Ghost healing speeds everything up, but scars still take a long time to fade.

Past him is too distracted by pain to really react to that, which is fair. He just huddles a little closer to the log and looks like he’d love nothing more than to never move again. Danny sighs.

“Okay. We can call this lesson number one. When you time travel, you always, always, always need to phase. It’ll be a pain in the ass until you get used to doing it, but the alternative is getting stuck in a log. Enjoying this so far?”

“Nnn-- hhfh-- no....”

“Yeah, I figured as much.” He kneels beside his past. It is, briefly, very weird. He remembers this moment from when he’d been fourteen years old and shredding his nails against dry bark, jaw clenched so tight his teeth should crack. He remembers the scraping and tugging of the branch in his arm, muscles rigid, his hand spasming. He remembers looking up at a young, leanly-muscled man with wild eyes and a menacing grin. He remembers being so certain that this was how he was going to die.

Flash forward and now he’s the menacing stranger looming over a defenseless, injured kid in the middle of a forest.

Hmm. Awkward.

“Okay,” he says, “I’m not gonna yank you free. I’d do more damage, and you’ve already pulled some muscle out like a champ-- no no, don’t look. Trust me on this. Just-- hold still, okay? I’ll try not to make this any worse than it has to be.”

Well that wasn’t menacing or anything. So sue him, he’s nervous. It’s weird, meeting himself like this.

“I’m gonna cut the branch instead of phasing you off it for now, because we’re about a mile from camp and I’d like to minimize your blood loss as much as possible. I’ll fly us back so it’ll be easier on you. That all sound good?”

“Hhh-- hhgn-- yeah--”

“Awesome, I love it when I'm on the same page as myself.”

Past Him’s eyes are starting to get a little glassy, which means it’s time to shut up and move. It’s quick work to rip his unrolled shirtsleeve off-- he really should have grabbed the first aid kit, way to drop the ball there, Fenton-- and tear it into strips to staunch the bleeding and tie the branch in place. A quick slash of ecto-energy cuts the branch free. Past Him writhes, clawing at the still-smoking ground and his leg both, a shriek scraped through his bared teeth.

“Sorry, sorry!” Danny says hastily. Probably should have warned him, oops. “Sorry. I’m gonna pick you up now, so hang on.”

“My buh-- bag,” Past Him gasps.

“Got it.” Another flare of energy to summon the bag, and he swings it over his shoulder, absently adjusting the strap to fit his broader frame. He remembers this bag; remembers a Sam who knew what to expect, and knew what he’d benefit most from. Sturdy quality, nondescript color, lots of pockets. Past him is gonna lose it before his sixteenth birthday, if he’s lucky. “You just came from seeing our Sam and Tucker, right?”

“Muh-- hhgh-- hh-- month ago.”

Danny scoops him up bridal style, wincing when this earns him another strangled cry. Past him curls like a pill bug, glaring daggers. “I warned you, sorry!”

He flies for camp, talking as he goes. He remembers that too, now that he’s here again. How he’d latched onto the rambling voice of his weird future self as a distraction from the fucking hole in his arm. The memory makes him ramble more. “Once you’re stitched up I can give you something for the pain. It’s just over the counter stuff, but it’ll take the edge off for now. If you need something stronger I can steal some tomorrow, okay? I’ll need to go into town for more supplies anyway, so don’t stress it. All you need to think about right now is not passing out, okay? You’re gonna be fine. This isn’t so bad. I know it hurts right now, but you’ll be okay soon. Just breathe, nice and steady, yeah, like that. I’ve got you. You’ll be okay. You’ll be just fine.”

Back at camp, Danny lays him on the spare blanket he’d laid out just for this. “Keep pressure on that,” he orders. “I’ll be right back.”

He doesn’t hear the weak reply, already rifling through the tent for his trusty kit. It’s been through hell with him-- if you want to call bouncing around the infinitude of forced trans-temporal hopscotch “hell,” which hey, some days. It’s dented and stained and the red cross on its lid is just about scratched gone. It still closes though, which is good enough for him. Kit in hand, he drops his past self’s bag near the edge of the blanket and kneels down beside the boy.

“Hold still,” he says, and hands him a piece of old leather. “Put that in your mouth. I don’t need you biting our tongue off, okay?”

Field surgery done by an amateur is, as expected, kind of a disaster. It’s easier than it would be if either of them were anyone else; it’s useful, sometimes, to be a couple of freaks. Past Him is too much of a ghost to bleed out from something as minor as this, and Danny’s too inured by years of stitching himself back together to allow his hands any hesitation.

“It’s kind of nice to be the living proof I don’t fuck this up and kill you,” Danny remarks lightly as he prods and massages the twisted muscles back into place.

Past Him gives him a look of deepest loathing.

Eventually, the wound is sewn and cleaned and bandaged, and it’s over. Past Him sprawls out on the least bloody corner of the blanket and just lays there and breathes. He’s gray-faced and shaking, skin cold to the touch. Danny gives him a bottle of water and a bag of trail mix and, as an afterthought, pulls another blanket out of the tent to toss over him.

“Sip slow, eat slower,” he says. “I’ll get dinner started once I’ve cleaned up.”

Canned soup takes basically zero effort to heat over a campfire, so he keeps one eye on Past Him and makes lists as he stirs. What will need to be stolen, priority versus indulgence. Medical supplies, obviously. More bandages. Ice too, for the swelling and for storage. It’s kind of weird, having perishables around. Fresh fruit, definitely. Red meat, for the iron and protein-- or would that fall under an indulgence? No no, Past Him needs it. Well, in a few days. For now he should probably stick to chicken broth. He’s had a hard time of it; too much rich food will just make him sick. Yeah, alright. That’ll do, for now.

He ladles out two steaming bowls and plops down on the blanket. Past Him twitches like it’s a habit. Danny doesn’t blame him. He remembers the first year like a bad dream, memories springing unbidden that still make his heart race over nothing. Trauma, Jazz would say if she were here. No shit, Danny would retort. He doesn’t have the looping scars on his arms and legs anymore, but they’re still a raw pink on Past Him. He remembers, even if his skin doesn’t.

A flicker of green energy levitates the bowls, leaving his hands free to gather up a pile of soft things to prop Past Him up. “Hope you’re hungry, because I’m not letting you sleep ‘til the bowl’s empty.”

Past Him stares. “How-- how are you doing that?”

His voice is weak. That should pass soon. It has to. Not like either of them can risk a trip to a hospital. “Doing what?”

“I can’t make stuff float.”

“Oh. Practice,” Danny nods at one bowl, setting it down beside Past Him and plucking his own out of the air. “We’ll get to that.”

“Um. We will?”

“Course we will. What do you think I’m doing here? Well, apart from saving my own life by proxy, I guess.”

Past Him hesitates, his spooning halfway to his mouth. “You’re... really me then?”

“Yup.”

“Then--”

“Shut up and eat, okay? We’ll talk once you’ve had some sleep.”

Past Him is too worn out to put up much of a fight, which is just fine with him. There’s time now, to put things off until tomorrow. There’s time a-plenty for them, for now.

In the morning Danny wakes to the patter of a light rain against the tent, and Past Him is gone.

“...Idiot.”

He floats out of his sleeping bag and gets dressed, shivering when the cold air nips his chest. On his way out of the tent he grabs a second hoodie with a grumble. It’s barely raining, really more of a fine mist if he’s gonna be technical, but it’s pretty chilly out and Past Him’s still weak. If the idiot popped so much as a single stitch wandering around the forest on his own, he’s gonna backhand him into next week! He wasn’t this dumb when he was fourteen, was he?

...Okay, maybe he was. Still!

He finds Past Him by the nearby stream, sitting cross-legged with his hurt arm resting in his lap, lost in thought. Danny huffs.

“Y’have a nice walk?” He asks, walking up. Past Him comes back to himself with a slow shake of his head, but doesn’t reply. With another huff Danny sits next to him, turning his gaze to the stream. The water’s so clear he can see the pale river stones at the bottom, and little shadows of fish darting around. It burbles and splashes, louder than the drizzle on the gold and red leaves still clinging to the trees. It’s peaceful here. Soothing.

They sit a while.

“How you doing?” He asks eventually.

“...’M’cold.”

“That’d be the blood loss, dude.” Danny tosses the hoodie at him, earning an indistinct noise of protest. Past Him pulls it on anyway, careful of his arm. When his head pops out he’s glaring. The hoodie’s a size or two too big for him; he ends up looking like a little kid pouting over not getting any cookies before dinner.

“You’re awfully cheery about all this, you know that?”

“Well sure, why not? We’ve got food, clean water, shelter, we can communicate with the current populace no problem, and I know when our next jumps are gonna be. Oh! And toilet paper. I picked up a bunch of that yesterday and you are welcome.”

Past Him sneers. “Well you might be satisfied with toilet paper, but I’m not looking forward to having this conversation again in ten years.”

Danny laughs. “Wow, thanks! I’m twenty for your information, so it’s only gonna be six years until you can make fun of your moping teenage self crying over how hard his life is, uh boo hoo hoo.”

“I’m not crying--” He stills, the irritation bleeding from him. “...Six years?”

And the snit he’d been working up to vanishes in a puff of morosity. “...Six years,” he says again, and rubs his thumb along the bandages on his arm.

Danny gets it. He does. Six years is forever when you’re fourteen. Six years is impossible to imagine, even when it’s snarking at you and making sure you haven’t popped your stitches. Past Him wants so hard to pretend this will all work itself out, that he’ll get to go home before this can really get out of hand. It’s written on his thin face plain as day. But here’s his future self, aged twenty and some change, as harsh a truth as a slap in the face.

Danny gets it. Six years still seems like forever to him now. But at least Danny’s already lived the years between fourteen and twenty. He knows that it gets better than it’s been for Past Him, that it gets easier. He’ll survive, and he’ll learn and see more than he ever thought possible, even if he has no control of the whats or whens. He hasn’t stopped wanting to go home, and he hasn’t stopped trying to get there either. But he understands that rock bottom could be so much worse than this. And if he’s turned out okay, then Past Him will too.

He has to. Right?

“Hey.”

Past Him says nothing, lost in the middle distance again. Danny rolls his eyes. Forget trauma, this is just drama now. He reaches out and shoves Past Him into the stream. The squawking and yowling that comes after is loud enough to chase a flock of birds out of the treeline, and Danny throws his head back and laughs and laughs.

“What was that for?!” Past Him splutters furiously, hip-deep and soaking wet.

“For brooding!” Danny shouts, flat on his back and kicking his feet.

“For-- what?”

Danny drops his legs, swinging himself upright to give Past Him a Very Serious Expression he can only just hang onto. “We future-Dannys have a strict no brooding policy.” This is a staggering lie. “Breaking this rule will earn you a swift and merciless dunking! If there’s no nearby body of water around, we’ll settle for a good punch to the nads.”

Past Him gapes for several seconds, and then finally-- god, was he this slow at fourteen too? He must have been but jeez, this is tragic-- he remembers his arm. With a yelp that’s half-panic and half-pain he throws his arm over his head, horrified. “My stitches!”

Danny floats to his feet and turns back towards camp, chest aching and mouth sore from grinning. Man, he’d needed a good laugh. “Phase ‘em dry! You’ll be alright.”

Still chuckling, he leaves his past in the water.

Breakfast is scrambled eggs with bits of ham and bacon. Danny grimaces his way through a cup of instant coffee, the gritty taste waking him up better than the actual caffeine. He leans back in his squat fold-out chair, plastic plate balanced on one knee and plastic cup perched on the other, gives Past Him an appraising glance. He phased himself dry but is still wrapped up in a fleece blanket against the chill, pulled up to his ears. His bandages ought to be changed too, as a precaution.

“So does this time travel garbage get any less random?” Past Him asks.

Danny snorts, setting his empty plate aside. “Pfft, I wish.”

“Then how come you’re here too?”

“Because this is what happened for me when I was your age, and now it’s happening again.” He shrugs. “I try not to think about it too hard when this kind of thing happens.”

“So, what, I’m destined to time travel for at least six years just to save my own butt?” Past Him stabs at his plate, looking furious. “How’s that fair?”

“It isn’t destiny, alright? Don’t make it sound like we’ve been prophesied into a magical loop of time hobo bullshit. It’s Clockwork, alright? This is all Clockwork’s fault.”

Past Him doesn’t say anything, picking at his eggs. But there’s a tension in his shoulders that wasn’t there before, even when he’d been racked with pain. Hmm. Danny thinks back again, tries to remember this conversation. It’s indistinct now, dreamy shapes instead of true memory. He remembers the meals shared rather than the words that passed between them. Mostly, he remembers being scared and overwhelmed and homesick. Trying to understand what had happened to him and unable to wrap his mind around the possibility of being preordained into having this conversation twice.

Damn.

“Hey.”

Past Him eyes him warily, like he’s somebody dangerous, somebody to be threatened by. Which, considering things, is a fair assessment. Still, ouch.

“I know this is a lot to take in. It’s been-- what, four months for you?”

A nod.

“Right, and it’s been shit. I remember. And Sam and Tucker, they told you what’s gonna happen, but hearing something bad is a whole lot different than seeing it.” He gestures at himself, smiling and hoping he looks apologetic. “You don’t want to believe, and that’s fine. But the fact is, I’m your best case scenario.”

“What does that mean?”

“You’ve seen an alternate Danny or two by now, right?”

Past Him winces. “Just one, in person. The other one was, um. His parents said he was dead.”

Yeah, that’s more common than he’d like to think about. Comes with the territory though, idiot kid hero trying to save the city one punch at a time. Dannys get hurt or they get dead, or if they’re very very very lucky, they get to grow up. “No, no. I mean alternate time-traveling Dannys. Ones like you and me.”

He looks at Danny uncertainly. “I… don’t think I have?”

“You’d know if you did. They’re usually dead.”

Ah hell, that was too blunt. Now Past Him looks all panicky again. “I mean-- what I mean is, this isn’t--” He clears his throat, tries to channel Jazz’s Lecture Mode. “Time travel is dangerous. Your arm’s proof of that. One slip up in a jump can be fatal. Statistically, it is way more likely that we’ll die instead of finding a way to fix this. A foot to the right and instead of a branch in your arm it would’ve been the whole log through your gut. You’ve made it this far okay and I’ve made it farther, but there’s six years between us and I can promise you you’re going to find some dead Dannys along the way. I’m sorry, but that’s facts.”

Past Him says nothing for a moment, stirring his eggs again. “...What happened to your face?”

“Huh? Oh.” Danny touches his cheek, tracing the edge of a scar even his supernatural healing hasn’t touched. “Ended up back in the bad future again, only a few seconds after I’d left. The Observants hit the big reset button while I was there.”

“Observants?”

“A bunch of one-eyed time cops who can’t grasp the concept of trans-temporal travel to save their skins.” He scoffs. “Clockwork works for them.”

“Really? He didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who, y’know, works well with others.”

Danny laughs. “Far as I can tell, you’re right on the money. There’s definitely some mutual hatred between them, but I couldn’t tell you why. It’s not often I’ve run into the Observants, and when I do I have to explain everything all over again and hope they don’t try and kill me.”

“Why?”

He leans forward to stoke the campfire with a long stick, prodding at the ashy logs until the embers burn brightly again. “Why what?”

Past Him shifts, taking another bite of his eggs. “Lots of whys, I guess. I dunno. Why would they try and kill you? Wouldn’t helping us out make their jobs easier? Being, uh, time cops and everything?”

He sighs, leaning back in his chair again. As he answers, he waves and jabs the stick for emphasis. “They put on this big show of passivity-- observe, but never to act, kind of their whole thing really-- but they’re just as trigger happy as any ghost if you startle them right. And like it or not we startle everybody, because of this.” He pats his chest. “No matter what I’ve told them, they always think I’m trashing their tidy little timelines on purpose. They don’t do much about me, obviously-- it’s kind of in their name-- but they’re annoying. They bristle up and make a big fuss in every timeline I come to as if I’m gonna go out of my way to wreck their tragically linear grasp of past-present-future, but since we’ve got this--” He pats his chest again, “--they just kind of grumble and posture ‘til I leave.”

“You….” Past Him frowns, rubs his face, and makes a visible attempt at sorting his thoughts together. This really is a conversation that should wait until the kid’s got a full five liters of blood to oxygenate, but Danny knows it won’t. Stubbornness is something he’s always been guilty of. “They don’t know who you are, over and over?”

Danny allows the clumsy question to be left alone, though he dearly wants to poke fun. Blood loss. Trauma. Et cetera. “They don’t, that’s the thing. They’re incredibly limited in their-- you know what? Here, we need some visuals, I think.”

He floats off his chair to a stretch of dirt closer to Past Him. A soft sweep of power brushes an uneven square clear of leaves and loose stones, and using the stick he’d stoke the fire with Danny draws as he talks.

First, a lone vertical line. “This is one timeline; one whole stupidly long stretch of reality as our little minds understand it from start to finish. Big B and E, Beginning and End, here and here.” Two little horizontal ticks to mark each. “And the Observants have existed in one form or another since like, right after the Beginning.” He doodles a circle around a dot in a rough doodle of an eye. Dirt’s a hard medium, so sue him. “They can see the whole of this timeline laid out like a movie reel. They see everything that will happen, is happening, or has happened within that scope, and they can see when calling in the big guns might be necessary.”

“Big guns-- meaning Clockwork?” Past Him asks.

“Yeah.” He draws another vertical line beside the first. “The thing is-- as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now-- is that there is waaaaaay more than just one timeline out there for us to bounce around in. And the Observants from this timeline--” He taps the first line, “--can’t even tell this timeline exists at all. If you try telling them Timeline A is different than Timeline B because everybody in the U.S. speaks German or whatever, they’ll call you a lunatic.” He fills the rest of the open dirt with vertical lines, more for visual effect than is strictly necessary. “Same in Timelines C through Z, onto infinity. You follow?”

“Yeah, I follow. Kind of the only thing that makes sense with all the, um. Places I’ve been.” Past Him rubs his wrist absently, tracing the shallow scars rather than the edge of his bandage.

“...I wasn’t a fan of her either,” Danny says quietly, and nods at the scars when Past Him looks embarrassed. “At least there was water then. You’re gonna hate Duulaman, if you stick around long enough to end up then too.”

“Who is--”

“Maybe later,” Danny cuts in, making an attempt to smile but feeling it strain across his teeth. Past Him huffs, but at least he isn’t twitchy like earlier. Talking all this out is a distraction, if nothing else.

“Okay. So Clockwork works for these Observant guys, right? Having us-- me?-- getting jerked all over the place is definitely gonna mess up something eventually. Have you tried telling them about how Clockwork’s left us out to dry?”

Danny barks laughter, tossing the stick aside. “Are you kidding me? That asshole may as well be my imaginary friend at this point. It doesn’t matter what I tell them; they either don’t believe me or nothing tangible comes from it. They don’t interfere.”

“...I see.”

“I can’t remember, have you tried going to his lair yet?”

“Yeah. Four times, before I gave up and went Earth-side again.”

“Ah, okay.” Another soft sweep of power brushes away the doodled timelines. He stands, stretching out his back with a groan as something pops. “Yeah, I’ve tracked his lair down a hundred times if I’ve done it once. No luck. Mostly I just get lost in the Ghost Zone for a while, until I pop into a time period where someone made a stable portal in Amity Park. Usually it’s some variation on Mom and Dad, but there’ve been a few surprises.”

“So he is avoiding me. Us. Whatever.” Past Him shuts his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose with his good hand. “This is… way more complicated than I’m prepared to deal with right now.”

“That’s fair. Here, you’re still looking pretty ragged ‘round the edges. How about you try and get some more sleep? I promise you won’t go anywhere for a while.”

He nods. “I… yeah. Sleep-- sleep sounds like a good idea.”

It’s evening by the time Past Him stirs again, and when he stumbles out of the tent he’s a little more put together, a little more coherent. As Danny sets him down by the fire to change his bandages again, he looks around with the first spark of interest he’s shown since he showed up. “Where’d you get all this stuff anyway? Did Sam go on another shopping spree?”

“Nah, I don’t think Sam’s even been born yet. Quit squirming.”

“Then quit poking it. What year is it?”

“Mom and Dad just put up the Fenton Works sign on the house.”

“So it’s only--” He frowns. “Did you get them to buy all this?”

“They’re not our parents. Not yet anyway.” He tugs on the bandage to make sure the clip isn’t loose, then pats Past Him on the knee. “And besides, these are pre-Portal days for them anyway. They’d think I was crazy.”

At a loss, Past Him looks out at the campsite again. It’s downright spartan, compared to the camping trips Mom and Dad used to take them on. Necessity has made Danny stingy and cautious, used to having nothing but the necessities at the best of times. But for this jump he splurged on lanterns and sleeping bags, a roomy camping tent and pre-cut firewood. Stuff that your normal American family wouldn’t think twice on bringing out to the woods, but it’s all stuff Danny’s gotten used to not having. It is, personally speaking, a shit ton of stuff.

“How did you pay for all this?”

“I didn’t.”

“Then--” His eyes widen, understanding at last. “You stole all this?”

“We gotta survive somehow, y’know?”

“I-- well--” He fumbles. “Yeah, I guess. But stealing?”

Danny smiles, not unkindly. “Lemme get dinner started before you get all high and mighty on me, okay?”

Past Him glowers. “I’m not hungry.”

“Bullshit, you’re not. You’re really gonna turn down chicken soup because I stole it? It’s like a dollar a can right now anyway, it’s peanuts.”

“Then you could’ve paid a dollar for it.”

Danny purses his lips, resting his hands on his hips as he levels a distinctly unimpressed glare at Past Him. “Before you look at me like I said I kick puppies for fun-- yeah, that look, knock it off-- just think about it for a minute. What’s the longest you’ve been anywhere so far?”

He may as well have flipped a switch to make Past Him look so miserable so quickly. “Two weeks.”

“Right, and civilization was kaput then anyway, so it wasn’t like you could buy a sandwich if you had the money to.” He huffs. “I’m not saying it’s all post-apocalyptic wastelands from here on out, okay? But the point is, it’s really rare for me to be anywhen long enough to land some honestly-made cash to honestly-buy anything. All of this--” He gestures at their little camp site, a circle of garish colors and a smattering of tacky camo, “--is very, very out of the ordinary. I only stole all of this because I knew you’d be showing up too, and I know how long we’ll both be here.”

Past Him makes a face. What, did he really forget this was a temporary setup? “How long is that?”

“Two months, give a take a day or two for both of us. I’ve been here three days already, so I’ve had time to prepare. And yeah, that means I stole a whole bunch of junk I’m not gonna take with me when I leave.” He shrugs, dropping his arms. “It sucks, okay? I know it sucks. But it’s steal or starve, and frankly dude, I’ve had my fair share of starving. Haven’t you?”

It’s a rhetorical question. Past Him looks like a pile of kindling somebody draped a t-shirt and a pair of jeans over. “You did all this… for me?”

“Yup, but don’t feel guilty about it. You weren’t the one who robbed half the camping section of Wal-Mart, I did. This is all just to help me spin you up.” He smiles. “Trust me, I woulda been perfectly happy sleeping in a nice hotel room for two months, but this little fall camping trip is where I learned how to survive, so now it’s my turn to repay the favor.”

Past Him shuts his eyes, leans back in his chair. The flickering light of the fire spills black shadows in the hollows of his eyes, across the sharp angles of his cheeks and jaw, down the taut lines of his skinny throat. Poor kid. He’s had it rough. Danny remembers, with that quiet distance memory gives to all bad things. An echo, absent of pain, softened by time. Long days and longer nights all blurred together, the panic and fear and hunger rubbed away, leaving only the distinct feeling of a loneliness that dogs him still.

Six years really is forever.

“Chicken soup it is,” Danny says.

A week passes quietly. For the most part Danny leaves Past Him be, answering questions when he’s asked and providing commentary on little things around the camp without expecting much response. Fire maintenance, trash disposal, washing their clothes in the stream; those kinds of things. He leaves a few hours here and there, to steal more medical supplies and food, and to furtively spy on the house so recently named Fenton Works. Mom and Dad-- no, Maddie and Jack, they aren’t his parents, they don’t even have a son yet anyway-- are hard at work fortifying the roof to support what will eventually be the Ops Center. Jazz is too little to be left unsupervised long, so they take turns to play with her and feed her, a gingham blanket and lots of pillows and toys strewn on a safe stretch of rooftop. Mom’s-- Maddie’s-- hair is long and curly, and there’s no gray touching D-- Jack’s-- temples yet. They’re really not much older than he is.

They’re happy. He’s glad, to see them happy.

A week since Past Him showed up, and he’s just about healed up. One of the perks of being a freak; even a branch shunted through his arm really can’t slow him down for long. The stitches come out and the heavy bandages are replaced with just two gauze pads, and even that’s not all that necessary. The new skin is raw and tender, looks like ground beef instead of scar tissue, but it’ll be fine. He’ll be just fine.

“You okay?” Past Him asks that night, dinner eaten and plates cleaned. They’ve been sitting by the fire, bundled up against the autumn wind whipping through the trees. Branches sway and and creak, black outlines against a night sky spilling over with stars. It’s a nice night, quiet. Past Him’s even been cracking jokes.

“...I gotta show you something,” he says, reluctantly. He should have done this days ago. He’s put it off long enough.

“Uh-oh. You got all serious. What is it?”

He unzips his hoodie, kneads the hem of his t-shirt in his fingers and swallows. “Something you really won’t like.”

“You’ve already been nothing but bad news,” Past Him grins. “C’mon, spit it out.”

“I wouldn’t call this ‘bad news,’ per se, more of an ‘oh my god’ kind of news,” he replies, and lifts up his shirt.

“Whyyyy are you stripping-- oh my god, what.”

The firelight makes it look worse than it really is. Idiot, he should have thought of that. He should have waited until morning, when the light would be better, when the shadows would be honest. But he might have lost his nerve by then, and he’s put it off long enough, he has. This is a cruelty Past Him has to know.

Danny doesn’t look down, only watches horror etch hard lines into Past Him’s skinny face, at the disgust twisting his mouth, the bulge of his eyes, how he recoils in his chair. He doesn’t look down because he doesn’t have to. He knows the shape of the hole in his chest like the back of his own hands, has traced its growth a thousand times with careful fingers. He knows the mottled purple bruising, the sloughed flesh that looks more like candle wax than skin, the white expanse of exposed bone, the slippery pink muscles, the glistening edge of subcutaneous fat. The hole in his chest doesn’t bleed, but the steady pulse of his beating heart can be touched, if he hooks his finger right.

Past Him’s hands have jumped to his own chest, reflexively trying to cover a wound he doesn’t have yet.

The fire shifts with a startling loud pop and crackle, sending up a flurry of orange sparks to wink out in the darkness above. The wind sighs, and goosebumps break out across Danny’s bare skin. The cold bites at his chest, a bone-deep ache like chewing on ice cubes, and he waits for Past Him to speak.

“What--” He swallows, shakes his head, tries again. “What the hell?”

“The time medallion,” Danny replies simply. It’s explanation enough, really.

“Howww are you… not dead?” Past Him makes a pained expression, rubbing his chest nervously. “Are you dead? Have you actually been dead this whole time and my ghost sense just didn’t work, because--”

“I’m not dead. You’ll know when you’ve found a dead Danny, trust me.”

“Shit,” Past Him breathes. “Sam and Tucker told me the medallion was gonna mess with me, but I didn’t think-- I didn’t think it’d be so-- so graphic.”

“It’s really not as bad as it looks.” He adjusts his grip on his shirt a little, fetching a pocket knife from his hip and flicking it open. The little blade shines blackly, a wavering streak of orange dancing down its edge. “And it doesn’t make me as vulnerable as you’d think it would.” And he demonstrates this by burying the knife in his chest.

Past Him shouts, jumping to his feet, but Danny’s already pulled the knife out. He tosses it underhanded to Past Him, who nearly drops it in surprise. He stares at it, then at Danny. The blade has rusted away to nothing.

“Only Dannys like us can really touch it,” he says, tapping his sternum. The tick-tick of his fingernail is loud, like tapping a pencil on a school desk, the kind with a cubby hole for your textbooks. It doesn’t echo, but the sound of a cluttered space inside is clear enough.

“...I’m going to throw up.”

“It’s not that bad.” Danny tugs his shirt down, zipping up his hoodie again.

“It’s pretty bad, actually!”

“Don’t be such a baby. You’ve got a while before it’ll start to show on you.” Past Him’s face loses its revulsion, gets that miserable dismay he wears whenever Danny talks about the future. “Once the bruising lingers, you’re gonna have to get quick with the lies, and creative with how you hide it. Nobody who isn’t in the know about what you are or what’s happened to you can see it.”

“...Who’s in the know?” Well, that’s begrudging as hell, but at least he’s not putting up as much a fuss as Danny had been afraid he would.

Danny closes the distance between them to pat him gently on the shoulder. He smiles, hopes it’s a comfort. “People you can trust. Who that ends up being is up to you.”

Past Him shakes his head, pulling away. He looks at the knife handle clenched in his fist like it might bite him. “But-- but how? You’ve got a-- a-- you’ve got that!” He points unnecessarily. “I think it’s bigger than my fist! Does it-- god, does it leak? Does it hurt? Like, all the time?”

“Of course it hurts,” Danny retorts. “You already know that. It hurts like hell after every jump, and after a while it doesn’t stop hurting.”

“But you-- you never said anything.”

Danny shrugs. “What’s the point of complaining?”

“What d’you mean, ‘what’s the point?’” Past Him flails a little, jabbing at his chest with the handle. “That’s horrible! That’s-- how can you live with that?”

Danny huffs again. “Because it’s either live with it, or don’t live at all.”

Past Him stops. Drops his hands to his sides. Looks at Danny like he’s seeing him for the first time. And he staggers back, falls into his chair, and crumples up like a paper napkin. Shaky, breathless laughter jangles out of him, the knife handle falling from his limp hand to the dirt with a muted thud.

“I can’t do this,” he says. “I can’t, I can’t, I’m in over my head. This is crazy. I can’t.”

Jesus. He’d forgotten, he’d actually forgotten how much this messed him up the first time around. What can he say? Is there anything? What’d he tell himself the first time?

...Ah, it’s been too long. He can’t remember.

“You have to,” he says quietly. “I’m your best case scenario.”

Past Him says nothing, so Danny leaves him by the fire.

After that, Danny stops hiding his chest. He doesn’t turn away when he changes in the tent or when they go down to the stream to bathe, breathless and swearing in the cold. Past Him goes white and quiet every time he sees the wound, and he presses his hand to his own chest when he thinks Danny’s not looking. That’s fine. He doesn’t have to stop being scared of it. He just has to understand what it means.

As the weeks pass Danny finds himself in an almost constant state of déjà vu, opening his mouth to speak only to have dim memories fall from his tongue. He wastes a lot of time blinking and shaking his head, knowing he looks like a strong advocate for helmets in the eyes of his teenage self and not really able to do anything about it. It’s not like he isn’t aware of how unstable he looks; he remembers this much. He’s already done all this. He remembers thinking, with laughable clarity, Oh good, I go totally banana sandwich because of this.

He doesn’t bother excusing these brief yet annoyingly frequent bouts of confusion. They happen. They keep happening. It’s almost convenient, actually, to have half-buried memories on-hand to help with the lessons he’s pulling out of his ass. It helps him sound like he knows what he’s doing, which is still very, very hilarious.

News flash to Danny Fenton, age twenty and some change: Teaching is a lot harder than it looks. If he ever gets a chance to apologize to Mr. Lancer, take it.

Past Him doesn’t like hunting. Danny remembers that too, with that weird double-layer to his memory of this jump. Saying something and remembering someone else say it when it really was him saying it after all. He remembers being disgusted before, and horrified, and scared, and young.

Him now? He’s so frustrated with this idiot kid he could scream.

“Do you really want a repeat of Plant Queen Sam’s vegetarian nightmare apocalypse?” He asks impatiently, fed up with all the protests he’s gotten over this. “You’ve been here almost a month now, getting three solid meals and all the Zs you could ask for thanks to me, but this isn’t a permanent setup. We’re both gonna leave, and you need to be able to fend for yourself!”

“I’m just saying,” Past Him says, just as exasperated, “There’s got to be a better way than this.”

This is a rabbit caught in a trap and a hunting knife. This is also, apparently, an exercise in futility.

“There is, and I showed you, and you went and had a big hissy fit over how it wasn’t ‘fair’ to the animals!”

“They don’t stand a chance that way!” And he grimaces and folds his arms over his chest, haughty and self-conscious and not looking at the shivering rabbit at his feet. “It just-- it doesn’t feel-- it’s not right.”

Danny does a little loop de loop in the air to burn off some tension. It’s that or slap some sense his dumb idiot terrible teen self. They’re both ghost right now, two black-suited shadows flitting through the forest, checking traps and finally finding something caught, and it is sorely tempting to slap Past Him through a tree or two. He’d survive it just fine, really. “You’re thinking about this as murder.”

“Yeah, ‘cause that’s what it is.”

“No, it’s survival. Practical application of your powers in order to sustain your own existence at the cost of an animal’s. It’s the food chain, dude.”

Past Him makes another face. “You sound like one of Jazz’s textbooks.”

“Because I didn’t think you’d kick up such a fuss over this and now I’m jumping through hoops trying to to find a way for this to make sense to you, you tremendous baby.”

Past Him throws up his hands. “I don’t want to murder a deer with my ghost powers-- or a freaking machete, for that matter!”

Danny laughs. “Wow, no. For one, this is a hunting knife. Totally different types of knives. Two, who said anything about deer? What are you, greedy? What the hell would we do with a whole deer? I made rabbit traps for a reason.”

“You know what I mean.”

The rabbit thrashes against the rope around its feet, panting heavily. Danny glares. “Look, it’s terrified right now. You’d be doing it a favor and getting a couple meals out of it. Kill the fucking rabbit!”

“I don’t want to!”

“You know what? Fine.” He phases his hand through the rabbit’s chest, a slash of motion too quick for the thing to see. It spasms once more and goes limp. Dead so quick it couldn’t have known what was happening. Quicker and more merciful than knives or guns or bows, and bloodless besides, and Past Him is a gutless coward who’d rather starve than kill an animal with his own hands.

“You win,” Danny snaps, picking the rabbit up. “Have fun going hungry again.”

“Wait, what?”

Danny stalks back toward the campsite, turning human mid-stride. Past Him flits after, nervously, like he’s expecting to be punished. Well Danny’s not gonna play Disappointed Dad with teenage him. He’s too young to be a dad, and too damn peeved besides. “From here on out you don’t catch dinner, you don’t eat dinner.”

“What? Hey, hang on!”

He ignores the whining and protesting all the way back to camp. Past Him doesn’t shut up even when he skins and guts the rabbit with practiced hands, though he does hang back and go a little greener than usual. He keeps up the noise as Danny gets the rabbit on a spit and over the fire. He goes on and on, crying about how it’s not fair to ask him to kill a defenseless rabbit when they’re just a few miles away from Amity Park. As if proximity to easy-access food is something that can be relied on indefinitely, as if that isn’t something Past Him is damn well acquainted with already. As if supermarkets and drive-thru fast food have existed since time immemorial and will keep on existing until the sun burns out.

Eventually, disgusted and irritated and fed up and tired, Danny chases Past Him out of earshot with a burning branch in one hand and a ball of ecto-energy in the other to get some peace and quiet.

“I’m trying to teach you a valuable lesson, you ungrateful ass!” He hollers after the disappeared flick of a ghostly tail.

Past Him lasts two days, lurking in the nearby woods. Any time Danny catches him in his peripheral he fires off a few blasts, aiming wide to warn the idiot off. On the third day Past Him drops a dead squirrel on his head, and Danny laughs and waves him down.

“I hate you,” Past Him spits.

Danny nods. “Then we’re getting somewhere.”

There’s just a few days left now.

Danny can’t remember who left first, so to be on the safe side he’s double- and triple-checking both of their bags. Necessities are priority-packed; medical supplies and emergency rations, spare socks and underwear, knives and iodine pills and parachute cord. All the frivolous trappings he’d splurged on for this jump will be left behind, one more ghost story the humans will tell and retell one another, missing case files that won’t ever get solved. He sorts through t-shirts and shoestrings and canteens and tries not to think about the married couple that aren’t his parents, only a little older than he is, unaware they’ll have a son one day.

Past Him watches him work, floating idly about ten feet off the ground. These two months have been good to him; he’s filled out, gotten some color in his face. He could walk down the street and no one would think anything of him, just one more kid killing time after school. He props his chin up with one hand and hums. “Does it get better?”

“Your cooking? Obviously.”

“No, I meant this.” He flaps his other hand vaguely. The two round scars on his forearm stand out like they’ve been drawn on with marker, but otherwise there’s no telling that he’d ever been hurt. “All this stupid time traveling.”

Well now. There’s a choice to make here if there ever was one.

Brutal honesty, half-truth, outright lying. It’s true that it stopped being hard once he got the necessary skills hammered out. It’s amazing, really and honestly amazing, what he’s seen and what he can still expect to see. It’s been incredible and terrible and humbling, to see the many facets of himself, all the hims that could have been and all the hims that never got to be, because they died or were never born, and someone else got to live in his place. Seeing a hundred variations on his friends and family, and a hundred generations of people before and after them too. All the lives lived, all the lives never known.

Yeah, there are many times he could say he’s even been happy.

This time, he doesn’t need to rely on déjà vu to tell him what to say. He’s been expecting this question-- expecting, not remembering that it was asked. They’re almost out of time. It was bound to come up.

He stops rooting around for his toothbrush, sitting back on his heels to look up at Past Him. “Listen,” he says. “This sucks. It really, really sucks, and sometimes I get so homesick I could puke, and I spend so much time scared out of my mind that I’m gonna die in some hole a million years ago and no one I care about will ever know what happened to me. I’m scared I’ll say something or do something wrong and mess up a timeline in some huge, awful way. Maybe I already have and I just don’t know it yet, because I haven’t been back to that timeline. Maybe I’ll never get to know how badly I mess stuff up, or how many people I hurt by accident or by choice. Maybe that’s a good thing. Or maybe not knowing is worse. I don’t know. I just….”

He sighs.

“I don’t know,” he repeats. “I never imagined I’d grow up to be a time hobo, y’know?”

Past Him smiles down at him, a wry slice of teeth in a sun-browned face. “I don’t think anybody ever aspires to be a time hobo.”

“Ha, yeah. And I mean-- like I’ve said before, the day-to-day stuff all gets easier. We jump, we acclimate, we get as comfortable as we can until we jump again. Rinse and repeat and hope maybe next time there’ll be a ghost portal to go through. We learn how to really roll with all the weird shit that gets thrown at us, and I’m saying ‘we’ because I met a future time hobo Danny once who had this kind of-- I dunno. Stone-cold, grizzled, badass action dad vibe thing going for him. It was very impressive. I was very impressed.”

Another smile. “When does that happen?”

“I was seventeen. If you’re lucky, you’ll see him too.”

“How old was-- no. You won’t tell me, will you?”

“Nope.”

Past Him gives an exaggerated sigh, but lets it go.

Danny stands, stretching on tip-toe with his hands over his head to ease the tightness in his spine. One of his knees pops satisfyingly. Geeze. He’s only twenty, and he already feels old. “We both get better at this,” he says. “And maybe one of us will be lucky enough to find a way to fix this. Maybe I’m not your best case scenario after all, and maybe the future Danny I met wasn’t mine.”

He almost says what that would mean, for both of them, but the memories of lonely bones and cold metal steal the words from him. “I… ah, hell. It sucks. It really does. Sometimes it gets better, but then it gets worse again, and some stuff there’s just no helping. I just had to keep going.”

“Like your face?”

“Like my face.”

Past Him drops to eye-level, an eyebrow pointedly raised. “And you’re still not gonna tell me how exactly you got that? Even though really, I’d think you’d appreciate changing your past so your face doesn’t get ripped open.”

“It wouldn’t be my past if you managed to avoid tall, dark, and homicidal. My past is for keepsies whether I like it or not.” It’s all tree branch and tributary metaphors for time travel; the past can’t be fixed, only altered enough to create a new timeline stemming from the thing you tried to change. The past may as well be set in stone. That’s just how it is.

“Yeah, yeah, you’ve said.” Past Him lands, hands in his pockets. “It’s still worth trying to change how it goes for me though, isn’t it?”

Danny said the same thing, when he was fourteen. “...Good luck.”

[thegeminisage]

zeldablogging! i actually quit playing hours ago but i didn’t have time to post it until now

firstly my bro came over and let me use all his amiibos and i got epona and some SWEET gear, but it's like, a random chance to get one of the three piece fo each one, so he has to COME BACK so can get everything

i got one of link's iconic hats haha im Sad

also i went to the wasteland tower and i can see the divine beast from there!! i think with the flying island bird thing i've now seen them all

altho if that ship thing really is the beast and i can see if from that far away...holy Fuck. they are so Big

my brother wanted me to go north to the woods at the top of the map to get the master sword, but im just not Ready yet. i wanna see more plot. he also told me that there was no special quest for it which like :/ weak?? im disappointed tbh

the interactive map shows a stable along the road so i guess i will start there!

i'm a little intimidated by the big desert tbh

god everything here is so tall and vast...i'm pretty sure bits of this are from one of the cool parts of the trailer

omg there's a talus on this hill

dont feel like fighting it now tho lol

KASS IS HERE <3

omg four dudes lost in the gerudo region...now THIS sounds familiar

ahaha :')

actually, i think i'm gonna go ahead and head to gerudo town first before exploring everywhere...which is the opposite of what i SAID i wanted to do after death mountain but this desert is big and vast and it'll be easier to keep track of what i've done, and tbh i'm afraid of running into the divine beast while i explore LMAO

plus: i wanna see plot!

i like that horses follow the roads, i can kinda see the sights and scope it out a little before Deep Exploration

wait can i not

oh god can i not ride my horse out here....?

oh jesus

ohhh my god what a long walk.......haha i've become spoiled

oh well here we go

lol i put on the link hat and got like. overwhelmed, emotionall.y too much. so much. to see him in green rn. altho lowkey disappointed he hasn't been in green for most of the game thats just His Color

omg it gets Cold in the desert at night!!

i bet in the daytime it gets hot hahaha

ooh i got a gerudo shield and scimitar from this lizalfos! nice!

WOW ANOTHER GERUDO HI HELLO IM GAY

uh

why......doesn't my map work rn

what the fuck??

i opened it and?? static??

please tell me it's the divine beast and not an area thing i can't LIVE without my map

wow the air got all green and windy here when i walked towards a shrine...dnw dnw 

see this is why i worried about exploring but it's Right There if igured it'd be no trouble

thats what i get for thinkin

omg a SAND SEAL?? they are so weird lookin haha and it scared me for a sec moving thru the gloom like that. thought it was a monster

uh

it strikes me with no minimap i can't fast travel and everything looks just the same out here...what if i get lost?

oh there's the shrine thank god

omg my map works inside the shrine ;w;

tbh i dont feel like doing it rn i'd fast travel out of this green shit if that didn't mean having to start the whole walk over

i guess i can just fast travel to the shrine itself at least now i know the direction i need to walk to get out

yep and here goes the temp climbing. jesus

luckily i prepped for this when i stop to cook i like to make a bit of everything and i knew i was coming somewhere hot, so

LMFAO out of sheer curiosity i took all my armor off and that worked too.

ohhh amn this no-map green-sand no-visibility thing is WIGGING ME OUT dude i pray it's a divine beast thing bc i can't explore like this AND i couldn't really see the whole beast bc of the sand. so. fingers crossed

please let me find the road please let me find the road please let me find the road

put all my armor back on bc i spotted an enemy and thats super weird even without special food the sun isn't killing me anymore...maybe it's a noontimeish thing? but no, it was sunrise before and 10am now.......mysterious. i don't like it. i do not like the desert. i Do Not like the desert.

I JUST HEARD THE BEAST ROAR

oh my god and there it is...what even IS that jesus christ

it's so big im scared and crying

and the lightning!!! it's so powerful!!!!

like, my brother said the dungeons were too easy but the FEEL of these things...they truly are fucking divine

oh thank fuck i see fire. help me please

MY MAP'S BACK YES

thank GOD

and i'm at gerudo town i think!! somehow

but i missed the oasis and i know there was a memory there painter dude told me ):

wait, no...this IS the oasis! yes!!!!!! i made it to the road in the perfect spot!!!!!!

wait they;re saying here "voe" aren't allowed in gerdo town...oh my god are they being serious rn

I HATE THE DESERT LMAO

but frankly i can't blame them. tbh if i had a society of all females i wouldn't let any men in either.

there's. so many pretty women in here. they're so tall. i'm so gay

omg there's a rito and a goron here!

oooh the highlands tower sandstorm apparently dies down for a few hours every day!! good to know x_x

god if it IS a regional thing im totally fucked.

oop the temp kicked up again once i left the oasis

WAIT i almost forgot the memory jesus christ!

ok ok

WHOAAA HOLY FCK

zelda was running from the yiga clan and link stepped in and saved her at the last second AND THE MAIN THEME PLAYED A LITTLE

altho i kinda hate this helpless damsel zelda stuff...i guess it's mostly par for the course, tho - very few games have had her able to fight and even the ones that did got her captured at the very end

there's a rock outcropping here and i can SEE the sandstorms, jesus

i hope they're less frequent after i free the beast

maybe the one near the shrine/tower broke up for a sec and that's why the temp kicked up? everyone says it does once a day...but my map didn't change lol so idk

lol got to tell a gerudo she was my dream girl

haha so they travel and leave to find husbands and have kids? she mentioned "training"... great potential for trans characters here but alas that's WAY beyond nintendo rn

i like that they speak another language, it makes the world feel bigger and more real (and they even teach you some!!)

omg you can RIDE the sand seals?!

i...need a shield...to sand seal SURF

that sounds. like the coolest thing ive ever heard in my whole life

apparently there's a guy who slips in every night that i could follow!! i wish i could just sneak in myself, tho

all right nothing doing so i loked it up and APPARENTLY YOU HAVE TO CROSSDRESS LOL i love it

like i've seen that outfit in guides and i thought it looked a bit nonfunctional

altho i hope this plotline doesn't make crossdressers the butt of a joke!!

aw you can tell the person on the rock "you're a man" but im gonna pretend she's trans and not be a jerk

AAAH I LOOK PRETTY

ok, i absolutely gotta dye these pink

AWWW LINK LOOKS BASHFUL WHEN TOLD HE IS A GOOD-LOOKIN GAL

MY SWEET SON

yes i am fast traveling this instant to dye these

i know this game is probably being gross about this but frankly i love the idea of agender link

and these are my favorite clothes i wanna wear them and ride my pink horse all the time

aaah and now i am pink!! tbh i'd love to sneak in now but i have a stream to get ready for ))):

maybe i will just look around really quick i still have a few minutes

im usually a little late starting anyways lol

ooh the music in the day here is rly cool!

OMG A LIL BABY GERUDO GIRL SHE'S SO CUTE im crying

LOL THERE'S A GORON HERE

why did they let him in! i thought there were no girl gorons

lmao even he doesn't know......omg

omg an OLD gerudo too finally!!!

gaaaah i wanna look around more but my time is up for tonight!!