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#I spent three days on this already sjsjsjsjs
getreadytosmash · 3 years
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EGG previews 1 (far, FAR off previews)
Okay!! this contains scenes I am planning to write and/or want within my series, Ever Growing Green, aka EGG! I am. a slow writer so i decided that putting previews would help!! This....was very and MUCH longer than I intended so I plan to write up a part two! Stay tuned!! And pls feel free to share your thoughts!! or ask questions!!
“Woah.” Rick couldn’t help but gape at the sight of the hollowness of this “Shadow base” place. It looked like it was some sort of sunken in cave. Walking inside of it hadn’t been any better and when Hulk muttered a low “Be careful”, Rick had certainly taken it to heart.
Even with a healing factor and armour, this place made him feel like he could catch tetanus at any opportunity. 
They had started to make their way into the base, Red getting out one of his guns in case something came out, with him and Rick at the front of the party. Both of them had better night vision than either Hulk or Skaar, even if being at the front of what seemed to be some sort of horror movie wasn’t Rick’s idea of a good night. 
Ugh, he hoped that nothing like a vampire or a werewolf ran out to get them. It would be such a cliché and yet-
He paused when something came to view in the dark corridor. There was something on the floor, almost like someone had discarded it or dropped off without anyone noticing. When Rick lifted a hand, the other Agents came to a halt, Hulk stepping further and squinting into the dark while Red moved to kneel down and pick the object up.
“Rick? What is it?” 
“It’s...a feather.” He replied, tilting his head in confusion over it. 
And there was good reason to be confused too. Shadow base had a large gamma presence emitting from it. One that had suddenly increased in the last hour before the Agents had a chance to arrive. They had all been hoping that this was where Jen had been kept in the time she was missing, but obviously they had been too late. It made guilt squirm in Rick’s stomach, an itching and rotting feeling that he hated and yet needed badly. 
He would do better. 
The feather that Red held, matched his shade almost exactly from what Rick could make out. It was large and smelt....odd. Familiar but different. This place had trapped Jen, stolen her away. So why was there a red feather?
“What else has this place been doing to people?”
~~~~~
Walking through the bad base had been awful. Every step echoed through the dark halls and when they went deep enough, Skaar winced at the heavier smell of blood came and they saw the smears off it across the walls.
It had taken them a moment to realise that these walls used to be white instead of red and when they did, Rick covered his mouth with horror and Skaar hoped that he wouldn’t be sick. It would make the smell even worse. 
Eventually they had found some sort of screen room. They had to go past rows and rows of cells; some had scratches in the walls, some had beds with straps connected and some...some of them had kid toys inside. It made Skaar turn away quickly when he saw those, reminded too much of his own cages in Sakaar, even if rusting metal had been replaced with smoother and cleaner metal.
Spears and knives had been his toys back then, but the feeling of being trapped had stayed the same. 
The screen room was...empty but full. Full of bodies hunched over but empty of life. 
“Oh god.” Red had uttered and even though Skaar was used to death, he still looked around with a wince. Blood pooled around these bodies and odd tubes went from the ceiling and into every person’s back, connecting to the large tv in the front. A single chair was in the middle of the room, a few feet in front of the screen-
He stopped. Smelled. Growled. 
He smelt the Leader. The same scent of machine and faint hints of chemicals mixing together. The only new thing with that scent was a heavy metallic of blood that had never been with the villain before. Did he take Jen? To hurt her? It seemed like something Leader would do and Skaar already found a surge of anger growing in his chest. 
But...Leader liked rubbing it in their faces. Hulk always said and pointed out that he tried to show his power and act like he was powerful, taking Jen away and not saying anything over the past few months didn’t make any sense. 
Nothing made sense. Especially with the grey woman and grey person Skaar had been seeing in his dreams. 
Rick walked further, the dim lighting of the room showing his unhappy face as he rested a hand against the control panel. Taking a deep breath, his eyes met Skaar’s with a small and pained smile. “Guess we better see what the heck’s been happening, right?”
~~~~~
Jen was smashed against the wall and bricks dug into her back, cutting her skin before healing up already. The green-skinned woman still let out a grunt of pain as she rolled, barely being able to twist her body up in order to skid across the floor. 
“Give up, Jen Walters.” The voice calls out and when she looks up, Jen’s met with the sight of someone just like her. Green skin in a slightly different hue, lighter, with bright red hair that’s fallen out of her braided bun from where Jen pulled a dirty move and tugged at her hair. The uniform she wore was odd. Red and yellow pants with a odd crop top that covered one whole arm and left the other one bare. The new woman - Lyra, she said her name was Lyra - occasionally pulled at her clothes, like it was something she hadn’t wanted to wear originally. 
“You can’t escape me forever, give up now and let your death be peaceful, hero.” The way Lyra said this word, a sneer grew onto her face and her fists clenched before she took a deep breath and with that, her eyes took on a brighter green. Glowing. 
“Oh please, as if Jenny is ever gonna go down easy for us.” Another voice joined and- no, there were only her and Lyra, who?-
A new woman stepped forward. She was red, the same shade as Red from back home. Red with long black hair joined with two streaks of red running through it and the same white on black eyes to match the general she knew. This woman even has the same smirk he often wore, a black version of the same outfit Lyra wore, although this newcomer seemed to be more comfortable in it than her partner did.
It took Jen a moment to spot the ugly grey and mint green collar around this Red she-hulk’s neck. 
“After all, it wouldn’t be any fun for us, right?” As she said this, the new woman cracked her knuckles, skin lighting up in the same way Red’s did. Lyra seemed to share a frown with Jen as she noticed that the collar didn’t seem to melt away. 
The Red she-hulk stepped closer and when she spoke, when she tilted her head and smiled, Jen couldn’t help but notice the warble in her voice, or the way Red she-hulk’s hands trembled when they rose into a fighting position. 
Those hands snapped towards her and Jen barely had a moment to flip back, but it was no use when Lyra’s foot slammed into the back of her skull, sending Jen slamming into the ground with a yell. She felt her hair get grabbed roughly before being yanked up to meet white on red eyes and a smile that didn’t quite meet her eyes. 
“Don’t do this.” Jen glared up, tensing up her muscles for one rough fight. “C’mon, there has to be other options, you don’t need to listen to them!” If they did listen, then she wouldn’t be able to contact the team, wouldn’t be able to figure out what was wrong with these new hulks and why they were so set on fighting her. 
God, the first women hulks she had ever seen and they wanted to beat her up. This preview sucked.
Red she-hulk seemed to pause then, a flicker of something on her face before it pulled back into a snarl. “You don’t know what I need to do. You don’t know me!”
With that, her fist came down onto Jen’s face. 
~~~~~
“You don’t need to do this.” Betty’s voice rang out into the room, catching Hulk’s attention as well as Daydream’s from where she floated above him. 
Daydream scowled, her dark green cloak and dress swirled menacingly from above them all, energy sucking and pulling from the other bodies of the Agents around her. A sneer pulled at her face as she took in the sight of Betty, the collar around both of their necks sparked but neither of them paid it any mind.
“I don’t? I don’t need to do this?” Her voice raised higher as Daydream let go of Hulk, who fell to the ground with a groan. “You know who I am! What I was made for. I was built to hurt people, built to be angry and now someone wants to tell me that I don’t have to do it?” 
Energy pulled and pulled from around the room and Betty watched with a odd expression before Betty stepped forward and hands came to the collar around her red neck. 
“You don’t.” Her voice was stronger now and Daydream regarded her source with surprise. “You don’t deserve to be told what you are or what you’re good for by nameless people who hurt and hurt. People who use you and only formed you because you were useful. Not because you were a person who had formed with thoughts and feelings.” 
Betty stepped closer, unflinching in the face of Daydream snarling at her. “I was angry. Angry over what had been done to me and the fact that Shadow base - Fortean - used me against the people I love and made me into a monster.” Her hands pulled more at the collar now, gripping it firmly. 
“Betty-” Hulk made a noise of pain, but neither her or Daydream paid him any mind.
“I know, that you are scared.” Betty said and when Daydream stared, when she floated down, Betty smiled sadly. “Because I was scared and I was so angry, but they shouldn’t have been allowed to make you from those emotions. I’m- I’m sorry, Daydream.” 
Her voice was quieter now and when she reached, the entity placed her hand in Betty’s, her face scrunching up with the shine of tears.  
“I didn’t-” Daydream looked away, her glow darkening. “I didn’t want to hurt anyone. I just did what I was told ah-and what I felt. I just wanted...I wanted a name, my own clothes, friends and- and a mother! Like he had!” She gestured towards Hulk, hands clenching as tears began to slide down her face. 
Something shifted in Betty and the roaring of Daydream’s power only made he eyebrows furrow as she tugged harder at the collar. “Then I’ll give it to you! I’ll give you a name, you’ll have the other experiments for friends and I’ll be the one who takes care of you, I’ll do what my own mother did for me!” She yelled. “You aren’t what they made you to be and neither, am, I!” 
With a final scream, Betty tore the collar off her neck and with it, a snapping noise occurred her back. She hunched over and screamed, red hands snapping and angling into claws, her ears becoming longer and pointed as her form has started to change. 
“Betty!” Hulk screamed.
“Re-” Daydream started before she reached for the older woman. “Mother!”
“Hulk, I’m sorry!” Betty cried out and the power surrounding Daydream grew stronger and brighter as Betty twisted over, sending a watery smile towards Hulk. “For hurting you and the others and my father...tell him I’m sorry.”
Wings exploded from Betty’s back and in one brighter flash, the two of them were suddenly gone, pulled from the nightmare realm and leaving Hulk in an empty hanger, calling her name. 
Hours later, when Red had recovered more and finally woke up, Hulk was standing at the end of the bed and looked towards him, a red feather in his hands. 
“I know who the Harpy is.”
~~~~~
The lightning and thunder shouldn’t have been possible in such a place, but Hulk knew that the Green Place, the Down Below, the Green Door of Death, worked to no exact rules. 
Everything shifted and bended and Brian’s laugh filled the sky and Hulk’s ears.
Madman - Phil Sterns - laughed right alongside him. energy swirling under his feet as he reached up to the sky and if Hulk listened close enough, he could hear screaming under that laughter. 
The door was starting to close and only so many people were at risk here and he needed to make sure that they stayed safe. 
“Hulk!” But there was a problem, one that he couldn’t exactly ignore for long.
“Hulk!” Jen cried out, her hands gripping the edge of the door. “Come on! We don’t have long, you need to hurry up!”
She expected him to come with her, to take her hands and leave and never come back through the door. Leave Madman behind with Brian in this, the most awful of places. 
But Leader, his old enemy, had stared at all of this with a horrible sense of familiarity and had turned back to look at Hulk and he had asked something, his back hallowed out and bleeding. 
“Save him, please, I know Phil isn’t good, but, please, save him!”
He had asked, begged, and Hulk was a hero and the only one with the kind of power to do this. Leader had asked and he was going to do his best to do what was right. 
**
It didn’t mean that Jen had to like it, or let it happen though. She watched as Samuel was shoved past her through the Door, but Hulk never reached to take her hand back and the Door was bound to close soon, so what was he-
“Jen, I have to do something. He asked-”
“You don’t have to do anything!” She snapped back and gripped the edges of the door harder. “Come on, he hurt us, he isn’t worth it-”
Her cousin laughed and it wasn’t a good laugh, it sounded like Hulk was resigning himself to something horrible and no, it couldn’t happen, he wouldn’t stay here, he would get out and Jen would tell him off and then she would finally be able to give her brother a hug. 
He wouldn’t stay in the death realm or whatever bullshit name people used for it. 
But Hulk wasn’t coming and when he looked up at her, tears had begun to gather in his eyes, the distant swirl of hatred and a large green mass already beginning to gather as Brian brought about his energy. 
He would kill Hulk. He would kill Bruce. Just like he did with Aunt Rebecca and exactly what Brian had always wanted to do.
“If it’ll help someone? It’ll always be worth it.” The energy was surging towards him now and the door was definitely closing. “Keep safe Jen, I’ll do my best and take care of the team-”
“Hulk, I said no!”
“-and help out those new hulks, they’ll need an expert like you.” Hulk’s eyes glowed and hands, forming from the ground and clawed, were reaching to grip him as the green started to slide out of his body. It wasn’t right to watch, that couldn’t happen, he couldn’t leave her-
“I love you, Kid.” 
The Door slammed shut and against orange sand and perfect night sky, Jennifer screamed, the sounds of concerned yelling fading to muffled water as her world turned green with grief and grey creped along her body. Hulk was gone, dead to the living world and trapped the person who would hurt him the most. 
Behind her, Rick sat up, groaning before a sight caused him to choke. Before him was...himself? Except his own body was sitting up and looking around the desert, calling out “Phil” before he tired to get up, but ended up tripping from where he wasn’t used to the weight. 
Rick blinked and looked down at green hands, felt a horrible ache in his back. 
“Oh no.”
~~~~~
“Mutate-SS/L00.1 is ready for sugary now sir.”
“Bit of a long name for me,” Samuel laughed from where he was strapped down on the table. His face was pressed into a gap and despite the fact that he was naked in front of so many people, he made sure to keep his breathing even. “Really, the Leader is fine.”
He was ignored, which shouldn’t have been too shocking, but it certainly made a point when every comment he had made so far had often resulted in Samuel being electrocuted or cut or being beaten. Clearly what he had to say had no meaning for anyone and the idea of “sugary” was already making Samuel quite tense. 
They kept him drugged here. Made sure that Samuel wasn’t able to observe or take advantage of anything and the green-skinned man was already going mad with it all. 
He needed to be free and he would be, soon, preferably when this shitty play at nurses and doctors were over. 
Footsteps came closer and from the table, Samuel could make out large and heavy boots. Almost hulk-sized. He narrowed his eyebrows, squirming slightly when he felt a gloved hand run across his bare back. 
They always made sure to cover themselves up whenever they touched Samuel. They knew enough about him to know how his skin secreted a type of toxin that induced infection that took over people’s minds, made them follow and connect to his own brainwaves. He hadn’t been able to reach any form of skin and a part of Samuel wanted to hiss when he felt gloved hands touch him. 
He had screamed and fought, biting and scratching and even hitting when they took him to this room and had first started to strip him down, cutting someone with his nails hard enough to surely cause an infection, biting down and feeling bone snap under his teeth before he had been overwhelmed. They took away layers of his clothing, staring at what he tried to keep hidden and pressed him down onto this cold metal slab where he couldn’t move and his chest was pressed onto the table uncomfortably. It didn’t feel nice, to have that form of control ripped away like everything else was. 
It was a torture method, to take away Samuel’s control and he knew it shouldn’t work on someone who was better than all of this, but...it did. He wanted to scream, even wanted to hope that the Agents would free them all. 
Instead, that gloved hand rubbed his back and it took a moment for Samuel to realise that it was rubbing some sort of solution onto his back, making him shiver. His skin began to tingle and when the body above him chuckled, Samuel immediately tensed up. He knew that voice.
“Sir, should we use-”
Phil waved a hand, already grabbing his needed tools and moving the holder into place, for when the skin needed to be kept open and stopping it from naturally healing over. “It’s fine, it doesn’t need to worry about the pain, not when I’m here. Right Sam?” 
Samuel couldn’t say anything. His mouth felt dry and tingly and he was laid out and vulnerable for anything. The hand on his back had only just stopped rubbing and Samuel could hear something being moved - angled above the spot Phil had been touching.
“Nothing to say?” Phil’s voice was light and happy and Samuel wanted to be sick. “That’s alright, you’ll be screaming enough it to not matter, baby brother. Rikki, you can sit and watch.” His voice became more clipped then, a large shift from the sticky sweetness just a moment ago. “This could happen to you after all.” 
Rikki nodded, her green skin so much paler as her collar flickered and she took a seat neatly. Aesthetic sat next to her, far too full than she originally planned and when the sugary began and Samuel began to scream, a horrible crunching noise came from his spine. The sugary was due to last fifteen hours by her constant calculations and Rikki was thankful that her obedience prevented her from being able to throw up by her own choice. 
~~~~~
“You need to wear the belt.”
“I am not wearing the belt, Rick.”
Samuel scowled up at Rick and tried to ignore the fact that Red and Jen were watching with amusement, Hulk shaking his head and sighing. 
“You need to though!” Rick said. “Otherwise no one will know that you’re a Agent too!”
Ugh. Samuel scowled harder and didn’t appreciate the fact that Rick had snuck two more of those ridiculous belts into his room. He didn’t know what the obsession was with them. Why did they need to match? They weren’t the Hex girls. 
“Hex girls?” Rick frowned and jutted his neck back in disgust. “You make a mean comment where I can hear it and you pick the Hex girls?”
“They match! They match styles!”
“Yeah, if they were emo.”
“Emo, oh my god they were in Scooby doo, you made me watch it with you-” Samuel squeezed his eyes shut and waved a hand, pointedly ignoring the way Red snorted. “The point is, I’m not going to wear the stupid belt for as long as I live.”
Jen frowned. “Didn’t you die yesterday when Hulk stepped on you?” Beside her, Hulk groaned and covered his face. 
“Well, yes, but I’m speaking metaphorically here, Jennifer.” He rolled his eyes and waved a hand, utterly certain that he would never wear the belt. Too many times he had made fun of the Agents (in his head) for wearing a group garment and Samuel was fully set on not being a part of that. 
Hours later and one adventure with giant birds left Samuel standing, surrounded by cruel brutes and wishing that he had died once more.
“You’re wearing it! The belt!” Rick is delighted, even without the link, Samuel would easily be able to feel his utter glee bleeding into everything. Worse was the fact that even the others were smiling at the matching white and black belt Samuel now wore. 
“Yes, I know,” He rolled his eyes and crossed his arms while glaring, but nothing he did seemed to wipe away the smile that was being seared into his skull, like a thousand solar rays. “But it was needed to trick the Balaflums and it’s certainly not a big deal-”
He gets interrupted by blue hands tugging him into a hug, Samuel yelps and only then do they suddenly become more gentle, being careful to not apply pressure to his back.
“It’s a big deal! The biggest deal! And it’s being totally made and sold! Oh man, we’re gonna have to celebrate you fully joining us tonight!” Rick made a weird high noise that...sounded a lot like a squeal and suddenly Samuel was being pressed in gently from all sides.
It took him a moment to realise that he had been pulled into a group hug and when he did, Samuel groaned loudly. 
If he purred and someone brought it up, he was going to stab them. 
~~~~~
Watching Betty fly was quite the spectacle. It reminded Red of his old days, flying planes in shows before he had crashed and ended up breaking his back. 
Now he was the Red hulk and any time he was caught in an explosion, he survived it, even if the feeling in his chest told him differently.
His daughter flew higher into the sky and Red felt something in his chest clench at the sight, but he stayed still, standing against a boulder and watching with interest. 
Betty had only shifted into this new look for a few weeks now and yet she took to the sky like a - well, a bird. 
She flew high up, swirling around in the sky before looping and dropping down, lower and lower before she pulled herself up at the last minute. Against the blue of the sky, Betty looked large and striking with her red hues. 
It made her a monster in the worst regards, a brand that Red had trusted someone once and Fortean betrayed Red by going ahead and hurting Betty, all because Red shared blood with her. His daughter had what it took to make monsters, all from Red himself.
Betty flew higher and higher and suddenly she gave a flick and she had lit up with flames, standing out in the sky like a star, like a plane that rushed home on early summer’s day, coming too close with flames and burning flesh-
Red’s daughter twirled in the air, a graceful arc that he would have admired, if the memories hadn’t swarmed forward and left him stepping back, bile rushing up into his throat and leaving Red to cover his mouth. He couldn’t breathe or move - 
Everything he did came back to haunt him eventually. Betty was just another casualty. 
~~~~~
“Sooo, you just...break into aquariums whenever you’re sad?” Rick raised an eyebrow as he said this. 
“Yes.” Samuel says and turns back to the tank he was interested in before Rick had interrupted him.
“....And no one knows?”
Samuel sighs and shrugs. “No Rick, no one knows I come here because in all of my years of villainy, no one often stops to wonder if the villain enjoys going to aquariums or about my other hobbies.” Really, it wasn’t like he dedicated his entire life to fawning over the Hulk. 
Silence came then and it was such a relief for Samuel, to be able to breathe properly and stare and reach down into the water in order to collect what he wanted. 
“...You’re picking up a jellyfish.” 
“I am.”
Rick gestured, like there was some sort of point that Samuel should have been following some sort of logic, after all, it was Samuel’s thing to be clear cut and logical. “Doesn’t it, oh I dunno, sting?” 
“It does!” Almost to contradict his last statement, Samuel holds up the jellyfish and grins, showing pointed fangs in the dim lighting. “The pain is quite something, I can feel the toxins radiating already, fascinating...” Samuel breathed before he turned to Rick with a grin. 
“Take some notes down about it for me?” 
But Rick wasn’t taking notes sadly, instead he lunged forward, rushing to take the beautiful creature from Samuel’s hands in order to keep it away from him. Instead the blue hulk had been a bit too rough and with a yell, Samuel and Rick fell into the water, fell into the pool of jellyfish where only one of the two of them were protected from the stings.
~~~~~
In the thundering world, where Hulk had been trapped for far too long, Lyra turns to the man who played a part in her creation and straighten her shoulders.
“Hulk, I’m sorry.”
Her words made her fa-donor blink, turning to look at her with some confusion. Hulk was tired looking, and he was thinner than Lyra would have liked. It reminded her of when she was a young cadet, still training when Mother was still around. 
The other cadets had been cruel, always pulling her hair and pushing her around with their boots and fists all over her body until her cursed hero skin turned a darker shade of greens and purples, but Mother had just said that such marks would make her stronger one day if she could overcome it. Seeing Hulk look even remotely similar made something twist in her stomach.
“What for?” His eyes narrowed in confusion, startling when Lyra reached to take his hands in hers. “You didn’t do anything.”
“But I did.” It was evident in all of her actions and the way she had treated people like her. “I didn’t have the same collars as any of the exp- people at Shadow base. I chose to do what I did because...” This was the harder part. Admitting what and why she did terrible things, but Jen Walters had proved to be the greatest warrior of all times, like in the books. A hero born from her choices being taken from her, much like Lyra hadn’t gotten a choice in being born. 
“Because I hated you Hulk.” She says and a part of her feels terrible for the flinch he gave, but she needed to carry on and work on removing those ingrained habits. “I hated you for the fact that you are my father and I never wanted a father because none of the other soldiers had fathers, let alone fathers who were heroes.” 
The word left a sour taste in her mouth, but Lyra was pleased when she got everything she wanted to say out. Hulk seemed to be just as surprised and a part of her worried for a moment.
What if this was the wrong time to say it? What if Hulk got angry and Jen Walters had been wrong about apologising and making things right?
She blinked in surprise though when Hulk reached out to hold both of her hands in his. It was odd, to see someone like her after so long of being the only good green person. Anyone else back home with green skin was far too long corrupted by the power of heroes and she had been shunned for long enough over it. Coming to a world where there was another woman and her fath- a man with the same skin as Lyra stood out so much. 
Hulk stared at her for a few moments and what he said next surprised her more than anything, even more than finding out that she was to be banished back in time by the Cradle Mother. 
“You don’t need to be sorry for not wanting a father.” 
When Lyra didn't answer, her face scrunching in confusion, Hulk sighed and continued. “I know how you feel. Not in the same way, I’ll never know how your life was bad, but I know that having a father and wanting a father isn’t the same thing. I...” He looks away, taking a deep breath before he sets his shoulders straight and glances at the roaring green sky, where Lyra’s grandfather pooled in power. 
“I never wanted my own father. He ruined Bruce, made him pool into fragments and he hurt everyone around him. I would have given anything to not have Brian Banner as my father and when I got older and my alter developed more, I realised that I didn’t have to have him as my father if I didn’t want to. We were related but we weren’t family.” Hulk says and Lyra...feels odd. You didn’t have to keep the people who raised you and were raised with you as your family?
There seemed to be a point to all of this and in a rush, Hulk gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “What I’m saying is, you don’t have to take me as your father, Lyra. No matter what people told you, you never have to accept someone as your family and while I’m fine with not being your father, I’d-” Hulk frowns and Lyra feels like suns are busting in her with this revelation. “I’d like to still be chosen for your family at least. Is...that alright?”
She didn’t need to choose her family and who was who in her life. 
Her father didn’t need to be a father, he could simply be in her life with the rest of the hulks.
Lyra could be a better person. She could do something good with Hulk and not have to take her Mother or Cradle Mother or any of the other soldiers back. 
“Okay.” She says and Hulk beams at her and suddenly Lyra does feel what Jen talked about before she left to save her donor. 
“Great, now let’s get ready to go home.” Rebe- Cradle- Grandmother is standing some distance away, with Karen Ross who holds her hands and seems to be saying something, a smile on her face. They would return home, all of them. 
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