#also for another miracle: my doc's visit went well and we have a new plan going fucking FINALLY. some action and good docs 😭

[flintbian]

I GOT THE APARTMENT!!! 😁

#OH THANK GOD!!! #you have no idea how much i needed this 😭 #also for another miracle: my doc's visit went well and we have a new plan going fucking FINALLY. some action and good docs 😭 #like im literally surprised when i have good visits and it's been months of struggle so im glad i finally got back in here #and we have a new strategic plan to try #some of my old docs for this are actually at this center now too and we're looping them in as well since they know my history #and incredibly complicated and difficult case #it's crazy whenever im taken seriously and the doc didnt torture me today that's nice #let's cross our fingers this plan helps #but anyways yay i got the apartment thank goodness!!! 😭😭😭 #we have to be strategic with moving though we cant use stuff like cardboard bc the silverfish love it #like we have to check and re-package everything i have to make sure i dont take them with me #im also probably leaving the couch behind bc we dont want to risk it and it was free anyways #im literally going to be making pest control barricades and shit like it's going to be so much and a hard move #but ultimately worth it to get into a better place #yay!!! 😁 #p

[memoryonrepeat]

Long overdue, but I finally wanted to share my travel diary from Bali! I spent a few days there with some friends after my trip to Hainan, and absolutely loved it. I wish I could have been there longer because I feel like I missed out on seeing so much, but that’s the problem with not having enough vacation days and having to go back to work... Just another reason to go back again!

We spent most of our time in Seminyak, but also visited Ubud for a day. The highlight of the whole trip? Hiking Mount Batur at sunrise. Photos and more on what we did below the cut!

We stayed at a beautiful villa right in the core of Seminyak, called Skye Villas. I found the spot on AirBnB, and split between the four of us, it was very affordable. We had a home cooked breakfast every morning, we all got our own rooms, and the villa even helped us hire a private driver to take us around during the whole trip. I also loved being able to walk right out to the shops and restaurants in the area. Also, the pool? Just perfect.

Wearing: SheIn swimsuit (sold out), eBay hat (similar here)

I will note that our villa (like most in Bali), was completely open, meaning the kitchen area opens out to the pool and there are no walls. The bedrooms and living area have their own doors that lock, but the stairs and remaining areas are all outdoors. Just be careful not to leave anything in the open areas and make sure to lock up before you leave.

I flew into Bali from Beijing on the red-eye, with a 3 hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. It was an exhausting flight (which I would not recommend), but well worth it when I finally made it to Bali. Our villa came with a free airport pickup, so the driver came to grab me at the airport, we had dinner, and then crashed for the evening.

The next morning we drove straight over to Ubud to see the Tegenungan Waterfall. This was a stunning spot, and already full of people despite us getting there fairly early in the morning. Personally, my favourite view of the waterfall is from halfway up, so I recommend doing the hike if you have the time. Also, it sounds touristy, but I’d recommend paying to go on the swing (I think the price converts to $1 CAD) and shoot some photos. I had so much fun up there!

Having gone to Bali in May, it was extremely sunny and hot, and there is little shade at the base of this waterfall. Bring a hat if you can and wear lots of sunscreen. Also, make sure to wear shoes you can walk in comfortably, because the rocks are very uneven and the stairs on the hike up are slippery. Don’t forget a swimsuit too if you plan to swim in the area!

After the waterfall hike, we stopped at the cutest little restaurant in Ubud that overlooked a rice paddy. The food was only okay, but the view more than made up for it.

Our last stop of the day was to the Tegallalang Rice Terrace. If you follow any travel bloggers on Instagram, I’m sure you’ve seen pictures of this rice terrace everywhere. I didn’t expect it to look as beautiful as the photos, but I was blown away. Visually, this place is just stunning. I could have wandered around for hours. Also, with the area being so large, we never had to worry about bumping into huge groups of people.

Wearing: Topshop dress (old, similar here), Jack Rogers sandals, Michael Kors watch (similar here)

Like the Tegenungan Waterfall, the terrain here is quite uneven, so make sure to wear comfortable shoes. I’d also recommend wearing shoes that you don’t mind getting dirty, because parts of the area are very muddy and wet.

We headed back to the villa after that, grabbed a quick take out meal and a few (by few I mean maybe 2) hours of sleep, and then we were up and off again, this time to hike Mount Batur. The sunrise hike at Mount Batur is something I read quite a bit about before going to Bali, and I knew I had to do it. It was a once in a lifetime experience, and I didn’t want to pass up the opportunity.

To make it to the top of the mountain by sunrise at 5:30am, you need to be at the base of the mountain and start your hike by 2am in the morning. It was a 2 hour drive from our villa to the base, so we left around midnight (hence the 2 hours of sleep). I’ve done some moderately difficult hikes in Alberta in the past, work out fairly regularly, and I will be completely honest and say that this was the hardest hike I’ve ever done in my life.

The first 30min of the hike is pretty easy - paved roads, slow incline. Once you get to the actual base of Mount Batur, it gets hard. There are no paved roads, you’re hiking in pitch black darkness with only flashlights to guide you, and you’re walking on rocks and uneven terrain the whole time. The incline is also very steep to the point where I had to use my hands to pull myself up at parts. I felt like I was mountain climbing.

When we got to the top though, it was completely worth it. For the first 30min or so at the top, it was extremely foggy and we couldn’t see anything. All of us were very disappointed because there was a chance that the fog wouldn’t dissipate and we wouldn’t be able to see the sunrise at all. And then, by some miracle, the fog lifted and the clouds moved, and we saw the most beautiful sunrise I’ve ever seen in my life. It was breathtaking, and the photos hardly do it justice. It was worth the hike up and then some, and I don’t regret it at all.

I’d highly recommend doing this hike if you get the chance. Make sure to dress warm (it gets very cold at night), wear the right shoes, and find a guide. I will stress that you absolutely need a guide to do this hike. It’s near impossible to make it up yourself.

Wearing: SheIn top (part of a two piece set), Free People shorts (old), Splendid espadrilles (sold out, but love these ones), Quay sunglasses, Bag from a stall in Bali (similar here and here), Michael Kors watch (similar here)

All of us were exhausted after the hike, so we immediately went back to the villa and slept for several hours. We had a few hours before we had to catch our flight back to Beijing, so we did some shopping around Seminyak and grabbed some food and desserts.

Wearing: Urban Planet top (sold out), Pants from a stall in Bali, Jack Rogers sandals, Prada sunglasses, HEYS luggage

Then it was off to the airport, and back to China. Bali has the prettiest airport I’ve ever seen, so of course I had to snap some photos there. I love that part of the terminal is outdoors too. It’s such a unique look. We grabbed some food before hopping on the plane (how cute is this cake that looks like a Nutella jar?!), and then we were off.

Looking back now, I adored Bali. While many people have come back and talked about how touristy they found it, I didn’t feel that way. It definitely is a place that caters towards tourists, but I expected that since their tourism is one of their main industries. Even with how tourist focused it is, I still found the sites we visited to be beautifully preserved and overall loved the experience.

Compared to other Asian countries I’ve visited, Bali is quite a bit more expensive (which I also expected). It’s still affordable by North American standards though, and well worth the extra costs in my opinion. You can definitely save some money on transportation and accommodations. There’s plenty of options for both.

That’s it for this Bali travel diary! I can’t wait to go back to Bali and explore more, and hopefully also visit some other places in Indonesia. Let me know if you have any questions about travelling to Bali, or if you’ve been there before! 

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#personal #lifestyle #travel #bali #indonesia #photo diary #travel diary #food #aug2018 #ootd #wiwt #Tegallalang Rice Terrace #seminyak #ubud #mount batur #sunrise hike #adventure #outdoors #explore #Tegenungan Waterfall #quality #luxury #photography #personal photography #personal blog #nikon

[nautilusopus]

The Number I

Chapter 20: Vincent Damages Company Property

Sorry for holding this thing back for a couple weeks. We've finally reached a turning point and I had to make sure there were actually things happening in between the dramatic plot-twisty bits. Like plot to twist in the first place.

I had a bit of extra help in that regard -- apart from my usual crowd, I'd also like to thank @socialmimikyu and @terror-billie for helping me get my thoughts in order so the rest of the story past Chapter 21 won't be a disorganised mess. And thank you guys for commenting, because that does wonders for my motivation.

There are holes in the world, and spaces between numbers. Neither should exist. Cloud starts noticing them, and he isn’t the only one who has. And unfortunately for him, he’s both. (Contains graphic depictions of violence.)

The floor was immaculately clean these days.

There had been a time when it wasn't -- when it was covered in dust and dead insects from disuse. Stacks of paper from promising research projects that piled up in corners and on desks. Uniforms and equipment from new subjects. And, once upon a time, stones of all shapes and sizes and colours, and crumbs from home baked bread, and dirt tracked in by a boy that was small enough to squeeze into places he ought not to be.

All of it had been swept away long ago. The place had been cleaned and remodelled and sterilised, and not even rats would enter the mansion anymore, even long after it had been abandoned by the scientists. All that was left were the failed projects.

Something moved in the dark. There was a scraping, then a creaking of old, damp-riddled wood, and with a crash the lid of one of the coffins was knocked the floor and crashed against the Buster Sword lying on the ground next to it.

Vincent Valentine arose from the coffin. All this time he had listened. Heard the screams of defiance and anger, and then weeping, and the pleading to no one in the dark, and at long last the sound of resigned mantras, repeated one after another, and then of silence. He had listened, and he had done nothing. Until now.

Vincent had realised long ago that he could do nothing for them. It was yet another consequence of his failures. One by one, they were fed into the ravenous combine that was Shinra, and one by one they were used up and discarded. But the boy... the boy had been the first in years. The same child that had been so eager to feed himself into those whirring blades one day, and lo and behold, now he was here. Another testament to his cardinal sin.

And yet... there had been something strange about his eyes. He'd seen that look somewhere before. In fact, it had been one of the last things he'd seen before a bullet had ripped itself through his chest, tearing his old life away with it. The look those eyes had given him as he choked to death on his own blood had been full of many things, but one that they were utterly devoid of was regret. He had failed, and in the end, she had chosen this path. For better or for worse.

Lucrecia. The tissue grafts -- they were continuing her research posthumously.

This boy, the boy from the village that hadn't stopped bringing him rocks, that was now huddled in a dog crate and muttering nonsense to himself, that was half-mad already and twisted into a shell of whatever he used to be, was here because of him.

Vincent shut himself away after that, never to reemerge. There could be no atonement for this.

He would awake from time to time in response to noise -- always reminders of why he was here in the first place. Sobbing, rattling against the walls of the little metal box, incoherent rambling... he heard it less and less as time went on, until one day it ceased altogether, as did the visits to the storage room. Vincent hoped that by some miracle the boy had perhaps died in his sleep. He did not awaken for some time after that.

The sounds of a struggle dragged him back out of the deep slumber he had returned to. This was a larger group than he remembered.

"Hold its arms so I can get the legs in," said a voice. One of the lab assistants.

"I am holding. It can't move, I don't see what the big deal is."

"There's still the issue of involuntary muscle responses, and from this guy that could easily wind up taking your head off. So pay attention. I gotta get this all the way to the nerve."

A plaintive, muffled wail echoed through the room along with the voices of the lab assistants. He knew that voice. He doubt he'd be able to forget that voice. The boy was still alive?

"It's looking at me."

"No it's not, it just has its eyes open. Doesn't got any real brain function anymore. Just between you and me, this is why you don't stick a pressurised pump into someone's spinal column and fill it with mako, that's probably what did it. How can you be smart enough to grow a person in a vat and not know that?"

"The president gave him the grant money, man, I ain't gonna question it."

"Yeah, well, that's why we don't have grant money anymore, do we? Hurry up and finish the form so we can leave, it's freezing in here."

"Humanoid... purpose for archiving... organs?"

"Maybe education. It's not gonna make very interesting combat training exercise, and it's technically still alive. They'll probably want to keep it in one piece so they can figure out what not to do for the next time."

"Serial number... six seven dash two, Series three. Jenova Project."

"Project head?"

"Let's see... says here it's one of Crescent's, officially. Guess that explains why Hojo's so bummed out about the cancellation."

"Urgh. Freaks me the hell out. Her and the doc. Somethin' not right about her."

"Hey, you can't say it doesn't make sense though, right? Birds of a feather."

"Yeah, whatever." There was a loud click, followed by the sound of rushing fluid. "So... she's gotta sign off on it, right?"

"Yeah. She's in Midgar right now. The doc's planning on leaving too, so just give that form to him and he'll deliver it to her himself. Guess we're all out of a job now..."

"Yeah, guess so..."

Vincent barely heard the door close and lock behind him over the pounding of his own heart in his chest. Lucrecia was still alive. Head of the Science Department, from the sound of things. This boy -- Lucrecia had done this. To him. To both of them. And Hojo -- he was still involved in this as well? The first child, the one she'd had with Hojo, must not have made it to term. That must have been why the project was still running. The boy -- he was Series 3, it all made sense now. But Lucrecia couldn't have been his mother, could she? He had mentioned a mother quite frequently all those years ago. She did not seem like Lucrecia, and the boy looked nothing like her nor Hojo. This boy had simply been fallout.

It all made a sickening amount of sense. At least now he finally knew, so he could have some peace of mind.

But peace of mind did not return to Vincent. He waited days, and then what must have been weeks, and the men did not return for Series 3. They really were just leaving him here.

He was ill, it seemed. Severe mako poisoning, not to speak of whatever else had been done. If anyone would know how to treat this, surely it would be Lucrecia? She was in Midgar... still making choices like she had the first time he did nothing.

But Lucrecia was still alive. This boy was still alive. Surely something here could be salvaged out of this nightmare.

Vincent decided to leave his coffin.

His legs felt weak as he took his first step in what must have been at least ten years, but they held steadily enough, and he strode over to the wall and flipped the light switch.

The back of the room was lined with glass pods. Vincent did not want to think about what was in most of them, but resting in one of them, a light coat of dust covering the glass, was the boy.

It was a mistake to call him "the boy" now, he realised -- it was a much sharper face peering blankly back at him from inside the cylinder. But while his hair had grown out to his shoulders and solidified into a mat, he didn't seem to have much in the way of facial hair. Perhaps it was malnourishment? Every part of him looked chewed and diminished, and his skin was every bit as unhealthily pale as Vincent's.

He inspected the pod and found a small button in the side that seemed to open it. The fluid inside slowly drained, and Vincent watched impassively as the body inside slumped against the wall of the cylinder, being held up by the tubes coming from its mouth and nose. Vincent carefully disconnected them, and hesitated only briefly before removing the intravenous lines and the feed hooked into the back of his neck. If he had caused any damage removing them, it would be another thing that Lucrecia could fix.

The boy -- no, not a boy. And it wouldn't do to call him Series 3, either. He'd had a name that he said many years ago he would remember. Something to do with the sky. An old Nibeli one, translated into one succinct word for the sake of the Standard that everyone in Midgar spoke. Cloud. His name was Cloud.

Cloud's emaciated body fell to the floor. It appeared they had taken his clothes long ago, and he likely would not survive for long this far north, damp and naked. He pulled a couple of the Soldier First uniforms off one of the shelves and used one of them to pat him dry, then set about stuffing him into the second. It was far too big on him. Another pang went through Vincent at the thought, and he steeled himself against it. He must remain focused. It was unlikely he would have another opportunity for redemption.

The old wooden door had since been replaced with a steel one, requiring some sort of key combination to open. Vincent braced himself against the door and pushed, but it held firm. They had taken his gun from him long ago, and the two spells he had mastered during his time in the Turks worked strictly on people and not doors, and would be of no use here.

One of his sabatons clicked against something metal. The sword. His strength wasn't nearly that of a Soldier, but it was certainly much more than it should have been, and would do for his purposes.

He picked up the sword out from under the lid to his coffin and, with a loud grunt, rammed it into the door like a battering ram. It took another ten blows or so before the metal finally caved and the door opened outward, now crooked on its hinges. His arms ached, especially from disuse, but he held the sword steady and stood absolutely still, listening for the sound of boots on stone and cocking weapons. Someone must have heard that.

A minute passed, and no one came. Something stirred in one of the cylinders on the wall behind him. Vincent refused to look at it again, and dragged Cloud over to the door. Upon further reflection, he placed the sword on the magnetic harness Cloud was now sporting on the back of his uniform, then hefted them both onto his back. Until he could find a gun, it was better than nothing.

He had mastered some magic, but not much. He looked around the storage room for anything that might have been useful. Something was still shining in his coffin. The healing materia -- it was still there. Perhaps...? No, that wouldn't work. Mako poisoning, if that's what this was, was well beyond his capacity to heal with an unused materia. Still, he pocketed it anyway, just in case.

Starved as he was, Cloud was fairly light. It was just as well, since the sword weighed easily as much as he did, if not more. The mansion might be abandoned, but he was still stealing company property. Someone would notice eventually. He would have to move quickly.

Nibelheim was just as he remembered it. Perhaps his mother... no. If they had her child, Shinra would have tied up the loose ends involved. He himself had done as much during his employment. Besides, there was nothing she could have done for him. That's where Lucrecia would come in.

They both stood out rather badly, as he quickly found out. He gave Cloud an impromptu haircut with the Buster Sword's edge, and stuffed his own hair into the back of a coat he'd stolen from a guard station. Would anyone still recognise him? How long had it been since he had gone missing? Or the boy, for that matter? At least ten years, judging by how Cloud had matured. A lot could change in ten years.

The main problem was food. Cloud would not chew, and it took a fair amount of coaxing to get him to swallow. He'd managed to get him to swallow a bit of bread he'd already pre-chewed for him, but it came back up not long after: Cloud had apparently gone quite a while since eating any real food. He considered sneaking back into the mansion for a pack of glucose. He decided against it -- if they hadn't noticed Cloud was missing before, they certainly would now. He would have to figure something else out.

He wound up breaking into a clinic and stealing medical supplies when they reached the next town -- there was a military presence here too, if the massive remains of some sort of missile labelled Shinra Type 26 looming over the skyline was any indication. Vincent dimly recalled mention of a war with Wutai. Was it still ongoing? Was this meant to be used against them? He almost turned to ask Cloud before catching himself.

The expiration labels on the gelatin cups he'd purchased with the stolen money clued him in as to how long he'd been gone. Expires 09/58. Assuming these cups were new and would last about a year, he'd been gone nearly three decades.

The shock didn't really hit him. It didn't seem fully real. He supposed technically this was the "future". That explained how Lucrecia was in Midgar: it seemed they had finished building it. He wondered who was directing the Turks in his absence. Orwell, perhaps, or Avery. Assuming either one of them were still alive. It suddenly struck him that nearly everyone he knew could very well be dead. Thirty years was a lot of time for people to learn too much and become a liability, or for loyalties to waver too much for the company's comfort, or to simply catch a stray bullet at the wrong time. Nobody left the Turks except in a body bag. Or, in his case, a coffin. He was briefly amused by the mental picture of Avery covering up his death. She'd have addressed it to the wrong department, she always did...

He wondered if Cloud had any friends that were still alive. Had he actually joined the military, or had Shinra simply abducted him off the streets? He himself had taken part in such "scouting" expeditions at times, on the occasion when they couldn't simply find a poor, desperate family to volunteer. Eight to ten was the preferred age of most samples -- young enough to be impressionable, old enough to follow complicated orders. And small enough that no one cared when they went missing. The child mortality rate in the slums was quite high in his time. Nobody thought much of it if one or two children slipped through the cracks.

He never saw any of the samples again. Vincent had been a professional, though, and hadn't asked where they had gone. No Turk was stupid enough to want to know.

Next to him in the grass, Cloud made a noise of distress, his hands unconsciously groping for something. Vincent watched him for a few moments until he went limp again. He didn't seem to be responding to any stimulus that Vincent could see. His arm lay twisted at an uncomfortable-looking angle, displaying his serial number quite clearly.

Vincent carefully picked him up and moved Cloud's arm so he could more efficiently bandage it with some of the gauze he had taken from the clinic. One or two times, his hand would twitch, still grasping at nothing. Vincent ignored it. Cloud likely wasn't cognisant enough to feel pain or discomfort, let alone respond to stimuli. Any comforting he did would be lost on both of them.

He had grown quite a bit from the last time Vincent had seen him. It was difficult to tell what was him and what was Shinra's doing, though. He was still just as sickly-looking as he had been the first time they'd met. The strange bony physique he had was doubtless a product of whatever experiments they'd been running on him. His eyes were hollow now -- whatever had been there before, it was beyond Vincent's reach or help. Shinra had shaped his body, and the mako had claimed his mind, and Cloud himself seemed to have gotten lost somewhere in the middle of it all. He wondered who he could have been once, and how much of the boy he'd encountered in that crate steadily becoming more and more unhinged years ago was the person he was currently feeding gelatin and broth too. Not that it mattered much anymore.

Vincent wasn't sure if his own answers were any simpler. He was no longer a Turk -- Hojo had seen to that. Perhaps that just made him Vincent.

Who was Vincent? A dead man, he knew. A man that had failed Lucrecia. A man that wouldn’t fail a second time, though at what he wasn’t really sure. He could offer Lucrecia redemption, but only she could accept it and atone for them both.

Cloud had stopped swallowing, and Vincent didn’t have anymore success afterwards getting him to take more food. He couldn’t have possibly been full, but there wasn’t really anything he could do about that either. Another thing out of his hands.

He, Vincent, was still alive. And apparently Lucrecia had been as well. And so had Cloud. Perhaps it wasn’t so farfetched to assume someone else had returned from the grave.

A week later, and Cloud was still not taking solids. Vincent could not afford to break into a second clinic. It would give him away, if it hadn't already. He would need supplies. And money. He'd need employment on a very temporary basis, with someone that wouldn't ask too many questions -- it was highly unlikely that Shinra was looking for him specifically or expected his involvement in the first place, but he also couldn't risk leaving Cloud alone for too long. His pulse was weak and irregular, and his skin was clammy. His hands no longer twitched, reaching for something that wasn't there. He was practically dead already.

He would not have been the first, or second, or even third person Vincent had watched die. He likely would not survive long enough for Vincent to take him to Lucrecia, if she agreed to fix him at all. In the end, he'd be delivering him right back into Shinra's hands anyway. His eyes landed on the sword on Cloud's back.

It would be kinder, he knew. Whether or not Cloud was aware of it, he was still suffering. It was the principle of the thing. And it wasn't as though he would have much of a life to return to, should he recover. He would spend the rest of his days running. That was no way to live.

Vincent removed the sword from Cloud's back and levelled it at his neck. One cut. He wouldn't even feel the pain. No one recovered from mako poisoning this deep, and it was much better than letting him slowly starve to death or die of exposure. He would be free from Hojo, from Lucrecia, from Vincent's mistakes. Truly free, not out in the wild being hunted like an animal, a marked man for the rest of his life, even if they were to one day stop pursuing him. Vincent had often heard it said that one's face looked peaceful in death, but all anyone had looked like to him was a corpse. Cloud, with his eyes glazed and his face gaunt, was no exception. He sighed and adjusted the blade.

"Why can't I just pretend? Why do you care so much if I just pretend?"

The words came to him unbidden, and he frowned.

"Because it has never done anyone an ounce of good," said Vincent sharply. He realised he was talking aloud to no one. Another thing that wouldn't actually help. Cloud could not hear him.

"Why can't I just pretend?"

He still didn't know how old Cloud was. He could have been fourteen, or forty. His body was too warped, by chemicals and fear and time, for him to tell. Vincent knew he himself was fifty-seven or fifty-eight. He might not look it, after all these years, but he felt the age somewhere very deep. It had settled into him and wrapped itself around his bones, sinking into the fingers that held the sword above Cloud's neck.

Vincent put the sword back down. He was perfectly capable of pretending. He was going to pretend Cloud was awake right now.

"It gains us nothing. You being alive does not serve you any. Neither does my insistence upon talking to you. It's purely for my benefit, in order to come to terms with my thoughts."

Cloud said nothing, as expected.

He had skills he could use. A few mastered spells, though it was likely only fire would be useful to him here. He couldn’t take any jobs that wouldn’t be extremely temporary, both for Cloud’s sake and his own; the longer he was tied to an area, the sooner people would notice he was there. People were not yet asking questions about Vincent Valentine. He did not want them to start.

So, what sort of work was available for former Turks that had avoided the usual method of retirement? Most of them wound up as assassins, most likely. Or mercenaries. Once a Turk, always a Turk, he supposed.

He began picking up small jobs -- a day or two as a porter on the Corel river. That had been one of the first shocks of many -- Corel was gone. He’d expected an economic decline, of course. Coal couldn’t begin to compete with mako in price or efficiency. But Corel was gone. Turks gone. Wiped off the map by Soldier from the looks of things. The bustling little coal town he’d seen pictures of was forgotten and unspoken of.

Phones were portable now, he’d learned as well. He didn’t see much point -- any time one would be away from home long enough to necessitate a portable phone would be long enough for the battery inside it to die anyway.

President Shinra was still alive and still in power. That one was a bit of a surprise, if only because he’d expected the man to have a coronary long before now. Perhaps the science department had perfected biosynthetic organs by now. He drummed the metal fingers of his false hand against the floor of the boat he’d stowed away on -- perhaps they’d be able to grow him a new hand. He couldn’t quite recall how he’d lost it in the first place. He wasn’t sure if it would help if he did.

That was how he made ends meet from week to week: small jobs. He had to be in and out and gone in no longer than a week. Cloud began to put on a bit of weight, but he showed no signs of waking. Little by little, they made their way across the wilderness, and little by little Vincent saw things that were familiar, and things that were different, and things that perhaps had always been that way, but he had simply never bothered to look before.

Not for the first time, he wished he could ask Cloud. Perhaps he should have asked more questions when he had the chance. But then, he hadn’t wanted to know back then.

“If you felt like saying something, now would be an excellent opportunity to start,” said Vincent one day. He had propped Cloud up against a bundle of hay in the barn he’d snuck into. The birds -- chocobos, mostly, with a few aggressive swallows -- were watching them both warily.

“You must admit, there is a certain irony in risking one’s life for someone unable to appreciate the act nor the selfishness of the motivations behind it,” he added.

Cloud said nothing, as usual. Vincent sighed and sat down by the hay next to him.

“I did not care for your visits,” Vincent continued. “I do not felt they accomplished much.” He set about the task of removing his metal hand. Now that he intended to sleep -- truly sleep, not enter a state of prolonged hibernation, he’d found it was rather uncomfortable to have it on during the night.

He stared at the stump that remained of his forearm. He could dimly recall pain. That didn’t really surprise him. And a lot of yelling. And a piercing agony through his arm that seemed to be spreading, and then blissful oblivion.

“Although,” he added, “perhaps I am not without blame myself. If I had been more interest in dissuading you, we would not be here now.” He leaned back against the hay, feeling that strange heaviness building up in his bones again. “It seems my lacking skills as a conversationalist have caused more than a fair bit of misery.”

He looked at Cloud again. It was strange to see him so quiet now. Orwell had always been rather chatty in the beginning. After they'd had to dispose of Yang to prevent a security leak he went quiet. Everyone went quiet in the end.

“Of course,” said Vincent, “you cannot hear me now. This conversation between us is as pointless as the first thirty. You might not have listened then either, even when you could.”

One of the chocobos squawked at him, raising its head crest in warning. Vincent gave it a look.

“And so, here I am, a man that should be well into retirement, peddling my skills as a mercenary,” he said. “That is the hand fate has dealt me.”

He put Cloud to sleep with a quick spell. It was difficult to tell if he was actually resting. This was easier. Vincent wondered if he still dreamt.

He kicked a bit of dirt over their fire and watched it sputter out.

“We are simply what the world makes us, Cloud. No more, no less.”

Vincent limped his way up the staircase, the body draped over his shoulder unwieldy and making each step grind further into his knee. One of the MPs had managed to get the drop on him with a baton, and while it wasn’t broken, he could feel something grinding against something else that had no business grinding against anything in the first place. The gun he’d stolen was clutched tightly in his other hand. An assault rifle. Inelegant, but better than nothing.

There were more than a few bullets lodged in his abdomen by now. Vincent may have been a former Turk, but that was before thirty years of inactivity and the body he'd been carrying over his shoulders had dulled his skills and slowed his movements. He could heal, he knew, but he wasn't sure if there was a limit to it. He may have died before, but he was certainly alive now. Alive and mortal.

He heard the sound of a pistol firing, and Cloud let out a sharp gasp. He'd been hit. Vincent quickly ducked down a hallway by the staircase leading to the sixty-eighth floor.

It was just a graze, luckily. A gash on his leg that was already closing up right before his eyes. He tore off a bit of his cloak and quickly wrapped it anyway. There were already voices approaching them from down the hall, and he couldn’t afford to get distracted this close.

If he had been a bit less focused, perhaps he would have paid more mind to the fact that Cloud had made a noise at all.

Still, he paused outside the door of the stairwell, the ID card in his hand hovering by the reader uncertainly. There was a very good chance he wouldn't come back out of this door. Cloud might not either. Of course, that wasn't really much of a tragedy. Cloud was practically dead anyway. He would either recover or he wouldn't. And he himself... he was a relic. There were still Turks around, most likely, but the world did not need Turks. The world did not need him. He and Cloud were both relics, forgotten in a basement for too long to have any place besides the one carved out for them there. An old man lingering around older sentiments. A boy who had long since missed his chance to ever pursue newer ones. It wouldn't really be such a terrible loss for either of them.

Still, he supposed he must try. Lucrecia still had a place.

Vincent swiped the card and watched the door retract with a quiet humming noise. He adjusted his grip on Cloud and forced his knee to carry him up the stairs.

There were about twenty guns trained on him all at once the minute he set foot in the lab. He took out two right away as he turned the corner, scrambling for cover behind a desk. A third was close enough to knock out with a quick sleeping spell. That left twenty... at least until backup arrived, at which point his death warrant was signed anyway. He shoved Cloud further under the desk and risked a quick peek at the room around him.

Seventeen guards, with likely some higher ranking military personnel among their number. Five scientists that appeared to be scrambling for cover. Vincent recognised two of them.

He forced his breathing to slow. His ears were already buzzing from the sound of unshielded gunfire.

He heard something behind him and quickly flattened out on his stomach in time to shoot the man that had been sneaking around on his blind side with the rest of the cubicle. Sixteen left.

He couldn't carry Cloud with him, but couldn't leave him alone either. He doubted they'd target him given he was still drooling onto the floor, but he wasn't willing to risk the possibility that he could be wrong. Unless -- he could have sworn his eyes moved to follow him as he crept away along the wall to peek around the corner. No time to check for sure.

He encountered another two trying to flank from the front now that they knew he was headed around the other way. They were only MPs. Vincent was a former Turk. It wasn't really fair. Fourteen.

Controlled, deliberate, methodical. Two in the torso, and one in the head. Thirteen, then ten, change magazines, then eight, then seven...

There were noises. Things moving beyond the loudest silence. Something stopped to listen to the Other that were noises that were not the loudest silence. Not him. He was him. He was I. I am.

A loud crack sounded in Cloud's ear, making him wince in pain. It was too loud here. It was quiet before. He wanted to go back to the quiet. The noises around him began to drown it out. His eyes focused on something blurry.

White. Blurry white. And grey, and something red and black and brown that danced around him. He feebly reached for it.

The dancing stopped. He realised something had been at his back only when it was pulled away. The blurriness in his vision receded with the fog and the silence, and he could hear voices.

"...did you get here?"

"What have you done? What have you done, Lucrecia?"

The second voice... he knew that voice. Everything was a blur, not just his vision -- he couldn't seem to focus on anything but the floor beneath him, and the voices above him, which kept getting louder and louder.

"What reason could you possibly have to come back here?" A third voice. An icy, sticky voice, sharp and intent and unforgiving. Cloud hated it, and loved it, and a powerful hurt flared up in his chest. "You were a clever man. I'm sure you know how this will end."

Hojo. He hadn't been good enough for him. He could never be good enough. They'd hurt him because he wasn't good enough. He shivered.

"Behind me," said the second voice. "I brought him for you."

"The Series 3 prototype was discontinued six months ago," said the first voice. Soothing, twisting, indescribably beautiful, profoundly hungry, reaching into parts of himself that called for something he had no name for. Part of him.

Director Crescent. He'd dreamed of her touching him, the way Ma once had.

Ma... the village... Sephiroth... it was all gone now... everything was gone...

"Listen to yourself," said the second voice. "I implore you -- was this the world you wanted to create? You both set out for the betterment of mankind -- he's led you down a path much like your own in feature but unlike yours in virtue. He may have chosen, but you --"

"I thought I made my choice clear, Vincent. I thought you knew that as well."

"Your son, Sephiroth, surely --"

"Vincent... Sephiroth is dead," said the Director.

"And you would condemn another to that fate?"

He knew that voice. Cold and rough, like stone under stone under dirt and snow and frost. Magic rocks. A companion in the dark.

The Pale Man.

Cloud's eyes fixed on the shape above him -- the Pale Man was here. The Pale Man was with him. And the others -- he was real? He was real. The Pale Man was real.

"I set out for the betterment mankind, and Series 3 was a stepping stone towards that goal." Director Crescent was looking at him coldly now. He wanted to go to her and the Professor, but he couldn't move. The Pale Man was still standing between them.

"You were always a hopeless romantic, Vincent. We both know why you came here," said the Director.

"Is it is such a crime, that I believe you are worth saving?" said Vincent.

"There is nothing to save us from," said the Professor sharply. "And certainly nothing you could provide deliverance from in the first place. You should have remained in storage. Goodbye."

The sound of weapons cocking echoed around them. He couldn't move. He was trapped in his own body, and he was useless, and he couldn't move, and the Pale Man -- Vincent, after all these years, he'd been there for him, and he, Cloud, was still as useless as ever --

The world bent. The people around them seemed to refract and waver like a passing reflection. The loudest silence howled around him, impossibly loud, and the ground beneath him felt as though it were about to break at any moment and let it all in. Cloud's hand spasmed, desperately reaching for Vincent, who seemed to be a million miles away and right in front of him.

Vincent was consumed in a wall of flames. It happened almost instantly -- one minute he was standing there, convulsing, and the next he was crumpled on the floor, spasming intermittently, ragged screams quickly trailing off as what was undoubtedly spellfire rapidly charred his flesh. A moment later he stopped moving entirely.

The Pale Man was gone. Everything was gone. The Pale Man -- he saved him. He saved him, and he was gone, because Cloud hadn't done anything, and he was gone and he was real and he wasn't alone in the dark and he was gone and the pale man was gone and ma was gone and he was alone and he had never once been held or wanted by the pale man the director the professor all gone it was all empty empty empty empty empty --

There were many things Cloud remembered about that day. He remembered the hands, shoving him and Vincent's charred corpse into a disposal chute in the lab. He remembered it all being too much. He remembered falling, further and further, his already limp body impacting against metal and concrete, and still there was so much further to fall, and knowing there was nothing in the world that had ever wanted him, Series 3, a failure, alone, broken, who ruined everything he touched. He remembered the other things that had been thrown out all around him in Sector 2, about not knowing where the Pale Man's -- Vincent's body was, so that maybe once he might hold it, and know that something real had wanted him, Cloud, that the something was alive. He remembered the rain leaking down from the plate below, splashing onto his face, creating mud that he felt himself sinking into. He remembered screaming and screaming and screaming, and not knowing how to stop. He remembered understanding that no one could ever want Cloud or even Series 3, that no one would miss them, that the world moved further and further away the more he realised it, and that soon enough it didn't seem real, and then soon enough he wasn't real either. He remembered lying there, the water pooling up around him even as he drifted off into unconsciousness. Some time later, perhaps days, perhaps a week, he remembered a pair of rough, work-worn hands holding him, pulling him close, and moving him out of the mud garbage piled up around him, and carrying him to a little run down dive bar in the slums.

The one thing he didn't remember was the look of confusion on everyone's face in the tower, from the guards to Hojo to Lucrecia herself, because none of them had actually fired yet.

#the number i #spitegarbage #i fucking hate vincent's dialogue and now i don't have to write it anymore!

[robininthelabyrinth]

Fic: Win the Race (ao3 link) Fandom: Flash, Legends of Tomorrow, references to Arrow Pairing: Barry Allen/Iris West; Leonard Snart/Mick Rory

Summary: You make some adjustments when aliens attack and a whole bunch of people get abducted.

Adjustments like adopting some kids - very quick kids -

(in which Len and Mick accidentally adopt Barry and Iris' kids)

A/N: Set past the end of Flash season 3. Very few Legends.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Losing Barry had hurt worse than anything.

Iris didn't want to eat - their favorite places - or see anyone - everyone reminded her of him - or, well, do anything.

They'd sent out their save the date cards, so at least she didn't have to look at the box of all her hopes and dreams and optimism. Not that that made her feel better. At least Dad took care of calling all of them and explaining that the wedding is off.

It's about a month and a half before people start getting impatient with her moping. Luckily, Iris gets sick right around the same time - vomiting! That means she's really sick, not just more moping! - so that's a good excuse to keep inside and away from everyone.

Play with McSnurtle. At least he doesn't pressure her to move on because "this isn't what Barry would've wanted".

Well, Barry's trapped in the stupid-ass speed force by his own stupid guilt - seriously, Iris has a list of alternative ways they could've satisfied the Speed Force's need for a speedster without having to give up Barry, because she totally hasn't been obsessing over this or anything - so Barry's sort of lost his right to have a say.

There's a knock at her door.

"Go away, Dad!" Iris shouts.

"It's, uh, it's not your dad," a muffled female voice says.

Iris frowns. She doesn't have that many female friends - never did, sad to say - so she's not immediately sure who it is.

She goes over to the door, wonders for a minute if whoever it is outside is going to judge her because she's wearing Barry's old college t-shirt and a pair of his STAR Labs sweats, figures the answer is yes, accepts it, and pulls open the door anyway.

She blinks.

"Caitlin?" she asks. "Or, uh, is it Killer Frost right now?"

"Caitlin is fine," the now white-haired woman says wryly. "I see you're handling what happened better than I handled Ronnie dying. Both times."

Iris hesitates. It's true, Caitlin does know what she's going through. That being said - "I'm not really in the mood for sympathy."

"I'm not here to offer it," Caitlin says. "I'm here to take you to your doctor's appointment."

"My...?"

"By your own report, you've been vomiting on a daily basis for two weeks straight. As a doctor: you are now way past time to see a doctor. Now, we either go to your GP for a walk in, or I kidnap you and take you to my lair to test you anyway. Since I am still a doctor myself."

Iris cracks a smile. "Is your lair STAR Labs?"

"Everything there is still set up for me," Caitlin says, not denying it.

"I'll call my doctor," Iris says. She doesn't want to go to STAR Labs. "She takes walk-ins."

She had time for Iris, miracles of miracles.

Iris wishes she'd taken the time to shower but, honestly, putting on real clothing was about as much effort as she was willing to put into this. Caitlin hadn't commented.

She had refused to leave, which - seriously? Iris isn't going to go out of a window to avoid having to have regular human interactions. Probably.

...not now, anyway.

"So, doc, what's the news?" Iris jokes. "Am I dying?"

She almost means it.

"Nothing like that, Iris," her doctor says warmly. "Just a bad bout of morning sickness."

Iris freezes. "Of...what?"

Dr. Hansen looks sympathetically at her. "Oh, I’m sorry! I didn't realize you didn’t know. Congratulations, Ms. West; you're pregnant."

Pregnant? But -

Barry.

"Oh god," Iris says, and goes to throw up.

---------------------------------------------------------------

"This sucks," Mick says.

"You're the one who wanted to live in a post-apocalyptic wasteland," Len points out snippily.

Mick thinks about objecting - Len needs to let 2046 go already! Mick's gotten over the Oculus! ...mostly! - but then Len blasts a few more aliens and Mick decides to let it go. Len's tired, he's tired. Len's always like order more than he did, and there's not much of that to be found now.

It's the end of the world.

No, really. The Dominators fleeing with their tails between their legs had apparently drawn the attention of the whatever-the-fuck these things were called, and this time, they'd been smart about it.

They went for the heroes first.

Of course, Barry was gone, so Central City was defended by a combination of Cisco - Mick refuses to call him Vibe, especially since Lisa had made that terrible joke about it - and Kid Flash, but they weren't Barry.

They'd never be Barry, and they knew it.

When the aliens came, they were careful to attack a whole bunch of places all at once, all places the heroes cared about, so that there wouldn't be enough time for a team-up. Without Barry to hold it together, any team-up probably wouldn't have worked, anyway.

They got to most of Team Arrow first, luring them onto a spaceship and then portalling it to the other end of the goddamn galaxy. As far as Mick had heard, those guys weren't dead, but they weren't getting home anytime soon, either. At least they'd been with their families when they'd detoured onto that ship - they'd been right in the middle of getting them out of the refugee camps the government had unwisely started forming.

Queen and Felicity were all that were left behind, and they're still standing, last Mick heard. They have a check-in every fortnight with them just to be sure.

Central City, with its metahumans, wasn't anywhere as lucky. The aliens timed their attack well - they'd invaded relentlessly, again and again and again, goading them, then waited until Team Flash got desperate. Team Flash had developed a habit of visit Earth-2 (apparently Kid Flash was dating the Flash of that Earth, which seemed weird, but also the Harrison Wells of that Earth served as their mentor so honestly Mick wasn't gonna ask), and they'd fallen back on the same habit when they decided to go seek help and a safe place to let some of their heroes rest.

That'd been what the aliens had been waiting for, the assholes. They detonate an EMP over STAR Labs just as the going group was jumping, disabling Cisco's universe-hopping device, and then they'd snapped Cisco up into one of those goddamn pods before he could make his way through.

Long-term stasis units, they were called. Fucking bullshit, that's what Mick thinks of them. They zap you unconscious and drag you to one of the pod farms, and then you're just lying there all Matrix-like, not aging, not moving, just asleep. Frozen in time.

But with no universe-hopper and no Cisco, there was no way for Team Flash to make it home. Joe West, Wally West, some other woman, even Caitlin Snow - all gone.

Only Iris West and Julian Albert had been left behind, and neither of them had powers. They'd teamed up with another CSI - some girl named Patty who used to be a cop - but there was only so much that they could do, these last few months.

The aliens were hunting them, too. Any association with Team Flash was as good as a target. They'd gotten Patty a week or so back, and Mick was pretty sure the other two weren't much longer for the world.

Which left Central City under the dubious protection of -

Well.

Him and Len.

Len was Central City's son, born and bred, and he was her foremost supervillain now that Grodd had been banished. The aliens hadn't counted for him in their plans.

Mostly because he'd been spending some time dead at the time they'd made their plans, but hey, what can you do?

(Len likes to tell people it was for tax reasons. Mick likes to hit Len whenever he says that.)

It'd ended up being to Mick's benefit, at any rate; when the aliens ambushed the Waverider, breaking the time drive and stranding them all god-knows-when, Mick was already back on land, nursing a still time-confused Len back to health. Len had gotten over his little brush with death - he'd only come back because they'd screwed up the timeline to such a horrific extent with that spear thing, but he was back and that's what's important to Mick - and now he was back with a vengeance.

A vengeance currently fixated on the aliens that had ruined large portions of his city.

Mick always said he'd give everything to Len, in the end, and he did: he dug up his old ship, with the Kronos armor, and though the time drive there was shot too - decay rather than sabotage, but either way still useless - it was still useful in launching a hell of an effective surprise attack on the bastards from space.

Mick also picked up some tips on armor from Haircut during their time on the Waverider, putting together weapons and cloaks and all sorts of shit you can use growing and shrinking and blaster tech for.

Len took a different approach. He gathered every metahuman still in Central - villain and civilian and confused - and he whipped them into a defense force under his control.

Well.

His and Lisa's.

The Rogues had been designed to be villains, but in the absence of real heroes, they ended up being hero substitutes instead.

Hell, the Rogues had been so goddamn successful that Lisa had ended up branching out, splitting off her own hand-selected group of Rogues and going to Gotham to recruit the villains there into their own version of a defense force. Len hadn't wanted to see her go, of course, but she'd insisted...

"Hey, Mick, you hear that?"

Mick pauses in where he's melting an alien which is probably (definitely) already dead by now, clicking his gun to silence.

Nothing at first, then, very distantly –

Crying.

"Someone's in trouble," Mick says.

"Let's go," Len says. "Unless you're getting low on charge..."

"Nah, I'm good. Ever since we got the dwarf star, the recharge times have been excellent, even if it does make the gun heavy as fuck."

"Good. Let's go."

The aliens are centering around a cute little daycare. There's a car which shows the typical signs of alien attack, so whoever had gone out to get groceries - Mick can see them spilled out on the ground - was almost certainly already pod-bound even as they approached.

The crying was coming from the daycare.

Shit, kids. Len hates it when aliens go after kids.

"Can we get them?" Len asks, trying to come off as dispassionate, coldly analytical as his nickname suggests, but Mick knows Len. His whole brain is bent on trying to figure out how they could save the kids - not at the expense of their lives, which Len knew were too valuable to Central to lose, but certainly with less of a margin for risk than usual.

Mick studies the situation. "Think so," he says, because he does. "Your call, boss."

"Let's move in. I'll go point, take center; you come in later."

Mick nods. They'd figured out the best way to hit these assholes long ago: the reason their plans were so good in advance is because they had their sharpest minds back on their homeworld planning it. The drones they sent to Earth, on the other hand, were shit at dealing with the unexpected.

Which is to say, dealing with Len at all, really.

Even against regular non-armed humans, they'd found the best way was for one human to establish a pattern of attack (like, throwing things) and when the aliens had adjusted to that attack, a second person attacks from a different direction using a different method (stabbing, shooting, whatever). The aliens are momentarily paralyzed trying to recalibrate their expectations, leaving a window of time when the humans can successfully attack or run away.

Mick and Len have been teaching a lot of self-defense classes at the underground refugee camp.

It's not actually underground, to be fair; it was just connected by radio and maintained-with-great-difficulty-and-sacrifice Internet into a living network instead of gathering up in person. The aliens used actual refugee camps as targets - too many humans in one place was practically asking for an attack. So they did the rounds, instead, meeting in short bursts and living off correspondence. But it's still living, which is better than not-living.

Len moves in with his cold gun.

The aliens he hits first die. The rest balk their wings (terrible buzzing creatures, like flies who couldn't achieve lift) and adopt a defensive formation, weakest drones out in front to act as a living shield against Len's ice while the stronger ones harden their shells against the cold.

Of course, a hard shell means that temperatures that go too high will cook them from the inside out.

Mick hoists his own gun and waits for the signal.

Len gives it, and in he goes.

There are more aliens than he'd anticipated, more than usual for these sort of pod runs, but about halfway through the fight Len and Mick swap guns and that confuses the aliens yet again. No one expects Captain Cold to be wielding flame.

Mick ends up having to bring out his Kronos pulse rifle to finish them off, which is a surprise; it's been a while since there have been so many gathered in one spot.

"Big family or important target?" Mick asks Len, who snorts.

"No more important targets left," he replies. "Let's go."

Inside, there are kids.

But not a huge amount, no; there are only two. Not even toddlers, not really - they're something like a year and a half, max. Maybe two, if Mick's being generous. And they're all alone.

"Shit," Mick says, already wracking his brain to see if he can find anyone who wants babies. The foster families are filled to the brim; the underground network is stretched thin...

Len kneels next to the kids. One boy, one girl. "Hey," he says gently, like he's talking to Lisa way back when she was young. "No more aliens, kids. Just me and Mick."

Mick's not expecting it to work - the kids are too young to really understand what Len's saying, and the calm tone he's using will eventually take some time to sooth them - but somehow it does. They calm down and reach out their chubby little arms to Len.

People who think Len's cold-hearted have never seen how quick he melts.

"Hey," Len says gently. "Where's your mom?"

They sniffle. "Momma back?" one asks hopefully. At least, that's what Mick thinks she's asking, it's a little slurred with tears.

Mick thinks of the car outside. "Doubt it."

Len glares at him. "What about your dad?"

"Daddy's gone." That sounded rehearsed, or at least an echo of something said regularly enough by a loving adult for the kids to repeat as well.

"Mick?" Len asks, but he's already put away the cold gun and is gathering them into his arms.

"I'm thinking!" Mick says. "There's a couple of options..." He shakes his head. "No one immediate. We'll have to cover for a few days while I get in contact with people."

Len nods. "My name's Len," he tells them. "You can call me Lenny, if you like. What’s your names?"

Oh, crap, they're at Lenny status already? Damnit Len, you can't get attached to all of them...

"Dawn," the girl says proudly.

"Don," the boy says, equally proud. "I'm a Don."

"Nice to meet you both," Len says gently, and Mick already knows what's going to happen.

Sure enough, by the time - about three days - that Mick finds someone to take the kids in, Len's in love.

Worse, Mick's got a case of the same.

"We can't keep 'em," he tells Len.

"We definitely can't," Len agrees. "C'mon, Duckie, open up for the airplane..."

Don - now proudly nicknamed Duckie, under the assumption that Don is short for Donald - pouts and turns his face away.

Len sighs dramatically. "Oh, well," he says. "Guess I'll have to eat this myself."

"No!" Duckie yells. "Mine!"

"Fine. Then you eat it."

There's a tug at Mick's pants. He looks down.

Dawn - already fed - looks up at him hopefully. "Dawnie up?" she asks.

"Sure, sunshine," he says, and scoops her up. Dawn likes to be tall. "You wanna sit on my shoulders?"

"Yeah!"

Onto the shoulders she goes.

Dawn imperiously waves at Duckie, making him demand that Len lift him as well.

"We can't," Mick says again, but it's weaker.

"You sure?" Len asks.

Mick sighs.

------------------------------------------

It's not that Len and Mick don't try to find the kids' original family. They do! If there was family, even if they're all dead, they'd want to know so they could honor their traditions or some such like that. Len is a stickler for that, talking grimly about the non-consensual adoption of Jewish kids after the Holocaust by converting Christians and how he ain't ever gonna be a party to that sort of shit.

Mick's got fewer personal connections to the issue, but he agrees.

Unfortunately, the daycare has nothing to tell them who lived there or who was using it. Their files were burnt, their walls were scrubbed, everything. The car is equally useless, since the obvious evidence of shoddy hotwiring makes it clear that it was stolen.

Asking Dawnie or Duckie is equally useless. It's not their fault, they're not even three; they happily tell them about Momma (mostly that they want her back and how she made things better), and Daddy (gone), and Paw-Paw (gone away as opposed to just gone), and Auntie C and Uncle C.

Auntie C had cold hands and Uncle C always has the best toys, but they also went “away”.

Not that unusual a story, honestly, but not very helpful.

Honestly, at this point, all they can guess at this point is that, given their light brown skin tone, at least one of their parents was black, possibly both. Dawnie is darker than Duckie, but her hair is straight and fine while his shows distinct signs of kinks and curls as it grows out.

Honestly, they're not even all too sure about that much. Neither of them were ever all that good at identifying ethnicities.

Whatever. The kids are the kids, and that's good enough.

They do eventually find out their middle names, via Duckie’s excellent memory of the fact that their Mommy used to be a first-and-middle name person when she was angry.

Well, okay, he doesn't actually explain that. He just waggles his finger at a misbehaving Dawnie and says in excellent adult mimicry "Dawn Eleonora, stop!"

Duckie's middle name (Henry) takes a bit longer to figure out, but they extract it with patience.

"I can't believe you finally cracked and got kids," Lisa gushes over the phone. "Tell 'em Auntie Lisa is coming to visit!"

"We're not their parents, we're just -" Len starts, but she's already hung up.

Hurricane Lisa shows up a few weeks later - transit from Gotham to Central isn't that easy any more - and that's the moment Mick really considers to be the start of their family.

Lisa's always been the best communicator in the Snart family. The kids love her.

She asks them what names they want to call Len and Mick, since they're going to be their new parents now. Len assures them that Uncle is fine for both of them, but the kids never really had a Daddy before (because their Daddy's gone) and they are delighted by the idea of having more.

"I refuse to be Dad or Daddy," Len says stiffly. "I won't take that away from their original Dad."

Lisa and Mick share a knowing glance, fully aware that it isn't the real reason and the real reason is the man Len called dad right up until the day he died even though he'd long since lost the right to it.

"I called my dad 'Pa' most of the time I knew him," Mick offers helplessly.

"What about what's the word," Lisa says. "From your mom's dad. Sabba."

"No, that means grandfather," Len corrects. "Dad is Abba."

"Then be Abba."

"I think I'd rather be Lenny," Len says, nose wrinkled.

It doesn't help him, of course. Duckie and Dawnie pick up on Abba for him like lightning - they still call him Lenny half the time, but he's their Abba, just as Mick is their Pa as often as he is Mick or Mickey.

They boast to the other kids at their new, underground daycare that they have a Momma, a Daddy, an Abba and a Pa, but of course Momma and Daddy weren’t around. The other kids – most of them with adopted parents of their own by – solemnly agree that this is by far superior to the system demonstrated on the films they watch. Those poor kids on the TV with only a Mom and a Dad and no one else; how sad.

Kids.

Mick hadn't expected he'd love the two of them as much as he does. Oh, sure, he'd expected to feed them - he does - and to worry about them - oh, he does - but he hadn't really thought about the way his shoulders would relax every time he hears their voices. The way his chest would glow and swell every time they run to him first. How every goddamn thing they did was the best way to do that thing, because they were wonderful and brilliant children.

His wonderful and brilliant children.

He hadn't expected how Len would melt for them, and stay melted. How Len was terrified of screwing them up and how he never, ever lost his temper with them. How effective and devastating a disappointed look could be, because Len refused to spank them.

(Mick eventually finds out that the kids had picked up on his and Len's tendency to worry about each other and that Len had exploited this ruthlessly, asking them to think about whether their actions would make their Mickey sad before they did them. He curses Len's name and quickly makes up for lost time by suggesting that they pay close attention to Len to see if he also needs love and affection. Len gets covered in snuggles on the regular. He doesn't complain.)

The kids also grow ridiculously fast.

Okay, totally within normal levels for kids their age - the doc swears it's true - but they're people. They're little people.

Mick can't remember when his siblings became people all those years ago. Nate was still a baby, he remembers that much, but the rest of it...

He's very careful to use the fire pit and lighters and other Len-regulated fire sources, and his kids know everything there is to know about fire safety.

Len teaches them how to spot danger and how to avoid it. He also teaches them how to pick locks.

They're the best four-year-old robbers ever, even if Len really had meant for it to be another safety measure. The idea of them being captured by aliens because they couldn't get through a locked door - unacceptable.

"Also, it's good finger coordination development," Len says, lying like a rug. It is, of course, but that’s blatantly not the reason he’s passing on his skills.

There’s still plenty they don’t know about the kids’ lives before Len and Mick found them: for example, Dawnie and Duckie are clearly twins, but they don’t know when their birthday is. As a result, they argue about it at length - sometime early in the year, they think, because of the vague memories of snow. They end up having January 23 for Dawnie and February 7 for Duckie, just because it's easier to give in than to explain that twins are born on the same day.

At any rate, it gives them more time to pick presents now that the kid are old enough to appreciate it.

Mick and Len are just debating the question of gifts - it's May and Mick had unwisely brought up the issue of half-birthdays - when the old Particle Accelerator, an abandoned and mostly destroyed STAR Labs, suddenly goes up in a painfully familiar mushroom cloud of orange light. It doesn't spread the way the first one did, but it does go up like a goddamn firecracker.

"Oh, shit," Len says.

Mick just runs to get a car.

They're the only ones going towards the labs rather than away; Mick sees people ducking into shelters in well-practiced motions.

The Rogues' war against the aliens was doing that much, at least: the aliens avoided Central more than they attacked it, nowadays. They were focused on subduing other parts of the world.

The same protection applied in Gotham, under Lisa and her girlfriend Selina.

The same in Bludhaven, where Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn - previously part of Lisa's Rogues - had set up their own Rogues.

The same in Starling, which had reverted to its old name out of habit, and where Oliver and Felicity had taken their sweet time about accepting the Rogues' offer to help but now considered themselves the leaders of the Starling Rogues instead of Team Arrow, a name they still used to refer to their long-lost teammates.

Mardon hadn't wanted to leave Central at first, but he couldn't resist Len's carefully structured offer to be the leader of the Rogues in the Windy City. Shawna, who'd been from Chicago initially, went with him to keep his ego in check.

Scudder had managed to get over himself enough to agree to work for Len again, his fear of the aliens managing to break through even his narcissism. After half a year learning how to fight aliens at Len's side, he'd been dispatched to L.A. to teach the self-absorbed assholes there how to really fight an alien movie. He liked Hollywood.

Rosa preferred San Francisco. Len was just happy that there was distance between the two of them - as much as they were still technically together, Rosa's obsession with Sam faded when he wasn't in her sight and she remembered things. Things like having been a first-rate computer engineer, once upon a time, and something of a genius. She did well in San Francisco and the nearby Palo Alto, between its tech industry and its loopier residents.

People were starting to figure out that where there were Rogues, there could be a city again.

Mick wonders, again, if he should inform Len that he'd become a general, but as always decides against it. Len thinks of the Rogues as his crew, albeit a crew that has scattered across the nation and each of whom is leading their own hand-crafted militia unit in the protection of their territory.

No need to trouble Len with politics. It's not like they had anyone strong enough to actually do more than hold back the aliens for a while.

At least, they didn't until they got to the center of the Accelerator, where they found a very confused-looking Barry Allen rubbing his eyes and shouting, "Guys? I'm back! Guys? Is anyone here?"

"Holy crap," Mick says.

Len is somewhat more fluent than that. He always did have a facility for Yiddish curses (Mick particularly likes the one that goes 'may you be as a lamp - so that you can be hung during the day and lit on fire every night!', all in about three or four harsh-voweled words.).

"What now, boss?" Mick asks.

"Now," Len says, smiling like he can't stop, "now we have hope."

"Snart?" Barry asks when he sees them approach. "Rory? What are you doing here? What happened to this place?" He gestures at the ruined room.

"You've been gone five years," Len says. "It's been an interesting time. Let me tell you all about it..."

-----------------------------------------------

"I can't believe it," Barry says, looking shell-shocked, his fingers clenched around a mug of hot chocolate. Len had broken out the good stuff for their guest, which is to say, the Swiss Miss with mini marshmallows. "Five years - and so much has changed -"

"The emotion you're looking for is 'I go away for five years and you assholes trash the place'," Len informs him.

Dawnie giggles. "You said a bad word."

"There are no bad words," Len tells her. "Only bad men."

"Not what Mrs. Levy says..."

"See, that's one thing," Barry says. "You guys have kids! Small adorable kids!"

"We're not small," Duckie says. "We're four."

"Paragons of age and maturity," Mick agrees solemnly.

Barry chuckles, but it still sounds strained and tense.

"Can you still time travel?" Mick asks, curious, thinking of the lost Waverider, still stuck who-knows-when.

"No. Well, a little. Not enough to help."

"What do you mean?"

"Speed force said I was abusing it and took it away," Barry explains. "Even though I tried not to mess up the timeline -"

"Let me get the sequence of this right," Len drawls. "You get told by everyone not to change time. You do it. Everything gets fucked up. You do it again. More fucked up. Speed force shows up personally, says don't do it. You do it anyway. Speedforce comes and gives you an ass-kicking, saying don't do it. And you do it again, but this time you're trying not to mess up the timeline. And you're surprised it yanked your cord?"

Barry makes a face. "Yeah. I've gotten the lecture."

"I'm not comfortable with how we're anthropomorphizing forces of nature," Mick grumbles.

"You think this is a problem, try being in the middle of a three-way argument between Death, Dream and Destiny about whether or not the way your life ended was narratively satisfying," Len grumbles back.

Barry looks a question at Mick, who shakes his head. He doesn't have any answers. He doesn't even want to have questions.

"So my friends..?" Barry asks instead.

"Like we said," Len says, easily distracted away from disturbing subjects. "Most of 'em are fine, just stuck on Earth-2. The only way to get 'em back is Cisco -"

"Who's stuck in the matrix?"

"Matrix-like stasis pod," Len says. "Good news is, you pop 'em open, people inside should be fine. Probably not even notice that time passed."

"And the bad news?"

"There's a shitload of pods, and we've got no idea which one your boy's in," Len says frankly. "Or your girl, neither."

"Why didn't Iris go to Earth-2 with the others?"

"No clue," Len tells him honestly. "Not like they really told us much. Cisco was hit first, yeah. West held up pretty well for a long time, but we were allies, not buddies. She was secretive. Ran a radio program. But a few years back, it cut off."

"She might be dead," Mick warns.

"She's not," Barry says firmly. Not the slightest trace of doubt.

"Speed force tell you that?" Mick asks skeptically.

Barry grins crookedly. "Actually, yes," he says. "It said I could save her if I took it slow."

"What does that even mean?" Mick demands.

"It means we're gonna save the world again," Len says, pretending to be put out about it. "One pod-break at a time."

"Do you know how to get into them?" Barry asks.

"Sure, but the risk's too high," Len says. "Unless, of course, I have a speedster on my side."

Barry swallows and sits up straighter, like he's making a decisions. "In that case, consider me one of your Rogues."

Judging by the delighted look on Len's face, his apocalypse has been made.

------------------------------------------------------------

There's a giggle and a thump and then more giggling.

Len has become a veteran child-raiser in the last two years, if he does say so himself, which is why he puts down the blueprints and heads over to the living room where the giggling is coming from.

Barry is sprawled out on his back on the Twister board, grinning helplessly as the twins crow at him.

"I see you're hard at work," Len says dryly.

Barry beams at him. "They said you and Mick refused to play it with them," he says earnestly. "What was I supposed to do, not teach them?"

"Like you couldn't not teach them the Macarena and the Chicken Dance?"

"Hey, you made me an honorary uncle when I moved in," Barry points out with some justice. Len hadn't been sure how else to explain 'magnet for trouble so I need to keep an eye on him' to the kids after years of refusing to cohabitate with any other family. "Part of that involves teaching them stuff that will drive you nuts."

"Not while you live here, I think. The true terror is Lisa."

Barry nods so fast that he's blurring, undoubtedly remembering when Lisa had managed to dig up some Tickle Me Elmo dolls for the kids' fourth birthday. Len had nearly strangled her - it was a rare item nowadays, so she'd clearly put time and effort into finding them, but it was also designed to drive Len, Mick and now Barry absolutely insane.

"You are menaces, you know," Len informs the twins.

"Like Dennis!" Dawn says excitedly. "Dennis the menace."

"Pa and Abba are pretty good menaces, too," Duckie says loyally.

"I'm not a good menace?" Barry pretends to pout.

"No! You're a hero!" Duckie proclaims. He’s maintained that ever since he found a Flash action figure.

Dawnie gives Barry a hug. "That's almost as good," she assures him with her nearly-a-five-year-old-really solemnity.

Barry laughs and hugs back. "Now," he says, making a big show of checking his watch. "I think you promised me that if I showed you how to play Twister..."

The twins giggle and run away from whatever chore they promised. Barry doesn't give chase, just watches them fondly.

"You're good at this," Len tells him.

"I'm a little jealous," Barry admits. "I've always wanted kids."

"You and Iris...?"

"Oh, no," Barry says. "We were only just getting married. Do you know what Joe would do to me if she'd gotten pregnant? Shotgun wedding doesn't even begin to describe it."

Len frowns. "But if you were getting married already..?"

"Doesn't mean Joe wants to think about us having sex," Barry says dryly. "At least if we were married, he could imagine that we conceived by magic or something."

Len shakes his head. He doesn't understand, but then again, he hadn't ever really expected to have kids.

"You're good with them," he says again.

"They're good kids," Barry agrees. "I hope that if Iris and I ever do have kids, they'd turn out like that." He thinks about it for a second. "Maybe slightly less larcenous."

"That's all good parenting," Len says proudly. "Now c'mon, I want you to see the plans."

Barry nods and is standing by Len's side before the words fade away. "What's the next step, now that we've cleaned out Central City?"

"Figuring out a way to consolidate our gains - installing those shield-makers Felicity reverse-programmed from alien ship tech, for one thing. I want Central City to live like a community again, not just refugees."

Barry nods.

"Also," Len says, "I think it's time to go north."

"North?"

"The largest single pod housing facility in the Midwest is located in the Dakotas," Len says. "We break that, we're talking tens of thousands of people. Possibly hundreds."

"Crap," Barry says, blinking. Most of the pod facilities were measured in the dozens or hundreds. "That means transportation. Serious and immediate transportation. That many people all together will definitely catch the attention of the local patrol ship."

Len stays silent.

"Unless that's the goal," Barry says.

"Mick's in Starling getting a crash course in alien tech," Len tells him. "Between Felicity's deductions and his own knowledge of piloting from his time with the Time Masters, I think we can do it."

"Are you planning on stealing an alien ship?" Barry demands, half-horrified and half-impressed. Mostly impressed.

Len smirks. "I told you, Scarlet. I intend for Central City to be free. The shields will help. Having our own gun-ship? That'll help more."

Barry nods. "And the people -"

"If we can defend them in the ships, we can do a slower transport. Cars, trucks, buses, the works."

"It's going to be massive."

"Where's your sense of adventure?"

"Oh, don't get me wrong," Barry says. "We're opening pods, which means we could be finding Cisco and Iris. I'm totally in. I'm just saying, it's going to be massive. Who's gonna watch the kids?"

"Mrs. Levy's agreed. Her husband was podded, too."

Barry nods. "Slow and steady," he says. It's been his mantra when it comes to dealing with the frustration that there isn't a single bad guy he can punch to make things better. "Let's save the world."

"Let's steal an alien ship," Len corrects him. "Stop making me sound heroic."

"Oh, no," Barry says, voice dry as dust. "Heroic? You? Never."

"Shut up."

---------------------------------------------------

"I don't want to sit this one out," Barry says stubbornly, but he's already given in, Mick can tell. More to the point, Mick can tell that Len can tell.

It's in the way Barry’s already started to make mac-and-cheese for the kids.

(They'd all been delighted to discover that certain farm-to-pre-made-food had been so automated that re-starting them was a cinch even after the apocalypse, but none more than the kids.)

"Uncle Barry!" Duckie shouts from the next room over. "We wanna piggy-back ride!"

"When the food is cooking," Barry automatically calls back, then scowls as he reveals his intention to be there in a few minutes. "Len, if you're sure -"

"You know we can do it without you," Len says reasonably. "And you know they're expecting you."

Barry sighs and nods. The aliens had immediately pegged Barry as the leader of the resistance once he had made its reappearance, presumably based on their snooping through old files, and they'd taken measures against him that Len was avidly noting down for future speedster problems (Barry seemed to attract future speedsters like flies, before - undoubtedly he would again; besides, what if he got around to having kids?)

The calculators behind the alien army, back on their homeworld, had made assumptions about Barry and Barry's inability to sit a mission he led out.

The calculators still had no conception of how to deal with Len. It helps to have all of your records eliminated, hard and soft copy both, so that the aliens look at you and see some asshole who got rung up on a single manslaughter count (murder in the heat of passion had been the final charge, and wasn't that hilarious?) who was assumed dead less than six months later.

They don't see Len.

And that's the way Len likes it, thank you very much.

Even without that well-timed deletion, though, Mick could've told them that none of them would ever have been enough to predict Len.

Mick has enough trouble doing it, even after all these years. That's why he only gets it then, and waits until they're in the car to actually bring it up.

The car, not the modified alien ship that even now patrols the skies of Central City.

"You think this is the one."

Len glances at him and smirks. "You always did know me best."

Mick nods. Normally, he'd leave it at that, willing to trust in Len, but maybe having two kids has made him a bit more open to actually talking about stuff out loud. "The reason this pod storage expects the Flash to hit it is 'cause that's where they've hidden his girlfriend."

"It was always too well guarded," Len murmurs. "I knew they had to have some valuable people there. It's not until a gap in their security opened up - a very specific gap, best exploited by a speedster - that I realized it was their idea of a trap. And to bait a trap..."

"Why not just fake us out?"

"Aliens," Len says. "Calculators for brain. They understand subtlety in attacking, sometimes, but not subterfuge. This trap is a step forward for them."

Mick nods. "Did you tell him?"

Len shakes his head. "I might be wrong," he offers.

"You don't think you are," Mick corrects. "You think Barry won't be able to resist the obvious trap."

Len shrugs, conceding it. Barry's been working with them for eight months, by now - long enough to celebrate the kids' fifth birthday with them as a much-beloved uncle - and Len usually trusts Barry to listen to the plan.

But, Mick supposes, this is Iris West. She always did make Barry irrational.

"You think maybe Cisco as well?"

Len is silent for a moment.

Mick glances at him sidelong.

"I don't have any reason to think so," he says slowly. "And yet - I hope he is. There haven't been any transfers out of this facility. But he'll be as hidden as Iris is prominent."

Mick nods. "Then we'll look twice as hard," he says, knowing they'll be working on a very limited time frame.

Len smirks. "Oh, you bet we will."

Mick thinks about the extra surprises he packed into his gear this time, the ones not even Len knows about, and wonders if today is the day he'll get to play with them.

Turns out it is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Oh, God, Iris!"

"Barry?" Iris gasps, her knees buckling, but Barry is there to catch her.

There's gasping and hugging and kissing.

Mick edges back.

Len studies the wall pointedly.

"Forgot how awkward these reunions are," Mick mutters to Len. They hate public displays of emotion.

"Don't remind me," Len says through gritted teeth. "Lisa's taking care of Cisco's, uh, reunion."

Mick snorts. "When's Ms. Levy dropping off the kids?"

"Soon enough. Figured Barry ought to be alone for this."

"Figured the kids didn't need to be getting the wrong idea about being all touchy feely, you mean."

"Or getting an advanced education in human reproduction. Besides, I was thinking we could have Cisco knock open the door to Earth-2, stat, before the aliens figure out how to stop us."

"Good plan."

"Told Lisa," Len says. "I figure they'll be opening the door pretty soon now."

There's a gasp from where Barry and Iris are intertwined.

Len and Mick look over.

Barry's sitting down, looking dazed, like Iris got in a good punch. More likely she said something, Mick supposes. Maybe she got a new boyfriend in the two and a half years he was gone before she also got disappeared?

It's been nearly four years since then, too. The staggered aging of the pod-freed humans and their free counterparts was one of the weirdest elements of the whole apocalypse.

"I'm so sorry," Barry says to Iris, who has sunk down next to him and is clutching his hand. No new boyfriend, then. "God, Iris - if I'd known - if I'd had any idea -"

"I didn't either," she tells him. "I had no clue until a month or two after you'd gone - and then - oh, Bear. I thought I'd lost you forever. I thought it was all I'd ever have of you."

"Of course," Barry says, wrapping his free hand around hers. "I'm so sorry I left you at all - if I'd been here -"

"If you'd been here, the aliens would've adjusted their plans to attack you first," Len says dryly.

They blink at him, clearly having forgotten anyone else was in the room.

Mick's just happy they decided to go with 'shocking revelations' instead of 'joyous reunion sex'.

"Cisco's free, too," Len tells the two of them. "We found him in a hidden chamber."

"Cisco," Iris breathes. "Oh, god, Cisco! Barry - that means he can go to Earth-2 -"

"He'll be able to get Joe and Wally and the others -"

One of Cisco's holes in reality open up in the middle of the room.

Mick hasn't seen them live before, but it's a welcome sight regardless, especially when Cisco and a second speedster stumble out first, quickly followed by Detective West and a handful of others: Killer Frost, a guy that looks like Harrison Wells, a girl dressed similarly enough to the speedsters for Mick to hope that they've now got three speedsters for the aliens to contend with.

He glances at Len, who's smirking his ass off in a way that signifies real pleasure and anticipation.

"You think..?"

"The aliens went for "em first deliberately," Len replies in an undertone, understanding Mick's unvoiced question. "Their calculators-for-brains know that the odds are against them if we've got the full set of speedsters."

Mick nods, pleased. It's well past time for the world to rid itself of the alien scourge so that they can go back to having regular communities and not having to depend on a group of radical net-neutrality activists to man the various ISPs in the area so that everyone else could cooperate using the Internet.

Joe goes straight for Iris and Barry, shouting their names.

Mick sighs.

More reunions. Great.

If only the house were big enough for them to leave...

There are tears. So many tears.

Barry keeps saying, "If I'd only known -" and getting shushed.

Eventually Len runs out of patience (thank god) and says, "As touching as this is, we're starting to get near capacity. Maybe we ought to stop with the hugging and get with the planning?"

"We're nowhere near capacity yet," Barry says. "We have at least room for -" A quick count. "- uh, okay, only ten more. But that’s still something!"

"Capacity?" Joe asks.

"The aliens attack places where humans cluster in too-large numbers," Barry explains. “Well, they try, anyway. It’s a reasonable precaution not to cluster too large.”

"So that's why Snart and his buddy are here," Joe says, nodding. "You're working together against the aliens."

Mick doesn't like how that implies that Barry would otherwise pick literally any group of people other than them if they weren't useful, but he supposes if you've not been around for the last few years, you couldn't be expected to understand. Communal living is the way people survive, now.

"Iris," Joe continues. "What about..?"

"I was captured by a pod," she says, her voice breaking. “I looked through all the pods when I was rescued – they weren’t there –”

Joe’s face is ashen, grieved.

“What were you looking for?” Mick asks.

“My babies,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes.

“You let Barry reproduce?” Len asks, sounding appalled.

Everyone glares at him.

“They might not be dead,” Mick offers into the silence. “Aliens usually ignore kids if they’re on their own – not a large enough heat signature – and there’ve been really good networks for recycling lost kids into the community.”

“Recycling’s not the word,” Barry says, correction made more out of habitual bickering than actual attempt to correct Mick. “But you think – there might be a chance?”

“It’s always possible,” Len says. “Even if we do track 'em down, though, will you recognize even 'em? It’s been three years, and babies grow fast.”

“I’m their mother.”

“Three years,” Len says implacably. “Kids. Trust me, I’ve got two of my own.”

“Who let you reproduce?” Joe asks with a bit of a sneer.

“They’re adopted,” Barry says quickly while Wally elbows Joe, likely more because of the way Len’s hand moved to sit on his gun. “And very happy. Good kids. Ms. Levy have them?”

“She’ll be dropping ‘em off soon.” Len tilts his head to the side a second before Mick hears the sound of the door opening. “Make that, dropping ‘em off now.”

“Abba!” Dawnie shouts. “Pa! We drew pictures today!”

Mick mentally canvasses how much fridge space they have left. They may need to start overlapping…

Dawnie and Duckie skitter into the room, big grins on their faces, sticky hands clenched around artwork made in crayon, and Mick watches in amusement as the amount of tension in the room relaxes as everyone smiles helplessly at the adorable kids.

Then it all goes to shit, because Dawnie’s smile fades into something nervous and wary and wanting and she stares at Iris and squeaks, “…Momma?”

-----------------------------------------------------------

It started, of course, with a lot of yelling in surprise and "holy crap!" and re-introductions and hugging.

Then, of course, came the recriminations.

"Why is my grandson think he's named after a duck?" Joe demands. He's a bit sore because the kids only had the vaguest recollections of their Paw-Paw.

"His name was Donald," Mick says defensively. The nickname had been his. "How were we supposed to know?"

"He was already nicknamed Don," Joe snaps. "Just like my dad."

"I'm amazed they didn't kill them," Wally mutters to girl speedster.

"You saying I hurt kids?" Len snarls at him. "Or just that I'm incompetent?"

"I didn't mean -"

"I bet."

"I'm just saying," Wally says, starting to get annoyed. "You're supervillains -"

"And you were gone, hero."

"That's not Wally's fault," Cisco exclaims.

"Oh, yeah, he's just saying – just like I'm just saying -"

"Why is everyone fighting?" Duckie asks in a small voice.

Mick puts his fingers to his mouth and whistles as loud as he can. Given that he's been using his whistles to silence entire stadiums, it's pretty effective in such a small space.

Everyone shuts up.

"It doesn't matter," Mick says. "We can fight about the details once the kids are asleep."

The Earth-2 people look at him like he kicked a puppy by admitting that they were going to keep fighting. Dawnie and Duckie (and, amusingly, Barry) all relax because this is something familiar. Len and Mick always schedule their fights for after the kids are asleep, explaining to the kids that it helped them get out their annoyance in a reasonable fashion; as a result, the kids have gotten used to thinking of fights that can be rescheduled as no big deal. No need to worry until you wake up in the morning - if the fight is still ongoing at that point, then you know it's serious.

"Let's go have dinner instead," Barry says. "We can talk over that."

"I can make Grandma West's noodles," Joe agrees.

"Not in my kitchen, you ain't," Mick says, because he's got a reputation as a kitchen tyrant to uphold. Neither Barry nor Len can cook, and if he gives an inch now, they'll be back to eating uncooked pasta. In the interests of avoiding another fight, though... "Maybe another time."

They all go to the kitchen. Mick ends up serving out a few cooked chickens he'd been freezing with plans to use over the next few weeks in different preparations, but chicken enchiladas are good for a crowd.

Most of the conversation is fixed on safe subjects, like goings-on on Earth-2 (alien free and a little boring, but for the gorillas) or the kids' achievements.

"They're even doing above their grade level in math," Barry boasts. He's selling the kids hard, but in fairness to Barry, he always does that. It doesn't feel personal.

"That part definitely came from Iris," Joe jokes. "I remember your math scores, Bear."

Mick personally thinks it came from the hours of tutoring Len put in with the kids, but - he reminds himself - they're trying not to fight.

"Kids, dishes or no dessert," he says.

The kids leap to their feet and start collecting plates. There's no dishwasher - or spare electricity to run one - so they'll be in the kitchen extra-long washing plates this time.

"Aww, let 'em have a day off," Wally says, winking at them. "Not every day they get their whole family back."

"If they don't wash the plates, they'll become unusable," Len says, pointedly ignoring Wally’s phrasing. "Humid climate like this, we'll get mold right quick. Rules are rules for a reason."

He waves the kids off.

"Strict," Joe comments. It doesn't sound like a compliment, though it doesn't necessarily sound like an insult, either. He chuckles, his mind clearly shifting directions. "Bet things'll be different when they go back home. Be careful not to give them culture shock, Iris."

"Home?" Len echoes. It's good he does, because Mick was going to speak and the wording wasn't going to be intelligible. "Not sure if your skills have deteriorated in the last few years, Detective, but they're home now."

"I just meant when they go home with Barry and Iris," Joe says.

He doesn't even mean anything by it, that's the most infuriating part of it; he just says it like it's a fact.

Mick sees red anyway.

"Now listen here, you little -" he starts, but Len's hand snaps out and catches Mick's wrist in an iron grip, signaling silence.

"Mick," Len says calmly. "Don't overreact."

"Overreact?”

"Yes. What's happened here is clear." He smirks. "Detective West has gone senile."

"I what?" Joe exclaims. “I have not –”

"You've lost your fucking mind," Mick says. "If you think anyone is taking the kids away from us."

"I just meant -"

"You'd think as an adopted father himself, he'd have more sympathy," Len says. "Unfortunately not."

"Excuse me if I don't want a pair of supervillains anywhere near my grandkids -," Joe says.

"They're our kids, asshole," Mick says.

"And we're grateful you took care of them for a bit while we were gone, but now Barry's here and Iris' here and I'm here, even Wally's here, and we're obviously more fit to raise them, that isn't even in question -"

"Dad, maybe we should wait -" Iris starts to say soothingly.

"No, Iris, I don't think this can wait. I don't see why there's even any debate about this. They're kids. They need a good, loving, stable and safe home environment, and we'll be able to provide that."

"And we won't?" Len says dangerously.

Joe snorts. "No offense meant, Snart, but you're hardly a good role model, and I can't imagine you know anything about raising kids to be anything other than a pack of criminals. Which isn't happening, in case I wasn't clear about that up front."

"Ain’t really your decision."

"No, it's Barry and Iris', as their parents," Joe says like he's speaking to an idiot. Barry and Iris look uncomfortable. "And they will obviously want to take Don and Dawn -"

"We're not going anywhere!" Dawnie yells from the doorway.

Mick immediately twists in his seat to look at them. Their faces are red and they're clearly upset, clutching at each other for comfort.

"We don't want to go away," Duckie adds, his lower lip trembling so hard he's nearly stuttering. "We wanna stay with Pa and Abba -"

"Don, my little guy," Joe says, standing and moving towards them, "you don't understand - you'll be going back to your Daddy and your Momma and your Paw-Paw -"

"We wanna stay with Pa and Abba," Dawnie says, starting to cry, Duckie right beside her. "We wanna stay! We don't wanna go with you! We hate you!"

Joe takes another step forward, clearly intent on convincing them. Mick gets up in his chair, equally intent on punching him in the face - Len is getting up, hand on his gun, face murderous -

"We're not going anywhere!" Dawnie says, and she grabs Duckie's hand and they turn -

There's a crackle of lightning and they're gone.

Everyone blinks.

"Barry!" Joe exclaims. "Bring them back this instant!"

"Uh," Barry says. "I didn't do that."

"Another speedster?" Cisco exclaims.

"I think," Iris says very carefully, "another two, actually."

"Whatever," Len says, clearly done with all of this; the revelation about the kids isn’t even making a dent in his rage. Mick sympathizes. "I don't care. Now stay down here while Mick and I go fix the damage you just did."

The kids are curled up in bed, just like they were taught to go when they’re angry.

Good.

Len and Mick spend three hours getting the now-vibrating-fast-enough-to-hurt children to calm down, explaining that they're not going to be taken away. Eventually, with the help of multiple assurances, a few more comfort animals than they're usually allowed, and a bedtime story or four, they fall asleep.

Then Len comes downstairs, Mick right beside him, and says "Barry, get Detective West the hell out of my house. Take him to Ms. Levy's place and tell them to send a signal to the next train transport - I want him out of Central City by the end of the week."

"You can't do that!" Joe shouts, whatever efforts to calm him swiftly evaporating. “Listen here, you little –”

"Joe," Barry interrupts. "You don’t understand. He can."

"What?"

"He's the head of the Rogues," Barry says. "They protect the city. If he says you're out, then you're out, and you're lucky to be out alive."

"You'd never let that happen."

"No, but - damnit, Joe, he's my boss now! And a good friend! His kids call me uncle!"

"Your kids, Bear, not his kids -"

"His kids! Their kids! Joe, they've raised them for three years; that's more than Iris and certainly more than me. They're the only parents Duckie and Dawnie remember. We're not taking them away."

"Iris -"

"I agree with Barry, Dad," Iris says. She shakes her head a little. "Dad, if Mom had shown up when I was ten or twelve and decided she was taking me away, I'd have thrown a fit about leaving you, and rightfully so. If we have a big fight about this, they're going to pick them, not us, and then next thing you know I'm not going to get to see them anymore and that's just not acceptable. I lost three years of their lives. I'm not missing another day."

Joe is silent, for once. He doesn't agree, Mick can tell that much from the way he's scowling, but he's silent. Good enough.

"West can stay," Mick says, and Len glances at him. "Kids ought to have a chance to know him. One chance. If he acts up in any way, I'll burn him."

He means it, too.

"Won't that be more traumatic?" Wally asks, crossing his arms.

"I'll say he was an alien spy masquerading as their grandpa," Mick shoots back. "They'll be cool with it."

Joe bristles, but Iris glares him silent.

"Let's at least try to make this work," Barry says.

He always was an optimist.

-------------------------------------------------------

To say that this wasn't the life Iris was expecting is something of an understatement.

She'd planned a life with Barry by her side having adventures as a journalist, maybe a kid or two down the line to be taken care of at home. Maybe by her, maybe by Barry, maybe by Joe if he'd retired - maybe even with a nice babysitter helping them out.

Then Barry went away into the Speed Force - for good, she'd thought - and she was pregnant and then she had a new life in front of her: single motherhood, with help from Dad and Wally and her friends, of the two most amazing (and infuriating) babies of all time.

And then the aliens came for them, and her support system disappeared, and she'd thought of herself as a grim Sarah Conner, the prototypical mother figure, determined to survive and to keep her children alive until they could push the aliens back.

Then - nothing.

The sleep of the pod was like sleeping in bed, deep and dreamless as far as she recalls. Like a coma, maybe. Like Barry's descriptions of his own coma, at least.

And now -

Now, Iris has a life with Barry by her side having adventures as the captain of her own alien warship, and she still hopes to have a kid or two down the line to take care of at home when the aliens are gone. But she's also a part-time Momma to the two best kid-speedsters in the world - Cisco calls them the Tornado Twins - and she co-parents them with Barry and his supervillains.

One of whom is the widely acknowledged commander-in-chief of the United States, leader of the real fight against the aliens and to whose offshoot Rogue branches the armed forces have swarmed to pledge their allegiance - not that he knows it, since Mick still refuses to tell Len that the people he's commanding aren't just surprisingly competent criminals - and the other one is the guy who makes sure said commander remains functional. Iris wouldn't have believed that Len thinks ketchup is a legitimate vegetable if she hadn't walked into that argument herself, but she did, so she guesses that if Len has inadvertently become leader of the free world, that makes Mick his First Arsonist or something, and they're all very lucky to have him, too.

They all live together, with Barry and Iris having one master bedroom and Len and Mick sharing the other, and the kids have the entire downstairs to run around in. The downstairs is a disaster zone as a result, of course.

It's okay; Iris spends quite a bit of her time captaining the newly dubbed (by utterly unanimous agreement) Enterprise and supporting Barry from the air. It's awesome.

Wally's slipped happily into the role of Kid Flash and cool uncle, and even Joe has come around.

It's not the life she imagined, but it's a good life. She likes this life.

She leans back in her captain's chair. "Show them in," she orders, and watches as a handful of strange-looking aliens and one human, all dressed in shiny green suits, walk in. Iris smiles. "Welcome to the Enterprise, representatives of - how did you call it - the Green Lantern Corps. Let's talk about what exactly it is you think you can do for Earth - and whether we're going to agree to any of it."

#dccoldwave #westallen #leonard snart #mick rory #barry allen #iris west #my fic

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Freezer added to Google Docs

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love My Freezer

 hutchyb for Getty Images/iStockphoto

There’s a technique — even a flair — to freezing food successfully

My mother is what you might call a culinary cryogenicist. Long before the crew at the Noma Food Lab grew their first flavor spore, my mom was experimenting with the effects of age and temperature on all kinds of foodstuffs: the last two bites of some mac and cheese. Four shrimp. One-third of a pork chop. Three matzo balls. Half a bag of green beans tied shut with a trash bag twist-tie. An old joint. Eight slices of rye bread. Raisins. So. Much. Ham. And that’s just the first shelf of the freezer.

It was a talent she inherited. Her own mother was a master of the freezer arts, best exemplified by the very same “tray of frozen shrimp” offered to us on every grandparent visit for more than two decades; it became a running family joke. As a member of the next generation, however, my family’s faith in the preservation power of cold turned me into a devoted freezer snob. For most of my adult life, my freezer has remained a sacred space reserved for only the most cold-hardy ingredients — ice cream, popsicles, those giant cocktail ice spheres, and maybe the occasional box of toaster waffles or bag of frozen peas. Meat? God no. Fish? Please, back away and leave quietly.

In my mind, freezing things ruined their precious molecular integrity by turning them into rock-hard cubes. Meat is normally prized for its “freshness.” In the fields, crops are carefully covered to prevent freezing, so why put them under such duress in your own home? Having kids a few years ago loosened me up a bit — show me one child-rearing American household a without a frozen bag of dinosaur-shaped chicken blobs lurking somewhere. But overall, for the better part of the last decade, my freezer has remained as sleek and food-free as an after-hours Apple Store.

But when COVID-19 hit I admittedly went into full hoarder mode. My diet, like my fashion, is dictated by my mood (it’s also why I’m a chronic over-packer). With annual memberships to Instacart, Amazon Fresh, and a handful of specialty grocers down the street, I’d become accustomed to getting all the ingredients to sate any craving within an hour of it hitting. Maintaining that level of spontaneity in the time of supermarket lines and impossible delivery queues meant stocking up in ways I’d never fathomed before.

Even with a family of four eating three-plus meals a day, the kind of inventory I was sporting needed to be able to hang out a while. And so, it was with deep reservations that I finally began freezing things — though the real miracle didn’t occur until I began un-freezing them.

First I tried a pork tenderloin, one of three I had purchased at Costco a few weeks earlier. Following the advice of the pros, I took it out of the freezer and put it in my fridge overnight, cooked it as usual, and it was… fine. Good, even. Next I tried salmon — I’ve had terrible experiences with frozen seafood in the past, so my hopes were low for the three rosy-pink portions I defrosted and broiled. But again, the resulting fish was surprisingly moist, fatty, firm, delicious.

After that I started throwing everything in the freezer just to see: ground turkey, chicken thighs. All were fine. Then I moved into pizza dough, shredded cheese, blanched vegetables; then on to chili, tortillas, pancakes, whole loaves of bread, coffee (while dry coffee beans won’t technically “go bad,” their flavor and aroma suffer over time). Pretty much every single thing I froze — and later unfroze — emerged as relatively unharmed and tasty as the day I bought it. (Notable exceptions included skim milk and some poorly wrapped steaks, and it took some serious trial and error with fresh greens.)

Now, as we go into week five… or six? of “safer at home” measures, my freezer has transformed from a sterile ice-storage facility to a clutch partner in culinary crime. Today the once-barren shelves are buckling beneath the weight of dated and labeled baggies and bins with enough perfectly preserved food to more than bridge the gap between bi-weekly produce box deliveries and masked-up grocery runs.

But as it turns out, my mom and grandmother were, in fact, artists — there is a technique, even a flair to freezing food successfully. Wrap something improperly or defrost incorrectly and you might not just risk the integrity of your ingredients, but also your health. So after a month or so of embracing my familial fate and becoming a frozen food convert, here are a few lessons I’ve learned:

The Container Matters

I know, plastic is the enemy, but those fancy glass containers can crack in the freezer. According to the experts, the best way to freeze food is in a vacuum-seal bag that you suction yourself with one of those fancy machines to minimize air (air is your enemy in the great freezer wars). I don’t have one of those — though I’ve been eyeing this one on Amazon — so I use regular old freezer-grade zipper bags and press out as much air as possible before sealing. There’s also a trick where you mimic a vacuum sealer with a drinking straw, slipping it in the corner of the bag and sucking out as much air as you can before pulling the straw out at the last minute, but I felt weird inhaling all those funky meat fumes. My Instagram feed has been full of ads for these pricey silicone bags that I hear work well but I’ve yet to give them a test run.

Either way, you’re going for minimal air exposure and some thickness barrier — a little cushion between your food and the freezer air will help prevent that dreaded freezer burn, a damaging mix of oxidation and dehydration.

Prep Is Key

For meat and fish, you generally want to remove them from their original packaging and re-wrap in individual portions before freezing. Wrapping each cut in an extra layer of plastic before putting them in the zipper bag adds another degree of protection. Timing is key here. Freeze cuts of meat immediately after you get them home, or better yet, buy them pre-frozen. There are entire industries built around freezing fish in a way that sacrifices the least in the way of flavor and texture, so trust the pros — they know what they’re doing.

Vegetables, for the most part, should be quickly blanched before freezing. The drag here is that in the process of blanching, they absorb too much water to get any sort of good roasty char later, but it’s a small price to pay for having quality seasonal produce year-round. Before you blanch, prep the ingredients the way you plan to eat them, meaning separating broccoli and cauliflower into florets, snapping the ends off green beans, and chopping greens. Then boil a big pot of water and dunk the vegetables in for about a minute before plunging immediately into a big bowl of icy water. This will keep them from continuing to cook and turning to mush. The next part is key: Dry everything as best you can. The more water, the thicker the tectonic ice coating you’ll get on every piece. Then put everything into baggies and freeze.

Fruit freezing techniques vary — it all depends what you want to use them for. No amount of freezer skill will recreate the experience of biting into a fresh peach after it’s been frozen. But for smoothies, pie fillings, baking, or juice, most fruit will freeze just fine. Bananas freeze great, peel and all. Berries you’ll want to rinse, dry, then let freeze on a large flat surface like a cookie sheet before transferring to bags. If you want to use citrus just for zest or juice, go ahead and freeze them whole. They say you can freeze citrus in wedges individually, but I found the texture suffers greatly after defrosting, and honestly I can’t imagine what you’d want to use floppy, deflated tangerine wedges for. Juice is no problem — just squeeze, put the juice into an ice cube mold and freeze. You can pop them out later and transfer to a plastic bag for easier storage.

The above ice-cube tray technique works well for all kinds of liquids and purees. I actually bought these cool molds to freeze baby food for my second kid, and I use them now for smaller portions of stocks, lemon juice, pesto, pizza sauce. For larger batches, I pour a couple of cups into a zipper bag, get out as much air as possible, and freeze them flat so I can stack them later.

Breads freeze fantastically, but as a rule pre-sliced is best. I started buying giant loaves of my favorite rye bread from the farmers market and keep them in the freezer full-time, toasting off individual slices as needed; my mom perfected a technique with bagels that involves slicing them as soon as you get them home, wrapping each half separately, and then toasting them direct from the freezer. Pre-cooked tortillas and pita you can just wrap, freeze, and cook off one by one, but my most exciting recent discovery has been in the realm of pre-baked goods. It turns out most doughs recover well after freezing, and I just made a batch of biscuits using this technique that has you freezing the raw, cut biscuits ahead of time and baking them off as needed. It’s opened up a whole new world of frozen pastry projects for me.

I’m sure there’s some technique to freezing cheese but honestly I just put whole hunks and bags of the pre-shredded stuff straight into the freezer. I don’t really freeze milk but the wisdom is that the more fat content, the better it freezes, so half-and-half freezes great, skim milk not so much. Coffee I found out you can freeze and brew straight from frozen, which is excellent considering it is an absolute nonnegotiable in my house.

*If you’re curious about any other ingredient, there are countless guides to freezing food online that will steer you in the right direction.

Don’t Rush the Defrost

(Even Though Sometimes I Do, But It’s Really Risky, Okay?)

The basic rule of thumb for pretty much everything is low and slow. Put whatever you want to defrost in the refrigerator the night before you want to cook it — sometimes longer for big cuts of meat — and let it come to temperature gradually. I do this... most times. But there is a reason your microwave has a “defrost” setting, and it will definitely speed things along if also putting you at risk of prematurely cooking the edges of your chicken breast. I’ve successfully defrosted smaller cuts of fish and shrimp by running the bags under cold water in the sink for a few minutes until soft enough to handle, but this is not officially endorsed by the pros. What you’re definitely not supposed to do is let your ingredients hang out at room temp until they defrost. I have done this too, though it is a surefire recipe for a bacterial infection and this is not the time you want to be running to the ER for dehydration.

The point is, the freezer might be cold and dark, but it is not at all a thing to fear. Utilizing it well has helped me maintain the kind of spur-of-the-moment cooking style that feels normal to me — a valuable thing when pretty much everything else about my life right now does not feel normal. Now all I need is a bigger freezer.

via Eater - All https://www.eater.com/2020/4/14/21219885/freezer-defrosting-tips

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