Chapter Text
Tommy sat in stunned silence, trying to take in what Billy had told him. Billy had brought him back to life just six weeks ago, slotting him into the body of a boy who wasn’t just drowning but was dying. Before that Tommy had only existed for a few weeks before becoming a disembodied spirit, floating aimlessly around space for three years until Billy figured out how to replicate his own resurrection.
“Why?” He asked when he could finally find words again.
“Why what?” Billy asked as if he wasn’t a mind reader.
“Why would you bother to bring me back? You had a great life. Why ruin it?”
Billy stared at him. He reached out and took Tommy’s hands in his and it was weird because no one had ever done that before and it was strangely familiar at the same time.
“I brought you back because you’re my brother, dammit! I needed you. For three years, I knew something was wrong, that something important was missing, and it was you. We came into this world together, we need to be in it together.”
Tommy blinked, his vision blurring. This sucked. He didn’t want to cry. He was a tough guy.
He swallowed, his throat feeling tight.
“That’s really sappy and lame.” He pulled one hand away to roughly wipe at his eyes. “We hardly even know each other.”
“But we do, don’t we?” Billy asked. “We got that twin thing going on.”
And he was right, which was probably the worst part. And maybe he was just going crazy because Billy was the first person to be nice to him in as far back as he could remember, but he felt like he knew him, like he actually trusted him.
“Yeah, okay. I guess,” he conceded. He pulled his other hand back and held it against his chest. “You can be my brother if you want.”
Billy smiled. “You’re not pissed at me? I kinda gave you the worst life ever.”
“I kinda am but it’s like being pissed about being born. I like being alive. And you did the best you could.”
Now Billy looked like he was about to cry. “Thank you, thank you. You have no idea how much it means to hear you say that.”
Tommy looked out the car window. “Not a big deal. We should probably start driving again.”
The further they got away from that place, the better.
Billy nodded and started the car with the push of a button. That was way less dramatic than it looked on tv. They pulled out of the parking lot of a Kum and Go which made Billy laugh for some reason.
The stretch of highways, gas stations, and fast food restaurants somehow wasn’t what he expected. There were no cul-de-sacs, there were no little town squares or movie theaters or ice cream shops. There wasn’t even much grass.
Tommy leaned his forehead against the window, wiping his running nose on the sleeve on his shirt.
“Where are we?” He asked.
“Wyoming,” Billy said. “It’s a long drive back to Jersey.”
“You’re taking me home?”
“Well, uh, Eastview. That’s where my parents live. I promised I’d be back by Friday for Shabbat dinner. I’m going to explain it all to them then.”
“You’re going to tell them you’re not their son?”
Billy’s hands tightened on the steering wheel. “I’m going to think of way to tell them so they understand that I am. At least, I really want to be.”
Tommy couldn’t even begin to imagine how that conversation would go. But he didn’t know a lot about anything. Which sucked.
“Let’s drive a few more hours,” Billy said into the silence. “Then we can stop at a motel. Mom gave me her credit card.”
It turned out to be a little more complicated than that. They stepped into the dim office of the motel to the jingle of a bell. The sun was still up because it was summer but it was on the way down. Billy explained that he was still on East Coast time so it felt later to him. Tommy’s sleep schedule basically didn’t exist.
The woman behind the counter was of an indistinct age and she raised an eyebrow when she looked up to see them.
“You kids got parents?”
Billy laughed nervously. “No, uh, we just want to rent a room.”
She looked them up and down. “We don’t rent by the hour.”
Billy looked horrified. He waved his hands wildly in the negative. “No. What? No. We’re brothers. We want a room with two beds for the night.”
Tommy wasn’t sure what that meant but he guessed Billy must have read her mind and didn’t like what he saw.
The woman chewed her gum. “I’m not judging but I don’t know why else kids would want a room.”
“We’re on a road trip. We would like to sleep. I have a credit card,” Billy said, brandishing the credit card.
She looked back down at her phone open on the desk. “You have to be twenty-five to rent a room. And sorry, kid, you’re not even twenty.”
Billy sighed and under the counter curled his fingers, blue electric light flickering across his finger tips.
“Can we please rent a room?”
The woman looked up abruptly, a glazed expression on her face. “Okay.”
She took the card and started clicking away on her computer. Billy glanced over his shoulder at Tommy.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Tommy shrugged. He hadn’t known he was looking any particular way.
A moment later, Billy took back the credit card and a room key and they left the office.
“Did you-” Tommy wiggled his fingers. “What do you call that anyway?”
Billy sighed, pressing his hand to his face. “Mind control. And yeah, just a little. Just a nudge.”
“Can you read everyone’s mind?”
“If I try, yeah, I can read basically anyone’s mind. I had to practice to stop doing it all the time, to learn to filter it out. Now it just breaks through when the thoughts come with particularly intense emotions, or when I’m very attuned to that person. I’m always reading my boyfriend’s thoughts by accident, luckily he just likes me a lot.”
Tommy followed him up the stairs to the second floor in the row of outward facing rooms to the door that matched the number on their key.
“You have a boyfriend?”
Billy stopped with his hand on the doorknob. “I do. Is that a problem?”
Tommy couldn’t imagine why it would be. “Not a dead robot boyfriend, right?”
Billy laughed. “Nope. Normal alive human boyfriend. His name’s Eddie.”
“Okay, cool,” Tommy said. “Congrats, I guess.”
Billy looked at him over his shoulder again.
“You’re so weird.”
Inside the room, Billy swung the large bag he was carrying off his shoulder and dropped it on the bed. He started digging inside.
“You should change,” Billy said. “You’ve got blood on you and in that outfit people will think you’re an escaped convict.”
“I kinda am.”
“Exactly why you should change.” He shoved a bundle of clothes into Tommy’s arms. “Here. Shoo.”
Tommy ‘shooed’ into the bathroom.
The first thing he saw was the shower tub. A chill ran down his spine.
The scientists at the facility had found out pretty quickly that he was afraid of water, particularly of having his head submerged, and made use of it whenever they got the chance. They’d even done a “controlled experiment” to try to replicate the explosion at the school. It worked like a charm leaving Tommy soaking wet and the lab mostly destroyed. So they had to try it again with the power dampening collar on.
That was the first time he really remembered it, the desperation squeezing his lungs, the icy water cutting like knives all the way to the bone. The panic that set in and obliterated all conscious thought. That fear was what stuck with him the most because it had become all he was until he was finally allowed to breathe again. Laying on his back, looking up at that gray ceiling, silent sobbing shaking his body.
He shuddered and turned away from the tub. He wasn’t going to look at it. He quickly stripped down and wet a washcloth in the sink. He still had the orders from the guards to hurry up ringing in his ears. He scrubbed himself down as best he could, wiping away days of sweat and loneliness. He was particularly careful around the bandage on his side but he knew the wound was already beginning to knit itself together again.
When he was done, he picked up the clothes Billy had handed him. He frowned. The sweater was a faded gray with an even more faded symbol in the middle. It was a five pointed star in a circle which itched like something familiar. The sweater was oversized and holes dotted along the collar and bottom edge. The sleeves even had holes at the ends that looked like they were there on purpose. Maybe to put your thumbs through? Why?
The black jeans for their part were way too tight and too short. He and Billy were pretty much the same size and height so that was weird. He stared down at his bare ankles. Luckily, it wasn’t cold out.
When he lifted his head, he caught sight of his reflection in the mirror. It was the first time he’d seen himself in weeks.
He had changed. His face was more gaunt, cheeks hollowed out. His chest was more concave, his ribs more visible. They’d been starving him even with three square meals a day, pushing his body past its limits with his powers. But the strangest part was that his hair had changed color. It had been a color somewhere between brown and blonde before but now it was a silver-white all the way down to the roots.
He touched it trying to determine if the texture had changed. He wasn’t used to this body still. The face in the mirror wasn’t familiar but this didn’t make sense. He pulled the sweater on and stepped out the door.
“You notice my hair?” He asked Billy. “Is it supposed to do that?”
Billy was sitting on one of the beds. He looked up from the little notebook he’d been fiddling with. “I’m not sure. Our uncle, Pietro, his hair was kinda that color.”
Tommy frowned. “And he wasn’t just an old man?”
“No, he was a young guy. Really into athleisure. I don’t know a lot about him but he was like you. He was fast.”
Tommy touched his hair again. “So it’s genetic. Even though we aren’t actually related by genetics?”
Billy grimaced. “Yeah, it’s weird. It’s complicated. When we get home, I’ll show you my research. I learned a lot from Reddit. And Agatha. But sometimes she doesn’t bother to keep the facts straight or even remember people’s names. I don’t think she was all that interested in Pietro. She’s kind of a dick.”
“Who’s Agatha?”
“I am,” a voice said from behind him and Tommy jumped right out of his skin.
One second he was in the motel room. The next he was outside, rolling down the short grassy hill.
He sat up, vibrating. The wall of the second story room looked like it had been hit by a bomb, the broken plaster and wood bowing outward around the jagged hole.
Billy stood looking down on him, shock clear on his face. Hovering in the air beside him was a milky white, translucent specter.
“Tommy, are you okay? What was that?”
Tommy raised a shaking hand to point at the thing, the shadowy shape of a woman.
“What the hell is that?”
The woman placed a hand on her chest. “Moi? You’re scared of little old me?”
Her voice sounded normal. Like the voice of a normal middle aged woman, not a freaking ghost.
“What happened?” Billy asked. “It was like you exploded!”
“I explode! That’s what I do!” Tommy shouted back. “Why is there a ghost?”
Billy glanced at her. “That’s Agatha. She’s dead.”
“Hi!” The ghost said cheerfully, wiggling her fingers in greeting.
Billy stepped out into open air and floated down to the ground. The ghost trailed after him, clinging to his shoulder.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” He asked Tommy. “You never did that before.”
Tommy wondered just how much Billy remembered of before or if he was just going off reports, things that he had learned along the way. Wait, did Billy even know why he’d been locked up or did he just find him by like a psychic compass?
Billy shrugged. “More the second one. But we can talk about it.”
“What the hell?” Someone yelled as a door slammed open. The woman from the front desk was hurrying around the corner of the building and other heads were poking their heads out of the rooms.
Probably everyone in the building had felt the explosion.
“Shit,” Billy said.
Agatha the ghost laughed. “You know what to do, Teen. Like mother like son.”
Billy’s mouth turned into a tight line. He held out his hands, blue light flickered in his dark eyes and at the tips of his fingers.
The woman stopped in her tracks, the same glazed over look entering her eyes as the guards from earlier. The man who had been sticking his head out the window pulled back inside. The doors of the motel rooms shut one by one. The receptionist turned on her heel and marched herself back to the office.
Billy let out a sigh, his shoulders sagging. He took a breath. “Okay, step one down.”
He raised another hand to the hole Tommy had blown in the wall. In an inverse of their escape, the wall moved back together, each scattered piece finding its correct spot.
“Wow,” Tommy said. He couldn’t help but be impressed. What Billy could do took a lot more finesse than just becoming a walking bomb.
Billy stumbled as the wall finished repairing itself. Tommy jumped to catch him before he fell face first into the sidewalk.
“You okay?” He gasped. As the blue light faded, he could see that Billy had gone deathly pale.
Billy nodded. “Yeah, just pushed myself a little too hard today.”
“Funny,” Agatha said. “It never seemed to wear you out before.”
“It’s harder to do it on purpose,” Billy said through gritted teeth. He straightened himself up and pulled away from Tommy.
Agatha tapped her chin. “Now is that actually ironic or is that just Alanis Morissette ironic?”
Billy rolled his eyes.
“This is why I left you behind for the breakout, you’re distracting.”
“Left me behind? Please. I didn’t want to go. Government facilities give me the heebie jeebies.”
“Me too,” Tommy muttered.
“Ha!” Agatha looked at him, eyes glinting with mirth. “It’s nice having somebody else to talk to, Tobey.”
“Uh, it’s Tommy, actually.” And he meant that. Tommy was finally the right name, the one that really fit him.
Billy put a hand to his head. “I think I need to lay down.”
Tommy looked around them. Everyone had gone inside again, the wall of the building was back to the way it had been before. There was no one to see.
So he stepped forward, grabbed Billy’s arm, and ran him upstairs and into the motel room. Part of it was to show off, part of it was to give Billy a taste of his own medicine after making him fly without warning.
The motel room was still in disarray so in the time it took for Billy to stop swaying on his feet, Tommy righted the beds and the side tables and threw a heaping of plaster dust into the trash. He couldn’t do anything about the scuff marks on the furniture but some of them had been there already.
Billy sat down hard on the bed. “Ugh, now I’m nauseous too.”
Agatha phased through the floor. She quirked an eyebrow at Tommy.
“I only ever made a fake version of your uncle, a Fietro if you will, but you do remind me of him. Or the version of him I saw in Wanda’s memories. Less loud though.”
Tommy had a feeling he would have liked to be loud if he’d ever– It was just hard to be when everything hurt and he was scared and didn’t understand what was going on.
But that wasn’t important right now.
He frowned. “You went through her memories? Who are you exactly?”
She swept a grand bow at him. “I am Agatha Harkness- the covenless witch, the witch killer, I go by many names. I met your mother when I was trying to steal her powers. Which, I suppose, would have killed her.”
Tommy’s eyes went wide. He stepped in front of his twin.
“Are you here to kill Billy?”
She laughed at him. “Because I would tell you if I was.”
“It’s fine,” Billy said. He lay back to stretch out on the bed. “Agatha’s a big softie. We’re a coven of two now. And I don’t think she can steal powers anymore, since she’s dead.”
Agatha sniffed. “I suppose it’s true. We came all this way to rescue you and that’s mostly just because I have nothing better to do.”
“It’s actually because she likes me,” Billy said. “But she won’t admit it.”
Agatha stuck her tongue out at him. Billy yawned.
He looked like he was going to fall asleep right there but Tommy’s stomach picked that moment to growl loudly. He didn’t know how long he had been locked up in the dark room for disobedience but it must have been longer than a day and then they had driven for hours to get here. He was suddenly starving.
“Do you think you could conjure up some food?” He asked.
“No, not there yet,” Billy said. “But I do have a credit card.”
He pulled it from the pocket of his jeans and wiggled it at him until Tommy took it. The small plastic card wasn’t exactly familiar but he’d gotten the gist that you used it to pay for things, like money.
“Do you have to be twenty-five to buy food?”
“Oh, he’s hopeless,” Agatha said.
Billy laughed and shook his head. Geez, Tommy didn’t realize it was such a stupid question.
“I think there’s a burger place across the street,” Billy said. “You just go in, order what you want, and tap the card to pay. It’s easy.”
Tommy looked down at the flimsy piece of plastic and beyond that, the scuffed white slip on shoes they’d given him at the facility. Someone had mentioned something about making sure he didn’t have shoelaces he could strangle himself with.
He shook his head, driving away the thought. That was in the past. They were moving forward now. And he was not going to be nervous about buying food.
Billy frowned in a way that made it clear he’d read his mind. He started to prop himself up on his elbow.
“Hey, if you’re not-”
Tommy turned away. “No, I got this.”
“I’ll go with him.” Agatha floated toward the door.
Her floating wasn’t like Billy’s floating. He made it seem like he was pushing himself through the air, forcing the laws of physics to bend to his will. Agatha just moved like a cloud, like she weighed nothing, was made of nothing. He supposed that was what being a ghost was like.
As they stepped out the door, the sun was now below the horizon, casting everything in cool blues. The street lights had flicked on over the four lane road with a concrete barrier in the middle. Cars raced by, their headlights on.
There didn’t seem to be any way to get across the road to the parking lot of the burger place.
“So how do I get over there?”
“Beats me. None of this existed twenty, fifty years ago,” Agatha said. “I don’t know where all these people came from. Sometimes I think that ugly purple lug was right.”
“Ugly purple lug?”
Agatha waved a hand dismissively.
“I think his name was Thanos or something. He was from space. It was all terribly boring. He killed your dad but whatever.”
Tommy took the stairs down, weaving through the motel parking lot. It was barely even half full.
“My- our dad was the dead robot boyfriend?”
Agatha seemed to think this line of questioning was boring too, if her rolling her eyes was any indication.
“Yes, your mother fell hopelessly in love with an android powered by an infinity stone. He was sweet, I suppose, in a naive sort of way. Like your brother. And then he died. Just like her parents died. Just like her brother died. It sent her cuckoo, if you know what I mean. So she turned a town into her own little sitcom world and brought him back and then she made the two of you. She was painfully obsessed with being part of an all-American cookie cutter white bread nuclear family.”
Tommy kept his eyes fixed on the cars speeding by.
“And was he a good dad?”
“Just when I think you’ll zig, you zag. Sure, he was a good dad if you like the strong, supportive, loving type. I’ve never had much use for dads.”
Tommy swallowed. “And good dads… what do they do when they get mad?”
Something about Agatha’s presence shrunk in on itself, like she had physically gotten smaller.
“Maybe they yell a bit. Everyone gets mad sometimes, it’s only human. And Vision was human enough. But he wouldn’t ever hit his kids if that’s what you mean.”
Tommy let out a breath, almost like a sigh. Almost like he was relieved.
“Well, I guess Vision is my dad now. Or he always was. But I’m claiming him now, even if I don’t remember him.”
“Look at that. Naive and sweet. It runs in the family.” Agatha was trying to sound annoyed but she almost sounded fond.
Tommy considered the road. In the distance, he could see a bridge that looked like the only way to cross on foot but it was annoyingly far away. Not that it would take him that long to get there. But there was a more exciting way to do it.
Afterall, cars were bigger but way slower than bullets.
He tensed, placing one foot in front of the other bending at the waist.
’Let’s race. You have to act they you’re on the starting block. Ready?’
For a moment, he almost remembered something. Then he was springing forward. The energy surging through him as he raced across the road, moving between the cars like slow moving beetles. He hopped the concrete barrier in a single bound and waved at a little kid staring with wide eyes out the back of a truck.
He skidded to a stop in the opposing parking lot feeling once again disappointed that he couldn’t have run for longer.
Agatha hovered a few inches off the ground on the other side of the road, her hair and purple robes fluttering in a wind he couldn’t feel. She put her hands on her hips and frowned at him.
He gestured for her to come on. He was getting hungrier by the second.
Still looking annoyed, Agatha began to float across the road. Cars drove right through her incorporeal form, making tendrils of her essence (?) flutter off and then congeal back together. When she reached him, she gave a little shake and screwed her face up in annoyance.
“That’s going to take some getting used to.”
He watched the cars that kept going by. He wouldn’t describe them as going particularly fast but he might have had a different standard than other people.
“Can they not see you?”
“You think people see ghosts all the time?”
He shrugged.
Agatha sighed. “Ghosts don’t appear to just anyone. You have to be sensitive to the supernatural. Though most with witch blood are.”
“I have witch blood?”
She gave him the look that said she thought he was particularly dumb again.
“Your mother is a witch, so is your brother. And you were literally dead. You’re basically possessing a corpse right now. I think you’re sensitive enough.”
“Huh,” he said.
“You shouldn’t talk to me when other people are around. They’ll think you’re insane. And you shouldn’t use your powers were others might see. Or cameras. You are an escaped convict, remember?”
“Right.” He rolled his shoulders. He agreed with Agatha. This all would take some getting used to. “Let’s buy some food.”
It ended up working pretty much how Billy said it would, if a little more awkwardly than Tommy had expected. He could tell that the teenager working the register was annoyed with him for his fumbling over his order and his twitchiness while he waited but eventually he got his order and that was what mattered in the moment.
As soon as they were back in the parking lot, Tommy’s hands full with burgers, fries, and shakes, he sat down on the curb and started eating.
Agatha wrinkled her nose. “That’s disgusting.”
’Tommy, you have to chew your food, you’re not a snake.’
Vaguely, he remembered the sensation of being picked up. Of being placed on someone’s lap. Of warm hands taking his as they wrapped around a fork and knife.
’Like this, old chap. Small pieces.’
He pulled back, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his sweater. A woman inside had given him a weird look, squinting suspiciously at the symbol on it. He wondered if it meant anything.
“Sorry,” he mumbled, his mouth half full. “This is so good.”
Whatever they had fed him back at the facility had hardly been warm let alone so juicy and salty.
“I suppose it’s been a long time since you ate anything half decent,” Agatha said. “What were you in for anyway?”
Tommy swallowed. He had realized earlier that Billy didn’t know what he’d done. That he had freed him because he was his brother, not even knowing that he was also a killer.
“I- I blew up,” he said. “I didn’t mean to. I didn’t know how I did it. But they were- holding my head underwater. And I think they were the ones who killed me- or killed the other me. Killed Thomas Shepherd.”
His eyes were stinging and he turned his face away. “I was so scared. Everything just…”
There was a moment of silence that felt like it stretched on far too long.
“You killed them.” It wasn’t a question.
Tommy nodded.
“I’m not sorry. That’s the problem. I should be but I’m not. Does that make me a monster?”
“Sounds like they deserved it,” Agatha said, drifting down to almost sit beside him. “I wouldn’t be sorry about that.”
He sucked a breath in through his teeth.
“Look, kid, killing your own murderers is about the most justified you can be. If that’s where you want to stop, fine. But don’t let anyone make you ashamed of being what you are. Survivors do what they have to do. And sometimes it’s not pretty but it gets the job done.”
He looked at her. “You don’t think I’m a horrible person?”
Agatha laughed. A cold hand that sent a chill down his spine landed on his shoulder.
“Kid, you obviously don’t know a thing about me.”
“Uh, no. I don’t.”
“I shouldn’t tell you because it’s not my story to tell but your brother over there has been beating himself up about a mistake that he made. He’s powerful, one of the most powerful witches I’ve ever met. And with that power, the power to shape reality itself, comes the capacity to do a lot of harm. When he was bringing you back, he wondered if he was killing someone else. I tried to tell him that sometimes… people die. It’s just the way of the world. So guilt- it isn’t a useful thing. I don’t think he’s really absorbed that.”
Tommy munched down on a handful of fries, thinking. He didn’t like the idea of Billy beating himself up over a mistake. Or being afraid of his own power. It just didn’t sit right with him. Even though Billy was so powerful, there was something a little soft about him. Like how he’d reached out to Tommy, given everything up for him even when he wasn’t worth it.
“I’ll look out for him,” Tommy said. “I’ll protect him.”
“He might need that, kid. He might really need that.” Agatha sniffed. “And you might start by getting him something to eat. Since you ate all that.”
She gestured to the torn open bags at his feet. He blinked. He hadn’t really known how much to order so he’d gotten four burgers with fries. It seemed like in his distraction, he’d eaten all of it.
“Oh, sorry. Do you think he needs four burgers too?”
“I think one is fine.”
Wyoming DODC Black Site
“How do we still not know what hit us?”
“Sir, the cameras all went out at the same time. We’ve got nothing inside or out.”
“What about infrared? Radar?”
“Infrared was down too. Nothing on radar. They didn’t come by plane unless they were dropped off by a stealth bomber.”
“Or a quinjet.”
“Most of those were decommissioned after SHIELD was dissolved. Too expensive to upkeep.”
“I know there are a few on the black market.”
“Sir.” An officer in camo entered the room. “The guards are working with the sketch artist. But the descriptions are… let’s say, different.”
“Different?”
“Unusual. And also all different from each other. Here.” He held out a piece of paper with a smudging charcoal drawing.
The general frowned down at it. “What exactly am I supposed to be looking at, corporal?”
“Um, it looks like the mothman, sir.”
The general crumpled the paper and spiked it on the ground.
“I am not telling my superiors that we were attacked by the goddamn mothman! Go back in there and get me something usable!”
The officer clicked his heels together with a salute and retreated.
“And you.” The general turned on the analyst. “Find out how the hell they did this. And don’t say magic.”