Author's Note:
Yes, I'm back after quite the hiatus. Let's just say that when I checked this site for the first time in a while, I saw the "Copy-N-Paste" button. Which had a lot to do with my decision to publish this. I had already written it last year, and it's a one-shot. So have a nice present. I'm already working on more "WordGirl" stuff. Did I mention "WordGirl" is my favorite show now?
"Dang it, Teddy! Stop flying! You know it's not fair!"
The girl with the shaggy auburn hair chased after her airborne twin. He spun around midair to face her, floating tantalizingly high — just out of her reach.
"Technically, I can't fly yet. I'm hovering, that's all." A taunting gleam in his amber eyes accompanied this statement as he bobbed up and down like a feather over a vent.
"No way! If you were hovering, you couldn't turn like that! Your motion would have to be completely vertical!"
The boy grinned again before speaking. "Our mother may have potentially been teaching me more varied applications of my abilities… including directional control."
"Hey, no loopholes!" cried the girl as she leapt up, utilizing all the strength she could muster in her legs. But her aim was just a hair off, and her brother dashed off.
With a huff, Clara turned around, about to look for a way to entertain herself. It didn't take long before she heard her brother collide with her father in the hallway. Knowing her hearing was more acute than either of the two, she was able to confidently tiptoe to a place where she could watch. Teddy liked to talk big, but, like their father, was easily cowed by a parental figure's presence.
The impact had been enough to send both father and son tumbling to the ground. Neither had been expecting it, and there was a brief moment of silence as Theodore MacAllister IV awkwardly started helping his father pick up what had been dropped on the floor: drafting paper, pencils, blueprints, a box of screws, glasses.
"S-sorry about that, Dad," began the four-year-old. "I was having fun with Clara, only teasing, and I didn't look where I was going, and…"
Theodore III smiled as his son trailed off, and he set his previous load down on the floor before picking up the adorable boy and looking into the amber eyes he'd inherited from his mother.
"You're not really scared of your old man, are you? I'm so much less sturdily built than you are!" Though he was an adult, he still kept the British accent he used to put on. Clara hypothesized that he'd eventually grown used to speaking like that.
"But… you're my dad, and…" Even with a larger vocabulary than most adult humans, the boy struggled to find the words to describe the authority parents had. Obviously, his dad couldn't just be any man, a mere mortal… he could say the same thing about his mother, but that didn't count — she wasn't even human!
With a grin that perfectly matched his son's, the elder Theodore ruffled the half-human boy's golden hair.
"That doesn't mean you and your sister couldn't best me in a fair fight. You may have already noticed, but my field of expertise lies in creating things stronger than I am."
Clara noticed the double meaning, but she wasn't sure if her twin did. She loved listening to her parents talk. Aside from having lovely voices, their patterns of speech were almost poetic — to Clara's ears, anyway.
"Speaking of your sister, where did Clara get off to?"
She was by her father's side at once, putting her arms around his legs until he sat down against the wall with a child at each side.
Even without their mother there to complete the foursome, the family resemblance was strong. Nobody was sure where Clara's reddish-brown hair came from, but her eyes were the same bluish-green as her father's, and she had the same nose and ears. The creamy brown tone of her skin made her look almost like a member of one of the Water Tribes. Theodore IV was blond, but otherwise he was practically an opposite-sex clone of his mother. And then there were the less visible features. Both children were quicker and stronger than humans, though Clara was stronger and Theodore was more agile. He could also fly, and both his parents proudly watched his progress. Clara had better hearing than Theodore, and, of course, both twins possessed massive vocabularies and syntax far beyond that of other children.
"I love you both so dearly, my precious ones."
"We love you too, Dad."
"When will Mama get home?" Theo the Fourth leaned his head against his father's shoulder.
"Oh, you can never really guess… she's always busy saving the day, making everyone's lives better…"
Clara detected that note of tenderness that her father used whenever he talked about Mom. She smiled to herself, hoping she'd love her future spouse as much as her parents loved each other.
"Tell us about how you met Mom… and how you courted her…"
It was a question that Clara had often thought but never spoken.
"Oh, haven't I told you before? Although it never hurts to retell a tale, particularly this one…"
He was nine, almost ten. Even though he had been making robots for as long as he could remember, he hadn't yet constructed one larger than himself. These smaller creations were his friends, so much better than the other children, they didn't make fun of him, they looked at the world through lenses made of glass too, they didn't care that the father he was named after lived in another city because his job wasn't a safe place for a little boy to grow up…
He held his mother's hand in the rain, waiting for the signal that would tell the cars to stop so pedestrians could cross. He gawked as a streak of lightning — no, it wasn't lightning — shot past him, and he caught the briefest glimpse of the most stunning face in the world.
He sat on his bed, staring at the wall plastered with pictures cut from newspapers. Mostly greyscale pictures, but there were a couple of full-color images. In the back of his mind he faintly wondered if this sort of behaviour would be considered stalkerish. Collecting pictures of the target of one's affections… but this was different, newspaper photographs were public. It wasn't as if she'd gone out of her way to protect her privacy…
Building colossal robots wasn't as hard as it would appear at first. The only issue was space… this is where his closet definitely came in handy. It hadn't been hard to figure out a way to maximize internal space without arousing suspicion. He'd even been able to create a more closety front space so his mother would never stumble upon his workshop. This would definitely impress the enchanting superheroine.
As he toiled late into the night to replenish the large number of creations who'd — yes, who'd, he refused to think of them as mere inanimate objects — been destroyed, he sleepily compared himself to Sisyphus. No matter how much he built, she always came out on top… he couldn't deny there was a devastating beauty to the way she moved, to her indefatigable spirit. Sisyphus never enjoyed the sight of his labor being undone… if he learned to love watching that rock roll down the hill, he'd be much happier, he thought.
No matter how many times she "disproved" it, she'd never been able to shake his suspicion. But she was a fast thinker, which he couldn't help finding attractive… heaven help him, he was falling for this two-faced girl more every day. Perhaps a different tactic would be in order…
He retired his army, building them a section in his "closet" where they could operate a self-sustaining society. He never gave up his love of the mechanical, but that was secondary to the new task upon which he was embarking: gaining the love of the girl who posed as a human, pretending to not realize the meek girl and his "old flame" were one and the same.
It was working, at least one way… how could he have been so blind to the charms she possessed when she wasn't saving the day? Everything was so endearing… especially the sorry excuses for lies she came up with when she had to dash off to fight crime. He couldn't tell if she was warming up to him at all… he hoped she at least trusted him, it'd been over a year since she battled his creations, and he had been working on his temper the whole time.
Sitting at the booth in some diner that didn't matter, he was on the top of the world. He couldn't take his eyes off her face as he absentmindedly dug the spoon into the melting banana split… how many years ago had his fondest dream been to take this girl out for ice cream? Time didn't matter, nothing mattered except her.
The monkey officiator wasn't the only thing that made the wedding unique.
He had wondered before what difference there was between her kind and his… all he could say afterward was that it was completely different than what he'd seen in his ninth grade biology textbook.
"Are… are you sure?"
She nodded mutely, and there was a moment of silence before she spoke.
"I have no idea what the… hybrids, I guess, will—"
"Twins?"
He'd never expected to actually be a father, but as he sat in the chair opposite the hospital bed, watching his beautiful wife nurse the children, he found it hard to believe that he could have possibly considered his life complete before.
"And now you have us!" squealed Clara. Teddy nodded enthusiastically. For several seconds, the three sat together, happy to be a family.
An alert beeped.
"Well, it seems like your mother has set her course for home. I'll go put my things in my study… I didn't have anything urgent to do anyway…"
The twins watched their father cheerfully walk away, and when their mother arrived home, the family shared a group hug.