For my little brother, without whom this story would not exist.
Foreword:
All right, here we go! Y'all have no idea how excited I've been to unleash this fanfic on the world. XD Time to Go Home will follow the continuity of my previous chapterfic Saving Tobey, but it's also an independent story, so you don't need to read its predecessor first to understand it. Any important references will be explained in the narrative itself, while less important ones will be explained in the Author's Notes. Just be aware that this fic will contain some pretty big spoilers for Saving Tobey for those who might be interested in reading it.
Peradventure [pur-uh d-ven-cher] – chance, doubt, or uncertainty.
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"Oh, Captain Huggyface, there's no place like home!" I exclaimed dramatically, collapsing on the sofa after a long day of fighting crime.
My faithful monkey companion rolled his eyes and chirped a reminder that I still had my WordGirl costume on.
"Oh, right," I muttered with an embarrassed chuckle. I pressed the star on my chest, and instantly my wardrobe reverted back to a purple pleated skirt and layered pair of pink and white tops.
Two years ago, shortly after the whole 'Rhyme and Reason' fiasco, Violet had convinced me that I needed to tell my family about my secret life. I had been scared at first, but once the first few awkward weeks had passed, telling them had proven to be the best decision I'd ever made. By now it had been so long since I'd needed to hide my identity from them that I'd grown lax about wearing my superhero garb around the house.
"Becky, is that you?" Mom's voice called out as she appeared in the doorway across the room leading upstairs. She saw me before I had the chance to respond and happily continued, "Oh, you're back! Tobey is here for your play date."
I rolled my eyes and restrained a sigh. "Mom, I'm fourteen. Don't you think I'm getting a little old for play dates?"
"Well, if it makes you feel more grown up, I could just call it a date," Mom flippantly replied, right as Tobey stepped into the room from behind her.
"Mom!" I shouted, rising sharply from my seat. Tobey flushed with embarrassment, and more than likely, so did I.
"Oh, I'm just kidding," Mom chuckled with a dismissive flip of her hand. "Claire and I shouldn't be more than a couple of hours, so you two have fun, okay?"
She danced off without a care in the world, leaving me and my 'date' standing across the room from each other in awkward silence.
Bob unhelpfully gave me a pat on the back as if to say 'good luck,' then marched off to the kitchen, leaving the two of us alone and making the silence even more awkward.
Tobey sheepishly glanced up at the ceiling and shoved his hands in the pockets of his navy green cargo pants.
"Soooo," he muttered at last, "'Sup?"
I heaved a flustered sigh, then smiled at him. "Smooth, Tobey."
In moments like these, it was hard to believe how much he'd changed since I first met him over four years ago. Back then he would've sauntered into my living room with either a cocky smile or a disappointed scowl, depending on his mood, and I would know that my day was doomed as soon as he started babbling in his silly British accent as though I didn't know it was fake. Since the groundbreaking pep-talk I'd given him last year about being true to your true self, I hadn't heard him use it unless there were other people around. He still wasn't completely comfortable with the sound of his real voice, but honestly, I had grown to like it. It had begun to get a little deeper and more mature-sounding in recent months, and besides that, it represented just one of many pleasant changes he'd adopted since that fateful day almost two years ago…
"How's the villain scene looking these days?" Tobey asked, bashfully shrugging his shoulders.
That time I had to giggle. "Not as interesting since you went straight," I said, "but not as frustrating, either."
Yep, that was it. That was the big change that had started it all. A few months before I told my family I was WordGirl, Tobey had figured it out. That had been one of the scariest days of my life. One careless slip of the tongue during lunchtime at school one day, and the next thing I knew he had trapped me in his room during one of our routine play dates and forced me to choose between protecting the city and protecting my own anonymity. It was an obvious choice, but not an easy one. After Tobey had proof of my identity, I had been mortified. I thought that my days as WordGirl were over—that there was no telling what would happen now that one of my enemies knew my secret.
The weird thing, though, was that after he'd finally confirmed that I was WordGirl, things between Tobey and I had actually started to improve. Back then I had been sure that he would blackmail me or divulge my secret identity at the next VillainCon just because he could. To my relief and surprise, he had done nothing of the sort. He teased me with his new-found leverage, to be sure, and I endured a stressful few days of wondering what he was planning to do, but not long after that, it became apparent that he had no desire to expose me. When at last I'd gotten up my nerve to confront him about this, his response had been shocking.
'I never wanted to hurt you,' he said, 'I just wanted to know who you were.'
That was when I'd realized just how different he was from all the other villains who troubled me on a daily basis, and from that point on everything just… snowballed.
"Ooh! Wanna see my new invention?" he asked, perking up suddenly.
"Sure," I replied. One of the things I'd realized long ago was that Tobey's motivation to cause trouble with the things he made was a lot less potent if someone took an interest in those things, rather than just wondering what kind of trouble he'd cause with them.
Tobey lit up with excitement and reached into his pocket, producing a small hand-held device. Funny how I didn't get nervous anymore when he did that.
He'd gotten into computers at space camp last summer, and now instead of building a special remote for each kind of robot he built, he just wrote programs that let him control them all from a pocket PC that could probably put the equipment at NASA to shame. He'd also come home from that camp a little taller than me, I couldn't help but notice.
"You'll love this," he promised, pressing a button on his palm-sized supercomputer.
I heard a tinny-sounding bark, and moments later a mechanical puppy came scampering into the room. It was clunky and a little awkward, lacking most of the visual aesthetic that made real dogs so cute, but there was something about it beyond the way it looked that just screamed 'puppy.' Its movements, its demeanor, the way it behaved. It gave another happy bark, then bounded forward so excitedly that it tripped over its own feet—though it didn't seem to notice.
"Awwwwww," I exclaimed, reaching down to pick it up as it ran into my arms. "It's adorable!"
I tickled its tummy, and it barked happily and thumped its back legs in the air like a real puppy would.
"I designed it to simulate authentic dog behavior," Tobey explained proudly, grasping the collar of his blue sweater with both hands and yanking it from either side. Since he'd stopped wearing a bow tie he'd instead taken to tugging at the front of his collar when he was feeling confident or accomplished—a quirk that was both funny and ironic.
"What's its name?" I asked.
"It doesn't have one."
I snuggled the robot to my face and it licked my cheek. Its tongue was rubbery and somewhat stiff, but textured so that it still reminded just a little of a real puppy's tongue. "You should name it Cuddlepie."
Tobey made a disgusted face. "Cuddle...pie?"
"What?"
"Nothing. Never mind," Tobey shook his head and forced a smile, but also rolled his eyes and hastily changed the subject. "Anyway, watch it change size."
"Not in the house!" I exclaimed, cringing at the thought of this cute little guy with his head poking through a hole in the roof and his wagging tail decimating the attic.
"No, it's okay, look," Tobey assured. He pressed a button on the computer, and the dog shrank to about the size of an egg right before my eyes. Its diminutive bark squeaked in my ears, and I just about went catatonic from the cuteness of it.
"Oh my goodness, Tobey," I blathered happily, getting down on my knees and smiling stupidly at the miniaturized dog. "You're a genius!"
"Well, that's a given," he bragged, though I noticed a thread of bashful hesitation creep into his mostly cocky tone.
I looked up just in time to see him blush before he caught himself, clearing his throat and sticking his finger in the air as he went on in his best bragging tone. "That's nothing, though. I'm also working on a neural interface that could, in theory, translate brainwaves into commands that robots can receive remotely."
I froze in the middle of picking up the palm-sized dog and gaped at Tobey in disbelief. "Whoa… Meaning you could control your robots with just your thoughts?" I marveled.
"Mm-hmm," Tobey mumbled with a happy nod.
"Wow, Tobey, that's amazing!"
"Isn't it, though?"
The robot turned back to puppy-size in my hands, and I laughed, remembering how different our conversations used to be, back before he knew I was WordGirl. Once it sank in that my secret was actually safe with Tobey, spending time with him became a lot more bearable. By that point I'd made it my personal mission to turn him from his villainous ways and rehabilitate him into a responsible citizen. And, to my shock, it had worked. After months of trial and error experimenting with different ways to divert his motivations away from villainy, I had finally managed to get inside his shell and figure out what the real problem was. It turned out that underneath all his selfish, destructive tendencies, he was really just… lonely.
After that, we finally started to make slow, steady progress. There were some pretty tough obstacles we had to get around, but by the time he turned thirteen, he had completely turned his life around. He wasn't exactly Prince Charming, but he'd come a long way from the little terror who used to give me grief and waste my time back in grade school.
Unfortunately, that blessed change had brought with it a problem I hadn't expected.
"What are you doing here?" a familiar indignant voice huffed from across the room.
I looked, and there was my little brother, glaring at Tobey with his arms crossed. He'd been like this ever since he'd found out about Tobey's not-secret, and it was starting to get frustrating.
I cleared my throat and muttered, "Mom and Mrs. McCallister went out shopping, so—"
"I know why he's here," TJ said, cutting me off. "I asked what he's doing here."
Tobey met TJ's glare with a matching one, and squeezed a bit harder on his little computer.
Oh, boy…
"Uh, check it out, TJ," I said, trying as usual to keep the peace even while I felt the tensions rising. "Tobey made a robotic dog."
I held out the puppy for TJ to see, but he just shrugged. "Big deal," he threw back contemptuously, "I could go buy one at the toy store for a month's worth of allowance."
"TJ," I grumbled under my breath. "Don't make him mad."
"Oh, that's right, I forgot. We have to keep him calm so he won't throw a tantrum and smash the house." TJ chuckled and rolled his eyes. "'Cause that's a great way to win a girl's heart."
Tobey balked and stuttered in his British accent, "Who said I was trying to—?"
"You don't deserve my sister!" TJ blasted out of nowhere.
"TJ," I snapped, feeling my cheeks go hot.
Tobey fumbled for a moment, caught off guard, but shook it off fast and jumped right back into the fray. "Well, I don't know what she did to deserve you, but it must've been pretty terrible!"
TJ scoffed. "This coming from a villain?"
"Ex-Villain!"
"Whatever! There's no way Becky will ever fall for a lame, nerdy, 'ex-villain' like you!"
"TJ!" I shouted. I stood between him and Tobey and growled in a menacing tone, "Get out of here, or so help me, I will put you up on the roof!"
TJ shot one last frown at Tobey, then glowered off, suspiciously muttering, "I'm watching you, pal."
Once he was gone I breathed out my frustration. These routine bouts between Tobey and my brother would be humorous if I didn't know how deeply personal they were. I could understand why TJ had reservations about me and Tobey getting close, but I also knew how much it hurt Tobey to be constantly reminded of how one-sided his affections were.
Sure enough, when I looked back at him he was staring at the floor, his face still angry, but with an unmistakeable thread of sadness running through.
"Tobey," I said softly, reaching out a hand to him. He turned away from me and glumly meandered over to the sofa, where he sat down with his hands in his lap and his face downcast. His robot puppy jumped up beside him and whined sympathetically, nuzzling its way into his lap.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and mustered a cheerful voice. "Don't listen to TJ. He's just taking his role as an annoying, overprotective little brother a bit too seriously."
Tobey sighed and somberly stroked the head of his creation. "It's fine," he mumbled without the accent, glancing up at me with a despondent look on his face. "I mean… he's right, isn't he?"
My heart skipped a beat, and I bit my lip.
That was it. The unexpected problem. Everyone knew that Tobey liked me. He'd had a crush on me since I first became WordGirl, and he had never been able to hide it. The burning question was, could I ever feel that way about him?
In fifth grade the possibility wasn't even on the table. He was a villain back then, after all, and I was his archenemy as well as his odd choice of love interest. I couldn't even fathom why he liked me, much less consider the possibility that I could like him back. But… that was before I got to know him. Before I knew that he genuinely cared about me. Before I'd realized that I cared about him.
It would be pointless to deny that I had grown to like him, but some of the things I liked about him made me uncomfortable. I liked the way he looked at me when he thought I wasn't paying attention. I liked how he would blush sometimes when I complimented him. I liked hearing him say my name, in his real voice… And I didn't want to admit that those things meant—what they probably meant.
Truth be told, I didn't want to reciprocate his feelings. The idea of straying into that territory quite frankly scared me. I had only known Tobey for four years, and the day we met he'd almost demolished my house in an attempt to force a confession out of me. A year later he'd gotten even worse, and had stooped to doing things like trapping me inside a giant battle mech to get me to go out with him. Things had changed a lot since then… but had they changed enough? Could I trust him with my life? Could I trust him with my heart? And if I could, would that kind of relationship even work between us, considering our checkered history?
It felt weird just thinking about these things. I could only imagine how awkward it would be to actually…
I forced the subject from mind when I noticed my cheeks getting warm. I knew I wouldn't be able to avoid confronting this issue forever, though. Sooner or later, something have to give, and none of the potential outcomes I could see sat quite right with me. It was starting to feel like there was no way around Tobey getting hurt, and that in and of itself hurt me.
Honestly, it would probably be better for both of us if we didn't see each other so darn much. It wasn't as though I was trying to spend lots of time with him, but there wasn't a whole lot I could do about the fact that my mom and Mrs. McCallister were close friends. Oblivious to the complexity of my shifting relationship with Tobey, my mom had flippantly continued to set us up on so many 'play dates' that if I didn't know better, I'd think she was trying to play matchmaker between us. As though our friendship wasn't already weird enough, what with him knowing I was WordGirl and me knowing he had a crush on me the size of Chuck's… crusher.
I took a deep breath and joined him on the sofa, leaving a comfortable space between us. "Tobey, look… I—"
Just then, my super-hearing was assaulted by a powerful noise, and I gasped.
"What's wrong?" Tobey asked. His robot dog's ears perked with interest.
Bob appeared in the room holding an ice-cream sundae just in time to hear my hasty explanation. "It sounds like engines… in the upper atmosphere… A spaceship?"
Bob chirped in surprise and swallowed his dessert in one bite.
"We should go check it out," I said. "Word—!"
"Wait!" Tobey exclaimed. He shrunk the dog into his palm and stuffed it in his pocket along with the computer that controlled it. "Can I come with you?"
I looked at him in surprise and hesitated. The first thing that came to mind was concern for his safety, but I immediately realized how silly that was. This was Tobey, after all. He was picking fights and wreaking havoc long before I was around to look out for him. He could handle himself.
"Mmmm… Okay," I reluctantly consented. "You have a battle robot on hand just in case, right?"
"Never leave home without one," he said, patting one of his pockets.
It really was wild how much things had changed between us.
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Have I not commanded you? Be strong and of good courage; do not be afraid, nor be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go."
— Joshua 1:9
A warning: I do a LOT of Author's Notes. For the record, though, I don't want my readers to feel pressured in any way to read these notes. I'm just a long-winded blabbermouth who has decided not to stifle myself because I have been informed that, for whatever strange and miraculous reason, some people actually enjoy reading my platitudinous prattling. :)
Author's Notes:
-1st Person— Some of you may have noticed that I wrote this story in 1st person. If you've read the prequel fic, you may be wondering why I chose to do this story in 1st person when Saving Tobey was written in 3rd person. The explanation is actually part of a much larger story that I plan to share later, lest I scare everyone away with a crop of author's notes as long as the chapter itself.
- To Accent or Not to Accent— Let me just start by saying that I adore Tobey's voice quirk, but it does create an annoyance for fanfiction authors in that we must make a note in the prose whenever Tobey changes how he's talking. Normally you have to specify when he's talking in his real voice since in the show he usually talks in his fake accent, but in this fic it's actually the reverse. For story reasons, he will rarely use his false accent in this piece, so unless I specifically mention that he's switched to British, you can usually just assume he's talking normally. :) If you're like I used to be and you have a hard time getting the sound of Tobey's real voice in your head because we hear it so little in the show, I suggest listening to some clips of other voice roles Patton Oswalt has done, like Remy from Ratatouille, or the male version of Jesse from Minecraft: Story Mode (who sounds to me just like an older version of Tobey, which is perfect). ;)
- "'Sup?"— In case anyone thinks this is an OOC thing for Tobey to say, I wanted to mention that I actually took it straight from the canon. :P In 'Tobey or Consequences' the first thing Tobey says to WordGirl when she shows up to fight him is "Heeeeeey… 'Sup?" I always thought that part was borderline OOC in the best possible way. :3
-Theme Song: "Because You Live" by Jesse McCartney— Those of you who have read Saving Tobey will probably get how this song fits Tobey without me needing to explain. ;) For you new readers, think of it as an emotional a recap in musical form. ^-^ The song explains how Tobey's feelings for Becky/WordGirl have changed, and not changed, over the course of the past two years. At this point he no longer simply likes her for some esoteric reason. Now he is indebted to her for rescuing him from a dark and hopeless future, and his feelings for her have only deepened as a result. I love how at the end of the song, even though there's nothing sad or depressing in the lyrics themselves, the song fades out on the same somber, wistful note that it started on. It's like it's telling the story of Tobey's relationship with Becky and how it came around full circle. At first it was sad because it was this hopeless one-sided crush that Tobey was too young and clueless to realize was doomed to go nowhere. Later, after Becky decided to help him and gradually grew to care for him, their blossoming friendship grew into something a lot more happy and hopeful. But now that Tobey has matured enough to realize just how much he loves her and just how unlikely it is that she will ever reciprocate, the relationship has become sad and painful again—painful, but nonetheless beautiful. T-T
-Theme Song: "Wait for Me" by Rebecca St. James— This song is about waiting to meet the person you're going to fall in love with, but I'm stretching my interpretation to allow for a beautiful representation of what's happening emotionally on Becky's side. She's starting to see Tobey differently, but she's not ready to accept that, and so she resists and represses her growing affections for him. I see this song as sort of her subconscious wish as she struggles through this process… her hope that he won't give up on her… that he will cling to his feelings for her until she can return them. :3