When Wildcat comes back to himself he is met with the worried eyes of his brother (Ford, Sixer, Pointdexter) and Mr Mystery (Soos, his boy, his heir of mystery). Worn material clasped in his weathered hands he grounds himself; pondering how to address this new dilemma he finds himself in. Rubbing the fabric with calloused thumbs to avoid the overbearing atmosphere and the salty sting behind his eyes for a few more moments he tries to collects himself.
It's summer... 2012? A year after he supposedly punched a demon in the face. He should be getting better at recalling these things but memories whirling and rearranging to slot into place is a muddling torrent of chaos.
He turns as he feels an arm guiding him to sit down, Waddles taking his respective seat by him. Scratching the pigs head absentmindedly, he detaches himself from jumbled tides and into the feeling of the chair creaking beneath him and the snuffling of the pig (therapy-pig as his nibling Mabel had dubbed them). Eventually Wildca- Stan (out of costume, out of name) regains his bearings enough to articulate a family meeting. He promised the boy with a mop of brown hair and stars on his brow that there wouldn't be any secrets. He promised and by his nine lives (80% sure he was on his last after the fear-a-mid debac- focus!) he would keep it.
Explaining everything proved a lot harder than he originally suspected with his scattered mind. His family sit around him as he tethers himself to the present and re-tells the past. Pieces fitting together at long last and dreams refitting not as illusions but as realities. He looks up and sees raven wit melt into auburn-haired flare. An old ring is replaced by a mysterious shack. Stan takes a deep breath and tells it all, of miracles and of midnight runs across rooftops. He tells of Hawkman and his crackling mace, of Fate and of bronze knuckles. He chokes out fondly of Dinah and Barry the spitfire and the shooting star; both gone too soon; far, far, too soon.
When the stories are all spent and the truths all laid bare in tear stained reverence he is pulled into a warm glittery embrace and the ache in his chest eases (at least a little bit, but that's all anyone can ask for isn't it?).
They learn to handle new revelations, and if he gets to show Mabel how to use her grapple gun it's all just a bonus for an old timer isn't it?
Until being an old timer just burns like the throbbing of his shoulder and the phantom in his fist.
Each of his motley mystery shack family come to him in the next few weeks when he feels like this. Dipper clutching a newly bound blue and silver journal in which he jots down stories and advice, sketches of fighting stances and gadgets litter it's page, names and dates etched in the parchment. Mabel and him corroborate on shakes, her Mabel juice and his Wildcat power shake(with added glitter!); needless to say the potted plant doesn't survive family taste testing. Wendy is there when his hands itch and he folds them behind his back as he barks out encouragements and light-hearted jabs as she runs courses and sails her own style of axe-swinging, kicking, screaming combat. Soos sits awed as he re-tells glory days and snatches of the less well known humorous mishaps; Barry scarlet speeding into the wall because of a frikking banana peel and the groan-worthy puns of Mid-nite have them laughing over marshmallowed cocoa late into the night.
Ford and him watching the sunset as his journal sits between them with the wind ruffling the pages, whimsical snatches fill the comfortable air.
His heart warms and the aches slowly knit closed with yarn and shoulder squeezes…
But there are still days that it all isn't enough. When the yarn is pulled taut and the shoulder squeezes leave holes where others had once done the same. When he is left choking and drowning, scrabbling in the torrents and the blue flames desperately for relief.
Memories while a blessing are also a curse, he is so lucky (more than he will ever be able to describe) to have a family like his to lean on when the reality hits of certain people he can never contact again burns to the surface. Old faces forever imprinted in ink or memory alone.
New somber impressions press on his mind with harsh blue-tinged clarity. Silently mourning the knowledge his photo is a sole memento of a joyous time he can never physically revisit. Ford holding him at the news that during his memory lapse Nelson, his Dr Fate, had passed on during a fight alongside the new generation. Nabuu bearing a new host so soon after the news reaches him burns. As if Kent wasn't worth anything to the god imbued helmet, a mere vessel. But late at night as his scar burns and he gazes at an old photograph, he concedes in the grand scheme of things the helmet of fate watches the world pass by infinitely. That they will continue watching the work long after his time, or anyone else he knows time.
This revelation brings him to the startling fact of his own life, his mortality. His age of heroes are dying, he may not even get a chance to say goodbye to those left, which means…
He doesn't know how to get back in contact with the few that are left of his generation, Hourman and Dr Mid-nite long since retired together to some secluded life away from knuckle busting. His carefully raised students mentors themselves now…how he could even show his face after all these years? He let them think he was dead for the past 30 years for crying out loud! His own brother punched him in the face upon their reunion, imagine how they'd react. It didn't seem a fun idea for a reunion for him to just waltz in out the blue with a 'surprise I ain't dead' when half were metas and others had crossbows or solid fists he had helped sculpt himself. The painting wasn't a pretty one.
He died a hero and lived long enough to know they'd see him as a lying monster who nearly destroyed the world just to get his brother back. What would Dinah think of him?
'Maybe they'd let him back?' his mind whispers as he sleeps, curling thought of joyous reunions into his very soul so he wakes with aching heart to a creaking of timber, summer over and resting in a bunk smelling of salt. He isn't in a fit state to fight anymore, no matter what his family joke about he knew the creaks of his bones would lead to snaps if he pushed them. He's old, he'll leave it to the next generation, it's best if he is forgotten. Now if only he could get his mind to agree with him.
But looking at news articles of a cowled crusader and his red breasted accomplices combatting Gotham-fuelled madness and feline anti-hero thieves (he knew that grin anywhere, she really had grown up hadn't she? His smile splits his face when he sees her in the papers). Star city with a vigilante green archer and the familiar sight of golden haired canary cries that left him seeing double (before his sight blurred). Flashes of a new scarlet speedster rising and an entire league forming from across the globe to rise to the new levels of villainy. Calling themselves The Justice League… Just what was it with the word 'The' now? The Ultra-humanite, The Joker, The Batman- jeez he thought he raised the kid better than that one; you'd never catch Wildcat with a capital lettered 'The', not happening (-stop laughing Pointdexter this is a serious issue!).
But back on the more important track; the world was changing; for the better at that! Hope was bright in the universe. So maybe, just maybe...
He'll never know unless he tries.
So in late autumn when his thoughts are lulled by waves and the sound of his brother breathing peacefully in his bunk, he takes up his pen, lets it flow over a postcard of the Mystery Shack and marks it for an old ring in secret code; in that moment with the stars as his witness he seals it with his signature and a bloom of hope, giving it a small smile. Time to finally re-find his place and re-open an old door.
Stanley Wildcat Pines is reborn.