Night was falling on Danville, or at least on what was left of it. For ten long years the city and the Tri-State Area around it had languished under the iron-handed tyranny of one Heinz Doofenshmirtz, whose every cruel whim was ruthlessly enforced by seemingly endless legions of flying robots that had one directive and one directive only.
Obey.
And make everyone else do the same. The slightest breach of conduct, the slightest refusal to conform, the smallest deviation from the rules - and you would be hunted down to the ends of the Tri-State Area, and mercilessly exterminated, your guts boiled from the inside out with such violence that your entire body would explode into assorted viscera, viscera which would splatter onto the NORMbot that had murdered you - and would remain there, a dull red stain, marking a testimony to the terrified denizens of the three areas that were still alive.
Submit, or die.
But not even the most brutal dictatorships can stand forever, and even the most devilishly cunning of tyrants still have flaws. A decade ago now, it had ultimately been just that that had led to Doofenshmirtz's downfall. Some travelers from another dimension had opened a portal into this one, and the dictator had fallen to his own immense pride and cockiness at the thought of forcing yet another dimension to submit to his will, igniting a chain of events that had turned the tide of the ten-year battle in the course of as many hours, ending the rule of the Supreme Ruler and bringing an end to the Era of Doofenshmirtz.
According to the Doofen-Calendar that the population had been forced to use during his reign, it had all gone down on 3rd Doofensday, in the month of 'No'.
According to the new calendar that had been nigh-unanimously adopted when the mantle of the ruler had at last been overthrown, it had been Day 0, Month 0, Year 0, After Doofenshmirtz. The old regime was gone, and the era of reconstruction had slowly, haltingly begun.
Now, the sun was setting on Day 12, Month 9, Year 10, After Doofenshmirtz. A decade had passed since the ex-dictator had held any real power, though it had only been nine days since he'd last mounted an attack on the city, burning down three whole city blocks in the process, starting a fire that had raged on through the night as the citizenry of Danville attempted to extinguish it. Nine days and five hours, to be more specific.
Nine days and five hours and thirty… four minutes.
Candace knew that tonight, she was supposed to be resting. It was why she was here in the bunker rather than up in OWCA Headquarters or out on patrol. Still, for her to rest felt like somewhat of a sacrilege, almost. She would, of course, do it eventually, but not yet. First, she would check the perimeter of the bunker one more time.
The bunker was already as secure as any man, woman, or child could ever hope to create, but you could never be too cautious and Candace was not going to be the one to take that chance.
When the search proved futile and the perimeter secure, she sighed inwardly and reluctantly returned inside. Alright, then. Everything was secure, having been locked down tight and quintuply checked. The Firestorm Girls were monitoring everything via closed-circuit television loops. OWCA's headquarters was not more than ten minutes away.
Still, Candace couldn't bring herself to feel safe. It wasn't surprising to her, though - that lingering sense of unease had become a permanent fixture in her mind in almost the same way her sunglasses had become a permanent fixture over the bridge of her nose. And if anyone had a justification for feeling uneasy, it was her.
Doofenshmirtz was still out there, somewhere. Her single purpose in life was to ensure that no matter what happened, no matter what he did, her two little brothers never, ever, ever came to harm. If she could manage to protect the entire Tri-State Area at the same time? Well, she had nothing against it. Though if the two goals ever flew opposite each other, she held no delusion as to which was more important.
In situations like that, when comparing the lives of two to the lives of many, you had to understand the concept of the 'greater good'.
Her brothers were the greatest good she was ever going to get, and the entire Tri-State Area could disappear into an atomic fireball before she would let them come to harm. She had a habit of saying 'nothing' was more important than they. And you could ask anyone around - Isabella, Dr. Baljeet, Buford, whomever you desired, and they would tell you that Candace Flynn never joked around this subject. Indeed, Candace Flynn never joked at all.
Life, survival itself - it was a battle from day to day around here. But it was all worth it so long as her brothers never experienced that struggle to survive.
Candace tapped the end of her staff idly against the floor as she sat on the couch in the living room. She was supposed to be resting. Alright, then, that was what she was going to do.
But directly before she could so much as move a muscle to begin that process, a familiar red-headed face poked around the doorframe. "Candace?"
"Phineas." A tiny flicker of something flitted across her face at the sight of him. "How are you?"
He shrugged slightly. "Fine." Looking around as if looking for something, he eventually sat down on the chair across the room from her. Why did he sit there? she momentarily wondered. For the past couple of months he'd taken every opportunity to sit next (and often right up next ) to her that he'd been able to worm himself into. It didn't particularly bother her, at any rate, but it was strange to see the pattern broken. Perhaps he was feeling unwell?
Her thoughts flicked back to Doofenshmirtz, quickly weighing the possibility of some kind of bio-weapon having been launched against them. No, that was highly unlikely - she would have heard or seen some of the telltale signs of such a thing.
He was fidgeting nervously in place on the chair, looking rather uncomfortable, if she did say so herself. At last, he cleared his throat awkwardly. "Look - look, Candace, I have something to tell you."
Ah. Did he, now? Okay, then. "Spill."
He looked up at her, but hesitated again.
Something about it made the corners of Candace's mouth turn upwards. This - this was part of what she fought for, you know? So that her brothers could afford to do things like this - they could grow up in a world where it was possible for them to let something like embarrassment stop them from a goal. She sometimes found it hard to believe that her brothers were twenty-one years old now, and exactly because of such situations as this. Look at how flustered he was getting. It was kind of adorable in its innocence, and Candace loved him for it.
She reached slowly up to her face and grabbed ahold her sunglasses, pushing them away from her eyes, up until they rested on the top of her head. For a moment, the glare of the light filling the room seemed to drown out everything else, as her eyes slowly adjusted to it.
Still, Phineas let out a short breath and seemed to grow more at ease with himself. They were alone - after all. It was the only time her sunglasses ever came away from her eyes.
"I have something to tell you," he repeated, even though she'd heard him the first time. "And I - I, well, I want - can you just promise me to keep an open mind about it?"
She passed her staff to her other hand mindlessly. "I'll hear you out on anything." That was true, of course. Safety permitting, if one of her brothers wanted to say something, she'd be ready to listen. Sometimes their ideas and thoughts were pretty … out there. But she would never let that come between her and them. And besides, they really did try, even if they often didn't grasp the full truth of the world that they were living in.
The reason they wouldn't grasp that, of course, is because she wouldn't let them, but that was for their own good anyway. Just look at what all that had done to her. The things she had seen were not things that should stain such innocent minds.
"Okay." Her brother took a deep breath. "Candace, I - I -" He was really having trouble spitting this one out, wasn't he? "- I think - I know - I, just, I have a crush on you."
Candace blinked. "Oh."
Okay, that was kind of adorable, she had to admit. Her little brother, thinking he had a crush - on her. It almost made her smile, even. She really did love her brothers - their imagination, their free-spiritedness, their lighthearted innocence and childlike view of the world. Those were the qualities she had fought tooth and nail to let them keep, after all, and it was kind of gratifying to see them play out before her like this.
"No, no, I mean, I'm serious," Phineas stammered. "I really, really do." He smiled so awkwardly that she almost felt bad for him. "I - I'm in love with you, Candace."
She raised one eyebrow slightly. He was being serious? At least, if she took him at his word, he was, and she knew her brother would never lie to her. Well, then. That was… unexpected, she had to admit. Hmm. Perhaps that explained his recent efforts to try and get close to her so much of the time? Possibly.
A noise temporarily distracted her attention - but it was nothing except the ice maker. Hmm. Safe, for now, then.
"I just - I just-" he was really stuttering now, looking like the words were physically getting lodged in his throat on their way up. "I've seen Ferb with Isabella, you know? How - how they act, I mean. I've seen how they hug. I've seen them - seen them kiss each other. And I - I don't know. I just feel like I want that. But - but with you."
Candace frowned. "You want to kiss me?" Well, if that was all it took to make him happy, she supposed-
"Yes! I mean, no! Well, yes, but no! Like- yes, yes I do, but only because I'm in love with you. I want that, Candace. What Ferb and Isabella have. The whole thing - the relationship, I mean. So, yeah, a part of that would be kissing, I guess, but it's more than just that. You're my older sister, and I love you, but I've sort of had this feeling, you know? And I never knew what to do with it, but when I saw Ferb and Isabella, I realized - realized that what I wanted was be like them, except, you know, me and you."
Oh. He kept bringing up Ferb and Isabella an awful lot, didn't he? Well, she supposed it was reasonable, since they were married. Still, though, what those two have between them now that they were married that… oh, hang on, she was pretty sure she did understand now. Hmm, it was a strange request indeed.
"You want to have sex with me?"
Her brother's face turned redder than blood. "No!" he exclaimed. "I - I - never thought of that, I swear!" The look in his eyes was almost pleading now. "I don't - I don't really know how to explain it, Candace, but I'm trying, I swear. It's I - I'm in love with you. I have a crush on you. I want to have a romance. I want to make something like that - because I've seen Ferb and Isabella have it, and I know that's what I want too. I want something like that, but for us." He offered her a faint smile. "I want to make 'us' work, Candace - please."
Candace's eyebrows both shot up onto her forehead, as another memory suddenly popped into the forefront of her mind. Another time, ten years ago, when that same question had been posed to her.
"I want to make 'us' work, Candace - please."
The last time, it had Johnson. Jeremy, the one from the North. Candace's counterpart from the other dimension had told her to look into him - not in any official capacity, but in a more personal sense. As in, in a romantic sense.
And, well, Doofenshmirtz had just been deposed. Her lifelong nemesis had been imprisoned for his countless crimes against humanity. Perhaps, then, when she'd been only fifteen years old, she'd still held some notion of somehow 'returning' the life she'd known before the dictator had risen. So, she'd tried.
She'd pulled out all the stops, trying to throw herself back into civilian life. She'd found some new things to wear - things that sacrificed tactical maneuverability for… looking nice? She'd tried to forget about the ten years of horror she'd seen. She'd stopped carrying her staff places. She'd relaxed somewhat on her exercise regimen. She'd tried to block from her mind the blood, the gore, the bits of scattered viscera spattered onto a girl hardly even old enough for high school. She'd taken her sunglasses off and left them on her nightstand. She'd even tried her hand at a romance, despite hardly knowing how to function inside one.
But it hadn't been enough. It had never been enough.
Her old - and really, only - life kept dragging her back, refusing to loose its hold on her, no matter what she did. She resigned from OWCA, hoping that cutting the old ties would somehow make it all pass.
It didn't.
She couldn't regret what she'd done, what she'd seen, what she'd endured. It had all been worth it, and she never would regret that for as long as she lived. But even so, she couldn't forget it. Doofenshmirtz had escaped. Her brothers were danger again, and here she was trying to withdraw her mantle of protection right when they needed it most?
Johnson wasn't a bad guy. Not at all - good soldier through and through. And she supposed he might have been a good romantic partner? She hardly knew. Little by little, she'd stopped resisting as her old life pulled her back, farther and farther.
She ditched the new clothes - they were uncomfortable anyway, and drastically cut on how freely she could move. She resumed carrying her staff, and it was like being reunited with an old friend. She took to making nightly patrols of the street she and her brothers lived on, just to make sure their house was safe. She slowly forgot about Johnson altogether, opting to watch over her brothers instead. What if something had happened to them - worse, while she was trying to not pay attention?
The thought was one too terrible to contemplate, and she felt ashamed of herself. Her attention would never lapse like that again.
And then, one day, after a week of not seeing him, Johnson had shown up at their front door. "Candace," he'd said. "What's going on?"
She'd told him the truth - that she'd been preoccupied with people more important than he.
He'd sighed. "I want to make 'us' work, Candace - please." he'd said. "I like you. I think you're - you're great. But sometimes I just… I get the feeling that you don't care." He'd hesitated after that. "Do you?"
And Candace had thought on it for a few moments. On the one hand, a normal life was being offered her. A normal romance, if she could figure it out. A life where she could be a normal fifteen-year-old girl, doing whatever those did. A life where she could be lazy and irresponsible, a life where nothing relied on her, where she relied on her parents for support, and let adults do the work while she had fun.
On the other hand, her brothers would be missing the constant presence of the protection she'd been giving them since she was five years old and they were too young to walk.
And in that instant, her mind was made up.
"I don't," she'd said.
The conversation had gone on longer after that, but she hardly remembered any more of it. Johnson had left, and she'd gone back upstairs and found her sunglasses again, pushing them firmly back on her face, and once more, the world was dim and familiar. Ideal? Commendable? Healthy? Not hardly. No one knew how messed up she was more than she herself.
But it was for the best reason she could have possibly had, and that was reason enough. She had grown up, so that her brothers hadn't had to. She had seen things, and heard things, and endured things - things that once had kept her six-year-old self up at night for days and days on end. But she would do it all again in an instant.
Because she had done it for them.
So, that, then, was what her brother was asking of her? He wanted to romance her, in the same way that Johnson had tried. Because, apparently, he was in love with her.
Candace loved her brother deeply, there was no doubt about that. But she didn't have to think for long at all on this subject to arrive at an answer to his question. Because although what she had done with her life had been justified and it had been necessary, it would have been foolish to try and claim that it had had no effect on her.
She'd tried to make herself normal again, once. She'd tried to have a romance, once.
She'd learned her lesson, once.
Her brother was silent, waiting expectantly in the chair across the room. She shrugged at him. "No."
For a moment longer, silence hung in the room.
"Wait, what?" he finally asked. "Candace, you - are you sure? You don't think that somewhere, maybe, deep down, you and I could-"
"No." She did love Phineas. Phineas was… was an innocent little bundle of hope and excitement and passion and love and optimism. He was the epitome of everything good left in the world. If there was anyone deserving of a happy life free from harm, it was him. The fact that, even now, she was letting him second-guess her, was testament to just how much she loved him.
Isabella may have been quite smart in her own way, and Candace knew that the woman had a quick wit and often had good ideas. But although that was true, and although Isabella had many times proved to be a valuable in making decisions, not even she was allowed to second-guess Candace's decisions once they had already been made. That was a privilege that her brothers only could have.
"Why?" Phineas asked desperately. "What is it, Candace? I just… I don't know, can you at least tell me why not? You're my sister - I love you, I really do."
"Phineas," she cautioned. "You're pushing it." He wasn't going to change her mind on this. It was made up - not worth another minute of her time, in her opinion. At another time she might be fine with letting him bother her about it for a bit longer, but it was nine-thirty now, and she wanted to contact OWCA Headquarters and get the latest status report from the crew there.
"But," he stammered. "But - but -"
Candace reached up and pushed her sunglasses back down over her eyes again, her tone hardening slightly. "What did I say, Phineas?"
He blinked, subconsciously stiffening in the chair before looking down at the floor. "Yes, sir," he murmured, slowly standing up and walking out of the room.
Well, that was the end of that. Candace stood up and pulled her two-way radio out of it's pouch on her hip. "Status report."
A few minutes passed as she listened quietly to the report. Well, it seemed the coast was clear - for now. Fair enough. When Doofenshmirtz felt the urge to strike again, they would be ready for him. He'd see.
So, what now? Probably nutrition. Yes, that'd be smart. Tonight, the guard shift was not hers, so she would get to sleep. It had to be done sometime, after all. Walking across the room to the cupboard, she produced a couple of boxes of dehydrated rations and dumped some of it out onto a plate.
The room was silent as she ate, her staff sitting across her lap the whole time. Some part of her was surprised that Phineas didn't come to sit and eat with her as he usually did. Oh, well, it wasn't like she'd ordered him to do it.
As soon as she finished, she was determined to head directly to bed. If she was supposed to sleep tonight, she was going to get a solid eight hours, so that she could easily pull an all-nighter tomorrow night if it was needed. Phineas still hadn't come out of his room, so she shrugged as she walked past.
"Phineas!" she called through the door. "'Night."
"Goodnight." The voice that returned through the door was strangely muffled, as if the speaker was trying to hide something - or was in trouble some way. Uh oh - there was no way this was going to happen on her watch.
She took a single step back, and crashed her foot straight through the door, shearing the hinges straight out of the wall and sending it tumbling to the floor with a tremendous noise. Her eyes darted around the room - but it was empty. Well, except for Phineas.
"What's going on in here?" she demanded.
"Nothing," he replied. But without the door between them, she was pretty sure she heard his voice shake somewhat.
She narrowed her eyes. "Look at me."
When he refused, she reached out with one end of her staff and physically lifted up his chin, letting her see into his eyes for herself. Hmm. She wasn't an expert on emotion, for sure, but she was an expert on her little brothers. And he was definitely bothered by something.
Sitting down on the bed next to him, she took one more glance around the room and slowly pushed her sunglasses back to the top of her head. "What's going on with you?"
He shrugged. "N-nothing."
Hmm. Well, okay then. Whatever.
"It's - it's just," he suddenly started. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes, remembering her sunglasses were off, and waited for him to continue. "I do love you, Candace. I really do. And I know what you said, but… won't you just try with me? Just, you know, for a little while - just to see if you like it?" He looked up at her, his eyes pleading with her.
He was still on this? Hadn't it been settled, like, forty minutes ago? Man, if it had been anyone else, she would have probably smacked them across the face and told them to shape up and deal with it. But… this wasn't anyone else. It was Phineas, her own little brother.
She took a breath. Okay, explaining herself. She… could do this, for her brother's sake. "Phineas, I do love you. You don't know how much I love you. There is literally nothing I would not do for you." That was true. If it somehow became necessary to slit her own wrists to save his life, she would do it without a moment's hesitation. "But what you are asking of me is… not something I am capable of."
"Oh, Candace," he replied softly. "That's not true. I know it."
She paused. A thousand lurid images flashed through her mind, a thousand mind-numbing sounds, a thousand soul-crushing scenarios. The suffering, the torture, the death. The metallic voices of NORMbots, of helpless people begging for mercy, the stomach-turning squelching sound as those pleas were suddenly silenced. She couldn't save them all. There was just no way. So, she'd determined to focus her efforts on area she could be successful. Her brothers.
If she was to do that, she would have to be above it all. She would have to keep her cool, her presence of mind, even as her fellow Resistors were blown to smithereens around her, even as she was splattered in their remains. She could not let those things faze her, ever, or the same fate would catch up to her too.
That was the true horror of the world, and she had chosen to absorb it all, in order to keep it from reaching her brother's sensitive minds.
"But it is," she firmly replied. "I love you. You are the most important person on the face of this Earth to me. But this?" She leaned down closer to him, until her face was almost in his. "Look me in my eyes, Phineas. See what I mean, when I say this. I am not capable of this which you ask."
She leaned back, pushing her sunglasses back down over her eyes.
"I - I'm sorry," Phineas breathed. "I guess."
She shrugged and reached out, pulling him towards to her in a powerful embrace. "Nothing for you to be sorry about." She ruffled his hair and stood up. "Now, I'm going to bed. I'll see you at oh six hundred sharp."
She turned and strode out of the room and into her own, sitting on her own pallet and yawning exactly once before leaning her staff against the wall and laying down flat on her back.
And that, as far as she was concerned, was the end of that.