A/N: Again, Caramel Cheescake was an excellent beta who should be revered. All mistakes are my own fault.

CHAPTER TWO

Wakko Warner was having an excellent dream in which a supervillain (he didn't know who) had captured Hello Nurse and trapped her in a vat of strawberry-fudge ice cream, and the only way to save her was to eat the entire thing.

What could he say? Some people's tastes mature, some people's don't. Wakko was quite happy with his juvenility, thank you very much.

He was just lunging forward to take his first bite out of the metal wall of the vat when a barrage of knocks on his door jerked him awake. He cried out, flailing his arms in a vague flapping motion as he fell off his couch. "Note to self," he muttered, rubbing his head. "Still can't fly." A smile spread across his face. "Not yet, at least." His mind filled with images of jet packs, wings that one could move individual feathers of, hang gliders that did more than hang and glide. . . .

The pounding on the door continued. "Open the door already! It's freezing out here!"

He stumbled to his feet and stared at the locked door for a long baffled moment. Once the fuzziness had faded from his brain, he unlatched the bolt and let the wood creak back on its hinges, turning back to the couch for a blanket. Dot would close the door for him.

His little sister was clad in a man's work shirt and a pair of denim shorts. She looked cold and miserable, but she met his gaze without shame as she sat down in the chair across from him. Wakko understood; he'd turned twenty-one only a year before, and it had taken him five months to figure out how to hold his alcohol without looking like a lake monster the next morning. Dot was smarter than he was, though, and he figured it wouldn't take her nearly as long to manage her liquor.

Yakko, of course, didn't drink.

"And what did you get up to, sister sibling?" Wakko asked with a smirk. He didn't care, really. Though he'd borrowed Yakko's affectionate moniker, he hadn't taken the overwhelming protectiveness that had always smothered Dot. Unlike his older brother, he knew better than to pressure her about making smart decisions, as that would only drive her to worse ones.

Unlike Yakko, he trusted his sister.

Dot smiled back wanly. "My head feels like it's going to explode all over your living room," she said. She glanced down at herself and winced. "And I have no idea whose shirt this is."

"I take it you celebrated your psychotic freedom a little too hard?"

"Psychoanalytic, Wakko. And yeah, I guess so. Fifi bought me this huge margarita and told me I'd better drink it all because she'd paid for it. That's about all I remember." She looked around. "You wouldn't by any chance have Pop-Tarts laying around, wouldya?"

He laughed. "Always, Dottie."

"I'd kill you if I could get up," she mumbled, curling up into a ball on the chair. "And if I knew where the Pop-Tarts are."

"That's why I said it." He stepped into his kitchen, cringing at the massive pile of dirty dishes. This was why he never brought girls home. He pulled the box down from the cupboard, mulling that thought over and wondering why it filled him with such a peculiar mix of satisfaction and dread. Then it clicked. "Shit!"

He raced back into the living room, tossing the box of Pop-Tarts at Dot as he passed. Ducking into the bedroom, he saw a mound of blankets with brown hair sticking out of one end and blue-toenailed feet sticking out of the other. She moaned and rolled onto her other side without waking up. Letting his breath out in a quick whoosh, he slipped back to where Dot was waiting. "Forgot about Michelle."

"Michelle? Who's — oh, waitress Michelle?" The woman in question worked with Wakko at Dylan's Dine-and-Dance, a somewhat sleazy diner-slash-nightclub that served undercooked hamburgers and limp salads about twenty feet away from a dance floor, complete with a disco ball and strobe lights. The music was determined by an ancient jukebox, so high schoolers without cars to get to cooler places were stuck grinding to U2 and Kenny Chesney. Still, it was the only place that would hire a Warner as a waiter, and he was quite good at remembering everyone's orders and balancing impossible trays of food. On the occasions that the food actually made it to the table, customers reported loving his hilarity and cheer. "You finally convinced her to enter this crusty hellhole, huh?"

"It's not that bad," he said, looking around. "Just a little laundry here and there."

"Sure. If she keeps her eyes closed, she'll never notice. Oh, wait. She can smell, can't she?"

He stuck his tongue out at her, letting it unravel like a slimy red carpet until it flicked the end of her nose. Instead of shrieking and writhing away, like most girls did when he pulled that trick, she snatched the end of it and tied it around a lamp, forcing him to walk over and free himself. "All right," he said once he could talk again, "so it's a little dirty. She likes me, not the apartment."

Dot had lost interest since the conversation had been so long away from her. It was an irritating habit, but one that had to be forgiven. She was Dot, after all, and she couldn't help it. "So I can't believe you didn't ask how my shrink session went."

"Well, since I got a call yesterday afternoon and heard you screaming, 'I'm free! I'm free from that crazy bitch forever!' I assumed it went pretty good."

She didn't bother to correct his grammar, too intent on telling her story. She'd gotten better over the years, managing to regale him with something that was more truth than embellishment. She even got her speech about a Hebrew pregnancy down to the letter.

He smiled a bit, but he looked a little sad. Dot narrowed her eyes at him. "What?"

He shrugged. "That just sounds like something Yakko would say, you know?"

"No, I don't know. I wouldn't talk like him and you know it."

"I don't know any such thing. But then again, if I knew I knew half the things I don't know I know, I could know twice as much as I think I know, and thus know all that I know." The sentence left his tongue tied in knots and his head spinning. Though he was talking more than he had as a kid, he still wasn't used to long speeches like that, let alone punny ones.

Dot seemed to feel the same way. "Look who's talking like Yakko now."

He sighed. "Look, I'm sorry. It's been a long night."

"You think you had a long night? Who exactly can remember most of it, again? I don't think it's the one wearing a shirt that smells like back sweat. I wouldn't sleep with a guy who has a sweaty back, would I? I mean, even drunk as a skunk I'd have better taste than that."

"I don't know. I think I might have slept with a sweaty-backed guy the second night I turned legal."

"Ha ha," she said, rolling her eyes. "So maybe it was a sweaty-back. I'll bet he looked like Mel Gibson."

"I'll bet he looked like Danny DeVito."

Dot glowered at him. "I hate you, you know that?" she said. "I hope Michelle in there has a dick and you just don't remember."

"Goodnight, everybody!" Wakko exclaimed with a laugh. For a moment they both fell silent, the presence of their older brother weighing on them like a lead blanket.

"I need a job," Dot finally muttered. As she spoke the tension lifted, and he noted that she really did look awful. "I hate it, but Plotzy was only footing my bill so long as I was getting psychiatric help from that blonde harpy." She looked up at him like she'd just told him she had terminal cancer. "I guess my crazy days are over."

He crossed the room and squeezed himself onto the armchair next to her, hooking an arm around her shoulders. "Nah. You'll just have to be careful about when and how you do it. For example, our dishwasher, Barry? Stuck a lobster in his pants yesterday while he was yelling at Michelle. Got out of there so fast he didn't see me. Thought it fell off the counter."

Dot sighed. "But it's no fun when nobody sees."

"Michelle saw. And that's the best way to get laid, in case you were wondering."

"Stick a lobster down somebody's pants?"

"Exactly," he said, hugging her close and reveling in the feel of a good old-fashioned hug (girls didn't like to hug the guys they wanted to sleep with, he'd discovered. They also didn't like Gookies). He felt protective and somehow safe. Dot was always going to need him to talk to, and he was always going to be there. He felt nice and secure in this knowledge and in his own ability to be a good brother.

He realized with a shock that he felt like Yakko. He felt like him, he sounded like him more and more each day. . . . It was like he was channelling his big brother's spirit or something. It was a little scary. Okay, it was a lot scary, but what could he do?

Somebody had to be the big brother.

Yakko just hadn't realized that being zany was part of the job description.

"So, Rita, how's Runt?"

"That's not funny," Rita Wilkins, a large Irish woman with huge muscles and hawklike eyes, said. She was clearly lacking a sense of humor. Unless, of course, she'd never seen Animaniacs!.

Yakko smiled at her. "So you and him are history? How about I pick you up at eight, then?"

"Please get off my desk, Officer Warner." Her voice was deadpan, but her eyes hinted at something more ominous.

One thing he'd learned since the show ended was when to shut up. "Of course, Sergeant Wilkins. Sorry to bother you." He stepped away from her desk and over to his own, collecting his things. His jacket slung over one arm, he turned to his superior, the only person currently in the office. "I'm clocking out for tonight. Goodnight, Sarge."

She nodded, looking surprised at his good behavior. You're not the only one, lady, he thought to himself as he slipped outside into the light drizzle. So far, he was not loving the classic New York atmosphere. It consisted of clouds and rain, followed by brief rays of sunshine that lasted just long enough for him to think that the weather wasn't so bad, and then were doused by more rain and clouds. When he'd made the cross-country trip, he'd expected a nice job in the city with bright lights and Broadway shows and plenty of chorus girls. What he'd gotten were old people and sulky teenagers, trapped in one of the almost-rural villages of upstate. He supposed that he should have done some research before agreeing to his realtor's suggestion of a nice little area called Scotia; he'd assumed that it was within half an hour of the Big Apple.

Ha. Try three hours, and then keep driving. Dot would have been furious with him for an error like that. Instead of getting the chance to be a stage star, she would have been stuck working in a Subway or the rinky-dink movie theater a few blocks away that only played second-run films. At least Wakko would have enjoyed the freedom of being as far away from Mr. Plotz as humanly possible.

But then again, hadn't the very fact that his siblings refused to come with him — refused, in fact, to speak to him at all — been the reason that he'd been too flustered to find out that Scotia was a village of nothing surrounded by a town of nothing in a county of huge-freaking-nothing? It was all their fault, really.

The one nice thing about being on the opposite coast was the fact that had been his only draw east: so far away from Hollywood and its influence, people didn't care whether you were a toon or not. Since there were maybe a third as many of them here as in California, most humans didn't have much of an opinion on the matter. In fact, they didn't really have an opinion on any matters, since they were all occurring so far south and west. Illegal immigration? No one cared. Various natural disasters down in Florida and New Orleans? Sure, they'd donate money to the fundraisers and charities, but it wasn't exactly a talking point. While Yakko missed getting into impassioned political arguments (not that he had a party to be affiliated with; he enjoyed taking the opposite side of whoever he was talking to, which in this teeny town meant Republican), he couldn't get over the feeling of buying his groceries and having the checkout guy ring up his purchases, hand him his change, and say, "Have a nice day, sir," without much more than a second glance.

Not that New York was some sort of Eden. He still got the odd slur or idiotic question — his personal favorite was, "How can you guys go out in the rain without melting?" — but the good people of the Empire State were content to leave well enough alone, and so these irritations were few and far between.

Of course, he wasn't an idiot. He knew that there was one huge difference between California and New York in this respect, and one main reason that he was being ignored rather than reviled. A beautiful woman walked past, her slinky, sultry movements bringing a pang of nostalgia; they were strangely reminiscent of Hello Nurse. He clapped his hand to his mouth before he could let out a whistle, and with his other he clutched a nearby lamppost, anchoring himself to the spot to avoid leaping into her arms.

People didn't bother him because he didn't bother them. He didn't act like a toon, so they didn't treat him like one. If that were to change, he thought his position on the police force would be gone before he could say Dot's full name.

So he played normal. He kept his rude, rapid-fire comments to a minimum, and he never touched anyone unless it was to shake their hand. It was hard, the hardest thing he'd ever done in his life, but he'd been practicing for seven years — starting when he'd applied and got accepted to the Criminal Justice program at one of the California State Universities, at nineteen years old — and it got easier every day.

He made it home around midnight, not worrying about keeping quiet as he went about his nighttime routine, which consisted of a huge bag of popcorn, a book called The Almost-Complete History of Toons in Media, and a radio station that mostly played really old rock n' roll. He kept the volume up and all the lights on. Why wouldn't he?

There wasn't anyone home.