Author's Note: Well, it's been a very long while, but here's another chapter for you to read. The reason I took so long was because I wanted to finish the story properly first before uploading a new chapter, and I've done that now. It's nineteen chapters, all in all, and about 87.000-88.000 words.
Chapter Seven
Wednesday, June 9th 2033
10:00 AM
Danville
AYA-Verse
It took me a few moments to capture my breath after Phineas had told me he wasn't an inventor – and honestly, it wasn't even the fact that this meant he might not be able to help me. I let him blab on about how he'd been approached by special effects master Clive Addison as a kid and how Addison had given him a call at some stage in his adulthood and they'd hit it off right away leading to his current state, but my mind wasn't really on what he had done here, but rather on what he hadn't done instead.
"But why?" I interrupted as soon as I could reasonably get a word in again. "You love inventing! It's your passion! Phineas, when we were young you couldn't go for a single day without not building anything – in fact, if we tried to stop you from doing what you wanted to do you straight-up went into a depression!" How could that ever – change, this much?
Phineas frowned. "Candace, I didn't always flip out at not being able to build stuff, only when I'd previously intended to do something and others got in my way. I had lazy days without doing anything even during summer, and Ferb and I didn't get to build as much as we would have wanted to during school time either. It's about managing your expectations, sis. You can't always keep doing the things you enjoy in life, and I guess I managed my expectations so much that I grew out of the inventing phase. But it's not all bad – I love my current job to bits, and…"
I shook my head. "That's not you."
"I beg your pardon?"
"That's not you" I repeated. "I can't believe I'm actually hearing Phineas fricking Flynn say that inventing was ever a phase to him. Phineas, inventing was as natural to you as breathing or eating! How could you possibly have 'grown out' of that? What about Ferb, has he gone nu- has he decided to stop inventing as well?"
"Ferb still – tinkers on the side" Phineas replied. "But he does a lot of things. Inventing things, directing movies, acting, practicing some of the magic they taught him at Camford on Oxbury…"
"Magic?" I spluttered. It didn't come out very loud, however, probably due to the extent of my surprise. Although to be honest, all of this was just one big shock after another.
"…but I think he's mostly occupied with supporting his wife these days. Vanessa does have a heavy burden to carry, you know…" He turned to me and frowned uncertainly. "…do you?"
"I haven't got a clue" I said dryly. "But by all means, do enlighten me. What exactly does Vanessa do for a living that would require Ferb's support all the time?" If I was going to be mad at the world here for steering my brothers – both of them – off their natural inventing paths, I might as well be informed on the exact reasons for why it happened.
Phineas looked up at me. "Well, she's vice-president of the United States."
… I have to admit that I was not expecting that. "Wha – vice-president? How did that happen?"
"I'm not exactly sure, but she was basically already on a path towards political ambitions when she started working at OWCA" Phineas replied. "She got into contact with some important people there, they convinced her to stand for a senatorial election, and with Ferb backing her and Vanessa's own strong personality they soon became an unstoppable team that headed straight forwards to where they are now."
"Wow" I muttered. "You know, of all the things that are different here, that one has got to be the coolest. I wonder what our world's Vanessa would think about that."
Phineas grinned. "I'm glad to hear you don't think everything here is awful. So, are you still in contact with Vanessa there?"
"Sometimes" I replied, wondering whether to explain her marriage as well before deciding that it might as well be best to have everything clear straight away. "She's actually married to Jeremy Johnson, if you can believe that. And before you ask, no, I'm not sure how that happened. I think they bonded at college, mostly over knowing people who were involved with craziness. They're both fairly laid-back people, so that must have helped."
"I guess so" Phineas agreed. "Still, Jeremy and Vanessa are far from the most obvious people in the world who could become a couple."
"Full agreement here, but those things do tend to happen sometimes" I said. "And I suppose it's up to them to determine whether they are happy together. I haven't actually spoken to them in a while, though – I found talking to Jeremy to be a bit awkward in the first weeks after Phineas and I started dating, and well, they don't know about our relationship so on that account it was perhaps only natural for us to drift apart."
Phineas nodded. "I see. Do many people know about you and my other self being… well, together?"
That stopped me short for a moment. "Well… no more than necessary, really. The people that do know all found out because of how much they interacted with us and because it would just have been too impractical to keep it a secret from them forever. We try to keep the amount of people who are in the know limited because my Phineas is a famous inventor," I swear I couldn't help the hint of smugness and pride that slipped into my voice there, "and for obvious reasons we don't want the press to get wind of our relationship. Thus far, that's working well enough – heck, Mom and Dad didn't even know until a few years ago."
"How do you keep it all a secret then, if my other self is such a public figure?" Phineas wondered.
I shrugged. "Well, it helps that it's not the first idea many people come up with when they see us together – incest is still quite a mental leap to make. If you read the tabloids, there are probably more people who think Phineas is secretly dating Ferb than me." The weirded-out look on his face was as satisfying as I'd hoped it would be. "And although we live together, the outside world has no real reason to presume that I'm not a single mother who has taken her brother in. Cohabiting siblings happen all the time, after all. Makes you wonder how many of them are secretly in a relationship. Anyway, Phineas has a separate bedroom which guests can presume he sleeps in, so there's that, and there is a whole shield covering the house and keeping it protected against paparazzi. Not to mention the fact that we hardly ever leave Danville together."
Phineas nodded thoughtfully. "I see. And what do your kids think about that?"
I paused for a moment but forged on before (I think) he could notice it. "Xavier and Amanda both had some issues with adjusting to the fact that your counterpart was their father," that was putting it mildly, especially in Xavier's case, "but eventually they got used to it. Phineas is their Dad behind closed doors, and although it clearly irks them that they don't have a public father and that we can't do many of the things normal families could do much more freely, they wouldn't want to trade us for another set of parents. Believe me – I've asked them."
Phineas nodded. "I see. Wow. I still can't believe that you and I – well, the other me, I suppose – are really in a relationship in another world. Does that mean he's never felt anything for Isabella?"
"Not that I know of" I replied ambiguously, and I suddenly realized that at this point I was willing to let this local version of my brother hope that his counterpart did at one point have feelings for someone other than myself. I was fairly sure he hadn't, even though I have to admit this whole experience was beginning to shake my confidence in that, but I was willing to let Phineas delude himself about that for a while. Not just because I felt bad for him, but also because I didn't want him to be upset since I still needed him…
Or did I?
If Phineas' other self hadn't invented anything in years, what was the point of continuing to hang around him? (Besides the fact that he reminded me of my own Phineas, of course.) He wouldn't be able to help me. And if he couldn't help me, I had to wait for my Phineas to come up with something. And if my local self hadn't told him who she really was, that could take forever.
I shivered, a doom scenario suddenly occurred to me. What if the other me had flipped out upon discovering where she was and with who she was? From what little I'd heard about her thus far, she didn't really sound like the nicest person, nor was she very close to her brother. Finding out that she was in another dimension after years of having nothing to do with her little brothers' brand of crazy could very well drive her mad, and the prospect of having to live with Phineas for a temporary husband could drive her over the edge. In my darkest nightmares, I could envision my counterpart fleeing in terror as she heard the truth, never explaining why – perhaps seeking solace with a confused Jeremy at first, driving a wedge in his and Vanessa's marriage, before deciding to permanently leave Danville and thus leaving my brother with no idea why the woman he loved had abandoned him so suddenly, perhaps driving himself and the kids mad with despair…
It was the most negative of all possible scenarios, of course, and it relied on my counterpart being completely irrational and uncooperative and on Phineas never realizing the mind transmitter had caused the problem, which even if the other me didn't tell him was an unlikely assumption. But it didn't matter. For those few moments, the image of never seeing him again was far too real, and I felt, it couldn't, I didn't…
No.
I wouldn't accept it. I couldn't accept it. I loved my home world, I loved my life, I loved my kids… and I loved Phineas. Never seeing him again simply wasn't an option. And if I had to single-handedly put the inventing spirit back into his other self, then that was what I would do.
I turned to said other self, who had remained quiet while I was mulling all that over. The curious, expectant look he gave me was intimately familiar, but I knew this person wasn't the Phineas Flynn I knew and loved and I felt that he didn't deserve the title of being his counterpart if he was really willing to give up just like that.
"Look, Phineas," I said somberly, "all these anecdotes we're exchanging are very interesting, but let's get back to the matter at hand. I understand you haven't invented anything in years. I don't get why, but I realize it and accept it. But that doesn't mean that you can't just give up. For my sake, and for your own sake. You may love being a special effects maker, you may love hanging out with Buford and Baljeet, but unless I'm thoroughly mistaken about who you are that can't be enough for you, Phineas. You're an inventor. You're a scientist. You love to dream about and build so much more than just movies. Even if you haven't done it for years, that spirit inside you can't all be gone."
Phineas sighed. "I've got to admit that I do wonder from time to time whether I should start building stuff again" he replied. "But what with my job and my family I just haven't had the opportunity – and like I said, I don't have a laboratory with anything sophisticated enough to help you get home. I could probably come up with some theories, but unless I have data to go on they probably won't be of any use to you."
I shook my head. "You don't need anything big and sophisticated – with just a few random bits of material I've watched you create wonders. And unless this world is even more drastically different from ours than I think it is, you should still have a place with that material on hand."
"What do you mean?" Phineas wondered.
I smiled. "Remember SHED?"
My brother paused for a long, excruciating moment, and then he slowly began to smile. "Of course! I can't believe I didn't think of that! I haven't been in the backyard of my parents' home for a while but SHED should still be there so we could…" He hesitated. "…we could get a lab. We could probably even get the equipment, and a lot of it would still be lying around there anyway since I don't think Ferb and I ever really cleaned it up. But even so, I'm not sure whether I could really pull something as complex as this off alone when I haven't worked on anything in years."
This was my final card to play, and everything was now riding on it. "What if I helped you with that?"
Phineas gave me a skeptical look. "You're not telling me that you're an inventor in your world too, are you Candace?"
"Not technically" I agreed. "But I've helped my brothers out on far more occasions than your sister probably has. I wouldn't say I'm great at it, but I know enough about how you work and the material you work with to be able to remind you. It probably won't be more than a kick-start to get you going, of course, but that just might be enough to get you on your way."
Phineas was quiet for an awfully long time after that, and it was agonizing. It felt like I was balancing between hope and fear. If my brother didn't want to help me, I – well, I supposed I could give it a try on my own, and there was always Ferb… but I'd still feel lost and miserable without him. He might not be my Phineas and he was a painful reminder of home, but he was a reminder of home nevertheless and an impetus to get back there. Not to mention that even if my other self was a jerk, I couldn't picture her brother leaving her to her fate like that. Any version of Phineas, even a Phinbella!Phineas, should want to help.
Finally, he turned to me and nodded, and I let out a sigh of relief. My joy was strong enough that I could barely hear him mutter: "This does mean I'm going to have to cancel my flight back to Zurich."
I frowned, being too unfamiliar with his profession to be able to tell how much trouble that was for him. "Can't you just get someone to replace you, or postpone the whole affair for a few days?" I reasoned. "Knowing you, I'm confident you've been punching above your weight anyway. Getting some off-time for a family emergency can't be that hard."
Phineas got out his cell phone. "It's not my job that I'm worried about." He touched the screen a few times, and I could hear the phone connecting through the speaker. There was no hologram emerging, though – another sign of slightly retarded technology.
"Phineas?" Isabella's voice eventually said. "Where are you?"
My brother's counterpart looked a bit nervous – too nervous for someone who was calling his wife, and certainly too nervous for someone as confident as Phineas. "I'm at Danville Park" he said softly. "Candace and I took a walk around it after we dropped Vicky off, and she explained her problem at length. She's got an important issue that only I can help her with, and it has to happen quickly."
There was a brief pause at the other end of the line. "Are you saying you want me to cancel your afternoon flights?" Isabella said, her voice rising in indignation.
Ah, so that was what had Phineas so worried. I watched on as my brother began looking more and more… well, upset wasn't the word, he was still relatively calm, but he certainly looked uncomfortable. "Yeah. Isabella, I know that you would have wanted me to spend more time at home for your and Vicky's sake, but…"
Isabella started to reply, but she'd barely gotten a syllable out when her agitated voice suddenly became much softer and more distantly sounding – Phineas must have turned off the speaker phone, not wishing his counterpart's sister to have to listen to his spousal quarrel. I could understand that.
In order to give my brother some space, I walked over to a nearby park bench and watched Phineas' conversation on the phone. That is to say, Isabella's monologue to Phineas, because it did not appear that she was giving my brother many chances to interrupt before rambling off again about something or another. I could see Phineas was still calm and trying to be the voice of reason (which I would indeed imagine him to be in a marriage with Isabella, even more so than he was in our own relationship back home) but that he was having a hard time doing that when he couldn't even get a word in.
For the first time since he had announced that he wasn't an inventor, I found myself feeling truly sorry for the poor guy.
It took about ten minutes before the phone call ended and Phineas sat down next to me. He was smiling at me, but it was clear that he was tired and exhausted by the argument. I considered just keeping mum about this altogether and switching back to what he was going to do to help me home, but… heck, I was too curious. I couldn't help myself.
"Are you all right?" I said, trying to sound as concerned and sympathetic as possible. "It sounded like you and Isabella had a really rocky conversation."
Phineas sighed, and his eyes fell. "Isabella was mad that I haven't been home for longer than twenty-four hours in three weeks, and yet I asked her now to cancel everything because you had some kind of emergency going on. Remember back at our house, she implied that I was paying more attention to you than to her and Vicky? She said that again now, and she had another few choice words to say about it which I will not repeat."
I nodded, hesitating about what I could and couldn't say to him. I finally settled on briefly patting his shoulder first. Although he started at my touch, he made no attempts to stop me. "So, has… anything like this happened before?"
Phineas sat up straight and looked at me like a deer in the headlights. The poor guy actually seemed to be embarrassed. "What makes you say that?"
I smiled gently at him. "I know you, Phineas, probably better than my counterpart here knows you. I could see there was some… tension when you talked to Isabella earlier, and I noticed that wasn't anything strange to Vicky."
At the mention of his daughter, Phineas looked mortified. "I know" he muttered. "Vicky has been a witness to one of our little spats far too often. And I've tried not to cause them so often, I've tried to be a good husband and stop letting myself get carried away by work and other things, but…" He shook his head. "Getting to date and marry Isabella was like a dream come true. Becoming a father was even better. You'd think I'd be at home every day with my wife and daughter rather than being off for work all the time. It's important, certainly, but I'm not home enough because of it and Isabella is right about that. And I want to come home more often, it just…"
I hesitated. "It sounds to me…" An open look in my direction encouraged me to go on. "I know it's not my place to say, but to me it sounds more like on these business trips, you're subconsciously trying to avoid going home and getting into all these arguments again."
Phineas contemplated the thought. "I – I certainly hope not" he whispered. "What kind of a person would I be if I did that, if I didn't want to be at home with my family? It's not true, though. I am busy, but I've been trying to make more time for my wife and child. Vicky is my only daughter, and I love her, and…"
"…and what about Isabella?" I said.
It was out before I could really contemplate what I was saying, and Phineas gave me a confused and unsettled look. "What do you mean?"
Well, I'd come all this way already – might as well go for the full package. "What about Isabella? Do you love her, too?"
Phineas blinked. "Of course I love Isabella" he said instantaneously. "Why else do you think I married her? I got a crush on her when I was fourteen years old and entering high school, I slowly fell in love with her over the years and have had those feelings for her ever since, especially after I found out that she returned them."
Huh, that was an even more unfamiliar story than what I'd been expecting (although I don't know what I was expecting, really). It made me wonder at which point exactly our timelines diverged, but that was a question for another place and time. "I'm sure you love her" I said soothingly. "Isabella has been your friend for a long time, after all, and even my Phineas has a deep affection towards her. But are you confident that you're in love with her? That the feelings you have had for her over the past two decades are romantic in nature?"
Phineas gradually turned away from me on the bench. "Candace, I know how I feel."
"Of course you do" I replied. And I could have left it there very easily, and the conversation would have merely ended on an awkward note. We would probably have forgotten all about it in an hour or so, certainly if Phineas returned the subject of the conversation to getting me back home. But since I was too deep into the conversation now, I… didn't.
"But do you ever question those feelings, and why you have them?" The vibe I was getting from him was more confused than angry yet, so I forged on. "Phineas, could you explain to me how you and Isabella got together in the first place?"
My brother instantly smiled at that, and even after half a day of getting used to the idea that still stung. "It happened when I was eighteen years old. I had already graduated high school but I was still oblivious to Isabella's feelings for me. Ferb had already picked his college, but I still had to pick mine, so Buford and Baljeet came over to talk. I can't remember whether I meant to ask them for advice or whether I just wanted some old-fashioned conversation about days gone by and a distraction from it all."
I nodded. "I see. Where were Isabella and the other me at the time?"
"You were at law school" Phineas replied. "Isabella was out with the Fireside Girls. We'd been getting more distanced from each other for a while."
That wasn't exactly what I was expecting. "You were moving apart? I thought you said you had a crush on her."
"I did" Phineas confirmed. "I think she was trying to let go of me because she thought I would never return her feelings."
"I was asking about your feelings, not hers. Why didn't you stop her if you were so in love with her?"
"I didn't realize how far we'd moved apart until it had already happened. And I never said that I was in love with her, just that I had a crush on her." He sighed, trying not to let his irritation show. "Can I go back to telling the story now?"
I frowned. "I guess so."
"Thanks. So, the guys and I were talking and Isabella came up. I mentioned that I didn't have a chance with her, and they told me she'd had a crush on me for years now." I wanted to speak up, but decided at the last moment not to interrupt his story again because I didn't want him to get too agitated. Better to wait until he was finished. "I was hurt, and asked them why they hadn't told me before. They reminded me that guys didn't talk about their feelings, but I still felt hurt about it all. I decided to go for a walk and clear my head, and then I ran into Isabella's Mom at her family's restaurant. She told me Isabella was leaving town for her college and how much she'd always wanted us to become a couple, so I decided to take off after her." Restrain yourself, Candace… "I managed to intercept her before she could leave town. Apparently, she'd been reflecting on our relationship herself. I apologized to her and told her how I felt, and I decided to go to her college with her. Ferb, Buford, Baljeet and the Fireside Girls showed up – apparently they'd been trying to make something for a romantic dinner but it had disappeared – and they applauded for us." As much as I probably shouldn't have, I couldn't stop myself from snorting there. "Isabella went off to college, but I decided that I couldn't leave her with just that, so I caught up to her and gave her a final – and first – kiss. Two weeks later, we started college together, and we've been together ever since."
My brother had a fond, reminiscent smile on his face, and looking at it I took a deep breath, knowing what I needed to say would wipe it right off. "Phineas?"
"Yeah?"
"Please don't take this the wrong way, but that sounds like a bad fan fiction story. And I should know, I write the stuff."
My brother's reaction was more surprised than angry, which was a relief to be honest because I wasn't sure how he was going to react. "What do you mean?"
I counted the deficiencies on my fingers. "If you'd been having a crush on Isabella for years, why didn't Ferb do something with it – he knew Isabella had those feelings for you, or at least I presume he did in this universe too, so why wouldn't he tell Isabella that those feelings would be returned if she confessed them? Did Isabella's Mom just happen to bring up Isabella's crush on you on the same day you talked to your friends about it for the first time ever? Did the Fireside Girls and the guys seriously applaud at you getting together with her – do you have any idea how cheesy that is, especially if they apparently didn't care very much before that… and you're not going to tell me Ferb joined in with them, too?"
"He didn't" Phineas said softly. "And he didn't tell Isabella before because he didn't know about my feelings for her. I never thought it would serve any purpose to tell him."
I had to spend a few seconds just staring at him after he said that. "You didn't tell Ferb? You – how serious did you say this crush was?"
Phineas looked up at me and hesitated briefly. I could see a flash of frustration in his eyes, but it was gone the next moment. "I didn't tell Ferb because I grew to be a more private person over time" he said on a steeled tone. "Not to mention the fact that my feelings grew stronger as time went on. At first, what I felt for Isabella was so unclear in my mind that I didn't know what I was feeling, but later I realized that it had to be love."
"Was it?" I instantly (albeit perhaps unwisely) reacted.
Phineas remained quiet for a few more moments, and I wondered whether he was going to say anything at all before I heard a soft "What do you mean?"
I sighed. "I'm just going to ignore the whole 'not telling Ferb' thing, which I'm still not buying by the way because if you had displayed any feelings at all at any point I'm sure Ferb would have noticed even if you hadn't actually told him – that's how he found out the you I know had a crush on me, and he actually managed to find that out sooner than you did which is probably a first in the global history of relationships – but are you certain that what you felt for Isabella was love? Phineas, Isabella has always been your best female friend. It's only natural that when she matured from a girl into a young woman, and you got through puberty and gradually started noticing girls in general, that you would notice her. Heck, even my Phineas once said that Isabella had grown to be attractive over the years, and that was when the two of us had already been dating for two or three years."
"Your point being?" Phineas said curtly, and though his head turned away from me I could tell that I struck a nerve but that he was refusing to admit it. Seriously, this whole brooding thing was weird and out of character for him, probably even in this dimension.
I continued unabated, because I was on a roll now and was going to make my point no matter what my brother would think of it. "If you noticed Isabella as a girl for the first time while being unfamiliar with romance in general, it's natural that you would come to think that maybe you had a crush on her, and that that thought would haunt your mind until you were absolutely sure. It sounds like the right time frame, too – the other Candace would have been off to college right around the time you entered high school, leaving you with no… distractions, so to speak. And so, you believed you had a crush on Isabella, with only the fact that you didn't tell Ferb or anyone else about it being evidence for how weak those feelings really were. Come that summer you just told me about, you and Isabella start drifting apart, your subconscious panics and wants to fix the relationship with romance as a more permanent glue than friendship, bam. Instant love affair, just add water. But that's not how romance works, Phineas."
My brother clenched his fists and shook his head. "I don't believe this. Do you really think you can tell me what I do and don't feel for Isabella? Whether or not I made a mistake by starting to date her? Candace, like I said before, I know how I feel! If I say I love Isabella, my wife, then I love Isabella!"
I wondered whether that 'wife' remark was a jab at the fact that my Phineas and I weren't legally married (which it couldn't have been in retrospect because I hadn't even told him that yet, but I have to admit that I was getting carried away at this point and wasn't thinking straight anymore). It only got me more frustrated with the other-ness of this dimension and more determined to 'fix' it. "Of course you do. You've been living together for thirteen years now, you've got a daughter together. I can understand why you wouldn't want to say there were no real romantic feelings involved from the start, because you're committed to that relationship now. But when you keep being under pressure from her to be someone you're not, when you're not looking forwards to coming home because it means you'll have to conform to her expectations again or risk an argument, your romantic present doesn't look so sound. And you have never broadened your horizons beyond that initial 'crush', have you Phineas? You haven't even talked to my counterpart in months. Have you ever really allowed yourself to think about how you feel about her? I know I was your hero when you were a kid, way beyond what I deserved, and our bond has been unique and special from the day you were born. I haven't been able to evade that even when I still tried, and your counterpart has always embraced it – and we're happy. We're a family, Phineas and I are closer than we've ever been when we were 'just' siblings, and our relationship is much better off than it is in your world, with you being a workaholic and me being neurotic in all the wrong ways, and apparently we haven't even properly spoken to each other in months which is seriously messed up from both sides. That bond between us is old and strong, Phineas, and it is so messed up in this dimension that it hurts to watch it, and deep inside you have to know that that matters more than whatever you think you feel for Isabella, so if you'd just listen to reason then you and your Candace could…"
Phineas' head snapped up again.
"ENOUGH!"
I had never seen Phineas so angry before. Then again, I had never said something quite so infuriating to him before.
"H-how could you!" Phineas snapped. He stood up and glared at me. "How could you say something like that about me and Isabella, and try to fit us into your own twisted model of how the world works? Did I ever say you shouldn't be with your world's Phineas? I didn't, because although it sounds strange to me and I'm uncomfortable with it it's all in another dimension and thus none of my business – just like my love life is of no business to you! I never thought you'd be so arrogant to just presume that the only way I could be happy is by being with you!"
He started stalking off in the direction of the car, and I began to realize that I'd just made a big, big mistake. It took me a few seconds of resolving what to do, but eventually I still ran after him. I caught up with him at the exit to the park. "Phineas, that's not it at all! I – I admit I went a little far there but all I was trying to do was make you happy, and I can tell that you're not and that my Phineas is! I…" I noticed he was walking towards the car. "Where are you going?"
Phineas stopped at the car door and turned to me, sighing. "I'm going home, Candace. To Isabella. To the woman I love." He got into the car and firmly shut the door behind him.
I tapped on the window, there not being anything else I could do. "Phineas, you – you can't just leave me here! I'm sorry, I…"
Phineas opened the window, and for a moment I thought I saw hesitation in his eyes – and then it was replaced by a deeper regret. "I know Isabella and I haven't got the best marriage, Candace," he said softly. "But what you just said was really uncalled for. I… I think I need to be away from you for a while. I can't do this right now. If you really want help to get home, you should probably get in contact with Ferb – his phone number should be at your counterpart's house." He sighed again. "I'm leaving."
The window went up and the car drove away from the high school, and as I stared after him the pain and hurt in my brother's eyes stuck with me. I hadn't meant everything I'd said to him, although I couldn't help but feel that at least some part of it was true. But I had hurt him, and that action had consequences.
My best hope to get home had left, and I honestly didn't know what to do anymore.
Author's Note: Just some notes on references in this chapter:
- The magic reference is derived almost directly from Act Your Age, where on Phineas' inquiry Ferb says about Camford on Oxbury that it's "not a wizard school. Well, there is some wizarding." I'm not sure what that says about whether or not Harry Potter is fictional in PnF.
- Vanessa is vice-president because of one line from Phineas and Ferb Quantum Boogaloo, when Linda says that Phineas is in Switzerland and Ferb is in Camp David. There was a whole discussion about that in the fandom because it appeared to refer to Ferb being the President of the USA, which is unlikely due to his British origin making him ineligible, or whether he couldn't be there for so many other reasons that had nothing to do with him being in politics. Some, however, suggested that Vanessa might be the president. I decided to use that idea (it's not like I'll be doing much with the Act Your Age-verse after this story anyway) but have her be vice-president just for a variation on the theme.
- FLS Candace's initial criticisms of Act Your Age are broadly similar to the ones I had when I first watched the episode, although there are a few things (like the cheesy 'romantic' song, or the canonically irrational age difference that I just retconned here) that I couldn't criticize because it wouldn't make sense for Phineas to tell her about it.
By the way, if anyone thinks Phineas' outburst was too strong, please leave a review about it. Phineas has been known to snap when he's upset (take for instance his reaction to Perry being a secret agent, or the 'get on the trike' moment, and FLS Candace did go pretty far here. Just rest assured that the breach between them isn't going to be permanent.
