A/N: This is a long one, but after the wait I guess that's worth it. Just think of it as a chapter for every 6 months!

There's a reference to what goes on in Chapter 18 (The History), so it might be worth getting a quick refresher on that before starting this one - or checking it out afterwards. Thanks to goldengod 180 for the suggestion!

CHAPTER TWENTY

"This afternoon, a demonstration at Disneyland turned deadly when three masked humans armed with water balloons filled with what police have nicknamed 'Dip' ambushed the mostly-toon protestors. Two men were apprehended, but one managed to . . ."

Wakko closed one eye, lining up his chopstick with the television's power button. With a deft flick of his wrist, he sent the utensil flying end-over-end across the living room. The screen went black.

Michelle, who had been curled against the other side of the sofa, yawned and sat up, her hair sticking up like bird feathers. "What time is it?" she asked blearily.

His neck stretched about a foot, turning to face the clock mounted on the wall behind them. "Noon," he said with a jaw-cracking yawn. "Ish." He grinned at her, his tongue lolling out of his mouth. "Have a good nap, Mickey?"

"Don't call me that," she groaned, staggering to her feet and turning toward the kitchen, swaying from lack of sleep. "I'm not a cartoon mouse. Do you have any food?"

Wakko knew he should get up and chivalrously offer to cook something, but the last time he'd tried that it'd taken hours for the firemen to clean everything up. Besides, he was comfortable. So his arms snaked out and wrapped around her waist, pulling her gently back onto the couch so she was laying flush against his chest. "You'd be a pretty cartoon mouse," he murmured, giving her cheek a wet, sloppy kiss.

She giggled, shoving against his arms. "Let me go — I'm hungry — stupid toon strength!" After a few moments he laughed and let her go, and she wriggled bonelessly to the ground, looking around with surprise. Her gaze landed on the food Wakko had been picking at, and her face lit up. "Ooh, Chinese!" Picking up the remaining chopstick, which had a piece of chicken skewered to its end, she sniffed it. "How old?"

"We picked it up this morning, on the way home from work." He watched with amusement as she nibbled at the morsel before deciding it was safe to eat. "You were there."

She shook her head, her bedhead waving like grass in the wind. "These night shifts, man. They're killing me. Besides, yesterday I got like no sleep, because I met up with some old friends. You should meet them, they'd like you. Except maybe Scylla — she's a toon, but not very funny."

Michelle too? Yakko had asked, on his way out the door, whether he'd like to join him on what he referred to as his "suicide mission," but the truth was that the middle Warner had never really gotten to know Yakko's college friends; he'd always sort of blamed them for his brother's change in behavior. Besides, Wakko wasn't really interested in spending time with a bunch of people. Once the guys from Acme Loo had stopped talking to him — assuming he was in solidarity with Yakko, he assumed — he hadn't made much of an effort to keep in contact with them. Being surrounded by an adoring audience had always been Yakko and Dot's thing, not his.

She continued, used to his silence and not the type to take it personally. "Scylla's cool, though. Been kinda a bitch since she got that 'senior performer' job at the Ink and Paint Club." Her voice lowered and she leaned back until her head was against the couch, staring up at him through impossibly long eyelashes. "I'm not supposed to tell anyone, but since you might wanna warn your sister, I thought I should: Scylla's a whore. Not, like, an insult, like she's actually a prostitute. Apparently that Rabbit lady has this whole side business going and nobody knows. Or . . . people know, but nobody says anything. Anyway, she hates it, but says the money's good. I mean, I dunno how Dot feels about that kind of thing, but in case she gets asked to be a senior performer, I figured you should kn . . ." She suddenly trailed off, sitting up and shifting away from his suddenly stiff body. "Uh, Wakko? You okay?"

"Hey, Warner, it's Phil. I just saw the news — that thing at Disney, you know, that's pretty messed up, and I just wanted to make sure you were okay." There was an awkward laugh, and a pause. "I mean, you probably weren't there, because why would you be? But some toons were hurt and the newspeople didn't say who, so I wanted to make sure — I dunno, I'm sure everything's fine. And you probably don't want to talk to me. That's okay." A sigh, one that tightened his chest. "I hope you're okay, man. And your family and stuff, I know your sister's a little . . . I mean, I just want you to know I'm here — in case anything happened. Or if it didn't. Whatever." Two seconds of silence. "Anyway, so give me a call if you feel like it, or not. No pressure or anything. It's cool either way." One. Two. Three. Four. "Uh, bye."

Yakko sighed, stared at his phone. Phil was a good guy, and was one of the few people in this town who didn't absolutely hate his guts. But . . . He pressed the glowing blue 7, listening to the stilted female voice on the phone say, "Message deleted. You have no messages."

He'd wait until things calmed down, then give Phil a call. The last thing he wanted was to get involved in any of this human-toon insanity. That was why he'd moved out to the East Coast, right? To get away from it all?

His hand was on the doorknob when a roar of fury made the door rattle on its hinges. He froze, only his teeth moving as they chattered with the violence of the sound.

"SHE WHAT?!"

It wasn't often that Yakko heard his little brother mad; Wakko Warner was as close to a personification of the word "chill" as had ever existed. Besides, on the rare occasions when someone pissed him off, he usually solved it with his mallet and a snarl, and if that didn't make them run, a quick flattening would do the job. A quiet kid — usually.

He didn't want to admit it, but hearing that gentle Liverpool accent crackling at the edges with throat-tearing rage was terrifying. Dot was scary when mad, and he liked to think he could intimidate if he had to, but . . .

"You haven't even talked to her yet! You don't know what happened, and even if you did, she's an adult!" Yakko sighed with relief at the sound of Michelle's voice. If he had to deal with Wakko in that mood, he didn't want to do it alone.

"SHE'S MY SISTER!" For a moment there was silence, during which his stomach tightened into a freezing ball in his stomach. There weren't many things that Dot could do to make Waks this mad, and he had a sickening feeling that he knew what this was about. When Wakko finally spoke again, his voice was softer. "Yakko's gonna kill her," he murmured, and there was a gentle thud, as though he'd slumped against the wall. "He can't find out about this."

Yakko smiled, heart warming at his protectiveness, and started to open the door. Until he heard Michelle's voice again.

"But . . . you said your brother goes to the club after hours all the time, to spend time with Dot and that other girl. Doesn't he already know?" She clucked her tongue in thought. "Maybe that's why he was so weird when we ran into him there . . . do you think?"

"He . . . that son of a bitch!" THUD. THUD. THUD. THUD.

Frozen, the knob half-turned under his hand, Yakko paused to think about what that noise could possibly be, and what implications it could have for his skull. He listened to the THUDs turn into a crackkkkk, and Michelle sigh. "The landlord's going to make you pay for that, and if the wall falls down your rent is going to go way up."

Gingerly, as though handling a stick of dynamite, he let go of the knob and took a couple silent steps back.

Maybe he'd give Phil a call. Wouldn't want to make him worry, right?

"Crap crap crap!" Dot skidded on the landing leading to Wakko's apartment, her heels making black scud-marks on the paper-thin carpet. She hadn't been very careful when it came to packing for life at Minerva's — she kept her stuff in the mink's rarely-used oven, after all, so it wasn't like she was going to bring her entire wardrobe — and now she was going to be late to her first real date in months, all because she'd forgotten her lucky hairbrush.

She threw open the door dramatically, sprinting to the bathroom and yelling, "Just gotta grab some stuff, so if you and Michelle are getting freaky just be quiet for like ten sec — Oh." Stumbling to a halt, she stared at the giant crater to the right of the TV. The paint had cracked away to reveal plaster, and behind that she could see hints of insulation where something had punched all the way through the thin wall. A thin white powder had settled over the area around the hole, like it had just snowed in her brother's living room. Or like he and Michelle were way freakier than she'd thought.

Wakko appeared from the kitchen, balancing three containers of Chinese food. He nodded amiably at her before sitting down, stretching out his tail to sweep the crushed plaster off the screen and digging through the cushions for the remote.

"What happened here?" she asked, her hairbrush forgotten. Had Yakko thrown a tantrum about something? It was hard to imagine him being violent, but she'd seen firsthand what his temper could be like. "Is everything okay?"

"Yup," he replied with a shrug, turning the TV on and muting it. "Just gotta patch that up tomorrow. Michelle said she'd bring some stuff over, so that's nice."

"But . . . what happened?"

"Found out about your job," he said calmly, watching the colorful yellow toons hurtle across the screen.

Dot felt the blood drain out of her face. She couldn't decide if she wanted to kill Yakko, beg for Wakko's forgiveness, or run away and never come back. "Oh." Oh, no. No, no, please no.

"I'm not mad, you know."

"The wall probably disagrees with you."

He laughed, his English-tinted voice as light and cheerful as it always was. "I was mad. But Mickey calmed me down. Reminded me you're a grown-up and can make your own decisions."

She shook her head. His words were perfectly normal, but so unlike what she'd expected that she couldn't make sense of them. "You don't . . . ?" Think I'm a slut? Want me to quit? She thought of Yakko's expression when he'd found out, cold and disgusted. Hate me? "You just accepted that?"

"Why not? It's true." And that was that, in his mind; she'd seen him let go of so many things with that almost frightening chill.

"Oh."

The Simpsons switched to a commercial about an exercise ball that came in seven fat-burning colors. Finally he broke the silence, taking a giant bite out of his food as he did so. "I was just mad 'cause you lied about it. I thought we told each other everything."

Dot leapt over the back of the couch and plopped down next to him, desperate to meet his eyes and reassure him — and herself — that nothing had changed. "We do! But I thought you'd . . . not want to talk to me anymore."

He smiled, setting the food aside and grabbing the back of her neck to yank her into a crushing hug. "Never, sis," he murmured into her hair with uncharacteristic tenderness. And she, just as strangely, had to squeeze her eyes shut to keep from crying. After a minute he pushed her back, keeping a hand on each shoulder and looking into her eyes. "I'm not going to shun you just because you have a job I don't approve of." There was a long pause as they both stared at each other, and he winced almost comically. ". . . I didn't mean it like that."

"Of course you didn't," she said with a snarl that was about 70% fake, pushing him away and climbing to her feet. "I gotta go, I'm already late to meet this guy." Wakko nodded. Dot wasn't surprised that he didn't ask for any details, but knew he wouldn't mind if she provided them anyway; he was always good at letting her monologue. "He's kinda boring, to be honest. Weird and shy, and like, not in cute way. But a girl needs something to do." Benny made a nice distraction, and his adoration was a great ego boost (not that she needed one).

"Be careful" was all he said, but his tail snaked over the back of the couch and booped her on the nose. "Make sure he pays well."

"Ha ha," she sneered, tugging at one of his ears on her way to the bathroom. The brush was exactly where she'd left it, though it had been buried under three towels and a pair of fur scissors. On her way out, she paused behind the couch again, watching an actress detail the exciting benefits of all-natural mascara. "So . . . we're cool, right?"

He turned and gave her a Gookie. Returning the face, she slipped out the front door. Wakko had been the last person she'd wanted to know about her "senior performers" job, but now that he did, she felt an immense wave of relief, like she'd finally been able to exhale after holding her breath for hours. At least one of her brothers knew that she was an adult.

She clattered down the stairs, her high heels too loud to overhear him mutter, "You're not the one I'm mad at."

It was just past midnight when Yakko finally crept back into the apartment, having hidden at the library all day until he got the courage to come home. He wasn't proud of his cowardice, but he'd been on the receiving end of Wakko's grudges before, and they made Dot's tantrums look like mild frustration. And they burned long; he still hadn't forgiven the actor who'd played a clown in one of the Animaniacs! episodes, and that poor bastard had finally skipped town with a hefty settlement after one too many smacks with a mallet.

He paused with his back pressed against the door, flinching at the soft click as it shut and locked. The living room, glowing dimly orange from the streetlights, was empty and spotless, and he let out a silent sigh of relief (wiping his forehead without noticing how cartoony the motion looked). It's probably fine, he thought, tiptoeing to the shared bathroom. If he's gone to sleep, nothing's gonna wake him up for hours. Maybe he had to work . . . If the apartment was empty, he'd raid the cupboards for supplies and lock himself in his bedroom, just in case. He had a window that overlooked an alley, so as long as he checked to make sure he wasn't going to rain down on any hobos, he wouldn't have to leave for any reason. Just grab your toothbrush and wait for everything to blow —

His vision went white and he staggered to the side, his head smacking the doorframe of the bathroom with a hollow bonk! that would've been comical if it hadn't hurt so much. His knees hit the floor, and out of reflex he threw himself onto the cold tiles and stretched out his hand until it met the carpet of the hallway, then a furry toe, then the thick hem of sweatpants. Balling the fabric, he yanked back as he lunged forward, tackling his assailant the second he hit the floor. The mallet clipped his chin, making him see stars, but he powered through the disorientation as he changed his grip, snatching a skinny forearm and pinning it under his knee before doing the same with the other, his free hand shoving his brother's furry face against the floor.

"Evening, bro," he gasped, shaking his head to clear the stars and wincing as a dull throb ran from temple to chin.

"H'llo." Wakko's voice was muffled from being sandwiched between carpet and palm.

"Having a nice night?"

Wakko shrugged as well as he could. "S'all right."

"Can I let you up without getting my head ripped off?"

Another shrug. "Prob'ly shouldn't."

"At least you're honest." Yakko shifted, trying not to let on how these last weeks of vacation (not to mention years of living in quiet suburbia) hadn't exactly left him in top shape. "That mallet really hurts, Waks."

Another shrug. "S'posed to."

Talkative as always. He slowly eased up the pressure on his brother's face, allowing him to look straight ahead, and instead pinned his brother's ears to the floor to keep him still. There was a sick pang in his stomach as he took in a hand-shaped red mark on Wakko's cheek — I promised I'd never let them get hurt — and he tried to pretend they were just two friendly brothers wrestling.

Two friendly brothers . . . one of whom was armed and — Yakko ground his knee into his brother's arm until it stopped wriggling — trying to worm free to continue beating him senseless.

Just another Warner family reunion.

"You didn't tell me about Dot." Wakko refused to meet his eyes, which was impressive considering he couldn't turn his head. Talking wasn't his preferred method of conflict resolution (said method currently smushed against the floor) but the carpet wasn't the most comfortable, and it had a weird smell, so he wanted to distract himself.

Yakko sighed. "I know. She didn't want me to."

"Bullshit. She didn't want you to come back to Burbank either!"

"I guess . . ." Now he was the one who couldn't look directly at his brother. "I thought that if you didn't know, it was easier to pretend nothing was going on. That everything was normal."

"Denial and delusion. Seems healthy."

Yakko looked at him, shocked as much by the tone — cold and bitterly humorous, ill-suited to his deep Liverpool voice — as the words themselves. Both were familiar in a way that made his chest tighten. "Wakko, buddy, that sounds like something I'd say." His tone was light, irritatingly chipper, a tic he couldn't control and usually didn't mind, but hated right then. "You coming for my gig?"

"Someone had to!" The words hit his face like a slap, and Wakko took advantage of his distraction to wrench his body to the side, yanking his arms out from under Yakko's shins and shoving the head of the mallet into his chest to force his older brother up and away long enough to scramble to his feet. He brandished the weapon, panting, and glared down at where Yakko had fallen to his knees on the bathroom floor. "You weren't around to say stupid shit, so . . ." He looked away, but didn't lower his mallet. "Dot does it too, sometimes." Yakko moved to stand, and his little brother's eyes snapped back to him and narrowed. "You know none of this would've happened if you'd just stayed here like you were supposed to!"

"Wait . . ." Yakko had lost the plot a bit, which might've had something to do with the fact that he'd once again banged his head against the door when Wakko pushed him. "Are you mad at me for not telling you about Dot, or for going to New York? Because you know I wanted you guys to —"

"You don't get it!" Wakko's grip on the handle tightened until the wood splintered. "It's not any of that, and that's why Dot's mad at you! You just — don't — understand." His voice grew ragged, and for a long moment they were both silent, listening to the younger brother's shaky, shallow breaths.

Yakko's head was spinning, and not just front the blunt trauma. It was like he'd been given a multiple choice test and every answer was wrong. He'd thought he and Wakko were cool, that bygones were bygones. Part of him had honestly started to believe that Dot was just being her usual melodramatic self, and that everything was going to blow over with a little more time. But he was getting the sinking feeling that there was a lot of built-up resentment headed his way — and worse, that it was well-deserved.

"It was because you left." He jumped, not expecting Wakko's voice, and started to reply when the middle Warner cut him off. "Not Burbank. Before that. You just all of a sudden . . . weren't there. You didn't want to pull pranks with us anymore, or practice hammerspace or bug Hello Nurse or any of it. And then a few weeks later you enrolled in school, and then you really weren't there."

He shook his head. "Waks, I didn't go anywhere. I was with you all the time, I — I never left you and Dot's side." Hadn't Dot complained about that, how much he was smothering them?

"No," Wakko agreed, lowering his mallet slightly. He looked like all the fight had been drained out of him. "But you were always trying to keep us from having fun — or doing anything. It was go to school, come home, do homework and shut up about that human-toon stuff. You wanted us to keep out of the whole thing, but you . . . you were going to school to be a cop. You were right in the middle of it, but you didn't want us to. It was like you were building up a new life and wanted to shut us out of it."

He paused, meeting Yakko's gaze levelly, fierce but not angry. Fierce but tired, like he wanted nothing more than to go to sleep but had to explain something essential and obvious. "Or we could be in your new life, but only if we fit. Which meant no jokes, no toon stuff. You think Dot's mad at you because you betrayed a bunch of random toons? She hates most of the people in this town anyway, toon or human." Dropping the mallet, he sank to the floor and rested his forehead on his arms. "You turned traitor on us, Yakko. The cop thing just confirmed it."

"I never — I just wanted to protect you from —"

"Your job isn't to protect us! That's Plotz's job, and Scratchy's job. But all of a sudden you turned into one of them, when you were supposed to be on our side." Yakko could count on one hand the number of times he'd seen his little brother cry (two of them had been related to clowns, one to a potty emergency), but suddenly Wakko's lip twitched, a tremble violently suppressed, and he glared down at his folded arms with a sharp blink. "It was like you didn't want us anymore."

Even though it violated literally all of his survival instincts at that moment, Yakko shuffled awkwardly over to where his brother was sitting and wrapped his arms tentatively around his shoulders. Wakko was unresponsive, quivering almost imperceptibly, but it was better than a mallet to the balls, so he tightened his hug and rested his forehead against Wakko's cheek. "We were going to get ourselves killed," he mumbled, feeling a knot reluctantly loosen in his chest, releasing words he'd sworn never to share with them. "I . . . got myself in trouble. With some human kids. Shouldn't have been a big deal — I was annoying, they were assholes, we were supposed to trade some blows before I leapt off into hammerspace." He let out a sound that was more sigh than laugh. "And that's when I learned never to mess with art students," he said. "One of them threw a can of paint thinner at me. Mostly empty, and the kid's aim was awful, but it scared the shit out of me. Jumped to Scratchy's, didn't even think about it. Something about him, we hadn't even spoken in like weeks, but he's our Scratchy, you know? I wanted to find out when they'd started hating us as much as I hated them."

"Hey, Scratchy!" Yakko popped his head into his p-sychiatrist's living room, a toothy grin hiding just how shaken up he was. "Miss me?"

The doctor looked up at him, and the eldest Warner was taken aback by the expression on his face. Dr. Scratchansniff wasn't surprised, or annoyed, or even disappointed; his eyebrows were raised slightly in polite interest, but otherwise it was like he didn't recognize one of his most irritating former patients. "May I help you?" he asked, setting down his book and placing his hands in his lap, like the Warner was a mildly entertaining television show.

For a moment Yakko was stymied. "Um, hi?" he said, uncomfortable and ashamed of his discomfort. This was Scratchy, after all. He was supposed to be angry, or to try and analyze him. To be predictable. And certainly not to ignore him for weeks on end while he and his siblings went absolutely bananas all over Burbank and rack up property damages through the roof. Oh, Plotz had screamed at them until his face turned purple, but from the retired doc they hadn't heard a thing.

Why he'd decided to come here of all places, he didn't know. But it had been the first safe place he could think of — besides the shrink's old office and the old water tower, it was the only place he could think of. "Didja miss me?"

"Vhat makes you think zat?"

So like a psychoanalyst. Now Yakko was in a position he felt comfortable with. Placing his hands on his heart and fluttering his eyelashes, he said, "You haven't called, Otto. Haven't written." He gave him a Dot-like pout. "I'm beginning to think you don't care anymore."

A wry smile quirked his lips, completely alien to Yakko. "You are no longer one of my patients. You should really be doing ze talking to Ms. Hartless, ja?"

His arms fell to his sides. "I . . . you always talked to us before." It was true; to the Warners Dr. Scratchansniff had never seemed retired. He still cajoled, still scolded, still tried to rein in their insanity and protect when he failed to control them — which was almost all the time. It had been that way for the last three years, ever since the show was canceled and the good doctor settled into a well-deserved retirement.

That was, until recently, when Yakko, having been arrested with Wakko and Buster for taking an ice cream truck for a joyride, lay sprawled on his jail cell's sole bed and listened with amazement as the warden said he was terribly sorry (yeah, right), but there was nobody answering at Dr. Scratchansniff's number, and they would just have to wait until Plotz arrived to take them home in the morning. Since then Scratchy had been AWOL, until finally Yakko had to stop by under the pretense of making sure he hadn't died.

The not-dead doctor met his gaze steadily, neither buying his cheery attitude nor interested in refuting it.

He shrugged, glancing around the room. He'd seen the doctor's condo a few times, but had never paid attention to it except to figure out what he could use to mess with Scratchy. It was cramped, like most old people's homes, full of strange books and weird old guys carved in marble or painted on canvas, but suddenly he saw things he'd never really noticed before: the walker by the couch, the bottles of pills lined up in a neat row on the coffee table, the impossibly-thick glasses on the doctor's lap. Suddenly he realized how old Scratchansniff must be, and how tired. Too tired, maybe, to keep up with three children who did everything they could to make his life difficult.

"I think someone threw Dip at me," he finally muttered, looking down at his hands.

The casual demeanor shattered as the doctor drew in a shaky gasp that made him cough. "You — ve must go — to ze hospital! Call — nine-von-von!" he cried between coughs, rising to his feet and hurrying over to inspect Yakko with impressive speed. "You have ze portable phone, ja? Vhere does it hurt, Yakko?!"

"No, no, I'm fine," he protested, holding up his hands and letting the doctor satisfy himself that he wasn't melting away. His cheeks burned, and he was suddenly ashamed of coming here and bothering Scratchy with his problems. "They didn't hit me. It just . . . I got scared, and I wanted to, you know, talk to someone." He paused for a moment, cringing in the silence, then blurted out, "Have humans always hated us like this? Or did I . . . did we . . . ?"

"Yakko, Yakko." Scratchansniff had settled back in his chair, but leaned forward to meet his downturned gaze. "You und your siblings have done nothing. Zese tensions have been building for years, before you vere ever born, und ve have been expecting zis for years."

"We?"

Scratchy shrugged. "Every-von. Ze toons, ze humans. Plotz und I, ve have know zat it vas only a matter of time before it reached you children. Ve hoped it vould take longer, und you three vould have a bit more time to . . ."

"To what?"

He paused, sheepishly scratching the back of his neck. "I am not ze therapist I vonce vas. I lack ze tact und ze sensitivity."

Yakko felt sick as he realized what the doctor meant. "Time to grow up, right? To stop being so stupid and antagonizing them, because it was only a matter of time before they got mad enough to hurt us." His hands clenched into fists, but there was nothing he had the heart to hit. "So it was my fault! If I hadn't been so stupid, my sibs wouldn't be in danger, toons all over wouldn't be in danger, we —"

Scratchy stood with some difficulty, taking his shoulders and forcing him to meet his eyes. "Enough." His voice was firmer than Yakko had ever heard it, without the pleading or uncertainty that so often characterized his interactions with the Warners. "Zis is not helping. It vould have happened anyvay, at zis time, vith your help or vithout it." He smiled, his eyes disappearing into crinkles. "You are not so annoying as you zink, Yakko. Und you are not ze catalyst for any of zis. Now you must stop zinking of ze past as somezing you can change. Ze past, you did nothing vrong. Ze future, on ze other hand . . . everyzing has changed now, ja?"

It had; suddenly Yakko felt like the doctor's hands on his shoulders each weighed a thousand pounds. "I have to take care of them," he said. "It's my responsibility to make sure they don't get hurt. I'm the only dad we have." The words made him feel even more exhausted, and for a moment he thought he was going to faint.

Scratchy's hands fell from Yakko's shoulders, and he nodded with false agreement. "Ja, ja, of course. Because ze vaters, zey make sure zat ze children are having ze food und ze clothes und ze happiness. No, you Varners have no one like zat in your life." For a second his therapist mask slipped, and hurt flashed across his face. For the first time Yakko saw how much trouble he and his siblings had caused Dr. Scratchansniff.

It would take a lot of love to keep trying to get through to them. Especially considering the number of bugs they'd stuck in his pants over the years.

"Come on, Scratchy. I didn't mean it like that. You — I mean I just —"

Scratchansniff shook his head, holding up a hand to cut Yakko off. "I lack ze tact, see? It is my age. Anyvay, if you vant to be ze Varner Brother vater, you vill have to set ze good example. Children, zey vill rely on you." He gestured vaguely in Yakko's direction. "Zis . . . no. Zis vill lead you all into trouble, ja?"

"Yeah." Yakko sank into a chair across from Scratchy. "But how?" he asked. "How do I know what will set them off? What if we have to stop being ourselves, Scratchy? And how do I stop . . . hating them?"

"It is hard for all of us. Ve all have to find our own vays to preserve ze tooniness und our skins." The doctor smiled at him reassuringly, taking a pen and pad from the end table beside him and preparing to write. "Zis session vill be on ze house, so to speak. Ve have a lot of vork to do. But Yakko," he leaned forward and placed his hand on the eldest Warner's knee, "you do not have to do it alone. You do not have to be ze only vater if you don't vant to."

"About that, Scratchy, I really didn't —"

"I know. It is okay."

"I've been so scared, every second since then. I thought I'd ruined you guys. Toons and humans don't get along that great anyway, but I trained you to feel the same way I did. So I guess I was trying to undo that training before someone decided to hit you with art supplies." He supposed he might've gone a bit overboard (maybe), but how could he not, when he saw Dip in every bottle and animator's erasers around every corner? His job became all about making them as inconspicuous and harmless as possible, and the danger had been so obvious to him that he'd assumed they would feel the same way, even if he didn't let them in on the horrifying details. So while he protected them from learning about the worst of the violence, he trusted that they would follow him without question, like they always had.

Like, he'd figured, they always would.

Wakko had relaxed into the embrace as he listened to his brother's story, but now he pulled away, watching Yakko from the corner of his eye. "But why did you? Hate them, I mean."

He shook his head. "That's a long story. And a pretty depressing one. Doesn't make me look very good, either. Plus, it's late . . ."

"You owe me." There was no menace in his tone, but he was dead serious.

Not to mention right.

"Fine." Yakko climbed to his feet and stretched, every joint his body seeming to crack. "Order some pizza or something, though. I wasn't kidding when I said it's long, and you'll probably have a lot of things to yell at me about when you hear it . . ."

He'd told Wakko the story about their parents, holding nothing back, and the middle Warner had taken it pretty well, all things considered. The mallet never came out, only a few slices of pizza were thrown at him (then retrieved and eaten), and Wakko was old and smart enough not to jump immediately into an anti-human vendetta, proving — not for the first time — that he was much more level-headed than either of his siblings. (Yakko wondered sometimes if Fate had made a mistake in giving Yakko the role of oldest sibling and pseudo-parent. It seemed to sit so much better on Wakko's shoulders.)

Yakko had told him almost everything. But there were some things that belonged to just him and his therapist.

"I never thought zat I would be seeing zis," Scratchansniff said, shaking Yakko's hand and squinting through eyes that were getting worse — something that scared Yakko to death, though neither of them would admit anything was wrong. (Once Yakko had been brave — and drunk — enough to ask Scratchy if he'd considered being redrawn, at least enough to get rid of the worst symptoms of aging. The old doc had smiled and said that he'd had it done twice and had a bit saved up for another session, but thought it wouldn't be necessary. "I vanted to see a few zings through, und I zink zey are almost ready to go on vithout me. I vill save my money for a vacation instead — one vithout you monkey children.") "Police academy?"

"Hey, it's cheap," he replied, giving the doctor a bright smile that wouldn't fool him. "Guy's gotta make a living, right? And I'll be cop-ready in just a few years. Less school required than most jobs, and doesn't pay too bad either."

The returning smile was bittersweet. "Be happy, Yakko," he said, pulling him into one of his rare hugs. "Und be good."

He couldn't help but wince as he put his arms around the old man's frail body, afraid that he would crush him if he wasn't careful. "Oh please, doc. If I get in trouble I can just call you, right?"

Scratchansniff pushed him away and rolled his eyes. "Oof," he moaned. "I vill be needing to go out of retirement to pay for your zanitude."

Yakko grinned and hoisted his bag onto his shoulder, glancing up at the clock. It was time to go. "You're a good dad, Scratchy."

"Und you are a nightmare monkey child," the doctor replied, swatting him on the shoulder to hide the fact that his eyes were misty. "Take care, Yakko. You are always velcome."

He winked. "Ya won't charge me for visiting you?"

"No." He gave Yakko a kiss on the cheek, a soft brush as light and dry as the fall air. "Not for my monkey children."

A/N: Can't resist dad!Scratchy. There's not enough of him in this fandom.