wow this sure did take a long time!

sorry for the chapter confusion, i realized perry's journal chapter just worked better coming after this one. hopefully this is still enjoyable, though. i THINK i'm okay with how it turned out and i did have someone proofread it but i might get nitpicky later. who knows!

also, warning: PHINFERB AHOY

In the past, in the days before the metaphorical rain clouds covered the sky of their lives, the Flynn-Fletcher household was rarely silent. There was always something going on, whether it be Phineas and Ferb building or Linda and Lawrence bonding or Candace being on the phone, fawning over Jeremy or screaming about her brothers to Stacy. Something was always happening, and the clamor of their daily lives was happy and comforting, albeit a bit strange at times. They were a vivacious family in those days; they had always been, and had assumed they always would be.

Now… Candace couldn't tell if she was alone or if her parents were still lurking about somewhere, silent and afraid. Her dad had become much happier now that Phineas had… done what he'd done, but her mother was even more subdued than before and Lawrence was the sort to join in her quietness when he knew he couldn't comfort her out of it. Not to mention how they'd all started tiptoeing about in the wake of the accident, when Phineas was at his most unstable… even recent events couldn't snap them out of that, out of the subconscious fear that one wrong step would earn them a wide-eyed lunatic's angry gaze.

Candace set down her cocoa mug with shaking hands and sighed into the silence. Phineas was better now, certainly, at least in terms of his personality. Maybe she should have gone with him to look for Ferb. She'd taken so much time off of school just to be here with the family, yet she rarely spoke to them, especially the one - or ones - at the center of it. Her brief interaction with Phineas as Ferb ran and cleared the fence was the most they'd shared in weeks. There was the day of Ferb's revival, but Phineas had done most of the talking then, hadn't he?

Ferb… what a complicated subject. Candace crossed her arms tight over her chest and stared into her mug, deep into the reflection of her own eyes and the conflict that lay beyond. She heard his voice, sometimes, as he spoke with Phineas; it was deep and smooth, save for the occasional crack, and his mannerisms and body language were all the same… yet there still remained the fact that he had nearly killed his own friends, had torn their flesh and snapped their bones without an ounce of emotion. And sometimes, in the dead of night, when Candace left her room for water or a trip to the bathroom, she would see that gleaming blue orb in the darkness, and she could never tell if it was trained on her or not, if he was stable or out of control, if the blue might suddenly become larger and larger until it engulfed everything and left her mangled in its wake.

It was terrifying. He was terrifying.

But for all that… he was still her brother.

What a mess this all was. Without really thinking, Candace glanced around the floor to see if Perry was near, but he was nowhere in sight. Strange how he seemed to have the most handle on the situation. He had grown more intelligent over the years, certainly due to Phineas and Ferb, but the extent to which he showed it now… it would have been eerie were it not Candace's only source of comfort. Odd as it was, Perry always seemed to know what to do, and it felt good to be able to hold onto someone who could make all the right decisions. Her days of shunning him for being a smelly, stupid creature had gone, replaced by the need to keep him close so that he may help her cope with the horrible happenings in her home.

The sound of the front door opening jarred Candace from her thoughts. She considered that it might be one of her parents, but the footsteps said otherwise - there were two people, and one had a very heavy foot that clunked on the floor like one of the boys's power tools being set down after a day of hard work.

Unsure of what to to do and still bristling with unease and fear, Candace remained still in her seat.

The cocoa in her mug rippled and jumped as Ferb's foot came down on the dining room floor.

"Hey sis!" Phineas greeted with an enthusiastic wave as Candace turned to look at him. He was smiling, as always; Ferb was not, but his face was not expressionless. There was a certain worry about him she was sure she'd seen on that very first day, when he was backed into the shadows of that dreadful shed.

"Hey," Candace replied as she forced a smile onto her face. "So… you found him?"

"Sure did!" Phineas grabbed Ferb's arm and brought him closer, looking up at him with an eager sort of fondness. "He was in a tree, of all places. But I've finally figured out what's going on in his head. No more accidents from here on out!" He paused, then drew away from Ferb and gave Candace a sheepish look. "Well, I can't guarantee that. But I know how to prevent it, at the very least. Everything should be alright."

Oh, yes. Everything would be alright. How many times had he said that in his murmurings after the accident? How many times had Candace heard him saying it from behind his locked door, his voice a mixture of excitement and shattered dreams? And was it alright? Has it ever been alright?

He was watching her, smiling, waiting for a response. Ferb was looking away.

"That's… that's great, Phineas," said Candace as she tapped her fingers against her mug. "What, um… what was the problem?"

"Basic instinct! Can you believe it?" Phineas broke away from his brother, then, and headed into the kitchen, towards the fridge. "I thought it was some glitch, you know, a mistake - I mean, I guess it is, in a way. But it mostly has to do with the 'fight or flight' instinct. You know what that is, right?" His question wasn't condescending; it was genuine, a sincere wonder. In the past it could have been taken as an insult anyway, but now...

Candace looked down at the floor and sighed. "Uh, yeah. That one summer when Mom made me go to that therapy group, they talked about different kinds of anxiety and what causes it." The memory of it made her eyes sting, but nothing came of it, she was past those days. Sometimes it was just such a toll to not be believed when the truth was always so close. And had she been believed…

Phineas closed the fridge door, two sodas in hand, and came back over to the table. "Well, turns out Ferb's anxiety has been pretty exacerbated lately. Huh, Ferb?"

As he had done so many times in the past, Phineas tossed the extra soda to his brother, and without a thought Ferb threw up a hand to catch it, just as it had always been. Unfortunately, it was his right hand he chose, and when he gripped the can with his new fingers, it crumpled and burst, the soda hissing out and coating the chairs and floor with sticky bubbles.

Candace couldn't help the surprised yelp she let out at the sound, and she was instantly on her feet, just barely avoiding the mess as she moved.

There was dead silence for a moment, save for the steady drip of what remained in the can falling to the ground. Ferb was a mix of surprised and mortified, his eye wide as he took in what had happened - what he had done. Candace couldn't take her eyes off of him.

And then it was broken as Phineas swept towards them both and placed a hand on Ferb's back. "Still gotta work on that power, huh? I'll see if I can tone it down a bit - you know, like training wheels for your arm." He was smiling, always smiling, on the verge of laughing, even. If he noticed how still his siblings had become, or the horror on their faces, he made no show of it.

Ferb didn't reply, didn't even respond in the slightest as he stared at his hand, the one with the broken can in it, still dripping - what did he see as he uncurled his fingers? His eye reflected a warped logo, but beyond that Candace wondered if he saw jagged scrap covered in blood. He was gone by then, certainly, but he knew what had happened - could he imagine it as vividly as it had been seen, as she herself had seen it?

And then he was moving, darting for the kitchen as the remains of the can fell onto the table, the sound not unlike stray metal breaking free and falling into the drenched grass below it.

Or was it the sound of shattered bones being tossed to the earth? He hadn't even intended to do it, had only meant to grab it out of the air. And it burst in his hand like a balloon.

"Pretty impressive, isn't it?"

Candace looked up at Phineas's smiling face as he cracked his own soda open and took a swig. He was proud. She knew she shouldn't have been surprised by it, not after what she'd seen and heard, but it still came as a shock that he saw so little beyond his handiwork - as if the destruction and danger was mere fantasy.

"That arm could stop a train, probably," he continued as he leaned over to admire the can. "I mean, I haven't tested that or anything, it's not like I wanna put Ferb in danger. But it's got some serious power in it. Remember that time we got to help save everyone from all those villains? It's kinda like he's half Iron Man now…"

There was a song Candace had heard once, it was called "Iron Man," and it was about Iron Man, but there was nothing fun or super hero-y about it and it didn't match the Tony Stark she'd actually met at all. It was dark and violent, Iron Man killing those who opposed him and feared him. She thought of that, now, as Phineas babbled on about his work.

No. No, Ferb wasn't like that, he was still Ferb. Candace knew that, she had to know it, had to believe it. He was still her brother. Her quiet, intelligent, handy, quirky brother. Not… that. Not some monster created out of hate and fueled by revenge. Meeting Iron Man back then had been so wonderful, meeting all the heroes had been wonderful, and Ferb was certainly a hero in his own right -

And then he was back, a roll of paper towels in hand, and he knelt between them and began to wipe up the mess in a frenzy, the light of his optic bouncing up and down on the linoleum floor.

There was fear in him. Candace saw it, now, as her brother tore at the paper towels with shaking fingers, the metal planted firmly on the floor. But fear of what? Himself? Or the way others saw him? Both, maybe, Candace thought as she watched Ferb curl his body closer to the floor as he worked, making himself as small as possible when all eyes were upon him. In the days before, he had always dominated the spotlight were it offered to him, but now he was a shadow encompassing a glimmering orb, darkness around a wayward spirit that fled from the light. He dodged all attempts to be seen, to be heard, to be known - yet even when he was unaware he was being watched he still had that way of moving and pausing to indicate that all was not well. She'd seen him through the windows, in the backyard, fidgeting about whatever Phineas wanted to do or just… staring into the distance, as though it might offer answers to questions she could only imagine might be on his mind.

It was all so clear in an instant, in that moment of watching Ferb fall to the floor to fix his own mistake. He was afraid. And fear… fear was something Candace knew so well, had battled so much in her life. For all the terror surrounding what Ferb had become, at the core, he was just as frightened as her, and… that was such a human response.

Candace shook her head and looked up, away from Ferb. He would certainly feel those eyes on his back, and why make it worse for him when it was obviously already so bad? She knew the pressure of being watched in times of distress, how two eyes could suddenly become two thousand in her mind…

Her other brother had obviously not come to the same conclusion, as he was watching Ferb in earnest as he drank his soda. Phineas wasn't afraid, or if he was, he was hiding it exceptionally well. Yet Candace doubted there was anything so… realistic inside of him. His only worries related to Ferb, now, and for all intents and purposes Ferb was fine - at least, in Phineas's mind. The stitches, the bruises, the grey skin, the metal, the wires - all means to an end, to him. Ferb was alive. Ferb was well. And Ferb was now safely back inside with his strange outbursts explained, so what did Phineas have to fear? With all the power in the universe at his fingertips, what did he ever have to fear?

A chill ran down Candace's spine.

"Here, lemme help," Phineas said as he set his soda down and knelt beside Ferb. They seemed to lock eyes for a moment, but Ferb didn't linger, and Phineas didn't either.

And Phineas talked, as he always did. He chattered on about high-tech alternatives to paper towels, things they could put together in minutes that would absorb everything in seconds, and he moved on to talk of liquid-proof wood sealants and then the origin of linoleum, and Candace could just barely listen to him because her mind was on so many other things. She considered helping them, but by the time the thought crossed her mind, they were both standing up and Ferb was walking away to toss out the used paper towels and put the rest away.

Phineas returned to his soda and downed what he hadn't yet finished in just a few gulps. Then he paused, burped, and started laughing like it was the funniest thing he'd ever done. Candace watched as Ferb returned to take the now-empty can, along with the destroyed one on the table, and Phineas was still laughing as Ferb walked back to the kitchen to throw them away.

Never before had it been eerie to hear a single laugh in their home, but it was, now, after all that had happened, after the way Phineas had giggled and shrieked the day of the accident. This laugh was different, but somehow still the same, at least in Candace's mind. It felt the same. And why?

Because Phineas was the monster.

The revelation came like a ton of bricks straight at her head, and she shoved it away almost instantly. Her baby brother was not a monster. For all he had done and been through, he was no such thing. There was no monster. That was the real revelation, wasn't it? Knowing her brothers were still human, and that they'd merely been through bad times? If she could accept Ferb being a reanimated corpse, surely she could accept Phineas's fragile mentality.

Yet for all the things she understood, there was still the memory of Isabella's voice in her mind, full of tears and horror -

He watched the whole thing! He watched it happen and he didn't do anything! He just walked away when it was over!

Sure, maybe he was paralyzed with fear, but deep in her mind Candace knew that wasn't the case. It wasn't fear in Phineas's eyes when Dad asked him if he wanted to go visit his friends in the hospital and he said no.

It was indifference.

"We're gonna head upstairs," said Phineas, and only then did Candace realize he'd stopped laughing and the house had been silent for several moments as she stared at the wall behind her brother. "Got some stuff to work on."

"Okay," Candace replied as she fidgeted with her sleeves. "Stay out of trouble."

Phineas snickered and rolled his eyes, mouthing 'sure' as he turned to head for the stairs.

Ferb was still in the dining room, oddly still, his eye going from the table to the floor to Phineas and then finally to his sister's face. They locked eyes, and for the first time since the day he'd come back, Candace didn't feel so afraid.

"...I'm sorry," Ferb murmured, his eye focusing elsewhere again as he seemed to try and gather up his nerves. "I - If I had known - I never meant to…"

Whether he was apologizing for the soda or for everything, Candace didn't know. But it didn't matter.

"It's alright," she said, and then he was looking at her again. "It's… it's not your fault, Ferb. You go keep an eye on Phineas, okay?"

Now his expression was unreadable as he studied her, and the fear came back in just the tiniest amount, rolling about in her stomach as she waited for a reply. They hadn't directly talked since at least the day before his death. Anticipating how he might respond was nearly impossible.

"...Okay," he finally said, and Candace could see him visibly relax, if only a bit. He seemed about to say more, like he wanted to, but after a moment's hesitation he merely nodded to her and made a quick turn for the stairs. Phineas had already vanished but was surely waiting at the top for him. They were never apart for long.

Her cocoa was cold by the time she returned to it, but Candace took a sip anyway as she sat back down. There were a million other things she could do, but waiting at the dining room table for something else to happen seemed like the best plan for that moment. Her parents were still absent, after all… and unless they were just hiding somewhere in the house, it was getting a bit late for them to be out.

Candace took her phone out of her pocket to check the time, but the notification that she'd received new texts was instantly her new focus. There were two - one from Stacy, and one from Jeremy.

Both had offered to also put their schooling on hold and join Candace back in Danville, but after the funeral she had sent them away with the assurance that she would be fine and that they needed to keep going. Stacy, truly the best friend forever, was going to the same college as Candace; Jeremy was elsewhere, and farther away, though never out of reach.

Though there had been hesitation, Candace had informed them both of the goings on that had transpired in their absence, and for once she'd been the calmest one of the three of them.

Stacy's text was simple: 'hey candy how r u doin?'

The reply was sure to be much less simple. To be honest, Candace didn't know how she was doing. Everything was a confused mess of emotion and happenings. And even if she did know how to summarize her current state, she wasn't sure she wanted to worry her best friend with her fears. Not this time. With a small sigh, Candace backed out of Stacy's thread and selected Jeremy's.

'I saw the news. He looks as bad as you said. How are Baljeet and Buford? I love you.'

Of course he saw the news. He was always checking their local station online because he was worried about what was going on. Candace didn't know how to respond to him, either, and for a few long moments she stared at her phone in utter hopelessness.

A chatter at the side of her chair pulled her away from the small screen, and there was Perry, his eyes a little focused but still in opposite directions as he looked up at her.

"Oh, there you are, Perry."

He chattered again, then clambered into her lap and curled up against her sweater. His feet were cold, and in his fur were a few small leaves and brambles. Candace brushed them away without a thought.

Ferb closed the door to his and Phineas's bedroom once he was inside, his body tensing up again as he saw Phineas sit down on his bed and start unzipping the windbreaker he wore. There were several years between now and when the feelings had begun, and Ferb had mastered the art of controlling or or even crushing his awkward feelings - especially when Phineas was undressing - but it was different, now, because Phineas knew. The fact that it didn't bother him hardly felt relevant.

The shirt under the jacket was simple, just a dark red t-shirt with even darker edges that were meant to look like blood stains. It was entirely plausible and quite likely that Phineas hadn't given it any thought as he threw it on, and even more likely that at some point he would make some sort of joke about it that would just be uncomfortable. That was how things were. How they might always be, now, but hadn't they always been? Phineas was no idiot, but small details often escaped him even when they were clear as day -

In his frantic thought, Ferb's grip had tightened on the doorknob to the point where his fingers ached, and he realized then that he'd also been staring vacantly and in terror at no spot in particular.

"Relax, dude," Phineas said with a smile as he patted the spot next to him. "Everything's alright."

It wasn't easy to get his legs moving again with anxiety and unease coursing through his veins, but Ferb managed to push himself over to his bed and sit by his brother (nearly bouncing Phineas off the bed as he did). "Easy for you to say. You didn't just confess your darkest secret to the last person you wanted to confess it to. Or crush a soda can by trying to gently grab it and terrify your sister in the process." He spoke now as he always had, but the underlying emotions behind what he said were obvious enough to the one who'd always known him better than anyone.

Phineas put a hand on Ferb's shoulder - the right one, the real one - and gave it a comforting rub. "It's really not all that bad," he assured. "This is just another exciting adventure for us. And the soda thing was pretty cool."

Ferb grit his teeth and wondered, in the back of his mind, if he should shrug Phineas's hand off or revel in its presence. The decision went unmade as he shook his head in frustration. "You don't get it. This isn't right. It never has been. All these years, with everyone I've been with, I've thought of you - my brother, blood or not - and when I tell you it's like none of that matters!"

"Do you really want it to?"

Through the optic, Ferb could see every detail of the way Phineas lifted an eyebrow and tilted his head, every small crease and hair, and the multiple hues of his eyes… the way midnight blue rose up against the faintest hints of sky, forming a gorgeous oceanic volcano around lava of the deepest black…

...just like the abyss. The nothingness.

Ferb closed his eye tight, the optic clicking off along with it, and let out a shaky breath.

When Phineas spoke again, his voice was soft, along with the touch of his fingers as they slipped down Ferb's back. "Those things do matter," he said, "but not in a way that has to impact what happens now. Life is all about moving forward - remember the thing with the sharks? They have to keep going or they drown? If we stop now to consider all the barriers that are supposed to be in the way of this, we're just going to get sunk down into those feelings and stay there." He paused, his fingers going still, then traced a seam on the side of Ferb's shirt. "Beyond society's assertion that this is wrong, I don't see any problems. And I'd do anything - anything - to make you happy."

In just a fraction of a second Ferb was back on his feet, pacing in front of the bed as Phineas pondered the empty space under his palm with dazed confusion.

"No, no, no! You can't do this for me! Don't you get it?" Ferb halted in front of the bed and briefly made eye contact with his brother, who still seemed surprised by the sudden move and hadn't even lowered his hand yet. "A real relationship - it's not about making one person happy! It's about… it's about mutual fondness, and a willingness to be, and…"

"You're talking like we don't already have those things."

Ferb threw his hands in the air and continued pacing. "It's different, Phineas! Everything is different now! Romance isn't the same as being best friends any more than being whatever the hell I am is the same as being alive!"

Now Phineas stood too, his hands finding Ferb's shoulders and pulling him close. "You're panicking," he said in a quiet voice. "It'll be alright. Everything is fine."

But it wasn't. Nothing was fine and surely Phineas had to know on some level. This was wrong, it was all wrong, the world had gone crazy and Ferb wasn't sure if it started after the summer when he left for England or when he'd been crushed under all that scrap metal. It could have just been the issue of liking Phineas that way, but the way the can had burst and the way Phineas even found out about his feelings… no, it was both things, all things, all at once.

"Ferb."

Warm hands found their way to his cheeks, ignoring the scars and stitching and merely bringing him closer. As they locked eyes, Ferb could see worry in his brother, and in a moment he realized why - his panic could escalate into another shut-down, couldn't it? And what then? Would he jump through the window and run through town, or would he…

A vivid picture of their room painted in blood crossed his mind, Phineas laying in the center, torn and frayed like an old dog toy.

Ferbclosed his eye so tight that it hurt and let out a shaking breath that stank of copper and wires and death and bubblegum toothpaste.

"Do you want to try kissing now?" Phineas's voice was gentle and reassuring, his thumbs rubbing Ferb's cheekbones in small circles. "Maybe get your mind off of all this?"

And there it was again, that mixture of excitement and revulsion Phineas kept making him feel.

"It's not that easy," he hissed as he took Phineas's hands off of his face and held them tight. "Can't you open your eyes for one moment and take a look at what's happening? What already happened? We can't just… start experimenting with my perverseness in the hopes that it will all go away! I'm - "

Phineas kissed him.

It was by no means perfect; it was wet and forceful and really just sort of mashed their lips together more than anything. Not that Ferb could have expected any different. Phineas had never been in romantic relationships before, had never kissed anyone on anything but their cheek or their hand - he was new to this, fumbling in the dark in a room he'd never been in before. And even though a large part of Ferb was still worked up and was even a little offended that Phineas would do this, there was another part of him - a very desperate, yearning part - that ached to demonstrate how this was actually supposed to go. And that was what won, in the end.

When Phineas pulled away, Ferb brought him back, and within a few moments his brother was copying the movement of his lips instead of just seeing how hard he could press their faces together. With new knowledge came power, and Phineas was in the leading role soon enough, his hands finding their way to places Ferb had always yearned for them to be; in his hair, along his back, stuffed into his back pocket to pull his hips closer as they stumbled towards Ferb's bed.

It was such a whirlwind of sensation and desire that Ferb didn't resist the fall onto his mattress, but when their lips collided again it was too hard, and his teeth dug into the soft flesh of his bottom lip before he had a chance to open his mouth. Phineas pulled back, surprised, as Ferb grunted in pain, but the pause lasted barely a second before he was forcing his tongue into his brother's mouth and tasting the blood for himself - not even real blood, but the substitute he had created, something sweet but sharp, like antifreeze. Ferb grunted again, louder, almost panicked, but just as quickly he was reciprocating the kiss and wrapping one leg around his brother's waist, making his excitement that much more evident as their groins were pressed together.

Shame stirred somewhere deep in his mind. Shame and fear and self-loathing, and the knowledge of what he was, and who they were, and yet at the same time none of these things could truly surface. In the heat of the moment it was almost as though a blanket had settled over everything that was wrong and had turned it into something else entirely, something sick and twisted but perfect all the same.

For a moment, the nightmare had turned into a dream.