i keep prodding it, don't i? i can't help it. this escaped from fingers to keyboard just now, over the course of maybe five or ten minutes, and screamed to me "YOU MUST POST ME NOW." so. here you go.
warnings: some Young Avengers, Earth-339. world-go-boom. character death. mild violence, mild gore. language: pg-13 (for one use of s***).
pairing: a little bit of the ever-ambiguous sort-of-brother-complex, sort-of-unrequited-love that is Tommy/Billy.
timeline: checks in at three times - 2009, 2013, and 2019.
disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters.
notes: 1) title comes from the Pat Benatar song "Shadows of the Night," specifically the line "You can cry, tough baby, it's all right / You can let me down easy, but not tonight." 2) the last segment is Tommy's POV from Hero.
Tough Baby
Tommy watches a chunk of skyscraper fall. It's a ponderous process, from his point of view. He has plenty of time to think about it, and about his options.
He can get the hell out. Save himself. Eli will bitch for a month.
He can try to save the screaming chick and her oblivious, Gameboy-fixated son, the pair of businessmen, and the little old lady. It'll take too long to try and save the dude who just got into his car. Eli will look stern for a while.
He can try to blast the chunk of skyscraper into gravel (which will still hurt, but probably won't be fatal). Eli will bitch for a week.
He can stand there and hope one of the others will deal with it. Maybe he'll get squished. More likely, the falling architectural feature will be magicked away. Eli will grumble for a week, Tommy will look like a total loser.
A combination of saving and exploding looks like the way to go.
The dude in the car is screaming by the time Tommy's cleared the others out; it doesn't do much for Tommy's concentration.
He misjudges the size and density of the rubble falling toward him. The explosions turn it from a huge chunk into several large and still-lethal chunks, one of which is literally a millisecond away from cracking his skull open when it vanishes in a burst of blue light.
Some kind of platitude is on the tip of his tongue, 'good save' or something like that, but he finds he can't speak when Billy is standing there shouting at him.
"—could've been killed, what were you thinking—"
And Tommy wants very badly to just laugh it off, but Billy's crying.
He made his little brother cry.
On that day, when they are just-barely-seventeen, he promises himself that he'll never do anything to make Billy cry again.
Fast-forward.
Four years later, it's something similar. Replace 'chunk of skyscraper' with 'train full of people.'
Blowing it up isn't an option.
But there's this crying little kid fifty feet away, and maybe, maybe Tommy can reach him in time to save them both.
Or maybe he'll get there just in time to be squished flat, and Billy will cry.
Even the possibility has him frozen for a moment in complete indecision.
Cass manages to catch the train, but the thing's gotta be awkward, and the last car's barely attached anyway, and…
And even though Cass catches the train, that one car falls, dead-on, like it's fate, and nails the crying little kid.
Tommy shuts down.
You could've saved him. So what if it would've risked your life? That's what heroes do.
This feeling is, against all odds, worse than making Billy cry.
That's the day, halfway through twenty-one, that he tells himself that Billy knows what they all signed up for.
Fast-forward.
It's the day of the Big One. Same shit, different day. It's not a skyscraper, it's not a train.
It's a nuclear missile and all the worst parts of human nature.
They push and press and shove and crush.
When a woman with a toddler on her shoulder goes down, he doesn't hesitate.
"Hey, are you all right?" he shouts to the woman at his feet, even as he holds her daughter securely to his chest.
The woman shakes her head and sobs. "My leg, I—just take her. Go, go!"
"Mommy!" cries the little girl.
"Katie, go with the man, please!"
He spares a moment to look at the child in his arms. She's four-ish, and beautiful, and her name is Katie. And if he doesn't move now, she's going to die.
So he pushes his way back toward the carrier. He could just blast them all out of the way, could try a shockwave or something…
No, they don't deserve that, and it might damage the carrier.
So he pushes.
It's too late. He knows it's too late. Unless he kills someone, he's going to die.
That's what heroes do.
Kate's yelling in his ear, over the comm.
It's too late.
He could reach her hand if he tried, but he might drop Katie. He stretches as far as he can and passes the little girl up into strong, sure hands.
"You bastard!" Kate shrieks at him.
The carrier keeps climbing into the sky.
Billy's going to cry so hard.
And when he stops, he'll be so proud.
On the last day of Tommy's life, they're almost twenty-seven, and he wishes with all his heart that Billy could have just an inkling of what he's feeling right now.
And then the world burns.
.End.