this one i'm just tired of. i kicked it around so much, and it actually mostly deals with things i completely scrapped, so it feels very disembodied to me, but MerianMoriarty mentioned that it looks like only Billy (and Kate, to an extent) go through a grieving process after Tommy's death. so maybe i'll dig up some of the bits and pieces of the almost-Tommy/Teddy-ish-but-not-really-because-it's-actually-more-Tommy/Billy-ish subplot that i ditched ages ago…

warnings: some Young Avengers, Earth-339. world-go-boom. character death. OC: Katie Ashton is the cute little four-year-old Tommy saved at the last minute in Hero. language: pg-13 (for one use of g**damn).

pairing: background Billy/Teddy, background Kate/Eli, teeny little hints of Teddy/Tommy and Kate/Tommy.

timeline: 2020, six-ish months after the Big One.

disclaimer: i doesn't owns the movies, comics, or characters.

notes: 1) i've actually changed the name of this one several times, looking for one that fit. after Tough Baby, it felt right to name this one "Don't Look Back." it's a reference to the same Pat Benatar song (Shadows of the Night), specifically the line: "Ransom my heart, but baby, don't look back / 'Cause we got nobody else." 2) "The Remains of the Day" is an acclaimed British post-war novel (that was made into a movie with Christopher Reeve and Anthony Hopkins). it's about, among other things, the juxtaposition of stability and self-imprisonment. 3) i've noticed that most kids below the age of five find tall people to be very scary (unless their parents are tall). 4) "Katie-pie" is actually something one of the girls at the magazine calls her little niece. apparently, it started as "cutie-pie" and morphed because the girl's name is Katherine. 5) even after twenty-some years, i imagine a shapeshifter could still accidentally change faces by thinking about someone too much. 6) the future-tense segment at the end happens in (Holding on to) What I Haven't Got, from the Nightmare sequence.

Don't Look Back

Katie turns out to have a natural aptitude for marksmanship. It will be a few years before her little hands are strong enough for a gun or a bow, but Kate's made her a slingshot, and she's good with it.

At the moment, Katie is banking roast peanuts off the wall and into Cassie's mouth while the blonde reads an old paperback copy of Remains of the Day. Kate doesn't know where the book came from; Cass probably borrowed it from someone (maybe Eli).

"What do you think we should get for supper?" Kate asks. "The choices are spaghetti with meatballs or seaf—"

"Pasketti!" Katie replies instantly.

"…seafood chowder," Kate finishes. "Okay, spaghetti it is."

The door beeps just as Katie fires another shot.

"Bring your elbow up a little higher," Kate suggests as she goes to answer the door.

Few people can inspire pity and coddling like a good-natured blond shapeshifter who's (consciously or unconsciously) mastered the pleading expression of a golden retriever.

"Teddy," she says, slightly shocked.

He scuffs his sneaker against the floor. "Hi," he mumbles. "Can I come in?"

She almost asks where Billy is, but thinks better of it. The two of them are only ever separable when one or both of them need space. "Yeah. Sure."

"Wow, who died?" Cassie asks (reflexively, Kate thinks), and then grimaces. "Oh. Jeez. Sorry. Oh, gosh."

"No, it's okay," Teddy tells her with a sad little smile that means it really isn't.

"It's not, ohmigosh," Cassie chides.

Katie stands beside Kate and stares up (and up, and up) at Teddy with something like trepidation.

"Hi," he says again. He wipes his palms on his jeans in a nervous motion.

"Sit," Kate commands.

He slips into the other chair at her table, across from Cassie (Remains of the Day sits abandoned between them).

"What's bothering you, Teddy?"

The puppy face tunes a few notches toward pathetic, from 'golden retriever' to 'golden retriever shut out in the rain.'

"I know what's bothering you," Kate amends. "But you need to say it. Out loud. In words."

"I'm sorry, I just need someone to talk to."

She raises her eyebrows. "I imagine so, since one of your closest friends just died and you can't talk about it with your husband for fear of instigating reality-altering magic. I think you should have tried talking to me or Cassie a lot sooner, to be honest—it's already been six months."

"It's…it's kinda a 'guy thing,'" Teddy says sheepishly. "Like to think we can just tough it out, y'know? I mean…I figured if Bill has to tough it out, I should be supportive and do the same, right?"

"Wrong, big time," Cassie disagrees. "Because if you look all unhappy like this around him, he's just gonna end up feeling guilty. One of you needs to be psychologically recovered from this, and he's not going to manage that by sticking his fingers in his ears and saying 'lalala, Tommy who?' So you've gotta man up."

Teddy gapes at her like she's said something incredibly groundbreaking.

"Step one," Kate says, gently nudging Katie toward him. "Katie, sweetie, this is Teddy. I know he's big, but he's a very nice man. Teddy, this is Katie Ashton, the girl Tommy gave his life for."

Like most small children, Katie shrinks and mumbles unintelligibly toward the floor.

But Teddy knows how to deal with small children by now. He smiles and leans down, elbows propped on his knees. "Hi, Katie. Who's your favorite superhero?"

"Or superheroine!" Cassie gripes.

Katie shrugs a little. "Ms. Marvel, I guess…"

Skrull shapeshifting is a swift and graceful process—in the space of a blink, Carol is sitting there with her hair growing out to the proper length.

"Whoa!" Katie gasps in appropriate awe.

"I do a pretty good She-Hulk impression, too," Teddy says in Carol's voice. Another fluid shift, bigger frame, green hair and skin.

"Wow! Can you be anybody?"

He reverts to his usual form. "Anybody I've seen, sure. But if there's stuff about them I haven't seen—like a scar under their clothes or something—I can't fake that. And I can't fake their powers if they have any."

Katie purses her lips. "Bummer. That coulda been cool, if you could stick on walls like Spider-Man." She fidgets for a bit. "Can you be dead people? Like my mommy?"

Teddy goes very pale and sits up straight again. "I…I shouldn't." Kate doesn't like the long pause there. "And anyway, it's like I said…I have to have seen them, or a picture of them."

"Katie," Kate says gently, and takes the little girl by the shoulders. "Why don't you and Cassie go get that spaghetti for us? Just three—Teddy will get his own when he goes to get dinner for his husband."

"Y-yeah, uh, let's go, Katie-pie," Cassie stammers, hopping to her feet and quickly ushering Katie out the door. "Maybe we'll go see what Jonas is up to while we're at it."

When it's just the two of them, Kate takes the seat Cassie vacated. Slowly, she reaches across and puts a hand on Teddy's shoulder. "Was it an accident?"

He jumps guiltily and won't meet her eyes. "Yes. I was in the bathroom the other day, just splashing water on my face…just taking some time out, y'know? And then I looked up at the mirror and there he was. Scared the crap outta me. I didn't dare tell Billy."

"You really should've talked to somebody about this sooner, Teddy," she sighs.

"I know, I know…it's just…I mean, even sitting here, right now, I don't know what to say. I've gone over it in my head a thousand times, and I still…I don't…"

She squeezes his shoulder. "There's not a right or wrong thing to say. Just talk. If you want, I can start."

He just nods, so she takes a deep breath.

"Tom Shepherd was a bigmouth and a braggart," she begins. "He was so full of hot air, but he could be really funny, too. He had this…this dry wit, just like Billy but worse. There were times where I thought to myself that if he'd been any more snide and sarcastic he'd have been born British."

"There were times when it felt like he knew Billy better than I ever will," Teddy replies. "He'd know what Billy was going to do before he did it…especially if it was something dumb and self-sacrificing. I think it might've been because he would've done the same thing if their places had been switched. He could be so stupid and stubborn and headstrong—they both could—but there was this loneliness and this earnestness that just…"

Kate sits in patient silence while Teddy stares at a spot on the floor and looks guiltier by the second.

"I keep catching myself thinking that if I'd met him first I probably wouldn't be married to Bill right now," he finally whispers.

That surprises her. Billy and Teddy are an axiomatic truth of the universe. Water's wet, sky's blue, Billy and Teddy were destined to be together. Like peanut butter and jelly, cinnamon and sugar, cocoa and marshmallows. "Sure you would," she laughs. "Tommy was straight."

"When we were seventeen, Tommy said he was willing to be flexible if it meant he'd be able to date the same person for more than a week."

Kate takes her hand away. "You should not have told me that. Any of that. That whole subject, in fact. If Billy asks, I'm not going to lie to him, and that's absolutely the last thing in the world he needs when he's trying not to do forbidden magic. With the state he's in right now, he'd magic himself right out of existence—replace himself with Tommy, or something. And then we'd all feel pretty Goddamn guilty, wouldn't we?"

"Didn't I tell you I didn't know what to say?" he groans miserably. "I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have come here. I should've just sat there and smiled and been Bill's cheerful blond puppy husband. 'Oh, look at him, the sweetheart, don't you just want to pat his head and say good boy?'"

Kate flinches. "Okay, so…over the years, people have kind of just assumed you're Billy's pet airhead, and you've had to bear with a lot of unfair and unrealistic expectations." She sighs. "And it's not like I have any room to talk about daydreaming 'what if' scenarios. He was good-looking, smart, funny…a great friend…maybe the bravest person I ever met or ever will meet. But you don't marry the bad boy who busted outta juvie after blowing up his high school. You marry the guy who works at the library and takes care of his grandma."

Teddy glances at her briefly, then back to the floor. "Are you gonna? Marry Eli, I mean. Now that Tommy's dead and he can't either mock you endlessly or crash your wedding with a rude drunken toast."

She shakes her head. "He wouldn't have. Not in public, anyway."

"Which one?"

"Either one. And I don't think he was serious about me anymore." She shrugs. "I don't think he was serious about anybody but Billy anymore. His life revolved around being a big brother. Yes, I think I'm ready to be a wife now. 'Kate Bradley' has a nice ring to it. Much better than 'Kate Shepherd.' There you go—he'd never change his last name for you, and 'Teddy Shepherd' would absolutely ensure dog jokes for the rest of your days."

"Oh, God," he laughs. "You're absolutely right. Ugh. Thank God for Mr. William Altman." He looks much better now than he did when he came in. He heaves a big sigh. "I'm so sorry about all this, Kate. I'll be fine, I promise. I have to be…for Billy."

She touches his shoulder again. "Hang in there."

In two years, when Billy only does his job and won't talk and won't smile and won't even go into a room if it's got a mirror in it, Kate will think back on this conversation. She'll wonder what she said that was wrong, and how much of it was right, and whether she could've said something differently. Because Teddy won't smile anymore, either, and he won't put on faces for the kids.

She'll wish she'd said try to be fine for Teddy, too. She'll wish she'd said don't forget to take care of yourself, or you won't be able to be there for him.

And when Cable asks for volunteers for a suicide mission, Kate will blame herself for the way Billy and Teddy step forward like it's their only way out.

.End.