Thank you to LRW, Sarcasmisinmyblood, and Hithere for the reviews! I'm so glad I'm not the only one freaking out about this upcoming special!
I want to take the time now to thank everybody who had followed and favorited this little challenge thingamajig. It was much appreciated! Special shout-out to everyone who had given me prompts, too! TheMichiganWriter, LRW, AlienGhostWizard14, Dirtkid123, a guest, Hithere, Casey Storm, thewriterswayoflife, daphrose, ShadowDragon1553, ABEDFAN, and visatoarea10 - HUGE thanks to you guys! Those were some of the most fun prompts I've ever worked with.
Alright, this last entry would have been a throwback to the very first one, the X-Men crossover, but there was a detail I was having a hard time working with, so it had been set aside for the meantime. Instead, we're going with a pre-story kind of entry today. It's connected to a Bree-centric AU story sitting in the vault at the moment. In it, Douglas is a good guy and has been from the start.
Thanks again for the R&R's, guys!
Onto day twenty-five!
/day twenty-five/
Prompt: children
Featured LR character: Douglas
"Change of Plans"
AU. Douglas never thought he'd be a dad to these two kids. Nonetheless, he loved both of them.
"Dad? Dad. Have you seen the voltmeter?"
"Why are you looking for it?"
"Iā¦have a project I'm working on?"
Douglas stopped tinkering with the transmitter to look at the teenager. Sure enough, he saw that suspicious grin on the boy's face, the one that was always telling on his real motive. "A project?" he asked.
"Yes."
"Does this project involve something exploding again? Like the microwave last week?"
"No."
Douglas stared stoically.
The boy sighed. "Yes," he said. "But, I'm being careful this time around. That's why I need the voltmeter."
Douglas kept looking at him. He was inclined to say no and send him away, but he knew that one way or another, the boy would find it. The kid was very curious, to his own demise at times, but Douglas knew that he had become like this because of him. He definitely took after him. "I want nothing exploding or malfunctioning. No more crazy experiments, Leo, do you understand?" he said.
"Yes, sir."
Douglas pulled out the drawer on the lower right side of his desk then took out the voltmeter. As he handed it over, he said, "I don't want you getting electrocuted either."
"I won't," Leo said with a smile. "Thanks, Dad."
"Hey. Where's your sister?" he said as his son made his way to the stairs.
"Upstairs. I think she's working on a paper," Leo said. "Why? You want me to call her?"
Douglas shook his head. "No. Just make sure you don't interrupt what she's doing, alright?"
Leo nodded. Then, soon, he was gone.
Douglas went back to what he was working on once the basement, or the Headquarters, as his children liked to call it, was empty.
After eighteen years, he still had times when the thought of him being a father catches him off-guard, and this instance was one of them. He never would have thought that he would be called dad by any child, mostly because it had never been in his plans. Years ago, his focus was on improving his work, furthering his knowledge on his preferred scientific fields, and feeding into that passion by creating many wonderful devices and new pieces of technology. He had also been so invested on the company that he and his brother built that the idea of having a family was so far away from his mind.
But, as circumstances would have it, nearly two decades later, a small family was what took most of his time.
He didn't mind it, though, because even if raising two teenagers with no wife to help him and working a demanding job that paid only a few notches above the minimum wage were hard, he still enjoyed the benefits that came from it.
The job gave him enough money to be able to keep a nice home at that small New York city, to have enough food on the table, to be able to pay all of his bills, and to have something to spoil his daughter and his son with from time to time. Their financial situation wasn't as good as it would've been if his brother hadn't become so greedy and took the entire company, but they were staying afloat most of the time, so he was still thankful. Plus, the work wasn't very bad. He had come to really like it after all these years.
And, he was doing it for them anyways. It was funny how he had gone from being so concerned with his own needs and wants to being so preoccupied and even anxious at times over the needs and wants of the girl and the boy he had adopted, raised, and accepted as his own.
Bree came to his life because of the project that he and his brother had a difference over. There would have been two more, but his older brother took them before he could save them. Knowing that his brother would eventually go after the little girl, Douglas had faked their deaths just so she would have the chance of living a normal life.
She was so tiny then. She was just one when they ran away. He had debated the option of giving her up to the state since that would work better in concealing her identity, but in the end he kept her.
Maybe it was just him being overly sentimental, but he knew from the start that she was his to raise and to love.
Leo came to his life because of something that he first thought was a mistake. While waiting for the train after work one day, a woman had placed a baby carrier beside him and asked him if he could watch the infant for a moment. Surprised and, admittedly, hoping to make a good impression on the beautiful woman, he accepted the responsibility. She thanked him, kissed who he still assumed was her child, and then left.
It wasn't until nearly an hour later that he began thinking that she had forgotten him.
Then, one week later, after bringing the matter to the police, he realized that she had willfully abandoned her child.
The process was a bit complicated and expensive, but soon, with the help of Mr. and Mrs. Colton, the older couple who had taken on the roles of being his advisers and parents, the boy found a home with him and his older sister. Again, his heart got in the way, and it told him to take the baby, too. He didn't want him in the system. Plus, when the state let the boy stay with them for a two weeks, Bree told him that she loved her new baby brother and let him know that she wanted him to live with them from then on.
Like with Bree, he also knew from the moment he found out that Leo had been left by his family that he was his to raise and to love.
Many years had passed since then, and the little girl and the baby boy had grown up to be teenagers with their own personalities. Bree, now eighteen, had become a responsible young lady who loved dancing, hanging out with her best friend, and saving people secretly using the bionic abilities she had been given with. Meanwhile, Leo, sixteen, had grown to be a curious teenager who experimented on everything he could get his hands on while doubling as a trusty partner for his sister on the missions.
Douglas paused at his work. A smile tugged at his lips as he thought of his situation in life right at that moment. A single father of two who worked a demanding job but had a nice home, a good circle of friends, and children who he loved more than anything in the world and who loved him right back.
He couldn't ask for anything better.
"Get back here!"
"No! No! Dad! Dad, help!"
"Your stupid experiment caused my laptop to turn off! You are so dead!"
Douglas blew a breath as he heard them running towards the basement, one desperately and the other determinedly, obviously seeking for him to settle what seemed to be the fifth disagreement they had that week.
Well, maybe he could ask for some peace and quiet. That sure wouldn't hurt.
NaNoWriMo begins tomorrow!
Reviews are appreciated, guys!
