This was actually a request of sorts from JoJo knd.
Enjoy :)
Lincoln sighed. It had been a week since the whole "dress" incident, and things in the Loud house hadn't been the same. At least, not for him.
Tossing the comic he had been trying to read aside, Lincoln sighed miserably at the sounds outside his bedroom door. Namely, all the sisters having a good time…without him.
After Lori and Leni had bought the same dress, things had slowly started to escalate between them. This wouldn't have been so bad, except it inconvenienced Lincoln in a couple of small ways. After being told he couldn't watch a monster truck rally, he had finally gotten fed up and went to confront Lori and Leni, against the advice of all the other sisters.
Lincoln tried to mend the fence between the two oldest sisters…but he not only made things worse, but also found out they had just recently made up.
Throughout the next couple of days, Lincoln (rather cockily) kept trying to fix things, only to make them worse and worse, up to the point that ALL the sisters were mad at each other.
Finally, Lincoln spent the night at Clyde's house, and the sisters made up…until Lincoln came back and inadvertently started ANOTHER fight between everyone.
After they eventually made up again, Lincoln wisely kept his head down. After a couple days, he apologized, and the sisters accepted. However, Lincoln could clearly see they were excluding him from their activities. He thought it was only his imagination, but he soon picked up that they didn't want to spend time with him.
It was a day after Lincoln had apologized. Thankfully, things were mostly back to normal in the Loud house
"Hey, Luna," Lincoln poked his head into his rocker sister's room, "Wanna jam?"
"Oh," Luna was caught off guard by her brother's appearance, "Um…I'm actually pretty busy. Maybe later, bro."
"Ok," Lincoln shrugged. As he headed towards his room, he bumped into Luan, in full clown gear. He raised an eyebrow as he asked, "Luan, what's with the get up? Are you getting ready for a gig?"
"Um…" Luan bit her lip and looked away, "I actually just finished a gig."
"But…you didn't tell me," Lincoln said, confused, "Didn't you need your assistant?"
"It, uh, it was last minute, and I couldn't find you, so I had to go solo," Luan said, forcing a smile.
Lincoln looked at her in confusion, "I've been in my room all day."
"Coulda…coulda sworn I looked there," Luan said, smiling nervously, "Well, anyway, I don't have another gig for a while, but I'll let ya know when I do."
"O…k…" Lincoln said, stepping aside and letting her enter her room. As he headed towards his room, he couldn't help but think, 'That was weird.'
Later, Lincoln asked Lynn if she wanted to play some basketball.
"I wish I could, bro," Lynn sighed, "But I promised I'd help Lucy with her new poem."
"But…that's what I usually do," Lincoln said, stepping out into the hall.
"GIVE ME BACK MY DOLLIE!"
Lincoln smiled as he heard yet another fight coming from the twins' room. He stepped towards their door, intent on helping them resolve their argument…when Lori rushed past him.
"Alright, what's going on in here?" She demanded, closing the door behind her.
Lincoln was surprised. Lori rarely got involved in fights that didn't concern her. She claimed it was a waste of her time.
"Maybe she's just trying to branch out and be a better sister," Lincoln muttered, deciding to head to his room and relax.
Lincoln didn't realize it at first, but that had been the start of a pattern. Luna was "too busy" to rock out with him, Luan kept going to comedy gigs without him, Lynn and Lucy spent more time together without him, and Lori and Leni helped the younger sisters resolve their problems.
It hurt, but he knew he really only had himself to blame. If he had just butt out, just waited 10 minutes before confronting Lori and Leni, none of this would have happened.
Flopping down on his bed, Lincoln sighed again. He figured his best bet would be to wait a few more days, until the sisters weren't mad at him anymore. Then he would try apologizing again.
"Hopefully I can actually fix this," He muttered to himself, "Without making things worse."
Lisa rolled her eyes as she heard her brother sigh AGAIN! That's all he had been doing for the past 4 days. Just staying in his room and sighing. It wouldn't be so bad if their house's walls weren't paper-thin AND the fact that her room was right next to his.
Lisa wasn't very emotional, but she was more than smart enough to see what was going on. The rest of her sisters were clearly ticked at their brother for starting WWL (World War Loud) and were avoiding him. Thus, he was depressed. She didn't know why, though. After all, just give it a couple days and it would be like the argument had never even happened.
'SIGH'
"Alright, I've had all I can stand, and I can't stand anymore!" Lisa growled, setting the project she had been working on aside and pulling out her box of tossed experiments from under her desk. She rifled through it for a moment, before smirking upon finding what she was looking for.
Lincoln stared up at the ceiling as he thought over how he could apologize to his sisters again. Maybe put on a sing and dance routine?
Knock-knock
Lincoln sat up, startled, yet also glad. One of his sisters was here! Maybe she needed help? Or heck, maybe she just wanted to hang out? Lincoln didn't care, though. He jumped off his bed and threw open his door.
He was more than surprised at seeing the sister at his door was Lisa.
"Lisa?" he asked, confused, "What's up?"
"I require your assistance, dear brother," Lisa spoke in her usual bored tone, "I have a project I am working on, and you are the only one whom I trust to help me with it."
Lincoln's confused look turned into a smile. Lisa needed his and only his help with something. He was needed again. "Sure thing, Lis," he said, smiling as the two made their way into her room.
Lincoln eagerly looked around, trying to figure what experiment his genius sister was working on and needed help with. The only thing he saw out of the ordinary was a metal sphere on her desk.
"Is that the thing?" Lincoln asked, pointing at the sphere as Lisa walked over to it and picked it up.
"Yes," Lisa said, walking over and handing it to her brother, "Lincoln, I'll put this in terms you can understand: What you're holding in your hands is an experimental time machine. I know that sounds farfetched, but hear me out." Lincoln had been about to say something, though he closed his mouth and decided to hear what his sister had to say. "I truly believe I have found a way to bend time in order to travel through it. Mainly backwards, but it's a start. Now, I seem to have made a rather peculiar error when making this device: it can only be used by someone with a Y-chromosome."
Lincoln raised an eyebrow in confusion, "You made a time machine that can only be used by a guy? How does that make any sense?"
"It doesn't," Lisa sighed, "But somehow all my attempts to use it have been futile, and just minutes ago I realized the problem. Thus, I require you to test it out."
"So…you want me to use a time machine to do…what, exactly?"
"I just need you to press the button and concentrate on going to a specific point in time," Lisa explained, "If my theory is correct, you will inhabit your past body, so as not to risk meeting yourself and theoretically creating a blackhole that could wipe out the entire planet."
Lincoln's eyes went wide at that part, and he started shaking with nerves as he tried to hand the device back to his sister, "Thanks, Lis, but I'm gonna have to decline. Getting blown up by one of your experiments is one thing, but having one that could destroy EVERYTHING is a step too far." At that, Lincoln turned and headed for the door.
"WAIT!" Lisa shouted, before regaining her composure, "Please, Lincoln. If this works, I could become famous in the scientific community. If that happens, our family would be rich. Think of that. Think of how our sisters would praise you for testing my machine and proving that it works."
Lincoln bit his lip. His sisters talking to him again did sound nice. And praising him for making them rich would be icing on the cake.
Sighing, he turned back towards his sister and asked, "What exactly do you need me to do?"
"I just need you to press this button as hard as you can" Lisa started, pointing to the button in the center of the orb, "Once you press it tight enough, it will link with you. At that point, you can mentally tell it when to send you."
"Ok," Lincoln said, taking the orb and placing it in the palm of his hand, his thumb ready to press the button, "When should I have it send me?"
"Have it send you back in time 10 minutes, right before I came and got you," Lisa said, "When I knock on your door, pull me into your room and pat your head and rub your stomach while telling me the code phrase, 'Fluffer Nutter is to die for.' That is the code phrase I came up with right before I came to you. Once you do that, I will know that my machine is a success. Now, if you're ready, we can prepare."
Despite the weird code phrase, Lincoln nodded. He took a deep breath as Lisa got out a stop watch and began the countdown.
"10…"
Lincoln was sweating with nervousness, but also excitement.
"9…"
After all, if this worked, he would be able to say he was the first person to successfully travel through time. He'd be a legend.
"8…"
If only it were true. See, the device had in fact started out as a time machine.
"7…"
But eventually Lisa realized that traveling through time was next to impossible, and ultimately abandoned the project.
"6…"
However, growing tired of her brother's moping (and feeling a slight pity for him), Lisa had come up with a plan to…help him.
"5…"
This "help" would be in the form of a painful electric shock that would likely render Lincoln unconscious.
"4…"
Lisa would act indifferent, because she knew Luna was playing with Lily, but would be bringing her back to her crib so she could practice her music some more.
"3…"
Once Luna saw her "little bro" hurt and Lisa acting like she didn't care, she would immediately start fretting over him, and the others would hear her freaking out, causing them to rush in and feel sorry for Lincoln, completely forgiving him for the dress fiasco.
"2…"
Of course, there was a small chance Lincoln would have to go to the hospital, but that was a minor detail. After all, Lisa was pretty certain that she had taken the small pellet of uranium out of the device, so it was basically just a fancy joy buzzer.
"HA HA HA! Good one, Luan!"
Lisa stopped her countdown right before she reached the end as the duo heard Leni out in the hall.
"I know, right?" Luan laughed back, "We gotta tell the others. They'll die laughing. Luna, come here!"
Lincoln sighed as he closed his eyes and clenched his fists as a couple tears spilled from his eyes. The Loud siblings didn't do EVERYTHING together, but it just hurt so much knowing that he was being specifically excluded from the fun.
It was times like these that Lincoln wished he had a do-over button. If he did, he knew exactly what he would do over: when he walked up the steps to Lori and Leni's room, he would instead do a complete turn-around and head to his own room and read comics, simply waiting out the end of Lori and Leni's fight.
At that moment, Lincoln felt a powerful surge of electricity surge throughout his body. His eyes shot open, and the last thing he saw was Lisa staring at him with a bored expression. Then, everything went black for about 10 seconds, during which Lincoln felt the most pain he had ever felt. He opened his mouth to scream, but no sounds came out.
However, once those 10 seconds were up, Lincoln opened his eyes to see that he was on the stairs. He didn't feel any pain, nor did he feel any after effects of pain. He also noticed that he was no longer holding Lisa's orb.
"We really should stop him. He's just gonna make things worse."
Lincoln peered through the hand railing to see the sisters on the couch, with his monster truck gear laying at the edge of it. His eyes went wide as he realized that Lisa's time machine had actually worked.
Of course, there was the thought of this being a dream, like when he had gone to the alternate universe where he had 10 brothers. But…he knew that shock he felt was real. Sure, he had gotten hurt in his brother world, but he had later realized that that had just been his mind imitating pain. There was no way that shock was "imitated".
But then there was the second possibility that the shock HAD been real, and he was simply lying unconscious on Lisa's floor and was simply remembering that fateful, stupid day.
"Eh, screw it," Lincoln decided, continuing up the stairs. However, instead of heading to his oldest sisters' room, he turned towards his room. He opened the door and slipped inside, closing the door and listening for what would happen next. "Dream or real, this time I'm gonna do the right thing."
As he guessed, a couple minutes later Lincoln heard the rest of his sisters coming up the stairs. He figured they were probably listening at Lori and Leni's door.
"I can't hear anything," Lynn whisper-shouted.
"Do you think Lincoln has made them even more dis-dressed?" Luan asked, earning groans from the others.
"Only one way to find out," Lola said.
The next thing Lincoln heard was knocking on Lori's door. It opened, and the rest of the sisters filed in. Lincoln kept listening, but with the others all talking at once, it was hard to make out exactly what they were saying.
"QUIET!" Lincoln jumped at hearing Lori shout, despite it not being at him (for once). Lincoln listened as Lori explained she and Leni were done fighting, and that Lincoln had not talked to them about it.
At that, Lincoln sighed, glad to have avoided a fiasco. However, before he could get too relaxed, he heard the girls running towards his room. He quickly jumped on his bed and grabbed a comic book, opening it to a random page and pretending to read it as his door was thrown open.
All the sisters, sans Leni and Lori, were standing in the doorway, giving their brother a suspicious glance.
"Bro, you didn't butt in the fight, did you?" Luna asked.
"Huh?" Lincoln asked, as though her question was taking a moment to register in his mind, "Oh! That, no. I was going to, but then I thought about what you guys all said, and I got paranoid that butting in would only make things worse. So, I decided to just hang in my room for now."
"Really?" Lola asked, raising an eyebrow as she looked at her brother's surprisingly calm face, "So, you just decided not to butt in? On your way upstairs, when that was exactly what you were gonna do, you just changed your mind?"
"Yup," Lincoln answered dully, "I thought about Lynn and Lucy's fight, and how that lead to Lynn bunking with me. I realized that that fight affected me more directly, seeing as I got a terrible roommate out of it."
"Hey!" Lynn stated, offended.
Lincoln ignored her as he continued, "But I figure this fight doesn't really affect me that much…other than having to go to the bathroom in a bucket." At this, he paused to send a slight glare towards Lana, who shrugged sheepishly. "Anyway," Lincoln continued, turning his head back towards the comic, "I figure it'll be good for Leni and Lori to cool off for a while. If the fight goes on for, say, more than a few days, then we definitely need to get involved. But for now, I agree with you guys that we should butt out."
The sisters looked at each other in surprise, not used to hearing their brother sound so logical.
"Actually, Linky," Leni appeared behind the others, "We already made up."
"Yeah," Lori said, "We realized it was stupid to fight over that dumb dress, so we made an arrangement on how to wear it."
"Good to hear," Lincoln nodded, "Guess it's good I didn't try to get involved. I'm sure I would have only made things worse." At this, Lincoln sighed, still hurt about what had originally happened.
The sisters all looked at each other with slight concern over their brother's sudden sad tone.
"Come on, bro," Luna said, "You know that's not true. You're the man with the plan. We're sure you wouldn't have made things worse."
"Yeah, Linc," Lynn spoke up, "You probably would have made these two hug it out and realize that they were being childish."
"Yeah, probably," Lincoln said, forcing a smile. However, the sisters weren't convinced. Before they could push further, however…
"Uh, Lis, there's smoke coming from your room," Luna spoke up.
"Dangit!" Lisa moaned, heading into her room. The rest of the sisters moved from Lincoln's door to Lisa's as they watched her pull a box out from under her desk, pulling some type of orb out of it and taking it apart before throwing it away.
"Stupid, non-working time machine," She muttered in annoyance as she placed a small green ball in a plastic bag before throwing it away as well, "I thought it was a dud. And I thought I got rid of this uranium pellet."
As Lisa was doing this, the girls were talking about Lincoln.
"I don't get why he thought he would only be able to make things worse," Lucy said, "Usually he's on top of these things."
"Yeah, I mean, he's screwed up a few times, but we all have," Luna added, "That's no reason to assume he'll screw up no matter what."
"That's right," Leni said, "Linky's really smart and he always uses his brain the most he can. Heck, I saw he was practicing just now."
"Practicing?" Lynn asked in confusion, "He was practicing getting smarter?"
"Yeah," Leni nodded, "He was trying to read upside down."
Instantly, the sisters rushed into Lincoln's room. However, as they had been right outside his room, Lincoln had heard them, realized he had in fact grabbed the comic upside down, and quickly turned it right-side up. He then casually looked up when his sisters reentered his room, all staring at the comic in his hands.
"What?" He asked, acting like he hadn't just overheard them.
"Nothing…" They all said, as they slowly back out.
As they exited his room, Lincoln thought back to how bad the last week (for him) had been. Realizing he had no reason to avoid his sisters now, he asked, "Hey, since the fight's over, you guys wanna…celebrate? We could all watch a movie together."
The sisters stopped back out as they thought over the offer. One by one, they all smiled, glad to see that Lincoln was apparently over his brief bum out.
5 minutes later, all the sisters were sitting in front of the TV as Lincoln put their copy of the original 1939 Wizard of Oz. Lincoln happily sat in between Luna and Leni as he pressed "PLAY" on the remote.
As the movie started, Lincoln thought over a few things. Namely, he had screwed up BIG TIME, and yet he had actually gotten a do-over. He realized that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance (especially since he had overheard that the time machine had apparently overheated, resulting in Lisa throwing it away), and he was beyond grateful. Heck, he was starting to wish he had gone back in time a few months. Think of all the things he could have done differently:
He could have avoided the whole trophy case/embarrassing videos incident. He could have actually exercised so his mom wouldn't have signed him up for football. He could have NOT bought those noise-cancelling ear buds. He could have made sure not to get up in the middle of the night and accidentally flush Lucy's Princess Pony book down the toilet. He could have just given the girls that stupid quarter and run out of the room before they got into that fight.
Shaking his head, Lincoln realized that while he did screw up those few times, he realized screwing up is part of growing up. For whatever reason, the universe allowed him this one do-over, and he was glad. Sure, give it another few days, a week at the most, and the sisters likely would have forgiven him. But now, he didn't even have to worry about that.
And yes, there was still the possibility that he was lying unconscious in Lisa's room, but if that did turn out to be the case, he would deal with it later.
"I love you guys," Lincoln said, wrapping Luna and Leni in a hug.
The sisters were a bit caught off guard by this random declaration of love by their brother, but they decided to go along with it as they wrapped their brother in a hug and replied, "Love ya, too, Linc."
At that, they watched the movie, Lincoln glad that he had his family back.
So, I've often watched episodes of shows like Fairly OddParents and thought that they were so stupid, and how the main character is supposed to be smarter than that. I sometimes wonder what the character would do if he or she had a "do-over" for that episode.
Because of my alternate and extended LH fics, I actually got asked if I would consider making and alternate to Brawl in the Family, due to how bad it was. I thought about it, and just wasn't sure how I could make an alternate. But then I thought back to my "do-over" question and realized I had the perfect way to make this. Thus, this is not "BITF alternate" or "BITF extended ending"; it's "BITF redo".
I think I did a good job at this. I made Lincoln skeptical, yet ultimately accepting that he had gotten a do-over. And of course he thought about other instances he would have liked to try again.
R&R