Hey, it's a new chapter! Trip and Liz deal with suspension in their own ways.

Beta'ed by the wonderful WtchCool.

- o – o -

Chapter Six: Headless Waltz

Trip paced around the corridor outside his mother's office, scowling at the floor tiles. Last time around, he'd gotten suspended for breaking Ryan's nose. This time, he'd gotten suspended for fighting with Liz. Honestly, they all thought he was Chess's son—why were they having so many problems with him?

He grimaced at that thought and flopped down on the lone bench, draping one arm over his eyes to block out what little ambient light there was in the room. This was going to take forever… The nine-year-old looked up as he heard someone walking past, and scowled. Travis Hall was a sleaze, in the worst way.

Why hadn't he called in that favor from Liz…? Oh. Yeah. That was right—he liked the idea of the biggest criminal in the city being beholden to him. It was a moot point now, but judging by the stories Liz told, she could get her wishes carried out just by giving her father one pitiful look.

It tickled Trip to think that his ally was such a daddy's girl at heart. Honestly, was there nothing she'd do to keep her father around? (Alright, he couldn't blame her there. That was their stated goal: Keep their respective fathers alive at any cost.)

And, Trip thought with a grimace as he heard the sleaze clear his throat, keep Travis Hall the hell away from my mother. He looked up, a sleepily inquisitive look on his face.

"Yes?" he asked politely, with an air of boredom in his tone. Ruvi really deserved a thank-you for those unintended acting lessons…

"I'm Travis, your mom's boss," Travis said, holding his hand out.

"I'm Vincent, son of a psychopath," Trip replied, using his real name in lieu of his nickname. Take that, Trevor. Trip smirked mentally as he saw his one-time stepfather blanch a little. "Can I help you?" he asked, looking up at Travis. An upside-down view did not improve the man's looks.

"I just thought I'd introduce myself," Travis said, sitting down next to Trip. "Would you like me to buy you a pop?" Trip shut his eyes and counted to ten. Why, in the name of all things holy, did Travis have to be a nice guy in this timeline?

"Not thirsty," Trip muttered, placing his hands over his eyes as he continued his counting. "I brought my lunch today," he added. When the nine-year-old heard the man walking away, he sighed in relief.

It had been so much easier to hate him when Travis had been married to his mother and attempting to send him to a boarding school from hell.

Why did time travel have to change that? And where the hell was Jack Kirchner hiding?

- o – o -

Elizabeth Raoul was not a morning person, in any sense of the word. In her nineteen years, she had never mastered the art of being completely awake before eleven a.m., and even coffee hadn't helped. Being younger hadn't exactly helped that little morning issue either.

Thus, it was no surprise to find the eight-year-old slumped over the kitchen table, stirring her spoon around a bowl of cold cereal. A mug of tea rested by her elbow, giving off the last few feeble curls of steam as it cooled down. She muttered something under her breath as her father—a dreaded morning person—strode in, fixing his suit jacket. He had already eaten and chugged a gallon of hot tea, taken with three sugars and no milk.

"Mornin' nipper," Scales said amiably, ruffling his daughter's hair. Liz grunted something in reply and spooned soggy cereal into her mouth. "Your mother was like that," the smuggler commented as he pulled his lunch out of the massive black fridge.

Liz registered the comment only after her father had left the house. It struck her as odd, because he never mentioned her mother. Hell, she'd only learned her mother's name when she was thirteen, after digging through all of her father's personal effects. And now that she'd switched the timeline up, she got off-handed comments about her mother's temperament?

It was too damn early to deal with this. Liz put her bowl of cereal in the sink, topped her mug off with the last of the tea, and plodded back to the second floor to drink it in peace. And maybe she'd go right back to sleep. After muddling through the comment about her mother.

She set the mug down on the bedside table and curled up on her bed. There was a chip in the rim of the blue and white checked ceramic mug, and she studied it intently. A few minutes later, her eyelids began to droop. As the former smuggler drifted off to sleep, she made a mental note to contact Trip in regards to their parents.

- o – o -

Trip sat on one of the pillars in the atrium of the Public Defender's office, reading a comic book. He'd have brought a copy of Herodotus, but didn't think his mother would understand why he was reading it. (It would have been too hard to brush it off as getting closer to his father; the elder Faraday had used it to prop up a coffee table more than once, to Dana's consternation.)

Somehow, though, the adventures of the Cape never got boring. Even when he was twenty and the city's acting superhero, he'd still read them as part of his nightly ritual. (He'd been meaning to see the movie based on the comics—mostly on him and his father, though—but then he'd time traveled. Maybe he'd get to see it this time around…) Trip didn't know where his issue with the Arsonist was, but didn't really care to look for it. Still too many bad memories attached to it, honestly.

He sighed and flipped to the next page. The question of what, exactly, the writers had been smoking still niggled in the back of his mind. This particular villain—a beetle-themed guy—had to have been made on drugs.

Trip gave a mental shrug and smiled. In the original timeline, he had never gone to the comic book store with his mother. This time, he had. And, oddly, she'd bought a comic book for herself. Alright, maybe it wasn't so odd—it was based on some legal drama she liked. Why she didn't get enough of that at work, Trip didn't know.

"Trip!"

The nine-year-old looked up from his comic book to see his mother. "Hey mom!" He slid off the pillar and walked over to her, shouldering his backpack. "Want me to carry that?" Trip asked, pointing at the box she was carrying. If he had his way, Travis would have no opportunity to open a relationship with his mother.

"Okay sweetie," Dana said. Trip took the box of files from her and followed her down to the parking garage. As his mother unlocked the car, Trip looked around, feeling a little uneasy. And then he saw it: His father, perched in the emergency stairwell. Vince was wearing his costume, and Trip realized why his father had asked him about the fighting in the same timeline.

Vince had never really stopped being his dad, had he?

Trip grinned and waved after he put the box of files in the trunk. It might have been his imagination, but he swore he'd seen his father smile and wave back before vanishing in a puff of grey-blue smoke.

This was a pretty good day, all things considered.

- o – o -

This was a horrible day, Liz thought as she paced around the private sitting room her father had taken great pains to keep out of his business. The room reflected that with its warmer colors and the comfortable armchairs and a battered sofa against one wall. The room he used to entertain his fellow mob bosses was uncomfortable and cold as hell. Despite this, Liz had never bothered switching anything up.

Her analysis of the day had begun shortly after waking up from her post-breakfast nap, sometime around lunch. Feeling much more human now that it was no longer morning, the former smuggler turned child had stumbled downstairs, pulling a jumper on over her t-shirt and trousers. Pink slippers kept her feet from freezing; if any of the men who worked for her father noticed them, they said nothing.

Liz had to commend them for that. She still had to wonder if any of them had had to disguise laughter as a coughing fit at points. Her father tended to wear bunny slippers when he was hung-over (very rarely), or extremely tired and just didn't care about his appearance (a lot more often, sadly). The girl's lips twitched in a smile as she filled a pot with water and set it on the stove.

"Are you allowed to be doin' that?"

Elizabeth looked up, eyes widening in surprise. She hadn't seen Noodle in months, and suspected that Molinari or that rat bastard Fleming had done something to him. She looked away and took a few deep breaths, willing the tears to recede some. Noodle cleared his throat again, and Liz looked back.

"Me dad don' mind it," she replied, slipping into her usual cant easily. "I think 'e would mind some stranger nosin' around me, t'ough," she added. Noodle grinned, shoving his hands into the pockets of his hideous red jacket.

"Well, that's kinda funny," Noodle said easily. "Seeing as how he sent me an' all." He grinned at her, and Liz felt her heart lighten a little. If things worked out like she hoped they would, he'd be kicking long after he should have died. Especially if she had anything to say about it.

"Fine," she grunted, shelving her emotions for later examination. "I only wan'ed some tea." Noodle smiled at her and turned the burner on for her, before slouching onto one of the stools by the kitchen island.

"I'm Charles," Noodle added. "Everyone calls me Noodle, though."

Liz hid a grin behind her curtain of long, dark hair. It was evident that poor Charles hadn't figured out that "noodle" meant idiot. Alternatively, he knew and didn't care. One didn't argue with the boss—in this case, Scales—after all.

"Liz," she murmured in reply, holding her hand out. Noodle smirked at her and kissed the back of her hand instead of shaking it like a normal person. There was a reason she'd liked him: He was funny, and he didn't let her go on a rampage without a good reason. (Trip had called him her voice of reason and his father had called him her conscience on more than one occasion. Somehow, it was appropriate, even given what she and Noodle did for a living.)

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Liz," Noodle said, a joking grin teasing around his lips. Liz beat back the emotions clamoring for attention by reminding herself that she was eight, and hitting on the help would be seen as more than a little disturbing. Also, her father would probably kill Noodle, and that couldn't happen. It would have been bad.

Liz sighed and fixed herself a mug of tea. Noodle helped himself to a pack of instant coffee and a mug of hot water. As she drank her tea—milk, one sugar—she realized that she hadn't asked him why he'd been stuck with babysitting duty. For that matter, she realized she didn't care.

Good god. She needed to talk to Trip, and fast. She also needed to figure out the whole hormone thing before it killed her…or Noodle. Argh!

The eight-year-old put her mug in the sink with more force than necessary and stalked out of the kitchen, glowering at anyone who got in her way. It wasn't until she had locked herself in her room (chair from the vanity under the doorknob) that she remembered why people had been getting out of her way so quickly: She'd acted almost exactly like her father.

She laughed as she composed an e-mail to Trip.

- o – o -

Trip slouched into his room, wondering why his father was such a blockhead. For good measure, he slammed his window shut and bolted it. He'd told the moron that he knew his father was alive, and… The nine-year-old resisted the urge to beat his forehead against the desk until he managed to knock himself out.

It would have been counterproductive, was all… And this was insane. Finding Jack Kirchner had just become Priority Number One, followed by Liz's plan of making it look like her father and his mother were interested in each other. Anything to get his father to stop being an idiot.

Speaking of Liz… He opened the e-mail and read it, eyes growing wider with each sentence. He began beating his forehead against the desk with all the force he could muster.

Why in the name of all things holy did she think he could deal with hormones any better than she could? Trip sighed and shut his computer off. His brain hurt.

Hormones? And Liz? Why did that sound like a bad combination?

- o – o -

So, what did you think? Good? Bad? Is Trip right about Liz and hormones being a bad combo? Drop a line and let me know!