When she had returned to her parents' home, not feeling right about moving into the old Carter house, even if it did once belong to Slade and Saber's family, Star sighed. They weren't in any condition to face the memories that being there would bring up, not after everything they'd just suffered. Commander Jamison was right: the amnesia that the twins had been afflicted with after they'd come back to Earth really was nature's way of being kind.
No one would ever want to remember having to slaughter the members of their own family that way; especially not people who'd been so obviously fighting to preserve what little family they'd had left.
She wouldn't even wish that kind of pain, that horror, on the very few people she honestly hated, let alone the very people who had been responsible for saving the world and everyone on it from suffering the same, sad fate that had befallen them. So, she had made up her mind to take the twins back to her house; though it really belonged to the entire Summers family, she having seen no point in trying to find a new house in some other place with the invasion going on, and when her family home had served so well for so long. The only people who actually lived there at the moment were her aging mother and father.
Her older brother Scott had died early in the invasion, and her parents had never really been the type for big families. She'd found it kind of lonely at times, having only one brother to play with when she was little, and even moreso now that he was gone, but now she was relieved to only be dealing with two people. In fact, wanting to avoid the inevitable firestorm of publicity that would be stirred up once people started realizing that the saviors of humanity were staying quietly on Earth somewhere; she had opted to take the twins out to her house while everyone else was sleeping.
Even the twins themselves, having spent the previous day with the Space Knights' surgeons working to patch them both up after the battle on the Space Ring – and Slade's later fight with Darkon himself – were fast asleep in the back of her car.
Pulling into the garage of her family's modest home, Star turned to look back at Slade and Saber, curled up together in the back seat. Their faces were relaxed, with the kind of deep, peaceful sleep she'd never known them to have before. Of course, before this day they were fighting the brainwashed members of their own family, and suffering from all the guilt that that would induce in any person with even an iota of human compassion.
She smiled softly; deciding to leave the twins to their sleep. It would be morning soon, anyway, and her family home was far enough removed from the general hustle and bustle of life in the city that there wasn't too much of a chance that the twins would become the center of a media circus if she allowed them to sleep until they awakened on their own. Besides, it would give her more time to speak with her parents about what would need to be done to preserve Slade and Saber's privacy.
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When he woke up, he was in a car; that was funny, since he didn't remember going to sleep in a car. He'd fallen asleep in a bed, or at least he thought he had. Saber was still with him, though, so that was good.
He would have been scared if Saber hadn't been with him; it would mean something bad had happened.
He just wondered where they were. This clearly wasn't the place they'd gone to sleep in; it was too dark, for one thing, and for another, there had been more room in the other place. That woman – Star, she'd said her name was – had called it an infirmary.
This new place seemed more like a warehouse, though a really small one, than anything else.
When Star came back, Saber was just starting to wake up. That was good, since there were two other people with Star, and he really didn't know who they were. Slade didn't want to face strange people without his brother by his side.
(Who do you think they are, Saber?)
(I don't know,) his brother said, curling his warm, strong hands around Slade's own. (They look kind of nice, though, I think. Kind of like Star, too.)
(Yeah,) he said, looking closer; he could see the resemblance now, too. (I wonder why that is?)
(I don't really know,) Saber said, sounding bemused. (I mean, I thought I had an idea, but it's gone now.)
(Oh. Well, maybe you'll get your idea back later,) he said, watching as Star and the other two people came closer to the car.
Star had told them it was a car, and since he didn't know what else to call it, he figured she knew best. He didn't really know much, aside from the fact that Saber was his brother – he didn't think he'd ever be able to forget that – and that Star and those Space Knight people she said she'd worked with were good. These two didn't look like any Space Knights he'd met, though.
(I don't think they're part of the Space Knights, like Star,) Saber said, and Slade nodded; that was what he'd been thinking. (I wonder what they're doing.)
(They look nice, though… Don't you think?) he asked, as his eyes traveled over the people walking on either side of Star.
(Yeah,) Saber said. (They look happy, too. They look like they're friends with Star, too. That should be good, right?)
(I think so, yeah,) he said, as he watched the people walk over to the car and open the door.
When they started helping him and Saber out, Slade decided that he did like them. Whoever they were, they were as nice as Star and those Space Knight people that had helped them after… whatever it was that he and Saber had been doing that had ended up with them being out in that hot, sandy place with all the broken rocks.
The older woman helped him out of the car, while the older man helped Saber. He let them, since Star seemed to like them and they hadn't given him any reason to mistrust them. On the contrary, they had given him every reason to trust them. Not only with his own life, but more importantly with Saber's as well.
"Slade, is there anything you and Saber would like me to get for you?" Star asked, looking from him to his brother as those two other people moved them out of the car and toward the door of the small warehouse where it was parked.
(Well, some food would be nice,) he said, making sure to include Star in his telepathic conversation; Saber was always a part of it. (I haven't eaten since… I don't even know when,) he said, chuckling.
(Yeah, I could use a hot meal before… whatever it is we're going to end up doing today,) Saber said, and Slade could see his brother smiling.
For some reason, hearing this seemed to make Star sad. Maybe she didn't want to have breakfast with them? But that didn't make any sense, since she was the one who had suggested that they all do something together… or asked if they'd wanted to do something, which was pretty much the same thing, when you came right down to it.
"I guess we could just go inside and have breakfast, if you two really don't want to do anything else," she said, looking like she was trying to smile, but couldn't quite get it right.
He wondered why that was; they'd already said that they wanted to go and have breakfast. It was almost like she hadn't heard them, but that didn't make sense since he'd been speaking to her and Saber both, and Saber had heard him just fine. It was strange, but he and Saber were getting breakfast anyway, so he supposed it didn't matter.
The door to the small warehouse lead somewhere Slade wouldn't have ever expected: it lead into a kitchen. It was strange, but there was something about this setup… the thought, if it was even there at all, was gone before Slade could start to really consider it. Deciding not to think about weird things that he couldn't really remember, Slade let himself be lead further into the kitchen.
"Is everything all right, you two?" Star asked, looking from him to Saber and back again. "Do you want anything in particular for breakfast?"
(Pancakes would be nice,) he said, knowing that Saber liked them, and feeling in the mood for something sweet, himself.
(I'd like some hash browns, if it's not too much trouble,) Saber said, and Slade could see him smiling. (Do you guys have any orange juice?)
"Don't worry, Star," the woman said kindly, as Star began to look disappointed again. "I'm sure they'll like what we're having."
"I guess you're right," Star said, looking from them to the older people who were helping them to the table that he had just noticed.
The table itself was oval shaped; there was something about that shape, something that made him think… but whatever thought he'd been about to have was gone almost as soon as he turned his attention to it, and so Slade just turned his attention to the food that was neatly set out on the table. There weren't any pancakes, so that wasn't all that great to see; there were hash browns, and orange juice, and some eggs in various states of preparation.
There were some omelets, and a big bowl of what looked like scrambled eggs, so anyone who liked eggs so much as Star and these other people clearly did would probably be happy.
(Well, I think I can guess what their favorite food is,) Saber said, and he laughed.
(Yeah, you really can,) he replied, with a laugh of his own. It really was funny, when you thought about it.
"What're you two laughing about?" Star asked, looking from him to Saber the way she always seemed to do.
(We were just saying how it's really easy to tell what kind of food you and those other people like,) he said, speaking a bit more forcefully than he did when he was just talking with Saber; maybe that was the problem.
"I guess you don't have to tell me," she said, sounding disappointed again; he knew he'd been speaking to her, so what was going wrong?! "I wish you boys would share something with me, though. We used to be such good friends."
(Really?) he asked. (Everything before today's just a blur; can you tell me anything about what we used to do, back when we were friends? Was there anyone else we were close to? That Ringo guy seemed pretty happy to see us. Was he one of our friends, too?)
"I really hope you two remember how to talk, soon," she said. It was like she wasn't listening to a word he said! So frustrating. "It's going to be pretty lonely, if I can't talk to you even when you're both here."
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Looking from Saber to Slade and then back again, Star found that they were both looking rather irate. The expressions passed quickly enough, and they both started eating without anything further seeming to trouble them, but she couldn't help wondering just what it was that had passed between them. She wondered if she would ever know just what they had been thinking or feeling while all of this had been going on.
Even when the twins had been able to talk, neither of them had really been the type to do so; even for all of Saber's banter he never really said all that much.
Now, though, it was like she'd lost them all over again; like all of the work that she – and Ringo, Tina, Maggie, and Mac, and even the Commander himself in his own way – had done to help bring the twins out of their respective shells had all been for nothing. It wasn't a good feeling. Still, there might be nothing she could do but wait, and try to remind the twins of the good times they had all had, back before… well, before.
She didn't want to remind them of the bad times that they had gone through; once was enough to live through those horrible things.
Still, there very well might come a time – as much as she hated even the thought of it – when they would begin to remember all of the horrible things that had happened to them during the time they'd been fighting against Darkon's forces. Fighting against some of the very people they'd have given almost anything to save, in fact. She didn't want them to have to remember those times, but that was a part of life: the good and the bad, you couldn't really have one without the other.
They all knew that, even if she didn't like to think about it all that much.
Once breakfast had been finished, though she still hadn't managed to get a word out of Saber or Slade, Star headed back up to her room. She didn't know just what she would do, with the twins refusing to say a word, and no one else here to help her in her efforts to get through to them, but she might be able to think of something after she had a break.
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When those two older people had showed him and Slade to another room – one that had two beds in it, so that was good – Slade had smiled and tried to thank them, but they hadn't responded to his thanks. They hadn't said anything when he'd repeated his brother's words, so Saber knew they weren't just ignoring Slade for some weird reason.
(What do you think is going on with these people?) Slade asked, sounding as if he was just about at the end of his tolerance for being ignored.
Come to think of it, so was he. (I don't know. I mean, we keep talking louder and louder, but they don't seem to be listening.)
(Yeah; it's just kind of frustrating, you know?)
(Yeah,) he echoed, flopping back on the bed. (So, what do you think we should do now?)
(I really don't know,) Slade said, laying down on his side and kicking off his shoes as he put his feet up on the bed. (I've pretty much run out of ideas.)
(Yeah. Me too,) he admitted. (Why don't we just sleep on it, then? Maybe we'll come up with something later.)
(Sounds as good as anything I've managed to think up,) Slade said, sounding resigned.
Something about that resignation felt almost like it should bother Saber, but since that didn't make any sense he decided to ignore that. Sitting up so he could take his own shoes off, Saber wriggled up under the covers and pulled them up over himself the rest of the way. Settling himself down as he closed his eyes, Saber yawned a last time and tuned out his surroundings in preparation for getting some much needed sleep.
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When Star had called him, sounding like she was nearing the end of her rope, Ringo figured that it was his duty as a friend to go see what was wrong. She had implied that it was something to do with the twins, and the last thing he wanted was for those two to have to go through anything too serious. Anything that he wouldn't be able to pull them out of.
The Space Knights stuck together, and these two had been wounded – even if it would take a neurologist to actually tell – during the course of saving the world. Those alone were two very good reasons for him to come out to help Star with whatever was happening out there at her house. Still, there was also the much more important reason: the fact that Slade and Saber were his friends, and no one and nothing was going to give them mental problems but him.
Pulling into the Summers' driveway, Ringo let the car idle for a few moments as he tried to compose himself. He knew, from the medical reports and his own experience, that neither of the twins remembered anything about their time as Space Knights, and he didn't know if reminding them of that would be too much for their minds at this stage. The docs had said that those boys were bound to be a bit mentally delicate after all that they had gone through.
Any sane person would be.
So, no matter how he might feel about the facts, that didn't change them in any way; he wasn't going to try talking to either of the twins about what they had done for the Space Knights, or what they had done for the Earth as a whole.
Climbing out of the car, resolving to find a good place to reminisce with Star once he'd managed to help her through her issues, Ringo made for the Summers' front door. He was already starting to compose himself, brace himself for the fact that – while the people he knew weren't quite entirely gone – the twins probably weren't going to remember anything about him other than the fact that they had met him in the Space Knight Command Center. And, maybe that was a good thing at the moment; they hadn't exactly had the best of starts to their relationship.
Smiling wistfully for all the times that they had managed to save each other's lives – and the world along with them – Ringo sighed. He didn't want to have those times back, exactly, since one battle with ruthless space aliens and their enslaved human attack dogs was enough for any sane person to endure, but he did wish that he could at least talk to the twins about their shared history without them thinking he was crazy.
Putting all of that aside, at least for the time being, Ringo walked up and rung the Summers' doorbell.
"Hello, Ringo," Star's mother Christine said, smiling. "Star said she was going to call you."
"Hi, Mrs. Summers," he said; in spite of the fact that she often told him that he could call her by her first name, he'd never really been comfortable doing so. "How are you and your husband doing?"
"Oh, we're fine, Ringo. We get along well with our neighbors, and no one really bothers us," Mrs. Summers said, smiling; then, looking around as if to make sure that no one but the two of them were actually standing close by, she leaned forward with a serious expression on her face. "That's probably why Star wanted to bring those poor boys here."
"Yeah, that's probably why." God knew that those two weren't up to dealing with the press in any way, shape, or form after what they'd just been through.
"Come inside, dear," Mrs. Summers said, speaking normally again, probably for the benefit of anyone who might be coming out of their houses right then. "I'm sure Star will be very happy to see you."
"I'm sure she will," he said with a smile. "Especially given the fact that she was the one who called me in the first place."
With a wide, warm smile on her face, Mrs. Summers stepped aside to let him walk into the house behind her. It really was a nice house, he mused, though not for the first time; he'd spent a lot of happy days – built a lot of happy memories – in this house. It was far more of a home to him than his old one had ever been, and part of the reason for that was the woman who had just finished welcoming him inside.
The Summers family had been more of a family to him than anyone in the Vereuse family ever had; which was the reason he had changed his last name to Richards when he had finally worked up the courage to leave them entirely. He would have liked to have been able to be a part of the Summers family, but he didn't think that Mr. or Mrs. Summers would want a son his age.
Especially considering what had happened to their real son; no one could really replace Scott, and he wasn't about to try.
Once he was inside the house, he hung up his coat on the hooks just opposite the swing of the front door and headed deeper into the house. After a quick exchange of words with Mrs. Summers, he headed up to Star's room. She'd told him that she was having some trouble dealing with a mutual friend of theirs; there might have been other people in the vicinity who might have overheard him, so they hadn't mentioned any names. He didn't want the twins dealing with any more attention than they had to, either.
Knocking on Star's door, Ringo waited.
"Hey," Star said, waving him in.
"Hey, Star," he said, smiling. "You didn't sound that great over the phone; the twins haven't been giving you too much trouble, have they?"
"No," she shook her head, though she still looked kind of worried. "It's strange, though; neither of them seems willing to talk. It's not that they don't want to talk about things, they're not saying anything at all."
"That's weird," he said, chewing the inside of his cheek. "Do you think they might be suffering from aphasia or something?"
"No," she shook her head, then seemed to reconsider her words. "Well, I don't think so. They haven't spoken once since they've been here, so I don't really know what's going on with them very well. It's entirely possible that they are suffering from aphasia, and I just don't know it."
"Well, let's go check up on them," he said, starting to get a bit worried for the twins, himself.
They both might have been more resilient than any human had a right to be, but that was only as far as the body was concerned. Their minds were just as vulnerable to the same stresses and problems as any human's. And, just to make things more interesting, Teknomen had their own unique set of vulnerabilities. Like Saber had said once, it wasn't everyone who had to worry about their deepest, darkest secrets being picked right out of their heads and used against them.
Not that the last group of Radam Teknomen had even needed to do that, of course, since every one of them had already known whatever secrets the twins had wanted to keep. They'd known them since they had all been close friends, or worse family, of the very people they'd been fighting. He didn't think he could imagine how hard that must have been for them. But then, he didn't really have to.
He'd seen it in their eyes, every time they'd had to go out and fight one of Darkon's Teknomen.
The Commander had been right on the money when he'd speculated that the amnesia was nature's way of being kind. It was a cruel sort of kindness, to be sure, but after the way the twins had been screwed over by life in general and fate in particular, Ringo hadn't honestly expected anything better. It really seemed to be the best that they could have hoped for.
When he was finally standing in front of the room where Saber and Slade were staying, Ringo found himself pausing for a moment as he considered what he might have to confront beyond that door. The twins might have been perfectly fine, but not quite up to speaking with people they didn't recognize, or they might be completely incapable of speaking a single intelligible sentence; the only way he was going to find out what the case actually was, was to walk into that room and see for himself.
Not an easy thing, considering how he felt about the twins.
Every one of the Space Knights, even those who hadn't worked with them in any close capacity, were worried about Slade and Saber. Those two boys had saved the world, though, so he figured that it was fully warranted. Hell, he worried about those boys, and he was fully aware of just how tough they were.
Opening the door, he caught sight of the twins all stretched out on a pair of beds that had probably been set up just for them. Both of them had sat up when the door opened, and now he found himself staring into an intense pair of bright green eyes, and an equally intense pair of bright blue. The twins were both awake, and they looked curious.
It was a marked improvement from the last time he'd seen them, when they'd looked like the end of a very bad day; the worst in a long time, in fact.
"Hey," he said, raising his hand to wave at the two of them. "Star says that you boys haven't been feeling very well. You want to talk about it?"
They looked back at him, the intensity in their eyes not diminishing for a second. There was something flickering, just out of sight under their bangs. Acting on a hunch, he went over to Slade, since he was the one closest to the door, Ringo gently brushed the kid's bangs back from his forehead and took a look at the now-exposed flesh. Sure enough, just as he'd been starting to suspect would be the case, the glowing emblem of Slade's crystal was visible there.
The telltale sign that Slade, and probably Saber as well, was using his telepathy.
"You do remember that neither Star or I can actually hear you when you talk like that, don't you?" Given the confused expressions starting to appear on both Slade and Saber's faces, he would have to guess not.
He sighed, then chuckled a bit; he certainly hadn't thought it would be something so simple. He couldn't say he didn't appreciate it, of course, it was just strange to think that they had gotten so worried over something that could have been solved so easily. But then, both of them had been worried enough about the twins not to consider something that could be overlooked so easily.
"Why don't you boys try saying something out loud?" he asked, as Star palmed her face and made a noise of frustrated chagrin. "That might help clear up some of our communication problems," he continued with a chuckle. "Do you think you could do that for me?"
"You mean, like this?" Slade asked, a look of mild confusion plain on his face.
"Yeah," he said, grinning. "That wasn't so hard, now was it?"
"It wasn't hard," Saber said, looking mildly confused; almost as if he couldn't really believe that the sounds he was making had actually come from him. "It just feels kind of weird."
"Well, it's still how we humans communicate," he said, grinning down at them; glad that it had been something so easily fixed as this, since most of their problems had been nothing of the sort. "So you two boys are just going to have to get used to it." Again, he added silently.
"I'm glad you two weren't hurt," Star said, going from Slade to Saber so she could hug them both in turn. "We were all really worried about you two."
"She's right, you know," he said seriously. "Everyone's been pulling for you two to get better; even the Commander requested updates on your recovery."
The news hadn't been all that surprising to him; for all his outward stoicism, Commander Jamison genuinely did care about his people.
"Who's this Commander?" Slade asked, after trading a look with his brother; Saber had just shrugged. "Have we met him?"
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"Commander Jamison was the one who greeted the both of you when you woke up in the Command Center's med lab," she said, genuinely relieved to be able to communicate with the twins again.
She still found it slightly troubling that she herself hadn't been able to spot what was going wrong with their mutual attempts at communication and thus been able to solve the problem on her own, but even the best of people needed help at times. There was no shame in asking for help, or in accepting it when you needed it. That was one of the many lessons her mother had taught her, and that working with the Space Knights had reinforced.
"The albino?" Saber asked, his tone one of mild confusion.
"Yes, that's him," she said; deciding it would be best not to mention what Saber had called him.
It had been disconcerting and sad at the same time, seeing him with that strange, faraway look on his face, reaching up to cup the Commander's cheek as he called for his little brother. He had actually called the Commander his little brother, smiling at him with tears in his eyes. It was a strange thing to have borne witness to; strange, and sad, and private somehow.
She hadn't felt quite right, almost like she was seeing something that she hadn't been meant to, but she also hadn't wanted to leave the twins when they were clearly in such a fragile state.
Come to it, she still didn't; even in spite of all the headaches and worry that the twins had inadvertently caused her and her parents, she still wanted them to be safe. She didn't know if either of them could truly be happy, with so much of their memories missing, but she was going to at least try to make them as comfortable as she could. As comfortable as anyone could be, anyway, when they were missing so much of themselves.
"He seemed like he was worried about us," Slade said, having turned around on his bed so he could face them more squarely as they all spoke. "Were the three of us close, or something?"
"The Commander, his name is Hamilton Jamison by the way," she said, wanting them to know that – even if they didn't end up remembering anything from the times where they had all worked together. "Is the leader of the Space Knights. The three of you weren't exactly what people would call close, but he cared about you just as much as he did any of the other Space Knights. He'd have been just as worried if it had been one of the others that had been injured the way you two had."
It seemed like she was getting through to them, since both twins were looking pretty thoughtful. Maybe they would start remembering things soon, after all. She really hoped so; it would be so good to have them back.
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Now that the Wonder Twins seemed to be getting back to what passed for normal for them, Ringo was relieved. He didn't like it when his friends were worried, especially when it was because one or more of them had been injured or became sick. It was kind of funny, though, the way he was so quick to think of those two boys as his friends. Back when he'd first met them, he hadn't trusted them a bit.
But, with all they had done for the Earth, and all that they had gone through to do it, they had earned that much. More, really; he'd stand behind them or beside them in an instant, and they would always be able to count on his support. He just hoped that they started to remember things soon.
Star might have felt differently, but he didn't particularly like being one of the few people who actually remembered everything that had happened during the Radam's long siege of their planet.
"Why don't we all head down to the living room, and I'll introduce you to my parents?" Star suggested, looking between the twins with a hopeful expression.
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"Those were your parents?" Slade asked, a thoughtful look settling on his face; the flicker of something in his eyes, something like recognition, was gone nearly as fast as it had come, leaving her to wonder if it had ever been there at all.
"Were you going to say something, Slade?" she asked, not knowing whether to be hopeful or not; it seemed like the twins either wanted to remember and couldn't, or they were thinking of something else entirely.
"I think I might have been about to say something, but I can't remember what it was, now," Slade said, sounding only the slightest bit annoyed.
"Oh, well, I'm sure it'll come back to you soon," she said, to cover a sudden flash of worry.
Something like this had happened before; when the twins had needed more power to offset the damage that their then-incomplete transformations had been doing to their central nervous systems, they had undergone a procedure that had been plainly stated to have a fifty-percent chance of killing them. It hadn't, thank God, but instead of burning out their central nervous-systems the way it had been doing in the past, their transformations had started to burn up the twins' memories. There had been a few days when they had plainly refused to answer to the names Saber or Slade, and had insisted that they wanted to be called Cain and Ness Carter.
They were both more open then, more innocent, and she would have been happy for them, except for the fact that they had been forgetting more and more as time went on. She didn't know exactly how bad the memory-loss had gotten by the time their war with the Radam had ended, and she honestly didn't want to know, but here, now, she would help the twins to piece their lives back together. It was the only thing she really could do, now; and she had to admit to some less-than-altruistic motivations for her actions: she wanted her friends back.
She wanted the man that she had started to fall in love with, and the man who would stand beside him unto the end of the world and beyond. These versions of the twins were uncomfortably close to what Slade had been, back when she and Ringo had found him after he had been captured by the Allied Earth Military and put under the former General Gault's "tender mercies". If that man hadn't died in his mad attempt to blow up the Space Ring, Star wasn't sure she could have stopped herself from trying to kill him.
While Saber had just been more determined, clearly running on pure fury and fraternal protectiveness; Slade had been defensive, curling in on himself and trying to shut the world out far enough that it wouldn't be able to hurt him anymore. He had actually admitted to her once, back when they were just starting to admit what they really felt about each other, that Saber was really the stronger of the two of them. And, since the twins were both equals when it came to sheer physical strength, she'd known that he'd meant Saber was more emotionally stable of the pair of them.
She wasn't about to dispute that, since she'd seen Saber bring Slade back from the brink more times than she honestly wanted to admit.
"Hey," Saber said, still looking like he was trying to get used to speaking out loud again. "Are we still going to go down and meet your parents, Star?"
"Sure, Saber," she said, smiling for the both of them. "You and Slade get your slippers on, and I'll take you down to the kitchen, okay? It's almost time for lunch, anyway."
"Is Ringo going to come with us?" Slade asked, not sounding particularly enthusiastic; but not sounding unenthusiastic either. It was like he didn't care, either way.
"Yeah, I think I will," Ringo said, after he'd looked over the twins; the smile on his face looked a bit strained, but then it wasn't every day you ended up having to try to speak with people who by all rights should have remembered you, but didn't.
People you had shared a history with; people you had fought with, bled with, and even walked side-by-side through hell with; and they didn't know you from Adam. She hated seeing them like that, after all that they had been through together. In a strange way, it felt like she and the twins had traded places, both at the beginning of their respective stories.
But where the twins had sought to hide from the pain of their shared past, burying it beneath their fury at the Radam and their desire for revenge, and later their clear determination to protect the Space Knights and the Earth at large, she herself was held back by concern over how the twins might be affected by the revelations that she would have in store. The knowledge of what they had had to do had nearly broken them once before, and she didn't know what would happen if they learned about it again.
Leading the four of them down to the first floor, and then making for the kitchen once they had all made it to the bottom of the stairs, Star turned back to look at the twins. The both of them seemed to be settling in well, and now that they'd been reminded to speak out loud if they wanted to be understood by anyone who wasn't another Teknoman – a group that only included the two of them, now that Darkon and all of his enforcers had been destroyed – she thought they would have a better chance of making a good impression on her parents.
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When Star left to go get her parents, he looked back over at the Wonder Twins. They weren't nearly the same people that he'd known back in the days when they were all fighting the forces of Radam together, and yet they were. It was weird to think about, almost like the kids he had known during the war had actually died out there; not something he liked to think about, but it was the best analogy he could think of given the circumstances.
When Star's parents arrived, and she started introducing the twins to them properly, he just sat back and watched. Their reactions were completely different than the kids he had known back during the war would have been. They might have been willing to let their guard down around people they knew, the ones that they had determined they could trust, but they were notoriously prickly around outsiders and people they'd decided they didn't like.
These two were talking and laughing with Star's parents as if they hadn't a care in the world, and while that was a nice thing to see, it only served to remind him of just how different these kids were from the Slade and Saber that he had known back in the war.
They seemed happy, though, and if he was a bigger person he might have been willing to say that that was enough. He wasn't, though, and he wasn't going to try to pretend to be. He wanted his friends back; the kids who'd been willing to fly straight into the jaws of Armageddon, just to have the chance to turn it back on the ones who'd tried to start it; the kids who'd he'd managed to get to know, in spite of all the obstacles, only some of them self-imposed, that had been in his way back when they'd all met for the first time; the kids who had been fiercely loyal to those they trusted, and just plain fierce in the pursuit of their enemies. He wanted Slade and Saber the Space Knights, the Teknomen; not Slade and Saber the amnesiacs.
After he'd watched about all of the domestic drama he could deal with for one day, he said his goodbyes to Star and the twins, even though they weren't the twins he'd known back during the war, and left the house.
Heading back to his car, he sighed. He might have helped the twins settle into the new lives that Star was helping them to build, but he didn't feel particularly good about it. As stupid as it would have sounded to say it out loud, he felt like if he helped the twins settle into new lives they wouldn't ever be able to go back to their old lives. The old Saber would have probably ribbed him mercilessly for that, but it would have been a welcome change from this new Saber's curious silence.
Once he'd gotten away from the Summers house and the friends who didn't remember him at the moment, Ringo found that he wasn't in any real mood to head home. He didn't know just where it was that he wanted to go, but he knew that it wasn't back to his quarters in the Space Knight Command Center, or back to the other house that his remaining family maintained. He was welcomed back there again, which was a strange thing to think about considering the fact that he had joined the Space Knights in an effort to get away from his overbearing family, but the Space Knights were the heroes of the planet now.
Well, two of the Space Knights in particular were moreso than the others, but all of them had done their parts as the support staff, and now they were all involved in keeping the twins out of the public eye until they were ready to face the world again; if they ever were.
Finding himself in an unfamiliar part of town, something he should have expected once he'd let his conscious attention wander away from the road, Ringo caught sight of a large house, just up ahead. Deciding that that was as good a place to ask for directions as any, he pulled up in front of the house and left his car behind. Striding up to the door, making sure to close the gates behind him, he knocked three times and then stood back to wait. When no one answered, he looked around for another way of getting the attention of the people inside.
Spotting a doorbell, he rang it once, and then settled back down to wait again.
When there was still no answer from the people inside the house, he began to become irate. It was long past noon, and this place was scenic enough that he doubted that anyone living here – with all of the obvious landscaping and gardening that had been done – would want to leave such a comfortable place. It wasn't really good weather for traveling, either, yet another reason to expect whoever owned this house to be in there rather than out somewhere doing something else.
It really was a nice house, he realized, as he stepped back to take in a more complete view of the house and its grounds. The place was more homey than his family's, with a soft, almost rustic feel to it. It looked like a place that had been well-loved by the people in it, and therefore he found it all the more unbelievable that the people living here would have left this beautiful place and all of the happy memories it must have contained behind.
Crouching by the welcome mat, having seen the glitter of something metallic sticking out from under it, Ringo fished out the key that had been hidden there. Lifting the mat, wanting to make sure that these people hadn't left another spare key out – since that was obviously what the glint of metal he'd seen so briefly actually was – he found that there was only the one there. That was good, since he didn't think these people would want one of their spare keys to end up getting lost somewhere, or found by someone else.
Slipping the key into the lock, intending to return it to the owners of the house, he opened the door and stepped inside.
Once he did, though, Ringo was confronted with such a powerful, nigh tangible, feeling of emptiness and disuse that he knew there was no one inside the house before he even said a single word. This place didn't feel old enough to have been abandoned for all that long, though, nor did the neighborhood it was on the edge of look like the kind of place that had been under constant attack by Spider-crabs and hence needed to be evacuated. So, that begged the question of just why a cozy, nice-sized house like this had been abandoned the way it seemed to be.
Looking around at the empty living room, he admired the large, comfy-looking sofa that was placed in the center of the room, and the two recliners on either side of it. It really was a nice setup; he wouldn't have minded staying in this cozy place himself, but there was just something about the issue that didn't make sense. Like, why would this kind of a place have been abandoned, when it was clear that it didn't have to be.
As he moved deeper into the house, seeking at least some kind of an explanation, Ringo turned around to face the door again, and thereby discovered the small, framed photo that rested on a table near the door. There was also a pair of small, decorative bowls on either side of it, but the photo was clearly the centerpiece.
Picking it up to have a closer look, Ringo rocked back on his metaphorical heels at what he saw in the photo.
It was a group-shot, seven people gathered together on the couch he'd just seen, and three of them were incredibly familiar to him: Slade and Saber were sitting together on the far left side of the couch, and Shara was sitting at Slade's feet, next to an albino kid that made him think of a young, almost cherubic version of the Commander; that pint-sized thug almost looked cute when he wasn't trying to kill anyone. Sitting next to the Wonder Twins was a tall, black-haired woman, and on her right was a man that looked kind of like an older version of Slade, just with short hair. It was weird and more than a little unsettling, but that figured to be Spear.
Standing behind the sofa, a look of pride and love clear on his face, was an older man with iron-gray hair and a mustache of the same color. He was clearly the father of all these kids, with the possible exception of the woman.
At least he knew where he was, now; with all of the things he knew about the Wonder Twins, he couldn't help but recognize their family when he saw it.
So, this is where those two crazy kids grew up, he mused, looking around at the living room with a new eye for detail. It was a nice house, with warm, almost pastel colors, and the furniture seemed tailor-made for relaxing all your troubles away. As he moved deeper into the house, feeling the echoing emptiness all the more acutely now that he knew why this house had been left standing empty the way it had, Ringo found himself in the dining room.
Large windows on the far wall let a great deal of light spill inside, bathing the room itself in sunlight. It was a nice effect, and it would have been all the more appealing if not for the complete emptiness of the place. Given what had happened to nearly all of the people who'd once lived there, Ringo supposed that he couldn't really expect anything else.
Still, it was sad to think about: this big, empty house, full of happy memories and treasured mementos for the Carter family, and they would never use it again.
Heck, even the Wonder Twins themselves might find it a bit too difficult to live here, surrounded as they were by reminders of the people who'd been turned against them by the Radam and who they'd ultimately ended up having to kill to ensure the continued safety of the Earth and all her people. Heck, if he'd been the one to end up in that kind of a situation, and he thanked his lucky stars every day that he hadn't, he wouldn't have wanted to be constantly surrounded by reminders of what he'd lost, either.
Still, there was a chance that all of this would serve to remind the Wonder Twins of who they really were. Of course, it would probably also serve to remind them of all that they had lost to the Radam during their long, two-man war with the aliens that had ripped their lives away, but you couldn't really have the good memories without the bad ones in a situation like this. Therefore, if there was a chance of getting the Wonder Twins back to the way they had been, then he was going to take it.
It was what they would do for him in the same situation, and then they could all be one big, weird, happy, slightly crazy family again; the Space Knights reunited.
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Watching the twins as they settled back into their beds for the night, Star smiled. They may not have been the men that she had once known, but from what she had seen so far, they were clearly the same kind, caring, helpful people that they had always been. She was glad for that, but then she supposed that she shouldn't really have been surprised by it, either. Loss of memories didn't mean that the person lost the essence of who they were, it just meant that they didn't know everything that had happened to them.
Slade and his brother were two of the best men that it had ever been her privilege to know; and if this meant that she had to get to know them all over again, to help them form new memories of Earth, and the people that they had worked with during the invasion, then that was what she was going to do.
Settling herself down in her own room, Star changed into her nightgown and climbed into bed. Even in spite of the fact that she could actually speak to the twins now, today had been tiring. Her parents had been curious about them, as anyone would be when they were presented with two of the foremost and most powerful saviors of humanity. But, since neither of the twins remembered any of what they had been through during the Radam War, she had been the one to tell them about everything that had gone on.
Up to and including the role that the Carter family had played.
They had been sympathetic, as any decent people would have been, and she had asked that they not talk about what she had told them in any place where the twins were likely to overhear. Of course, that had necessitated that she explain the enhanced senses that the twins had now. That had ended up leading to her reminiscing about just how she had helped them to discover the range of those enhanced senses of theirs.
It had been good to remember, good to remind herself of who the twins had once been; even if they wouldn't ever remember it themselves, at least she would know. She and the other Space Knights would keep the memory of Slade and Saber the Teknomen, the brave defenders of Earth and everyone living there, alive. The twins themselves might even get to have the normal lives that had been consistently denied to them while they had been in the thick of their fight against the Radam Empire.
Finally settling down to the point where she felt capable of sleep, Star wondered for a few moments just what tomorrow and all of the other days following it would bring.
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When he woke up, staring at a ceiling that he wasn't sure if he had seen before or not, Slade blinked as he remembered just where he'd been staying. That wasn't really what he was so interesting to him now, though; what he wanted to know was just who those shadowy people he'd been dreaming about were. He thought they might have been calling him younger brother, though sometimes they had actually been calling him older brother, but all of them had been asking him the same question.
The same question that he hadn't been able to answer for the entire night; the same question that had driven him from an already-troubled sleep to stare at the ceiling of his and Saber's room in the house that Star and her parents had let them stay in. The question itself seemed innocuous enough: why did you do it, younger/older brother; but Slade couldn't for the life of him remember just what it was that he was supposed to have done.
It also didn't make sense that all of those voices kept calling him their brother, since Saber was the only brother he'd ever had, and none of these people – if they even were people in the first place and not some strange figments of his imagination – sounded very much like him at all. It was strange, though; while he was dreaming, Slade almost felt like he should have known who the people in his dreams were.
(Saber?)
(What is it, big brother?)
He smiled slightly; even in spite of the fact that Star had said that he and Saber had both communicated verbally for most of their lives, he didn't particularly believe it. There was something so much more inherently familiar, and thus inherently comforting, about the telepathic link that he and Saber shared. Speech didn't carry nearly the same inflections, or the same intimacy.
(Have you been having weird dreams, lately? The kind where people keep asking you why you did something, only you can't remember what it was? And; and somehow you feel like you should know the people who keep trying to ask you about why you did what you're supposed to have done, only you don't and you don't even remember what it was that you were supposed to have done?)
(No,) Saber said, sounding confused by the idea; he couldn't really blame him, though. If Saber had been the one asking him this kind of question, Slade got the feeling that he would have been as confused as his brother was feeling right now. (Do you have any idea why you might be dreaming about… whoever these people you're dreaming about are, big brother?)
(No, not really,) he said, rolling over in bed so that he could look at Saber while they talked. Sure, telepathy was a lot more intimate than any other form of communication that he had encountered before in his life, but it was always nice to face someone when you were talking to them. (I mean, sometimes I think I should, but I never quite manage to figure it out. None of the people in my dreams have faces,) he paused for a moment, sighing. (In fact, none of them seem to be anything more than shadows when I dream about them. They always seem to be asking me the same question, though. I just wish I knew what it meant.)
(Yeah,) Saber said, sounding thoughtful as he tucked his left knee under his chin. (You really don't want people asking you cryptic questions you can't even answer in your sleep. You don't really get a good night's sleep that way.)
(Yeah, I know,) he said, yawning as he felt the after-effects of his lack of the full night's sleep that Saber was clearly still getting. (I'd at least like to get to sleep for some of the night,) he said, with another, longer-lasting yawn. This one even got Saber yawning with him, too, which was kind of funny.
(Warm milk,) Saber said, not quite sounding like he'd intended to project that thought, but it was interesting enough that Slade decided to answer him anyway.
(What are you talking about, Saber? What does warm milk have to do with anything?)
(I- I don't really know,) Saber said, sounding confused, but also like there was something on his mind. (I just had this picture of one of us, I think it was me, and this woman taking me down to this room; I think it was a kitchen, and giving me a mug of warm milk when I couldn't get to sleep.)
(That sounds interesting,) he said, sitting up in bed as he considered the idea. (You think it could work now?) he asked, willing to try but not quite wanting to get out of bed if he didn't have to.
(I think so. I mean, I remember it working for me, so I think it'll work for you, too,) Saber said, levering himself up and out of bed and toeing on the slippers that Star had given him to wear around the house.
Slade, flipping the covers back and climbing up and out of his own bed, toed on his slippers and followed his younger brother out of the room. Heading down the stairs to the first floor, he let Saber go in first and watched as his brother bustled around the kitchen getting ready. He opened the refrigerator and got out the big jug of milk, first, and then started looking in the various cupboards for a pan to heat it up in.
All of this seemed vaguely familiar to Slade, so he closed his eyes and tried to prod at the memory that might have been trying to make itself known to him. It had been such a long time since he had actually, honestly remembered anything, and it was starting to wear on him. He wanted to have something back, something that he could honestly say was his, and maybe even something he could share with Saber, too.
Heading over to the table, having decided that he wasn't going to stand up while he was trying to prod his recalcitrant memories into some sort of order, he pulled out a chair and settled down into it. Resting his elbows on the table, he put his chin on his folded hands and closed his eyes again. Trying to remember just what it was that had seemed so familiar to him about what Saber had been doing, Slade just managed to recall an image of someone doing just that kind of thing.
It seemed to be a man, though, not a woman the way Saber had seemed to recall. He wondered about that for a moment, but then he decided that that wasn't really important. He had remembered something, even if it wasn't quite what he had been expecting when he'd started out. He wondered who the man was that he couldn't quite see, since something about the person-shaped blot of darkness he'd not-quite-seen in his mind seemed kind of familiar to him.
Then he realized that one of the shadow-people in his dreams had had those exact same dimensions, and he became all the more interested in how he might find out who that person was. And who they were to him, since he was pretty sure he wouldn't have been dreaming about someone who didn't mean anything to him. Maybe those people who kept calling him their older or younger brother had actually existed.
But then, that left him with the question of just what it was that he was supposed to have done to them completely unanswered.
Saber set down a mug of warm milk in front of him before he could start thinking too deeply, and Slade was grateful for that. He was still tired, and he still wanted to get at least some sleep before the sun rose, and if this was the best way to do it than this was what he was going to do. Saber had a mug, too, and as Slade raised his own mug to take a sip, he smiled.
The warmth of the milk spread throughout his body as he drank, and Slade found that it did let him relax a bit. Drinking slowly, letting the warmth settle into his body, he finished his milk and set the mug down. Saber finished just a few seconds after he did, and as a gesture of gratitude Slade washed the mugs and the pan that his brother had been using and put them in the draining board to dry, just the way he'd seen Star and her family do every time they cleaned one of the dishes.
(Do you feel better now, big brother?)
He smiled. (Yeah, I do. Thanks, Saber.)
(Well then,) Saber began, then yawned, which made Slade smile softly since it was kind of cute. (Let's get back to bed, big brother. I don't know about you, but I could definitely use some more sleep.)
(Yeah,) he yawned, feeling infinitely more relaxed than he had been when he'd been trying to get to sleep earlier. (So could I.)
Linking arms with Saber as the both of them left the kitchen, he leaned against his brother's side as the two of them made their way up the stairs. He'd talk to Saber about what he'd remembered tomorrow, since he really did want to get some more sleep; just like his brother, really. When the two of them made it back to the room that Star had given them, Slade was more than happy to gently kick off his slippers and climb back under the warm covers that he had been given by Star.
Well, really by her parents, but Star had been the one to suggest it in the first place, and that was probably why he had gotten it in the first place. So Star was always the first one he thought of when he curled up in this bed. He kind of wondered, sometimes, if he and Saber had had their own bed, back where they had come from; wherever that was.
As he settled himself down to sleep, closing his eyes and listening to the soft sounds of his brother's breathing, Slade's last coherent memory wasn't anything that had been said to him during the course of the day, but of what the shadows in his dreams kept trying to ask him: Why did you do it, younger brother? Why did you kill us?
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When he woke up the next morning, after having fallen asleep considering if he should really do what he had tentatively planned to do later on, Ringo stared at the far wall of his room for a great deal longer than he usually did. On the one hand, he wanted the twins back; the twins he'd known back during the War, the kids he knew he could count on in any situation, the boys who had become like the brothers that he'd never had by the end of things. On the other hand, he didn't know quite what kind of effect it would have on their minds if they were suddenly to remember everything they'd been forced to give up, everyone they'd been forced to kill, during the War.
He didn't want them to suffer any more than they already had, but he did want them to remember who they were; kind of a contradiction, he knew, but that didn't make him want it any less.
Finally deciding that he would make up his mind properly after breakfast, Ringo levered himself up and out of bed and made for his small kitchen. He'd already made plans with Star to visit the twins again today, so he'd at least have a valid pretext for heading out that way; it was just the specifics that he needed to work out with himself. Once he'd reached the kitchen, Ringo fixed himself some bacon and eggs.
It was a pretty simple breakfast, and small enough that he knew he'd be at least decently hungry when he reached the Summers' house, and he finished it quickly even without rushing. Washing the dishes so they wouldn't pile up and feel like they were trying to take over his whole kitchen, Ringo dried them and put them up. It was one of the slight downsides to living alone the way he had chosen to: you had to do all the in-home chores yourself.
Sure, being one of the world-famous Space Knights meant that he could have hired a housekeeper for a lot less than what it would have probably cost anyone else, but the idea of having someone else in his house while he wasn't there didn't really appeal to him, even if they were just there to do the chores that he wasn't particularly fond of.
Leaving his kitchen in favor of the living room, on his way to the front door, he paused in mild surprise as he heard the buzzer go off. Since he was already heading that way, and figuring that he could afford the few moments it would likely take to get this new person, probably the mailman or one of his adoring fans, to tell him what they wanted and then to send them on their way, Ringo opened the door with a polite but distant greeting on the tip of his tongue. That greeting died on his lips once he actually saw who was waiting out there for him.
"Balzac?"
"Hey," the former spy, former Tekno-suit pilot, and former adversary of the Space Knights, said, with a wistful sort of smile on his face. "Were you heading out somewhere? I can come back later."
"It's all right," he said, leaning against the threshold of the door; he hadn't arranged for any concrete time to meet up, and he was getting out a bit early, so he could in fact spare the time to speak with someone who'd actually become a friend. As strange as that was to think about sometimes. Especially when he remembered what Balzac's original intentions toward the Space Knights in general and the twins in particular had been when they all met up for the first time. "I've got some time before Star and I are due to have breakfast together."
"The two of you have a breakfast date?" Balzac asked, his eyes a bit wide. "I thought she was waiting for Slade to get better, so she could pick up their relationship from where they left off, before," he looked away, lost in the same, dark memories that Ringo himself had been dealing with, on and off, ever since the end of the invasion when Slade and Saber had been brought back to Earth as actual amnesiacs; rather than just a couple of kids who'd been asked to do the impossible, and had been handling it in the only way they really could. "Everything happened."
"She still is," he said, tucking his hands into his pockets as he stood up straight again. "It's her family's house the twins are staying at, in fact. We even got them talking again." And, even with all the grimness and the doom and gloom of the whole War and the aftermath of all their restoration efforts, the fact that the Wonder Twins had actually forgotten that they were the only ones left in the world who had that "selective telepathy" of theirs was pretty much guaranteed to make him laugh at least a little. "Well, I did. Star didn't really know what was going on, not at first, but at least we got those kids of ours back."
"I guess that's what really matters, in the end," Balzac said, his tone almost as wistful as the look in his bluish-green eyes.
What Ringo said next came more out of the blue than anything, but the expression on Balzac's face made it pretty difficult to take back: "Why don't you come with me? I'm sure Star won't mind, and I think the twins might be interested in meeting someone new, now that they remember they need to actually talk if they want us to hear them."
"You sure?" Balzac asked, looking hopeful but still a bit dubious about the whole thing. "I mean, the three of us didn't exactly meet under the best of circumstances."
"You didn't exactly meet up with us under the best of circumstances, either," he pointed out, smiling slightly. "Believe me, if Star and I didn't forgive you for all the stupid stunts you pulled back in the day, you would have known. Not only would I probably have shot you, but Star would have beaten the living hell out of you."
"Thanks for the advanced warning," Balzac said, and Ringo grinned at the disgruntled expression on his face.
"Well, you were the one who was getting all panicky," Ringo reminded him, smiling slightly. "So, are you going to come, or not?"
"I think I will," Balzac said, that old, wistful smile back on his face.
"All right," he said, nodding. "Did you drive here, or do you want me to give you a ride?"
"Well, I drove, but I don't know the way to Star's house," Balzac shrugged, looking sheepish for a moment before seeming to gather himself again.
"No problem," he said, closing and locking up his door as he strode past the other man on the way to his garage. The garage door was already starting to open, since he had flashed the remote at the sensor just as he had finished locking up his front door, and Ringo smiled back over his shoulder at Balzac. "You want to ride in my car, or do you just want me to lead you to her family's house?"
"I think I'd prefer taking my car," Balzac said, and he could see a wry sort of smile on the man's face. "Nothing against yours, of course, but I just don't want to be pulled over by any and all cops on the road for riding around in a flaming, cherry-red Mustang."
"First of all, it's a Jaguar," he said, grinning back over at Balzac. "And second, the only cops who've tried to make me think they're pulling me over for a ticket always end up wanting either a photo op or an autograph. It was kind of funny at first, but I've pretty much gotten used to it now."
"Lucky cuss," he heard Balzac mutter, as he reached the door of his red Jaguar and let himself in; Ringo chuckled. He supposed he was at that.
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As he climbed into his own car, a perfectly respectable olive-green Jeep, thank you very much, Balzac laughed; leave it to Ringo to take shameless advantage of the hero-worship that most of them, or actually pretty much all of them, were the targets of right now. It definitely fit with the man's personality, and Balzac found that he couldn't really blame the other man for being so eager to accept the adulation of the people that he had worked so hard to save. After all, the ones that everyone really wanted to see were the twins, but those Space Knight boys weren't in the best shape to deal with the media or the public in general right now.
He sometimes wondered if they ever would be again.
Shoving those depressing thoughts aside, Balzac started his Jeep and started off after Ringo. He didn't know quite where they were all going to end up when they finally stopped, not having paid any visits to Star's parents' house, but from the way Ringo had looked when he'd talked about the place, Balzac suspected that it would be a nice one. Following behind Ringo as they both made their way down the road to Star's parents' house, Balzac couldn't quite keep himself from wondering just what kind of a state the twins were in.
He'd tried to get to know them, back when they had all been staying together at the Space Knight Command Center, but back then it had just been a cover for his efforts to find out how the powers that the twins had been granted, or cursed with, by the Radam worked. And how they might have been duplicated. And sure, the Tekno-suits had proven to be good for dealing with the near-endless hoards of Spider-crabs that the Radam had seemed intent on burying them with back during the thick of the invasion, but they'd been almost entirely helpless against any of those Teknomen.
To this day, even he wasn't quite sure how he'd managed to beat that dragon-lady Sword without having to self-destruct his Tekno-suit or something; the old scars in his right arm and leg gave a twinge, as if to remind him that he hadn't quite escaped that battle entirely unscathed.
Still, the fact that he'd pretty much shattered every bone in his right leg, not to mention the damage that he'd done to his arm on that side in the landing, was a comparatively small price to pay for getting rid of one of Darkon's Teknomen. Especially when you considered just what their boys had gone through. And all that they had lost taking on Darkon himself.
It wasn't really a fair comparison, his losses to either of theirs, so Balzac tried not to think about them so much.
They soon arrived at what seemed to be their destination, at least judging by the fact that Ringo had stopped his car in the driveway and was getting out. Parking his own car a comfortable distance from Ringo's, since while the driveway wasn't quite wide enough for two cars to sit side-by-side, it was definitely long enough for him to park behind Ringo, Balzac climbed out of his Jeep and followed Ringo up to the house. The place was definitely cozy, what with the soft, gentle colors of the house itself, and the elegant landscaping; he couldn't really think of a much better place for those boys to spend their time while they were working on their respective recoveries.
Ringo knocked on the door, and Balzac quickly joined him on the front porch; he didn't know just what he was going to see when he finally met up with the twins again, but he hoped that they were all right.
"Good morning, Mrs. Summers," Ringo greeted the slightly plump, kindly-looking woman who met them at the door. "Is Star still here?"
"She is," the woman said, with a smile that seemed to indicate that she knew what Ringo wasn't talking about; which, given the fact that she and hers were taking care of the twins, pretty much fit. "Why don't you boys come in; we've been waiting for you."
As he followed Ringo and Mrs. Summers into the house, taking a few moments to study the place where the two former Space Knights were resting. It was as nice inside as it had looked outside, and he smiled; there really wasn't a much better place for those boys to recover from all that they had gone through during the War than right here. And there wasn't many people that he would trust more with the recovery of their boys than Star Summers.
The three of them came into the kitchen just as some other people, some very familiar people, were settling themselves down at the big table to eat the large amount of food that had been set out for them.
"Hey," he called softly, drawing their attention.
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Balzac looked like he wasn't quite sure if he should sit down at the table or not, and he even seemed surprised that he'd said anything at all. Smiling up at him, even as the twins asked her who he was, Star waved him over to the table.
"Slade, Saber, this is Balzac," she said, pointing him out as he sat down; Balzac waved briefly. "He was a friend of ours, during the latter half of the War."
It was a half-truth, she knew, and judging from the quickly hidden wince on Balzac's face, he wasn't entirely happy with the near-deception. It couldn't be helped for the moment, though; neither of the twins was at their best mentally right now, and she'd had more than enough bad experiences with them when they were out-of-sorts to want to deliberately bring that kind of thing on. There would come a time when the twins were well enough to be told exactly what had gone on between them and Balzac, and what their relationship with Ringo had been like at first, but that time hadn't come yet.
When all of them had settled back down at the table, the twins already having lost interest in the new person sitting with them in favor of the food that had been set out for them, Star took the opportunity to study Balzac. He certainly looked better than he had the last time she'd seen him, but that was true for almost all of the people that had participated in the last few battles of the war against the Radam. Really, the only people who didn't seem to be doing as well as they could be were Slade and Saber themselves.
Her boys had forgotten all of the bad things that had happened to them over the course of the War, yes, but they had also lost all of the friends that they had made and all of the good they had done for the Earth and everyone who lived on it.
The meal went on with a bit more conversation than she had come to expect, but that was only natural considering the fact that there was another person for the twins to speak to, even though Balzac didn't seem entirely inclined to speak to either of them at length. She couldn't really blame him, though; he and the twins hadn't really started out on the best of terms, and though neither of them remembered it right now, Balzac did still feel guilty about his part in getting them captured by the Military.
He'd talked to her about it more than a few times, and while she had initially been unwilling to forgive him for all that had happened to her boys, the genuine remorse that he had so obviously felt about the things that had been done to the twins had eventually persuaded her to give him a second chance. And, so far his actions toward both the Space Knights in general and her boys in particular had proven that he'd been sincere in his desire to reconcile with them. So she'd eventually forgiven him; she wouldn't forget, of course, and neither would Ringo, but most people deserved a second chance.
Soon enough, though, breakfast was finished. Balzac, who had declined her parents' invitation to stay with a guilty look in the direction of the twins, made a hasty retreat before either of them could ask him anything else. Star didn't know quite how she felt about that; on the one hand, she had forgiven him for his part in what her boys had suffered during the time they had been under the AEM's control, but it was obvious that Balzac hadn't forgiven himself yet. That was kind of sad; Star decided that she would make time to speak with him about it.
She didn't like the thought that anyone would suffer for the actions that they had taken in the past, at least not when they had honestly come to regret those previous actions.
While Slade and Saber went to lay down – the doctors that had examined the twins had said that they might need more sleep than what would be considered normal for them in order to recover fully from the events at the end of the War – Star busied herself with cleaning up the dishes and clearing the table after the meal. Her parents had offered to do that for her, but since she and her boys were guests in this house, even if her mother and father had been the ones to make the offer of shelter in the first place, she was at least going to contribute something to the maintenance of the house while she was there.
Once she had finished clearing the table and loading the dishes into the dishwasher, Star turned the machine on and left the room to check on her boys. Making her way up to the room where they were both staying, Star tried not to think about the unfairness of life in general or fate in particular. Neither Slade nor Saber would have ever chosen the life that they had ended up leading: that of the two greatest heroes of Earth; especially since it had ended up costing them every living member of their family and every one of their close friends.
When she made it up to their room, she peered inside to see how they were doing; even though they'd shown no signs that they were suffering from the nightmares that they had been plagued by while the War was still going on, she wasn't going to leave things like that to chance. Looking over them as they slept, Star sighed softly, relieved to note that neither of them seemed to be showing the effects of the nightmares that they had told her about. When Slade shifted in his sleep, rolling over to face her where he'd previously had her at his back, she saw that he hadn't been doing quite as well as she'd thought where his nightmares were concerned.
Slade's eyes were darting around under the lids, his face scrunched up into an expression of what could either have been concentration or pain, and there was sweat standing out on his forehead and temples. Worried, Star came up and put her hand on his left shoulder.
"Slade? Slade, wake up; it's just a nightmare, it can't really hurt you."
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They were all around him now, their voices echoing from the shadows as they demanded to know why he had killed them. He didn't even know them! And yet, sometimes he was almost convinced that he should; he didn't know what to think, and he often wished that there was someone to tell him what these strange images he kept seeing meant. When one of the shadows, the largest and the one that had always seemed the most dangerous to him, even though it always spoke the softest, stood over him and reached out with those sharp, talon-looking hands that all of them seemed to have, Slade panicked and started thrashing.
He didn't know just what one of those things would do if it ever managed to get its hands on him, but he really wasn't in any hurry to find out; in fact, as far as Slade was concerned, it would be perfectly fine with him if he never found out what it was that these weird, terrifying shadow-people wanted from him. As he felt the taloned hands of the largest of them digging into his arms, trying to pull him forward into god-knew-what, Slade reached instinctively for the comforting presence of his brother.
Saber had always been there for him, closer than any of the new people that had seemed to expect him to know them for some reason, and his brother was still connected; Slade could sense him even when they were both still asleep. Calling out to his brother, Slade projected an image of the shadow-man – at least, the presence that had always given him a distinctly male impression whenever he saw it – that was trying to attack him. Just like always, Saber was at his side in the time between one heartbeat and the next.
Together, the two of them were able to wrestle the shadow-man to the ground and pin him there.
It was kind of strange, though; every time he had seen the largest of the shadow-men, he had always seemed to be a huge, implacable figure of terror, but now something was different. As he wrapped his hands around the shadow-man's neck, determined to stop whatever it was that these creatures were trying to do not only to him but likely enough to Saber as well, Slade felt the shadow-man begin to shift and struggle against them. He wasn't going to let up, of course; these shadow-people had been tormenting him for as long as he could remember, and now that he had one of them at his mercy, he wasn't going to show it any more than it had always shown him.
The shadow-man was struggling, calling out something that Slade was trying not to listen to, but something about what it was saying almost seemed familiar to him. Like he should know what the shadow-man was talking about. It almost seemed like the shadow-man was calling his name,too; but that was stupid.
None of the shadow-people had ever called him anything but brother; sure, some of them would call him older- or younger-brother, depending on how big they were, but none of them would ever call him by name. He'd never known if they hadn't known his name, or if they just liked confusing him by calling on familial connections that Slade was certain that he didn't even have with them; the only family he could ever remember having was Saber, and he already knew where Saber was.
But the shadow-man was calling his name, and, even stranger than that, it almost seemed to sound like another person, now that he had actually stopped to listen to it. Slade paused for a moment; the voice had actually sounded familiar, now that he was actually getting a moment to think about things rather than just reacting to what had seemed like an obvious threat. He sat back on his knees, taking stock of this new situation that he'd found himself in now even as he loosened his grip on the shadowed figure's neck.
Slade only hoped that neither he nor Saber would come to regret it.
As the figure reached up, Slade tensed, but it only put a hand on Slade's head and began to gently stroke his hair. Relaxing under the touch of that familiar-feeling stranger, Slade began to wonder just who it was. It couldn't have been any of the shadow-people, since he could always sense danger from them, even if he didn't know just what kind of danger he was sensing.
This was almost like something that woman would have done; the one who had called herself Star, and kept saying that she had known him and Saber back when they were working with some group who called themselves the Space Knights. Smiling softly as the familiar-stranger continued to stroke his hair, he leaned against the warm body in front of him. He still didn't know just who this familiar-stranger was, but he was sure now that they weren't one of his enemies; no enemy would have ever been so kind.
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When Slade had gone for her throat, Star had felt for a moment the same, sudden fear that Saber had once admitted to feeling when his brother had done likewise so very long ago. However, like Saber had known then, she knew now that Slade wasn't a murderer. The grip Slade had had on her throat had been more like a restraining-hold than anything; she hadn't even had to struggle to breathe, and she suspected that she wouldn't even have the bruises that Saber had been sporting around his own neck after his confrontation with Slade so long ago.
Stroking both of the twins' heads as the three of them knelt together in the room that her parents had given them to use, Star smiled softly as both of her boys leaned their heads against her shoulders. Wrapping her arms around both of their necks, Star pulled them closer to her as both Slade and Saber relaxed under her ministrations. When the twins seemed to want to sit back up, pulling back from her a bit, Star loosened her grip on their necks and rested her hands on their shoulders. Her boys seemed to be fully awake now, and Star smiled at them as their jewel-colored eyes came to rest on her.
"Did you sleep well, boys?" she asked, already suspecting the answer but wanting to hear it from the two of them rather than making assumptions.
"I think I might have been having a nightmare," Slade said, reaching up to rub at the scars over his left eye. "I saw these weird shadows, and one of them started attacking me. I mean, I've been seeing them every night, and they keep trying to ask me things, but this is the first time I've ever had one of them attack me."
"What do you mean? What shadows, Slade?" she asked.
This was news to her, since neither he nor Saber had ever mentioned anything about these shadows that Slade had been seeing in his dreams.
"Well, I keep seeing them, every time I fall asleep," Slade said, sitting back on his knees as he leaned against Saber. "They keep asking me why I killed them; I don't think I ever killed anyone, though," as she saw the confused expression on Slade's face, Star found that she had to fight down a wince; knowing what she did about Slade and Saber's family, she knew that that wasn't true. "So I don't really know what they're talking about."
"Yeah; I've seen those shadowy things that Slade's talking about," Saber said, scratching his right temple. "I don't really know what they are, either, but it seems like they're all really curious about my brother. It's weird that they keep asking him why he killed them, since I haven't seen him kill anyone, and I definitely know Slade better than any of those shadow-things."
Saber sounded so calm, so confidant, that for a moment Star wanted more than anything to believe what he said about his brother. But she knew better; she knew what her boys had gone through during the course of the War, she knew what Darkon and the Radam had done, and more than that she knew what her boys had been forced to do. Both to protect the Earth and everyone who lived on it, and to protect themselves from the very people who had once meant so much to them.
There really hadn't been a chance to turn them back to Earth's side, much as Star had often wished that there had been; both for the sake of the people themselves as well as that of her boys. It was a sad thing to think about: the fact that her boys had been forced to give up so much of what had made them human, even up to the memories that they had clearly cherished so much. Every one of their family members and close friends were dead, and the ones who hadn't died during the process of becoming Teknomen had been killed by one of the twins themselves.
Star even knew all of their names; first the ones they had been given by Darkon when they had re-awakened as Teknomen, and then the ones that they had lived with as humans. She thought that that was a bit sad, the fact that no one but the twins had known those people as they were. And, what made things even sadder was the fact that neither of them remembered those people at all.
It was like they had just vanished, vanished like so many of the people who had been killed during the War. Anyone else would have probably thought that it was some kind of poetic justice, that the people corrupted and enslaved by the Radam to fuel their war machine would never be remembered at all. She just considered it sad, the fact that, whoever those people had been during the course of their lives, they would never be remembered as anything more than the Radam's most powerful enforcers.
That is, if anyone even cared enough to remember them at all.
"What's wrong, Star? You looked so sad."
Looking back up into Saber's guileless, sky-blue eyes as Slade's younger twin rubbed her right hand gently, Star smiled.
"I'm all right, Saber," she said, smiling for both of her boys. "I just got a little lost in thought, that was all."
Leaning forward to plant a gentle kiss on the foreheads of both twins, before Saber could think of anything else to ask or to say, Star smiled; anything Saber said was almost certain to remind her of the times that they had spent together during the War. She wasn't quite up to dealing with those kinds of reminders, not when she didn't know when or even if either of the twins would ever remember anything about those times.
Star didn't like seeing the helpless confusion on the faces of her boys when she talked about the things that the Space Knights had done and been through during the War, it made her feel helpless. It made her wonder if there was actually a chance that her boys would remember who they were, who they had been, or if she was going to have to get to know the twins as entirely new people.
She still loved Slade, but she didn't know if this new Slade would love her; she didn't really know what to think.
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He'd checked in with Star a couple days ago; it seemed that neither Slade nor Saber were any closer than they had been to regaining any of their memories. Sometimes he thought, as he had said to the gathered Space Knights all those months ago, that this had been nature's way of being kind. After all, no humane person would ever wish to remember the fact that they had been forced to kill every still-living member of their family; especially when they had wanted more than anything else, as Slade and Saber had, to save the very people that had been made into their enemies by the Radam.
With that knowledge in mind, Hamilton found that he couldn't begrudge those brave young men the reprieve that they had been granted. He didn't know if they would ever remember just what it was that the people of Earth were so very grateful to them for, but he also didn't think that it would have mattered to them in any case. They hadn't fought for accolades, nor for the recognition that such actions had brought them in the end, but solely to protect the people of Earth from the fate that had befallen them, their loved ones, and the entire crew of the Argos.
Now, however, without the ever-present threat of the Radam, their Teknomen, and the near-endless hordes of Spider-crabs that the enemy constantly employed to destroy any and all resistance on the planet, Hamilton found that he and the remaining Space Knights were free to concentrate on researching what the Radam had left behind. As Slade had once said, it was Earth's first verifiable contact with alien lifeforms, even though these particular lifeforms had proven to be implacably hostile in the end. In fact, the very nature of the Radam made it all the more critical that they continue to study the artifacts that they had left behind.
Given what the twins had said about the nature of the Radam in the past, that probe ship that had been dispatched to this region of space was unlikely to be the last of its kind. Also, considering the fact that the Earth had been seeded with masses of Radam teknoplants, teknoplants that were proving to be astonishingly resistant to most methods of eradicating flora that had originated on Earth, studying their nature was even more urgent. There had been talk of sealing off the most densely forested areas and firebombing them from the air; however, all of that depended on having the fuel and the aircraft necessary for that kind of an operation to be carried out.
Given the losses that the Earth and her people had suffered during the war, not only of personnel but of materials and the infrastructure to provide them, any of their plans for dealing with the forests that the Radam had seeded on Earth would have to be shelved for the moment. They were also going to have to find more efficient, less costly and/or damaging ways of dealing with the teknoplants than to burn down the forests of them, or to try to drown the afflicted areas in herbicides. Especially considering the fact that no one had any real way of knowing just what kind of chemical formula would be needed to destroy the teknoplants, or just what kind of effects it would have on the surrounding area.
It would do them no good to destroy the forests of teknoplants that the Radam had seeded on the Earth if they did irreparable damage to the biosphere in the process.
So, they continued to study the plants, trying to work out a way to kill them without doing unintended damage to the people who lived around the areas that had been colonized by the Radam's teknoplants. They were also doing their best to avoid allowing any other people to be captured and transformed by the plants than the fairly small number that had inadvertently found themselves in that very situation when the teknoplants had bloomed near the end of the War. Those people had been granted a rudimentary form of Slade and Saber's own abilities.
The physical enhancements; the greater speed, strength, and durability that those who had been transformed by this variant of the Radam's Teknoprocess, were not nearly as great as those that the twins had been granted. It was an odd thing to consider, but these newly-transformed also seemed to be incomplete in other ways; their armor was almost rudimentary when compared to that worn by either of the twins, they possessed no form of weaponry aside from that which they could appropriate for themselves through mundane means, and it was obvious that none of them were capable of utilizing the energy attacks that Teknomen were known for.
Some of the Space Knights' own personnel had been transformed in such a way, and some others who had been transformed had joined up with them later, so Hamilton was not overly concerned about the need to convince civilians to aid the Space Knights in their efforts at studying the effects of this particular variation of the Radam's Teknoprocess; those who had been transformed in such a way were often the most curious about what had been done to them. They were also, for the most part, interested in meeting the twins, as well; however, given the fact that neither Slade nor Saber remembered any of what had occurred during the Radam War, that was unlikely to happen anytime soon.
That was yet another reason that he stayed in contact with Star, asking her for updates on the condition of the two young men that had once worked so closely with the main corps of his Space Knights. Not only because he cared for his people, and made all reasonable attempts to stay in contact with those of them who had chosen to retire, but because those people who had been transformed into these new, rudimentary Teknomen all seemed to be more concerned with meeting Slade and Saber than even the most celebrity-obsessed of the Earth's postwar population.
It seemed that they needed, rather than simply wanted, to meet the twins; it was an odd thing to think about, especially since they had all been examined for signs of Radam mind-parasites and had been pronounced free from any such influences. Still, it was possible that the mental influence of the Radam was not strictly limited to the mind-parasites that they implanted in their completed Teknomen to ensure their loyalty. He couldn't say for certain, never having met Ness and Cain Carter personally, but the possibility remained.
Settling back down at his desk in the semi-new Nevada Command Center, Hamilton Jamison, official commanding officer of the Space Knights, wondered just what this newest day would bring in terms of research into the artifacts that the Radam had left behind.
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On the moon, draped in the deep shadows of the satellite's far side, a small biological construct – about the size of a soccer ball – twitched and began to pulse softly. It had been kept dormant by sporadic signals from the Deep Scout that it had detached from, but now, in the absence of such, it was beginning to revive. The pulses it gave off were weak, for the moment, but with the continuing absence of a counter-signal, the pulses would grow steadily stronger…
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When he'd returned to the old, abandoned Carter place, Ringo hadn't bothered with the doorbell. He was already perfectly aware that he wasn't going to get any kind of answers from the people who no longer lived here. Instead, he unlocked the doors with the spare key that he'd kept from his last trip there. Making his way into the empty house, still a bit unnerved by the silence and near-palpable loneliness radiating from the building, Ringo passed the table with the family photo on it, glancing down briefly at the smiling faces of all the Carters.
Maybe seeing that picture would jar some memories loose in the Wonder Twins' scrambled brains, so Ringo decided that he would take the photo with him when he left. For the moment, however, he wanted to get a closer look at the house where the Carters had all lived out their interrupted lives. Seeing what they had all left behind would help him figure out what kind of people they had been, which, considering the fact that neither of the Wonder Twins had ever been big on talking about their past, was something that Ringo had found himself particularly interested in.
He could understand their reluctance, now that he knew the whole story of what had happened to the Argos and all of her crew, but it was still something that interested him. He'd been wanting to come back to this place ever since he'd stumbled across it the day before yesterday, but things hadn't quite worked out that way. Now, however, with a whole day free to do anything he wanted, Ringo was determined to get to know at least something about those two crazy kids of theirs.
Making his way through the comfortable living room of the cozy, empty house, Ringo found himself facing a set of stairs. Heading up the flight of carpeted stairs, Ringo looked over the photos displayed along the wall: the first one was of the albino kid; the next one was of Shara, and Ringo winced slightly at the reminder of the Wonder Twins' sickly little sister; the next photo up was one of the Wonder Twins themselves, and the one at the top of the stairs was that same guy, the one who looked like an older version of Slade, that he'd first seen in that family portrait down on the ground floor. All of them were smiling for the camera, and Ringo found himself smiling softly as well.
There had obviously been a lot of happy memories associated with this place for the people who had once lived here; maybe seeing this would be better for the Wonder Twins than he'd thought at first. He'd just wanted them to remember the people that they had been, back during the War when the main corps of the Space Knights had all been friends and comrades-in-arms. It might have been a bit selfish of him, since the Wonder Twins had seemed fairly happy whiling away their days and nights in Star's parents' house, but he'd never pretended to be particularly altruistic.
Once he stood at the top of the stairs, Ringo looked down the hall on both sides. There were six rooms on this level of the house, and he suspected that he knew, at least in a general sense, just what he was going to find in them. Arbitrarily turning to the right, Ringo made his way down the long hall to the first room. Apparently, the kid who'd owned this particular room had been named Conrad.
Kind of a strange name, but then Slade's old name had been Ness, so maybe the Carter family had just had a thing for odd names. He felt a bit weird about just walking into a guy's room without even knocking, but since the guy who'd owned and used this room wasn't in any kind of position to object, Ringo opened his door and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that the fact that this kid, well maybe he shouldn't call someone who looked a fair bit older than the Wonder Twins a 'kid', had been an avid collector of model spacecraft and airplanes.
Ignoring the dead vines that stretched across the floor, Ringo made his way deeper inside.
Seemed like Conrad Carter had been a big one for aviation, which fit pretty well with the story that Slade had told about all of his family members being space explorers and all. It also seemed like Conrad was a big reader, judging by the three stuffed bookshelves that lined the far wall of his room. Heading over to look at what was on the shelves, Ringo leaned close to study the various titles.
Conrad had clearly been a bit of a sci-fi buff, something that Ringo found a bit ironic considering what had ultimately happened to him; but then, this was the kind of passion that humanized a guy. Hell, he enjoyed a good high-fantasy story every now and then, so there was already a bit of common ground between the two of them. Moving away from the row of shelves, Ringo made his way over to the desk he'd spotted when he'd first came in.
It hadn't seemed all that interesting at first, at least not compared to the bookshelves that Conrad had had lining his wall, but there were obviously other things to this guy than his love for sci-fi and his clear interest in engineering. Making his way over to the desk, Ringo opened the top and took a look.
Inside was an assortment of stationary, and supplies such as pens and what he realized were mechanical pencils. A pair of small, leather-bound books caught his attention then, and he picked up the first one. Flipping through the first one, he found that it was full of recipes; they looked hand-written, and for a few seconds Ringo wondered just what Conrad was doing with something like that; some of the recipes had little notes scrawled on the margins of the paper, noting where a substitution had been made, or which of his family members liked a particular dish the most.
He also found out the name of that albino kid, too; the names listed in the notes were those he recognized, either from dealing with the Wonder Twins themselves, or from meeting their remaining un-brainwashed family. Ness and Cain had been Slade and Saber to him; Shara was obvious, and he was starting to suspect that Conrad had been Spear; that left the albino kid, whose name was obviously Sam.
So it went Conrad, Ness, Cain, Shara, and last of all, Sam, Ringo mused, putting the book of recipes back where he'd found it. He also knew that their father had been named Ulysses, but that still left him wondering just what their mother's name had been. Still, there was the other book left to look through. Sliding it up and out of the small cubby where he'd found the recipe book, Ringo flipped it open to a random page and chuckled. Apparently, Conrad had been having a bit of a problem with the kid that Saber had once been, if the message he'd left in what was clearly his journal was any indication: Cain, you devious little sneak, if you're reading this message, I'm not only going to kick your ass, I'm going to lock you in your own closet for a week! You read me, you incorrigible little brat? A week!
Chuckling softly, since something like that fit pretty well with what he'd learned of Saber's personality over all the time he'd known the kid, Ringo put Conrad Carter's journal back where he'd found it. Sure, it probably had all kinds of information about his family and his life before the Radam, but it was also something he clearly wanted to keep private, especially given the message that he had left for Saber; or at least for the kid that Saber had been before the Radam had gotten their hooks into him.
Leaving Conrad Carter's room behind, Ringo made his way down the hall to the next room; the room which turned out to belong to Shara.
It was kind of weird, going into someone's room after you'd met them, and especially after you'd learned that they'd died. Still, it wasn't that much stranger than going into the bedroom of a guy that he'd never met before; someone who had also died in the War, and someone who'd actually been fighting for the Radam when they'd been alive. It wasn't like he could blame the guy, though, since the Radam had obviously done something to his brain when they'd had him in their evil little clutches. Hell, from what the Wonder Twins had said when they'd finally been persuaded to talk about what had happened to their family when they'd met up with the Radam, brain-alterations were pretty much SOP for any of the completed Teknomen that the Radam had hatched.
Shara's room was a bit more colorful than Conrad's, though it was mostly done in relaxing, pastel shades that Ringo thought were a pretty perfect fit with the kind of girl that Shara had been. Well, at least the kind of girl she'd seemed to be, given how short a time he'd had to get to know her before she'd died. Heading over to the two bookshelves he'd spotted on the way in – it was starting to seem like a lot of the Carter kids were fairly big readers, and Ringo was almost disappointed that he'd never really had the chance to get to know any of them – Ringo began to examine the titles.
It seemed like Shara had been more a fan of space opera and fantasy, rather than straight sci-fi the way Conrad seemed to be. Ringo thought he'd have liked getting to know her better. too, but that seemed to be shaping up to be the case with the Carters as a family; he thought it was kind of sad that he hadn't had the chance to get to know any of them. But then, the Wonder Twins were the ones who'd known these people all their lives, the ones who'd been forced to fight against them by the Radam, and the ones who had ultimately ended up having to kill almost every one of their family members because of them.
Heck, the only one of the Carters who didn't seem to have been affected by the Radam invasion was the family's mother, and Ringo hadn't yet seen any evidence of her presence in this house. He knew that there had to have been some woman involved with the Carter family sometime, but even Conrad Carter's little recipe book hadn't mentioned anyone that Ringo hadn't been able to match up with one of the Teknomen that they had all... met during the War. It was kind of a strange thing, that, but he was starting to suspect that Mrs. Carter had died sometime before the War.
It was kind of a sad thought, that these kids had lost their mother, but on the other hand, Mrs. Carter hadn't had to see what had actually happened to her kids after the Radam had gotten their hooks into them; there were good points and bad points, the way it was with pretty much everything.
Leaving Shara's room behind, Ringo made his way down the hall to the last of the doors; well, the last of the doors on this side, anyway, since he could see that there was a door down at the end of the hall, and when he'd first come in he'd seen some doors opposite where he was standing at the moment, but he was aiming to finish this side of the hall before he moved onto the other side.
The next room on this side of the hall belonged to Sam Carter, a kid he'd never had the chance to really meet – brainwashed, evil Teknomen didn't count – and Ringo wondered for a moment just what the youngest of Slade and Saber's siblings had been like. A big reader like the rest of the family he'd seen so far, Ringo concluded as he caught sight of the two, heavily laden bookshelves at the far end of the kid's room opposite the door. Making his way over to the shelves, stopping to note the subdued, muted colors of the room he now stood in, Ringo got the impression that Sam Carter had been a fairly quiet kid; well, that or he just hadn't been fond of bright colors or the kinds of knickknacks that the other members of his family seemed to be so fond of.
Shara's room had had paper flowers scattered around it, and for Conrad it had been those models of planes and space ships, but all Sam seemed to have was an alarm clock, a floor lamp, and the previously-mentioned bookshelves; there were some empty spots on the wall, like maybe the kid had taken down a poster or two, but nothing concrete. It seemed like Sam Carter either didn't have much character, or he just didn't like having a lot of stuff stashed around his room. Making his way over to the shelves, Ringo began to look at the books that the kid had collected through his life.
He seemed to be a fair bit more studious than any of the other Carters, or maybe those kids had just kept their textbooks in their closets or something like that. The kid seemed to have the same taste in sci-fi as Conrad did, but he also had some space opera in his collection, and Ringo wondered a bit if he'd been holding them for Shara or if Sam Carter liked those kinds of books, himself. It was an interesting question, though not one that he was likely to ever have answered.
Leaving Sam's room, Ringo bypassed the large door at the end of the hallway and made his way over to the first door on the left. Opening it, Ringo found that the room itself was easily twice the size of any of the other rooms that he'd just been in. In fact, as he explored the room more thoroughly, he came to the conclusion that this had once been two rooms, but the wall separating them had been removed somehow. Whoever had done the job had been really good at it, too, judging by the lack of anything suggesting that this double-sized bedroom had once been two rooms aside from its sheer size.
As he looked around the room, Ringo began to see just who it was that this room had belonged to. The influence from both of the Wonder Twins was blatantly obvious in this particular room, from the colors to the decorations to the layout of the room itself. The bookshelves contained the usual sci-fi books he'd been coming to expect from this family, but the bottom row of all three shelves was crowded with comic books. Chuckling softly, since with what had happened to those kids pretty much some kind of a comic book come to life. Of course, in the case of this particular comic, he would have had some harsh words to say to the author.
Of course, this being reality and all, there was no one he could really take any issues he might have had to.
Sighing, Ringo stood up and left the double-room that the kids who'd become the Wonder Twins had spent so much of their lives in. He'd been able to avoid thinking about what had actually happened to all the people who'd once lived in this house, but there was only so much dancing around the issue that a reasonable person could do. No one who'd lived in this house would ever come back to it in any real way; either because they'd died in the War or before it, or because they weren't the same person that they had been when they'd lived in this place.
Making his way back down the stairs, Ringo paused for a moment in the living room. It really was strange to think about, this empty house with all its memories and secrets, or memories that were secrets, what with everything that had happened during the War. Still, if it hadn't been for the War, he might not have ever gotten the chance to meet the Wonder Twins at all; in fact, he really wouldn't have, since the only reason that those two had even met up with the Space Knights in the first place was because they had been fighting Gunnar out on the Space Ring. Gunnar had clearly given them one hell of a beating out there, judging by all of the injuries they had been sporting when the two of them had turned up in that crater out in the Arizona desert.
Still, he might have had the chance to meet up with the Carters, and get to know the twins that way; even then, though, they wouldn't have been the same kids that he had known while they were all fighting the War together, simply because there probably wouldn't have been a War in the first place. Not that he blamed any of the Carters for the Radam showing up here, since any well-trained space explorer would have been interested in what that ship might have had to offer, and it wasn't like any of them could have known what was really waiting for them onboard that ship anyway.
The War had been Earth's first, and Ringo hoped last, encounter with the Radam. Not even all the information they had been privy to in the past, whatever it had actually been, would have told them the first thing about the Radam.
On his way back out of the Carter house, Ringo picked up the family portrait on his way out, pausing for a few moments to take in all of the people in it. He knew most of their names by now, well, at least he knew the people who'd actually been a part of that family rather than just a family-friend. Carefully tucking the framed photo into the bag that he'd brought for just this occasion, Ringo locked the door behind himself and made his way down the driveway to his car.
The day was half over by this time, and since he figured Star wouldn't be too happy with him if he just dropped in on her unannounced, especially given what he was planning, that when he made it back to his car he just started the thing up and headed for home. There would be plenty of time for him to try this crazy little stunt of his after he'd told Star about his idea; he was pretty sure that she wanted to get those boys of theirs back to their old selves just as much as he did.
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When it came time for breakfast again, Star yawned and made her way to the room that her parents had set aside for her boys to sleep in. She knew now that they tended to enjoy just laying around in bed; she thought it was probably a reaction to all of the time that they had had to spend either fighting against the Radam, preparing to fight the Radam, or recovering from a fight against the Radam. She didn't begrudge them the extra rest they wanted, though, she couldn't; not after what her boys had been put through during the War.
When she reached their room, Star gently opened the door and looked in. She knew that neither of her boys would be awake yet; or, if they were, they wouldn't be out of bed, so she was going to have to try getting them out of bed herself. She knew that they would want to have a nap after they had finished breakfast, something that had seemed a bit strange to her parents but something that Star wasn't going to let herself worry about, but if there was anything that her boys enjoyed as much as sleep, it was eating.
They still had the same blast-furnace metabolism that they had been either cursed or blessed with by the Radam when they'd been transformed into Teknomen, so she didn't worry too much about them getting out of shape; still, even if they had gotten out of the habit of sparring with each other during every free moment they'd had, like they had done back when the War had been in full swing, she couldn't really begrudge them the peace they had managed to find for themselves. They had more than earned it.
Closing the door as softly as she could, Star made her way over to the beds where her boys slept. She was only mildly surprised to find that the both of them had curled up together in the same bed, since back during the War that had seemed to be their method of coping with the more severe forms of emotional stress that they had put through. Still, Slade and Saber were close enough to each other that she didn't find it too surprising. Actually, it was kind of nice seeing them together this way when they weren't dealing with stresses that few human minds were made to cope with.
Making her way quietly over to the bed where her boys were sleeping, curled up together in a way that she hadn't thought she would ever have the chance to see them in again, Star smiled softly. They really did look adorable when they did that, a lot like the pair of kittens that Ringo had compared them to all those months ago. There were times when she honestly couldn't believe that they had managed to beat back the Radam invasion as well as they had, in the end; the Radam had seemed to possess every conceivable advantage, from their legions of giant, vicious, nigh-invulnerable Spider-crabs, to their small corps of brainwashed Teknomen, each of whom had been more than a match for anything that the forces of the AEM and the Space Knights had been able to muster to face them.
Then the twins had come; freed from the Radam by their own father, and sent out into space as a last-ditch effort by that poor, brave man before he'd died from the same transformation process that had been used to transform the other members of his crew – including the rest of his sons, and his only daughter – into the Radam's brainwashed super-soldiers. Back in those days, she had wondered just what kind of circumstances could make someone so eager to cut themselves off from human contact to the extent that the twins had so obviously done. Now that she knew what they had been facing, what the Radam had done to them, Star found it amazing that they had even been willing to open up so much as they had in the beginning.
Not many people would have been willing to hold onto so much of their humanity when they had been hurt so deeply as the twins, she thought; Star didn't even know if she herself would have wanted to get close to anyone human again, after having her whole life shattered the way that her boys had. Saber had seemed a bit more open than Slade, but at the beginning that had only been a front; both of her boys had been closed-off, shielding themselves from the pain that they had gone through. It had been six long, agonizing months since the Radam had first invaded before the twins had come; six months of their people suffering constant defeats, six months of their cities being either destroyed or simply buried beneath the Radam's Spider-crabs and then being replaced by forests of the spore-plants that they had planted on Earth as a part of their effort to control the planet and its populace; the spore-plants that would have attempted to transform every human on Earth into the same kind of armored super-soldiers that Slade, Saber, and the rest of the Carter family and close friends had been transformed into.
At least, anyone who wasn't killed during the process.
Blinking, Star brought her attention firmly back to the present. She didn't really like thinking about the early days of the War, though the events still weighed heavily on the minds of almost every person who had lived through those dark, desperate days. In fact, the only ones who didn't remember anything about the War were the very people who had been so instrumental in winning it for the human race in the first place. It was a sad irony, that; and, at the same time, it was really the best thing that had happened to her boys.
Life could really be funny that way, sometimes.
"Slade, Saber, it's time for breakfast," she said, pitching her voice to carry to them, while at the same time being careful not to speak too loud; she remembered the explanations that they had both given her about their enhanced senses, and didn't want to disturb them too much.
The sheets covering the twins shifted, and both of them turned their heads to look at her, bright blue and bright green eyes fixing on her for a long moment. She was just about to speak again, to say something about how it was nice to see them up again, when they both blinked. That wasn't the strange part, since she had seen both Slade and Saber blink enough times that the actual act wasn't really that interesting to her anymore, no, the strange part was the fact that Slade and Saber had actually managed to blink in perfect unison. Sure, in the days when they had been insisting on being called Ness and Cain Carter, the twins had sometimes spoken in unison because it had seemed to amuse them, but they had always clearly been taking verbal cues from each other to be able to do it.
She had the feeling that this, whatever it was, was something a bit different.
"Star," they both said, their voices overlapping so perfectly that it seemed as if only one person had spoken.
Star was startled by it, but then the twins seemed to shake themselves out of whatever kind of stupor they had fallen into, Slade going slightly before Saber so she was at least somewhat sure that they weren't still affected by... whatever it was that had just happened to them.
"Morning, Star," Slade said, blinking innocently up at her as Saber yawned. "Is it time for breakfast now?"
"It is," she said, opting not to mention the strange thing that had just happened; it was probably nothing more than some kind of side effect of the twins' telepathic link. Something carried over from their battle with Darkon; something having to do with the way Saber's teknocrystal had glowed, back when she'd been staying with him on the Space Ring. "I thought you two would have already been up," she said, watching as her boys sat up and stretched, Slade yawning as he bent his back slightly. "You usually are."
As the twins nodded to her, climbing up and out of the bed to go wash up and get themselves dressed, Star tried again not to worry. Both of them had started going to sleep a bit earlier, and waking up a bit later, but that didn't mean that there was necessarily anything wrong with them. At least, Star was trying to keep thinking that; but the small things that kept happening were starting to worry her: the way they would start speaking in perfect unison, and the way that that kind of thing had been starting to happen more often; the altered sleeping and eating habits that the two of them had started falling into, and the way that they were both starting to move in perfect sync at times.
She was well aware that the that Slade and Saber, having grown up together and being twins besides, knew each other as well or even better than anyone else who was still alive; certainly well enough to anticipate the other's movements when they were sparring, or to mimic the other's motions when they wanted to play with people, or just to amuse themselves at times. Still, seeing the two of them acting, and even speaking, in such perfect unison did worry her, sometimes; no matter how much Star tried to convince herself that it shouldn't.
As she followed the twins out of their room, tagging along behind them so she wouldn't risk tripping them up while they were on the stairs, Star reflected back on what she had seen; all of what she had seen, not leaving anything out simply because it made her feel uncomfortable to think about. The twins were acting strange, even considering all that they had been though at the hands of the Radam. Star made up her mind to speak to Commander Jamison about what had been happening. Even if he didn't know exactly what to do, he would still want to know what was going on.
He cared so much for all of his people.
When she and the twins settled down at the dining room table, Star kept a discrete eye on them even as she joined in on the small talk going on over breakfast. It was a mutual decision that nothing about the War, the Radam, their family, or even the Space Knights in general was to be mentioned at any meal; or even in the house, for that matter. She'd been the one to first suggest the idea, knowing that neither of the twins would have appreciated the topics being discussed even if they hadn't had amnesia. Considering their current condition, and the fact that no one really knew what would happen if they were given reminders of the past in their current state of mind, they had all made up their minds not to talk about it.
The memories weren't pleasant, in any case.
The phone rang, then, and since she had been the first one to finish her meal – with her parents eating at a more leisurely pace, and the twins eating all that they could stomach – Star got up to answer it.
"Summers residence," she greeted. "May I ask who's calling?"
"Hey, Star. Nice to hear from you again," Ringo said, sounding like there was something he wanted to share; something that he was particularly enthusiastic about. "How have you and your family been doing?"
"We've been all right," she said, smiling at Ringo's concern; it was nice to know he still cared enough about her and her family to ask those kinds of questions. "The twins are doing well, too. Though they've been spending a bit more time sleeping than they did the last time we talked."
"Maybe that's normal for them," Ringo said, though he didn't sound like he quite believed it. "After all, they went through a lot during the last days of the War. Maybe they still haven't quite recovered yet."
"You might be right," she conceded, though it didn't make her feel particularly good to have to admit something like that. "What was it that you called for, anyway? It sounded like you had something important you wanted to talk about."
"Well, I meant to bring this up earlier, but I've been to the old Carter place," Ringo said. She was a bit surprised to find that out, since she hadn't expected any of the others to stumble across that particular piece of history. "Actually, I've been visiting it on-and-off for a few days, here and there. And, I think I might have just figured out a way to get those boys of ours back to their old, peppy selves."
"I don't think the twins could have really been considered peppy, Ringo," she said tolerantly; at least, not the twins that they had known during the War. Not the man that she had begun falling in love with, or the man that had been willing to stand by him through hell and back; even for all of Saber's banter, he hadn't been really what anyone would call peppy during the War. At least, not when he'd been in full possession of his faculties. "Anyway, what was it you really wanted to talk about, Ringo? I'm glad you told me about these visits of yours, but it sounds like you have something else to say."
"Well, you know how a lot of people like taking pictures of their families, and keeping them around for sentimental value. I found one of the Carters' old photos; it's a group-shot of the whole family, plus one. Or at least I think it is; that woman didn't look like she was related to the rest of the kids in the photo," Ringo trailed off, seeming to be thinking deeply about something. "In fact, I think she might be that fiancée of Conrad's that Slade mentioned, back when he was telling all of us about how he and Saber got their powers. Anyway," Ringo said abruptly, and Star could just imagine him shaking his head sharply as he realized that he'd just gone off on a tangent. "I found the picture in their house, and I think it might be just what the doctor ordered, as far as getting those kids of ours back to normal. Well, normal for them, anyway."
"I don't think that would really be the best idea, Ringo," she said, looking toward the kitchen, where both of the twins were eating. "They seem so happy, now. Do you really think we have the right to take that from them?"
"I know," Ringo sighed, and Star could just imagine him pinching the bridge of his nose, the way he always did when there was something bothering him. "It's just- none of this really seems right, you know? The Space Knights were always a team, and we were the main force behind them. Us and those boys of ours; it kinda felt like we'd be together forever."
"I know," she said, feeling the same kind of wistful nostalgia that Ringo was so obviously talking about. "Still, times change, and no matter how much we might not like it, Slade and Saber do seem much happier now than they ever were, back during the War. I don't think it would be right of us to take that away from them just because we're missing the way things used to be."
"Yeah, I know," Ringo said, and she could hear him sigh again. "I just- I hate seeing them like this, you know? They were our friends, and I…" There was a soft "thud" audible on the line then, and Star could almost see Ringo with his forehead leaning against the nearest patch of bare wallspace. "I just can't help feeling like I failed them, somehow."
"I know how you feel," she sighed. "Still, I don't think there's anything we can do about that."
Even if there was, Star didn't think that she could do it. They seemed so happy, now; freed of all the burdens that they had borne during the War, all of the horrible memories that they had been tormented by during the time that they had been forced to fight the members of the Argos' crew. To fight the people who had once been their friends, and the remaining members of their family.
Given all of that, Star was determined to be happy that her boys had been given a second chance to be themselves; a chance to be happy.
