Work Text:
Having Urges or Cravings to Smoke
At twenty-two, Gilbert Baskerville–Vessalius had chewed gum like the world was ending, and had smoked cigarettes out the window of Xerxes Break’s car, embarrassedly, wanting to seem grown-up and yet not wanting Oz and Oscar to know about his habit.
Two weeks later, Raven had neither the funds nor the ID to buy himself even a single cigarette, and as he stood on the familiar-unfamiliar city street, watching a pair of familiar-unfamiliar children play racing with the city bus, and aching with the need to put something between his lips and pull. He smelled of tobacco and smoke, though none of it was from his own actions, and he hadn’t touched a cigarette in weeks.
If he were to get money, and go to a store, he wouldn’t buy a pack, either. He would get shampoo, and conditioner, and detergent, and the strongest alcohol he could buy, and try and forget that he was twenty two and ten years in the past, and he’d already fucked the timeline all to hell and back, since he was currently impersonating a superhero and nobody seemed to realize it.
When the real Raven showed up, he was fucked. When he was pulled back to his proper time, he’d be embarrassed.
God, he needed a cigarette.
But the real Raven never came, and this Raven didn’t find himself pulled back, and as the days went on, and he pretended more and more, he longed to take a cigarette between his lips and inhale and exhale the smoke that had killed so many others, but that bloomed like home inside his chest.
Feeling Irritated, Grouchy, or Upset
“I cannot believe you!” Raven was shouting. Somewhere deep inside him, he did not think he should be shouting, especially not since the recipients of his anger were still so young. “You could have died—did you not see where they were aiming? —Your heads, you get shot in the head, you die ! You are not immortal—you are not invincible—you are not interchangeable!”
“Like anyone even knows there are two of us?” shot back the boy-child, B-Rabbit, blond hair mussed and covered with blood.
“You’re different genders!” Raven shouted. “You have different hair! Damn you—people will notice and I’m sure they have, most people are smarter than me! You could have died today, do you understand?! You could have died—do you think anyone would have mourned you?!”
“Of course not!” said the boy-child. “Alice has nobody and Gil would forget me soon enough! Why would you become a superhero if you had someone to mourn you?!”
“Are you stupid!” Raven shouted. “You are stupid! You’re an idiot to think nobody would mourn—you’re an idiot to put yourself in danger like that—you’re the biggest idiot I have ever met—!”
“Then meet Gilbert!” the boy-child screamed back, “and you’d know he’s worth dying for!”
“You are a child!” Raven screamed, “there is nothing worth your death, nothing worth your life—”
“Raven,” said Xerxes Break sharply.
“—there will never be any value in your death! Or your injury! You stupid idiot, why can’t you see—”
“Raven.”
“—are you blind, are you stupid, you could have died today, they would have shot you in the head and killed you, they would have killed you! You would have died! Do you understand that!” He was shaking the boy-child. “Do you understand?! Your life—would—be—over—”
“Raven!” He was yanked away. “That’s enough!”
“He almost died today—”
“And hardly for the first time,” said Sharon Rainsworth severely (Sharon Rainsworth a superhero, that was something he’d never seen coming) “and certainly not for the last.”
“That had fucking better have been the last—!”
“Raven,” said Xerxes Break. “That’s enough. He’s crying.”
Raven looked. He was, the small boy-child, whose near-death had set Raven off on this lecture hours ago, and guilt set itself like a stamp into Raven’s chest, and Raven knelt and pulled him into a tight hug.
“I’m sorry for yelling,” he murmured to the sobbing boy. “I was—scared.”
The boy curled into Raven, and Raven felt a quiet fury at himself, and at the people who’d been shooting at the boy, and he didn’t do anything about it, simply held him tightly and stroked his hair.
Feeling Jumpy and Restless
For the next week, every loud noise had Raven jumping, and every time he closed his eyes as he paced his tiny apartment he saw the bullet moving towards the head of one of the superheroes known as B-Rabbit.
He had melted it in a flash—the first time he’d used his fire since he was a tiny, tiny child, still with the Baskervilles—and the molten metal had landed on the boy’s arm, and he’d screamed, and…
It would be another two years before he knew whether or not he knew the B-Rabbit’s identity, though the original Raven had to have known the entire time. A parental figure, maybe. Someone loved, someone trusted. Someone who didn’t scream at a thirteen-year-old until he cried, and then shook him while still yelling. Someone worthy of the love and trust with which he had always spoken of his Raven.
He.
Damn it all. Raven couldn’t even think his name, couldn’t even think about him without it hurting. Three months, three months in the past and he hadn’t come for him, and the real Raven hadn’t told him off for taking his place.
He turned on his heel, stalked to the other end of his apartment. He didn’t stop moving until long after the sun had come up.
Having a Hard Time Concentrating
His hands trembled against the armrests of his chair. Break had promised him a new, false identity, and he was here to get his papers, to get his information, to properly own the apartment he was living in.
But it was hard to answer the questions correctly, hard to keep his fake identity in order, when the television was replaying that fight from a few days ago. People were already speculating about the bullet melting into white-hot metal, and the video was helpfully showing, in vivid detail, how said metal had burned itself through the boy-child’s jacket and into his arm.
“What’s your date of birth?” asked the receptionist.
He had had a scar on his right arm, too, and he’d always been horribly tight-lipped about where it had come from. It had been big and purple and ovular, and Gilbert had been able to rest an entire finger into its divot, and he had always smiled secretively and fondly and said that it was his favorite scar, though he had never explained why.
Up on the television screen, the burn looked like it was in the same shape of that scar, though of course it was hard to tell.
“Sir? Sir, are you paying attention to me?”
But if he had the same scar from the injury Raven had inadvertently given the boy-child, what did that mean about the timeline? What did that mean about how long, conceivably, Raven could expect to be stuck here?
Did it mean that he wasn’t coming for him?
“Sir? Hello?”
…Was there only ever one Raven…?
Having Trouble Sleeping
The night was dark and lonely, and Raven hadn’t gotten one whit of sleep ever since falling into the past. He spent his time cleaning his apartment, and working on cooking for Break, who didn’t eat enough, and for the boy-child, whose arm he’d burnt horribly. He had always loved sweets, and half the time Raven saw Break, he was eating candy, and so Raven was working on making homemade chocolates.
Then someone knocked at his window.
Raven jumped, and very nearly dropped his pan on the floor, and stood in his kitchen and shook for a moment, because that was a very familiar knock: whenever he had gotten it into his mind to come and visit him in the middle of the night, he would knock like that at his door, and so Raven’s body reacted before his mind could catch up, and when he opened the window the boy-child climbed in, wearing nothing more than a dark hoodie and pants and a cloth mask.
“B-Rabbit,” Raven said in surprise, and B-Rabbit was so small, so so small, so much smaller than he was used to seeing on the news.
“Um, hi, Raven,” B-Rabbit said, climbing inside the window like he owned the place. “I…wanted to say sorry.”
“You…wanted to say sorry,” Raven repeated, because the words made no sense, because Raven had been the one to make an injured, traumatized child cry, to shake him and scream at him until he was pulled away.
“Yeah. I…I didn’t mean to scare you.” The boy-child looked down and away, and Raven could imagine the expression on his tiny face, hidden as it was by hood and mask.
“It’s fine. Just don’t put yourself in danger again,” Raven told him, though he knew that was a promise the boy-child couldn’t, or wouldn’t keep. “Do you want hot chocolate?”
“What?” the boy-child asked.
“It’s late. And it’s cold out.” Raven paused. “I could make tea, as well, though I don’t have anything very good at the moment. But you need to warm up.”
“...Alright,” said the boy-child, and he followed Raven into the kitchen and hovered awkwardly as Raven made hot chocolate and then carefully served it to him, dropping exactly four miniature marshmallows into it before placing it at his cheap kitchen table.
“You can sit,” Raven told him, and watched as the boy-child did so, and as he blew carefully on his hot chocolate before taking a tiny sip.
“This is perfect,” he said, surprised.
Raven allowed himself a tiny smile. “I’m glad,” he said. He had made it to his tastes, after years and years of knowing him better than he knew himself, and he really wasn’t surprised that the boy-child liked it. “Let me know if there’s anything else you want.”
“Why?” asked the boy-child.
“You’re my guest,” Raven said simply. “Also, you’re a child, and I want to take care of you. …How’s your arm?”
“It’s fine,” said the boy-child, which was probably a lie. “I’m good to keep fighting.”
“I don’t care if you’re good to keep fighting, ” said Raven, “I care if you’re safe and healthy.”
“I don’t understand,” the boy told him. “I mean, you don’t know me.”
“You’re one of the few people I know in this time,” Raven told him. “Also…you’re a good kid. I can tell that already. I care about you.”
“Thanks,” said the boy-child quietly. “I…I care about you too.”
Raven reached over, unable to hide a pleased smile, and patted his hair. “Take care of yourself,” he said, and then debated whether or not to add a B-Rabbit at the end.
“Oz,” said the boy-child after a moment.
“What?”
“My name is Oz. My real one.”
…Raven wasn’t at all surprised.
“Take care of yourself, Oz,” he said, and patted his head once more.
Feeling Hungrier or Gaining Weight
Raven had once read about something known as touch starvation, and he was thinking that he might perhaps be experiencing it. Though the air conditioning in his apartment honestly wasn’t the best, and he often kept the windows open and brought his single fan from room to room with him in order to not melt away into a puddle of sweat, Raven found himself wrapping blankets tightly around himself and squeezing his arms tight. His family had not been shy with physical affection— his uncle would often hug the children tightly, ruffle their hair, make the fact that they were safe and at home and loved evident with every motion, every touch, and his sister hugged easily and often, and he had been so, so physical, had grabbed the boy Raven had once been whenever possible, had smacked when either of them were upset and clung on the rare occasion that he was afraid or allowed himself comfort, and gave excellent hugs whenever the boy Raven had been needed them.
Ever since Raven had landed ten years in the past, however, he had been entirely untouched, except for in fights, and when he’d had to be pulled away from the tiny Oz, whom he’d been shaking.
He ached for some form of physical affection—he starved for it.
He gripped his arms tighter.
Ten years couldn’t be that long—could it?
Feeling Anxious, Sad, or Depressed
Raven found that he hadn’t been taken off of the B-Rabbit team the next time he reported for patrol duty. Both the girl-child and the young Oz were full of energy, bouncing around him, and Raven couldn’t help but remember him and Alice, a dynamic duo, always causing trouble at each other’s sides.
He missed them terribly.
She had been there, with him and the person Raven had once been, though he had no idea what she knew about the situation and what she thought about his actions. Raven didn’t know what he thought, either. He’d said—
But that wasn’t important right now, because Oz and the girl-child were starting a game of tag, and Raven followed along after them as they bounced from roof to roof, Oz materializing and dematerializing iron chains that he used to swing around as the girl-child just lept and bounded from building to building: enhanced physical abilities—enhanced strength, enhanced healing, an appetite larger than a bull’s—just like Alice had.
Sometime he wondered if he really had traveled backwards through time, or if he’d landed in another universe, or—worse—if he’d traveled back in time and then irreparably fucked his own universe up, and nothing would be the same again. If Oz wouldn’t grow up to become him.
Sometimes, Raven wondered if he even wanted Oz to grow up to become him. He’d always been so sad, when he thought Gilbert wasn’t looking, and he’d refused to open himself up to anyone, ever, and he’d always put himself in far too much danger, and if Oz didn’t grow up to become that…
But Raven didn’t want to lose him…
But he’d already lost him, he realized. Four months in the prior decade and he hadn’t shown up to rescue him once. Raven was stuck here with little baby Oz and little baby girl-B-Rabbit and little baby Sharon and younger Xerxes Break and shockingly little Reim Lunettes.
And little baby Oz had taken to coming to his window at night, curling up on his shitty couch and leaving before the sun rose, something hard in his eyes like love or trust, and the little baby girl-B-Rabbit often took the bed that Raven had bought in order to keep up appearances, and didn’t leave until it was time for them to head out on patrol.
He’d already lost him when he didn’t tell him that he knew what he snuck out to do, when he ignored the injuries popping up on him without explanation or question, when he ran off and became a superhero without a word to the boy Raven once had been, and Raven knew, whenever he walked in his living room to see a small blond boy curled on his couch with a too-large book, that this time’s or this world’s Gilbert Baskerville-Vessalius had already lost his Oz, too, and that somehow, against all odds, the Raven that was here had gained him.
A middle schooler’s hand smacked against Raven’s elbow. He flinched.
“Tag!” shouted a girl’s joyful voice, and she smiled at him under her mask in a way Alice Baskerville had never once smiled at Gilbert Baskerville-Vessalius, since they were enemies, both clawing at each other for Oz Vessalius’s time and attention. “You’re it!”
Raven twisted and ran after her, darting to the side at the last minute and tagging the boy-B-Rabbit, who let out a playfully disappointed yell, and he made sure to keep up with their running as his heart sank deeper into his chest.
No, he wouldn’t ever come for Raven, even if he still existed somewhere, somehow, because he had his own Raven and he had Alice, and Raven had lost the game before he even knew he was playing.