Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

In theory, none of this was Peri’s fault, at least, that was what he was telling himself.

After a long day of self-imposed isolation at school, Dev sat on his bed, sulking. He looked down at his self-tying shoelaces and fiddled with the sunglasses in his hands. A perfect picture of malcontent.

Peri had no idea what to do, but it felt wrong to just sit around and watch. He sighed as he transformed, shifting from a pair of violet headphones to his natural fairy form.

“Well kid, anything you’d like?” he offered. “Within reason, preferably” he clarified.

Dev glowered at him before making a point of checking his phone. “How about you go away? I wish you’d go bother someone who actually wants you around.”

Peri winced. The words were harsh, sure, but that wasn't the worst of it. Beneath Dev’s temper was a reminder that this kid had issues Peri didn’t know how to remedy, problems that couldn’t be fixed with magic. He hoped that simply being there for Dev would provide some consolation, but now Dev didn’t even want that.

Regardless of how Peri felt about it, the wish had been made.

Truthfully, Peri wasn't entirely sure what such a wish would entail, on some level, he assumed it would do nothing more than send him home.

He sighed. Dev groaned.

“Alright, I can do that one for you.” maybe he actually missed the feeling of his parents’ couch against his wings.

Instead, Peri found himself hovering in place, a good twenty feet off a corner of unfamiliar roadside, overlooking a run-down gas station, an auto mechanic’s garage, and a bland line of stores that constituted a strip mall. It was impossible to decern where exactly on earth he was, most utilitarian human structures looked the same to him.

A low grunt sounded out from below. He wasn’t alone.

Instinctively, Peri transformed into a seagull and carefully circled the source of the noise, a man in a pink and grey argyle sweater, waging a war of attrition against three large sacks of, something.

Peri swooped low as he attempted to make out just what the man was carrying.

“No! Not bird food, fish food!” the human barked, inadvertently answering Peri’s question. In an ill-conceived attempt to wave a fist in the air, the man dropped his bags and sent himself tumbling to the ground.

Now that the human was splayed out on the sidewalk, wincing, Peri managed to get a good look at his face. Sudden, shocking recognition dawned on Peri, a sensation not unlike flying into a telephone pole. He then proceeded to verify the accuracy of the simile by bashing wing first into an actual telephone pole.

Obviously, he hadn’t been looking where he was going, he was too busy gawking at Timmy Turner.

He wasn't entirely sure how he had recognized his older godbrother, in fact, he had, on a base level, always assumed that Timmy was actually, literally fully grown by the time he had outgrown his fairies. It had made sense when he was seven years old, and Peri had never really stopped to interrogate that perspective.

This was not a lanky teenager, but an adult human with a defined jaw, wide shoulders, and bags under his eyes. Still, Peri was absolutely certain of the man’s identity.

‘Someone who wants you around.’

It seemed improbable that someone who had forgotten him entirely would want him around, but as Peri narrowly avoided a collision with the sidewalk, he concocted a few theories.

Perhaps he had gotten something wrong, maybe he’d actually gone with ‘someone you want to be around’, maybe he was tracking some subconscious desire. Maybe it was an impulse Peri had pulled from his own subconscious, but there was a non-zero chance that Timmy legitimately wanted him around, somehow.

Peri landed on a nearby awning, he wasn’t physically harmed from his encounter with the wooden post, but his ego was certainly bruised. Below him, Timmy finally finished laughing at his display of arial incompetence and returned to, whatever it was he was doing with three colossal bags of fish food. 

He was loading them into a sporty black sedan, apparently.

It looked like he needed help, and Peri seriously wondered if this was why he’d been sent here. Maybe Timmy was thinking about how much easier this task would be if he had a brother. It wasn’t lost on Peri that the man was buying fish food, although the sheer quantity of the stuff was downright baffling.

Of course Peri wanted to go down there and lend a hand, even if he could only do so as a complete stranger, a passing Good Samaritan, it was the right thing to do. Unfortunately for him, that was much easier said than done. Going down and helping would require a convincing human form.

He could transform into a human well enough, just, not well enough to actually fool real humans. It was an exceptionally difficult trick that had taken his parents thousands of years to master, he was twenty-two.

So he compromised, magically lightening the load of the bags as Timmy lifted them. In response to the change in weight, Timmy checked the bottom of each sack for a leak. The human’s innocent confusion brought a small smile to Peri’s beak, but that smile faltered as he became painfully aware of the distance between them. It wasn’t just the literal distance, or even the fifteen years since he’d last seen Timmy, it was all that and knowing that all the hazy, childhood memories that were flooding back to him existed in his mind, and his mind alone.

The realization left Peri desolated, and it got worse the more he remembered. Memories of mid-summer toboggan rides, standing on Timmy’s knee to watch him play video games, listening to music he didn’t enjoy just because his godbrother liked it. 

Timmy was starting his car now, and Peri was replaying Dev’s words in his head, over and over again over snapshots of spent youth. 

Without a plan or a rationale, Peri followed the car. He was pretty sure it was a nice car by normal human standards, a low, stocky sort of thing with thick wheels, but it struck him as profoundly boring; save for it’s front, which had a split grille that, hysterically, vaguely resembled buckteeth.

The drive was uneventful. At a stoplight Peri took the form of a dragonfly and landed on the left sideview mirror, affording himself a closer look at the man inside. Timmy’s eyes caught the movement, and after a moment of staring he jolted in his seat, then pulled a lever on the car’s dashboard, causing lights along its flank to begin flashing. Timmy raised a sheepish thumbs up to the car behind him. 

Eventually they drew on through a valley suburb and pulled into a cobblestone driveway overlooking a beige, entirely unassuming house. The most notable thing about it was the unpainted wooden fence separating the backyard from the rest of the world. 

When Timmy exited the car, he grabbed one bag of fish food and made straight for the fenced backyard. He put one foot up on the fence, and used his knee to support the bag as he undid the latch. Peri followed behind. 

The backyard itself was dominated by a koi pond, which took up the majority of available space. What remained of the yard was occupied by a stone path that led from the pond to the house and a portable plastic shed dedicated to pond supplies. 

Timmy dropped the bag beside the pond and cut it open with a box cutter pulled from his pocket. He began calling to the fish. Five large koi gathered in his shadow, bobbing their heads out of their water as they begged for food.

Still a dragonfly, Peri landed on a nearby fern. He didn’t know koi tolerated petting, but these fish couldn’t get enough of it. 

“Atta boy, Fluke. You’re a good boy.” Timmy cooed while hand-feeding a red and white carp with elongated fins.

It made sense. After getting his memories wiped, the positive emotions he’d associated with Cosmo and Wanda would remain, largely redirected towards their cover as goldfish. Glumly, Peri wondered if an older Dev would have an inexplicable distain for headphones.

”Alright, alright, c’mon Phantom, one more.”

The solid white koi he’d called to didn’t respond to its name, but it did respond the fistful of kibble in front of its face. This whole thing made Peri feel strange, he understood why the words ‘wants you around’ had sent him here. From Timmy’s perspective, it probably meant missing his childhood fish. Peri also realized that he was feeling jealous of koi, which felt like a new low.

Timmy left and returned with the other two bags of fish food, carrying them into the shed. 

Peri followed, resolving to get one last look before he returned to Dev. Given that this was likely to be the last he’d ever see of his godbrother, he decided it would be best to see him through proper retinas and not compound eyes. He shifted from a dragonfly to a starling, and followed Timmy into the shed, landing on a bright teal net leaning almost parallel to the shed wall.

He landed on the net’s rim, locking tiny passerine feet into its mesh, catching one toe in the webbing. In an attempt to free his foot, he pulled away, beating his wings. Then the net pitched forward, falling to the ground as Peri flipped from the momentum.

Then his foot was free, because he was laying on the floor in his natural form. He couldn’t shapeshift back. The net had landed on him.

There was no meaningful distinction between the design of a fish net and a butterfly net.

The clatter of the net’s fall had caught Timmy’s attention, and Peri’s heart stopped in his chest when he looked up to see two clear blue eyes drilling into him.

-

In Fairy Land, a power surge of massive proportions resulted in the blackout of the millennium. Generators and power lines crackled with an unexpected surplus of belief, and then went dead. 

-

The net had fallen over again, this time it had waited until Timmy wasn’t looking at it, and he nearly dropped the fish food on his foot when the jumpscare clatter sounded out from behind him. He turned to face the noise, and promptly dropped the bags.

They didn’t land on his foot, at least.

There was a tiny humanoid caught in the net. The creature was laid out on his back, winded. His hair and eyes were both a bright purple. Rounded, earwig-like wings radiated out from under him, twitching against the plastic floor. A black and gold scepter lay wilted at his side. An incandescent crown floated askew over the fairy’s head.

That was the strangest part, Timmy automatically knew what he was looking at. It was weird enough to randomly encounter a supernatural being in your backyard, it was far stranger to lock eyes with a supernatural creature and intuitively know exactly what it was, what it could do, and why it was contained.

This was a fairy, fairies have unfathomable reality warping magic, this little guy couldn’t do any of that right now because fairies are weak to nets. It was like Timmy’s mind was a Rubik’s Cube, and after years and years of unconsciously idling away at its squares, the puzzle had solved itself.

Timmy remembered everything.

He crouched down to better inspect the creature, who was beginning to sit upright. Looking at him up close, Timmy felt a horrible mixture of homesickness and sentimentality. This guy was near identical to the fairies he remembered from his childhood, down to the set of the head and the shape of the face.

At the thought of Cosmo, Wanda, and Poof, he had to restrain himself from asking this fairy if he knew them, if he knew what they were doing, how they were doing. He held his tongue, it was absurd to assume all fairies knew each other.

”Please let me go,” the low, smooth voice came as a bit of a surprise. The fairy was standing now, looking at Timmy expectantly.

He wanted to, at least on some level, but he knew exactly what was going to happen the moment he lifted that net. Once this fairy’s wand was back in order, he was going to erase Timmy’s memories. 

He’d just gotten his memories back, he wasn’t about to lose them again. At least, not without a fight. 

“Please, let me go,” the fairy faltered, pausing in order to select his next words very carefully “I have a family, I have a godkid.”

“I’m not gonna hurt you, I promise, I’m just being careful.” Timmy felt horrible, but he found himself reaching for a plank of cardboard and sliding it under the net. 

“You’re joking. You—“ the fairy growled in frustration “Kidnapping is a form of harm!”

”This isn’t a kidnapping, I’ll let you go. I just need to move you into my office before my wife and kids come home, which could be any minute now.” He was halfway to the house, using one hand to hold the net by the handle and using the other to keep the cardboard in place. The sliding glass door was unlocked, but it was going to present a problem anyway.

The fairy’s doll-like face was hard to read, and Timmy was out of practice, but there was no mistaking that expression for anything but flabbergasted betrayal. 

“You’re unbelievable! This is—“

”I don’t want to hurt you. I just want to talk,” Timmy promised, laying the makeshift trap on the ground and pinning the handle with his boot “if I let you go right now, best case scenario, you wipe my mind, but if I take you inside and we have a productive conversation like adults, we can maybe come up with something that’ll be mutually beneficial.”

The fairy just sighed.

Timmy picked the trap back up and shut the sliding glass door with his shoulder.

As he made his way up the stairs towards the office, the fairy spoke up. “What do you remember about your fairies?”

Timmy flinched. He made a mistake bringing up memory wiping. Clearly, this fairy had managed to intuit his whole backstory from that one slip up. Timmy had wanted to hide that he was a former godchild. He wanted to pull it out at the right moment to appeal to this guy’s emotions, or if he proved truly unreasonable, keep it close to his chest and pray that the memories wouldn’t be targeted by another mind wipe if the wiper didn’t know they existed.

He set the trap down on the office table and took a seat in his computer chair.

“I remember everything,” He finally answered “and I don’t wanna forget again.”

The fairy was looking around his office, eyes wide. He let his gaze drift over the family photos, framed law school accreditations, and graded comic books. “I don’t want you to forget again.”

His voice had gone very small, and there was a hidden meaning there, something that Timmy could almost place. 

“Uh, good! See, we’re already finding common ground. Do you have a name?” Timmy asked.

”You’re going to get me in so much trouble.” The fairy beat his wings in frustration, not hard enough to pull off of the table, but hard enough to make noise. It was a fierce little sound, like a hornet stuck on glue.

“Look, I think you’ve already figured out my deal. I used to be a godkid, I just got all my memories back, and I want you to help me find my family, my godfamily. Once I’m with them, I’ll let you go.”

Again, the fairy’s expression was hard to read. His mouth was open and there was something in his eyes that might have been either anger or pity. When he finally spoke, there were tears in his voice. “You have no idea how rich this is. You’re not just going to get me in trouble, you’re going to get yourself in trouble.” The fairy paced around his allotted space inside the net. “If you let me go now, I will leave without touching your memories. Really, I don’t think I could bring myself to do that to you.”

The fairy took a seat on his cardboard floor. “But, if you don’t let me go, I’m going to tell you something, and then we are both going to be stuck in a much larger, metaphorical butterfly net, together.”

Timmy thought about the offer, but mostly he thought about what this fairy could possibly have to tell him, beyond that, he found himself thinking about how profoundly familiar he found the little guy. Once he'd set the net down, the fairy's demeanor had shifted from fearful to something else entirely. His voice was pretty easy to read, and it was wrought with concern, not self-interest. Among the first thoughts Timmy had after finding the net was how much he looked like—

You have no idea how rich this is.

If he was wrong, he was going to look ridiculous, desperate, maybe somewhat narrow-minded, but if he was wrong, it wouldn’t matter and he’d be exactly where he currently was. If he was right— “I think I already know, what it is that you would tell me. You’re Poof, aren’t you?”

The fairy brought his knees up and rested an arm atop them, avoiding Timmy’s gaze as he nodded. “Nobody calls me that anymore. I changed my name years ago, er, no offense.”

Timmy did not take offense. On some level, he was embarrassed he’d looked at a baby and named it after an onomatopoeia in the first place. He began his next sentence with an absolutely pathetic laugh. “Heh, heyeah, so. Ah, so what’s your name then?”

”Peri, short for Periwinkle.”

Seeing Peri curled up in his makeshift trap, Timmy wanted to kick his own ass. He couldn’t believe it had taken him fifteen minutes to make the connection. It was so obvious, he didn’t think it was biologically possible for Peri to look any more like his parents, and he’d been thinking about that, and obstinately refusing to make anything of it.

Hand shaking and heart racing, he took hold of the net’s handle and lifted. It was hard to tell if it was trust or a guilty conscience that sent him into motion.

He didn’t know what would happen when the net was gone, but he knew it had to come up eventually. 

Chapter Text

Peri watched, equal parts relieved and tense as Timmy pulled the net away. For his part, Timmy looked wholly overwhelmed as he set the snare to rest, propped up against the office table. There was a weariness to him that Peri couldn’t quite place, it might have been situational, this was a stressful situation, but it was just as likely to be a side effect of being a thirty two year old human. 

With a soft sigh, Timmy wheeled back in his seat, putting a bit of distance between the two of them. Peri carefully stepped off the cardboard and onto the table. It was a bit of a mess, covered in manilla envelopes, sticky notes, and sketched-over printer paper. Every flat surface that wasn’t dominated by looseleaf documents was overtaken by knickknacks. Ceramic fish paperweights, shot glasses emblazoned with the names of random tourist traps, articulated action figures.

The office itself was relatively small and occupied a point between attic and room, two walls were flat and the other two slanted inward, meeting in the bare wooden rafters. Insulation peaked out from behind the wood paneling in a few places. A squat black computer tower sat between Peri and the desk portion of the tabletop, which was slightly more professional. The section of the table Peri stood on appeared to be a resting place for things Timmy didn’t know what to do with yet, magical creatures included.

Peri kicked off the ground. If he wanted to, he could have left right then and there, but only if he wanted to. He found himself hovering in place, awkwardly shifting his wand from hand to hand. Timmy watched the movement carefully, bracing himself for something.

Oh, right. “I won’t make you forget, I don’t know what I’m going to do about this, but I won’t do that.”

Timmy’s shoulders eased as he let out a breath. "I'm sorry, about the whole thing with the—yeah. I just turned, and I saw you there, and it was like my brain suddenly started working again, and also like my brain suddenly stopped working.”

He sounded nervous, he looked nervous too, wringing his hands together like he was attempting to squeeze out blood. After working over each knuckle, Timmy got up from the chair, and Peri was looking up again.

”I really should’ve recognized you. I was thinking it, I saw you and immediately started thinking about how much you looked just like Cosmo and Wanda, I was even thinking how you looked like, you." He was pacing now, plain brown boots beating a rhythm against the hardwood. "You know what I was thinking? I was going: it's been so long since I'd last seen a fairy, my facial recognition must be shot. That's too big of a coincidence and I'm clearly desperate."

"So, all of your memories came back the moment you saw me?" Peri asked. This whole reunion was incredibly surreal to him, and his perspective didn't involve any major shifts in worldview, he couldn't begin to imagine how this felt from Timmy's position. One minute he was a normal human feeding his fish, the next, his whole understanding of the universe had been reassembled.

"Yep, everything. I think. I can't tell you what I don't know." Timmy's attempt at levity only disclosed how uncomfortable he really was. "Obviously, I remember you and your parents, I remember time traveling, going into comic books, an alien fell in love with Vicky, most of that was before you, I remember my mom and dad found you one time."

"I don't remember that?"

"You were like, two months old, max. There's no way you would remember that." The pacing continued, in fact, he was picking up speed as he spoke "I tried to make one year repeat forever, oh, oh man. Well, I suppose it's more like I made Cosmo—" He stopped in his tracks and turned to face Peri "How are your parents doing, by the way?"

"They're doing good, they're good at doing good." Reason and pragmatism told Peri to leave it at that, but the curt, clipped answer felt insincere. "They retired for a while and traveled around a lot. Honestly, I sort of lost track of them for a while. I bumped into them earlier this year, after they came out of retirement. They have an apartment now, it's connected to a whole normal human apartment complex and everything. That's not as odd as it sounds, they're spending most of their free time in human disguises nowadays. I think they're friends with the neighbors."

"Huh. An apartment here on earth," something revelatory was worming its way into Timmy's voice "where is it?"

"Look, I know what you're getting at, and I absolutely cannot take you there." Peri allowed himself to consider how exactly he would go about sneaking his godbrother into his parent's apartment, in his mind's eye it looked like something out of an eighties kids movie, sneaking a massive human around the furniture to show him a few old scrapbooks and souvenirs. "The more people who are in on this, the more likely it is this gets out."

"Okay, we can work around that. You said they have human disguises, I could bump into them at the grocery store or something."

Peri landed atop the computer tower, leaving shoeprints in the dust. "No. I'm sorry, but I can't. We both know you won't stop at a distance—"

"It could be as simple as," Timmy walked up to Peri's perch, donning a practiced smile and a certain air of showmanship "Hey there, this is silly, but I've been thinking about how much fun it would be to invite some total strangers to my Christmas party this year, and you two look like you'd be great company to have at a party. It's mainly a work party with a few law firm friends of mine, but I host it at my place, aaand opening one's home to strangers feels like a nice way of getting into the seasonal spirit."

Confidence did not make his words sound any less preposterous, actually, it might have had an exacerbating effect.

"That's a really bad idea," Peri said.

"I can workshop it," his tone was pressing, and Peri was looking up at a colossal human wall. Timmy didn't seem to understand, if he wanted to keep his memories, his best option was staying far away from all things magical. If this innocent plan escalated into some kind of scheme and he got caught, Peri was pretty sure Jorgen was going to tag the man like a problem bear.

"No, I don't think you—"

Downstairs the front door swung open, followed by a clear "Hey honey, we're home."

Both brothers fell silent, their deliberation all but forgotten. Timmy looked to the open office door, then to Peri, and made a placating gesture as he moved to shut it.

"I'm in the attic, having a minor family emergency. I'll be in a video call for the next few hours, maybe all night." he was halfway to the door, but stopped at the sound of footsteps upon the stair. Instead of pulling the door closed,  he stepped out into the hall and half-closed the door behind him.

"Please don't tell me your parents are back in Vegas." Timmy's wife spoke with pure apprehension. "I really don't want to deal with any of that again, I thought we were gonna have to call the credit card company. I thought we were gonna have to call a taxidermist."

"Nope, thankfully. Well they might be in Vegas, but that's none of my concern. That was their last shot, if they called me up again, I wouldn't answer," there was a pause, and then "I sort of bumped into my half-brother, I have him on hold right now."

Peri startled at the direct mention of him, producing an undignified chirp of stridulation as his wings puffed out. Even though Timmy had a tidy partial truth on hand, he was getting alarmed.

"I didn't know you even had siblings?"

"Yeah, it's really complicated, he's ten years younger than me and we've been distant for over a decade. There's stuff there that I definitely don't have permission to go around telling people."

"Oh my, is he—"

"It's definitely not as bad as that sounds, it's just, a whole lot and none of it's my place. I should probably—"

More footsteps up the stairs, followed by a young boy's voice, "Can you show him Koda?"

"Ah, you have her. Alright Jimmy, sure, I'll show him Koda, real quick," Timmy pulled back into the office, hands clasped tightly together. He hooked the door fully closed with his foot. Peri wondered how suspicious that was.

"So, Po-Peri, you're fine with rats, right?"

Peri realized what was happening and he laughed. "Show me Koda."

Setting his arms above the table, Timmy slowly pulled his hands apart to reveal a small, black and brown rat. Koda was about the size of Timmy's palm and colored like a rottweiler dog. She was quick to explore the new space presented to her, when she noticed Peri, she trained onto him with dark eyes, aware that she was looking at a new sort of animal. More fascinating than the rodent herself, was the quiet care Timmy was taking to keep the little mammal on his hands without disturbing her. Peri reached out one careful hand to pet her, she decided to allow it, after a thorough sniffing. "Hey, did you see the koi?"

Peri nodded, and Koda watched the motion. "Yeah, nice pond. I would've loved something like that as a kid."

His wording clearly took Timmy off-guard. He reddened around the cheeks and ears. "I was only ten, I didn't know any better. I know now, half the reason I started keeping koi was because I felt so bad about keeping three goldfish in a bowl when I was a kid."

Peri wasn't entirely sure what Timmy was getting at, "You do realize we weren't actually goldfish, right? We could make our own room in there."

"I didn't know that for the past fifteen years. I thought I had a goldfish body count, it stressed me out. One day the only positive influence in my life was gone, and the only thing I could channel that emotion into was thinking I'd killed my fish."

"I'm so sorry."

"Well, it's not your fault." He cupped his hands around Koda and made for the exit. Peri considered how insane this conversation would sound if Timmy's wife and son were still eavesdropping, but then he heard solitary, heavy footsteps descend the stairs.

Alone in his brother's room, Peri stayed behind, fighting the urge to follow behind to snoop. He could snoop plenty from within the office. Flitting from the desktop to a standing cabinet, Peri magicked open a drawer and begun to rifle through its content.

It contained nothing but dry reports written in impenetrable legalese, he got bored halfway through a mimeograph of an audio transcript of an arrest after a bar fight and shut the drawer. He darted over to a dusty Crimson Chin action figure and cleaned it off with the cuff of his sleeve. There were a few scant photos nailed to the two flat walls, the most eye-catching among them was a vacation photo featuring the whole family standing in front of a mountain split by a massive crater. He focused on the family, two siblings, a boy and a girl of about the same age, Timmy was standing with a dark haired woman behind the two of them, they were all bundled to the nines.

Peri allowed himself a stripe of envy-like longing, which was ridiculous, because even if the world was perfect and just and nobody ever slipped out of the life of a loved one, people still wouldn't be chomping at the bit to invite random twenty year old uncles on cross-country trips.

however, the sense he'd been robbed didn't fade. Peri was more of a rule-follower than a rule-breaker, if he absolutely had to make that distinction. Up until this point, he had been a law abiding citizen, but now he was dead set on breaking this one rule. Of course he was going to return to Dev before the boy could get himself in any real trouble, but as soon as he had more free time, he knew he would be heading back here. An absolutely manic part of his brain was considering going downstairs and introducing himself.

No, that was way too much. If anything that thought scared the reason back into him. Greater familiar connections were a bad idea, but this, on its own, just might be sustainable.

Timmy returned carrying two amber colored bottles. He opened one with his teeth and placed it on the desk, pointing at the other in his hand. "I know you're twenty two, but I gotta be honest I have no idea if you can drink this."

Truthfully, Peri had about three sips of alcohol over the course of his entire college experience, and certainly not a single sip of human-made alcohol. "Well, I'm sure in theory I can drink a quarter of my body weight in beer, but I don't want to test that theory."

"Oh." Timmy picked a shot glass off the table and very, very carefully poured his beer into it, maintaining a perfect forty five degree angle. Again, Peri was impressed something that large could be so dexterous. Timmy placed the glass a foot away from him, and stared. "You are fully grown, aren't you?"

Peri gawked at him. "Of course I'm fully grown, like you said, I'm twenty two. I'm not trying to get one over on you, if that's what you're asking, this was your idea."

He took the glass with two hands, conscientious not to spill it as he flew higher.

"I only ask because I'm sure I remember Cosmo and Wanda being bigger." He took a small sip from his bottle, then prepared a separate shot glass of beer, downing that in a single gulp.

"Wow, I wonder why." Peri took a sip of his own glass, it tasted like if bread could curdle. He couldn't tell if he was pulling a face."Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure you're the single biggest human I've ever seen."

"That can't be right, I'm only six two. Maybe that's above the average, but c'mon, there's football linebackers, and hockey players, and really tall guys in elevators."

"I don't spend a lot of time this close to adult humans. It's not just height though, you're like two Dale Dimmadomes put together." The same manic part of his brain that suggested going downstairs was contemplating whether it was against Da Rules to send a much larger human with more experience parenting in to straighten out a godchild's horrible father. If it wasn't, he was pretty sure such a ploy would get it added.

"I-What? Is that a normal unit of measurement for you? Is there a tech mogul measurement system somewhere?" Timmy joked.

"No, he's—" as the words escaped his mouth, Peri knew he had made a mistake, "he's my godson's father, I guess he's my default idea of a human adult."

That sounded absolutely awful, much worse than it was meant to sound, but luckily Timmy had no idea what exactly he'd accidentally insinuated.

Timmy collapsed into the computer chair. "I figured you were here for my kids."

Peri definitely pulled a face there. "Don't say that, this whole room is full of pictures of your kids, you stopped to show me the rat at your son's behest. I'm sure you're doing fine, you're probably doing better than me."

He landed on the desk and leaned against the monitor, taking another sip of his beer. "I started as a godparent a few months ago, and don't know if I'm any good at this. This kid, he needs, I don't know what he needs because if I did, I would be able to give it to him. But that's not even true, he needs his father to love him, but I can't make that happen. I'm useless, I can't do anything and even if I could, that wouldn't fix anything, because, if Dale Dimmadome did love his son, he'd just transfer all of his awful to his son and turn him into a horrible mini-Dale. This poor kid, he says he wants to be like his old man, but only because that's all he knows how to aspire to. He doesn't want to be alone, but he doesn't want my company." In an act of pure benevolence, he did not say that Timmy should have left Dale in the lemonade dungeon, even if he was thinking it.

When did his glass get half empty?

Suddenly there was a very large hand around his shoulders. "I get it. I do. C'mon look at me, I'm a defense attorney, and the first thing I did after passing the bar was sign up with a local public defendant's association while I tried to find a better gig, and believe me, I know that feeling that you're making things worse for the one person your whole job revolves around helping. That was ten years ago, and today I am a lot better at my job. You're gonna live for thousands of years, if you keep doing what you're doing you're going to get better at it"

Peri grumbled, "You're definitely better at giving vaguely parental advice."

Timmy took the drink from his hands as he leaned onto the desk. A hand and a forearm brought Peri into an awkward, lopsided hug. They both attempted to rearrange themselves to make the hug more practical, and eventually Peri was sitting on the crook of Timmy's arm, held tight to his chest. He batted a scruffy chin away before he could get fully comfortable. "Man, you need a shave."

"I got it, I'm working tomorrow anyway." Timmy yawned, displaying a snaggletoothed upper jaw he had almost grown into.

The buzz of a cellphone cut off the embrace. Peri landed on Timmy's knee as he checked the notification. The air evacuated his lungs as he saw the message he'd received from Wanda.

-Big blackout in Fairy World today. So we're spending the night at the Wells', having a normal human sleepover! At least, that was the plan.-

Attached was an image of Cosmo, as a fairy, asleep on a human-sized cot in the middle of what Peri assumed to be the Wells' living room. He was partly obscured by the blanket, and by Hazel Wells, who was curled around him, holding him like a live teddy bear.

It was a charming photo, and Peri would have appreciated it if he wasn't fixated on the first sentence of the message. He looked back up at Timmy. That had to be it, didn't it? They had caused this blackout by creating an unplanned surge in human belief.

His phone buzzed again.

-It looks like the power's going to be back tomorrow morning- -Probably- -Just a heads up in case you pop home tonight-

He sent a simple thumbs up reaction, afraid that anything more detailed than that might give something away.

"Is everything okay?" Timmy asked, leaning in as close as he could without jostling his knee.

"All good," it might have been a lie, Peri wasn't certain "hey, do you want to see a picture of my parent's new godkid?"

An half-concealed orchestra of emotions ignited upon the human's face before he played it off casually. "Yeah sure, show me."

Peri selected the image and zoomed in, confident the context wouldn't strike Timmy as noteworthy. For all he knew, that was just Cosmo and Wanda's normal apartment. Peri second-guessed his judgement when he saw just how meticulously Timmy was poring over the picture, taking it in like there would be a quiz later. Finally, he looked away and leaned back into the chair. At least he wasn't grabbing at the phone.

"You shouldn't have showed me that, now I'm jealous of a little girl." He sighed.

"Well maybe I'm a little jealous of my parents." Peri moved back to the desk and retrieved his drink.

"You're getting texts from them right now?"

"Yeah, you know how it is." He went in for another sip, but after saying that, he could only taste his own foot. No, of course Timmy didn't 'know how it is'. Peri didn't remember a single thing about Timmy's parents, aside from the hazy understanding that there were other humans who lived in that house. He couldn't say if they were comparable to Dale, or horrible in entirely different ways. The prelude to an anecdote he had overheard in the hallway didn't inspire optimism on that front.

Embarrassed as Peri was, Timmy didn't pick up on the transgression. He was finishing up his beer and looking over some of the documents on the table. Peri flew over, hovering to the left of the human's shoulder. When Timmy noticed him there, he took one hand and roughed it though Peri's hair. When Peri's hair snapped back into place unassisted, they laughed.

"I should get going soon, it's getting late." Peri said.

"Ah," Timmy stopped what he was doing and turned to face him "can I get your phone number then?"

It was a blatantly bad idea, but that didn't stop Peri from conjuring up a sticky note with his number. For an instant, Timmy looked around for some sign of slight of hand, he was totally unacclimated to magic. By the time his brain caught up to his reaction he was already inputting the number. "How do you spell your name?"

"Like Periwinkle, P-E-R-I"

"Like Perpugilliam?"

"What?" Peri didn't even know what that meant, but he could glean from Timmy's crooked smile that it was meant to be teasing.

He held a hand up placatingly, "It's friendly fire, I mean, my middle name's Tiberius."

It suddenly clicked, slotting into place with a recollection of summer nights spent watching cheap sci-fi. He drew a few more connections while he was at it. "Wait, please tell me your son is not named James Tiberius Turner."

"No, of course not, his middle name's Jack. I wouldn't do that" Timmy laughed.

"Well if anyone's allowed some misgivings about your child-naming skills, it's me."

"In my defense, I was ten, and anyone could have stopped me." Timmy was legitimately apologetic, which only made things funnier to the both of them.

Peri's glass was empty, and he set it down beside his brother's keyboard. He was just stalling for time now, he could think of no further conversational detours, and it was already dark. Dev was surely wondering if he had actually quit this time.

They stared out the window as a soft silence fell over the room. The fish pond was visible from this height and the water was mostly dark. Occasionally the shape of a large mottled carp would drift into the glow of the patio lights.

Chapter Text

Timmy awoke in his office chair, feeling like he’d spent the night slumped over in an upright position. Despite that, he felt oddly good. Perhaps the unusual pressure on his spine released some tension he’d been holding in his shoulders. He felt lighter, that was undeniable.

The previous night came back to him in a great torrent. He stood up, questioning his sanity as he pulled out his phone to confirm that there was indeed a new number on file. 

If that wasn’t enough, there were tiny footprints in dust atop his computer tower. Each one about as long as the tip of his thumb to the center of his palm. Like a lunatic, he took a photograph of the tracks. He set the picture as Peri's contact image.

Even looking at the evidence in front of him, it all felt deeply unreal. About as credible as casts of sasquatch tracks and far too good to be true. Timmy had spent the last fifteen years of his life somewhere on the cynical side of skeptical, not even actively so, he was so fully dismissive of the idea of the supernatural he didn't dedicate any time to thinking about the topic. Now he was wondering if his disinterest in the topic was part of the magic that had forced him to forget.

Because magic was a real thing, and more than that, it was directly involved in his life. 

In the past, he'd stopped to consider that it was a small miracle he was not a horribly bitter man. The first eighteen years of his life were a cavalcade of unpleasantries, the only time his parents had ever celebrated his birthday was the day they'd kicked him out of the house with a college fund and a handshake. It could have been worse. At least they had wanted him to be successful, they just didn't want him around.

Whenever Timmy remembered all the nights he'd spent cooped up in his room alone, there was always some level of emotional detachment, bad things had happened to him, but it wasn't like he was angry about it. Now he knew why. Suddenly he had nine years worth of happy childhood memories floating about in his head. It felt great.

He got ready for work, shaved, brushed his teeth, put on a clean suit.

Tootie caught him in the hall and immediately noticed his good mood. "Busy night, huh?" she asked, as she straightened his tie. He was perfectly capable of tying it himself, he thought, but a ritual was a ritual.

"It's funny, I didn't realize how much I missed him until I bumped into him yesterday." Long ago Timmy had realized that there was no lie more effective than the truth, worded very carefully. Ideally, he wouldn't have lie at all, but, things were not that simple. Even if he could be sure telling her everything was the right thing to do, the evidence he had on hand was less than convincing. It would have been starting the morning with the announcement that he'd gone completely insane.

What could he theoretically say? 'Hey honey, do you remember the strangely specific form of madness our fourth grade teacher had? Well, do you want to see the fairy footprints in the attic?'

He couldn't outright dismiss the possibility that he was going crazy. It didn't feel like he'd lost his mind, but that's not supposed to be the kind of thing one can intuit about themselves. Breakfast was microwavable egg and cheese bowls, and over the table talk was light, Timmy struggled to focus on it.

Jenny and Jimmy had gotten into a territorial dispute in the living room, having mutually caught the other in the act of stealing from the other's book bag. It was a matter of novelty book fair erasers, the really long kind.

"They're erasers, you can split them in half and both halves will work fine," Timmy's suggestion was met with such horror that it inadvertently ended the fight "or you can trade them, if you both want the other one."

They elected not to switch erasers. On the way out, Jimmy pulled on Timmy's sleeve, stopping him in his tracks. "Mom says you have a brother who's way younger than you. How young is he? Is he our age?"

Timmy's stomach clenched in his gut and he wasn't sure why. "He's twenty two."

"See I told you he was an adult. If he was our age he'd be living with us." Jenny jeered.

"Whatever. Can he come over?"

"How come you never said anything about him, does he have problems?"

"Does he even know we exist? Does he live with your parents?"

The twins were on a roll, whenever Timmy thought he had an angle of approach for one question, they'd hit him with a new one. The best strategy he could come up with was a total termination, which had to sound authoritative but not dismissive. "I don't know if he'll be able to come over. I hope we can figure out some way to make that work, but it might be hard."

"Is he in jail?" Jenny asked.

"No. He just got his first job, and it’s very stressful, so he doesn’t have much time to go visit anyone.” 

“What does he do?” Jimmy asked.

”Child psychology, human development, that sort of thing,” Timmy smiled as the twins interest faded around his words. Again, ostensibly, debatably, theoretically, not a lie. Just a very cautious truth. "I won't say you'll never meet him, at this point I don't really know what's going to happen."

That was entirely true. He had no idea where this was going to go. As an adult he had a much sharper sense of risk assessment, he knew there were plenty of ways this could go horribly for him. Furthermore. the thought that he was legitimately going mad had not left his mind.

He wanted to say that last night was the single strangest thing to ever happen to him, which surely wasn't right. When he was eight years old, he was assigned fairy godparents because he was so miserable the universe had noticed, and they granted his wild, reckless wishes with minimal complaints, they acted as his primary parental figures, and that was normal to him. It was a lot easier to accept the outlandish when one was a child and surrounded by affirmations of that world, now he was thirty, with nothing but memories and dusty shoeprints.

And a phone number, he didn't dare call the phone number. He was going to call, eventually, but he didn't know what he was going to say. He didn't know what he was going to do if the number turned up unresponsive.

On the way to work, Timmy found himself flanked by large pickups, including one blue Dodge tailing him by a matter of feet. It should have been frustrating, but the only feeling he could muster was incredulity. Didn't they know that he was the craziest guy in traffic today? Oh, sure, they had deep dish wheels and bumper stickers blocking their back windows, but he was living in an entirely different reality from everyone else on the road. It lent him a strange, manic confidence. He applied pressure to the accelerator, cutting forward, then left, into the fast lane. He made it to work in record time.

The Bali & Boligard offices were located about a quarter mile off of the highway, located within a stately brown block of a building, sat beside a parking garage of equal size to the offices proper. It looked like the platonic ideal of a law firm, or maybe Timmy was so used to the building it had wholly eclipsed its peers in his mind. Either way, he could find his parking place on total autopilot, which was proving useful today, his mind was unprecedentedly preoccupied. There was nothing he could do to keep his mind from wandering, perpetually tracing over his childhood in the hopes of unearthing some new buried memory.

Timmy had forgotten a lot. On some level he had always known that he was missing large portions of his childhood, he would've brought it up to his therapist, if he'd ever gone to a therapist. He hadn't. He supposed he'd been afraid of what he'd find.

All of the pleasant experiences of his youth had been tucked just out of his reach for over a decade, it was a relief, he was relived, and also a little livid. He knew he still couldn't remember everything, which was normal, nobody could remember nine years with perfect recall, but circumstances had made him paranoid. Worst thing was, he still couldn't remember exactly how his mind had been wiped. He'd woke up one day, feeling very alone.

He marched through the lobby, to the elevator, and saw that he wouldn't be alone on his way up. Lena Kovich held the automatic door open with a boot, smiling a sly, sharklike grin. She recalibrated when she saw the intense look on his face, trying and failing to match his energy. Truthfully neither of them were sure what emotion he was currently conveying.

"Wow Turner, looking, er, perfervid. Is something going on?" Her voice imparted a mixture of concern and self-interest. Kovich was a friend, in a work sense. Timmy invited her to his Christmas parties, and she always brought twenty dollar gifts for the twins.

"No. Nothing. It's funny, when I got up I was in a great mood, then the implications hit me."

"Say no more, I know the feeling all too well."

She followed him out of the elevator, which was normal, their offices were right next to each other, it still felt like he was being chased.

When Timmy was finally alone in his workplace, he took a deep breath, steeled himself, and attempted to rally up a normal work mindset. He sat at his computer and opened up a small army of tabs, half of which he knew exactly what to do with given the case at hand, the other half he opened out of habit. For some reason he pulled up the White Pages. That wasn't one of his normal work tabs. He was working on a wiretapping case, he already had the phone numbers and addresses of everyone involved.

He didn't know what had motivated him to open that tab, but now that he was there, staring at the site's front page, a bad idea sprung to the forefront of his mind. Last night, Peri had told him Cosmo and Wanda were currently living at a normal, earthly apartment building. It was perfectly legal to look people up using digital tools, hell, he was pretty sure looking up estranged family members was the most morally sound use case for the technology. It wasn't as if he would have to deal with false positives, 'Cosmo Cosma' and 'Wanda Fairywinkle' were extremely unique names. He tried a few searches with varying last name hyphenations, and turned up no results. Given the information available to him, he could've been missing anything. There was no guarantee this building was located within the USA. They could be using aliases.

Then it hit him, he was looking for renters, not owners, he was going to have to go through the postal service if he wanted results. It was still a long shot, but Timmy leaned in as he pulled up Melissa Lookups. No point in giving up this soon.

Oh. He found it on his first try. He wasn't expecting to get anywhere with this, now he was looking at a tidy little address. It was close too, like, one hour drive close. Timmy stood up and began to wander around his office, his workload all but forgotten. He took a picture of the address with his phone, then entered it into a search engine. There were listings for other apartments in the same building, pictures of the building too. It was an old but stately brick structure with no parking in sight. He ran the location through Google Streetview. Then he stopped himself, fully aware of how obsessive his behavior was.

Timmy slumped back in his seat and closed all irrelevant tabs. He had to stop thinking about it, he had business to attend to. Apparently his foray into cyberstalking did something to quell his hindbrain, he slipped back into casework with ease.

Hours of silence, interrupted only by the clacking of his mechanical keyboard, troubled only by normal work problems.

The office phone rang, which was odd, nobody who used that number would be calling him at noon on a Thursday. Most of the time, that phone was nothing more than a fancy nineteen-nineties themed paperweight, a relic of a bygone century. Timmy figured one of his bosses was trying to reach him.

Instead, he heard an unfamiliar female voice, indistinct, but distinctly secretarial, "Your client will be seeing you shortly, Mr. Turner."

"What," he prompted, it was more of an automatic reaction than a question, "you have to make an appointment, I can't take walk-ins." It didn't occur to him that the call might have been supernatural in essence, even if he abstractly knew that magic was real, his brain was not wired to expect it. It came as a real surprise when Jorgen Von Strangle charged through his office door.

Shocked, dumbfounded, and honestly a little bit scared, Timmy completely froze up. His panicked lack of reaction was a blessing in disguise, it allowed him to assess his situation without revealing anything he wanted to keep to himself. Worst case scenario, this was connected to his recent activity on various people finding sites, which was irrecoverably incriminating, it also meant that Jorgen had access to a government-level surveillance program, which felt dreadfully plausible.

Timmy put the phone down, slowly, he was buying time for himself, trying to formulate some practical plan of action. He took in Jorgen's appearance and noticed the fairy was disguised as a human. It didn't change much, but he lacked his crown, instead, he sported a short white beard. It might have been part of the disguise, it might have been a normal change in hairstyle. Disregarding the small details, Timmy understood the fact that Jorgen was disguised meant he might not know what Timmy knew about magic.

Plan of action: play dumb.

"I'm very sorry, but I can't take up another client right now, you can go down to the front office and they'll schedule something for you. I can't guarantee you'll end up with me but-"

"No Mr. Turner, it is very important that I speak with you now." Jorgen's voice was exactly as Timmy remembered it, loud.

"Oh. Why?"

Jorgen produced a parcel of paper, and laid it out on Timmy's desk. He did not remove his hand after putting it down, so Timmy had to lean forward to inspect it. It was a contract detailing what a renter was allowed to do with a rented electric scooter.

"I need you to look this over. Now. Confirm it is legally binding." Jorgen lifted his hand off the papers.

"Uh, that's not really what I do here. You could save money by hiring a paralegal." He took the contract in hand, the thing was overly intricate and prone to repetition, it had clearly been written to take up as much of his time as possible.

"I hire the best, money is no obstacle."

Timmy wondered if he would get paid for this charade, the odds did not fall in his favor. Jorgen took a seat in the chair opposite Timmy's, leaned back, and began a line of interrogation. "So, Mr. Turner, where were you last night?"

"Home."

"And earlier that day?"

"I went out and bought some fish food, they were having a buy two get one off sale at the aquatics store. I keep koi."

"And did anything unusual happen to you coming to or from the aquatics store." Jorgen took out a little notebook and wrote something down.

Timmy looked up from the busywork, he was pulling a face. He wasn't worried about seeming suspicious, anyone would pull a face in this scenario. Honestly, it would be well within the sphere of normal human behavior to run out of the room, he just didn't think he'd actually make it to the door before getting tackled by Jorgen. "Yesterday was a normal day for me. Why do you ask?"

"No reason, just making chit-chat."

"Mh-hmm." Timmy began speedreading the document.

"Tell me, do you believe in the supernatural?" Jorgen asked.

"Uh," Timmy attempted to summon up the exact answer he would have provided on Tuesday, "I guess not, I don't spend my time thinking about that sort of thing. I don't really have any skin in the game"

"You don't have skin in the game?" Now Jorgen was the one making a face, and it was more confused than suspicious.

"Alright, let me come up with a hypothetical. Okay, Bigfoot — wait, not Bigfoot, that's a bad example. Okay, lets say we send the first human to Mars, and this guy calls back, and says 'Hey, I don't know if you know this, but the earth is flat, and it's turtles all the way down', so we run the numbers, we send out spacecraft to check this out, and it's true. The earth is a disk, supported on the backs of an infinite stack of turtles. They don't have to be in a line, it could be a turtle pyramid, picture it however you want. As far as anyone can tell, the world used to be round, but it's all turtles now."

"You had fun in college, didn't you?" Jorgen interrupted.

Timmy narrowed his eyes, but kept talking. He wanted to rant at someone, and he had a volunteer, there was no stopping him now. "I exist in this hypothetical, and I'm a normal, average human, I have a family, and a job, and I turn on the news and now I know about the turtles. I might be in a state of shock, but no matter what, I'm still gonna be doing my best to take care of my family, and that's gonna involve going to work to support them. So my routine doesn't change. The turtles do not know I exist, and I don't know if the turtles would want to know I exist. It might be a lot of stress for the turtles to know that all of civilization is balanced on their backs, y'know?"

He hadn't meant for that to turn into a coded confession, but it definitely covered his bases in the event that Jorgen did know what he knew and was gauging how much of a threat he was. Jorgen was writing something down, something long.

"Why was Bigfoot a bad example?"

"It's not even supernatural, it's only a big ape, so it didn't fit the question. The question you asked." Truthfully, he had wanted something of a much larger scale.

Jorgen wrote something else down, then he sighed.

"I don't believe in Bigfoot either, by the way. Just making that clear." Fully convinced he'd blown it, Timmy went back to reading the contract.

"Why not?"

"It's improbable? I don't think something like that can live in the woods, basically all over the country, without being detected. Eventually some asshole would shoot one." Was that the wrong thing to say? Did that make him sound terrible? He couldn't tell, but the silence that followed was furiously uncomfortable.

"Thank you for your time, Mr. Turner. I think I have everything I required from from you." Jorgen stood, and donned a pair of black sunglasses.

Timmy's stomach clenched in his chest and his heart drummed in his throat. When Jorgen pulled a slender device from his cargo pants, he couldn't help it, he tensed, jolting back in his chair.

"You can relax sir, this isn't a weapon."

"Wait, please wait!" He begged.

-

Jorgen took the mock contract and pocketed his neuralyzer as he left the room. Once in the hall, he pulled out his long range communication device. "It wasn't him — I'm sure — Be glad it isn't Turner, that would have been a total nightmare."

A young human woman stopped as heard his words, her blonde hair went askew as she whipped her head around to face him, "Turner? Is he okay? I saw him in the elevator today and I swear he—"

"He is fine, maybe a little busy." Jorgen said, tone clipped. He didn't have time for this, now that he had ruled out suspect number one, he was going to have to get creative.

-

For a few moments, the world was nothing more than a suggestion, then Timmy came back to reality. He was sat in his office, alone. It felt like novacane, whatever it was. The dizziness faded, and he looked at the clock. He'd been asleep at the desk for two hours. With a shake of the mouse, his computer flicked out of sleep mode, exactly where it was two hours ago.

What had even caused that? Sure he'd slept upright the night before, but he'd managed a normal eight hours on that chair. Could one experience sleeping in a chair set someone up to fall asleep in chairs more often? Did he have coffee with breakfast? He legitimately could not remember.

Regardless of the answers to any of those questions, he had just lost good portion of the day to his impromptu catnap. He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and went back to work. Beneath him, his phone buzzed. Apparently willing to lose more time, Timmy fished it out of his pocket.

It was a good thing he took it out, Peri was texting him.

-Hey! How are you?-

-Good- -I'm at work-

-Oh. Me too, kind of. I'm disguised waiting for the last class of the day to end."

Wait, he was disguised, as in, shapeshifted into an alternate form, and he was somehow texting like that? The logistics present here were confounding. -I just fell asleep siting up at my desk- -Second time this has happened in the past 24 hours-

-Does that happen to you often?-

-Nope- -I may be a little stressed- -Which isn't your fault-

After sending that last barrage of texts, Timmy watched Peri's typing indicator flicker on and off. Unable to contain his curiosity any longer, Timmy bit the bullet and asked how that worked. -If you're disguised as something right now, how are you messaging me-

-Magic?- -I'm not physically texting, just sending you signals. It probably makes a lot more sense from my perspective.

It was a better explanation than Timmy had expected. He almost understood what was going on. -Huh, neat- -I'm going to have to get back to work though, if I don't get anything done today I'll get assigned a roommate- -We can talk later-

-Alright, good luck!-

-You too!- -I mean it man-

Relief warmed Timmy's mind as he re-returned to work. He was hoping Peri would be the one to initiate conversation, he just didn't know how to begin. Of course that had still been awkward, text chains always started out a little awkward, it was a start.

More relief reached him as he managed to catch up with his missed workload. By the time he clocked out, he had a good array of sources citing his client's claims, and a decent load of notes. Most importantly, it didn't look like he'd spent the day sleeping and texting.

On the way to the parking garage, he crossed paths with Lena Kovich once again. She was waiting for him, actually, her and Cody Suarez, another Christmas party alumn. They were both leaning against Cody's glossy white supra, gravely whispering at each other. When they saw Timmy approaching, their faces fell. It looked like an intervention.

"What was with that guy outside your office?" She asked.

"What guy?"

"Lena saw some huge guy coming out of your office, ranting and raving about you on the phone. Total stranger, shouldn't have been up there. I thought there was no way, because I would have seen him too, 'cause i was in the same hall right after her. So I went and looked at the security footage," Cody pulled out his phone and pulled up a video thumbnail of a clip he'd taken of a crt monitor displaying overhead footage of the office halls, "and check this guy out."

Timmy paled. The image quality was horrendous, but he recognized the man onscreen immediately. Without a trace of a doubt, that was Jorgen Von Strangle.

Cody played the video, "Watch this, this is where it starts, he steps out of your room, passes Kovich, goes down the hall, there he goes. Then I come in, I step out from behind the exact corner he just went down. I didn't see him. I'm sure you're thinking—'

Lena butted in, "We checked the camera for that hallway, he never shows up. It's just footage of Suarez turning the corner."

"That's—Wow."

"Did you see him, in your office? Because coming out of there is where he first shows up." Lena said.

"No. I didn't see him at all." Timmy knew how weak his voice sounded, but he didn't really care. He had not been asleep two hours, he was missing two hours. He might have been missing something more. It seemed like his childhood memories remained intact. There was no way of being sure. He could no longer tell if there were only three people in this parking lot. The paranoia was catching, and soon everyone was looking around, visibly distressed.

"Do you know what that was?" Cody asked.

"No clue." Timmy lied.

Going home was out of the question, whatever level of danger was present, he didn't want to bring it near Tootie and the twins. Contacting Peri was an option. Timmy doubted his brother would be able to provide much help, and there was no use in implicating him if he didn't have to. He wasn't out of options, against his better judgement, he remembered the address he'd found and photographed. It was very obviously his best move.

It began to rain, it began to pour.

Chapter Text

"Alright. Both of you guys, forget about this. Don't press it, don't push it, don't tell anyone, let me handle it. Just, forget." Timmy could appreciate the hypocrisy in his words as he moved away from his coworkers, hands raised placatingly. Everyone knew he was hiding something, that was clear. He turned, not quite running away, but not walking either.

"Can you handle it?" Lena called out as he left.

"Well, I hope so!"

A sharp, cold wind brought a draft of rain into the parking garage, it didn't hit Timmy directly, but it produced a fine mist that permeated the air. By the time he reached his car, he was chilled to the bone and slightly damp, his neck was sticky against the leather car seat. It was impossible to tell what was sweat and what was mist. Sitting alone and inert in the car was making his heart race. He hadn't felt this helpless in decades, not since he was a kid alone with his babysitter.

In the distance, lightning illuminated a cloud. If the thunder came, he didn't hear it. He wasn't moving and his brain was screaming a thousand different obscenities at him, giving commands his body wouldn't heed.

Starting the car and shifting it out of park was an uphill battle.

Once he pulled away from the concrete half-wall, he parked again.

He couldn't just disappear. That was a surefire way to send Tootie into a frenzy trying to find him, and he half-believed that she'd manage to track him down somehow. No, he had to leave a message. He practiced his little spiel in the rear view mirror. It didn't matter how he looked, but it mattered how he sounded, and when he heard his voice crack on the first go, he knew practice had been a good choice.

When he called for real, he reached voice mail, it was better this way, he wouldn't have to answer any hard questions. His little family emergency had expanded into something more serious, he was fine, but he was going to be needed elsewhere for a bit.

Timmy considered ending it with a jape about the last time he'd had a family emergency, the hours they'd spent at the airport waiting for his parents, the gambling debt, that thing with the deer, instead he ended it with an "I love you."

Then he pulled up the picture he'd taken of the apartment address and entered that location into his car's GPS. Thunder clashed overhead. Timmy descended the parking garage and drove out into the mess. He turned the radio off, whatever song was playing sounded like community theatre.

It was getting late and the roads were quieter than usual due to rain, which gave Timmy liberty to slam his foot on the accelerator once he reached the freeway. He wasn't sure if he wanted to draw out this drive for all it was worth, or if he wanted to speed to reach his destination sooner. In the abstract, he really, really wanted this, so much so that it was clouding his decision-making. He'd wanted this from the start and it was Peri who had talked him out of it.

However, despite all the abuse it had taken in the last twenty four hours, he still had a rational part of his brain, and it was reminding him just how unexpected and uninvited he was. Obviously, Cosmo and Wanda had moved on with their lives. Peri had done very well to show him that picture of Cosmo with their new godkid, it was an ice cold cup of perspective. A perfectly crafted reminder that he was not the center of the universe.

Still, he held down on the gas, racing against the rain. The car itself was a monument to his impulsivity. Three years ago, he realized that he had proper walking around money, he decided to fix that problem by purchasing a BMW M3. Not once, in the three years since then, did he feel like he had truly gotten his money's worth out of it. Now he was going seventy in a torrential downpour. It had been a while since the last major rain, and the oil and grease coating the road was coming off in a foam, like soap suds against the tarmac, shifting under the scrutiny of his headlights.

Timmy had really liked the Christmas party idea, he had to convince himself there was some version of events that would lead to a nice, normal Christmas with his godparents. Maybe they could bring their new godkid, he was sure Jimmy and Jenny would appreciate having another kid their age at those gatherings. He wasn't going to be weird about that, he was going to be very normal about that, he was at least capable of cordiality on command.

He allowed his foot to ease off the gas, just a little. The car didn't slow, not the way it should have. He didn't apply the brakes.

Genies were real. Did that mean Islam was the one true religion? He really didn't want to think about that. Was it a theological free for all, everything and the divine kitchen sink? He didn't want to think about that either. Were there angels that would hear him if he begged and pleaded hard enough? Somehow that felt like accepting defeat.

Aliens were real. Multiple galactic civilizations of varying levels of hostility. There were individual extraterrestrial threats that hated his guts specifically. What would’ve happened if Timmy had been going about his normal human business and Dark Laser tracked him down? Would his memories have snapped into place the way they had when he first saw Peri? Would he have died extremely confused? He liked to think he'd be able to pull something off in such a situation, clueless and powerless, but hopefully quick-witted and defiant enough to meaningfully defend himself.

None of this had bothered him as a child, but back then he was a codified part of a grander system, he had support, he had a kind of power. Now, Timmy could only look for help. How was that any different from his childhood? Had he grown so pointlessly proud in the search for self-sufficiency? So what if he had? There was no shame in valuing his independence, it was normal to prefer being able to support others over needing support.

It was embarrassing, to show up unannounced with nothing to provide in turn. He wanted to make a good impression, which was not at all the purpose of this trip. It was important to him that he looked successful.

Timmy couldn't shake the feeling he was being constricted by his own nervous system and he couldn't place where it was coming from. Currently, the only bodily threat he was facing was his own driving, and yet, he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. The cars were getting more dense as he approached Dimmadelphia proper. He finally hit the brakes.

Excellent timing, the GPS directed him off the highway a few minutes after. The offramp was steep and soaked, he fully floored the brakes, it was by the grace of wide wheels and potholes that he found the traction to reach a complete stop before the glaring red traffic light. Moments later, a highlighter yellow fox-body mustang zipped out from under the overpass. Timmy's chest tightened around his lungs. A horrible, unfunny dad joke clipped into his mind, 'Can't say you didn't see him', it jeered. His knuckles were bone white against the steering wheel.

The light turned green, the GPS demanded he go left. He was extremely close, three turns and seven miles close. The emotions were mixed, anxiety and longing and an all encompassing sense of immediacy.

Even through the rain, the city was bright, street art adorned every corner store, neon signs reflected back at him from every puddle and reflective surface. A few bold stragglers marched around in the rain, moving from point A to point B at the most efficient speed they could manage against the torrent. Timmy did not envy them.

Two turns. The mustang he could've collided with was parked on the side of the road, the man inside was sitting in the driver's seat, idling on his phone and waiting for the downpour to end.

One turn. A man was standing at a bus stop, unbothered.

Timmy rounded the corner slowly. He tried to look for the building he'd seen online, which was difficult given that every apartment on the block looked roughly the same, an affect exacerbated by the dark and the rain. The GPS announced his destination. Solemnly, Timmy realized that there was no available parking. He had to turn left twice before he found a slot he could confidently parallel park in.

Then he sat in his car for a moment, assessing the water around him.

"This is going to suck," he said aloud to no one.

Pushing the driver's side door open with a pop, he shambled out. He was correct. This sucked.

By the time he made it back to the apartment complex, his suit was heavy on his back, he could feel the weight with every movement. He rung the buzzer. In that moment, it seemed entirely possible that the door would not open. He considered alternative means of entry, once he'd taken a case where a man had entered a building through the fire escape to surprise his girlfriend, the landlord had him on tape and considered it trespassing. Briefly, he thought about how, if anyone was following him, this would be the perfect moment to apprehend him. He was pretty certain he was alone now, though, nobody in their right mind would have trailed him on the highway, in this weather.

The door unlocked.

Immediately, Timmy was inside, profusely thanking the desk clerk and dripping rainwater everywhere. There was a vending machine in the lobby. Whatever happened in the two hours he lost, it didn't include lunch. The only thing he'd eaten in the past twenty four hours had been a microwaved bowl of scrambled eggs. Nevertheless he did not fumble with his wallet and debt card, he made his way towards the lift, shoes squelching against the linoleum. At the elevator's gate, he was faced with his reflection, a wholly sorry sight, soaked ragged and shivering slightly. The best he could do to amend it was to slick his hair back, which at least kept it from sticking to his forehead. He stepped into the lift and sighed. At this point, he didn't even care how he looked, he just wanted to go home.

Slippery fingers nearly dropped his phone as he double checked the address and floor number. Briefly, he considered what his ‘story’ would be, he settled on ‘the truth, unadulterated’. Then he realized that he really didn’t want to get Peri in trouble if he could avoid it, ‘the truth, with plausible deniability’.

The elevator chimed as its assent came to an end. Timmy entered the hall, moving quick. Every time he lifted a foot, he could feel the water inside his shoe getting reabsorbed into his sock, when he put his weight on one foot, he could feel the fluid flowing out once more.

Oh. The apartment door had their names on it, that was cute.

He knocked, with more force than was normal, then he started calling out, repeatedly, "Cosmo! Wanda!"

It occurred to him that this was a very ineffective way of conveying urgency when their names were literally written in front of him. He stopped once he heard how uneven his voice sounded, it took a few shallow breaths to recalibrate. "It's Timmy Turner."

He leaned forward, resting his forehead against the door. This was a bad decision, as that was the moment the door opened, he nearly fell forward, but caught himself one-handed on the frame. It was an awkward movement, but he didn't have the time to feel that awkwardness before he was pulled over the threshold and into a hug.

Chapter Text

Someone was knocking at the door, and the hinges were rattling with the force of each pound. The beating was accompanied by a low, loud voice, harsh with desperation. "Cosmo! Wanda! Cosmo! Wanda!"

Wanda stilled. She supposed there were certain risks associated with renting out a human apartment, but this situation didn't fit neatly into any of them. While the man in the hall sounded, frankly, completely manic, he didn't sound aggressive. He was beating something ferocious against the plywood, but despite the force, he wasn't attempting to knock down the door. Mostly, he just sounded scared.

Cosmo poked his head in from the kitchen, into the living room. "Who's that?"

The beating reached a fever pitch and then a crescendo, then it ceased entirely.

Wanda double-checked her human disguise and shifted the apartment’s view. The window flickered, replacing its view of Fairy Land with a rainy Dimmadelphia skyline. Oh wow, it was really pouring out there.

She intended to peer out the peephole, knowing that she would probably end up doing far more, Wanda approached the entryway. The man called out again, the raw emotion had been wrung out of his voice, he'd taken the pause to steel himself. "It's Timmy Turner."

After he spoke, there was another thump against the door, this one much smaller and sadder than the last.

There were multiple possible interpretations of his words. He could mean 'It's about Timmy Turner', it was possible the man in the hall was calling in regards to, or investigating something related to Timmy. However, it seemed far more likely that the words were literal, and the man on the other side of the door simply was Timmy Turner.

Wanda pulled the door open without checking the peephole. It had not been locked. As the door swung inwards, the man staggered as it came out from under him. Quickly but gracelessly, he caught himself one-handed against the doorframe, hanging just beyond the threshold. The man winced, Wanda couldn't if it was from pain or some other form of discomfort, and she couldn't begin to guess how he had found them, but she immediately recognized her godson. Any shock she felt was drowned out by an overwhelming but directionless relief.

Really, Wanda wasn't even surprised, she'd allowed herself this exact thought when the blackout had first begun. What if a surge in human belief knocked the power out? What if Timmy was involved somehow? It felt equal parts inevitable and too good to be true.

She pulled Timmy into the apartment, into a hug. He was absolutely drenched, no doubt from the rain outside. The three-piece suit he wore was clammy to the touch, so thoroughly soaked that it bled water at the slightest disturbance.

His chest was almost level with her head and his heart was beating so hard it sounded painful. Amid slow, shaky breaths, he began to slump forward, sinking into the embrace until he was standing at a slant. When he realized how much weight he was putting on her, he pulled back, leaving one damp, trembling hand on her shoulder. He was so cold to the touch. A plain golden wedding band was fitted around his finger.

"I, uh, I got my memories back," Timmy mumbled, "I think I remember everything,' He ran one hand down his face. "I know I shouldn't be here—"

"It's alright! Stay here, you can stay as long as you need sport, whatever you want." Wanda assured.

"Oh no, I'm not asking for anything like that. Well, I guess I don't know what I'm asking for," his voice stabilized as he spoke, "I mean, thank you. Thank you."

He looked so different. On some level, Wanda would always picture Timmy as a child, perhaps as a consequence of the fifty years he'd spent in the vicinity of ten years old, perhaps because she still considered him her baby. Even after he'd sprouted up in the way that humans generally did after the age of fourteen, he'd always looked like a kid. The man standing besides the coat rack was every bit as familiar as he was unfamiliar. There were certain features on a human that weren’t supposed to change with age, chiefly the eyes and dentition. It was at least partly true, in that Timmy's eyes were still the same pale blue they were when he was ten, but now they sat in the shadow of a defined brow, framed by thin lines. It lent his gaze an icy intensity, and his eyes were darting around the room now, fixating on every photograph and bauble. He opened his mouth to speak.

It was then that Cosmo barreled into Timmy, pulling him into a second hug. "Timmy, it's been so long! You got so old! You got so big! You look so professional."

That got a small laugh out of Timmy. He looked far more familiar when he smiled. "I just got off from work, I'm a defense attorney. Which is why I'm here, actually. Well, not because I'm an attorney, unless someone needs— never mind. I'm here because something happened to me at work, and I don't know what to do. It would be a lot easier to describe this if I knew what happened to me in the first place— but according to the security cameras at work, Jorgen was in my office today, my co-worker caught him leaving."

"That's great!" Cosmo chimed.

"It is?" Timmy ventured to shut the door, looking to Wanda for permission.

Wanda nodded. "If you were questioned, and you still have your memories, it means you slipped through without stirring any suspicions."

"Oh. Huh," once the door was closed he stared at the dark stains pooling around his feet. "sorry about the carpet, and your blouse, and your hoodie."

Cosmo dismissed the apology, far more interested in dragging Timmy into another hug, he held him around the torso, then lifted at the right bicep. "Oh man, you're really armed there, aren't you?"

Water dripped from Timmy's suit sleeve, and he flushed red around the ears, rambling about how a suit is actually meant to hide definition. "That comes up at work way more than you'd think. I get these clients wearing suits, two, three sizes too small, and they insist it looks better that way, and I've got to hold my tongue before I say it looks like they stole their clothes off a busboy. I don't think I've come up with a single polite way to word that though, even if you're delicate it sounds like you're picking a fight." With a sweeping gesture, he splattered the nearest counter.

Wanda smiled fondly, with the wave of a wand, all of the rainwater in the room was whisked out of existence.

In the middle of his rant, Timmy flinched, pulling away from Cosmo. His hands darted to his suit jacket, checking that the garment was still there. Once the initial reaction passed, he took on an apologetic air. It made sense, in the years before they'd been removed from Timmy, he'd gotten slower and slower to make wishes— it had been one of the first warning signs that they would lose him before he turned eighteen— and now it had been fifteen years since he'd dealt with anything even remotely magical, of course that had taken him off guard.

"It's fine, just surprised me is all! I'm gonna be honest, I'm gonna be jumpy for a little while. Weird day, y'know?" He pushed further into the apartment, still shivering. Every minute detail seemed to interest him, and he was clearly fighting the impulse to run his hands along everything, hands twitching at his sides. He pointed toward a photograph. "Is this real? I mean, a real photograph."

Cosmo and Wanda looked to each other. The photo was a real, tangible object, but the image it displayed of the two of them in human form was entirely fabricated. Nobody had taken the picture, it had been willed into existence.

"It's, well, it's representative." Wanda offered.

"It's, uh, nice." Timmy hummed assent, moving on.

Then he spotted a small machine beside the closet, the generator, the most obviously fortean object in the room. He squatted down, regarding the breadbox-sized machine curiously. Its plates were pink and blue, bent around corrugated pipes with a texture similar to plastic straws, it produced a quiet but droning hum as its engine worked. After a moments consideration, he asked a question. "What's this thing?"

"A generator." Cosmo said automatically.

Timmy reached for it, "Huh. It's fairy-sized then? Why do you guys need a—"

The moment his finger contacted the machine's paneling, the apartment plunged into darkness with a noise like the fizzy crack of an old flashbulb camera. Timmy was halfway across the room by the time the lights faded back on, his hands were firmly planted in his pockets.

"Hey, looks like the power's back," Cosmo said before stopping in realization, looking from Timmy to the busted generator and back again, "honey you were right, they can discharge all that extra energy without finding the source of it." While speaking, he motioned at Timmy, who stared uncomprehendingly.

"What extra energy? What did I do?”

Cosmo turned to Wanda for a technical answer just as she was hoping that he would be able to provide an easy, spontaneous response.

"It's fine!" They responded in unison.

"It's just, magic sort of comes from human belief in magic, which is normally very regulated, but if there's suddenly a huge surplus in magic, some systems can get a little, overwhelmed."

"But it's better now, they're probably running a few settings on high to keep from frying the grid this time."

"Since you already slipped through questioning, it might be a long time before anyone circles back to you. Eventually Jorgen will have to give up."

"Oh." Timmy was still looking at the generator, he was quiet for a long time, flexing the muscles in his jaw. Slowly, he began rubbing his nape. "I think I'm gonna sit down."

He followed his words and took a seat on the sofa, resting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward to place the weight of his head on his hands. The TV wasn't on, but he was watching it like it was, contemplating the reflection onscreen. "Is this like— are you harboring a fugitive by letting me stay here?"

"More or less." Wanda supplied.

"It'll be okay. Anyway, I think we've got a pretty good attorney." Cosmo continued.

Timmy tried to smile, but it wasn't particularly convincing. He ultimately slumped even further forward on the sofa, continuing his staring contest with the severe-looking man on the black glass. Wanda took a seat beside him. "You're gonna be alright sport, I promise."

She was certain she'd used the old nickname at least once over the past hour or so, but Timmy hadn't reacted the way he did this time. His face crumpled and screwed his eyes shut, he picked himself up, rubbing his forehead like he was attempting to banish a headache. Sitting upright so they were shoulder to shoulder, he was still cold.

"In all honesty—“ he sucked air in, quick and sharp. He seemed to do a lot of breathing exercises, was that a lawyer thing? “Well, I guess I’m kind of, scared, right now, and I don't know if those fears are founded. I am the same person I was yesterday morning, I'm thinking, what if I go back home and it slowly turns out I don't act the way my wife and kids remember. I'm telling myself that won't happen, because the longer I sit with all the memories I got back, the more I think 'Oh, that's why I'm like that'. But everything feels different now, including me."

He stopped to take a breath. Wanda couldn't comment on whether or not he'd changed in the past two days, in the time since she'd last seen him, he'd become a brand new animal. Instead she resolved to wrap him in a warm blanket, because he obviously needed one, and to gauge how he'd react to another mundane use of magic. It surprised him, but he didn't startle the way he had when she dried the room.

He wrapped the warm flannel tighter around himself before he spoke again. "I keep coming up with these hypotheticals while I'm not even thinking clearly. In the past twenty-four hours I've eaten nothing but a bowl of eggs. That's not—"

"You What?" Cosmo interjected, immediately supplying Timmy with a plastic basket containing a burger and fries.

After nearly dropping it on the carpet in shock, he began tearing into it, talking as he did so. "So I know I need some kind of a plan— not to jump into action or anything just— some way to go about doing, anything after this— and that is why— I'm here"

The burger was gone in a grand total of seven bites.

Chapter Text

When the fries were finished, the basket dissipated in a cloud of green smoke, leaving nothing but a fading glittery dust.

Timmy was trying, very hard, to formulate a good 'defending oneself from supernatural authorities' plan. Instead, he kept coming up with more upsetting hypotheticals. For the first time that night, it occurred to him that Cosmo and Wanda were just as susceptible to memory wipes as he was. It had happened before. It had been his fault. Every thought he had was pulling new-old experiences to the surface.

"I think I need a full copy of Da Rules, something I can read through while I-" He trailed off, muttering something not even he understood. Timmy had tried this exact strategy when he was sixteen, half a lifetime ago, trying to prevent the very scenario he was still waking up from. The odds had to have moved into his favor now, last time he'd tried this, he hadn't even graduated high school, now he'd be facing the matter as a trained professional. He wouldn't be bested by a book that, if he recalled correctly, had segments written in crayon.

Cosmo and Wanda were both looking at him like he was at risk of exploding, nervous, concerned looks he didn't know how to deflect. Timmy made his request again, steadier, clearer, he even smiled at the end.

He’d resolved not to make any wishes. He didn’t know if he still held any tangible power over them, but he was making sure he wasn’t forcing anyone to do anything. He had a selfish reason too, given his track record, Timmy was afraid a formal wish could be tracked down to him somehow, or it would, classically, get wildly out of hand and wing.

A book manifested on his lap, leather-bound and bookmarked, impossibly lightweight given the size of it. Timmy leafed through the tome, experimentally opening random pages and reading whatever he found. Da Rules had changed since he had seen them last, new rules, as well as a few minor alterations that could very well be tricks of memory. It was somewhat comforting to know that no legal system was immune to revisions and living changes. Changes that, upon consideration, might have been his fault. He swallowed. That was significantly less comforting.

Why did he have to be so deeply entrenched in everything? At this point, cosmic insignificance would have felt like a mercy.

He shut Da Rules and rubbed his temples one-handed. It was a minor miracle he didn’t have a stress headache.

Wanda rubbed his shoulder through the blanket. "You don't need to have a plan right now, you've got plenty of time."

Timmy opened the book again, leafing to the new regulations on time loops, time distortions, and time dilatations. "Well, maybe—"

She closed it and sets it to the side. It laid on the couch, propped up against a pillow, totally inert.

"You have time, you don't need to wind yourself any tighter," Wanda said.

Cosmo turned on the TV, with a remote. "You should watch something, maybe it'll help you relax," the television faded on with a hum, it had been left on the local news. The newscaster had the same last name as him. No relation, probably. Timmy chuffed something that wasn't exactly a laugh, the utter crushing mundanity of it caught him off guard. He was lucky the ongoing report was something about a new addition to a nearby museum and not a ten car pile up. 

Timmy wondered how much of the maintained normalcy in the apartment was for his benefit. It was obvious that he was being handled with kid gloves, he couldn't begrudge that. Really, he appreciated it, but that didn't change the fact that it was extremely unusual to find himself sitting on a regular human-sized sofa, watching the same local news he got at home, next to two fifty-something humans he knew to be neither fifty-something nor human.

Cosmo and Wanda's human disguises were flawless, fitting and convincing, and based off the scale of the furniture, frequently used. Timmy could remember similar human disguises from his childhood, but nothing this— he wasn't sure what word he was searching for— practical? They looked comfortable. Timmy was assured that this was normal and not a sign that they were uncomfortable around him.

Oddly, he found himself wanting to see them as fairies. Possibly because he was seeking familiarity in this unfamiliar environment, possibly because he was sure that would jog more memories. Either way, he stayed silent because voicing this thought aloud would surely sound bizarre at best, and voyeuristic at worst.

The news changed its topic, shifting to a report on a hotel going out of business. Cosmo commented on the rain. 

Timmy was about to describe his walk to the apartment complex when he was stopped in his tracks by an unprompted bolt of recollection.

In the car he'd struggled to remember the specifics surrounding the day he'd lost Cosmo and Wanda, the hotel story and the proximity had jogged his memory. He slumped back in his seat, Da Rules prodding him in the hip.

He’d been seventeen and starting dual enrollment at a community college after doing his best to clean up his GPA. It had been a non-magical affair, or as non-magical as it could’ve been with fairies for tutors. If he was going to clean up his act it had to be internal, otherwise he was at risk of losing his new initiative when he turned eighteen. It certainly wasn't easy going, but whoever said that Cs and Bs get degrees was damn right.

His first day on campus went shockingly smoothly, Timmy sidled about from class to class, looking to draw as little attention to himself as possible. Nobody paid him, his muttering, or the three multicolored carabiners on his belt loops, any mind. It was a pleasant reprieve from the cliquishness of high school, it was still school, unfortunately, but it wasn't as miserable as he'd been expecting.

Then his dad forgot to pick him up.

Poof had been the first to suggest wishing him back home. Timmy considered it, but emboldened by the independence he'd been allotted all day, he decided to do something a little experimental, and maybe a little vengeful. He walked to a hole-in-the-wall hotel and dipped into his emergency funds to get a room for the night. It was a good night, too. He spent it laid out on the hotel bed, talking his lack of plans for the future. Only now did it occur to him that Cosmo was the first person to seriously suggest he go into law school, at the time he hadn't taken it seriously, but apparently the thought had stuck with him.

Timmy woke up at three AM to a call from his father, who was yelling so loud it was peaking the landline microphone. Instead of returning fire, he weaseled his way into convincing his father to let him do this every weekend. He framed it as a time away from him for a low cost, time his father could spend unwinding with his mother. It worked.

He went straight to sleep afterwards, and the following day was fantastic. He walked to college, loudly spitballing ideas on how to spend the time between classes. Halfway through Humanities 101, his professor caught him talking to his pen and mistook it for attempted commentary on the topic. Timmy fully expected a reprimand, instead the professor integrated his aside into her lecture. As he left, she thanked him for contributing to the class discussion. In his attempts to find an isolated place to enjoy the breaks between classes, he accidentally befriended a full-time student.

Again, no one came to pick him up. His new friend offered to give him a ride, and as that was just about the most mortifying thing Timmy could imagine, he turned that down. He didn't wish himself home either, in fact, he was eager to spend the rest of his emergency money on another night at the hotel. He could wish himself over to high school in the morning. After checking back in, he made the only wish he'd made all day, he had some art supplies brought over from his room.

He sat on the hotel bed, drawing whatever came to mind, taking requests from his godfamily. Everything had felt like the beginning of the end for a while at that point, he knew he had less than a year before— before it was over— before what had happened.

Monday was a clear, cloudless day. Timmy didn’t know why he remembered that, it must have been cloudy that week, it probably stood out at the time. Maybe it felt reflective of his mood? Because for the first time in a long while, he started looking forward to the future, just on a week by week basis, but still.

Suddenly, he was taking the law school suggestion seriously. Suddenly he had long-term plans.

Abstractly, he knew what that meant, but he didn’t think it was pushing him any closer to the edge. Cosmo and Wanda were encouraging him every step of the way. Getting invested in his ridiculous five year plans like they would be there to see them come to fruition.

He started accepting the carpools, he started intentionally contributing to class discussions. Even at home, even at high school, he felt like he knew where he was going.

About two months into dual-enrollment, he was alone with his fairies, having a totally normal weekday. Timmy pushed open his bedroom door and saw Jorgen standing there, he didn’t look particularly happy about it.

Timmy stepped into his room, shut the door, and began begging for another month. He got another hour.

Once that concession had been made, Jorgen had to give Cosmo another hour, then Wanda, then Poof. All in all, a four hour leniency was good work. It still went by far too fast. When the timer ran out, Timmy managed to buy himself even more time by bolting for the restroom. He just stood in there, staring at his reflection.

At seventeen he was lanky and maybe even a little babyfaced, but he was over six foot and getting scruffy, the specifics didn't matter, he definitely didn't look like a child anymore. He was crying, he could hear crying on the other side of the bathroom door. It was only getting worse the longer he drew out his sad little obstruction. Meeting his own teary eyes didn't make anything better.

In that moment, he was so sure he knew what he had to do. This was it, childhood's end, so he had to go out there and start behaving like an adult, which meant accepting the inevitable like a grown-ass man. And that was exactly what he did. Timmy said his goodbyes, clung onto his last hugs, and figured it wouldn't hurt as much in the morning. He could remember the the queasiness in his gut as he realized that Poof didn't fully understand the situation, Wanda assuring him that it wasn't his job to explain.

The following day, he was mentally numb. Numb like waking up after surgery, waiting for the pain to hit. It swept over him slowly, and he didn't understand where it had come from.

His fish had died and his mother hadn't even told him, just disposed of the bodies in the night. He completely nosedived into his classes because it was the one thing he had going on at the moment, his grades soared as he plummeted. When the school year ended, the worst summer of his life began. The horrible, untraceable loneliness that followed his every movement like a steady rolling fog. He had to get out of that house, it was killing him, it was always empty, even when everyone was home it was empty.

He got better though, Timmy reminded himself. Getting kicked out of his parent’s house had been an actual mercy to him. Money for college meant money for a dorm. He’d always insisted he had it okay as a kid. 

Initially, reconnecting with Tootie in college had started with commiseration over how much of a living nightmare Vicki was. Vivid grisly story after nightmare scenario.

He’d always been so quick to dismiss any assertion that he could have possibly had it worse. After all, Vicki was her sister, she’d had no escape. When he mentioned massive, inexplicable gaps in his memory, she stilled, horrified. Timmy made it very clear he didn’t want to be the subject of pity, and Tootie had respected that.

There wasn’t much to be said, but anyone could say whatever they pleased, as long as they didn’t pity him. It just wasn’t fair. When compared to what other people had to deal with, he had a good childhood.

He was right. It was vindicating.

Not only was it a good childhood, it was an extraordinary childhood. More than enough to fuel a man’s ego, an odd feeling given that he had experienced a thousand tiny ego deaths on the drive to Dimmadelphia. Of course, he was still a tiny speck on a wide, wild tempest, flashing a signal to those who would wish to do him harm, but at least he was loved as a child.

Timmy blinked. He’d zoned out for a half an hour, the local news was gone, replaced by some game show. Cosmo was calling out answers to every question with a confounding hit to miss ratio. Timmy has to start joining in, because it's better than getting lost again, better than panicking. He's wired to respond to these sorts of things strategically, watching in silence and only saying something when certain he has a correct answer, focused on what he knew rather than what he didn't know. He started responding to every question without demarcation.

"Thunder!"

"Chile!"

They were both wrong.

It was fun and it was uncomplicated, and normal in a way that was weird unto itself. Then Wanda leaned into Cosmo and whispered something, she tried, and failed, to keep from drawing Timmy's attention, which only made him more attentive.

Awkwardly, he assumed it was about him, "what is it, should I—?"

"It's not you it's—" Wanda trailed off, her human disguise did absolutely nothing to hide the careful consternation on her face, "it might be a little bit hard to explain."

"We need to— Wanda needs to check up on something." Cosmo said, a compromise audible in his tone.

Wanda nodded. "Just a little check-up, I'll be back in a little bit. Maybe an hour."

She stood, and for some reason Timmy expected her to walk out the front door. He startled when she went out in a pink haze, then silently cursed himself for flinching again. He didn't know what they were hiding from him, but he was pretty sure he knew why they were hiding it.

He probably looked like some fragile Lovecraft protagonist, scared to the point where he was a danger to himself and others, one more aberrant revelation away from a total breakdown. For all he knew, Wanda was just picking up some dry cleaned clothes from the nearest Fairy Land laundromat, and they were afraid that even that would set him off the deep end.

It was impossible to blame them, given the circumstances, but it wasn't true. He wasn't scared of them, he was high-strung. He'd been truly happy to see Peri again, and there was no need for any pretense there. If anything he found the unusual physicality of their interactions amusing. Beer in a shot glass, dammit, that was gold! That had been so sweet, and goddamn, Peri was probably going to be pissed when he realized what had happened. It was clear the poor kid understood the risks better than he had.

Poor kid? He was twenty-two. Timmy surprised himself by reaffirming that yes, a twenty-two year old was still just a kid. Especially when his little brother was concerned. There was an awful irony to it, he'd tricked himself into believing that he'd grown into a crafty, cautious man, and now he was here, in the middle of another colossal problem of his own creation. He thought back to the way he'd towered over Peri, aware of what he was looking at but not who he was looking at. Why hadn't he let the poor kid go? Why did he have to be so selfish? He'd really messed up this time.

Timmy tucked his legs onto the sofa and he pulled into a cross-legged stance. He rubbed his eyes as he addressed Cosmo, "I'm jumpy, I know. It's nothing personal, really, I'm not afraid of you or Wanda, if that's what you're thinking. I just feel, small."

Cosmo's response surprised him, again, but he managed not to recoil this time as the fairy went up in a puff of smoke. When it dissipated, he looked like, well, a fairy. Also, his outfit had changed. His novelty plastic sunglasses were gone, the frumpy green hoodie had been replaced with a dress shirt and tie. That caught Timmy off guard in an entirely different way, and he couldn't rule out the possibility his lack of reaction came from the two varieties of surprise cancelling each other out.

It didn't matter though, because Cosmo settles hovering above the far armrest. "You can be scared of whatever you—" He caught the poor word choice and began again. "It's okay if you're scared, nobody will be upset if you're scared. But you aren't small, you're very, very significant. To me and Wanda, and in general!"

He put a lot of emotion into that last part, stress and genuine concern, and it got Timmy fired up as well. "That's worse! Okay, I'm not small, I've got a massive target on my back, and there's a thousand things out there with bones to pick with me or from me, and I'm basically defenseless on my own, and I don't even know if I know how bad I fucked up!"

Timmy really hadn't meant to say it like that, he hadn't meant to raise his voice, he hadn't meant to swear. Logically, he knew damn well he was talking to another adult, one much, much older than him. He still hated the way it felt, yelling at something only two feet tall, and Cosmo had reacted to the volume, flitting back a few inches. Timmy winced. He hated that, he really did. It made him think of his father, his biological father.

It wasn't the first time he'd recognized how much he'd inherited from his father, but the revelation had never hit him with this level of gravity before. Because he'd spend the past fifteen years unthinkingly confused about his own origins, with misplaced positive emotions aimed somewhere in his parents direction. Looking back, unclouded, his father was a deeply petty man, callous to the edge of cruelty, thoughtless, and prone to making sharp remarks when silence would suffice. Timmy knew damn well he'd dealt with those demons his whole life, and even at his best he was capable of being petty, callous, and acerbic. He grumbled wordlessly as he shoved his face into his hands, it was supposed to sound apologetic, he hoped that registered.

He pushed his head down to free his mouth. "I'm sorry, for losing it. I really don't mean to be such an asshole."

Somewhere in the world there was a psychologist who would pay thousands of dollars to hear his internal monologue right now, the imagined battle between nature and nurture, the unpleasant understanding that he could have turned out much worse. At least he'd been taught some system of affection, and memories or not, that had stuck with him.

Timmy didn't need to look up to hear the sound of Cosmo's wingbeats getting nearer, though he did lower his hands and turn enough to get one eye free. The TV was off now, he hadn't noticed who had turned it off or when, he could have choked that up to magic, but it was just as likely to be a matter of inattentiveness on his part.

Cosmo butted in under his armpit, he hooked one foot under Timmy's elbow and used the leverage to force the human's head upright. "You're not. Definitely not an-"

At the slight hesitation, Timmy laughed slightly.

Cosmo rose up, grabbing at the sides of his head. "You're not an asshole!"

This time Timmy laughed much harder, pulling away as he shook. On a good day he would self-describe himself as an asshole, not in a self-hating way, but because there were plenty of real benefits to being an asshole, and plenty of benefits to being perceived as an asshole. It wasn't supposed to come off so dire, and he didn't feel like explaining his tone, so he simply accepted the endorsement with a small "thanks".

If he wanted to litigate specifics, point out that it had been well over a decade and Cosmo barely even knew him as he was, he could have been a real pain, but he chose not to bring that up. Maybe because he didn't want it to be true, maybe because he didn't think it was true. Timmy pushed off the couch, moving slowly to let Cosmo get out of the way. "Can you tell me what Wanda's doing? Or is it important I don't know?"

"I guess you could know, but I'm not sure you'll like it." Cosmo hovered below eye level.

Timmy walked a loop around the couch, eyeing the array of light controls on the far wall. He remembered that absolute dark was not good for fairies, he refused to contemplate the reasoning for that aversion, there was no need to think about that right now. Regardless, it partly explained why every light in the house had a dimmer and not a switch. He approached the rheostats, treading over the glittery spot where the generator used to be.

"I'd rather know than not know," he gestured at the light dimmer labeled 'overhead', "y'mind if I dim these?"

"Go ahead!"

Timmy brought the lights to a scintilla, as bright as he could imagine sleeping under. He assumed he'd be sleeping on the couch tonight. "Whatever it is, I promise I won't be an asshole about it."

He tucked his hands into his pockets as he spoke, bowing his shoulders forward. It was a gesture he'd picked up in court, something he typically did while deferring to a judge. His tone is light, he makes himself seem as easygoing as possible.

Cosmo didn't waver for long. "We maybe-sorta have a new godkid."

Oh, yeah. Timmy already knew that. He had no idea how to play it off like he was reacting to new information here, he was pretty sure his original reaction had been pretty understated. Probably. "Okay. mean, that's good, moving on, y'know. I— hmmm. Would you like to see pictures of my kids?"

"You have kids?" The shock hit Cosmo so hard his wings briefly stopped beating, "But you're only— well I guess not. I can't believe it— I mean— I can, I don't mean it like that, But how?"

"I'm pretty sure you know exactly how, I'm pretty sure I've got a brother somewhere," Timmy smirked, fishing his phone out of his suit pocket, quick to start looking for one of his favorite videos ever recorded. He reached it in a few short swipes.

"They're twins, Jimmy and Jenny." He continued as he brought the panel to Cosmo. Onscreen, he was trundling through his first apartment, with a two year old Jenny wrapped around one leg and Jimmy wrapped around the other. Tootie was laughing loudly as he approached the camera. "You laugh now, but once I adapt I'm gonna be the fastest man on earth." He made an exaggerated show of grunting with each slow, unsteady step.

When he looked at Cosmo, he saw the fairy's large eyes were damp with tears. Before Timmy could formulate a reaction, Cosmo darted into his chest, his free hand followed the motion and they ended up in an awkward lock. It wasn't really a hug in the traditional sense, nor in the way he'd hugged Peri last night, he was basically carrying Cosmo one handed. Fairies were shockingly light, he wasn't sure if it was magic or hollow bones or both, but there was no way he was currently holding more than five pounds.

Cosmo was clinging onto Timmy's tie, sniffling into it. Timmy didn't mind, it was an old tie and objectively worse things had happened to that scrap of pink polyester. "I can't believe you're so grown up, you were my boy and now you're a father and—"

"Y-Yeah, I get it. They're a lot bigger now too, eight years old now. One day, we're gonna have to try and reenact that one— an' break my damn hips probably." Dammit, now he was crying too.

Cosmo sobbed something Timmy couldn't make out. He returned to the couch and laid down, placing his phone and Da Rules on the floor, one stacked atop the other. Now that his other hand was free, he was fighting the urge to run it over Cosmo's wings. Gentle as he would've been, it felt like a remarkably rude thing to do unprompted. Instead he took in the details with his eyes, flat, diaphanous semicircles that shimmered in the low light, radial veins followed the shape of the wing, and if Timmy looked very carefully he could see glittery, translucent fluid inside. He turned his attention towards the coruscating crown over Cosmo's head, he refrained from prodding that too, because it was probably some sort of magical sensory organ, and because the generator explosion was still fresh in his mind.

Instead, he laid his head on the armrest and shut his eyes.

Then he felt a sharp displacement of air near his head, shocking him upright. Timmy turned to face the presence, and met Peri’s wild eyes. 

“What on earth,” Peri balked, “how did you even get here? How did you find us?”

”I drove, used the internet, y’know.” Timmy said, Peri’s panic hurt, but he certainly understood it.

”Wait! Peri! It’s okay, it’s Timmy!” Cosmo interjected. He had nictating membranes, Timmy noted, and based off the state of them, he was clearly waking up from a very short nap.

Peri’s eyes snapped back to Timmy, who really hoped that he was picking up on the fact he’d totally hidden him from blame. When Peri’s expression softened, it wasn’t with relief, instead he was looking at Timmy with wavering mixture of confusion, concern, and, to Timmy’s dismay, pity.

Chapter Text

Hazel Wells stared intently at the small, blue ceramic tile in her hands, it was part of a school project.

The day had begun with an assembly announcing that the school would be doing a mural for a local shopping mall. Each student was handed three tiles to decorate however they pleased, as long as they stuck to the color assigned to the square. Tomorrow, the students who completed their tiles would be rewarded with a small prize, for a few weeks after that, shoppers would be allowed to vote for their favorite tile, and the winner would receive a grand prize.

Hazel didn't really care about the prize, but the idea of leaving a permanent mark on Dimmadelphia's largest mall was incredibly intimidating.

She had one blue tile and two grey tiles. So far, she only had one idea, to decorate one of the grey tiles with an assortment of flat rocks, mostly mottled pieces of quartz-heavy granite, a few really cool piece of basalt she'd picked up after a volcano-related wish, and three little chunks of concrete. Hazel was firmly of the opinion that manmade rocks were just as cool as naturally occurring rocks. This went doubly so for a material that was first invented by the Romans, a constant companion to humanity for thousands of years.

The pieces slotted together nicely, and she was able to create a simple floral pattern with the rocks, a small stone flower radiating from each corner, and a big one in the center.

Now she was done with the first grey tile, and no new ideas had come to her. Well, she had thought about painting water patterns on the blue tile, maybe cutting out paper shapes to give the water more depth, but that wasn't good enough. This tile was going to be on display for years, it had to be creative, and personal, something she could be proud to look back on twenty years from now.

It wasn't like shopping malls were known for their vigorous upkeep, her tiles might be left hanging in place even if the mall closed down. People would take pictures with her tiles hanging in the background, possibly preserving them for even longer than the building itself.

This was hard. It would have been easier if Cosmo and Wanda were around, but they were busy with, something. Hazel hoped it was a good thing, but she really couldn't tell. They'd left to have dinner together, a relatively normal occurrence. Or at least, it had been, before the ruckus started.

It was just in time for Hazel's own dinner, a bowl of her father's onion-based gumbo. She sat at the table, intently watching her mother refine an essay while in the middle of a call, multiple calls, actually.

Then the shouting began. A man's voice, urgent to the point of ferocity, repeating Cosmo and Wanda's names like some kind of chant. The voice was accompanied by the drumming of a fist against wood, starting as a simple knock before growing into something downright thunderous.

Hazel stopped at the sound, heart pounding in her chest. In her stillness, she couldn't even speculate on what exactly was unfolding in the hall. She didn't notice her dad approached the door until he leaned into the peephole and began to narrate what he was seeing.

"It's a man in a suit, he's soaking wet."

Well, it was raining outside. The suit was an odd detail.

"He might be government," her dad continued, "FBI, maybe, some kind of X Files division, probably. If they even have a name for this division, if he’s even human. I’ve always suspected that some phenomenon attributed to undisclosed government agencies really represent psychic manifestations of collective—“

Hazel hadn't even realized any of that was a possibility, but now that it was planted within her mind, she was struggling to focus. It felt like she had cotton balls in her stomach.

Her dad was still talking.

“I knew there was something off about that blackout! I mean, one apartment going dark while the rest of the complex is lit? It had to be supernatural. I tried to warn them, but they wouldn't consider it. Though I assumed it was spectral in nature, a simple scan could have— if there's-" he stopped mid sentence, "I should do something, record this. I should-"

Her dad was worried, and he didn't even know what was going on.

She didn't know what was going on either, but she had a whole lot more context. The blackout last night had nothing to do with faulty apartment wiring, or ghosts. It was a massive, unforeseen blackout, spanning vast swaths of Fairy World. This sort of blackout could only be caused by an adult human earnestly believing in fairies. Most of the time, when this kind of thing happened, it wasn't this big of a deal. To cause such a significant power surge, whoever this was, they must be very well informed. Really, really well informed.

Wanda suspected whoever it was of being a former godchild, she shared a weird loaded silence with Cosmo after sharing the suggestion. Cosmo had wondered if they were writing a book.

Hazel hadn’t considered the possibility that the government had found out about fairies, though now that she was thinking about it, it made sense. What could she do? How could she help?

"Oh, huh. The door opened and they're all hugging each other now, and crying. Maybe not FBI, then," her father's narration broke her out of her stress, "Oh- er- alright. Maybe I should give them a little privacy. This seems a little- personal." Her dad wiped the sweat off his palms before sitting back at the table.

“They did say they had a son.” Her mom said, returning to her work.

“Well, I guess. He didn’t look related.”

Hazel’s mom cleared her throat and gave her dad a pointed look.

"He didn't look anything like Cosmo, except for, maybe, a haircut. I'm telling you, this guy was the size of a barn door. He looks like he could've been buddies with Alexander James Junior as a kid. Well, maybe not, he didn't look that smart, or-"

Her mother coughed again, smiling this time.

"I'm just saying! Though," her father shrugged, "they definitely acted like he was a long-lost son."

Hazel didn't get the nuances of whatever her mother was signaling over, but she was certain that Wanda's godkid theory had come to fruition. She finally found the nerve to voice a question. "So they were really happy to see him?"

Her dad nodded, "For sure. He seemed pretty happy to see them too."

All things considered, this was better than the government agent idea. She didn't have to worry about anyone getting taken away, now she was just worried without any clear goal or target. She was pretty sure the noisy stranger in the hall didn't mean any harm. She was pretty sure she knew exactly who he was. After all, there was only one godkid Cosmo and Wanda tended to mention by name.

Abstractly, Hazel Wells knew who Timmy Turner was, Cosmo and Wanda had pictures of him in their apartment. Mostly, pictures of him at about the age she was at now, a few pictures of a stroppy teenager doing his best to hide his face from the camera, little more than an impression of a pink hoodie and shaggy bangs. She had heard stories, endearing anecdotes, the occasional cautionary tale. Really, he was like some kind of a ghost, haunting Cosmo and Wanda's apartment even though he wasn't dead and hand never lived there.

It was surprisingly hard to connect that specter to the yawping in the hall, but not impossible. She was pretty sure he was the only option.

Most of her godparents other charges lived centuries ago, but their last child was somewhat recent. Truthfully, Hazel had always imagined him at the same age as her older brother Antony, not old enough for her father to mistake him for some kind of federal agent.

Well, it wasn't like her theory and her father’s original theory precluded each other. Maybe he was some kind of federal agent? Probably not, she hoped.

She tried to put herself in the stranger's shoes, imagine herself twenty years from now, long after the day she forgot about magic, suddenly remembering everything.

It was really hard to imagine, and she'd only had her fairies for a few months.

For everything she'd ever stressed out over, she was always worried she'd lose her godparents to some kind of an active threat, like Cookie, or one her father's co-workers, aging out of magic seemed like the kind of thing that was too far away to worry about.

However, given that everyone always told her she was mature for her age, maybe she needed to start worrying about that. She didn't know exactly how that kind of thing worked, but given the distress emanating from the hallway, it couldn't be pleasant.

Suddenly, the sky-blue tile in her hands felt inconsequential. Hazel tucked her legs under her chin as she sat on her bed, listening for another commotion. Instead, she heard the familiar sound of a fairy entering the room in a puff of glitter and smoke. 

Wanda appeared alone, that never happened. Hazel took it as further confirmation of her theory.

”So that guy at the door was your previous godkid? His name's Timmy, right? He found you guys after getting his memories back?"

Wanda looked surprised. "All that detective fiction rubbed off on you, huh?"

"Well, it wasn't that hard to put together," Hazel deflected, smiling, "really, it was your theory first. So, how'd he get his memories back?"

Hazel wanted to know how it had happened, maybe one day, she would need to know how to get her own memories back. If Wanda told her now, she could write it down somewhere safe, and if she didn't remember why she'd written it down, she'd know she needed to get her memories back.

"We don't really know how he got his memories back," Wanda's tone became hopeful, "maybe seven years is just too much to forget. Maybe Timmy has so many memories with us that magic can't erase them all."

As much as Wanda seemed to like this idea, Hazel was disappointed it didn't involve a highly specific but ultimately replicatable combination of wearing a helmet and banging one's head against against a banister.

If he knew so much about Fairy World that it was magically significant, it seemed possible that the knowledge itself could have some magical properties, maybe. Hazel wasn't confident enough in that line of thought to voice it aloud. She looked at the ceramic tile again, it was warm around her fingers and cold everywhere else. Oh, that gave her an idea. She could wish to be really good at crochet and make a little granny square sweater for the tile. If her experiences with secondhand stores were anything to go by, crochet stuff basically lasted forever.

She could wish later, the ongoing conversation was a lot more important. "So, what's he like now? Can I meet him?"

Chapter Text

Peri didn’t understand how things had escalated so quickly.

A few short hours ago, he had messaged Timmy and received, normal, pleasant responses. It was almost enough to convince Peri that they had a chance of getting away with this. Maybe, if everything went perfectly from here on out, Fairy World could find good use for the extra energy, and nobody would ever have to know where it was coming from, and eventually, the powers that be would lose interest. Peri could almost convince himself he was going to keep his godparenting license, convince himself that nobody would ever know he was too softhearted to wipe a human's memory. 

He wasn’t letting himself get too optimistic about it, but Peri figured that if they’d lasted this long, he had a little time before everything spontaneously caught fire.

After Dev fell asleep uncharacteristically early, he teleported to his parent’s house. He didn’t plan on staying long, he wasn’t entirely sure why he wanted to go. It felt like the right place to be after spending the majority of the day fretting over his terrible decision making and the inevitable distress it would bring his family.

As he poofed in, he heard a stirring beneath him.

Ah. Timmy was laying supine on the couch. 

Of course. It didn’t make any sense, but it was the sort of thing that would happen to him.

His brother was reclining lengthwise, head propped up against the armrest, his dark, pressed suit incongruous against the pink polyester. The last thing Peri noticed before Timmy jolted upright was the equally incongruous imagery of his dad sleeping on the human’s chest, one massive hand draped over his shoulder. The couch squeaked under the shifting weight as Timmy shifted, blearily surveying the room before looking up at Peri.

He thought they reached a mutual agreement to not do anything crazy. Except, this was infinitely more drastic than anything either man had entertained the night before. In his office, Timmy had stuck to semi-reasonable plans to encounter his parents in human disguise, and Peri had shut those down because even that was flying too close to the sun. Peri thought he’d gotten through.

Apparently not. This was exhausting and absurd, maybe even a little bit sad. However, it was also undeniably impressive. Peri couldn’t begin to imagine how Timmy managed to find his way here without the use of magic. 

“What on earth,” Peri questioned, “how did you even get here? How did you find us?” 

Timmy’s answer was vague and noncommittal, drowned out by his father mistaking Peri’s hostility for a lack of recognition.

“Wait, look!” His dad stood up in Timmy’s arms, and pulled the man’s lips apart to display uneven teeth. Timmy went pinkish around the ears, but didn’t protest. ”See, it’s Timmy! He’s just, bigger, and hairier.” 

After taking his fingers out of Timmy’s mouth, Cosmo reached up to run a hand through the hair atop Timmy’s head. Timmy gently shifted Cosmo down, freeing one hand to gesticulate as he spoke. 

“Ah, yep, I am indeed Timmy Turner,” he leaned back, offering a handshake, then pulling back when Peri only stared at the extended limb, “and you are?”

He was playing dumb. Peri didn’t understand. Was there a chance he had actually forgotten? Had he been caught by Jorgen and left here as the Fairy Council decided what to do with him? That was highly improbable.

Cosmo redirected his attention on proving Peri’s identity, taking to the air to pull Peri closer. “He’s my son! Look, he looks just like me!”

If Timmy was playing dumb, he was doing an excellent job of it, his face lit up, darting between Peri and Cosmo. “Poof! You’re right, he does look just like you!”

“Whu-ff” Peri was about to say something when Timmy dragged him down into a hug, using his shoulder to nudge Peri’s head closer to his own.

“Hey, I covered for you. I told everyone my memories came back on their own. As far as anyone knows, it’s all my fault, and nobody has to know you’re involved.” Timmy whispered.

Even with overlarge forearms supporting him, Peri kept his wings beating. He knew this routine by heart, his whole family was always so willing to put themselves in harm’s way to protect him. If he’d harbored any doubts about the authenticity of Timmy’s filial bond with him, this would have shattered them. Of course his older brother was babying him, sheltering him from the consequences of his own actions, what else could he expect?

In all honestly, he didn't want to be coddled like this, and he certainly wasn’t convinced this plot would keep him out of trouble in the long term. In fact, he suspected it could only make things worse. Still, Peri wasn’t brave enough to reject the courtesy. Despite himself, he appreciated it. “I- Thanks”

Peri flew back, he had to squirm a little before Timmy actually let go. Once free, Peri pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “You can’t stay here, it won’t work.”

Timmy furrowed his brow. “Now look, I’m not moving in-”

“You’re not?” Cosmo protested.

“No. I’m only moving through,” as he spoke, he tilted back on the sofa and invited Cosmo to land on him once again, “I’m not staying any longer than the weekend. My family’s gonna think— I don’t even know what my family’s gonna think.”

“Your family could move in too!”

That suggestion shocked Timmy into silence. Peri didn’t understand the sudden shift in demeanor, nor the reason why Timmy slowly rearranged himself on the sofa, shuffling around until he was holding his dad like a therapy cat. Peri thought the manhandling looked wildly uncomfortable, but more than that, he was surprised to see an adult human being so affectionate with, well, anything. When Timmy finally spoke again, his voice had gone soft.

"I wish I-" he stopped himself, "my kids would love you."

Timmy kept talking, rambling really, describing his children and their personalities, how he worried his daughter was socially isolated, how his son loved taking care of small animals. The topic expanded to Timmy's general family life, to work, to neighbors and miscellaneous accomplishments. He started talking about renovations he wanted to "inflict" upon his house, he started talking about the engine in his car.

Peri recognized the glint in the man's eye, he was far too familiar with it. Even muted and refined, Peri knew the cloying desperation of a boy trying to impress his father. His stomach did a flip at the revelation, and he was glad he was still in the air, where nobody could see the face he'd just made. He wasn't sure what to think, all he could do was take this as further confirmation that he was absolutely terrible at his job.

There was a reserved fondness in Timmy's voice that Peri couldn't imagine Dev using with him in a thousand years. Peri tried to placate himself by thinking about just how extreme an outlier Timmy really was. Nine years years as a godkid, from eight to seventeen, was beyond abnormal, of course he was unusually close with Peri's parents, even after fifteen years.

Still, he knew he was doing something wrong. His parents had only known Hazel for a matter of months, and she was unrelentingly fond of them. 

He found it very easy to imagine Dev in his early thirties, in fact, he was reasonably certain the kid was a literal clone of his father. However, it was much harder to imagine an adult Dev where Timmy was now. That was a good thing, Peri reminded himself. He was watching a disaster in-progress, not something to be envied.

Timmy was describing the tricks his son's pet rat could preform, bumping his knuckle against the costa of Cosmo's wing. Envy was not among the emotions that Peri felt watching them, instead he felt an awful longing, a mixture of pity and self-pity and fury at the world at large for being so unfair. When he was a little kid, he wanted to keep his big brother forever. 

Peri remembered crying something fierce when his mom had told him ‘We can’t keep him, because that would mean keeping him from growing up.’

Back then, he didn’t understand what could possibly be so good about growing up that made it worth losing one’s family. At the time, he couldn’t articulate his problems with the system beyond throwing a natural disaster of a tantrum.

Everyone avoided the subject around him after that.

The day they lost Timmy had been devastating. He still didn’t understand, he still cried until his throat hurt. By then he had a much better cap on his magic, which meant his sobbing was less frightening and more tragic. All he could do was make the already sad situation sadder. In the moment and in the aftermath, he screamed about how unfair it was, how it didn’t make any sense. 

He understood why humans could be dangerous, they were big and smart and often very hungry for power. This was taught as early as spellementary. Peri remembered attempting to convince Jorgen that Timmy had already been big and smart for a long time, and he never hurt anyone. It wasn’t the best argument. ‘That means he’s grown up.”

Nobody wanted this to happen, but everyone agreed, even though they couldn’t explain why Timmy growing up meant he had to leave forever. The day after, when his mother tried to comfort him, he wouldn’t stop asking why and getting increasingly unsatisfactory answers.

Eventually, he got Wanda to admit. ‘I don’t know why, it’s not fair to anyone.’

Wait.

"Where's Mom?" Peri asked. If there had been an argument over Timmy’s unexpected reappearance, there was no sign of it. 

The question was well timed, before either Timmy or Cosmo could respond, his mother entered the room in a shimmering pink cloud. She wavered when she saw him. "Oh Peri, I'm glad you're here. We know what caused the blackout, and the non-emergency powers are back on."

"Yeah, I can definitely see that." Peri said. He could feel his mom's eyes on him, trying to gauge his reaction. He wasn't sure what she wanted to see from him. Truthfully, if he hadn't known about Timmy’s memories in advance, he would fending off some kind of emotional breakdown right now. "What happened?"

"We don't know, yet, but maybe memory wipes don't work on him. It's possible he knows too much too forget."

"That'd be nice, but I definitely got my mind wiped a few hours ago," Timmy interjected, his gaze moving from Wanda to Peri, "Jorgen definitely wiped my mind when he showed up at work, I thought I fell asleep at my desk. I didn't know anything had happened until two friends of mine showed me the security footage."

"Oh." Peri whispered. One of Timmy's texts had mentioned the falling asleep in his chair, he hadn't questioned it. Well, he had questioned it a little, but he was quick to accept it as some normal facet of human aging.

"Yeah," Timmy got to his feet slowly, giving Cosmo ample time to take to the air, "when I saw that, I freaked out, and ended up here."

"You ended up here?" Peri asked. It wasn't like his brother could teleport, this wasn't the result of a single rash decision, this was the outcome of repeated, calculated, horrible decisions.

"I panicked. What was I supposed to do? I didn't know if it was safe to go home."

Peri wanted to suggest that he should've contacted him, he wanted to ask why he felt so unsafe. Surely, he realized nobody wanted to hurt him? Peri would've been able to ask, but now he was committed to this ridiculous parade of lies by omission. While Timmy was clearly adept at the art, the best Peri could do was meet the human at eye level and glare.

His mother pulled him back by the wrist. "He was so scared, don't give him something new to stress over."

"I'm gonna be fine. I'm already fine, I just needed some time to calm down. That's basically what you said, so you were right." Timmy rocked on his heels.

"I'm not sure an hour is enough time for that."

"Then I'm ahead of schedule! 'Cause I'm adaptable, I can take whatever's thrown at me."

Wanda's expression remained dismayed. "About that, when I came here, I had something to ask you. Or, I had something to tell you. What I meant to say was– Well– Oh. I'm not sure if this is a good idea."

Timmy's face fell, Cosmo's wings buzzed.

"I get it, I just, I didn't know what to do I–" For the first time since Peri found him in the apartment, Timmy sounded like he was struggling to justify his actions.

"No not that! You're good, it's good!" Wanda panicked, "I didn't know if it was a good idea to tell you. While I was gone–"

"I know you and Cosmo have a new godkid." Timmy said.

Peri nearly dropped out of the air. Had he just dropped the charade, for no discernible reason? What could Timmy possibly be playing at? Peri had been conflicted when Timmy first started it, but he'd definitely appreciated it.

"Cosmo told me." Timmy continued.

Oh. Sure.

"Timmy told me he has his own kids, twins!" Cosmo added.

Before Cosmo had even finished speaking, Timmy went reaching for his phone. Peri had to change the subject before this turned into an all-night baby photo showcase. He couldn't think of anything natural to say. Instead, he magically drained Timmy's phone of its charge, he stared at his inert phone for a moment. visibly confused. Peri let out a breath when he pocketed it, crisis averted.

Timmy opened his mouth.

"So what were you going to say?" Peri interrupted, directing the question at his mom, hoping his dad would recall a non-sequitur from before this mess had kicked off. 

"Our current godchild, Hazel, she wants to meet you." Wanda said.

Timmy hooked his thumbs into his belt loops. “Sure, why not?” then his mind caught up with his amicability, “Wait, you told her about me?”

”Not exactly, she sort of put everything together on her own.” 

With a deep frown, Timmy finally understood just how terrible of a secret he was. 

“You did make a lot of noise.” Cosmo explained.

”What?”

”She lives next door, across the hall.” Peri clarified.

Timmy looked to the door. “Huh, convenient.”

Proximity wasn’t any concern for fairies, Peri wanted to explain, but stopped as he realized the information might pair poorly with Timmy’s new understanding of how obvious he was. 

He would have to demonstrate his indifference to proximity soon enough, through his wand he could feel Dev beginning to stir. It was for the best that he was already there by the time the boy woke up. Peri was not looking forward to pretending everything was normal. 

-

Hazel kicked her feet as she sat on her bed. It’d been a while since Wanda left to ask Mr. Turner if he wanted to meet her, and now Hazel’s mind was beginning to wander. Her bedroom was better soundproofed than the living room, but if anything bad had happened, she was pretty sure she would hear it. Even with her ear pressed against the hallway-facing wall, she couldn't pick anything up.

Maybe he said no? That was reasonable enough, it was getting pretty late, and he sounded pretty stressed. Why had he sounded so desperate?

Her father’s description of the man conveyed a daunting figure, a well-built, well-dressed professional with an aura of control. Mr. Turner’s voice maybe fit like the first thing, but definitely not the latter two. She wrapped her arms around a pillow, wondering what would happen if she fell asleep, wondering if something bad was happening and if she should be helping. In the end, Hazel didn’t move, petrified by the uncertainty. Even if she knew what to do, she was alone, and she wouldn’t be able to help on her own.

Then, in a flash of light and a puff of smoke, there were three figures in her room. Cosmo, Wanda, and a stranger, formally introduced by a series of flashing neon signs her fairies had hung in the air behind him.

Timothy Tiberius Turner, they read.

Looking at Mr. Turner, Hazel definitely understood why her father mistook him for a government agent. He had a wry sharpness to his features that lent him a striking but ultimately unremarkable look. An effect intensified by his style of dress, a generic black suit worn over a generic white button-up, the only splash of color was the pale pink of his tie. He was still wearing shoes, leather and shined to a polish.

Initially, Mr. Turner looked around the room in confusion, but he smiled when he saw her. He had a warm, goofy sort of grin that made him look a lot less intimidating.

“Hey kiddo, I hear you wanted to meet with me. The name’s—” he gestured to the signage behind him, “but you can call me Timmy, or Tim”

Truthfully, Hazel thought he looked more like a Timothy or a Tiberius than a Timmy or a Tim.

“Can I call you Mr. Turner?” Hazel asked.

”Go right ahead! I hear you’re called Hazel? It’s a nice name.” Mr. Turner said.

Suddenly, Hazel felt bad about thinking his name was unfitting. “Yeah, I’m Hazel Wells, Hazel Antonette Wells.”

He reached out to shake her hand, she took it and shook in the most professional manner she could manage, hoping to impress. He smiled again and took a seat on the apartment floor. 

“So, I’m guessing you summoned me here for a reason?” His tone was light, but Hazel didn’t know what he meant by that. He made it sound like they were brokering a deal.

”Huh?”

 “Y’know, asking me questions, fishing for anecdotes about those two,” he pointed a thumb back at Cosmo and Wanda, who were supervising the interaction with an effusive interest that reminded Hazel of when her parents used to set her up on play dates, “y’know, that kinda thing. I bet I’ve got some whoppers up my sleeve.”

”Oh, yeah! Uh, how old are you? What kind of things do you like? Do you remember any wishes you made? What made you remember? What happened that made Cosmo and Wanda take a ten thousand year vacation after they lost you?”

Mr. Turner expression had remained relatively stable throughout that barrage of questions, up until the last one, where his mouth shot open, soundlessly forming unconnected syllables. He slowly turned to face Hazel’s fairies.

”Ten thousand years?” He asked, voice lower than a whisper.

”We missed you!” Cosmo said as Wanda offered to have ‘that conversation’ later.

Hazel hadn’t anticipated Mr. Turner’s reaction to that last question, though it made sense in retrospect. Of course he didn’t know about something that happened after he’d lost his memories. Hazel listened as the man took a steadying breath. When he returned to answer the rest of Hazel’s questions, he sounded mostly unbothered.

He was thirty two, soon to be thirty three. He liked video games and ongoing superhero comics, though he didn’t have as much time for those things as he used to. When Hazel expressed her sympathies at that, he mentioned that he sometimes played multiplayer games with his kids. One time he wished no one needed to sleep, to disastrous consequences. He yawned after bringing that up. The yawning spread through the room like a contagion. He didn’t know what had sparked his memories.

She offered to make a wish that would clarify how that had happened. Mr Turner paled at that, and clarified that he didn’t want her to do anything that could magically affect his memories. He also mentioned it being too late to make a wish like that.

”Have you ever worked for the government? I only ask because that’s what my dad thought you did when he first saw you.”

”Does working as a public defendant count? That’s on the same level as librarians and beat cops, I guess. Wait, your dad saw me?” Mr. Turner sighed.

“Through the peephole. It’s okay, they figured out that you’re Cosmo and Wanda’s Kid all on their own.”

“Wow. Guess I’m not winning any awards for subtlety this week.” He remarked, clearly talking mostly to himself.

Hazel laughed a little.

Then Mr. Turner began to ask her questions, how old she was, what she liked to do, what wishes she’d made.

She answered his questions with gusto.

In all honestly, the main reason why Hazel wanted to see Mr. Turner was to hopefully glean something about her own future. Talking to the man, she really hoped her future was close to what she was seeing. Mr. Turner was friendly, confident, and charismatic, whenever she struggled to get an idea across or stumbled over her own words, he would try to help her work it out. She wondered if he was anything like her when he was a kid.

”If we have the same fairy godparents, does that make us godsiblings?” Hazel asked.

”Ehh, maybe. If you wanna think of it like that, it might be best to consider me some kind of estranged uncle.” Mr. Turner replied.

“Do you want me to call you ‘Uncle Turner’ then? ‘Uncle Tim’?”

He laughed at that. “Not unless you really wanna. Mr. Turner is fine.”