Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

They are in the middle of clean up. Lark is elbow deep in some mysterious substance that needs to be cleaned out; Grant has been collecting weapons from all over the building and piled them into a startling high tower of deadliness to catalog; Terry has been going through their paperwork, mostly throwing it all out, but occasionally finding projects and puzzles they have completely forgotten about; and Sparrow has successfully put himself on actual standard, boring clean up and is mopping the floor.

It’s just the four of them – occasionally Henry gives them a hand but he and the twins are still uneasy around each other – they don’t have any workers anymore (Mae has been given a very early pension) and they haven’t once seriously considered asking the teens for help. So it’s just them cleaning up the final messes of D.A.D.D.I.E.S. and the Doodler and trying to find closure in between the weapons and the artifacts and the weird gore that no one knows where it came from.

And maybe it’s also sort of their escape from their partners, who don’t really trust them anymore, and their kids, who are angry and justifiably not really talking to them. It’s something they can concentrate on. Something that takes up their time and is useful and means they can scratch at the layers of guilt they still hold.

“Do you think we still need to follow up with that cult in Washington?” Terry asks, squinting at his color coordinated excel table, “We haven’t heard anything from them in a year.”

Sparrow, seemingly the only one to listen to him, looks up from his mop and opens his mouth. But before he can say anything a portal open right next to Lark. He stumbles back, and the rest of them are on their feet immediately.

This could only be one person. Because the only people that could and would visit them by portal are Henry – who doesn’t show up unannounced – and Nicholas.

But it’s neither. Instead Glenn Close, hair tousled, eye patch missing and guitar slung over his back, steps through. He’s bleeding from a wound on his arm but seemingly doesn’t notice.

“Oh good”, he says, voice slightly more subdued than usual, “You’re all here.” He doesn’t seem pleased about that.

“Glenn”, Terry slowly steps towards him, uncertain what to do. He’s not used to Glenn without his demon features. He looks weird. Small. Terry looks back at the others, they look just as shocked as he is.

Sparrow steps forward, “Do you- ehm, do you need help with that?” He asks and points at his wound. Glenn looks down at his arm, just now noticing the blood. He makes a half chuckle, covers the wound with his other hand and in seconds the blood is gone. He shakes his arm out.

“Nah, that’s nothing”, he grins, nods to the unidentified texture that Lark had been messing with, “Now this guy! He’s probably had a rough day, am I right?”

He laughs. The others are quiet. Terry finds Sparrow’s eyes. They’re thinking the same thing: Glenn’s freaking out. Something happened.

“Why are you here?” Terry asks directly. Otherwise they’ll be here all day.

Glenn’s eye flit around the room, find every single one of theirs. Then, like a puppet that got its strings cut, his posture falls and his devil-may-care smile is replaced by a dark scowl. One that Terry has only ever seen twice before. Once in the Forgotten Realms, when Terry overheard Glenn talk about his plans to kill Bill Close, and once when he asked Nicky if he wanted Glenn to kill Terry.

“Listen”, Glenn says, clearly pissed off, “I wouldn’t ask you if I knew what else the fuck to do. Frankly, I’d rather you stay forever at least an entire realm away from Nick but”, he takes a deep breath: “He needs your help.” His eyes find Terry, and there is no playfulness, no charm behind those eyes anymore, “Specifically yours, Junior.”

“What happened?” Lark asks, arms still covered in gunk that he doesn’t seem bothered by.

“We tried to find my dad in the Forgotten Realms. Or well, Earth I guess.”

“What?” they all yell at the same time.

“I know, I know”, Glenn tries to placate them with his hands, “Stupid idea. But you know what they say, leave the Close Boys alone too long…” he shakes his head, like he changed his mind, “Anyway, I just hate loose ends, y’know? Wanted to make sure the ship’s clear and all. Honestly, I kinda expected us to find him dead in a ditch somewhere but surprise! Fucker’s still alive and we kinda spooked him and now Nicky’s trapped!”

“Trapped? How?”

Glenn turns his left index finger next to his head, “Y’know. Trapped in his head.”

Terry finds Sparrow’s eyes again. He looks back at Glenn.

“I don’t understand.”

“For fuck’s sake” Glenn groans, puts his hands to his hips, “Bill put his consciousness away or something! He’s gone deep, deep, deep in his head. I can’t talk to him, he can’t react. It’s like this thing he sometimes does”, he snaps with his fingers, looking for the word, “Dissociating! But just like worse. He’s been like this for hours. I already talked to Jodie and he recommended we go into his head to pull him back out. But he can’t do it and neither can I, but you could”, he points at Terry, “It’s just like the thing we did to get Ron’s anchor.”

Terry makes a face. Yes, theoretically he knows how to do that but it was entirely unpleasant the last time and Ron at least wanted him there. He can’t imagine Nicky would be thrilled to find him pocking in his brain.

“Where is he?” asks Grant from the side, pulled away from his mountain of weapons, “Why didn’t you bring him here?”

“I ain’t gonna bring my unconscious son to the people who shot his arm off without back-up. Don’t get me wrong, I could take all of you easily but I ain’t risking you getting close to him until I know you’re actually gonna help.”

“We’re not going to hurt him”, Sparrow says with a pained smile. Glenn just glares at him and it’s bad enough that Sparrow actually take a step back.

“He’s in Hell right now”, Glenn finally answers, “And once we have a deal, Jodie’s gonna come up here with him. Don’t think we’re letting you into Hell again.”

Terry decides to not argue that, even though they now have zero interest in Hell. Glenn’s mistrust is still warranted so he’ll let him be.

“Of course we’ll help, right Terry?”, Sparrow smiles at him. Hands clasped in front of him like Henry usually does when he’s scared but trying to calm everyone else down.

Glenn points at Sparrow, “You I don’t need. Just Terry. The rest of you are going to stand back and not touch my son.”

“I actually think we need them”, says Terry, “If he’s trapped in his memories it’s not like with Ron. There’s not going to be something to lead us through his brain like the anchor did. We’d have to find him manually and that takes time. Better to have as many eyes as possible in there so we find him quicker.”

“So you want all of these bozos in there? On their own?”

Lark glares at him, “Well, if you care so much about your son, why don’t you get in too?”

“Oh I will”, Glenn glares back. They’re silently glaring daggers back and forth, quietly trying to find a new way to murder somebody, “I already talked with Jodie, I go in and he keeps watch out here.”

“Again, no one’s going to hurt Nicky”, says Sparrow but Glenn just ignores him.

“We all go in”, Terry says, “I need to be close, if I want to get him out and we’re working on limited time. We only have an hour in there and if he’s already been trapped for hours we shouldn’t waste anymore time. Otherwise it could become impossible to find him.”

“Fuck fine!” Glenn takes out his phone, “But Jodie’s still gonna wait outside and keep watch.”

Sparrow opens his mouth again but Lark gestures for him to stop. He shakes his head.

Glenn taps on his phone and seconds later a new portal opens, revealing Jodie’s imposing form caring Nicky’s limp body in his arms.

Jodie doesn’t say anything to any of them, just glares and jostles Nicky’s head so it’s leaning on his arm and not hanging limply in the air.

Nicky looks…small in the arms of his demon father. To be fair, Jodie is quite large, bigger than any normal human but Nicky seemingly drowns in his arms.

“Where do we do this?” Glenn asks, taking turns glaring at them and checking on his son.

Sparrow leads them to the infirmary where Jodie carefully puts Nicky’s body down. His eyes are closed but Terry can tell that he is not asleep. Not in the usual sense at least.

“Tell us again why you thought it was necessary to find Bill? Who even came up with that?” Lark asks, looking at the scene from the doorframe he’s leaning against, arms crossed, scowling at Nicky. He’s obviously worried.

“Like I said”, Glenn scoffs, “I didn’t want any loose ends.”

Jodie raises an eyebrow, “Which is why you had to involve my son?”

Glenn clearly wants to answer something but for some reason doesn’t do it. He bites his lip and looks away, only then does he say: “He’s our son first of all.”

“If we get him back after you fucked him over.” Jodie crosses his arms across his chest.

Glenn grits his teeth, “At least I didn’t shoot his arm off.”

And now both of them are glaring at the four men standing in the room with them. Terry finds it a bit discouraging that Glenn and Jodie can actually agree on something if that thing is that they hate them and maybe want them dead.

“Okay well,” Terry takes a deep breath, “This is how it’s gonna go: Jodie wants to stay outside, right?” He nods with his arms crossed, “That means the five of us go inside. We’ll split up 'cause that means we’ll go through more memories faster. The goal is to find the real Nicky – he’ll be more responsive than the other one’s we’ll meet. He probably knows what’s going on or at least remembers going with Glenn to find Bill. Either way, when Nick wakes up he’ll remember us being in there. The memories we visit can be altered and he will remember both versions, probably. At least for a while. If you want to leave a memory try any door you can find. There should be a light that will get you to another memory. Probably. That part can be tricky, depending on the memory you're currently in.”

“Should we change forms?” asks Glenn.

Terry thinks about it, “I don’t think that’s a good idea. Nicky probably doesn’t want us in there but disguising us feels like lying about it. I’d rather he know exactly what’s going on.”

Glenn just shrugs. The rest look determined to anxious. Terry prepares his spell while he keeps explaining, “If any of you think you found the real Nick yell something…some codeword.”

“We could just say I found him or something”, suggests Sparrow.

“I’d rather we have something specific. Something you wouldn’t say otherwise so I know for sure that you’re trying to ask me to get back.”

“Code Nicky”, Lark says. Terry isn’t sure if it’s a joke or not. But it does work.

“If none of you found him before fifty minutes are up I’ll just take all of us back. If I don’t take you back by that time, assume something happened and get my attention in any way you can.”

They all nod. With the briefing done he starts casting the spell. As he finishes and his consciousness gets pulled from his body and into Nicky’s he realizes one thing they all overlooked with this plan: Nicky isn’t like Ron. He doesn’t just have one set of memories. He also doesn't have just one conciousness.

Chapter Text

Lark’s in the boys’ bathroom of Westrock Middle (and Elementary) School. He knows the space like the back of his hand because he has spent about equal time in Middle School (and Elementary) drawing on both his hand and the walls of these stalls.

He looks at himself in the mirror, except that he doesn’t have a reflection at all. All he sees is the crack in the upper right corner and the reflection of the rancid toilet stalls behind him. Right, he doesn’t actually exist in this space.

He turns around and looks at the stall doors. All closed, but none of them are locked. Is no one in here?

But just in that moment he hears a soft whimper from the stall furthest away from the door. Slowly he walks up to it and presses his ear to the door. Quiet whimpers and sniffles, someone is crying in there.

Well not someone. It’s Nicky, this is his memory after all and if no one else is in here then by process of elimination it has to be him.

Lark tries to think if he knows when this happened. He can’t see Nicky so he has no idea how old he is and his voice is not an indicator since all he hears are short whimpers. If they’re at Westrock it means he’s a child. Lark frowns. Would Nicky, the actual Nicky, be somewhere around here? It wouldn’t be Lark’s first instinct. Should he just go? To where though? He doesn’t know how this memory magic works. Terry had just briefly mentioned something about following the light? Lark sees no light around here. Well, except for the flickering lamp on the ceiling.

Nicky blows his nose.

Should he…talk to Nicky?

Lark opens his mouth but in that exact moment the door to the bathroom opens. In comes the small figure of ten year old Lark himself (lark is pretty sure it’s him and not sparrow, sometimes even he can’t tell them apart on picture where they’re younger).

Baby-Lark enters the toilet, clearly with no intent of actually using it. No one actually used this bathroom cause it smelled weird and the toilet were prone to getting clogged. And it was cold. Boys only used it in an emergency or to make it more disgusting on purpose. Lark used it primarily to live out his ‘creative calling’ as Henry used to call it.

But as soon as Lark enters and closes the door behind him, marker already in hand, he stops. Lark, him, the adult, still has the ear to the bathroom stall and thinks for a moment that his baby-self can see him. Baby-Lark isn’t looking at him though, he’s looking at the door.

He comes closer as quietly as he can. Nicky is still crying and apparently has not noticed that someone entered.

Lark, baby-Lark, drops to his knees and scooches to the gap beneath the door stall to peer into it. He must see Nicky, ‘cause he immediately jumps back up and without any hesitation rips open the stall door.

“Well, if it isn’t the crybaby!”

Adult-Lark cringes.

Nicky sits on the closed toilet seat with his legs pulled up and close to his chest, hugged tight with his arms. His eyes are blotchy and red, his cheeks are wet with tears. He must be around eleven, maybe twelve? Back before he was Nicky, currently just Nicolas.

Now Lark kind of remembers this. All thoughts of leaving this memory are gone, his curiosity tells him to stay. This was a weird memory he knows.

“What are you whining about now?” Lark says to the crying boy and also blocks off the stall door with his body leaned against the doorframe, “Someone insulted your perfect-little polo shirt?”

“Leave me alone”, Nicolas chokes out. He’s looking pointedly away from baby-Lark, as if he could still hide the tears.

“No, no. I simply must know: what could possibly have happened that little Narcolas himself is skipping class?” Lark grins from ear to ear, so wide that it frankly even freaks out his older self. God, he hates that little brat. What is he even calling Nicolas little for? He’s taller than Lark at this point!

It clearly affects Nicolas though, or at least one of the things Lark said affected him, could be all of them. He somehow shrinks further into himself, looks at the floor.

Now Nicolas definitely was a crybaby. He cried at soccer practice, he cried over bad grades, he cried when people teased him, he cried when he got angry. And boy did he get angry often. But Lark had always, secretly though, admired that he barely seemed ashamed of that. People would tease him about it, Lark often the first and loudest one, but Nicolas would just glare and yell and refuse to stop. He’s always been like this, loud, impossible to ignore with his seemingly too big feelings. Only when his dad was present would he become softer, he would wipe away the tears before anyone could see them and he would pretend like he was above all their teasing.

So back then, Lark remembers being quite confused that he found Nicolas hiding away. Crying silently and stifled and embarrassed that anyone could see.

“I don’t want to talk to you”, Nicolas says, which is about what one would expect. In all honesty, Lark, back then, had assumed it would be about five more minutes of them going back and forth before it would escalate. Nicolas would shove him, and then they would fight until someone found them and they’d get detention. That’s how it went all the other times Lark teased Nicolas. Afterwards Nicolas would always be deeply ashamed of course; he would avoid him at all cost, looking like a kicked puppy because his precious father had raised his voice a little at him.

But this conversation had gone differently, and Lark had never really understood why. He’s had questions about it for years. Never bringing it up to Nicky, because what would he say? Why were you honest with me that one time when I was being all terrible? Nicky probably didn’t even know.

“I’ll have to report this of course!”, Lark says with a puffed out chest, pretending like he was someone that cared about people skipping class, “Oh, teacher~ Nicolas is skipping class! How terrible! What would your precious pig of a father say?”

And then Nicolas had done the first thing that wasn’t like Nicolas at all: he had bit his lip. His shoulder had fallen and his perfect, high-strung posture had fallen.

Weirdest of all he had not defended his father or yelled at Lark. He had said: He’d be disappointed. Like they were friends and shared these things. He had sighed and continued: I just- one of the guys on the team had said something about-

He had hesitated and bit his lip and studied Lark’s face like he was looking for reassurance.

Might as well tell you, everyone’s gonna know soon anyway.

Lark had been quiet because he had been shocked. But Lark had also always been a little obsessed with figuring Nicolas out and to find this morsel of vulnerability felt like hitting the jackpot. He had stayed quiet because in that moment nothing had been more imminent than his burning curiosity about what made Nicolas not act like Nicolas.

Mercedes is your mom, right? Lark had nodded. Then…do you know what being trans means?

And Lark’s eyebrows had shot up into his hairline, putting the puzzle pieces together quickly. He and Sparrow had listened in on their parents discussing that there was a trans kid on their soccer team that the school was making a fuss about. They had discussed writing emails and creating a big fundraiser and more over the top plans like they always did.

Present-day Lark can’t help but think about a world where any of that actually happened. That would be about Nicolas’ biggest nightmare. Thank god, they had figured it out quietly and without Nicky getting outed to the entire school.  The rest of the soccer team would find out though, just a few days after this.

Lark, watching the memory, expects that conversation. He expects Nicolas to suddenly open up to the kid that could, maybe, be called his bully, and he expects to watch the conversation where they actually talk normally to each other for the first time ever.

But this Nicolas bites his lip and his shoulders drop and that’s where the similarities end. Because Nicolas’ appearance shifts. His hair grows rapidly until it hangs in his face and the tips of his bangs (bangs! on nicolas!) dye themselves a deep cherry-red. His perfectly fitting baby-blue polo morphs into a washed out blue jean jacket and reveals an ill-fitting band t-shirt. His khakis become scruffy black jeans and a silver guitar pick reflects light, dangling from a chain on his neck.

Lark blinks. That’s not Nicolas.

No, when he bits his lip like that, hunched over, long hair in his face he looks like- he looks like Glenn.

Or well, like he could be Glenn’s son.

“It’s not a big deal”, Nick says.

Baby-Lark, who seems fully unaffected by what just happened, huffs. He comes into the stall and sits down at the door, looking up at Nick, not grinning but looking- worried? Adult-Lark peers over at Nick, who’s still gnawing on his lower lip.

“You don’t have to stay here”, he says quietly to Lark. But Lark doesn’t move.

“Well, my friend, I will stay here until you tell me what ails you! And then maybe we can wrestle and that’ll make you feel better!”

Nick chuckles and starts playing with the hem of his t-shirt.

“I think I’m gonna get kicked out of the soccer team”, he says, “Cody found something out about me and-”

“Is that why you are hiding? Did Cody challenge you on your spot on the starting team? Because you are much better and I will fight for your honor!” Baby-Lark seems incredibly pleased by his deduction. He smiles, what is probably supposed to be encouragingly, up at Nick. He sits with his feet together and bouncing his knees up and down, like he’s doing the butterfly in yoga.

Adult-Lark feels weird watching this. He wasn’t like that as a child. He wasn’t encouraging and trying to cheer up Nicolas. That never happened. He didn’t like Nicolas. Even after he outed himself to Lark.

And yes after that he was careful of not teasing Nicolas about being trans and maybe he fought Cody – the guy that outed Nicolas to the entire team – so he would keep his mouth shut and not tell anyone else. But that wasn’t about Nicolas, that was because Lark had been raised well…right in some aspects at least, and also because he liked fighting people. Lark wasn’t being a good person when he did that. He wasn’t being a good friend, or any friend at all.

“No,” Nick says, sniffling again, “I’m gonna tell you something, okay? You have to be cool about it though.”

Lark nods and bounces his knees more. Normal did that as well. Lark had always found it really adorable when Normal did that.

“I’m trans”, he whispers.

Baby-Larks eyes grow wide.

“You’re the kid that my parents made the posters for?”

Nick’s cheeks get red like his hair, “They made posters?” He sounds horrified. “Oh god, I have to stop them!”

“You know about this?” Lark cocks his head, “I though they just kinda forced themselves into it.”

“No”, Nick looks back at the floor and suddenly his hair is short and black again and Nicolas speaks, “Your mom found out. I ehm- I got my period on our last field trip and she noticed and got me some pads.”

Lark blinks, Nicolas had told him that yes. What was going on here? He just got used to seeing a memory he doesn’t know.

“And then she and your dad promised they would make sure the school woudn’t kick me out. They don’t like that I play in the boy’s team.”

“What? But Darnell and Daryll love you!”

“Not them!” Nick, it’s back to Nick, back to dyed hair and chewing on his lip, “The school administration. They’ve been kinda allowing it so far because none of the parents know. But well, Cody found my pads and know he knows and he’s a big fucking narc.”

He never liked me anyway, Nicolas had said.

Nick is really, really red in the face. He sniffs and wipes away the tears that have welled up again. “If the parents of the other boys want me off the team and the school’s gonna do it. Your parents have promised to do what they can but like- I didn’t think that meant posters. I don’t want anyone to know. It’s not that big of a deal!”

“Well, you’re crying in the bathroom”, Lark says helpfully.

“So what?”

“I’ve never seen you cry”, Lark emphasis. “You’re not a crier. Not even when you tore open your knee and blood was everywhere.”

“’Cause it wasn’t a big deal”, Nick mumbles and his shoulders hitch higher.

Lark grins, “Well, we can make sure no one else finds out.”

“How?”

“I’ll fight Cody to the death!”

“What! No!”, but Lark can see that he’s almost smiling, “Don’t fight him to the death!”

“I’ll fight him until he knows to keep his mouth shut then”, Lark’s grin is as wide as it was when he came in here.

Did you give Cody a bloody nose? Nicolas had asked at the end of the week when Cody had showed up looking worse for wear. Lark had only grinned at him. And a black eye?

I gave him a message. Lark had replied. And Nicolas had smiled at him shyly and thanked him. They never talked about it again. Not about this or the trans thing. But Lark had glared at Cody for the rest of their time on the soccer team together and Nicolas and him had never fought again. Not physically at least.

Nick giggles when Lark describes what he could do to Cody that would not kill him but get the message across. He keeps wiping his tears away until they stop flowing.

“Thanks”, he smiles when he finally stops breathing.

Thank you, Lark. Said with the smallest of smiles, quietly but earnest.

Nick relaxes enough to drop his feet from the closed toilet seat, “Why are you here actually?”

Actually, what are you doing here?

“Skipping”, Lark says and had said back then, shrugging.

“You shouldn’t skip”, the boy sitting on the toilet seat says, scowling at him. Because it’s not Nick but Nicolas again. Like the memory can’t remember who this happened to. Because it happened to both of them, Lark realizes. It finally makes sense, Nicky’s memory can’t distinguish between what happened to Nick and what happened to Nicolas, so it all gets mixed up and keeps switching between both scenes. They both happened; it’s just the words that slightly changed.

“You’re skipping”, Lark says to Nicolas.

“Don’t tell dad”, and he has long hair without any dye, and wears black jeans with a polo shirt. His voice sounds doubled.

“You’re dad cares about you skipping school?”, Lark raises his eyebrow.

“Of course he does”, Nick and Nicolas say at the same time. Then the jacket and the dye is back and it’s just Nick, “I promised him not to skip. I don’t know why he cares about it so much, but he really wants me to do decent in school.”

“Well, that’s not going well, huh?”

Nick shrugs, “School’s hard. But he doesn’t want me to get the best grades ever, just y’know, show up?”

Glenn never finished High School, Lark remembers somewhere in the back of his head. Nicky didn’t end up graduating either.

“Does Narcolas need a tutor?”, baby-Lark teases because he had been feeling wrong-footed having such a long conversation with Nicolas were they had been civil.

Nicolas, it’s Nicolas again, rolls his eyes but starts rubbing the collar of his shirt, “You’re not better than me.”

“No”, Lark grins, “But I don’t care.”

“Well, you’re parents are like super permissive!” What twelve year old says permissive? Adult-Lark thinks, especially when he knows that Nicolas struggled in English class. Well, struggled as in he didn’t get the perfect grades he wanted to get.

“Dad promised me he’s gonna get me actual drumming lessons”, Nick says and Lark can see stars in his eyes when he thinks about it, “But I have to try a little in school. Y’know, not become a total nerd. Just try.”

If I keep up the good grades, Nicolas had said, Dad said I can go to Marching Band next year.

“Sparrow’s sick. Had to stay at home”, Lark grins at Nicolas or Nick, because he probably sais it to both of them, “We’ll just inform the teachers that you saw me throwing up as well and you were worried about my well-being, so you selflessly stayed away from class! Neither of us will get in trouble!”

That’s…nice, Nicolas had said. You’re a lot nicer than usually.

Nick ducks his head and smiles.

Thank you, Lark, keeps ringing in his ears as he watches Nick hop off the toilet. He holds out his hand to help Lark get up. He takes it but also uses it to pull really hard and make Nick stumble. Nicolas would have yelled at him. Nick just laughs.

“Let’s get you home, you poor dying child”, he grins wide and easily. Then he ducks his head again, “Thanks, Lark. You’re a really god friend.”

No, I’m not, Adult-Lark thinks immediately. Of course, he isn’t. He couldn’t be. He wasn’t friends with Nicky before the Forgotten Realms. He wasn’t a good friend to Nicky ever. He was selfish and stubborn and miserable for most of the time they knew each other. He had agreed to a plan that could have very well killed Nicky.

They’re not really friends, or have ever been. They definitely weren’t good friends.

But he made Nick laugh. And Nicolas stopped crying. And he was the reason Nick and Nicolas could stay on the soccer team. And he agreed to lie for his sake when he never cared about getting in trouble for skipping a class.

Lark’s chest burns. He’s not a good friend. He knows he isn’t.

Why does Nicky remember him as one?

“Why this one?”, he asks into the empty stall after Nick and Lark have left. He looks around, like he hopes to find someone to answer his question. “Why show me this one?”

No one answers. Instead his surroundings gets kind of blurry, it’s like when he wears Sparrow’s glasses. The memory is ending now that he is nowhere close to Nick – or Nicolas – he guesses.

Faintly, Lark hears voices. He can’t quite make out what they’re saying but it sounds hectic. Maybe they’re yelling? At least two voices he thinks.

“How do I get out of here?” he asks into nothing, “I can’t just stay here, right?”

Instead of an answer he gets a bright light coming from the stall next to his. Follow the light, Terry has said. Alright then, he wants to get out of here as quickly as possible anyway.

Just as he goes to open the door the voices get louder. He can make a singular word: Nicolas!, someone yells. Like they’re in agony. Like they’re terrified.

Lark opens the stall door.

Lark is in Nicky’s room at his parent’s house. Well, the one on Earth anyway. He knows the rooms well, the five of them had spent countless sleepovers at each other houses after the Forgotten Realms. Even after the first year they were at each other’s place constantly. Nicky’s especially, because he had his own TV and couch and Morgan, the only parent still living at the place, was ‘chill as hell’ as Nicky would always say.

But instead of the bedroom Lark knows, a clean, bright room, with only a single poster on the wall, from some cop movie Lark’s parents wouldn’t let him watch and the nice couch and the potted plants that Nicky cried about when they died; Lark sees – frankly – a mess.

Not just a mess mess, no, this is the most cramped, disorganized, chaotic room he’s ever seen.

The potted plants seemingly took over one half of the room, sprawling long and wide all over the walls and the floor. There is not one poster on the wall by his bed but dozens, the movie poster hangs on the wall at least thrice. It’s so many that it’s almost impossible to see the actual paint underneath; the paint that should only ever be one color but is instead a wild mix of black and red and blue and crème and bright eye-sore pink. Every visible inch seems to have a new combination of colors. The couch looks like it’s two different ones sewn together. The nice, pristine blue one Lark knows and a dark green one, crumbs all over it and a suspicious stain half hidden between an old pillow. There’s stuff all over the floor, you can’t even make two steps without stepping on something. Toys, instruments, weapons, multiple tiny figurines depicting devils and demons, at least one that looks suspiciously like Jodie’s full demon form. The bed has two different blankets and a dozen more pillows. Clothes are lying all over the couch and bed and any other surface of the room. Bright polos and neutral khakis; flannels, band shirts and ripped jeans; leather jackets and much more provocative pieces in sizes between pre-teen and slightly-smaller-than-average adult. Lark lifts one up and it’s a fucking crop top, one that he has definitely seen on an adult Nicky on occasion. A Nicky that hasn’t lived in this room anymore. No, Nicky’s bedroom has never looked like this. It had been almost minimalistic actually.

Lark, deciding that all this memory magic mumbo-jumbo is above his pay-grade, elects to ignore it until it seems relevant.

As he looks around, he spots himself and Nicky sitting on the couch. They must be around fourteen and fifteen-sixteen respectively. Lark hasn’t yet cut his hair to the buzz cut he had for a few years, so he isn’t fifteen yet. Nicky is in that phase were he changed his hair about once a week, so it’s impossible to get any clues from that. Right now it’s long, down to his upper back, and bleached at the tips, pulled up into a ponytail. Both of them are hunched over, looking at something between them.

Music is playing out of a speaker standing among the messy coffee table. Something melodic and melancholic that sounds vaguely familiar to Lark. It must be Nicky’s playlist.

When Lark comes close to inspect the scene, he hears a pained whimper from Nicky, clearly played up for effect a little bit.

“Keep still”, Lark says without looking up. Now adult-Lark can see the Nicky’s arm is carefully kept still by Lark’s hand that isn’t holding the needle to tattoo him with. A familiar sense of dread fills Lark.

Wait, wasn’t there supposed to be yelling? This memory doesn’t have that. It’s just Lark given Nicky a tattoo and then the argument. But that wasn’t the type of argument where someone had to yell someone else’s name all scared and shit. What was that about then?

Just as he thinks it, Lark can hear it again. Nicholas!, someone yells, Nicholas!

Nick, Nick, Nick. Another voice chants, also worried but not screaming. Lark turns around but sees nothing. The voices stop and it’s just the music again.

“What do you think of the playlist?” Nicky asks, his eyes are fixed to the top of Lark’s head. He’s watching closely what he can see of Lark’s face.

Lark doesn’t even look up, “It’s fine. Sounds kinda sad.”

“The lyrics are really good, remind me of you and the guys.”

“Sure.” Nicky wiggles a little and Lark grabs him more aggressively, “I said keep still. This was your idea!”

“It’s just kinda uncomfortable.”

“You can set yourself on fire”, Lark deadpans, “How is this uncomfortable?”

“It’s a very different feeling, for your information.”

Lark rolls his eyes and keeps going. Nicky starts to hum along to the song playing.

Adult-Lark tries to look at the tattoo. He doesn’t actually remember what design he did for Nicky, it’s been so long ago. He can’t check anymore either, cause the wrist he tattooed it on doesn’t exist anymore.

“How much longer?” Nicky asks and wiggles some more. Lark doesn’t answer.

Adult-Lark is finally close enough to see the tattoo his past self is doing. He snorts. It’s a fucking pentagram. With ACAB written in the middle.

I need a tattoo, Nicky had said to him over the phone after telling him to come over, Any fucking design as long as it pisses Jodie off.

That’s all the explanation Lark needed really. He had gotten the tattoo gun a few months ago and had gotten really tired of hunching over himself to do anything with it. The other guys had been very reluctant about letting him do anything on their skin, even Sparrow for some fucking reason, but Nicky had been hesitantly interested for a while. The only reason he hadn’t agreed early was because it’s “not something Nicolas would do”. But apparently the time has finally come that Nicky hadn’t given a shit anymore about what Jodie would want from him and just did it.

He was a very difficult person to tattoo though.

Foster, go a- a voice says, sounding like it’s coming from right behind Lark. He turns around, there’s nothing there. It’s the voices again.

Nicolas! Nicolas! they chant, What happened? What happened?

A cold shiver runs down Lark’s back. He has no idea what this is about. He doesn’t like this whole memory thing.

He’s here to find Nicky, not to watch a fucking home movie of himself being a dick and Nicky’s supernatural identity crisis. The first memory might have been mildly interesting but he knows what happens here. He’s gonna say the wrong damn thing and Nicky freaks out and suddenly Nicky didn’t want the tattoo! And then he’ll blame Lark for ruining his relationship with Jodie and not keeping Nick in check.

He doesn’t fucking understand Nicky. Never has. He won’t understand him now after Lark helped shoot his arm off and they haven’t talked for like a decade.

Lark turns away from the two teenagers and walks up to the door of Nicky’s bedroom. He needs to get out of here.

The door opens to blindingly bright light, just like the one in the toilet stall. Lark steps in without looking back.

And he’s immediately back in the same room. Same plants, same posters, same fucking mess. He groans. Fuck this goddamn memory bullshit-

“Nicolas?” a voice behind him says. More of those fucking voices? No, this one was calm, soft and not panicked.

Behind him, in the door he just came through, is Morgan.

Lark looks back into the room. This isn’t the same memory anymore, he notices. Just the same room.

Teenage-Lark is not here anymore. It’s just Nicky lounging on the couch with his phone in hand.

“Nicky”, he says, without looking up from his phone.

“Sorry, Nicky”, she corrects, “Jodie’s here.”

Now he does look at her. He blinks, “Why?”

“You’ll have to ask him”, she sighs, “He’s not talking to me, remember?”

“Well, I’m not talking to him!”

“We can’t both ice him out”

“Watch me”, Nicky goes back to his phone.

Morgan steps into the room fully. She sits down next to Nicky on the couch. Lark trails behind her. He decides to take a seat on the coffee table next to the couch so he can clearly see the two of them.

He doesn’t like this stupid memory magic stuff. But the door is open and there is no light anywhere so he might as well wait until this one’s over. At least he isn’t in it.

“Is this about the tattoo?”, Morgan asks and nudges Nicky’s tattooed wrist. It’s still red and swollen

Nicky scowls and doesn’t look at her, “It’s not not about the tattoo.”

Morgan nods and for a second it’s quiet.

“What’s your plan if you want to piss Glenn off?” she asks.

Nicky blinks and turns to her, his eyes land at her chin, not her face.

“You know”, she shrugs and grins a bit mischievously, “Pissing Jodie of is easy. I would know. But if you ever need to rebel against Glenn, what’s the game plan. You can’t dye your hair, he doesn’t care, can’t get more tattoos, he just thinks that’s punk as hell. Actually I think just you trying to rebel against him would make him cry tears of joy.”

Nicky bites his lip, “Drop out of school.”

Morgan blinks. Then she does a double take like she didn’t hear him right. “Well, please don’t drop out of school. Like, that would be the thing Glenn cares about!” She waves it off.

“He would”, Nicky says like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “I know he wants me to go to college. Or at least like, Community College.”

“That doesn’t seem like Glenn at all.”

Nicky shrugs and looks in the opposite direction of his mom, “Then you don’t know him very well.”

“Nicolas”, she says. All sad, and long and drawn out.

Nicolas! a voice yells like their heart is breaking.

We’re here Nick, another says, We’re right here.

“If you don’t want me and Glenn to date, you can say so. I know it’s, well, difficult for you.”

Lark can clearly see Nicky roll his eyes.

“You’re single. You can date whoever you want to.”

“Well, yeah but-”

“Morgan”, Nicky stops her. Morgan, not mom. None of his parents are mom or dad anymore, not after the Forgotten Realms. Lark hasn’t called Henry dad or father in years either but he suspects Nicky has very different reasons for that. Nicky still likes his parents, and that might be the problem.

“You can date Glenn”, Nicky sounds so over this conversation, “I don’t care.”

Morgan frowns. Lark can’t read her very well but her flighty responses and nervous smiles make him thing that she feels as awkward as she looks. She doesn’t know how to talk to her son either, “I thought you were mad about the divorce?”

“I’m not”, Nicky sighs, “You and Jodie never worked together anyway. You’d have divorced earlier I think, if this”, and he points at all of himself, “hasn’t happened.”

“Sorry”, she cringes.

“Don’t apologize”, Nicky mumbles, “The only one that has to apologize is Jodie.”

“Why are you so mad at him? You know if he did something, you can tell me and then I’ll yell at him.”

Nicky shrugs and starts rubbing his shirt’s collar. He doesn’t answer.

“I think you two should talk”, Morgan finally decides and get up, “I’ll tell him to come in.”

Nicky doesn’t agree, but he also doesn’t object. Morgan leaves the room and closes the door behind her.

Lark for some reason, feels a little better that apparently even Nicky’s own mother doesn’t understand Nicky.

He looks around the room, the room that has never, ever looked like this in real life. Maybe Nicky also doesn’t understand Nicky.

“Lark?”

His head turns back to Nicky instantly. He’s looking directly at Lark. Like he can see him.

“What are you doing back here?”

“You can see me?”, Lark asks and can’t help but curse this stupid memory-thingy even more. Why can’t any of this make sense for once?

“Of course I can?”, Nicky frowns, “Don’t play dumb with me.”

“I’m not- What?” Lark shakes his head, “Do you think I’m Lark? Your Lark?”

Nicky cocks his head slightly, narrows his eyes, “Sparrow?”

“No!” Lark groans, “I mean that I’m obviously not fucking fourteen! Look at me! I’m in my thirties! Don’t you think that’s weird?”

Nicky blinks owlishly at him. He shakes his head. Looks back at him, “But you are Lark?”

“You know what, forget it”, Lark doesn’t have the patience to try and understand this, “Yes I’m Lark. Fourteen-year-old brat lark Oak. What’s going on?”

“I’m guessing you’re still mad at me?” Nicky says and ignores half of what Lark just said.

“Sure”, might as well just roll with it.

Nicky takes a deep breath then: “I’m sorry”, and that surprises Lark. Because Nicky doesn’t apologize for a lot of things, “I shouldn’t have yelled at you. You just did what I asked you to do.”

“You’re talking about the tattoo, right?”

“Of course”, Nicky looks confused, “What else?”

Lark shrugs. He doesn’t know either.

“I do like the tattoo”, Nicky says, and hovers over it with his fingers, tracing the lines, “You should do art.”

He used to say that to Lark a lot. He told him to become a painter or a tattoo artist or even write comic book. Lark didn’t know why Nicky was so insistent on pretending like their lives weren’t revolving around killing the Doodler and only that. Lark couldn’t be anything but the person that corrects his mistake. (and now he hasn’t even done that)

“If you liked it”, Lark start because even after years he can’t stop being curious even if he knows that he’ll never get Nicky, “why were you angry I did it?”

“I wanted a tattoo. Nick wanted a tattoo and to piss of Jodie. Nicolas didn’t want it though. I can’t make decision about my body that we can’t agree on, that’s unfair to them. Especially not to piss of someone else’s dad.” Lark does not like it when Nicky talks about Nick and Nicolas in third person, it scares him frankly a little bit. Magic is so fucking complicated and he never gets it. But he never quite asked Nicky how it works either.

He doesn’t ask now either, “Why did you ask me then in the first place?”

“’Cause I was pissed off and not thinking right. And then I got mad that you didn’t try and talk me out of it. But that’s not your responsibility. Again. Sorry.”

Lark doesn’t know what to say to that. He kinda assumed there was a good reason Nicky had gotten so angry that day and had thrown him out of his house. Most of the time when people are angry at him, there’s a good reason and it is his fault.

He’s not a good person and he is not a good friend.

But Nicky doesn’t actually think this was his fault.

“Jodie and Moragn divorced”, Nicky says, “Finally I guess. And Jodie has kind of spiraled and I just don’t know what to do. He makes me so angry but mostly- I’m just scared for him?”

Nicky looks up at Lark like he has any answer.

“I don’t want dad to be so fucking miserable all the time.”

What happened?! and We have to burn it. Burn it! the voices say.

“Everyone is”, Nicky keeps talking but the voices have gotten louder, “Everyone is just miserable now. And I’m trying so fucking hard to make anyone happy, just anyone.”

Nick. Nick. Nick. and Nicolas! they chant.

“Did you ever listened to that playlist, I made you?” Nicky asks.

Lark shakes his head. He doesn’t know what playlist he’s talking about.

“Of course not”, Nicky smiles, sad but not disappointed. He probably didn’t expect Lark to ever listen to it. Lark doesn’t listen to music.

It’s them, a new voice says. This one is quite and so, so familiar, It was them.

The scene before Lark breaks abruptly.

Chapter Text

The scene breaks at the edges first. Not the visible edges, it’s nothing Lark can see. Instead the memory crumbles audibly. Loud static fills the air and only after nothing of his surrounding can be understood over the noise anymore, does the static also appear in his vision.

Then, like the scene in front of him was just projected onto curtains, it swings and folds, and flickers. Something is behind it and it wants to get out. The middle curves. It reaches towards Lark, comes closer and closer. The faces of the people he just watched get disstorted, their voices – still only static – warp in pitch and volume.

Lark has seen awful things in his time. This might still be in the top ten, simple by how little sense he can make of it.

He fucking hates memory magic.

Like a malfunctioning projector it flickers more, and then his surroundings vanish. It's dark all around.

Another scene comes back one almost immediately. Flickering again until it stabilizes.

Instead of Nicky's bedroom on Earth he’s now in a badly lit hallway that is entirely unfamiliar to him. There’s still static in his vision and in the air, first it softens but then it crescendos again. Worse than before. The noise is so bad that Lark instinctively tries to cover his ears but it doesn’t help at all.

The air around him also becomes unbearably hot. He can smell smoke around him, even if he sees nothing. Is the house on fire? There has to be a fire somewhere. A fire or-

The static dies abruptly and with it the heat lowers, as reality in front of Lark gets carved apart. Like heat on hot concrete the fissure in space shimmers. It grows until it is roughly the size of a door.

Nicky enters the hallway through his portal and with him the last bit of static is gone. Lark’s ears still ring but he can barely pay attention to that when he sees what’s going on with Nicky.

His arm is gone. He’s holding it with the other hand, desperately pushing the scraps of his shirt against the still fresh, bleeding wound. But it’s too much. He leaves a trail of blood in the hallway that Lark now realizes has to be inside his home in Hell.

Nicky stumbles forwards, almost falls but catches himself with his bleeding shoulder against the wall. He yells in pain. The same way he has yelled when they shot it off.

He takes another step, another one. Slow and unsteady but now he is finally close enough for Lark to see his face. He’s ashen, there’s blood smeared everywhere, only washed away by the tears streaming down his face.

Lark stares back in shock. He can’t breathe. He can’t move.

Neither can Nicky. On the next step, he stumbles again but this time there is no wall to catch him, he falls to the ground right in front of Lark. For a second Lark thinks he should catch him.

But then he would make himself known in this memory, and he can’t imagine that this Nicky would feel much of anything but terror if he saw him now.

Nicky stays on the ground, lifts himself up with his healthy hand. He yells again. No, sobs. He tries to lift himself but his legs shiver and he can’t get them to lift him.

Lark, again, makes an aborted movement to reach out. Stops.

Nicky sobs more, quiets down, then even his healthy arm seems to give up.

He lifts his head from the ground, half covered by his hair, half by his tears and blood. Then he opens his mouth, seems to catch his breath, then he yells: “DAD! HELP!” his breathing goes fast again, his chest pumping up and down, “HELP ME! PLEASE! DAD!” followed by another sob. The loudest one yet.

Immediately loud, heavy steps come from behind Lark. Then the hallway erupts into light and Jodie Foster’s shadow envelops Lark. Not even seconds later another door gets thrown open and the much lighter footsteps of Glenn Close reach them as well.

“Nicolas!”

Lark has the good instinct to move away, behind Nicky’s crumbled body, so that he is not in the way when Jodie rushes towards his son.

“Nicolas, what is going on? What- What happened?!”

He crouches next to him, his hands hover, like he doesn’t know where to start.

“What happened? What’s going on? Nicolas, where are the others?” he asks, panic in his voice.

Glenn appears on Nicky’s other side and, contrary to Jodie, he immediately grabs Nicky’s bloody stump.

Nicky sobs at the contact. His other hand blindly pushes towards Jodie, like he wants his dad to hold his hand.

“Foster, stop overwhelming him!” Glenn yells and frees the wound from the soaked shirt, “Fucking heal him!”

“Yes! Yes!” Jodie looks fully overwhelmed. Isn’t he the fucking king of Hell? Why’s he more useless than Glenn?

Jodie takes Nicky’s hand and starts mumbling something quietly. At the same time Glenn lays his hands around the bleeding stump and starts to quietly hum the tune of Silent Night.

As far as Lark can tell, nothing much changes. But there is so much blood that he likely wouldn’t know anyway.

“It’s not closing”, Glenn says and pulls his own shirt over his head to wipe some of the blood away, “Like we did nothing.”

“Who did this, Nicolas? What happened?”, Jodie says again and again like a mantra. Nicky doesn’t answer, just another full bodied sob.

“Jodie! We need to close the wound! It doesn’t fucking matter what happened!”

“Yes it does!” he barks back, “If we can’t heal him than that might mean someone specifically blocked our magic. Than we can’t do anything!”

Lark winces. Yes, they did that. The idea was only to block Nicky’s demon magic of course. He didn’t- well, they didn’t expect him to get back to Hell at all. Not without them in tow. Somehow stopping Nicky’s dads from saving their son feels even worse than just outright shooting him. Crueler.

“Like fucking Hell”, Glenn glowers, “What happened to his stupid fucking friends? Where are they?”

Nicky starts shaking.

“No”, he says quietly but his dads immediately hear him, “No, no. Was them. ‘was them.”

He keeps shaking his head, repeating it over and over again, clutching on Jodie’s hand.

Glenn and Jodie look at each other. Lark isn’t quite sure what that look means, but it’s clear that whatever it is, they do not have to say anything to come to the same conclusion.

Carefully, gently, Jodie moves the hair out of Nicky’s face and looks him in the eyes. He still holds his hand, “Do you mean…your friends did this? Terry? Grant? Lark and Sparrow?”

Nicky’s chest is still moving up and down a hundred miles an hour, but he looks at his father and he nods. Just once, softly, barely noticeable. But everyone knows what it means.

Lark wants to say something. They didn’t actually want to kill him, just force his hand. He wants to justify their actions. He wants to tell Nicky that it was a stupid fucking plan from the beginning. That they hadn’t thought it through, and that now, they know that this wasn’t the right fucking move. It never was.

But what would that change at all? No fucking justification, no reason, no apology, no begging for forgiveness would ever change anything about this moment.

One of his best friends was bleeding out, crying from the betrayal of his closest friends, surrounded by his fathers who couldn’t do anything to help him – and it was Lark's fault. It felt so different from the guilt he felt about releasing the Doodler. He was so angry at that version of him. At that dumb, naive child. He wishes he could go back in time to fix that every day.

But this? This felt so much…crueler. These weren’t the consequences of a dumb child’s naivety. This was the darkest parts of Lark – of all of them maybe – that did this. He had known better this time, he had known the consequences and yet he and the rest of them had chosen this path. Because it had felt like the only option. Because they had been so scared, so hopeless about their families and their future; about everything.

Not a good person. Not a good friend.

And Nicky had insisted, so often, that there could be another way. He had persisted, had remained stupidly optimistic, had tried so hard be more than the paranoia that consumed the rest of them. Lark had called him naive then. And some other, more aggressive words.

But in the end he had been right. And all of this had been entirely pointless. They had betrayed their friend for no reason other than their own hopelessness. Maybe it hadn’t been different from releasing the Doodler at all. Maybe Lark had been the naive one once again.

Lark looks back at what he did. It does feel different from the Doodler though, different than when he looks at the victims of incursions and acolytes. He can’t put his finger on it.

Bad person. Bad friend.

“We burn it”, Glenn says, and looks back at Jodie.

“What?”

“We have to close the fucking wound or Nick dies. Do you have a better idea?”

Jodie shakes his head. He takes a deep breath, “Alright. Grab water and something cold. I’ll get him to his room.”

They fasten Glenn’s shirt into a makeshift sling. Then like he weighs nothing, Jodie scoops up Nicky’s limp body. Just like he did in the real world, what now feels like, hours ago.

“And think of a way to distract him”, Jodie says over his shoulder.

Glenn doesn’t retort with a snappy comment or tries to argue. He nods once, his jaw set.

Lark follows Jodie to Nicky’s room. Once the door opens Lark recognizes that it’s the exact same room as the one form the other memory. Every single piece of clothing, every poster on the walls, every overgrown houseplant, just like his memory as a teenager.

Is it...the same in every memory?

Just as Lark gets lost in that thought, and Jodie slowly places his dying son on the half-and-half couch and grabs his hand so gently (like it might be the last time he could do so), something in the corner of the room moves. Lark wipes his head around, ready for an attack.

But in the darkness off the dimly lit room is not a monster or a danger of any kind, curled up between the memorabilia that is and isn’t his, sits Nicolas Foster and watches the scene just like Lark.

When he notices that he’s being watched, he looks at Lark. He’s wearing the soccer uniform of their Middle (and Elementary) School. He’s thirteen, with messy hair and torn clothes and a scratch on his arm, just starting to heal, that he got in the Forgotten Realms.

Lark realizes that this is Nicolas. The real one. Not a memory. No, the real actual conscience of Nicolas. This is the child that was left in the Forgotten Realms. Just Nicolas. No one else. Not a demon. Not a second child crashing into him.

He stares at Lark and Lark stares back.

Nicolas bolts.

Like he owns this memory, probably because he does, he rips the space apart and runs into the darkness behind the destroyed memory-

Fuck, thinks Lark. They were supposed to get Nicky sure, but Nicolas is part of Nicky. He was prepared to only find the adult demon but now that he has seen him it only seems logical that they need all three: Nicolas, Nick and Nicky.

He needs to catch that child.

Chapter Text

Grant opens his eyes. One moment he was at D.A.D.D.I.E.S.’ med bay, the next he is in Nicky’s old house in their living room, inside of Nicky’s memories. The thought freaks him out if he’s honest. Nicky’s going to be so pissed at them once he’s back (if they can get him back). Grant at least would be pissed if his friends invaded his memories without his consent. And they’re not Nicky’s friends.

The house he is in looks different than from what he remembers. It’s been a few years but the house had always been clean and pristine, a bit sterile to be honest, before Morgan and Jodie divorced and Morgan let her own personality shine more.

But this is messier than Grant remembers it ever being. And the couch is definitely not one Grant has ever seen. It looks ratty and old and has a pretty big scratch down the backside where the stuffing is moments away from spilling out. On the couch is a child, about eleven maybe? Grant doesn’t recognize him.

His hair is dyed cherry red about half way through, cut into a shaggy mullet. He is wearing an oversized hoodie and baggy pants that are too big for his scrawny frame. He’s lounging on the couch, staring into his phone but Grant can’t see his face from here. Music is blasting through the room, something grating, grungy and messy. The singer sounds terrible.

Grant looks around more, trying to figure out his environment. This was definitely Nicky’s old living room. Not just the couch is different though, all the furniture is. It looks older than the one he knows, more torn up and shabby. Nothing looks broken, just…a bit worse for wear. Except the drum set in the corner of the room. It looks shiny and expensive, not brand new, but kept in much better condition than the rest of the room. It looks a lot like the set Glenn got Nicky for his sixteenth actually.

Now it starts making sense to Grant. This is Nick. The Nick that grew up with Glenn as a father. The one that Grant and everyone else forgot about.

He looks different than what Grant has always imagined. For some reason he expected him to look differently than Nicolas as a child. But when he looks up from his phone and the bangs fall out of his face, it’s the same face that Grant has always known. Different hair, different clothes, different house, but the face is the same. How does that even work? Nick and Nicolas biologically have different fathers – and it’s not like they look like Morgan that much. Grant always thought that Nicolas was a carbon copy of Jodie. This one looks exactly the same but nothing like Jodie at all. It’s super weird.

There’s a low rumbling noise, just barely audible over the music. Nick sighs loudly and starts massaging his stomach, then puts his phone down. When he looks up, his eyes settle on Grant. He furrowed his brows, like he can see him. Grant’s breath hitches.

Terry has said that they can change the memories, right? Does that mean this child can suddenly see the weird thirty-something-year-old in his home? Oh shit, he should say something-

‘It’s me, Grant’? Does Nick know Grant? But even then he is in his thirties and this Nick’s Grant should be eleven at most.

Before Grant can say anything though, Nick looks away and gets up from the couch. Like he didn’t see Grant at all.

Grant follows him, debating if he should say something anyway. But if Nick can’t see him that’s probably for the better. Again, weird adult that should not be inside his house. He’s not supposed to mess with the memories, he’s supposed to look for a light or present-time Nicky, neither are here currently. So that means waiting. He decides to follow Nick and watch.

Nick’s going to the kitchen, where the clock on the oven confirms what Grant had already kind of suspected: it’s late December, the 24^th, and Nick’s alone at home. It’s three in the afternoon.

Nick takes something out of the freezer, then prepares a plate with frozen chicken nuggets and puts it into the microwave. Three minutes later he picks at them slowly, nothing but a bit of ketchup on the side. God, Grant hopes this is just a snack and Nick doesn’t count that as a full meal. Maybe he should say something. Just so he can help Nick make actual food. But again, probably not a good idea.

When Nick’s finished, he gives the plate a somewhat lackluster clean in the sink. Grant’s honestly impressed that he even bothers. Nick even puts it on the drying rack.  He drags himself back to the living room where he turns on the TV. The music is still playing loudly from some speaker but Nick doesn’t seem bothered by the noise. He just lies on the couch and stares listlessly at the TV screen where some daytime medical drama is playing. Nick looks bored out of his mind.

Even with the two sources of noise assaulting and overwhelming Grant, the room, and the house, feel deathly silent. Like a heavy blanket is muffling both the noise and the lights. Grant sits down, as far from Nick as possible, on the couch.

He should say something. He can’t just watch this for the rest of however long this memory is. He needs to do something.

“Nick-”, he starts but in that moment a phone rings. Suddenly the boredom and lethargy vanish from Nick completely. He sits up straight, jumps for the remote and turns of the TV, then almost trips when he runs to turn the speaker down as well. He smiles wildly when he picks up his phone again, bright and toothy. Grant could swear he can see stars in his eyes. In his excitement, Nick almost drops the phone because his hand is basically vibrating.

“Dad!” he calls into the phone, still with his giant grin, “You’re so early!”

On the other end of the phone Grant can hear Glenn Close’s laugh, loud and almost as ecstatic as Nick. Nick lays down back on the couch staring into the phone. But this time he doesn’t look bored and stiff, he can barely stop moving. Fiddling with the guitar pick around his neck or wiggling his legs around, drumming his fingers again and again on his leg.

Grant moves a little, just so he can watch the phone more clearly. Glenn Close – no devil horns, no missing eye, no salt-and-pepper hair. Just regular, pre-Forgotten Realms Glenn in what looks like a regular hotel room.

“Hell yeah, straight out of ou rpractice. Haven’t even showered yet. What’s up, man?”

“Not much”, Nick says and but can’t stop grinning for one second, “Enjoying the break. I thought about asking Grant to come over once his family lets him back out after Christmas.”

Grant sits a bit straighter at the mention of his name. So Nick does know him. Are they friends? Obviously, if Nick wants to invite him over during Christmas break. They’re probably really good friends then.

“Oh yeah, absolutely”, Glenn gives him a thumbs up, “You could invite some more even. Throw a little party if you want.”

Nick smiles but he doesn’t seem fully enthusiastic about it. “I don’t know, man”, his eyes wander a bit away from the phone screen, “I don’t need all that stress. The guys from the football team are always…so much.”

Glenn raises an eyebrow, “Is anyone…bothering you again?”

Again? Is Grant’s first thought. His second is that suddenly both Closes have stopped smiling and aren’t really looking at each other anymore, the heavy feeling is creeping back in.

“No, no not like that”, Nick says and Grant can’t for sure say if he’s telling the truth or not. He’s definitely uncomfortable. Grant gets the deep and sudden urge to hug him and never let him go and also to tell him it’s totally okay if he has to cry. He thinks Nick looks in need of a good cry. Was Nick a crier? Nicky and Nicolas were.

“They’re just all so loud and aggressive.” Nick shrugs, “And I just wanna chill. At least Grant gets it.”

Does he? He is pretty quiet at least. Did Nick not like loud and rowdy people? Is Grant his best friend?

“Well, you can invite whoever you want.” Glenn shrugs, apparently deciding not to investigate further why Nick was acting so cagey. “As long as the house is still standing when I come back.” And with that the topic seems done and Glenn switches to a different one: “You want me to tell you about our tour? So far it’s been kinda boring. Chris keeps saying we should change the line-up but I think he just wants his big solo closer to the end.”

“Chris is boring”, Nick says almost like it’s a reflex, he keeps his eyes away from the screen and his dad, slowly biting again and again on his lower lip.

“Hell yeah, he is. Wish I could finally kick him out.”

“Then I could be your drummer.”

Something on Glenn’s face changes. Like he has swallowed something bitter. Like he is wrestling with what to say. “Man that would be so awesome”, he laughs but it sounds fake, “Sucks, that you still have school.”

“School’s boring.”

“Fuck, don’t I know it”, Glenn’s smile is brittle now, like he can’t hold it much longer, “But that’s how it works. You gotta get through so you can prove to everyone that even though school’s boring, it won’t make you boring, right?”

Nick shrugs, eyes trailing towards the ceiling, “I guess?”

Then something in his face changes. His hair seemed to grow inwards, his messy hoodie shrinks and the red in his hair vanishes. His whole appearance becomes cleaner, more put together. He looks like Jodie again.

“I know you feel lonely at school right now but you will find your people”, the voice on the phone says and it’s not Glenn anymore, “There’s always someone out there who understands you, I promise. Sometimes it just takes a while.”

“I just don’t think anyone on the soccer team actually likes me.” Nicolas, this is Nicolas not Nick, says, “They had this huge get together before the break and I only know about it because Terry asked me if I’m coming. Which is how I found out I wasn’t invited! I don’t get it! I’m being perfectly nice to everyone!”

Well, nice might be a stretch. Grant can’t help but think. Nicolas was fine as long as no one broke the rules in front of him, but kids were unfortunately very good at that. Which is probably why no one invited him. He’s not sure, he doesn’t remember any specific party.

“I’m trying to be like you, dad”, Nicolas says, “Everyone likes you.”

“Nicolas”, Jodie says sad and slow, he looks sad as well, “I’ll tell you something. People didn’t like me in school either. I still struggle with the people at work! I always feel like I’m a bit…different than other people. It’s normal” Is it normal? Or is it because Jodie is not a human at all? “And even with your mother’s friends, you know I don’t get along with them very well.”

“Cause they’re all druggies?”

“We don’t say that, Nicolas.”

“Nicolas?”, he frowns again, looks away from his phone and his eyes land on Grant. Like he can see him.

He blinks. His hair becomes long again, his face doesn’t change at all but it’s not Nicolas anymore. Grant shakes his head. What was that? He thought he was watching Nick’s memories?

“I’ll be back next week”, says Nicolas’- Nick’s dad on the phone. It’s Glenn again, “Then we’ll do a big Christmas party, right? Hey, did my gift finally arrive?”

Nick, still staring at Grant who can’t think of doing anything but blink back, sits up, “Yeah, looks huge. Can’t wait to open it. You’ll call me tomorrow, right?”

“’Course, man”, Glenn says, his usual grin back on his face. All the weird tension in the air is gone, “Wouldn’t miss it for anything. Say hi to your mom for me.”

“What?” Nick’s head snaps back to his phone but the screen is already dark. He blinks, takes another look at Grant, eyes furrowed like he is trying to find him again, while Grant is standing right there. He looks back at his phone.

The heaviness comes back like a crushing weight. Nick stares and stares and stares at his phone. Like he’s waiting for something. Like he wants his dad to be calling him again.

He rubs his eyes and Grant wishes he would just cry. Nick clearly wants to, he has that look in his face, Grant knows it from Lincoln. But instead of giving in Nick just gets up again, wandering upstairs. Grant follows him silently. What else is there? This memory seems so…mundane. The only exemplary thing about this has been that Grant feels really, really bad for Nick. And maybe a little bit for Nicolas.

But Grant expected more to be honest. Terry had, once, talked about what he saw in Ron’s memories. Not in detail, but he has told Grant how terrible it all was. This is, by all means, not an interesting memory, Grant thinks as he follows Nick up the stairs. Kinda weird that the house is still the same as Nicolas’ actually. Would that mean that the Nicolas-timeline-Glenn lived in the house that Nick-timeline-Jodie lived in? Wait no- did Nick-timeline-Jodie even exist?

Now he wants to ask Nicky all sorts of questions. He never explained any of this.

Nick opens the door to what must be Glenn’s bedroom. Like he expects his dad to come around the corner any minute now, he steals a glance over his shoulder. What is he planning?

Nick kneels by the wardrobe across from the bed, scrambling through the lowest drawer. He fishes something out that looked like a small box but his back is turned towards Grant, he can’t quite make out what it is – until Grant hears the telltale click of a lighter. Smoke and the smell of weed curl from Nick towards Grant. One, two, three drags before Nick gets back up, turns around and plops down on his parent’s bed. He keeps smoking, slow long drags, clearly this isn’t his first time doing it.

Grant is convincing himself that he should finally talk to Nick when he’s interrupted by a sudden, violent sob. Nick has curled up on his side and is now crying into his pillow. He looks wrecked, his body shaking with the force of his sobs. Immediately Grant is right by his side, trying to figure out if he should touch the kid, if he could hug him or at least say something.

“Nick?”, he finally tries. Nick doesn’t react.

Carefully Grant nudges his shoulder. It’s solid. That’s good at least, “Nick? Can you hear me?”

“I’m so fucking stupid, Grant”, Nick finally says.

Grant blinks, “What?”

Nick looks up at him. Finally his eyes clearly and definitely find Grant’s.

“I’m stupid”, Nick repeats, “I can’t even smoke weed right.”

“What?” Grant asks in lieu of having anything intelligent to say. Is he not confused? About Grant being here?

Nick sits back up, rubs at his swollen eyes and gestures with his blunt. It’s still burning.

“I’m doing something wrong”, his lower lip trembles, “Dad doesn’t get like this when he smokes.”

Slowly Grant sits down at the edge of the bed. He’s about an arm’s reach away from Nick. Slowly he tries to formulate a response, but like usual his brain seems to work in slow-mo. By the time he knows what to say, Nick still hasn’t stopped crying, fat tears rolling down his cheeks. Suddenly Grant wishes really hard that Nick hadn’t cried at all.

“People eh- people react differently to weed”, Grant sounds so unsure, fuck. How’s he supposed to help this kid? “I just get really sleepy.”

“But my dad is always so happy when he does it. He says it helps when he’s feeling bad. But I just feel worse when I do it.”

“Then maybe don’t do it?” Grant tries, even though he knows it’s a lost cause. Nick looks woefully at his blunt, takes another hit and makes a face.

“Could I have it?” Grant asks, not quite sure where he’s going with this, but he really wants to get the blunt away from Nick. Nick shrugs and gives it to him. Grant takes it hesitantly to his lips, and finds he can actually take a drag. Immediately he starts coughing, he hasn’t smoked since college. Nick next to him starts laughing.

“Dude”, he grins, his demeanor not at all like eleven-year-old Nick, “You suck at this. Why did I even give it to you?” Grant remembers Nicky saying something similar when they first smoked together.

Then Nick frowns out of nowhere and his posture goes rigid, the red vanishes from his hair, “Put that out.”

Grant blinks, takes the blunt away from his lips. Nick scowls at him, a scowl he knows well. But he still hasn’t fully stopped crying.

“Sorry”, Grant looks around and finds an ashtray on the bedside table. He puts the blunt out. “I shouldn’t smoke in front of kids.” He says like the kid wasn’t the one who started it.

Nick- Nicolas nods, and seems to relax again. His face becomes sad again but the red also reappears into his hair.

“Thanks for coming”, he says, like they weren’t just in the middle of a totally different conversation.

“You’re welcome?”, Grant isn’t sure what’s going on. He feels wrong-footed and out of his depth but his mission is still to cheer the kid up, so he plays along, “Why did you- ehm…you invited me, right?”

“Course”, Nick falls back onto the bed, arms outstretched on both sides like a starfish, “That’s why you’re here. I just don’t like being alone on Christmas.”

“Oh yeah”, Grant is trying really hard to understand what’s happening. Does Nick think he’s also eleven? Does Nick think they’re in college (or that grant’s in college, since nicky never went), where this was a regular occurrence?

“It’s really shitty, you know?”, his face is puffy, still a few tears rolling down his face, “I miss him so much. I wish he was here.”

Grant grimaces; of course he knows who Nick is talking about.

“I know”, Grant says to the child.

“You think he’d be angry that I stole his weed?” Nick wonders, “He hasn’t noticed yet but if I keep doing it, he will.”

“Then why do you keep doing it?”

Nick shrugs, he’s playing with his fingers. Something that Glenn also does a lot. “It’s so cool when Dad does it. And he feels better afterwards.”

“But you don’t.”

“No”, Nick shakes his head, “I’m scared he’ll be angry if he finds out.”

“Well”, Grant tries to find something to say that’s not ‘Glenn would never be angry with you but that is kinda the problem’ but also isn’t straight up lying. “Has your dad ever been angry at you for something similar?” he asks instead.

Nick frowns, “One time he thought I had smoked and he got really angry. Glenn said- wait, no.” He narrows his eyes at the ceiling, “Dad said”, he continues slowly, like he’s puzzling the story together while relaying it, “I had smoked because he could smell it on me? But I didn’t smoke? I was just- I think I watched older kids doing it? No, I was smoking with them, right? But then I came home and dad was angry? No, that wasn’t Glenn.” He shook his head, clearly confused by his own inability to get the story together, “It wasn’t Glenn. Why do I think it was my dad?”

Grant is biting his lip. Should he explain it? He can’t leave the kid like this, it’s clearly making him anxious! But the reality honestly wasn’t going to make him less anxious.

“Maybe it was just another authority figure?” Grant says, almost desperately, “Like you know- a- a cop?”

Nick slowly nods. “Yeah.” He stares at the ceiling, clearly his head is somewhere else, “A cop.”

His eyes become wet again. He blinks away a few tears.

“Could you stay here?” he asks with a voice crack, “I really don’t want to be alone.”

Grant wants to. He really, really wants to. But he can see that underneath the door of the bedroom a bright light has appeared. He’s almost a hundred percent sure that that is what Terry was talking about. He wants to keep Nick company, because he clearly needs it, but he has to go. Nicky needs him, and in the end this is just a memory. He can’t change much here.

“Actually”, he says, as a thought forms, “Why don’t you call someone?”

“Like who?”

“Like a friend”, Grant fumbles on how to make this next part make sense to Nick, “You could, like- try calling me?”

Nick blinks at him, still high and clearly sluggish because of it. But then a grin forms on his face.

“Yes, I call Grant all the time”, Nick says, more to himself than to Grant in the room, “We’ll play something.”

“That sounds like a good plan.”

Nick is already on his phone, ringing him.

Suddenly it’s like he can’t see Grant at all anymore. He’s still rubbing his eyes and swiping away the tear tracks but when Grant answers the phone Nick’s voice doesn’t sound choked up anymore.

“Hey Grant, you got time?”

The real Grant gets up from the bed and walks towards the door. He wonders what actually happened in this memory. Was this the memory righting itself to go back to reality before Grant intervened? Did Nick actually call Grant when he was sad and crying and missing his dad on Christmas? And if he did, why did Nicky never tell him about it? He feels sad, not knowing whether or not he was that friend to Nick. He wishes he could know for sure.

“Really?” Nick says on the phone, “You’re the best, man. Sorry to drag you away from your family.”

He’s smiling. Grant feels like he did his job. Whether right now or back then.

It’s nice to know Nick still has positive memories attached to him, Grant thinks as he opens the door to the blinding white light. Or is it? Maybe that makes it worse, actually.

The familiar sound of Jingle Bells greets Grant immediately as he steps through the light, even before he can see anything. Seems like they’re sticking with the Christmas theme.

It’s not just Jingle Bells though. It’s a bunch of voices, talking and chatting and yelling over each other. Warmth hits Grant. Not actual warmth, more metaphorically, the warmth of a perfectly cozy Christmas celebration. Finally, things materialize around him.

Another living room, Sparrow and Rebecca’s living room, to be precise, filled with almost everyone Grant cares about. Rebecca’s sharp laugh comes from the kitchen and he can see Terry chatting with her through the open door to the living room. Lark sit on the floor in front of a toddler Hero – probably not even a year old – trying desperately to engage her with some wooden blocks. Sparrow is fretting around, a deep worry line on his forehead, from the kitchen to the living room, and back again. Carrying food and plates and what not, and Grant has to take a step back so Sparrow doesn’t run into him because he can’t see him. On the couch Grant sees himself and Marco, who’s watching Lark and Hero with an amused expression. Grant from the memory looks much less happy to be here. He keeps glancing at Marco, like he expects something to happen.

Present-Grant feels like he’s hearing more voices than there should be. But over the loud music and Rebecca’s laughter and Hero’s giggling, he can’t be sure.

Crucially missing from the scene entirely is Nicky. He’s not anywhere in sight, which make Grant very suspicious. This is Nicky’s memory. He can’t remember things he hasn’t seen, right?

As soon as Grant wonders about it, he hears multiple loud noises, clinking, and then one – very loud and enthusiastic –“Fuck!” from the corridor.

Everyone turns around. Grant included. Someone’s yelling for Nicky, but it sounds weirdly far away. Also they’re saying Nicolas. Weird. They didn’t used to call him anything but Nicky.

Sparrow’s forehead wrinkle gets somehow even deeper.

“Stay here”, he says to everyone else. The people from the memory listen, Grant doesn’t. He follows Sparrow out of the living room and towards the main entrance.

“Nicky?” Sparrow asks when he rounds the corner to reveal the demon. Nicky is holding the clothing rack up with his left hand, balancing the pot with the giant yucca palm on his right food and only not falling over cause he’s propping himself up with his giant, leathery wings.

He’s in full demon garb, the horns, the fiery hair, the tail, the wings of course, even his eyes, usually a warm deep brown, now look like burnt coal.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck”, he says eloquently. Sparrow rushes up to save the plant. As soon as he rights it and Nicky can set down the clothing rack again, Sparrow’s frown deepens even more.

“Nicky”, he sounds disappointed.

“Yes, I know. No wings inside”, and they vanish as soon as he says it, along with everything else, just his hair still looks like it’s on fire. Dyed tips with orange, and yellow, and red of course. Sometimes, when he was feeling fancy, he would dye it like blue flames instead. “In my defense, I portalled in straight from Hell.”

“That’s why I also said no portaling inside”, Sparrow looks him up and down. Then, without asking he gets close and straightens out the collar of Nick’s shirt. He looks almost boring today. White button-up, and a nice pair of blue jeans; nothing fancy, but less punk than usual.

Nicky snorts, “What, and let the neighbors see me?”

Sparrow doesn’t answer. When he deems Nicky presentable, he leads them back into the living room.

“Guess who’s here!” Nicky yells to everyone, like they haven’t all heard him already, “Saint Nicolas himself! I come bearing riches you could not comprehend in your wildest dreams: my company!”

Larks snorts, Marco gives him a polite wave, Grant of the memory barely looks at him.

Now, he remembers the specific Christmas celebration he’s watching. It was Marco’s first Christmas with them, his first time hanging out with all of Grant’s friends at the same time. Grant had been pretty out of it for most of the celebration before Nicky showed up. And then-

“Hey Grant”, Nicky says and his past self looks up like he just remembered where he was, “Wanna come help me bring the gifts in?”

Sparrow whips around where he was setting the table, “We said no gifts!”

“And I didn’t listen”, Nicky sticks out his tongue, “Most of them are for Hero anyway. All I got for you is shitty vegan chocolate.”

That’s not true, Grant knows, Nicky loved getting them gifts. The rule of ‘no gifts’ was mostly for him, because he kept buying them dumb stuff, but he never once adhered to that rule. Sometimes the gift weren’t that bad though. One time he had gotten Grant on-pot-meal cookbook and then helped him cook half of it for the first time. Grant still knows three of the recipes on the top of his head and makes them when he has no energy for anything else.

“Grant come on!”, Nicky says again and whistles him over.

Sparrow, still fretting, doesn’t let up, “I can also help.”

“Nah, I want Grant”, Nicky doesn’t allow anymore discussion, just turns around and leaves the room again. Both Grants follow him this time, until they’re outside. There’s nothing there.

“The gifts are out here?”

“No, the gifts are in Hell”, Nicky turns around to Grant, “You just looked like you needed a breather.”

“You just came in?” Grant looks confused.

Nicky shrugs,” I watched a little bit from Hell before I came here.”

Right, Grant always forgets that Nicky can do that. Explains the memory starting before Nicky actually arrived.

“So you’re late because you needed to stalk us?”

Nicky sits down on the bench Sparrow keeps on their front porch, “In case you were conspiring against me.” Nicky winks. Present-Grant visibly flinches.

Past-Grant, not knowing what’s to come, ignores the comment and sits down next to Nicky. From the outside, they can still hear the voices of the others, laughter and short yells. A shriek from Hero that could be anything, joy, excitement, a block toppling over. He thinks he hears someone yelling Nicky’s name but he doesn’t react. Maybe Grant’s just imaging it.

“You don’t have to tell me”, Nicky says, now quiet and soft. The tips of his hair, that always seem to glow like actual flames, bath his face in warm colors even in the dusk.

Past-Grant sighs and picks at his nails. Nicky’s hand stops him and takes it in his, with all the carefulness one might have with a scared bird that has fallen out of its nest. “But you can.”

“Just- worried, I guess”, Grant shrugs, “I can’t stop thinking about what Marco’s thinking.”

“You’re worried he’s not enjoying himself or something?”

“Or something”, Grant answers, “what if he doesn’t like you guys?”

Nicky smiles kindly, “Then we tone it down and next time we all pretend like we’re normal people, okay?”

“Easier said than done.”

“It’s very easily done actually”, Nicky says off-handedly, “But I get it. You like the guy, you want him to stay. You’re kinda forced to hang out with us. It’s hard to make that work.”

“I like you guys too”, Grant levels Nicky with a glare, “That’s why I want him to like you. You’re my best friends.”

“I know”, Nicky pats his knee with the hand that’s not holding his, “It will be fine, Grant. I’m sure you picked the right guy to meet us. You have a good judge of character.”

“It’s just-”, and present-Grant knows exactly what he will say next, “You have no idea how hard it is to meet someone and like, make all of this”, he gestures to himself, “work. There’s not gonna be someone else for me, definitely not someone better.”

Nicky laughs out loud. Then he looks back at Grant and his expression has something sharper, something meaner on it, “I? I have no idea how hard dating is?”

Past-Grant looks caught, like he tumbled into a trap, “Yeah?”, he sounds hesitant, “You’re really charismatic? People like you.”

“First of all, people like you too”, Nicky says, “Second, I don’t think you have any idea what dating is like for me. I’m trans”, he counts it on his fingers, “I technically have three biological parents who are all a nightmare to introduce to anyone or introduce anyone to. I don’t have a High School diploma, but I remember two separate times that I had to out myself to my parents. Then all the D.A.D.D.I.E.S. stuff and the getting-kidnapped-by-your-grandfather; and yeah also I’m a demon from literal Hell and I piss fire.”

“You piss fire? Since when?” Grant asks and immediately Nicky breaks out into roaring laughter.

It takes him a while to calm down. “Sometimes”, Nicky wipes a tear from his eyes, “That’s not the point though. I’m saying Grant: you’re not as complicated as you think. And that’s a good thing! If it doesn’t work out with Marco – which I doubt, he seems great – you’ll get another chance.”

“And you?” Grant asks, “Do you think you get a chance?”

“At finding love?”

“Having a family”, Grant corrects. Because that’s what this conversation was really about.

Nicky just smiles, it’s small and he looks more sad than happy, “I don’t know.”

“Would you like to?” Grant has always wanted a family so bad. He has denied it often over the years, thinking that he doesn’t deserve it, but it’s always been the truth. Marco and Lincoln are the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and he knew that even before he met either of them.

“Mh”, Nicky hums and looks into the night sky. It’s still the normal California sky, with all its light pollution and non-visible stars. No Code Purple has happened yet. “I think so”, Nicky finally says, “I think I really want kids. Or one kid. Let’s start there. Hey, did you know?”

“What?” Grant has also looked up, like he knew this wasn’t a conversation where you looked at each other. Nicky’s still holding his hand though. Present-Grant remembers how warm it was compared to the chilly December-night. Like holding your hands up to a fire, but it never got uncomfortable.

“St Nicholas”, Nicky grins from ear to ear, there’s a glint in his eyes like ember, “Like the actual one. He’s the patron saint of children. And there are stories where he is walking around with a chained demon who – and I’m quoting this – entertains spectators with pranks and bizarre antics.”

Grant snorts, “That sounds actually perfect for you.”

“Yeah”, Nicky is humming again, some song Grant doesn’t recognize. He’s also silently drumming along to the beat on the back of Grant’s hand. For a while they’re just silent.

Present-Grant hopes that a new door lights up somewhere soon. Preferably even now. Even if he couldn’t remember most details about this conversation, he knows how it ends. He thinks he has been replaying Nicky’s words for years in his head like a broken record. He doesn’t need to hear them again.

“But either way,” Nicky says before magical light can rescue Grant, “it’s gonna be okay even if Marco’s not the one and I never find anyone. We still have good things right here.” He turns to the lit window where Sparrow is probably freaking out because they aren’t coming back, and Lark is playing with Hero, and Marco is finding it all so charming.

“I have my parents in Hell”, Nicky’s word echo in Grant’s head, taunting him since he said them. First it was because he was quietly impressed by Nicky’s optimism, knowing that he could never be so stead-fast in his hope for something good to stay. And then it was just a constant reminder on what they’d done. “And I have you guys up here. That’s all the family I need.”

All the family I need. You’re my family. All I need-

They’ll come here! They’ll get you!

Grant blinks. That’s not just in his head. He’s clearly heard that. He looks around but there’s nothing but the quiet December night in the suburbs.

They’ll get you! Someone is crying, sobbing. They sound terrified. The voice sounds familiar.

He looks around once more. Nothing. Not even a light to follow into the next memory.

Nicolas! someone cries. Nick. Look at me. someone else says.

The memory ends right there

Chapter Text

Out of nowhere the scene in front of Grant gets filled with static. Loud and aggressive, it fills his ears, then his vision, then it reaches his skin. It’s a terrible feeling, like a thousand ants running across his body.

Grant takes a step back but it changes nothing. His perspective doesn’t change, like the memory lies directly behind his eyelids. Like it’s a fucking VR-headset. Wherever he moves, however he turns his head, what he sees stays exactly the same. It buffers, like a lagging videos game. Moves. Buffers again.

And then past-Grant, Nicky, the house- it all simply vanishes into darkness.

But Grant barely has time to freak out about getting lost in the great nothingness of Nicky’s head, when a new scene materializes from the edges inwards until it covers his entire field of view.

The first thing Grant can make out between the still present static is an ear-piercing shriek of pain. And then the memory is crystal clear.

He’s in Nicky’s room, but the messiest, most chaotic version of it. Worse than it has ever been in Grant’s own memory. He can’t analyze the space around him for long though because another terrible, pained scream cuts the air.

Crouched over the couch in the middle of the room is Jodie. On the couch is Nicky, writhing and sobbing, wracked with pain that could only stem from the bleeding stump of his arm.

Grant’s stomach drops.

He had expected something like that. After two nice, calm memories he has hoped it wouldn't happen. But of course it would. Nicky’s unconsciousness seems to know that it was him, Grant, seeing these memory, so of course it would use the opportunity to show Grant exactly what they had done.

Nicky screams again, but this time it dies down into a sob half way through. Jodie holds him down by his healthy shoulder, “It’s alright, Nicolas. It’s gonna be alright. We’re going to cauterize it, okay? We just need to wait until Glenn’s back. And then it’s gonna hurt a lot but afterwards everything will be alright, okay?”

He tries to take Nicky’s hand in his but he has it tightly clutched on his torn and bloodied shirt. Jodie has clearly tried to remove as much clothing around the arm as possible. But Nicky’s fist is white knuckled around the rest. He can’t get it away from him.

Slowly Grant comes closer until he’s right by the couch and looking down at Nicky. He looks even worse up close. Grant is starting to feel faint.

Then the door opens and Glenn rushes in, a pot of water sloshing in his hands and multiple piece of cloth thrown over his shoulders.

He puts the water pot down right next to Jodie and starts soaking some of the cloth. He also grabs Nicky’s fist and starts messaging his wrist to make him let go of his shirt.

“Nick, Nick, look at me”, Glenn says in a much softer voice than usual, “Jodie’s gonna close it, so don’t look at him now, okay? Only look at me.”

Nicky’s eyes find Glenn’s but it’s unclear how much he understands. His eyes look glassy and shiny, he can’t quite keep them open.

“Just look at me, Nick.” Glenn says again and starts to dab at his face with a wet cloth, “Nod if you understand.”

He does. And almost immediately, the sound and smell of burning flesh fills the room.

Nicky screams louder than ever before. It’s almost the worst sound Grant has ever heard, only topped by Nicky’s yell when they shot his arm of in the first place.

It doesn’t stop. Nicky screams, and screams, and screams, and it stops being a human sound altogether. It sounds like electric feedback, like a wounded bird, like crackling fire.

The stench of Nicky’s burning flesh fills his lungs with every breath and his screams ring in his ears until he can’t hear anything else. Grant grips the back of the couch to keep himself upright. He thinks he might throw up if this keeps going.

Yet he can’t look away from Nicky’s face. He can’t. He wants to, so badly. He wants to look away from the sheer terror, from the blood and the tears and from the face of the person he did this to. But he’s not allowed to. Grant did this. Grant and his friends did this. Now he needs to watch.

The pain seems to become too much and Nicky starts kicking and squirming away from Jodie. Glenn leans over him, pins his legs under one arm and keeps a hold of Nicky’s hand with that same hand. The other one is still dabbing at Nicky’s ashen face.

“Nick, you have to keep still, okay? Just a bit longer, then it’s over. Only a little bit longer. I know you can do it. C’mon, kid.”

“Fuck!” Jodie yells and rips his hands away from Nicky like he had just been burned himself. Like it has physically hurt him to do. “Done” he says. Mostly to Glenn, then he scoots away from Nicky and takes long, deep breaths.

Glenn takes up his spot right by Nicky’s head and starts cleaning what’s left of Nicky’s arm. Both men are quiet until Nicky’s breathing starts to pick up again.

“Dad”, he whimpers. He’s whimpering. He’s crying to. But still, for some, reason conscious.

“It’s alright, champ”, Glenn says but doesn’t look away from his work, “Your done. You should sleep now. I’ll clean this so it doesn’t get infected. Then it will stop hurting as well.”

“Dad”, Nick says again, looking at Glenn and reaching for him with the one hand he has left, “It was them. It was them. They wanted to come here. They’re gonna- they’re gonna come and they’ll-”

“Shh, it’s alright”, Glenn finally looks at him. He wipes away the tears that keep flowing down Nick’s cheeks. For a second Grant can see that Glenn’s eyes flicker to Jodie but he’s clearly exhausted and a bit in shock. His eyes are closed but he sits as far away from Nick as he can, while still clearly keeping him in his eye line.

“Are you scared they’ll come here?”

Nick nods, “They want-”, he’s clearly struggling to get any words out, “Code Purple. Code Purple. They want- here in Hell. They’ll come here. They’ll get you. They’ll get you. They’ll get you.”

“Nick, they can’t come here”, Glenn says with a patience that Grant didn’t know existent in him. He’s so gentle, so soft. Grant only knows him as insanely stubborn and obnoxiously over-confident. He only knows how much the guy has hurt his best friend – either out of his own fault or because he was forced to.

Glenn has made Nicky cry so often. But Glenn has never made Nicky bleed.

Nicky had been, countless times, scared for Glenn. He had never been scared of him. Nicky is scared of Grant now. He’s scared he’ll come back and hurt him again. He’s scared he’ll come and hurt his family as well.

Grant’s eyes start burning and he desperately tries to keep it in. He doesn’t have the right to cry over this.He did this. This is his fault.

“They’ll find a way”, Nick says, small and scared, hand hanging onto his father’s. “They won’t stop. They didn’t stop. They’ll come here.”

“Nicolas”, Jodie says from his spot, still far away from his son. But he isn’t the one that did this. He saved Nicky. How fucked up is it, that even he feels guilty? He didn’t do this. How could Grant have done this? “Nicolas, they can’t come here without you. You’ll stay here, you’ll be safe and then they can’t come here.”

“Taylor- Taylor- what about- they can-”, he’s wriggling under Glenn, trying to get up but he is so weak and tired that Glenn barely has to try to keep him down.

“We’ll watch Taylor”, Jodie says calmly, “We can make sure they don’t come near him. But he can’t get to Hell, he’s too young, too human – they’ll know that.”

“They won’t hurt him” Glenn agrees but his eyes flit back to Jodie, like he’s doubting it. Of course he is. Of course they don’t trust that they won’t hurt Taylor. They had trusted that they wouldn’t hurt Nicky. Their best friend.

“We’ll watch him”, Glenn agrees, “We can figure out a plan, okay? But for now they can’t come here and you have to sleep.”

Nick closes his eyes and whimpers, “I can’t. It hurts. It hurts. They- they shot me. They shot me, they shot me. Dad, please.”

Glenn wipes the sweaty hair away from Nick’s clammy forehead and keeps it there.

“You want me to sing something? I’ll sing whatever you like.”

Nick hesitates for a moment. Then he nods, still with closed eyes, “And stay”, he says, opens his eyes and looks at Jodie, “Both of you.”

“’Course” Jodie says and clears his throat. His eyes look misty as well.

“Can you sing betty?”, Nick slurs, his eyes closing up again, “’S Taylor’s favorite.”

Glenn chuckles and without any hesitation starts singing.

Grant knows the song only by virtue of being around Nicky when he was watching Taylor. Because yes, Taylor loved this song. He would beg Nicky repeatedly, every day, to play it and sing along loudly and badly. Nicky had eventually learned the song on the guitar, so he could give Taylor a live performance when he wanted to.

Grant doesn’t think he’s ever heard the song after Nicky was gone.

And Nicky can’t play the guitar anymore. Not with only one arm. He couldn’t see Taylor either.

The song fades out quickly as Nicky falls asleep. He can still see Glenn sing and move his lips but it’s muffled and unintelligible. Only the melody still holds.

He expects the scene to end there but it stays. Confused Grant looks around, expecting something.

Otherwise this would be the end of it.

The room is still messy and chaotic. He can’t make sense of it, especially not the many plants that should not have the ability to survive in Hell.

Then he sees him. Right behind Grant, only visible when he turns all the way around is another person quietly watching the scene.

A thirteen year old in a washed out, dirty soccer tricot. His hair is held back by a hair band the same cherry red as his died tips. He’s quietly humming along to the song, both his hand in his pockets. Nick. The real Nick Close.

He’s grinning up at Grant. But it’s not the full, friendly smile he saw in that memory. It has something mischievous. Something sinister.

“I’m supposed to get you.”

Grant blinks owlishly at him.

“Come along”, Nick says and turns around. In front of him the memory splits apart into blackness, he steps through with one leg than turns around, “Come. You need to see the rest.”

“The rest?” Grant asks, “This isn’t it?”

Nick’s smile falls and he shakes his head, “Not even a fraction. Of course, we don’t have time for all of it. Just the most important bits and there’s one more for all of you.”

He gets swallowed by the darkness. Grant looks one more time back at his sleeping friend, who isn’t his friend anymore. By all accounts he is his victim, he realizes. Grant quickly looks away.

He follows Nick.

Chapter Text

Sparrow stumbles into the memory like he jumped of a small edge. His balance is way off and he almost falls. Then he manages to right himself, looks around.

This is…his parent’s backyard? He blinks. Yes, that drawing of Mother Earth is literally the only one like it in this Realm and the next. Sparrow looks away as quickly as possible. He forgot how graphic it actually was.

What could he possibly be doing here? In the middle of the night no less, judging by the darkness around him and the moon hanging brightly in the sky.

Nicky’s memories. Their backyard. Late at night.

Could be anything in theory, but Sparrow’s magic has taught him to trust his instinct and his instinct tells him this isn’t one of the many times they had sleepovers, or Lark and Nicky had snuck away to do…whatever they did. No, he suspects this is about him. That’s how magic works. That’s how Nicky’s magic worked.

There is one specific memory Sparrow can think of that this could be. If it is…maybe he can finally get some answers.

He walks towards his own front door where he suspects Nicky will appear in just a few moments.

No. Not Nicky. Not quite yet. This was still Nicolas. In a way.

And like he predicted, the heat and crackle of a Hell portal appears next to Sparrow just seconds later, and Nicolas comes stumbling out of it.

He looks small, is the first thing Sparrow thinks. Then comes the clarity that this is, in fact, the memory Sparrow was thinking of. Nicolas, coming straight from Hell, is in full demon form. It looks much less impressive than after his demon puberty. His horns are little more than nubs, the tail is short enough that he always just stuffs it in his pants, his eyes still look like any normal human’s and even his teeth and tongue and skin have no demonic features yet. Most importantly though, his wings are not yet big enough to support him in flight, barely a meter long each. Right now they are uselessly hanging behind him, torn up and bleeding badly.

With shaking hands, Nicolas takes out his phone and dials. It barely takes a moment before Sparrow on the other side answers.

“Sparrow?” Nicolas whispers and waits a second for an answer, “Listen, sorry for waking you up. I’m in front of your front door. Could you let me in? Without waking up your parents maybe? I kinda need your hel- Ah FUCK!”, he bowls over and just barely catches himself on the wall of the house, “Just be quick please?”

Nicolas puts his phone back into his pocket with still trembling hands. He looks really, really bad. It’s not just the terrible shape his wings are in, he’s also pale and barely seems to be able to stand with his shaking.

Sparrow remembers how shocked he was when he opened the door to see Nicolas in this state. Not only was it just the second time he’s seen the demon form – and the first time up this close – but to see the wings looking like torn up pieces of paper? It scared Sparrow if he was being honest.

Sparrow of the past comes down quickly and opens the door for Nicolas. Sparrow of the present can see the shock and fear in his face.

“What- what happened to you?”

Nicolas shakes his head, “Just- You can heal right?”

“Yes but only a little bit!” Sparrow hesitates for a second. Then he takes Nicolas’ hand and supports him to get him inside. Present Sparrow follows them.

“Can’t your father heal? And Glenn?”

Nicolas mumbles something, that neither Sparrow can understand.

“What?”

“I said”, Nicolas grunts, face screwed up in pain, “That they can’t know about this. Neither can your parents, Henry’s gonna snitch.”

Snitch, was not a word Sparrow has ever heard Nicolas use before this moment. He can see that his younger self looks confused, but chooses to ignore it. Instead he helps Nicolas sit down in the kitchen. A long line of blood is trailing behind them where Nicolas’ wings have dragged along the floor.

“What did you do?” Sparrow asks again, and turns the stool Nicolas is sitting on so he can move all around him. Carefully he folds open his left wing. Multiple parts of his leathery skin are hanging only partially onto his bones and the arteries at the top have been hit, the source of all the blood.

Nicolas grips the table, his knuckles turning white instantly. His wings are sensitive, Sparrow knows. Even if this injury isn’t as bad as others could be, it hurt a whole lot more.

“Fuck”, Nicolas says. Another word he hasn’t used before, “Doesn’t fucking matter, okay? Just- fix it? Please?”

“This will take me much longer than it would take father.” Sparrow inspects the wing further and wisely decides to start healing before he keeps debating with Nicolas. He begins at the left shoulder, where a big gash has torn open Nicolas’ skin and probably some of the tendons and muscles connecting shoulder and wings. It looks like something, or someone, with giant claws has used Nicolas’ wings as a scratching post. Curiously though, no other part of his body seems hurt.

While the bright glow of the other Sparrow’s magic illuminates the kitchen, the real Sparrow sits down so he can watch both of their faces. Nicolas has his eyes screwed shut and is breathing hard through his mouth.

“Are you sure you don’t want me to wake up my father?” Sparrow asks again but keeps healing the wound on the shoulder.

“Yes”, Nicolas presses out, “Listen I don’t need Jodie to be up my fucking ass about this. Best case I get back and he hasn’t even noticed me sneak away.”

Eleven-year-old Sparrow looks like he’s seen a ghost just hearing Nicolas talk like that. It’s nothing uncommon for him now but back then even Nicolas calling Jodie anything but dad was unheard of. Sparrow then still had to learn that this wasn’t quite Nicolas anymore.

“You- you snuck away?” Another thing that Nicolas would never do. “Where to? Is that how this happened?”

“Doesn’t matter how it happened”, Nicolas says again. The whole night it would go like this and even hours later Sparrow still had no answer to what, or who, made Nicolas’ wings look like this. “Just, Jodie doesn’t need to know.”

“What about- I mean”, Sparrow hesitates, but never stops moving his hands over the bleeding scratches. The one on the shoulder has closed and Sparrow has started moving towards the wing itself, “Glenn would probably keep quiet about it?”

“And why would I ask him?” Nicolas snaps back, sounding like Nicolas again, proud and stubborn, and too good to talk to people like Glenn.

“I thought-”

“Just-”, Nicolas has opened his eyes. He stares with furrowed eyebrows at the table and his hands on top of it, “Glenn’s not my dad.”

“I know.”

“So stop implying it”, Nicolas curls his hands into fists, still keeping them firmly on the table, “What would you even fucking know? You’re life isn’t all fucking different now. Like fuck!” He yells and presses his eyes shut. And Sparrow doesn’t know if it’s the pain or the frustration or everything else, but a single tear rolls down his cheek.

“I can’t remember where my locker at school is anymore!” Nicolas starts venting, “I don’t know my own phone number! I can’t stop thinking that I want to like- make music and play the drums! I curse now! I sneak away and I think my dad is lame on a good day and a bastard on a bad one! Fuck, some part of me does want Glenn to be my dad more than anything and I can’t even look my mum in the face anymore because all I feel is this crushing grief when I do! Everything’s fucked now, and I just- I want it to make sense again.”

Sparrow keeps quiet, just keeps moving up the wing until the worst of the bleeding has stopped. Then he takes the right one and repeats the same process.

“I get it”, Sparrow says quietly, and his voice echoes in the silent kitchen, “I want things to be normal again more than anything.”

“At least your still fucking human”, Nicolas looks with vitriol at his hands where sharp claws have dug themselves into the skin of his hand, pushing out blood at the edges. Sparrow has never thought about it back then but- Nicolas wouldn’t have…? No, right? Sure, he had a tough time with the whole demoness and the claws and the horns and the wings for a while. Nicky had said that it took him a while to recognize himself in the mirror again. More than anything that had scared Sparrow. He has always found comfort in looking in the mirror and knowing that his brother was looking back at him. To be so drastically changed in an instance that he wouldn’t…

Maybe Sparrow would have been tempted to do something drastic about those extra features separating him from Lark – but Nicky? Surely not. Right?

“I’m not so sure if we are”, present-Sparrow looks back at his younger self and away from the pinpricks Nicolas has dug into himself. Sparrow continues speaking, “There’s this whole- the Doodler, you know”, his voice sounds shaky and thin, “It was inside of us. Lark and me and father. Maybe still is. Maybe that doesn’t make us human either.”

Nicolas sits up a little straighter. Stops staring at his hands. Instead he looks up, seems to find Sparrow’s face in the weak reflection of the kitchen window.

“And- and Lark. He’s different. And if he’s different, then I’m different too, right?”

Nicolas frowns. He looks surprised, like he didn’t expect Sparrow to have those thoughts. Even though they were the most obvious thing to him.

“That doesn’t make sense, Sparrow”, Nicolas says, not angry anymore but still stern, still with that voice Nicolas had where he was convinced that he knew better than everyone else, “What’s happening with Lark is not about you.”

“Isn’t it?” Sparrow has stopped the healing, now he just looks at the still torn up pieces of Nicolas’ wings. He looks tired. Defeated. The same tired and defeated Sparrow has felt since Lark has stabbed Henry. He’s hopeless. Sparrow’s been hopeless for a while; he can’t remember when it started. Maybe it was right here. Maybe it was when Lark woke up and hated their father more than anything.

“Sparrow”, Nicolas says and tries to move towards him. But Sparrow is still holding onto his wings and the movement tears at the wounds, making Nicolas wince. He stops moving, but still speaks, “Sparrow. Whatever is happening with Lark and the world and all- I mean I know I was just- But like, we’ll find a solution. Our parents are doing their best. They’re gonna find something.”

How can he go from being that angry and terrified to being almost level headed? How does he still believe that their parents will solve this when his parents have messed everything up for him?

“I don’t know”, Sparrow has slowly started to pet Nicolas’ wings, lost in his own thoughts. It clearly irritates Nicolas’ wounds more, given that he keeps wincing, but he doesn’t say anything.

“I don’t know”, Sparrow repeats in the same defeated voice, “This Doodler thing, do you really think anyone can do anything against that?”

“There has to be a way.”

Sparrow shrugs, “This just how the world is now. All messed up and terrible. Lark hates our father. Grant is all quiet and weird. Terry acts like an adult now. And you’re a demon and have weird memories and Glenn thinks he’s your dad now. We’re never going to be normal again.”

Nicolas’ frown has deepened while Sparrow was talking. But the anger has now fully vanished. Nicolas doesn’t look hopeless and tired. He’s clenching his teeth and tightening his fists, this time without digging the nails into his flesh. He losses that last bit of Nicolas’ arrogance and holier-than-thou attitude; but there’s still that brightness. But now he his face looks soft too. Warm.

“No, we’re not going to be normal again”, Nicolas says but sounds like Nicky, “It doesn’t have to be a bad thing.”

In that moment a phone rings through the kitchen. Nicolas’ phone, Sparrow knows.

“It’s Glenn”, he says when he looks at the caller and he chews on his bottom lip. Then he looks at Sparrow, “Could you give us a minute?”

“Your wings aren’t done yet.”

“You should take a break anyway”, Nicolas says, still soft and warm, “I’m not bleeding anymore. It’s fine.”

Sparrow nods and leaves the kitchen. Nicolas answers the call.

“Glenn”, he says. Silence while he waits for the answer.

Shouldn’t Sparrow get to hear Glenn as well? He’s watching the memory from Nicolas’ perspective and Nicolas knows what Glenn is saying.

Something tugs at his magic. Sparrow concentrates on the feeling. Sure, he could never do what Terry did and get them in here, but he still knows magic. If he could just follow that tugging-

He takes a deep breath, closes his eyes and concentrates on hearing Glenn.

“- and where the hell even are you, man?” Glenn’s voice is clearly audible through the kitchen like he’s standing right next to them. Nicolas doesn’t flinch, just keeps acting out the memory. Sparrow grins, he did it! He can manipulate the memories!

“I’m on Earth.” Nicolas sighs.

“What’s going on dude?”, Glenn asks. He sounds unsure and wrong-footed, like he’s talking to a scared animal, “It’s eh- not like you to run away? Jodie’s freaking out.”

“You already said that”, Nicolas huffs, “And I’m…fine, I guess. Just, didn’t want to be home right now.”

“Hey yeah, totally get it. Especially with old Jodie here, right?” Glenn laughs but sounds unsure. Like he’s egging out how much he can shit-talk Jodie to his son.

“Yeah”, Nicolas is drumming his fingers again and again against the kitchen table, “He’s a bit…much lately.”

Now Glenn’s laugh sounds real, “So you just snuck out, huh? And you’re staying at your mum’s?”

“No”, Nicolas shakes his head, “I’m at the Oak’s. I think I’ll be staying here for the night. Are you- are you gonna tell Jodie?”

“Hell no!” Glenn laughs again, now free and loud, like he usually does, “Listen. If you promise to tell me where you’re going when you sneak out, I’ll gladly cover for you. Always, no questions asked. I’ll tell Jodie you’re safe though, just so he isn’t gonna tear all of Hell apart.”

“Okay”, Nicolas sounds a bit choked up, “Thanks, Glenn.”

“No problem, Nick- Nicolas.”

Silence. Like Glenn’s waiting for Nicolas to change his mind and immediately call Jodie to tell him about their conspiring. Like he expects Nicolas to be Nicolas.

Instead, what even Sparrow didn’t expect with how the night started: “Glenn”, Nicolas says slowly and carefully, not even sure himself, “You can call me Nick.”

“Oh-oh, okay”, Glenn chokes a bit on his next words, “Yeah, cool, okay. Thank- thanks, eh- Nick. Thank you, Nick. I’ll go get Jodie of your back now. Have a good night.” He pauses, and then he can’t help himself, “Have a good night, Nick.”

Nicolas hangs up with a smile. It last for about as long as it takes for Nicolas to shift, irritate his wings and make him cry out again.

Sparrow knows that that is where he comes back. It takes almost two more hours before Nicolas’ wings are functional again. Sparrow remembers how much calmer Nicolas had seemed when he came back. A week later, when he came back to school, he had introduced himself as Nicky and had insisted that everyone only call him that. Except Glenn and Jodie. Maybe that wasn’t because he had given up on correcting them.

And yet Sparrow had never learned what had happened before Nicolas had come to him that night. Years later, Nicky would just refuse to talk about it altogether. But now…now Sparrow was in Nicolas’ memories. And if he could manipulate them to let him hear Glenn on the phone, maybe he can make them show him what happened. Whatever it was it must have been something important if it made Nicolas run away and hurt himself and still not admit to Glenn what happened.

Sparrow concentrated on the tugging feeling he had noticed before. It’s somewhere in his body, the part where all his magic came from. Yet he never could name what part that was.

He closes his eyes, ignores the continued chatter of himself and Nicolas, and asks his magic to bring him where Nicolas had come from.

At first nothing happens. But Sparrow knows that something changed. He leaves the kitchen and walks back to the front door of his parents’ house. And it has, in fact, changed. A bright white glow is coming from the crack below the door. Sparrow gets almost giddy with curiosity.

Just before Sparrow reaches for the door handle, he hears a loud shriek right behind him. Something filled with pain and agony. Something demonic.

There’s nothing behind him. But he hears it again, now coming from the door. It sounds almost like…

Sparrow shakes his head. Was that Nicolas? Did whatever attacked him hurt him that bad?

He takes a deep breath, prepares himself to see the worst, and opens the door.

He expects to land in Hell. That’s where the door was supposed to bring him. Get him to Hell and let him see how Nicolas hurt his wings.

But instead Sparrow lands in another kitchen. Another boring, clean kitchen on Earth. It takes him a second before he recognizes the layout. This is Nicky’s old apartment. The one he had before he moved in with Cassandra. It even looks like he is currently in the process of that move. Half-packed boxes are standing around, the drawers around the kitchen are opened and their contents seem severely diminished. Nicky’s sitting on his kitchen table writing something down. His hair is tied up, he’s dressed in a lose T-shirt and just his boxers. He’s definitely not thirteen-year-old Nicolas in Hell that Sparrow actually wanted to see.

Quietly Sparrow curses to himself. After the phone call he was so confident that this would work. He knows that memory magic can be manipulated and made to show you specific things. Terry is quite good at it, but apparently this is above Sparrow’s capabilities. Was the phone call just a fluke? A happy accident?

There’s another scream coming from behind him. And reflexively Sparrow turns around again. Still nothing.

If that’s not Nicolas’ scream, than what is it? He can hears the whispers of a conversation, but nothing is intelligible. Nicky at the table doesn’t seem to be able to hear it.

It must be another memory then? Why is it leaking into this one? Did that block him from entering Nicky’s other memory?

Just when another very loud shriek cuts through the quiet of the kitchen, Nicky picks up his phone and starts dialing, stopping Sparrow from investigating further.

A few seconds later, the person at the other end answers. This time Sparrow can hear it immediately: “Nicky? Everything alright?” It’s himself. Of course it is. Maybe that’s why he couldn’t get into Nicolas’ other memory. Because Sparrow isn’t in it. But that’s not how memories worked when Terry tried to explain it to them, right?

“Everything’s peachy”, Nicky says, smiling brightly and propping one leg up on the stool he is sitting on, “Listen, I’m kind of calling for a favor? Like, not really. I would totally pay for it, if you want me to-“

“Oh, yes. Absolutely!” Sparrow cries out. Quite literally too, like hearing Nicky say that he needs his help is saving Sparrow from something worse than death. What memory was this? He doesn’t remember.

“You don’t even know what it is yet”, Nicky’s grinning, “I just wanted to ask if you still need Hero’s old stroller? You didn’t give it to Grant, right? Cause Cass and I looked at the prices and ooh boy that is expensive. I had kinda hoped you could give us yours? At a discount maybe?”

Sparrow on the other end is silent. Sparrow in the room is thinking hard about what happened in this conversation that made it important enough for Nicky’s subconscious to show him. He can’t come up with anything.

“Hero’s stroller?” Sparrow asks as if to clarify, his voice sounds tense, “We- well, you’re really gonna keep it?”

Nicky frowns, “You mean the baby? I mean, yes? We’ve decided weeks ago? Otherwise we wouldn’t have told you all. At least not at a party?”

“It’s just- Like- Is that really a good idea?” Sparrow’s voice is much higher than usual, “What if it’s like- the Antichrist?”

Nicky laughs out loud, “Well, as far as we know the whole ‘Is-god-real’ question is still up for debate. And even if he was, I certainly wouldn’t be the father of the Antichrist. So no worries. Also like, Cassandra said she’d be totally chill if the child ends up having demon horns. I don’t think they will? Oh wait, you know what would be awesome?” Now he’s giggling to himself, “What if they get wings? I could teach them how to fly!”

“Yeah, awesome”, Sparrow echoes lamely. Clearly sharing none of the excitement Nicky has. This must be around the time Sparrow and Rebecca found out about the pregnancy with Normal. If Cassandra is currently pregnant with Taylor and he is that anxious it could only be about Normal.

“Well, you don’t sound enthusiastic at all”, Nicky shifts so he sits cross-legged on his stool, “Is something wrong? Like you don’t have to give me the stroller, you know that right?”

“It’s not about the stroller. Or well- it kind of is. Just- I can’t give it to you.”

Nicky has stopped smiling but he still looks and sounds relaxed and unbothered, no idea what must be happening in Sparrow’s head right now, “Oh, why not?”

“I- We- We’regonnaneeditagain”

Nicky blinks slowly. Than his eyes get wide: “You’re pregnant?”

“Well, Rebecca is. But yeah.”

“You know what I mean!” Nicky waves it away like Sparrow could have seen him in that moment, “That’s so awesome dude! Since when did you know? How far along is it now? Do you have names yet? Does Hero know? What’s her opinion? Dude, that’s so cool! Our kids can be friends! They’re gonna be like twins, all inseparable and codependent and shit!”

Sparrow’s line has gone silent again. Eventually even Nicky notices. He stops his waterfall of words.

“Sparrow?” he asks, now softly and delicately, “Are you not excited?”

“I don’t know”, Sparrow answers and he can hear that tiredness again. And the nerves that have seemed to fry his brain from the inside out at that time. Sparrow remembers how he felt after Rebecca told him the ‘good news’. He was already making Hero’s life more difficult than he should, he knew he couldn’t provide anything better for a second child.

So he had asked Rebecca to keep it quiet for a while. Just so he didn’t have to deal with all the people telling him what a terrible idea this was. Or worse. The people that would tell him that he’d do good.

Was Nicky the first person they had told? This must have been when the pregnancy was pretty fresh news. But he would have told Lark first, right? Although he remembers that his conversation with Lark had severely calmed him down and this Sparrow does not sound calm in any way.

“You don’t know?” Nicky interrupts his musing.

“I just-”, Sparrow hesitates for a very, very long time. If it wasn’t himself, Sparrow would have thought he had forgotten that he was just talking, “Do you really think we could like…actually have a normal family?”

“No”, Nicky chuckles.

“Well, thanks”, Sparrow groans, “Why did you- Why do you want a child then?”

“Weird doesn’t mean bad, Sparrow. All of our lives are weird. My kid’s definitely gonna be weird no matter what. They’ll have three grandparents and the personification of getting a scam call as a step-grandpa on one side, and with luck they’ll never meet their human grandparents.” He shudders. Like the actual Hell-side of this family was gonna be Cassandra’s parents, “Their mom’s a pretty famous child star and their dad’s a demon – no kids gonna come out being normal like that. But like, who cares? I just hope that I’ll be like, a good dad.”

Nicky’s hand wanders to his collar where he rubs it between his fingers.

“You’ll do fine”, Sparrow says, “You’ll do better than me certainly.”

“Don’t say that”, Nicky frowns again, keeps playing with his shirt, “You’re great dad, when you aren’t stressing yourself out all the time.”

So never, Sparrow thinks to himself.

“So…”, Nicky says after a long time of more silence, “Do you have a name yet?”

“No”, Sparrow answers, “Do you?”

Nicky is clearly trying and failing to suppress a smile, “Cassandra wanted them to have her last name, which I am very happy with, so I had an idea-”

“Oh no”

“Taylor is a great name. Works for either gender. But most importantly: it keeps up the family tradition!”

“You can’t be serious.” Sparrow sighs.

“Why not!”, Nicky is grinning from ear to ear. You can even see his teeth, sharp and pointy, and so inhuman. “Cass thinks it’s hilarious! She’s made a playlist, that I am now legally required to play in the hospital-”

“You are not naming your child after retired megastar Taylor Swift. That’s ridiculous!”

“Should have told my grandparents”, Nicky snickers, “I get it know, y’know. The temptation is so hard to resist. I bet our kids is gonna hate us for it but their kid will think it’s hilarious again.”

“You are ridiculous”, Sparrow says over the phone but even Sparrow in the room can tell that he’s suppressing a smile. They had tried for weeks to get Cassandra and Nicky to choose any other name. Which, evidently, had not succeeded.

“Mh”, Nicky’s still grinning like the devil, “You can’t judge me unless you tell me what horrible name your next child is getting.”

Okay. Very fair, Sparrow thinks. He wasn’t in a very good headspace when he came up with Hero’s and Normal’s names. And Rebecca had just said yes to whatever he had proposed.

“Listen, Sparrow I have to keep packing”, Nicky says now, slowly untangling himself and standing up, “But you’ll do good. I know that. You just have to try.”

“I am.” Sparrow doesn’t sound sure of himself.

Nicky’s smile turns sad and heavy, just like their surroundings. Sparrow hears the screams again.

“Promise me?” Nicky asks and he looks up and his eyes find the real Sparrow. He stares right at him, unsurprised to find him here. His face darkens; he looks angry, Sparrow has no doubts that Nicky knows exactly who he is and what he’s doing here, “Promise me you won’t give up this time?”

Did he say that? Sparrow doesn’t remember, has no clue what he would have said in return either. He doesn’t get to hear it now. Instead, with Nicky’s eyes, like coal and embers, burning into his soul, and the yelling of voices he can’t recognize in his ears, the memory gets overtaken by another.

Chapter Text

A low crackle fills the kitchen and becomes louder and louder until there might as well be a plane taking off right outside the window. Through the static Sparrow can hear the voices, but not the end of his and Nicky’s conversation. The voices still sound like nothing but yelling, but they get louder and louder. Then they ebb away, getting overtaken by the audio-static again. The only thing Sparrow could compare it to is flicking through radio stations with bad signal. Sometimes he can make out a single word but then it gets lost again.

Nicky, still staring at him, opens his mouth again but all that comes out is more static.

Even the lights in the apartment start flickering. Then his whole surroundings get dark. They come back once. They flicker out again. The very thing he sees are the embers of Nicky's eyes, before even that light gets swallowed in static and darkness and then- nothing.

The audio static clears a bit, finally Sparrow can make out words: “I called Morgan-”, more crackling, “-here soon. Should I- Cassandra-”,

Another voice becomes distinguishable, “Wait- wakes up-”

His surroundings become quiet again. The first thing he hears clearly is his own breathing- no, Nicky’s breathing. It’s deep and heavy, almost like he’s sleeping.

Sparrow looks around trying to locate where it’s coming from but everything’s still dark. He takes a deep breath, tries to calm his nerves even when he has no idea what just happen. Best he can guess is that whatever memory has repeatedly tried to invade has finally succeeded. Whatever this is, Nicky’s subconscious really wants Sparrow to see this.

Except he still can’t see anything. Is Nicky actually sleeping? But then he wouldn’t have memories on what the people around him where saying.

“He might wake up soon”, the voice, now clear of all interference, is unmistakably Glenn’s, “The spell only last so long.”

“Let’s hope he sleeps longer than that.” The second voice must be Jodie’s, he sounds more tired than usual, or well, at least compared to the last time Sparrow has heard him.

Glenn sounds tired too, and a lot quieter. The voices that have forced themselves into the previous memories, Glenn’s and Jodie’s most likely, had yelled and screamed. They had sounded panicked and desperate.

Sparrow has a feeling what memory this could be, even if he's never witnessed it.

“Jodie”, Glenn says, “Do you want me to use the spell on you as well?”

“What?”

“Your pacing”, that must be the footsteps Sparrow had been hearing, they stop just as Glenn mentions them. “You’re making it hard to think. And Nick doesn’t need you to freak out as well.”

Nicky’s breathing, to Sparrow the loudest sound in the room, picks up just a smidge. Now Sparrow finally understands what’s going on: Nicky’s pretending to still be asleep. Asleep after what though?

Sparrow bites his lip in the dark and hopes his suspicion is wrong. That is instinct is leading him astray again.

“I’m fine. I can calm myself.”

“Then sit”, Glenn insists. More footsteps, Glenn sighs. His voice sounds closer than Jodie’s. He’s probably sitting by Nicky’s side while Jodie is somewhere else in the room. “Jodie”, Glenn says with a heavy voice, “Nick needs us.”

The footsteps stop. Come closer. Sparrow hears Jodie sitting down, now his voice is about as close as Glenn’s, “He’s not gonna agree.”

“We should give him the option.”

“You know Nicolas”, Jodie sounds frustrated maybe? “I don’t doubt that even now he still holds some misplaced affection.”

“Misplaced is a harsh word”

“They shot his arm off, Glenn.”

Immediatly, Sparrow realizes that Jodie hadn’t sounded tired, or frustrated, he sounded pissed. He is furious, and only barely holding his anger in. His anger for the people that hurt his son.

Sparrow wishes he had been wrong again.

“They were his closest friends”, Glenn retorts, “He might not want to hurt them.”

“I want to hurt them!” Jodie yells, so loud and sudden that Nicky startles and just barely opens his eyes. Light floods the scene for just a second. Sparrow is sitting on a couch, mostly covered by Nicky’s lying body. He can just barely see Glenn sitting next to it before Nicky closes his eyes again. Neither Jodie nor Glenn react, not noticing that he is awake.

“Shut up”, Glenn whisper-yells back at Jodie, “It doesn’t fucking matter what you want! Keep your demon-ness down for once, will you?”

“This has nothing to do with being a demon”, Jodie says, “It’s about my son almost getting fucking murdered by his supposed ‘friends’. I don’t know why you’re not angry!”

“Hey now, I am fucking pissed, okay?” That sounds more like Glenn. Not the usual, easy going, nothing-really-matters Glenn, but at least he’s seen Glenn angry more often than worried. “I just- I can’t believe they did this. We need to at least, like, wait to hear what exactly happened. Maybe this is a misunderstanding or-”

“You think Nicolas lied to us? About this?”

“No! Fucking- no! That’s not what I said and you know it! Can you stop being up your own ass for a goddam second and actually listen to me?”

Sparrow expects the conversation to escalate. He knows how Jodie and Glenn speak to each other. It’s about ten seconds of actual talking before they both start screaming at each other like children. This has been a record-breaking conversation thus far.

But instead he hears Jodie take a single deep breath in – and then out.

“Sorry”, he says, now calm and quiet, “You’re right. This is about Nicolas and he might not want his friends hurt.” He pauses, “Even though they deserve it.”

“They do”, Glenn agrees, and it feels like Sparrow's getting stabbed, hearing Glenn so easily agree, “But attacking Earth will solve nothing. It’s just petty revenge.”

Jodie groans, “Stop being smart. I hate when I have to agree with you.”

Glenn laughs once. Loud and barking, “Well, even you can’t turn a blind eye to genius forever.”

“Get back on topic." Sparrow can hear clothes rustling, then Jodie continues: “We need to talk to the guys.”

“I don’t think Henry knew about this”, Glenn says immediately, “He hasn’t talked to the twins since Mercedes died.”

“What about Ron? And Daryll?”

“No idea”, Glenn sounds more than tired or angry now. He sounds defeated, “I’d hope they had no idea.”

“The kids have been doing things on their own for a while now”, Jodie says and if Sparrow didn’t know any better, he might say that he’s trying to cheer up Glenn.

Sparrow had never considered, he doesn’t think any of them did, that them betraying Nicky also meant a separation between Glenn and their dads. Glenn, even in his – technically – death was a very present figure in all of their lives, hanging out with their dads, his closest friends. But he had also taught all of them spells and weapons like any of their dads would, had taught them how to think on their feet and stay out of trouble and more importantly get into trouble. Glenn had once said he was proud of Lark and him when Henry could barely look at them anymore. What did he think of them now?

Sparrow had wondered once, before they betrayed Nicky but after Code Purple, what would be the last straw with all of his friends and family. Henry’s had been clear and they did it anyway. Nicky’s couldn’t have been more obvious. But it had all seemed so worth it, in that moment, to protect the world. It felt like the only option.

All of Faerun, his dad, Nicky, Glenn – they had all seemed like worthy sacrifices. But it didn’t do anything, barely bought them time.

Sparrow wonders if Glenn ever talked to the other dads after the betrayal. Had he blamed them as well? Had they consoled him over what their terrible children did to his son? Or had he severed that connection as well?

Has Sparrow destroyed even more friendships than previously thought?

“What do we do about Taylor?” Jodie finally asks, his voice even heavier than before, “Do you really don’t think they would hurt him at this point?”

“I’m-”, Glenn hesitates, “Pretty sure they won't? Neither we nor them have any reason to believe that Taylor could get them to Hell.”

“What if they bet on Nicolas coming to save him?”

Both are quiet. Sparrow is glad he can’t see their faces. Even gladder that they can’t see his.

They did. They did consider it. Taylor didn’t have any powers as far as anyone knew at that time, but they had also been sure that Nicky would come to save him if he got hurt. And they thought about it. Briefly. Very briefly. But they did.

“He can’t go to Earth again”, Glenn says, “The FBI has these tracker things – they aren’t very good but the concept works – if they are serious about this they could easily steal one. They would know how to make it actually work. They could find him wherever he portals in.”

“You can’t do that to him.”

“I’m not doing anything to him”, Glenn hisses back, “It’s a fucking safety issue. What’s more important? One child seeing his dad sometimes or the safety of everyone in Hell?”

What’s more important, Sparrow thinks, Earth’s entire future or their best friend?

Sparrow’s surroundings become bright once again. Nicky is opening his eyes.

“He’s right”, Nicky croaks like he hasn’t drunk water in weeks and his diet only consisted of inhaling as much smoke as his lungs could hold, “I can’t go back.”

The first thing Sparrow can clearly see from his surroundings are Jodie and Glenn sitting on the coffee table next to the couch in Nicky’s bedroom.

The second thing he sees is mess that seems to encapsulate th entirety of that bedroom. It looks like the entirety of someone's eartly possesions had exploded in just one tiny room.

And the third thing Sparrow sees is the giant tear in the memory right behind all of that. Like a cut in paper it opens to blackness and a figure jumps through.

“Sparrow!” they yells, before Sparrow is actually sure who it is, “Your brother is crazy! Get him off of me!”

Nicolas Foster, thirteen and looking just like he did the last time he has been neither demon nor Glenn’s son, wildly gestures behind himself. Not a second after Lark jumps through the tear, skids to a halt and looks around.

Nicolas scrambles behind the couch. The memory they were in has stopped frozen in place. The only people still moving are the ones foreign to the scene.

“Lark?”

“Sparrow?”

They look at each other. Then Lark’s eyes wander behind Sparrow’s head, to where Nicolas must be standing.

“What are you doing?”, Sparrow asks before Lark could.

“I was following the little twerp”, he nods at Nicolas, “Appeared in the last memory I saw- actually”, he looks around, like he’s studying the entire environment but Sparrow can see that his eyes keep flickering to Nicky on the couch.

Sparrow hasn’t actually seen him for himself yet. Nicky has one arm, unsurprisingly, and his stump is dressed in careful wraps but curiously not soaked in blood. Not like the rest of him. His shirt is gone, and his face is clean but his hair has clumps of blood in it and one of his legs – still dressed in bloodied jeans – is sticking out of the blanket thrown over him. His face is pale and sweat pearls at his forehead.

“I think I just saw this exact one?”, Lark wonders.

“No, you didn’t”, Nicolas, still behind the couch and with Sparrow between him and his aggressor, says, “You saw like an hour before this. When he was still bleeding out, remember that?”

“You mean you?”, asks Sparrow turning to see the kid.

He scoffs. Like Sparrow is an idiot. The gesture is painfully familiar both as something Sparrow’s kids do all the time, and as something Nicolas has done countless time when he thought Sparrow and Lark were idiots.

“No, not me.” Nicolas rolls his eyes as well for good measure, “I’m me. That”, he point at Nicky, “is Nicky. The ‘bossman’ of this place, as Nick would call him.”

“Nick is here as well?”, Lark asks.

Nicolas shakes his head, then hesitates, “What do you mean by here? Technically he’s in this room as well right now – just like, at a different time, different memory – he’s getting Grant and Terry.”

“Why is he getting them?”, Sparrow asks, “Aren’t we supposed to find you?”

“Well, Nick and me aren’t lost”, Nicolas shrugs, “So you don’t have to rescue us or whatever you were planning on doing. And Nicky definitely isn’t getting rescued by you either.”

“What do you mean?” Sparrow looks back at Lark. Will this be a problem? He had hoped, for a second that Nicolas could help them since he can clearly navigate the space without a problem. But maybe they don’t want Nicky to be conscious again? Are they mailcious?

Nicolas steps out from behind the couch. His shoulders are straight now, confident and self-sufficient, like Nicolas always liked to be seen. “I mean”, he struts between them, “That Nick and me have something prepared for you. Nicky’s subconscious pulled you all over the place trying to figure you out, so we split up to get to all of you. So you can watch the grand finale together.” He smirks in a way that looks entriely wrong on Nicolas' face.

“Listen, you little brat”, Lark steps towards the child, but Nicolas doesn’t seem impressed at all. He just looks up at him, unflinching. “We need to get Nicky out of here. We don’t have time for your games.”

“Not a game”, Nicolas says and turns back around to only look at Sparrow now, “And it’s not like you guys have a choice. We have all the power here. But I will give you this: we are not interested in taking over Nicky or whatever you might think. We just don’t want you to find him. We’re looking out for him.”

“And Glenn?”

Nicolas smiles, “We’re pretty sure that he’s already found wherever Nicky has hidden away. Best not to disturb them though, I think they have a lot to talk about. Just between us," and he leans in conspiratorily, "I partly only came up with this plan to give Nick something to do, so he’s not interrupting. Nicky can’t have a productive conversation with Glenn if Nick’s there as well.”

Sparrow looks at Lark. He shrugs. Neither of them are sure what that means.

“Anymore questions?” Nicolas asks but turns away from them immediately, “No? Perfect! Let’s go then, you don’t have that much time in here after all.”

And he tears the space apart again. This time he doesn’t enter first though, he steps aside and motions for them to go.

They share another glance. Sparrow doesn’t think what comes next will be any better than what he’s just seen. Lark agrees, he knows. But Nicolas is right. They don’t have any power here. They are at the mercy of these two teens that are clearly still very, very pissed at them.

When Sparrow steps through the portal he wonders what the relationship between Nick, Nicolas and Nicky actually is, if they aren’t the same person. He wonders how he’s never asked Nicky that before. He hopes he can still ask.

Chapter Text

Terry has done a lot of research about memory magic. After they have gotten back from the Forgotten Realms he became fascinated by the topic. He’s read every book, learned every spell, has collected every artifact he could get his hands on. He has done his own experimentations on the memory syringes to perfect them and has learned how to navigate someone else’s memories better than anyone.

And he can confidently say that every person who has ever written about memory magic, neglects to mention how awful it feels to get sucked into someone else’s memories. Even worse, if you’re the person casting the spell.

After the wave of dizziness and nausea that comes with invading another person’s mind, Terry immediately gets assaulted by noise. So, so much noise. He hears every one of his friends and Glenn’s voices talking simultaneously in his head, as well as the edges of whatever conversation they might be in. He can definitely hear yelling and screaming somewhere, but has no clue where it’s coming from. Just knows it’s giving him a headache. His surroundings aren’t helping. Of course the actual memory he landed in is filled with noise as well.

Slowly Terry opens his eyes. And shuts them immediately again. Distorted, colorful disco light, dozens of young people, teenagers, chatting and dancing and moving and being loud. Music is blasting all around him.

Terry tries to open his eyes again.

He’s at prom.

Senior prom? Maybe. Most of High School was a bit of a blur for him. For all of them. He’s not even sure if he ever went to prom. He knows that most of the time, he and the other guys had just holed up at one of their places and played video game instead.

Except Nicky, he had gone to every prom. Even when he barely went to school anymore. Even when the others had refused to go and he had to go alone.

An old, familiar voice rings clearly through the noise in his head: “TJ?”

He looks around. Nicky is standing in front of him. Younger. Dressed up in a vest and button up. One of the buttons is a different color than the rest. His hair is shorter than it is now and is dyed electric blue on the underside, peeking through the black on top.

Nicky’s holding a cup in one hand and has a smile on his face.

“You came!” he cheers and hugs Terry, barely reaching up to his chin. But then again, Nicky hasn’t grown much after he hit eighteen. He can’t seem to recognize that Terry is not eighteen as well though. That’s weird. He should see him just as he is. Terry hasn’t done anything to alter their appearance.

But Nicky seems undeterred by the fact that Terry’s twice his age right now. Or that he seemingly appeared out of nowhere. “You didn’t answer my text if you were still coming. I was nervous you were gonna stand me up.”

Slowly Terry nods, deciding to play along. Apparently he did visit prom then. Is he just a stand in for his old self? That’s not how it works usually, but memory magic can be weird and random at times. For now it’s best to keep up the ruse and observe what happens next.

“I was driving”, Terry says, “Didn’t see your text.”

“No problem”, Nicky grins and looks down at the cup in his hands. He holds it out for Terry, “You want some?”

Terry nods and takes a sip before he can even think about it.

“Wait, is this spiked?” he asks after immediately putting the cup down again.

Nicky shrugs. He can’t be shorter than he is now, but he looks smaller. Is it cause the wings are missing?

“If it’s spiked, it’s not my fault. I thought about it but I-” Nicky pauses and carefully looks at Terry, then much slower he says, “Unless you want it to be spiked? Which I could still do.”

“No! Why would I want it to be?!”

“Cause you’re anxious? I know you didn’t really want to come.” Nicky looks at the ground, “So I’m really happy you still decided to show up.”

 “I didn’t want you to be alone”, Terry shrugs helplessly and thinks about what prom this was. He could have sworn that he never went.

Nicky laughs. Loud, head thrown back, eyes closed. Terry wonders what is so funny. “Terry you crack me up!” he says and takes a deep breath, “But for real. If you wanna go, you can. It’s totally fine. I mean I can also come with you? Or I could still spike your drink and then we can still have a fun prom. Or weed? You want weed? I could get some. Probably. Maybe. Do I have some?” He frowns. “Do I smoke?”

Nicky’ eyes become unfocused. He rubs them with the palms of his hands. Terry remembers this, it’s something Nick used to do a lot in High School when he got confused about himself. Sometimes he just couldn’t recall who he was. It made High School…difficult for Nick. A lot of fights with other students because Nicky couldn’t remember dates and friendships and grudges and people. Eventually the combination of most of his life being in Hell anyway, and the impossibility of being two people in a school that barely wants you to be either of them, made Nicky stop going. His parents, all three of them, sort of agreed that it was for the best. Nicky only showed up randomly after that. He didn’t graduate with them.

“Okay, bad news”, Nicky’s voice pulls him back into the scene, “I apparently don’t smoke. But I could still totally get you something!”

“I don’t want weed, Nicky.” Terry frowns when Nicky’s eyes fall on the cup in his hands, “Or alcohol.”

“Yeah that’s fine. Totally fair.” Nicky’s eyes dart off. Now that Terry looks closer, his body language seems anxious. “You wanna get out of here? Or are you having fun?”

Maybe Nicky wants to get out of here? It doesn’t seems like he’s enjoying himself and the noise in both Terry's head and on the dance floor is getting overwhelming for him. He nods, “Okay, sure. I could take a breather.”

Nicky grins wide and toothy. He grabs Terry’s hand and pulls him. Around them the scene changes as they move. Until they land on a flight of stairs in front of the school. It’s dark and quiet outside. A bit chilly too. Out here, the other memories in his head are much louder, not drowned out by the other party noises anymore. But Nicky laughs loud and bright and at least he can concentrate on his voice.

“I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy prom”, Nick says, now with a sincere smile, “I'd really hoped you would but it’s fine. At least you came and we’re spending time together!”

“Yeah. Sorry”, Terry looks around. He can’t remember any prom. He can’t remember leaving prom early with Nicky and sitting on the stairs of the school either. But maybe it’s just the noise and the migraine making his own memory scrambled. “Why did you want me to come anyway?”

“Cause I’d rather go to prom with my friends, duh” Nick rolls his eyes, “Everyone else at school is a nark and irresponsible”, those seem like two entirely different things, “I bet someone did spike the punch! And not even with the good stuff.”

Terry isn’t sure if Nicky wishes the punch was spiked or not. He doesn’t think Nicky knows either.

“The others didn’t want to come?”

“Weren’t you there?” Nick frowns again, massages his temple. Then he decides against combing through his memories, “Ah forget it. No, they didn’t. Grant doesn’t wanna go anywhere and Lark hates it cause it’s not cool enough or something, who knows. And Sparrow doesn’t hang out with me sooo...” Nicky shrugs.

That’s news to Terry, “Why wouldn’t Sparrow hang out with you?”

Nicky makes a face like he just bit into a lemon, “We don’t have to talk about that.”

“Nicky, if you two are fighting-”

“We aren’t fighting”, he rolls his eyes, “he would have to talk with me for us to do that.”

“You hang out all the time.”

“We fight monsters all the time” Nicky corrects, “But if I actually want to hang out it’s always a fucking chess game. I mean not with you! You’re so easy! You actually like me!” Then he bites his tongue and turns around abruptly, “Forget I said that!”

“What do you mean? Of course Sparrow likes you. We all like you.” This is not a conversation he’s ever had with Nicky. He knows that for a fact.

“Of course!” Nicky turns around, smiling brightly again, “I am very likeable after all! I play all of Grant’s favorite games with him. I do whatever stupid and reckless idea Lark’s got cooked up! It’s not my fault Sparrow doesn’t want to share his hobbies with me. You know he likes all of this painting stuff and taking hikes and shit and he just doesn’t want me to join. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t like me!”

He looks even more anxious than he did inside. His voice that must have dropped just a few months ago, if Terry is getting the timeline correct, but now it's tto high again. Almost squeaky.

Terry frowns. He knows those thoughts from Nicky. He’s heard them a hundred times: Jodie doesn’t want me to come along to his big important mission, or whatever the guy always did in Hell. But it’s always been about Jodie. Or Glenn. Or Morgan. Do they like me? Am I a good son? Can I be both Nicolas and Nick at the same time and make everyone happy all the time, forever?

Terry didn’t know that Nicky thought it about his friends as well. He wants to give Nicky another hug.

“Nicky, Sparrow doesn’t invite you to go hiking cause we all know you hate it”, he says instead, in what he hopes is a gentle tone, “You can’t stop complaining about it when we have to take hikes for incursions. And I assure you, you’ll find painting boring too.”

“But Sparrow likes doing it”, Nicky sounds whiny and childish. Like the concept that he doesn’t automatically like the things his friends like personally offends him.

Terry wants to assure him they all like him. That they love him. Even now. But especially back then. He wants to tell Nicky that they like spending time with him, even when it’s not just for their sake. That he came to prom for Nicky because Nicky asked him too and that he can do that whenever he wants to or needs to. He can asks them to spend time with him because they are friends and that doesn’t mean that Nicky always has to be the one bending to their wishes.

That they aren’t like Nicky’s parents.

But Terry can’t remember ever going to prom.

Nicky asked him to go. Asked them all. Every year. No one wanted to because they’ve felt alienated and isolated from their peers for years and they had nothing to celebrate. So they all said no. Every year.

What’s there to celebrate? they had all thought, even though Lark was the only one to say it out loud.

Getting through another year? Nick had shrugged. Surviving? You guys are finally graduating? Just to have fun for once? Seem like good reasons to me.

They hadn’t agreed. Prom was for normal teenagers, finally celebrating being free from school and getting to go out into the world on their own. They weren’t normal. They barely felt like teenagers. They’ve been out in the world, on their own, years ago and it did nothing but ruin their lives. They knew that after school they would not go to college and get a job and become an adult like any other. They had certainly tried.

Terry and Grant had gone to college. Sparrow too, if only briefly. They all got apartments and partners and jobs and kids and never once had any of it felt enough to overshadow the fact that the world was ruined. The world was ruined. They were ruined. The only thing that they could do was fix it and nothing mattered apart from that. Not celebrating prom, or their own families and brief happiness, or other people, or Nicky.

But Terry had felt bad when Nicky had asked again and again. He’d asked them the year before too and had gone alone then. So Terry had told him the day after that he would come. If just for a little bit. And Nicky had lit up like the night sky. Or maybe like the spark to ignite a fire.

But Terry hadn’t gone. When it was time to leave, he said goodbye to his parents and had gone outside and then he had driven as slowly as he could in the direction of the school. But instead of ever arriving, the knot in his stomach had tightened and tightened until he felt like he could not breathe anymore. He had been late. He had seen Nicky's text message asking him where he is. He had turned around the car and driven to Grant’s house instead.

What’s there to celebrate?

Nothing. All prom was, was noise and lights and the people from their school that they all barely knew, nor liked. And it was something Nicky had wanted to do.

Terry had went to Grant where he and the twins had spent the evening watching movies and getting drunk and being miserable. He had ignored Nicky’s calls and texts for more than an hour before telling him half of the truth. Nicky hadn’t come to join them.

The edges of the memory begin to peel. Terry can feel the protective layer he had involuntarily created rub away and see the real memory underneath: Terry had never shown up and after twenty minutes Nick had gone outside as well. He had sat on the stairs they stood by now and had stared at his phone. In the dark, quiet night, the muffled noises from the party behind him lighting up the background. And Nick had sat down, curled up on the bottom stairs, knees to his chest, arms circling around them. He had called Terry again. And again. And again.

He had stared at the ground and he had tried not to cry. He had drunk from the vodka he maybe-sort of- wanted to spike the punch with, in case Terry would have found it funny.

Terry feels like the worst person alive.

Chapter Text

Terry is still watching Nicky’s lone form. Abandoned and cold, and he wonders if what they did was inevitable. Were they always like this? Would they always ditch Nicky, who still had hope and energy and joy for the world, to stew in their own misery together?

He doesn’t have an answer.

Instead he sits down next to Nicky on the stairs of their old school and quietly waits with him for the answer he knows won’t come.

But then something around him changes. Like insects humming, or like TV static his surrounding begin to hum. Immediately his headache gets worse. Much worse. Something wants him out of this memory and in another one and the little control he had over where he is in Nicky’s head slips out from underneath him.

And now he can make sense of one- two of the voices he had been hearing in the back of his head repeatedly. They weren’t from the other guys. They were from this memory, this memory that's trying to invade. Has been trying this whole time. It wants to be seen. It needs to be seen. Terry’s presence has triggered it to the forefront.

Whatever it is, something in Nicky desperately wants Terry to see this memory. So Terry stops fighting it and lets it take him. Like he is merely sitting in theater and watching a performance, the memory he was just in gets covered in darkness like curtains falling in front of a stage. From the upper edges of his vision inward, with a soft sound of heavy fabric meeting itself in midair. Then it is completely dark.

A stage light gets flicked on, or at least the sound suggests it, and light floods everything around Terry.

He blinks and strains his eyes, trying to get used to the brightness after spending the previous memory mostly in dim night light. This time he is inside. Inside what vaguely looks like Nicky’s old bedroom except…fuller.

Nicolas’ room had been bright and neatly organized, cleaned meticulously because he knew that it would impress his father, but nevertheless it had had character. Nicky had thrown out most of his stuff when he came back from Hell. His room had then been barren for most of his High School. Every few months or so he would paint it a new color and buy cheap decoration in a fit to be someone, but it had never lasted long. When he became an adult Nicky had given up and just decorated his room and apartment like Nick and Nicolas had liked it. Finding some balance between being messy but organized, being cleaned often but looking lived in. He would still veer on the side of minimalism but he would always blame it on the fact that he had two homes and couldn’t afford to have everything twice. Terry always wondered what Nick’s room would have looked like.

This though…this is none of them. It isn’t just messy. It is bursting with how much stuff there was. Clothes cover the floor, posters hang twice and thrice on the walls, the lamps flickers between cool, bright light and warm but dim every few seconds. Terry sees a throw pillow he remembered getting for Nicky’s first housewarming party. He sees the houseplants that Nicolas used to obsess over like his own children. He sees a giant drum kit, covered by more clothes and more blankets that takes up an entire corner of the room. Next to it are two guitars, the magical-electric one and Nicky’s first acoustic.

This isn't the actual room from this memory, Terry can feel it. This is tampered with, manipulated, the same thing he is doing by being here. Why would Nicky do this? What prupose would this have?

Finally Terry’s eyes fall on the actual memory, not the fake memory of the room that's overlaid on top of it.

Nicky is half sitting, half laying on his couch, propped up by Glenn with Jodie sitting by and watching them.

“We called Morgan”, Jodie says, “She should be here soon as well.”

Nicky just nods, doesn’t look at him. Jodie glances at Glenn who makes a sort of half-shrug.

Terry comes close until he is opposite of Nicky. His stomach sinks as he sees that his arm is freshly bandaged and most importantly, missing its entire bottom half. But even ignoring that he looks bad, pale and shaky and his eyes can‘t focus. He keeps slowly blinking, then squinting at nothing.

“We- I“, Jodie says, still silently communication with Glenn, “wanted to ask if you... if we should do something?“

“I don‘t want you to attack Earth“, Nicky is barely audibly. He speaks it blandly too, no intonation, no emotion behind it. It‘s the loudest thing in the room.

Jodie tenses, “You heard us?“

Nicky nods. Just once.

“Are you sure though?“ Jodie asks and immediately gets an elbow in the rib from Glenn and a look that could kill.

“Jodie“, Nicky‘s eyes finally find his father, “Drop it. I don‘t want you to avenge me or some shit. If I hear otherwise-“

“Alright“, Jodie nods, “If you change your mind though...“

Nicky glares at him but he doesn’t say anything else. He looks away and closes his eyes again. For a second Terry thinks he’s going to fall asleep sitting up. He looks exhausted enough to do so.

Terry had no idea that Jodie was ready to wage war on them. He’s never really like them before and this – well, Terry’s not surprised now that he knows. He’s more surprised that Nicky was against it. They had been afraid of a war with Hell. Had been afraid when they argued with Nicky and tried to force his hand. Had been afraid when Nicky got angrier and angrier and would curse them and set their table on fire just so they would know that he meant it. Had been afraid when they saw the fear in Nicky’s eyes as they pointed their guns at him. Had been afraid when he vanished into the woods and for weeks after.

But nothing ever happened. The fear never quite vanished but they learned to live with it, like they learned to live with all of their fears.

In the end it had been unnecessary like everything else. Nicky would never attack Earth. It was as much his home as Hell. And just like he wasn’t ready to sacrifice Hell for Earth, he wouldn’t sacrifice Earth for Hell. They had been blind to think otherwise.

“Do you…need anything else?” Jodie asks, still careful like stepping around glass, “Anything we can do for you?”

Nicky shrugs but doesn’t open his eyes. For a while it’s silent while Glenn and Jodie carefully look at him. The tension is thick, the worry in their face even thicker.

And then, tiny, almost silent sobs fill the air. Nicky’s shoulder start to shake, tears roll down his cheeks and then he breathes in and the dams break.

Worse than Nicky’s sobs and the bandages around his arms are his fathers’ faces. They look heartbroken.

Terry did this. Terry did this. Nicky shakes like a leaf. Glenn and Jodie look at each other and they don’t know what to do, don’t know what to say. And Terry has betrayed his best friend.

Jodie scooches up so he can also hold Nicky as well. Nicky, without hesitation throws himself into Jodie’s arms and buries his face in his chest. Glenn is softly caressing his back and head.

“We’re here”, Jodie whispers, “We’re right here. You mum’s gonna be here soon as well.”

He doesn’t say It’s alright. Everything is okay.

“Whatever you need”, Glenn says, his voice sounding hoarse, a bit like he’s forcing the words out.

Nicky doesn’t answer, only sobs and cries and shakes. And Terry has betrayed his best friend. Terry did this.

“Feel bad yet?”

Terry blinks. That voice is new. New yet very familiar. He turns around.

“Boo!”

Terry startles hard enough to hit his elbow against the wall.

Nick Close giggles at his expense. At least Terry assumes it’s Nick Close, given that he looks exactly like Nicolas when he was thirteen just exponentially cooler. Terry looks around trying to figure out where he came from. Nothing. The memory he was just watching has paused in mid-scene. Even the air around them seems unmoving, waiting for Nick Close.

“Where did you come from?” Terry asks, “What- Who are you?”

“You know who I am”, Nick bounces on the balls of his feet back and forth, hands clasped behind his back. He looks adorable, Terry thinks, and immediately chastises himself for it. He does not look like he would appreciate that thought.

“You’re Nick Close?” Terry asks, “The real one?”

“The one and only!” Nick grins, “And for your second question: I come from another memory where I just collected Grant. Now I’m getting you.”

Terry blinks, “What for?”

“To show you another memory of course”, he looks very excited about it. Much too excited to see Terry. He probably shouldn’t be.

“Actually”, Terry says with apprehension, “I’m supposed to find Nicky here somewhere. I don’t have time to keep watching memories.”

“Didn’t stop you before”, Nick points out, “And anyway, Nicky’s safe. Dad’s got it covered, so he doesn’t need you guys to come and get him.”

That doesn’t make sense, Terry thinks, “Memory holders have to accept the people coming in on some level”, he explains what he read about it, “If you didn’t want us here, we couldn’t be.”

“It’s complicated”, Nick sighs, “Nicky had some questions for you, I think. And me and Nicolas want to show you something. I think that’s enough reason right? But that still doesn't mean we wnat your help.”

Maybe? Terry isn’t so sure about all of this. He’s only read about it so far and most people’s memories are far less complicated than Nicky’s. They don't have sort-of-dead thriteen-year-olds in them for example.

“What questions did he have?” Terry asks instead.

“I thought you’re supposed to be smart”, Nick says, still grinning from ear to ear, “It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?”

Terry shakes his head.

“Then I’m not gonna help you”, Nick shrugs.

“Did he get his answers at least?”

Nick stops smiling. Instead he looks down and chews on his bottom lip. “I think so.”

Terry nods. He should ask Nicky about this.

“Can I ask you another question?” Nick looks back up at him.

“Sure. But after this we have to get to the others. Nicolas is really annoying when it comes to being late.”

“Oh, do you two get along?”

Nick raises an eyebrow in a way that looks just like Glenn, “Is that your question?”

“No, but I still want to know.”

“Ah whatever”, Nick shrugs, “Nicolas’ cool, I guess. I guess he kind of is me so…yeah, we get along. We get each other.”

It surprises Terry a bit to be honest. He expected Nick and Nicolas to be just like Glenn and Jodie. On the other hand, they are the same person. There has to be some overlap somewhere that Terry just doesn’t see.

“My actual question was about this room”, Terry waves his hand around the space they are in, “It’s quite messy.”

Nick rolls his eyes, “It’s not messy. It’s just…a bit maximalist.”

Terry raises his eyebrows.

“Well, we can’t change it. None of us can. Nicolas had some long, nerdy explanation for it but either way, this is what it looks like know. Everywhere. Across all memories. I kind of like it though. Feels like us.”

“It does”, Terry smiles. Messy, and full, no clear-personality but too-much but something so personal and warm and bright about it – it’s very Nicky.

“Well, now that the interview’s over, we gotta find Nicolas.” Then Nick slaps his hand against his forehead, “Oh shit! I almost forgot!” He turns around and snaps. A tear opens up, not at all like Nicky’s Hell portals. It has uneven edges and doesn’t shimmer, behind it is just darkness. And Grant.

He stumbles out of the portal, looking a bit paler than Terry last saw him. He rushes over to support him.

“Sorry for leaving you in limbo”, Nick says but doesn’t sound very sorry, “I wanted to watch TJ sulk for a while.”

Terry doesn’t get the chance to respond to that before another tear opens up and Nick start pushing them both towards it. Of course his pushing does little to nothing but Terry has a soft spot for teens, so he cooperates and drags Grant in as well.

“This will be fun”, Nick says and Terry sincerely doubts it.

Chapter Text

When they step through the tear Nick has opened they arrive on the other side it’s night and they are in a dark, gloomy forest illuminated by glowing orbs around them. Immediately they are greeted by another voice: “Nick, you‘re late” And Nicolas Foster is standing before them, staring them down, arms crossed, face in a scowl, and Lark and Sparrow behind him, looking as confused as Terry and Grant feel.

“Relax”, Nick walks up to Nicolas and slings an arm around his shoulders, “We got time.” They look at the adults around them. It’s uncanny, how much they look the same. Not like Lark and Sparrow, who look incredibly similar but not the same once you’ve known them for a few years. Nick and Nicolas just have the same face. There are no small differences in the curve of their eyebrow or the angle of their jaw, nothing someone can unconsciously pick up on and recognize them by.

At the same time, they could not look less alike: the way they dress, their hair, the way they move and hold themselves make it impossible to confuse them for each other. And yet Nick is fully leaning on Nicolas, while he seems totally unbothered by him. Nick must have been telling the truth, they do get along.

“They only have one hour”, Nicolas says, looking at his alternate self, “And they’ve already been here like thirty minutes”

Nick shrugs, “Well, we’re here now. You can start.” And he nudges him in the side.

The scowl vanishes from Nicolas’ face and instead a huge grin spreads, he looks at the adults around them, “Well then, are you ready?”

“Stop”, Lark interrupts him, “You’re going to explain to us first what you’re doing.”

“I don’t think so”, Nick says and sticks out his tongue. Nicolas rolls his eyes while keeping Lark pinned with his stare.

“Just answer some of our questions”, Terry asks.

Nicolas looks at him for a second and narrows his eyes. He turns to Nick, who raises both his eyebrows. Nicolas turns back around to Terry, “Fine. Ask what you want, but make it quick.”

Terry doesn’t waste a second, “Why are we here?”

“Well, Junior”, Nick grins, “Your mum would probably call it ‘healing your inner child’.” That’s not an answer but at the same time neither seem in the mood to say more.

“Did you control the memories we’ve been seeing?” Grant asks another question instead.

“No”, Nicolas answers, “That was Nicky.”

“How does that work?”Sparrow’s forehead wrinkle furrows, “He’s not here currently, right? He’s lost?”

“He doesn’t have control over it”, Nicolas explains, “But he subconsciously made you see what he wanted you to see.”

“Because he had a question”, Terry looks at Nick when he says it and he nods.

Lark looks confused back and forth between them, “What question?”

Nick shrugs. Nicolas says, “Not sure. We have an idea though.”

“You know he had a question but not which one?”

“No”, Nicolas says and seems to think that’s enough of an explanation. But Nick takes pity on them: “It’s like when you’re living with roommates and you can hear them cooking in the kitchen, but you still don’t know what they’re cooking.” He says, looking at Nicolas to confirm that explanation. He nods.

“But you have an idea what it is?” Lark narrows his eyes. He and Nicolas are staring at each other like they’re silently trying to kill each other.

“Yes”, Nicolas says, still not looking away.

“And you won’t tell us?”, asks Sparrow.

Nick shrugs. “I’m not a nark”

All eyes land on Nicolas. He smiles, “I just don’t want to tell you.”

For a second they all hesitate, not sure if they should keep digging or just ask another question. Until, finally, Lark interrupts the silence. “Why”, he says.

“Why?” Nicolas huffs, “Why?! Because you shot our arm-”

“No why”, Lark says, all quiet and intense, “That’s the question. He’s asking us why we did it.”

They all stare at him. Was that really-

Nick, the only one not in shock apparently, leans towards Nicolas, “See, this is why Lark was my favorite.”

“You have terrible taste.” Nicolas replies without missing a beat.

But it’s not like the rest are listening. Why did you betray me? Nicky has asked them. Why, when I have all these memories of us? Why, when you were some of the most important people in my life?

“I have another question”, Terry interrupts because he doesn’t want to keep thinking about it. He doesn’t want to give Nicky an answer, especially because it seems like he already got what he needed. Probably something better too, than what they all could have given him. Terry right now just needs to get them all safely out of here, which means dealing with Nicky’s alter egos first. “When Nicky saw me in his memories, he was around eighteen maybe, but he seemed to have thought I was his age? That’s not usually how it’s supposed to work.”

“Oh yes”, Nick shrugs, “Just happens sometimes. People in our memory look different all the time. Older, younger, sometimes we don’t even know them. The memory could start in one place and suddenly be in a totally different one. You just get used to it. Everything that doesn’t quite make sense- we just ignore it for the most part. No use spending all that energy, it won’t start to make sense now.”

“Like your room.”

“Yes. Like our room”, Nicolas and Nick exchange a glance. They seem to have another silent discussion.

“I’m going to stop this Q-and-A”, Nicolas finally decides when he turns back from Nick, “It’s time that you finally shut up and do what we tell you.”

“And what are we doing exactly?” Lark grunts, “I can’t imagine it’s going to be very fun.”

“Oh, on the contrary, Larky”, Nick trills high and enthusiastic but it sounds fake. He has finally untangled himself from Nicolas and dances up to Lark to dig his finger into Lark’s chest. It looks comical, Nick is half as tall as Lark, “You especially will think it’s fun. You’re really good at it after all.”

Nicolas waves his hand through the air. Weapons appear in each of their hands. Not any weapons either, they would recognize the weight of these anywhere. Even the forest looks familiar now. It’s creaky trees and the starless sky hanging over them, the only light they have comes from the glowing orbs around them. They should have known that Nicolas and Nick were planning this. That this is the memory they would show them. The memory of them betraying Nicky.

Nicolas smiles bright and fake, “We’re going hunting.”

Through the thicket of the trees and the bushes a shadow runs past. They can barely make out anything about the figure except the shape of it – the shape with its horns and wings is unmistakable. It is prey.

And like prey, it is much faster than them. Faster, but scared and all alone, and no animal can outrun a human’s gun anyway.

Without any thought, without even the will to do so, they move. Fanning out, so they can close in later and circle around their prey.  They will corner the creature with its wings and horns and tail. It is not human. It is not their friend.

Lark is the first to shoot. And as soon as he does he looks at his gun in wonder and astonishment. Like he wasn’t the one shooting at all. Then Grant raises his rifle, but just as he shoots he yells: “No!”

And the horns and the thing they’re hunting ducks away. The bullet hits a tree.

“What’s going on?” Lark yells back at his companions. They don’t have an answer.

Nicolas behind them does: “Like I said, we’re hunting.”

 “Are you controlling us?!” Sparrow yells with anxiety high in his voice, still running and jumping over obstacles without any hesitation, “How are you doing this?!”

“I didn’t make this choice.” Nicolas says none of the arrogance and anger are present in his voice anymore. He just sounds cold, “You made this choice a long time ago. We’re just replaying it.”

Terry now raises his arm, shaking and trembling like a leaf, but nothing in him can stop the movement, “Stop it!” he says, but shoots anyway. Their prey screams loud and inhuman. Then it crumbles to the ground.

They have it surrounded in seconds. Finally the lights following them shine on its form and they can see more than just its silhouette and its inhumanness.

But it’s not right. It’s not the right one.

He looks correct at first, flaming red-and-blue wings fluttering behind him, horns the size of someone’s forearm curling on his head, the blood seeping out of his arm.

But he’s not wearing the right clothes. He’s not dressed for an incursion and fighting, no leather jacket and too-little armor. No weapon clutched at his side. He’s dressed in only an old band t-shirt and boxers, his hair needs a re-dye and is half-tied up and messy. A man dressed for a day spent at home.

Sparrow gasps and skits to a halt. The rest also stop, now finally a little in control of their body. Yet they all still raise their weapons, point it at their prey.

“Sparrow?” he asks scared and confused, clutching his bleeding wound, “What’s going on? We we’re just on the phone and-”

“Shoot it”, Nicolas behind them says, “C’mon, that’s what you’re here for.”

“Wha- What?” Sparrow turns around, Nicolas and Nick are still standing behind them, unchanged and unmoving. They don’t look like they have been running with them, they don’t look out of breath or like they’ve broken a sweat. Nick turns from them to Nicolas. Nicolas’ face darkens even further, “I said shoot it. Get rid of it.”

“’it’?”, Sparrow tries to find the others’ eyes.

“The memory”, Nick elaborates, “Shoot it and it’s gone.”

Terry looks at Sparrow, then back at Nicky in just his T-shirt and his messy hair, “What memory is this Sparrow?”

“Just- just a phone call”, Sparrow answers and his voice trembles, still holding the weapon high enough to shoot him right in the chest. He’s shaking and yet he can’t put it down.

“Well, if it was just a phone call than it’s no problem if we delete it right?” Nicolas smirks, “Just shoot him- it.”

“Sparrow?” the figure looks at and he looks so, so scared, eyes wide and blood all over him, “What- what are you doing?”

Sparrow hated the memory when he saw it. He knows that in that moment, when he confessed to Nicky what he really felt about having another child, something important happened between them. He knows that it might have been the single most important conversation he had with Nicky. And yet he can’t put his finger on what it was that made it so important. And he hates that.

And he hates, also, that he knows that the memory means a lot to Nicky too. That Nicky had love for him in that moment, that he still remembers it fondly even after what they’ve done. There’s a part in Sparrow that wishes that didn’t exist anymore.

“Does it really matter that you were the first person that learned what his future son was gonna be called?” Nicolas taunts behind him, “Does it matter that he was the first person you told about your son? You don’t even remember it yourself.”

Sparrow keeps staring at Nicky. He looks younger with his hair in knots like this. With the blood soaking his t-shirt and obscuring the band name printed on it. Wouldn’t it be a favor to Nicky if he didn’t remember that anymore? If Sparrow was just the man that tried to kill him, and not the person he consoled, that tried to argue with him about his son’s name?

He would just have to shoot Nicky, to make it up to Nicky a little bit. He’s the only one who could do it in this moment, he knows. This is his memory.

Sparrow lowers his weapon.

“I-I can’t”, he stutters, looking Nicky right in the eyes, “I can’t do it.”

“Pf, fine”, Nicolas rolls his eyes, waves, and Nicky vanishes.

Instead another figure runs past them – tail lashing, wings dragging behind it, but not using them because the fun of it is that it won’t escape. Even if it could.

They’re moving again even before they know what’s happening. Persistent and unrelenting. Unlike their prey, they won’t get tired. It’s four against one and even the tiniest mistake will cost it everything.

They catch up next to a small pond where it tumbles and rolls to the ground, looking up at them from the water it’s crouching in, when they surround it and raise their weapons again. Dirty and covered in cuts and bruises, tail curled behind it – it looks just like back then, but again, it’s not quite the right one.

This time he is in a smart button-up and sensible jeans, dressed for a nice Christmas party among friends. His hair is nicely styled. Fresh glowing dye, like there are real flames licking up his neck.

This time it’s Grant pausing to take it in. His breath is shuddering as the rifle finds aim. But he is not ready to shoot yet.

“C’mon Grant”, Nicolas sighs, “Do it. You’re so good at shooting your friends.”

Grant flinches so hard, it’s impossible not to notice.

“What’s the problem?” Nicolas taunts.

“I- what?”, Grant looks back at Nicolas and Nick. He’s scared of them. Grant’s scared of them. That animal fear taking up all space in this memory has gotten to them. They can feel their prey’s heart beat hammering, not knowing it isn’t theirs.

Nicolas smiles. Chuckles even, “What’s the problem, Grant? It’s just a Christmas party. Nicky was late anyway. Missed basically the whole damn thing. And it’s not like you remember much of it.”

“I remember this”, Grant gestures at it with his barrel, still down on its knees in the dirt, ruining its nicest shirt. “I remember what he said.”

“Mh yes, what was it again?” Nicolas wonders and turns to Nick.

He replies, but without the vitriol that comes out of every gesture, every word Nicolas uses, “I have you guys up here”, Nick echoes perfectly, at exactly the right inflection, his voice is just a little higher, “That’s all the family I need.”

Grant shudders.

Nicolas turns back to Grant, “And that hurts, doesn’t it? He told you that and yet you still shot at him. You could at least make it a little better.”

Grant just stares at him. But his rifle is still carefully aimed at the creature before them. Finally Grant looks back at it.

“It would probably feel better”, Nicolas says, “if he didn’t remember that, hm? Maybe it would even help lift some of that guilt you have?”

Grant looks at Nicky, who has dirtied his nicest shirt running away from them. It would lift the guilt, he thinks, just a bit. What is Nicky thinking about him? Knowing that Grant knew how he felt, but barely hesitating when he ignored it. Maybe Nicky would hate them more, maybe he would hate them less. Either way, it would hurt less.

Why is Nicolas doing this, though? What does he get out of this?

“Grant”, it’s Terry’s voice. He looks at him in terror, “Grant, you can’t do this.”

The rifle in Grant’s hand trembles, he graces the trigger with his finger. It’s not right, but he wants to. If Nicky stops thinking about it, can he stop thinking about it?

“Do it”, Nicolas keeps egging him on, “Delete it. We don’t need it anymore.”

Grant shakes and shakes and shakes his head- “No”, he whimpers, “That’s not- it’s Nicky’s-”

Nicolas yells in frustration. Then he sighs deeply and looks back at them, “What’s the fucking problem now, huh? If you want to hurt him it’s so easy for you, but now that you could actually help-”

Nick interrupts him by putting his hand on his elbow. Nicolas doesn’t look back at him but he stops his tirade. He’s seething with rage, just seconds away from shooting the fucking memories himself. But he can’t. He won’t.

The thing in its dress shirt vanishes. A new figure, a little smaller than the first two, although you can barely tell, runs past where the old one has stood. They take up the chase again. Grant might be crying. But that won’t stop him from hunting their prey and finally making a god dam decision.

It takes them only a fraction of the time they needed before. Nicolas is getting sick of the running, so he allows Terry to shoot it after just a few seconds. He closes his eyes when he does it. Like that would change anything.

The thing is younger this time, in a nice vest with its hair dyed electric blue like the hottest of flames, yet it shivers and trembles like it’s freezing in the cold, wet mud, with its closest friends standing over it and looking down while it bleeds out. While it’s clutching its arm and trying to understand how they could be doing this to him.

“I won’t do this”, Terry says as soon as he takes the figure in, even before the others could fully stop running, “Stop asking us to do this.”

“We’ll give you an offer-”, Nicolas nudges Nick who is biting his lip, looking back and forth. But he continues like Nicolas wants him to, “We’ll change the memory permanently. You’ll delete the real one. We create one where you actually show up.”

Nicky, kneeling before him, wings and horns and snake eyes and claws out but only really looking like a scared teenager, looks up at Terry and he already has tears in his eyes.

“Terry”, he says, voice creaking and cracking cause his voice finally has started to break, but he looks angry more than sad, “Why didn’t you come? You fucking promised me!”

“I was-”, Terry feels frozen. He can’t move, can’t pull the weapon down even though nothing is forcing him to. Nothing is forcing them to train their weapons again and again. “I was on my way. I really was.”

“But you didn’t come”, he cries, “You never fucking came. You ignored me. You made it clear that I don’t matter to you as much as them!” He points wildly at the other three staring at them in shock.

“You could make it better”, Nicolas promises, “He won’t remember it anymore. We’ll make the fabrication you made reality. You can actually do right by Nicky, just this once.”

And Terry- Terry is tempted. Soothing some of that guilt…he wants to. He really wants to. The trigger is only the tiniest movement away.

“Why?” Terry asks instead, “Why do this?”

Nicolas rolls his eyes. Terry always does this, asks questions and solves a riddle when he doesn’t want to face himself. It’s getting old.

“Do you think we want to remember this? Do you think we like this?” Nicolas says it with disgust and hatred, “Do you think Nicky wants to keep missing you? After everything you’ve done? ”

“There’s nothing to miss here”, Terry looks at the teenager in front of him, “You heard it, I didn’t come.”

“But he wanted you to. He always fucking wanted you to be there”, Nicolas replies with his unmoving, stone-cold face, while Nick has been suspiciously quite this whole time. Staring back and forth between himself and the adults.

“If you don’t want to, fine. If you’d rather Nicky remembers that his best friends was a coward who didn’t care about him, fine. Let’s see if Lark has the guts to do what needs to be done.” And he turns to the only man left to make his decision. Nicolas waves one more time.

This figure is even smaller, long hair trailing in the wind behind it. Almost obscuring all of its inhuman features.

Lark, unlike the rest of them, doesn’t hesitate for a second. He doesn’t even start running, just aims his gun and shoots straight at their prey. It goes down mere meters away from them.

His hair is long and inky black, only the tips shimmer with silvery-blond dye. Unlike Terry, Lark hasn’t hit his shoulder, but his wrist, where, if you looked closely, between Nicky’s clutching hand and the blood, you could see the reddened edges of a fresh tattoo.

Lark raises his gun right to its head. Good old Lark, Nicolas thinks, neither crying nor trembling or hesitating; while the thing pressed to the tree bark is shaking with fear. A true hunter. Maybe this one will finally do it.

“Morgan was also in this memory”, Lark says, eyes unmoving from his target that looks up at him with glassy, wet eyes.

“We’ll keep her of course”, Nicolas shrugs, “It’s just you we want to get rid of.”

Lark is still only looking at it, not shooting, even though he clearly wants to. Nicolas is getting impatient.

“What’s the problem?”, Nicolas yells, “It’s just a stupid tattoo! He doesn’t even have it anymore! He’ll forget all about it!”

The hand holding the gun lowers, if just for a second. “He’ll forget about the tattoo?” Lark asks and for the first time he doesn’t sound angry or annoyed. Just surprised. Shocked even. His eyes wander to his friends. They are unmoving, shocked or terrified, Terry keeps shaking his head at Lark.

Finally even Nick seems to be losing his patience with their second-guessing and moral questioning. “The tattoo is gone, man! Honestly better we forget about it. One less thing you shot off!” He screams at them.

Lark would have done it. He would have shot fifteen-year-old Nicky between the eyes because he hated the memory so badly that he would forcibly remove it from Nicky given the chance. It probably would do Nicky good, he thinks, if he doesn’t feel like he has to apologize to Lark of all people anymore. If Lark’s involvement gets eradicated and he can stop staining Nicky’s life with himself. And the tattoo is just a dumb, childish attempt at rebellion and nothing else. It hasn’t meant anything to Lark in years, and he doubts Nicky has thought about losing the tattoo when the rest of his arm was so much more severe. If he presses the trigger now, Nicky won’t remember the tattoo at all. He’ll forget he ever had it. And there will be no proof of its existence otherwise. There will be no more of Lark’s stain on Nicky’s skin or mind.

The tattoo will be gone. Like it never happened.

Lark lowers his weapon. He turns around to glare at the children that brought them here. “Nick.” His voice is heavy and dark. “You clearly don’t want this either. Tell Nicolas that what he’s doing is insane.”

Nick looks surprised for a second and turns to Nicolas. They were so sure they had him. If no one else, then surely Lark would do it? But no, now he’s instead trying to turn them against each other.

“Nick”, Lark repeats, “You don’t want this.”

While Nicolas is angry and emotional, Nick is miserable and sad. Maybe that’s their core difference. But no amount of small or big differences will change that they are the same at their core. They have different reasons for doing this, but they both wanted this.

“How would you know that?” Nick’s eyes are boring into Lark, the way Nicolas had been doing this whole time. “You all forgot me. Why shouldn’t I forget you?”

“Now do something”, Nicolas says and points at where Nicky, their prey, had been laying unmoving on the ground. He’s not fifteen anymore with a small bleeding wrist. Now he’s an adult with his arm ripped off and blood on his clothes, sitting calmly. He’s looking at them, not with anger or sadness or pain. Nicky looks like a puppet, detached and almost peaceful.

“Make the right decision for once”, Nicolas yells at them, “It’s not even about you anymore! This was the worst pain we’ve ever experienced! Do you have any idea what this was like?!”

“No”, Terry says again and again, shaking his head. Trembling while the others are too stunned to speak. Lark stands both arms fallen to his side. All the fight has left even him.

“You started it.” Nick’s voice is clear but a sadness swings in it that Nicolas can’t muster up anymore. “Now finish your fucking job.”

“You would finally do Nicky a favor!” Nicolas shouts. “You could finally stop ruining our life!”

“Just once you could do what Nicky actually wants you to do.”

And why wouldn’t he want to forget that? They can’t deny that just watching what they did too Nicky was terrifying. They can’t imagine what it felt like living through it. What it felt like living through your friends tricking you and hunting you down and maiming you. Cutting you off so cleanly from your life on Earth and everything you had there.

But none of them do it. They look at each other. Unsure and scared and confused. But they don’t do it.

“And why the hell would I want that?” says a new voice, disturbing the eerie silence. A new, old and familiar voice. Through the thicket, just like before, comes a figure. No terrified and fleeing prey, instead it’s almost looming, shadow seeming so much bigger than its body. Flaming hair, and missing arm, and overly big leather jacket and wings raised above its head.

Nicky looks fucking pissed.

Chapter Text

Glenn arrives outside a beat up looking diner on not-Earth. He recognizes it instantly. This is where him and Nick meet up for lunch once a week since he got revived. It looks a lot nicer here than in real life though. The facade isn’t quite as dirty and the paint of the door looks more vibrant, less faded than it does when Glenn last saw it. But the building is unmistakable.

His eyes quickly fall onto the figure at the window. In an otherwise completely empty diner Nick sits alone and takes sips from the cup before him. There are no other people around. Not in the diner or on the street outside. This doesn’t seem like a normal memory. Something about this is wrong.

The bell above the door echoes through the empty space when Glenn opens the door. It is eerily quiet inside, like it is frozen in time. But Nick looks up immediately and smiles when he sees him. So Glenn doesn’t hesitate and sits down in front of him.

“Glenn!” Nick’s smile is bigger than their new sun. He looks so genuinely happy to see him. “You came here!”

“You’re the real one?” Glenn asks, cause usually things aren’t that easy for them.

But Nick nods and grins even brighter, “I’m the one. Sorry, really, that this got all complicated.”

“Not your fault my old man is such an asshole.” Glenn shrugs. “Wish I could have finally finished him off.”

“Yeah”, Nick cringes, “Sorry about that too. It’s not- it wasn’t really Bill’s fault?”

“What do you mean?” Glenn narrows his eyes. When Nick was a kid Glenn could read him like an open book. All of his emotions were written so clearly on his face. Nowadays, Glenn has to guess every time, and in the last decade it’s become even more difficult. Nick’s not like before, he’s grim and closed-off. Even though Glenn knows, sometimes he catches himself wondering, What happened?

All that to say is: Glenn thinks Nick’s anxious. He’s not sure what about.

“It- he hexed me but not into here. I-I doubt he can actually do that.”

Glenn tries to find his son’s eyes but he’s only looking at the cup before him.

“Than…how did you get here?” Glenn asks. At the same time he has the small realization that this conversation is going to be a lot longer than he thought. It won’t be as easy as just telling Nick to come back.

Nick shrugs, and at least that gesture is still painfully familiar. “I’m not sure how it happened exactly.” He drums his fingers against the edge of the table. “He did some magic thing and then I just felt this- urge to get away, I guess? And I don’t know how I did it, but I came here, and I didn’t really know how to get out. But I also…don’t really want to get out, I guess.”

Shit, shit, shit, Nick is going to have another difficult conversation with him and Glenn can already feel the sweat pooling on his hands and his stomach clenching. What does he say now? What is he supposed to do? Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why didn’t they ask Morgan to come? Or fuck! Even Jodie! Why is he the one here?

He has to say something. Why the fuck does Nick not want to come back?

“Why…not?”, Glenn asks but it sounds like he is in pain.

Nick looks at him finally. He stares at Glenn for a very long time, seemingly thinking about what to say. Instead of answering though, he lands on: “Do you want coffee? Or tea?”

Glenn blinks but nods before he can think about it. A cup of tea appears before him. Jasmine tea. The exact one this diner serves and the reason they both like going here, even though the foods kind of sucks. But honestly Glenn’s just glad he sees Nick regularly again. He had asked Glenn to do lunch once a week and Glenn wasn’t about to refuse him outright. Not like wanted to anyway. So they come to this diner that’s convenient to reach for both of them and catch up over lunch. Most of the time it’s Glenn talking though. Nick’s gotten a lot quieter.

Glenn might as well change topics, Nick’s not going to answer his question.

“What’s up with this space?” He takes a sip of the tea, “It’s normally so busy in here.”

“Just wanted some quiet”, Nick says, his fingers drumming a repeating rhythm on the table. Probably a song, but Glenn can’t recognize it, not his generation anymore then.

“So you wished all the people from the memory away? Is that how it works?”

“Something like that”, Nick looks a little sad, Glenn thinks, his eyes fall next to him and for the first time Glenn notices the guitar laying on the bench besides Nick. It’s his old acoustic. A lovely guitar, with dark wood instead of the classic brown. “There weren’t a lot of people in this memory anyway.”

“Do you go here without me?” Is the only thing Glenn can think to ask. Nick has never brought his guitar on any of their meet-ups. As far as Glenn knew, Nick hasn’t even touched it in years.

“I do lunch with Taylor too.” Nick’s voice is a little weak. “He doesn’t always come. That’s fair, I guess. Sometimes he’s just not in the mood and he texts me it’s not happening. I’m just usually already here. If I leave Hell five minute before, I’m at least an hour early. You know how it is.” He shrugs again. This time Glenn is pretty sure that he’s not just sad, but fucking miserable.

“Oh”, Glenn says in lieu of having anything useful to say, “And the guitar?”

Nick looks at it and bites his lip. “I had hoped he would want it? It’s not like it’s any use to me anymore.”

“And did he? Want it I mean?”

Another shrug, “I haven’t managed to ask. He didn’t come and I- I haven’t had the courage to ask another time. I don’t think he would want it, to be honest.”

“It’s a good gift.” After all it’s a really nice and expensive guitar. Probably a bit big for Taylor still but he’ll grow into it. Glenn’s guitar was too big for him when he started to learn, but that just made it a lot easier later on, when he could finally reach all the strings easily. “Why wouldn’t Taylor like it?”

“Cause he doesn’t like me.” And Nick has that look again. One that Glenn has only seen in him in recent years, that he could not figure out for the life of him. Is he angry? What would he be angry about? That Taylor doesn’t like him?

“But gifts help with that”, is the first thing that Glenn thinks to say. And immediately knows it’s the wrong thing.

Nick looks away from the table, puts his head back, stares at the ceiling and sighs deeply. “I know you think that, Glenn.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

Nick looks back at him, “That you are wrong a lot of the time.”

“Yes, yes I know, we’ve had this conversation.” He does not need to hear that again. He is a terrible father, he’s got it. Enough people have told him that now. They could really just let it rest at this point.

“We really haven’t”, Nick shakes his head, “’Cause you keep pulling away every time I want to have it with you. And to be fair, most of the time I have Nick in the back of my head telling me this isn’t necessary so I don’t try as hard as I should. But he’s not here right now, so I- I can finally actually talk to you.”

Glenn stares at the cup before him. Nick in my head, because this isn’t really Nick. Glenn should know this.

Glenn should also, if he really wanted to do the right thing right now, let Nicky have this conversation. Instead he deflects: “You didn’t want to talk much lately though.”

Nicky blinks in confusion, “We have lunch every week?”

“And even then, you barely say anything”, Glenn sighs, “And before that especially. Before Taylor and company started running around saving the world and shit. Like the entirety of the last decade almost. I mean- you moved out.”

“I’m allowed to do that. I’m an adult.”

“Well, yeah. I’m not mad or anything”, Glenn isn’t really sure what he is though. Or maybe he is and wants to say so, but that possibility is quite terrifying. “You’ve lived with Jodie in Hell for years and it didn’t bother you. We all agreed that was what we wanted.  You think I would have moved in with him if it wasn’t for you? And then you suddenly move out.” That sounded too harsh, Glenn immediately thinks. He’s not saying that Nick wasn’t allowed to move out or something. Just like- “Morgan was really worried.” He adds. Maybe that makes it make sense.

Nicky stays quiet this time, drums another rhythm on the table, much more frantic than the previous one. Glenn doesn’t know it either.

It’s been silent for too long. And it feels so much larger in this empty diner. Nicky’s not going to say something, Glenn realizes. He’s just staying quiet again.

So Glenn has to continue the conversation, “Like it just seemed really sudden, y’know? That’s probably why I don’t understand it. You stayed with us for a full year after you moved to Hell permanently and then you just get up and leave? I mean, Jodie was worried too. He always said he wants you to move out but he was such a downer about it. Sulked for months. Like worse than after the divorce! The second one, I mean.” Oh Hell, Glenn’s rambling. He has no idea what he’s even saying anymore. Why is he still talking about this? Where is he going?

“Glenn.” Nicky sounds so tired. He speaks with a much lower voice than he would have before, with less emotion and less excitement and he just doesn’t sound like Nick anymore. Not even like the Nicky that Glenn got to know for years now. He looks tired too.

“I’m thankful that you took care of me”, he says slowly, “And I’m thankful you let me stay for so long. But I just needed some space.”

But that’s just it. ‘Needing space’? “That doesn’t sound like you.”

It really doesn’t. Nicky never wanted ‘space’ from them. When he was mad at Glenn he went to Jodie, when he was mad at Jodie he went to Glenn, when he was mad at both of them he’d go to Morgan. But he’s never wanted space from all of them. Maybe Glenn does actually have something to say.

“People change, Glenn”, Nicky shrugs, “I change. All the time.”

“Nick- Nicky”, Glenn stumbles over his words. He knows what it is, he wants to say, but he has no fucking idea how to say it. How to say it like Glenn. No matter how, it sounds foreign and strange  in his head. The words aren’t the right shape for his mouth. They feel too big for him.

“It’s nothing”, Nicky’s voice gets quieter and quieter, “It’s fine.”

Glenn is the only one here right now. And if he doesn’t say it now there’s the very real chance that he can’t convince Nicky to come back with him. That he’ll just choose to stay in here and shut himself in completely.

“’It’s fine’ is your ‘We’ll talk later’”, Glenn blurts out.

Nick finally looks at him again. Surprised.

“You always say it.” Glenn continues, because he’s apparently possessed by some truth spell. Or the panic that’s been crawling up his throat. He feels like he’s fighting for his life right now. His heart is surely pumping quicker than when he fought like…anything. Glenn only remembers one time that he has felt anything like this.

“You always say that”, he repeats, slowly finding the words that come next, “But I don’t believe you.” Glenn takes a deep breath, says the next part, “I don’t think I ever believed you when you said it.”

Nicky looks at him with tired, quiet eyes, “So what?” he asks.

“Well,” He doesn’t have a Morgan or Jodie to hide behind. They’re not here. So here it comes: “I’m worried. About you. About how you’re doing.”

“Are you…asking me how I’m doing?” At least Nicky agrees that that sounded fucking weird and not like Glenn at all. But he already said it now. Has to deal with this one way or another.

So Glenn nods and ignores that his hands are sweaty and his heart is pounding. He forgot what it felt like, in all his years being not-alive, but he’s fucking nervous.

“I want to know what’s going on.” Glenn says carefully, “’Cause I know you haven’t been ‘fine’ and you have been avoiding your mum and Jodie and me for years. And that’s not like you. You aren’t like you.”

Nicky hesitates a little more. He still doesn’t seem convinced that this is reality. Or particularly excited to answer Glenn’s question. But there seems to be a little more movement back in his body. His tail has started thumping on the cushion’s of the seating. If only slowly.

“I guess, I’ve just”, Nicky does a little half-shrug, “I don’t know. After- after it happened I couldn’t go out at all for months. So I stayed with you, and for the first time you were all there and you weren’t arguing at all and you just kept looking after me and at me with that- with that face. And that scared me.” Nicky takes a deep breath, “I don’t know. I wasn’t thinking right but I felt so smothered and- and caged in? Even though that was really my fault. You all tried to get me out of the house.”

But Nick didn’t want to. Nick had stayed in bed for weeks and afterwards hadn’t left the house in months. Morgan had finally managed to get him outside, but only as long as she was right next to him the whole time. Nick had stayed in their shadow and they all kept thinking that he acted a lot younger, like he did when he was a child. Like he didn’t trust anyone who wasn’t his parent.

And then like a switch flipped, he had decided he wanted to go.

“It’s not like I was more social on my own”, Nicky’s finger had stopped moving. When had they stopped moving? “Only thing that changed was that I didn’t have you around to force me anymore. I don’t know if that was better. Sorry, I guess.”

Nick was always a social butterfly. Glenn knows, cause he was always proud of it. Felt like he took after him. And Nicolas might have been a stuck-up and mildly disliked by most of his classmates, but he was a good kid too. Someone that looked for connection everywhere, that tried his best to find common ground with the people around him. Point is, that Nicky was good with people. That he liked people.

“You’ve been isolating yourself”, Glenn says. Nicky nods. Maybe Glenn should have already known that. Maybe that was obvious to everyone but him. But the idea of Nicky avoiding the people around him is as foreign as Nicky without his drums.

Suddenly Glenn really regrets that he didn’t kill Terry that one time. He should ask him for a rematch. He could take them four-against-one even.

“I don’t want to go back”, Nicky keeps talking with his tired, exhausted, strange voice, “Nothing out there for me. It’s not like anyone is waiting for me really.”

Something Glenn has also forgotten, although it had little to do with his un-death, was the feeling of his heart breaking. He’s getting a pretty violent reminder.

“I am.”

“No. You’re not.” Nicky stares at him, again with that unreadable expression. But now the floodgates have apparently opened, and at least he’s not quiet anymore. “We’re barely even a family anymore. And this time it’s not even your fault. I did this on my own. I fucked up Taylor’s life. I fucked up any relationship we might still have had. With you, and Morgan, and Jodie. So whatever. Seems like every person I love eventually leaves. And it’s just me left. And I don’t feel like anything anymore, so there’s no reason to go back.”

Glenn has no idea what to say. Barely knows how to even say anything at this point. He just wants this conversation to end and maybe hug Nicky and not let him go again.

“This is just what I do”, Nicky just keeps going, while his eyes start swelling with tears, and Glenn realizes more and more how unequipped he is for this conversation, “I do everything I can so people like me and love me but it’s never enough. It seems like everyone around me- I love them more than they ever love me. And maybe that’s why it’s so easy for all of you to leave me behind. And maybe, just this once, I wanted to do the leaving. So maybe that’s why I moved out. Cause the idea of being alone made me want to rip my fucking hair out, but I knew it was going to happen at some point. Might as well finally make a decision of my own and do it myself.”

He takes a shuddering breath in, and the first tear rolls down his face. Glenn feels frozen in space.

“For a really long time, I kept trying to rationalize it. To make it make sense, to figure out what I kept doing wrong, that makes everyone run away from me all the time. But maybe all my friends stabbing me in the back had one good thing to it: I realized it’s not my fucking fault. I was just trying to protect my home and my family and they left me for it.”

The tears are streaming down his face, but now Nicky also grits his teeth and balls his fists and now he is clearly absolutely livid.

“So maybe it wasn’t my fault either”, he continues in rage, “that Jodie pushed me away whenever he gets all gloomy and moody about another divorce, even though I tried everything to make him feel better! And maybe it wasn’t my fault that my friends pulled away, even before they decided to shoot my arm off, because they were so obsessed with their own pain and misery that it didn’t matter what I said to them! And maybe it’s not my fucking fault that you didn’t want to look me in the eye after mum died, or that you left me alone every Christmas, or that you didn’t want to bother with any real issue I had, or that you’d rather get high as a kite instead of telling me how you’re feeling, or that you choose to stop being my dad!”

Glenn…Glenn’s not really sure what he’s doing. Or what he’s feeling. Or what he’s thinking. Except for: “But that was the right decision”, he says, “I choose to not be your dad anymore instead of the dragon. That was the correct decision.” It had to be, right? It was the one thing Glenn was sure of. The one time he knew he did right by Nick. Even with everything that happened afterwards. That was the correct decision. The decision he didn’t want to do because it was the right one.

“I don’t fucking care!”, Nicky yells and gestures wildly with his fists, “Maybe it was! Maybe it was the most moral thing you ever did or whatever! But I just want one piece of evidence that you actually want me!”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, I wouldn’t fucking know, would I? You take every opportunity to leave me!”

Because after Morgan died, Glenn needed drugs and his shows to keep going and he didn’t want Nick to see that. Because when Jodie showed up, Nicky had a much better father around and Glenn was only good for getting in and out of trouble, and maybe pissing Jodie off. Because the choices were letting Nick go or hurting him even worse than he’s ever hurt him. “Because I’m not good for you.”

“Why do you get to decide that?” Nicky wipes at the tears on his cheek. All the fight gone as quickly as it came.

“It’s not just me”, Glenn tries not to look at Nicky again, “Everyone thinks that.”

“Well, I don’t”, Nicky takes a shuddering breath, “The worst ways you have ever hurt me, were by not being there. I want you to be here. I’ve always wanted you to be there. And maybe just this once everyone else can stop deciding things for me because it doesn’t matter what they think!” He grips the edge of the table like a lifeline, “So I want you in my life. Stop taking that decision away from me.”

“I- That’s not what I was trying to do.”

“I know that”, Nicky looks away and at his guitar, “But just- Everyone keeps making that choice for me. Always. And the only one I can’t be angry at is Taylor. It’s fair, if he doesn’t want to see me. I guess I just can’t understand it at all. That he wouldn’t want to be with his dad, when that’s all I ever wanted. Be it you, or Jodie, or Morgan.“

Glenn takes a deep breath, trying to find his voice again. Trying to find any words at all.

“Ok”, he says after a longer pause. His voice sounds hoarse.

“Ok?” Nicky’s brows furrows.

Glenn nods and raises his voice over the sound of his beating heart, “I’ll- I’ll be here. I’m not going anywhere now.” It feels a little bit like pulling teeth out. Saying things he actually wants to say and do. But then, if he didn’t say it now, he might as well tell Nick that he doesn’t love him. “And whatever you want to do, or want me to do, I guess. I mean with the lunch and stuff, that’s already a start, right?” He nods at the table between them. Empty, except for two cups of tea.

“And you’ll have to meet Taylor.”

“I’ve met Taylor?”

“Formally”, Nicky insists. He’s still wiping away tears, that haven’t quite stopped flowing yet. Glenn can’t remember Nick crying a lot when he was young.

And well, he is not big on formal anything but that has been a Jodie influence that Nicky never let go off. And he just said ‘whatever you want’, hasn’t he?

“Alright”, he shrugs. Like it’s not a big deal.

“If Taylor wants to, of course.” Nicky mumbles into his cup, “Although I think, he thinks you’re cool so- I don’t know.”

Glenn grins.

“And you and Jodie have to apologize to each other.” Nicky looks up again.

“What? For what?!”

“You’re general behavior towards each other.” Nicky raises his eyebrows. “I know you can be decent to each other. I’ve seen it.”

Glenn rolls his eyes. Jodie and him are only ever on the same page when it’s about Nicky. There is a begrudging respect there. Deep down Glenn can admit that Jodie has good influences on Nicky and he knows that Jodie thinks the same. But he can’t mention that, or it would burst the bubble.

“Dad”, Nicky stresses, “Promise me.”

There’s a fuzzy feeling rising up in his stomach when he hears that. He grins, “If you call me ‘dad’ in front of Jodie, I will apologize for every single transgression individually. Pinkie promise.” He winks and immediately gets Nicky’s foot to his shins.

But Nicky is almost smiling again, “Fine”, he sighs and doesn’t even look that annoyed. “I guess I have to do my part as well.”

Another lull develops in their conversation, even though they both know this isn’t over yet. They both take sips from their tea and Glenn keeps glancing at Nicky when he thinks he isn’t looking. He’s in his thirties now. Doesn’t look much like it though, except for the bags under his eyes and the general air of tiredness. Is it the demon blood? Or the fact that he technically, maybe isn’t really in his thirties? It’s not like Hell is known for having good calendars, so Glenn has no clue how long the ten or so years up top have been down below. He certainly didn’t count. He wasn’t even aware it’s been ten years before he saw Taylor all grown up. Barely recognized the kid.

When the silence gets too long and Glenn can’t stop staring at the too-young, too-exhausted form of his son, he finally finds something to interrupt it: “You haven’t actually answered my question.”

Nicky frowns and puts his head to the side.

“About how you’ve been”, Glenn clarifies.

His fingers start drumming again, instead of hanging onto the table with a white-knuckle grip. This rhythm at least feels familiar, even though Glenn can’t name it. “Not good, is the honest answer.”

That is about what Glenn expected. He nods and chews on his lower lip before thinking what to say next. Be there for Nicky, he thinks. So what would be good for Nicky right now?

“Maybe…I don’t want to tell you what to but…Jodie would be happy if you wanted to move back in with him. And if you want to stay up here for a while…You know, I’ve been living at Henry’s old place, so…” Hell, Glenn hopes the message is coming across like how he wants it to.

Nicky raises an eyebrow, “Henry still has the house?”

“Jup”, Glenn nods, “Didn’t want to sell it. To many Mercedes memories, I think. But he was really into the idea of me staying there.”

“That’s good. And I guess, thank you. For the offer. I’m just not really sure…”

“Too many bad memories?” Glenn guesses.

“Good ones”, Nicky corrects and changes the rhythm he’s drumming abruptly. “But maybe I should move back in with Jodie. I miss him. And I don’t particularly care about my current place.”

Glenn swallows down his disappointment. Even if it isn’t him, he’d much rather have Nicky living with Jodie again then on his own, after all. Before he got his arm shot off, he’s never been away for longer than a couple of weeks at most. When Morgan eventually also died and landed right back with the rest of them, Nicky had his own flat on Earth (or not-Earth) but he stayed almost every weekend with them in Hell. He’d rather have him back where they could keep an eye on him. Or at least where Jodie could do that. He’d keep them all updated, Glenn’s sure.

“And like”, Glenn clears his throat. He wants to keep going. He wants to keep forcing the words out because he knows if he doesn’t do it now, he’ll never try again. And he just gave Nicky a promise. “Do you need, like, anything else? Like are you good? I mean you aren’t, of course, you just told me but like-”

“I’m sober, dad. I want to keep it that way.”

Glenn blinks, because for the first time maybe ever, that’s not what he meant, “I wasn’t talking about drugs.”

“Oh”, Nicky looks confused too, “What did you mean then?”

“I don’t know. You tell me. I was thinking like, what do you want to do now? Do you need – or wan – a job? In which case, I could forge you a decent and airtight resume. Or like, anything else?”

“I don’t know”, Nicky shrugs, “I don’t do much, nowadays.”

That’s not very encouraging to hear, Glenn thinks. Especially not when Nicky looks like that when he says it.

“What d’you mean?”

“That I just don’t do much”, Nicky shrugs again, “Mostly just. Sit around and binge shit. It’s not like there’s much else to do. Don’t need a job in Hell anyway.”

Hell, he had really hoped he could give Nicky a shiny new gift that would proof that he’ll keep his promise but that doesn’t really seem like anything anymore. Nicky, more than anything, needs a fucking social life again. Because apparently his son had become a giant loser, while Glenn wasn’t looking. And a good part of that is probably- definitely Glenn’s fault.

Nicky sighs, clearly getting nervous about the fact that Glenn hasn’t said anything about his confession, “I mean, like…there’s nothing left, right? I don’t- I don’t have anything anymore. I feel like…like everything I was, was just built around the people around me. But they’re not here anymore, so why keep up the charade?”

“Nicky…”

“Like”, Nicky’s breath hitches, “What did I ever have that was just mine?”

And Glenn looks at his insistently moving fingers. Something Nick has done, something Nicolas has done, something Nicky kept doing even now. He looks back at Nicky, “Well, you’re a drummer.”

“Was”, Nicky corrects and gestures with his stump like he needs to remind Glenn, “And even then, I only started because you suggested it and I wanted to impress you.”

It kinda hurts to hear it so plainly said. It also…it’s not quite the truth.

“Nicolas learned the drums as well”, Glenn says, “Jodie told me.”

Nicky’s breath hitches.

“He said you wanted to learn it really badly. That you begged him for a whole year. Nicolas certainly didn’t do it for anyone else.”

“That was- that was just marching band.”

“There’s not really a difference, is it? I mean, just between us”, and Glenn leans in, “we know rock ’n’ roll’s the best but in the end all music’s music, right?”

“I-”, Nicky’s blinking really hard. Shit, did Glenn make him cry again? “But I can’t- I can’t even play anymore.” His voice cracks when he says it.

Glenn looks at his son who looks so different, so tired and worn down and heartbroken, and he feels just like he did before Justice. This is a test. This is the final test, so he can convince Nicky to come back. But he doesn’t have a grand gesture, some impossible choice before him, which could proof anything right now. So just this once, Glenn thinks really hard about what to say next.

Can you play the drums with just one arm? Probably? It wouldn’t be as good though. You kinda need the other hand to make it sound good, right? But he can’t tell Nicky that. He needs to find a solution for him right now. Or else his son might forever stay here in this quiet lonely diner.

Nicky is looking back down at the table. His horns point right to the ceiling when he does it. Hell, Glenn misses his horns. And the wings and the tails. They were really fucking useful.

And slowly, with realization, Glenn looks at Nicky’s tail. It’s curled up to his side, the side where the guitar isn’t lying, and it keeps thumping in an even rhythm. It does that a lot, Glenn’s never been quite sure if it was something Nicky’s even aware of. His tail is a lot thinner than Glenn’s was, but also more flexible from what he’s seen. The tip is sharp and pointy, but also heavier than the rest of it.

Glenn looks back at Nicky’s exhausted face.

“Why not use your tail?” he says, “I mean, it would be a bit difficult, getting used to move it correctly but I don’t see how that couldn’t work.”

Nicky’s staring at him, mouth open and clearly surprised. Glenn’s kinda surprised too, that Nicky apparently never thought about it.

“I- I’d have to re-learn everything”, but there’s a spark, a literal spark, in his eyes that hasn’t been there before. This is good, Glenn said the right thing and he put Nicky on the right track and now he just has to keep pushing him, so he actually keeps going that direction.

“You loved learning the drums”, he reminds him, “Jodie complained about it all the time! That you’d always put off studying to practice instead. And honestly, it sounds like you need a project.”

Or just hobbies in general, Glenn doesn’t say. He’s not trying to insult his son, but he really needs to convince him that just ‘sitting around and binging shit’ is not really…anything.

“And you know what? You can’t just give that guitar to Taylor. He doesn’t even know how to play! I bet he’d appreciate it if you taught him.”

“I can’t play the guitar anymore either”, Nicky frowns, “I’d be a pretty shitty teacher.”

Glenn snorts. “Man, you’re dense”, he says and leans back in his seat but doesn’t break eye contact. “I’m giving you an excuse to spend time with him. Why do you think I taught you the guitar after the Forgotten Realms?”

“Oh”, Nicky gets a little red around the nose and his eyes get big, and did he really not know? Glenn has thought he was pathetically obvious back then.

Before he can say anything else though, he jerks violently and starts messaging his head.

Immediately, Glenn is on alert, “Nicky? Everything’s alright?”

“I heard…fuck”, he shudders again, “Are those gunshots?”

“Gunshots?” Glenn hasn’t heard anything.

“Oh shit”, Nicky’s eyes go wide as saucers, “Fuck. Fuck. The guys are here?!” He stares at Glenn.

Glenn stares back, “Yes? I thought you knew? We were hoping to find you faster the more there are of us.”

“No, I- oh shit”, he sits up ramrod straight, “What the fuck have they been doing?”

“Did you-”, Glenn’s not really sure what’s going on. He had assumed Nicky would be somewhat aware of what was going on in his head? “Did you not eh- see them before?”

Nicky shakes his head but keeps messaging it at the same time, “No, no. It just- fuck, I wasn’t even really sure- to be honest, the whole time I was here I felt a little like I was…underwater I guess? I couldn’t even reach out to Nick and Nicolas.”

Oh Hell, Nick is here. Glenn tries not to let that excitement show on his face. Not the time.

“But you can now?” he asks instead. Nicky nods in return.

“They’re- oh no. Oh no. What the fuck are they doing?”

“What?” Even Glenn’s getting a bit anxious now. He doesn’t like not knowing what’s going on.

Nicky jumps up, “These fucking assholes!” Glenn’s not sure who he’s talking about. “Glenn, we gotta go. I can’t let them do that.”

“Wait, wait”, Glenn gets up as well, but holds Nicky back by his shoulder, “Are you okay? With the guys? Seeing them again, I mean. If not, I can totally deal with them.”

“I told you before, I can deal with them myself”, Nicky’s eyes are sharp when they find Glenn’s. His entire demeanor has changed. It seems so much more familiar on him. This is the Nicky Glenn has seen all the time after the betrayal. Angry. Is that better than the hopelessness he had this entire conversation?

“Alright”, Glenn backs off. When he does, Nicky, for the first time this conversation, bites his lip. This Glenn could read in his sleep, he’s unsure.

“Just-”, Nicky says, “Can I- Could I-”, he looks away, now chewing on his lip aggressively.

“Hey”, Glenn nudges him, “Whatever you want, right? Just ask.”

“Can I have a hug?”

Glenn pulls him in before answering. Something feels a little lighter in his chest and he hopes Nicky feels it too.

He’s not a good dad. Everyone agrees on that. But he really wishes he could be. His son wants him to be. That’s something, right?

Chapter Text

“What the Hell are you doing?” Nicky asks, ignoring the assembled adults in the forest and stalking straight towards his two alternate selves. He shoves Grant to the side when he’s in the way of his path but doesn’t deem him with even a look.

Behind him, from the shadowed woods he came from, Glenn appears as well. As soon as he sees him, Nick lights up, “Dad!”

He tries to run to him but Nicky catches his arm with his tail and keeps him by his side. “You’re staying here, buddy”, he pulls him back, so he can glare at Nicolas and Nick at the same time, “I have no idea what the fuck is going on with you. But this is insane.”

“We tried to tell them that”, Sparrow interrupts and immediately gets a glare, much worse than the one Nicolas and Nick have gotten, from Nicky. He let’s go of Nick, instead his tail grabs around the gun in Sparrow’s hands, ripping it from them. Nicky catches it in mid air and crushes it with his claws.

“I’m not talking to you”, he simply says and turns back around to the children. Nicolas has his chin raised in defiance. Nick is still paying more attention to Glenn than his own self.

“Tell me why exactly you thought this was a good idea”, Nicky looks at them expectantly. More at Nicolas. He knows who had the idea first. After the talk with Glenn awareness has very suddenly come back to him. Everything his the guys did to scramble up his memories, the stupid shit Nicolas and Nick tried to convince them off, he knows all of it now. He’s in his own head again.

Nicolas stares at him, a certain look in his eyes. He doesn’t answer but Nicky can tell that there’s something going on. It’s not like he can read his mind but in the end Nicolas is part of Nicky, so the expression is not entirely unreadable.

So Nicky knows that Nicolas didn’t actually want to delete those memories. He could have done so himself if he wanted that. This plan was about something else entirely.

“You little imp”, he says and ruffles Nicolas’ hair maybe more aggressively than necessary, “You have any idea how much you scared me?”

Nicolas smiles knowingly, “Not more than we scared them”, he says it so quietly that no one but the three of them could hear it. Nicky rolls his eyes but crouches down to be eye level with the two children.

Still in a quiet voice, because this conversation is for no one but himself, he says: “Please don’t do that again, okay? I know you had good intension but for a bit I was really convinced you would get rid of them.”

“Why not though”, Nick is the one asking, “Why not get rid of them? We don’t like remembering them anyways.”

“No.” Nicky tries to sound gentle, because he knows why Nick might want that but he can’t let him keep thinking that, “I don’t want all of that gone just because it hurts. Sometimes the good things come with something bad. Sometimes you have to fight through all the terrible stuff to get to something good. That’s still worth it. We’ve always believed in that.” He looks back, past Lark and Grant and Sparrow and Terry, to Glenn. He gives Nicky a nod and a smile. Something like an apology. Something like forgiveness. Nicky looks back at Nick, “You should know that you can’t just get rid of the bad stuff, you lose the good bits too. And they’re the most important part.”

Nick keeps looking between Nicky and his dad. He nods.

“Come here”, Nicky says and pulls both of them, one with his arm, one with his tail, into a hug. For maybe an entire minute, no one moves, no one says anything. They just wait. Nicky’s grateful because honestly, these last few hours of dull emptiness he’s been feeling have freaked him out a bit, if he’s honest. He’s really grateful, he can feel and hold Nick and Nicolas again. It felt hollow without them. And now he finally feels like himself again.

When Nicky finally lets up, he nudges Nick a little bit, “You can go now”, he says, and nods towards Glenn. Nick jumps up and runs to his dad without hesitation.

Glenn has his arms open for him before he reached him. Nicky can’t hear what they’re saying, but he’ll know all about it in a bit either way.

Then Nicky looks back at Nicolas, who looks back at him. “You want to go as well?” Nicky asks this time loud enough that everyone can hear them.

Nicolas is eyeing the other four people standing around, still lost for words, “Will you be fine?”

“I think you scared them enough that I could blow them over with a sneeze”, Nicky ruffles Nicolas’ too short, too neat hair, “Go talk to your godfather, he’ll catch you up on what we’ve been chatting about.”

Nicolas nods and separates from Nicky. He doesn’t run towards Glenn, but he still takes the short side-hug from him. Nicky smiles when he looks at them. It drops when he turns to his ex-friends.

“You’re invading my memories”, he says in a cold, stern voice, “I don’t appreciate that.”

“Sorry”, Sparrow says lamely, “We thought we had to rescue you.”

“And instead I had to come and rescue you from my crazy alter-egos. Life’s weird”, he shrugs. The gesture feels relaxed, in a way Nicky hasn’t been in a while. But he feels much lighter now. Still angry at these people, but it’s not the only thing he can think off now. Mostly he’s just relieved, and maybe a little bit grateful to these four assholes.

Terry shifts uncomfortably from his left to his right side, “We should probably go back now, right? It’s been like fifty minutes.”

“Don’t worry”, Nicky waves it off, “Give them a few more moments.” And he nods towards Glenn and the children, “I’ve been hogging dad this entire time. They deserve to get something nice out of this too.”

“Nicky, I really think-”

“Terry”, the smile falls instantly, and his eyes, sparking and crackling, land on Terry’s, “I’m telling you to wait.”

Terry doesn’t continue arguing. Nicky tries not to enjoy that he can shut them up so easily now. But it feels a little good.

“For what it’s worth”, he decides to say on a whim, “I want to thank you.”

Lark and Sparrow instinctively look at each other and in perfect synchrony they say: “For what?”

Nicky chuckles but it doesn’t sound much like his old laugh at all, “Not finishing your job, as Nick put it. And not falling into Nicolas’ trap.”

“His trap?” Terry frowns.

Nicky nods, shrugs, might as well tell them, “He was testing you, idiots. If you’d take the easy way out and make another decision for me. Or if you backed off and respected me for once. I like my memories, most of them don’t make sense, even to me, now even less cause you guys are dancing all over them, but I want to keep them. I don’t want to stop missing you. So congrats. You passed. You’ve very slightly redeemed yourselves.”

“But you won’t-”, Terry starts but Nicky interrupts him quickly, “No. I won’t forgive you. I don’t think I can. I barely know my son and I’m not sure he’ll ever want me to. The only people I still really trust are my parents and I’ve spent a decade avoiding even them. Hell, I didn’t even know I was related to Hermie until like a week ago. I can’t play the guitar anymore. You took all of that away from me.”

Silence. There is nothing Nicky wants to hear from them anyway.

But he’s still smiling and still feeling that lightness, “But I’m going to re-learn how to play the drums”, his tail whips behind him, then it moves back and forth like it’s waving, “with this thing.”

And he’s excited about that he realizes. He hasn’t been excited about anything in years. But maybe he can have music back. And maybe he can have Glenn back as well. Who knows what’s coming next?

They spent another minute or so just standing there, quietly watching Glenn and the kids talking – they look happy, Nick is clutching his dad around the stomach still, who keeps an arm around his shoulders, and Nicolas is rolling his eyes like crazy but he keeps trying and failing not to laugh – Nicky finally says: “Let’s get out of here. Otherwise dad will get all stir-crazy sitting out there all by himself.”

Nicolas says goodbye easily. Nick clutches his dad for a bit longer, not quite ready to let go.

“Y’know, if you ask really, really nicely”, Nicky tells him, “I might allow Terry to do this again. Not for himself obviously”, he eyes the aforementioned guy, “But for Jodie and Glenn. Just keep them out of the stuff they don’t need to know about.” He winks.

Nick grins, Nicolas is smiling as well.

“And mom?”, Nick asks, slowly letting go of Glenn.

“Sure”, Nicky shrugs, “And mom. Whatever you guys want.”

And he gives Terry the go ahead to get them out of his head.

The relieve washing over Jodie’s face when Nicky opens his eyes to the sterile old med bay of D.A.D.D.I.E.S. is so apparent that it instantly makes Nicky feel bad. He really didn’t mean to frazzle his parents that much. So he allows Jodie to squish him a little harder than necessary in apology.

“I was so worried”, he mumbles into Nicky’s shoulder.

“I know”, he replies, “I know, dad. I’m really sorry.”

Immediately Jodie drops the hug in surprise and stares at him. Hell, they are a broken family, if both his fathers have that much of a visceral reaction to him just calling them ‘dad’. He’s not actually sure yet, if he’ll continue that. The word feel weird on his tongue but it makes them happy and that makes Nicky happy. He’ll probably never stop fishing, just a little, for their approval and love. Even now, that he feels more reassured than ever that he has it.

He looks at Glenn behind them and motions for him to come closer, not wanting to stand up from the bed yet.

“Thank you”, Nicky says and pulls him into a hug again. He feels warmer than he has in ages but also incredibly exhausted. So after bathing a little longer in both his dads shutting up long enough to hug him, he turns to Jodie: “I am really, really sorry. Shouldn’t have run after Bill like that. I know it was stupid.”

“Yeah well, next time don’t let Glenn convince you, okay?”

Nicky blinks in confusion, “Glenn didn’t convince me? I asked Glenn. He wasn’t really into the idea at first actually.”

Jodie glares at Glenn and Glenn looks away and at Nicky instead, “I ehm- I told them it was my idea.”

“Oh”, somehow Nicky feel even warmer.

“Next time”, Jodie sighs and looks at both of them, “if you’re conspiring against me, plan it better.”

“Oh my god, Jodie! We were busy!” Glenn shoves him, which does nothing because Jodie is about three meters tall and twice has wide as him, “We had more important things to talk about!”

Slowly Nicky detangles himself from them and scooches away until he has line of sight to the other four people in the room. They’re standing there, unsure and in varying degrees of anxiety. He already said what he wanted to say to them. Mostly. There’s just one more thing.

“You know”, he starts, something from his old self coming back to him. From the guy who loved these people more than almost anyone else, “My kid’s friends with your kids.”

Confused they look between each other.

He lets them wiggle for a while. Then he continues: “I’m just saying I should probably get to know the kind of people that raised those friends. Make sure they’re alright. I wouldn’t want my son to fall in with the wrong people,” he narrows his eyes, “people that could hurt him.”

They exchange more glances. More hesitation. Finally it’s Grant of all people that steps forward and actually makes eye contact, “Would you…would you want to come to a barbecue sometimes? Maybe next week or something?”

He looks so fucking nervous just asking. It’s clear, that this will be different. They won’t be the friends they once were and they won’t be Nicky’s second family ever again. And some part of Nicky will always hate them deeply for what they did.

But it could also be nice. He used to know these four better than anyone else in the world, understood them better than he understood himself. He knows how to press their buttons and how to make them tick and maybe after they saw directly in his brain they finally understand him a little as well.

He shrugs, like he doesn’t really care, “Sure. I’ll come.”

You: Hey Taylor. Hope your doing alright? Is this week’s lunch still on? Either way, I have a few things I want to ask you. And it’s totally okay if you say no to all or any of them, alrighT?

You: first of: i would like to actually introduce you to your grandparents (again, if you want to). i know you already met them but that wasn’t really the best circumstances and i would like to give you the space to actually get to know them. i don’t know if you ever met Cassandra’s parents so like maybe you had your fill of grandparents already (i wouldn’t blame you in that case, they are *terrible*) but as you might have been able to tell by the first time you met them, my parents are very…different. form Cassandra’s i mean

You: so that’s the first thing. the second thing is: i have a gift for you. it was mine first but i can’t use it anymore so i thought you might want it? i’ll teach you of course. if you want to. but it’s a really good one and not cheap so even if you do’t want to use it you could like sell it or something? idk, whatever you want to do with it, it’s yours. if you want it

You:  shit lol. i forgot to say. i’mtalking about my guitar!!

Taylor: you’d teach me?

You: of course!

You: and if you really like it…idk maybe we could talk about you getting the electric one as well

You: if your mother says yes of course

Taylor: …

Taylor: you know scary *is* looking for someone to join her band

You: is that a yes?

Taylor: to the second thing. still thinking about the first one.

You: that’s alright. take your time.

              Taylor reacted to your message: 👍