Chapter Text
They cleared the table, not that it looked any cleaner afterwards. The twins rode with Mick and Len while Solnishko and Shawna rode in Lisa’s car. The ladies cordially chatted about asshole exes and family, culminating in Shawna reporting, “Grammy and I were the only ones who got along with each other; both of our families didn’t aspire to much above crime and scams. I wish I could’ve kept her home after she died, but she told me to sell it because, ‘Baez, history isn’t gonna remember you for keeping an old woman’s house; history will remember you for educating yourself.’ After that, I moved in with Clay.”
Solnishko stopped stargazing and stared at the upholstery, “Your life is ruined, and it’s all my fault. If I didn’t cry in front of Clay—”
“Sweetie,” Shawna interrupted him, “none of this is your fault; there was nothing between me and Clay to ruin. Everybody has a right to cry, and if Clay’s too dumb to realize that, he’s not the one for me. There are plenty of other fish in the sea.”
“But you don’t wanna fish! You wanna person!”
Lisa shrugged when Shawna looked to her; then divine inspiration struck Shawna for how to proceed, “To be honest, Clay is kinda like a fish. He was interesting for a couple weeks—a month, if I’m being generous—but I didn’t wanna spend the rest of my life with him. He was rude as hell to everybody, gambled like crazy, and I’m pretty sure he’s been cheating on me for the past few days.”
“That moron should’ve been worshipping the dirt you walked on for paying any attention to him,” Lisa huffed.
“It’s just… this whole mess started because I couldn’t stay calm enough to stop Lewis....”
Lisa said firmly, “Solnishko, it is not your responsibility to stop anybody.”
“But.... my powers—”
“Fuck your powers! Your only responsibility is to stay safe,” her spruce-blue eyes glared at him through the rearview mirror. Keratin dug into leather as her grip on the steering wheel tightened. Her driving sped up. Solnishko watched her without melting into terror, which said a lot about how much he’d come to trust her.
Shawna waited a moment before she told him, “You got out of bed and left your home this morning: that’s amazing. You saved my life today: that’s a bonus.”
Meanwhile, the men’s conversations were just as riveting despite their silence. Mick checked in with Shawna via text after Len thrummed his disapproval of Lisa’s outburst in front of them. Len squinted at the rearview mirror and elbow-tapped Mick, who scrunched his eyebrows trying to figure out what the twins were saying. They were using gestures the older men had never seen before.
“((This is Robbie,))” the goth blond introduced his new golden retriever plushie to his twin. “((Joe gave her to me so I’d yell at her instead of fighting all the time.))”
The pumpkin spice-haired twin smiled, “((Hi, Robbie, you’ve got a big job ahead of you, but if Joe thinks you can do it, so do I.))”
“That’s not ASL,” Mick stated.
“It’s CSL!” Clyde exclaimed. “Clarkian Sign Language! Mark and I came up with it when we were, like, three.”
“A twin language, eh?” Len approved. “That must help on heists.”
“We’re mostly just pickpockets. One time when we twelve, we broke into someone’s house,” Clyde then became guilty. “She knitted us scarves and fed us our first home-cooked meal in years.” The twins produced two scraggily scrambles of yarn from their coats in sync and teared up with recollection. Clyde continued, “We probably should’ve gotten rid of these years ago, but what if we ever see her again? She’ll be sad enough already that we trashed ‘em.”
“Nah, they ain’t trashed,” Mick chuffed. The twins looked up, expecting ridicule, not acceptance. “They’re well-loved, that’s all. If y’all ever meet up again, I bet she’ll be more than happy to knit you new ones.”
The twins looked at him with hope sparkling in their eyes when Mick finally got a reply.
We’re okay now, thanks. Lisa says to tell you I’m a natural at resolving sunshine situations
Sparky: She tell you what that means?
Baez: Something related to Solnishko? We just got done telling him he’s not responsible for all the crap that went down with Lewis & Clay today just because he has powers
Mick came close to crunching his phone when Len asked, “Sunshine situation?”
“Yep.”
“What’s a sunshine situation?” Clyde wondered out loud. Mark was torn between smacking Clyde for poor manners and his own desire for a definition.
Len and Mick flitted their slate and sage gazes at each other. Finally, Len allayed the twins by promising them an explanation when the clan settled into safehouse #8 since Shawna would need one too.
Clyde bobbed his head to the beat of the song playing on his imaginary iPod. Mark hummed the tune, and before long, the older men discovered that Clyde couldn’t sing for shit—his voice reminded them of a cat figuring out that the can opener is not going to give it treats—but the soul that went into their performance graced it with their brotherly bond.
“Solnishko’s not a big fan of Tarzan,” Len suspected why they liked both it and its origin movies. “It lacks enough extraordinary elements to shut off his book knowledge.”
Rehabilitating feral folks doesn’t work that way, never mind the fact that Tarzan is way past the critical period for acquiring languages. Also, if you’re gonna include animals in your movie, at least consistently call them the same wrong species throughout your movie instead of calling them different wrong species every time you bring them up. And don’t ask how elephants know about fish which live nowhere near their continent cuz not even Len could BS an excuse for that one.
“We haven’t watched it in years, but we love it cuz Kala loves Tarzan even though everybody else tells her not to.”
Suspicions confirmed!
“You’ll have to share a room since we have none to spare,” Len informed them. The twins scoffed. Almost a dozen years on the streets taught them to stay in arm’s reach, especially at night, which is why they’d prefer bunk beds, please and thank you!
Mick chuckled, “Would you like a ladder or stairs?”
“You can build stairs into bunk beds!?” Clyde squealed.
Mick Rory was going to build them bunk beds!
With stairs :D
The rest of the ride looped enough to rival a rollercoaster. Clyde was having a grand time flailing his arms around Kermit-style. Mark became just as dismayed as his twin did when it ended; the elder Mardon simply concealed it better.
Clyde carried Robbie over his head, exploded out of the truck, and bounded into safehouse #8. Mark commanded Clyde to take his boots off in the house, startling everyone who heard him except for Clyde.
“(I’m okay with whispering if I absolutely have to,)” Mark explained to the group after setting his and Clyde’s boots onto the shoe shelf by the door, “(and keeping Clyde outta trouble, but that’s about it.)”
Lisa sipped her mug of hot chocolate and looked expectantly at Mick. She flicked her devilish goddess eyelashes at the hallway. Mick traversed silver-flaked, mauve carpeting that squirmed between toes and tickled bare feet. He knocked on the last door on the left—right across from his and Len’s room. His brawn drew a snarl from the dense wood.
It was neither locked nor closed, so he wasted no time inviting himself in. He slid the closet door open with a circular cavity and found his brother huddling inside on the floor.
Shit.
He only ever did this if he thought he deserved a punishment. Granted, it was a step up from huddling in the workshop. That was a fantastic afternoon; Len appearing behind him startled him into dropping a plate. Solnishko’s lips twitched as he stared at the shards before he looked up at Len, who saw the exact same face on his brother-in-law that he and Lisa donned whenever they upset Lewis. Solnishko bolted for the basement. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots between safehouse #8’s coldest, darkest, and most metallic room with the Freezer of Solitude.
Mick sat against the door with one leg notched up and his other foot tucked between the bend, “Cub, you did your best today; it’s all anybody can ask of another or themselves.”
“But my best should be so much better,” tears bled out and cyan fog shimmered from his eyes as his voice cracked into dubstep Vader. “Future me saved Central from a tornado and a tidal wave in the original timeline, and he only had yellow lightning. Blue means I’m faster. I’m supposed to be a hero; I’m supposed to save people. I’m supposed to be strong, but I’m not, I’m just…”
He clamped a hand over his mouth and slumped sideways against the wall. Shadows sought to suck him into their clutch, so Mick drew him out and cradled him like somebody must’ve done before der Mann in Gelb stole him. Mick would never believe his little brother was an orphan in any life he led, no matter which timeline he led his life in.
Len set his mug down. He surprised the newcomers when his turned out to be the Frozen one with a muscle-thick layer of mini marshmallows. Not a drop of cocoa colored his lips and not a single mini marshmallow stuck to his cheeks. Diametrically, white and brown painted Clyde; the boy was incapable of keeping himself clean. Len twitched to suffocate him with a napkin until the kid got with the program. Stop snorting, Lisa, OCPD is no laughing matter! Mick sighed his disapproval at his brother’s state; subtlety soared over his head. This was nothing Shawna hadn’t seen before as the middle child of thirteen siblings: whole, half, step, or otherwise.
If Len's outrage broke his favorite mug, he vowed to take the sharpest shard and stab the younger Mardon’s eyeballs with it.
Repeatedly.
And clean the bloodstains with the heathen’s bomber jacket afterwards.
Len breathed deeply before he began, “A sunshine situation is an occurrence during which Solnishko implicitly or explicitly compares himself in this timeline to himself in the original timeline.”
Shawna already planned on enlisting the avatar of Google to dig up dirt on der Mann in Gelb; this made her want to call him now, “So Solnishko had powers… and became a superhero in the original timeline?”
“Bingo!” Lisa answered between sips. “Med school’s gonna beg you to become a doctor; your brain contains everything brilliant in Hartley Rathaway and Harrison Wells except you’re a not a fuckin’ snob about it.”
“His powers were less potent in the original timeline, so he believes he’s not living up to his potential in this timeline because heroics isn’t his day job,” Len continued, still yearning to stab Clyde. Was this boy 21 or 12!?
Shawna and the twins became officially inducted into the Murder der Mann in Gelb Club while their chairman held his little brother and told him, “Cub… you’re the strongest person I know.”
Solnishko opened his drenched eyes and mouthed, “How?”
“You’ve survived so much,” Mick spoke as soothingly as he could muster. A year or two ago, he’d never imagine his voice would ever need this tone on a regular basis. Sure, Len and Lisa had nightmares once in a blue moon, but Solnishko’s memories began with terror, and really, it was pure dumb luck Mick found him at all. Sandpapery hands crinkled at the horror of his whims leading him somewhere else—anywhere else—that morning. “You deserve nothing less than the best of humanity. The only one of us two who’ll ever have a job is me, and that’s keeping the worst of humanity away from you. I’m sorry I didn’t do that today.”
Shawna stashed gear from her job in Gotham in the bottom dresser of her room—the one between the Mardons’ and Lisa’s—and tapped a bat-shaped app on her home screen. The other end picked up before her phone tolled twice. Gauntlets against flesh littered the background; this wasn’t the first time she’d called amidst combat, “I’m so sorry to bother you, but this is important.”
“Your calls never bother me,” Batman’s modulated voice fizzled over the phone. Henchmen groaned, gasped, and collapsed throughout Shawna’s summary of Solnishko’s tale. “One cannot simply build this specialized prison without enough laborers to construct it nor enough assets to purchase resources and keep those laborers quiet, assuming he did not kill them all upon completion of their task. Either fate will not escape my research. Is Solnishko in need of additional protection?”
“Nah, we’re good for now,” Shawna replied as she set out boysenberry lipstick and orchid eyeshadow on a tri-shelf desk with an x-frame against the wall. “He’s got Mick, Len, Lisa, me, and the twins; we can each take a day of the week.... If der Mann in Gelb pops up again....”
“I shall employ the first train to Central City,” Batman vowed “and the Teen Titans will come as well. I assume you wish for me to apprise our allies as well?”
“Of course!”
“....What if Catwoman returns and leaves again while I’m in Central and I miss her???”
“She can trace the tracker in her hoodie, right?”
“Correct.”
“Then bring it with you, and she’ll come find you!” Shawna assured him as he necessitated dental surgery in another henchman. Stirrings outside prompted her to end the call. “I’ll visit you yahoos soon, okay?”
“Okay. Take care, Nightwing.”
Mark and Clyde finished writing “Tarzan” and “Kala”, respectively, on two of Solnishko’s glow-in-the-dark stars when Shawna emerged. Without requiring an explanation, she wrote “Baez” and “Grammy” on the duo Solnishko offered her. He departed to stick them on the crumbly ceiling of his room. They joined Snowy, Sparky, Goldendoodle, Lowell, and Lori.
“Alright, so it’s been a crazy day today, so feel free to sleep on this,” Lisa began. “You know those you’re-fired-if-you-don’t-show-up-to-these-totally-optional activities lame companies think’ll build synergy and teamwork and shit? We own every single Disney movie inside and outside of the vault; which ones does everyone want featured during tomorrow’s Disneyathon? We just can’t watch Frozen without Lenny or he’ll legit ground us.”
“Your brother likes Frozen???” Clyde voiced what none of the newcomers could believe. Lisa swirled her finger and pointed it down the hall. The trio did a double take at him wearing pajamas emblazoned with snowflakes and Elsa smugly conjuring one in her palms.
They had to sleep on their answers because they spent all night in shock.
The End!!!