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They wanted to go home.
It started with Velma, of all people. She looked Marcie in the eyes one day and was hit with a fierce homesickness that nobody here could soothe. She saw for a brief glimpse the Marcie who flew through the sky with ease on manticore wings, and snuck into Mr. E’s lair, and gave her life for Velma.
Then the fog cleared and this other Marcie who smelled like cinnamon and had never been called “Hot Dog Water” in her life blinked back at her.
Velma realized how empty she felt.
It worsened whenever her mother spoke to her. Out of all the gang, Velma had the most amicable relationship with her mother in the Before times. She could never bring herself to see this version of Angie Dinkley the same way as her mother. In her mind, “Mom” was in reference to the Before Mrs. Dinkley, and “Angie” was this version.
She clenched her teeth and played pretend, even though she didn’t care about this science competition or these projects or her grades.
*
Fred soon followed, unable to see anything other than the evil people his parents had been Before. He longingly stared at Coach Jones from afar during their final days of school, and trembled whenever he was referred to as “Fred Chiles.” He skipped soccer practice under the guise of being sick, avoided his teammates, and spent most of his time down by the river where he’d lived after his fake father was arrested Before. He left his white van in the garage, and chose to walk places instead.
Even the one small pleasure of having inherited trapping from his parents was stolen.
Brad and Judy were appalled when they found him messing around with bear traps in the backyard out of desperation for something familiar.
“It’s out of concern,” he hollowly told Daphne over the phone after the less-than-pleasant conversation had gone down. “They do love me. They’re just worried.”
*
Daphne didn’t really know how to feel. She’d gone from the “underachieving” daughter dating a “low-life lunatic” to the only one her parents felt any pride in. A small part of her relished in the freedom, no longer subjected to petty, demeaning remarks from the quadruplets or the constant judgement from her parents. A much bigger part of her wept at her sisters’ misfortunes.
Yes, they had been cruel to her, but they had been successful and happy. All of that was gone now. They were timid and constantly whispered how much they wished they weren’t failures. The universe itself seemed to be against them, as everything they did ended poorly.
On the first day alone, Daisy dropped a glass on her foot during an interview and Delilah fell down the stairs in front of a potential date. It was humiliating and costly.
Daphne wondered what her sisters did to get their happiness, if the destruction of Nibiru removed it.
She missed the Before them, in a weird way. She missed being the one not looked at, so she could have something special that no one else was interested in.
Yes, she was going to be married to Fred one day. Absolutely. But it was going to be on her terms. Not her parents’.
And Before, that was never an issue.
*
Scooby-Doo had never liked Crystal Cove to begin with.
It used to be creepy and unsettling, with nasty people and scary creatures showing up every day. Even if they were fake, it showed how strange Crystal Cove was, later proven to be because of the Evil Spirit casually buried under the town.
Now, it was hollow and lonely. Any semblance of normality was gone.
People were happy, sure, but Scooby couldn’t just forgive the Rogers’ so easily. He couldn’t just trust the Chiles’. He especially couldn’t look at Pericles without wanting to growl and bare his teeth.
Scooby was never close to any outsider particularly, except for Nova. He tried looking for her initially, but with the clear distress the gang was in, he was hesitant to wander away.
He personally adapted quickly. He accepted their new reality rather fast. While Scooby wasn’t jumping for joy, he didn’t exactly want to go back to the dark, spooky town filled with narcissists and black magic.
There was something pure and sweet about this place.
Yes, the formerly evil people were hard to look at, but Scooby was happy Cassidy got the ending she deserved. He was happy for Sheriff Stone and Mayor Nettles, and their four cute kids. He was happy for Marcie and for the old Mayor Jones.
But this still wasn’t home. He missed the mysteries. He missed the Mystery Machine. He especially missed the smiles on his humans’ faces.
It had been nearly two weeks and not once did any of them smile for real.
Scooby hated it.
*
Shaggy’s reaction was the catalyst to their decision to follow Professor Ellison’s words and leave.
In truth, even in the other universe, Shaggy wasn’t really a slacker, nor was he truly a coward. He was always anxious and easily overwhelmed, living in a stifling house with inattentive parents, struggling to juggle too many tasks and emotions at once. In this world, given room to properly breathe, he was able to accomplish a great deal.
In fact, he found medications in his bathroom cabinet, with all sorts of long names, that he was supposed to take to handle his crushing anxiety and fear.
But Shaggy didn’t know how to handle all these new things. He was scared and out of his element, overwhelmed by these new expectations. He was terrified of letting down all these people. The school, his parents, the town were suddenly thinking highly of him.
It was far easier to be the slacker, the chicken, the freak.
So, in the middle of the night, he tried running away. To his credit, he got a good three miles out of town before Scooby caught up.
The others found out the next morning when Shaggy’s mother, Paula, called Velma, poorly disguised worry clouding her words as she asked if her son was with them.
It was wild, actually, to hear Paula Rogers looking for the child she ignored Before.
They lied and said he was. Maybe it was instinct, when they used to protect each other from their own families. When she hung up, though, they went looking.
The fact that Shaggy wasn’t in bed at eight in the morning was a good indicator something was up.
Call it ‘best-friend-intuition’ that they decided to check the diner first. That, or just common sense.
Alarm bells went off in their heads when they found Shaggy picking at his scrambled eggs, barely a plate finished.
“Is something wrong?” Daphne asked carefully, sliding into the booth beside him. She glanced at the eggs, pursing her lips when she noticed they were cold.
Velma and Fred sat on the other side.
Scooby’s ears were low, his tail lashing impatiently like a cat’s. He seemed to be struggling to contain his emotions.
For a few seconds, Shaggy was silent, a thousand emotions flashing across his face. And then, he whispered, his voice breaking in ways they’d never heard before, “Everything’s wrong.”
The other four stared at him.
Shaggy hunched his shoulders and clutched his fork tightly, “I wanna go home.”
Never, even in his most terrified moments, had he ever sounded like that. Like a lost little kid looking for a familiar face.
“This is home,” Velma tried to say, but her voice betrayed her, dipping in a way it only did when she lied.
The gang knew her far too well. They glanced up, eyebrows raised.
Scooby whined and nuzzled his face against Shaggy’s, “Re’re rokay.”
The lanky teen scraped his eggs across his plate forcefully, trembling. Shaggy was usually a stress eater. He never let anything edible just sit there.
“Are you going to eat that?” Fred asked pointedly, unsure of what else to say.
Shaggy pushed the plate across the table and shook his head, “Help yourself.”
Scooby let out a confused whine. He nosed his plate, also strangely devoid of his usual amount, toward Shaggy, whimpering.
He laid his head down on the table, “‘M not hungry.”
It was so wild, so unlike him, that it struck the others how different this world was. All their emotions came crashing down at once, because Shaggy wasn’t eating and that was impossible.
So was jumping timelines.
Daphne caved first. She nodded frantically, scrubbing her eyes. A soft plea slipped through her lips, “I want to go home.”
Fred inhaled sharply and he covered his face with his hands.
Velma gripped the leather seat hard enough to crack it, her nails digging into the padding underneath. She glared at that plate of eggs, like it was the reason they were here.
All their emotions overwhelmed Scooby, who began to whine and tear up. He pushed his head against Shaggy’s chest and forced him to sit up.
The teen was still at first, but he then threw his arms around the great dane and buried his face in his fur.
It was far too early in the morning for anyone to see as the Scooby gang broke down in the far corner of a tiny diner.
When the waiter returned, he kindly pretended not to see the puffy, red eyes and runny noses as the kids ordered enough food to feed a small village and stuffed their faces like they hadn’t eaten in days. When they paid, there was a collective resolve on their faces.
Daphne’s hands were steady as she handed him her credit card.
The waiter struck up conversation as he handed her the receipt, “You folks doing anything exciting today?”
Shaggy grinned, an actual smile for the first time since Before, “Like, yeah, man! We’re heading out on a road trip!”
Velma finished the last of her tea, “It’s high time we get back to where we belong.”
To Miskatonic University. To the Mystery Machine. To be together, because all that was left of home was here in this booth.
Thirty-six hours later, that very waiter, sixteen-year-old Jeremy Broder, would be standing before a police officer, being questioned about the disappearances of four teenagers and their dog.