Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

A boy named William didn’t die, but he almost did. His mother’s frantic mind wondered, in those awful, ambiguous moments, how her elderly mother would make it to the funeral from Poland. Most things matter. Most things don’t. Juxtapositions. Co-existence. William didn’t die, and his grandmother attended no funeral, but Rebecca screamed for her son, her boy, and when God returned him to her, she lived in the moments after.

Rebecca is so full of fear. She likes to keep William within sight, within reach, at all times, like if she can’t brush shoulders with him in the kitchen, she might forget he was real. Rebecca takes the train to work and the car collects dust in the garage.

When William turns sixteen, they take the train to his favourite Thai restaurant, in the city. William eats too much pad thai and recites his lines. He makes Rebecca and Jeff laugh and tells himself this is what it means to feel warm.

Jeff grades papers at the kitchen table, later, and William sits beside Rebecca on the couch, his head resting on her shoulder, eyes closed, listening to the scratching of his pen. Jeff is the sort of person who seems endlessly strong, endlessly brave, fearless in his entirety. His hands are strong but not rough. William can hear that Jeff is nowhere close to the inhumane act of fearlessness – he knows of his father’s panic. Most days, he wishes he didn’t.

“Mom,” he says, sitting up, trying to listen to his own head instead of hers. Far away, in the kitchen, he can hear the soft murmur of his father critiquing sentence structures. This is as close as William can get to home.

“Yeah, baby?” Rebecca prompts absently, clicking away at a sudoku on her phone.

“I want to learn how to drive. I’m sixteen now. Dad can teach me, if you don’t want to. He can take me to get my license on Tuesday.”

“Later. The roads are slippery,” she says, her fingers stilling, because Rebecca Kaplan is not particularly good at acknowledging her own fear. There’s always an excuse – Rebecca collects them like stamps.

“The roads are always slippery,” William counters. “It’s Spring. They’re not as bad as they could be.”

“Not as good as they could be, either,” Rebecca mutters, adding a three to a square. Her nails are click-click-clicking against the screen. There’s a woman who taps mugs of hot chocolate across the kitchen table with only her mind – click-click-clicking, tap-tap-tapping. The woman isn’t here, and she wouldn’t find her son if she did. This is Rebecca and her son, William, William, William.

“We’ll be careful. We won’t practise too soon after it rains, we’ll go on the warm days. Mom. Mom.”

She sighs, turning her phone off and putting it aside. “On average, 1.19 million people die a year because of car crashes, you know.”

“0.7% of car crashes are fatal,” he offers, because he does know. They are researchers, the both of them. He knows he gets it from her. He’s so full of fear, too, that sometimes he thinks it’s spilling out of his body. There’s power in his veins, but there is also deep, intrinsic fear.

“Motor vehicles are the number one leading cause of death for people aged 13 to 19.” Rebecca’s voice is very small, and very unlike hers.

“I know,” he says, reaching out and holding her cold hand with both of his own. “I think that’s why I need to. I… I can’t… I don’t want it to… I’m scared, Mom, and I think this is what I need to do. For me. Will you support and enable me to achieve that?”

Rebecca stays silent for a long moment, tracing the lines on William’s palms. Then, she says “now, you be careful,” and draws him close, kissing his hair to hide her tears. “And wear your seatbelt!”

“Always, Mom,” William says, and let’s himself be held.

---

Except William Kaplan is dead – he is one of 1.19 million people, three years ago, that lost their lives. He is in the 0.7%. Billy inherited no legacies from Rebecca – he stole them, a quick-handed pickpocket that heard the things he wasn’t supposed to.

“I am Billy Maximoff,” he tells the mirror, and then he apologises for it. “I’ll never make it up to you,” he admits, reaching out and touching the reflection’s face – the glass is cold. And then he turns away, because if he starts talking to William Kaplan, maybe he’ll never stop.

He doesn’t promise the reflection that he will grieve him, but it is a weight singularly on his shoulders. No one else in the world knows to grieve William. Billy will keep up the façade, the con, continue the part he has cast himself in, but in private, he won’t forget what he stole, or who he stole it from.

“Sometimes, boys die,” Agatha had said, and Billy had heard it before she finished speaking. Her thoughts were thick, heavy, and sad in the way that ached, like pressing on bruises, like tired bones. She didn’t usually let him listen – something was wrong, but something was always wrong. Sometimes, boys die, but Billy hadn’t, and there is no grave for William Kaplan. There is no grief for him, none at all, except for Billy’s.

If that’s all Billy can give the boy in the mirror, he will give it in absolution.

---

I can’t quite tell you the beginning. Stories don’t work that way. They are fluid and rushing, like rivers, like time. It begs for questions that I do not have the answers to – the chicken or the egg, the phoenix or the flame, peace or war. So, choose it for yourself. Was it now, with Billy’s stolen hands on the wheel and his feet pressed to the accelerator? William had died in this very car, and now his body took it driving in the depths of the night. Was that it? The catalyst? Billy could have stayed in William’s bedroom, wearing down the floorboards and watching the sky through glass. But he did not. He learned to drive.

Or here – the opening bars of Lorna Wu’s masterpiece, played again and again and again. I have learned the lesson of all that’s foul and fair – have you? Have you learnt it yet? This is a ballad and a shield and a sword, a plea and the solidification of love, of grief. This is just a song. Which is it? Does it start here, do you think?

Maybe it starts with the Google search results of witchcraft, or in Agatha Harkness’ house, or maybe it started, long ago, in the Maximoff’s, down the street. You decide. You tell me.

It could, conceivably, have started here, now – Agatha waves at the neighbours and Billy pulls out of the driveway. He takes a right, and then two lefts. He doesn’t know where he’s going, but maybe he doesn’t have to. The radio hums between them. There is a whole world, stretching out in front of them. William had a life here but Billy doesn’t know when he’ll return, or if.

Billy has spent three years learning how to become William Kaplan. Now, the rug has been pulled out from under his feet. He will use William’s body, a puppet to a puppet master, but he must learn how to live as Billy Maximoff.

He takes a deep breath – another right, onto a long, straight road that stretches on and on, maybe forever.

“Step on it, hotshot,” Agatha says gleefully. The car speeds on.

---

“I’m not going to come home,” Billy says, when Robin inevitably calls.

“Hm,” she says. “I wasn’t asking you to.”

“My parents-”

“I don’t do things for other people,” Robin interrupts.

Billy thinks of Latin and hammocks and warm cups of tea. “That’s a lie.”

“Alright. I’m not doing this because I’ve been asked to. I’m checking that you’re okay.”

He thinks about it, leaning back against a tree. “I will be,” he says, and it feels true.

“Me too,” Robin promises. “I’m going to be okay, and you’re going to come visit me in England and we’ll be stereotypical tea drinkers.”

“That sounds nice,” Billy says, and it does. Maybe Robin’s not really his cousin, but he’d never lied about that, not to her. She would tell him, later, across warm mugs, whether or not he was a bad person, and he would try and believe her, try and be alright with her verdict. “Mind if I bring a guest?”

“Who are you looking for?” Robin asks, curious, instead of answering.

“Would you believe me if I said myself?”

“Yes. I know who you are. You don’t have to. Maybe you’re not supposed to. Yet.” There’s a pause. Billy waits – he knows Robin’s thought patterns intimately enough to wait, at least.

“But there’s someone else, isn’t there?” Robin continues, “You’ve got a lead on Tommy.”

Billy sighs, long and suffering. “He’s out there, now. I’ve just got to find him.”

“You’ll find him, Will.”

“Yeah, okay.”

“No, really. Listen to me. You are going to find Tommy. I believe in you, even if you don’t believe in yourself yet.”

“Thanks, Robin,” Billy says, and blinks furiously.

It’s then that Agatha saunters up. “ROBIN HOOD-”

“Love you, bye!” Billy says and hangs up.

“SAVE THE RABBIT! SAVE THE RABBIT! SAVE THE RABBIT!”

“Are you ever quiet?”

“Overrated. Justice for Señor Scratchy! My darling, my life and soul-”

“Will you be quiet if I ask Eddie to look after your rabbit?”

“I’ll consider it. And he has a name, Billius, say it with me now – Señ-or Scratch-y, did you get that, with an S-”

“God, who invited you-”

“I did!” Agatha says, and grins in delight. “Tell your boy toy that Señor Scratchy likes mice when he’s missing me and crickets in the morning. Oh, and, er, he should probably keep any birds of particular importance out of reach. Very far out of reach – you would be surprised by that rabbit, once he gets hopping.”

Billy sighs and flounces back to the car to call Eddie in peace.

(It’s in vain, of course. Agatha insists on giving Eddie his endlessly complicated instructions directly. Billy tries to apologise, but she’s already hung up.)

---

The sky darkens, and the streetlamps turn on. They play David Bowie hits on the radio, much to Agatha’s delight. She turns it up far too loud and sings even louder. It is not peaceful.

“Sing, Billy boy. You know you want to!”

So, with no witnesses but Agatha Harkness, Billy gives in to his urge. He belts out the words and winds the window down to feel the wind on his cheeks and, for the first time in what feels like a long time, he grins.

Agatha, pale and ghostly, grins back.

---

Finally, as the stars get brighter and they pass fewer and fewer other cars, Billy’s eyes begin to blur. His shoulders ache from clenching the wheel.

“Alrighty,” Agatha claps her hands. “Looks like we’re spending the night in – where are we? – Marlboro. Joy. This is exactly what I wanted to spend my death doing, thank you.”

“We can’t – we can’t stop,” Billy says, horrified. “I’ll get a coffee at the next open café we find. It’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Hm,” Agatha sniffs. “Well maybe I’m not fine. I’d like to spend the night outside of this blasted car, if that’s alright with you.”

“You’re welcome to sit on the roof. Or, heck, you can leave. No one asked you to be here.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t just say that,” Agatha flicks her shining hair over her shoulder.

“I’m finding Tommy. That’s why I’m here. This isn’t just some joy ride, Agatha. This is important.”

“And important things need non-sleep deprived drivers. Listen to me, kid. Tommy isn’t going anywhere. He’ll still be waiting in the morning.”

“No. I’m not stopping because you’re slightly uncomfortable.”

“We’re a bit beyond slightly,” she mutters, and then she reaches out, her hand solidifying, and grabs hold of the steering wheel, pulling it towards her.

“Agatha!” Billy screams.

“Yes, Bill-o? Have you changed your mind about driving all night?”

“Okay, yes! Whatever! Just let go!”

“Now, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” She looks unbearably smug as Billy frantically rights the car.

“What the fuck, you’re crazy-”

“Guilty as charged.”

“Jesus Christ,” Billy groans, heart still thumping, and parks outside the Marlboro EcoMotel.

When he uses the money he had extracted from Rebecca’s card to pay for a room, he tries very hard not to feel guilty. Agatha floats in through the outmost wall and does her best to scare him while he brushes his teeth. Billy is quickly learning that Agatha is enjoying her death far too much.

There is a painting of the ocean opposite the bed – Billy lies and stares at it. He does not have to wonder what it feels like to drown, to have the water press down, to gasp and choke and feel fear right down to the marrow. He already knows.

Billy breathed for Tommy – he did not breathe for the boy in the pool.

---

He dreams, that night, of falling, of the clang of swords on swords, of the way knives slice through strawberries. He wakes up, gasping, and checks his fingernails for Lilia’s blood. Billy thinks he can feel it, drying there, a crimson reminder of what he has become. Skewered strawberries. Bloodstained dresses. Stiffening corpses.

Agatha is sitting beside the bed, like the world’s strangest guard dog. She turns away abruptly when he tilts his face to look at her, but Billy has seen the look on her face – he feels oddly protected. Comforted.

Even facing the other direction, Agatha glows a bright, burning silver in the dim room. Billy thinks, sleepily, of the moon in a starless sky. He thinks of nightlights, of scarlet out the window and gold set into a forehead. This time, when he falls asleep, he dreams of being warm.

---
In the morning, Billy scrubs at his fingers until Agatha turns the tap off. He stares down at them – they are red, raw, and a little tender.

“I didn’t know we were trying to drain this dump of its entire water supply,” Agatha says. “If that’s the case, I’ll go investigate the pipes. Gotta go to the source, rookie. It’s alright – you’ll learn. You have me.”

Billy stares into the mirror, unseeing, for a long time. When he does return to the bedroom, there is a tube of cherry hand cream lying on the bed, and Agatha is nowhere to be found.

They should probably get out of here before the managers discover the havoc Agatha has undoubtedly wreaked on the water system.

---

“How do I know where to go?” Billy asks, later, waiting at an intersection, when they have successfully fled the scene of the crime.

“You don’t! You’ll know when you get there.”

“How will I know?”

“Okay, sorry, I’ll know when we get there.”

“Again, how?”

“So many questions! It’s simple logic, pumpkin. I’m basically dead. Been there and returned, so to speak. As has Timmy-"

"Tommy-"

"So, obviously, I'll be able to know. Kaboom.”

“This doesn’t seem like a very well thought out plan,” Billy says doubtfully.

“Nonsense!”

“I hope you know what you’re doing, Agatha,” he warns. “This is my brother we’re talking about.”

“Ugh. So serious. Lighten up! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

“Going on a road trip?”

“Going on a road trip with me.”

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve gone on plenty of road trips.”

“Ha! Alright, good point. Going on a road trip with me and surviving it. You lucky boy.”

“I’m thrilled. Truly.”

“You’re an ungrateful swine, is what you are,” Agatha huffs, and then she turns the music up too loud and smirks like she’s won.

---

It only takes an hour and a half to reach Atlantic City from Marlboro Township. They drive through Pleasantville – Agatha scoffs – and Billy parks the car at Ducktown. He gets out, unlaces his shoes, and walks barefoot through the warm sand. He walks very far, until his body is shaking and he stands, a lone figure, staring out at the sea.

“Tommy always wanted a pet duck,” he says quietly. His hands tremble.

“No taste with that kid,” Agatha says, using Billy’s head as a drum. “Everyone knows rabbits are the superior pets. Don’t you worry – you’re a close second, Billaroo. Or – a second, anyway.”

With that last impartment of wisdom, Agatha jumps down from where she had perched, weightless, on his shoulders, and disappears into the water, no doubt planning to terrorise all those souls unfortunate enough to be kayaking in the nearby area.

Billy sits down and cards his fingers through the sand. Once, his father had done this with the soil of a dying city. He had cupped the soil in his fist and brought it home to coax life out of it. Billy will not take the sand from this beach, but he digs and digs, sand underneath his fingernails, like maybe he could find what he was looking for.

Agatha comes back, eventually. The sun is high in the sky. She sings out his name and performs a few backflips that he doesn’t watch. He stares out at the horizon and thinks about foreign shores.

“This isn’t right, is it,” he says dully.

“Hm,” Agatha says, stilling, looking out at the water like she’s thinking. “Not quite, poppet. Some things require time.”

“Alright,” Billy says, and walks back to the car. Agatha spreads the atlas on her knees and while she decides, Billy takes them half an hour to Somers Point, which is flat and bright and very beautiful, but not right at all.

Agatha complains until Billy lets them stop off at The Crab Trap. Agatha makes faces at the other patrons while Billy eats, and people watches harshly – “wrong shade, honey,” and “precious few can pull of a coat like The Coat. You are not one of them,” and “ooh, she’s cheating with his sister,” – until Billy is laughing over her observations and trading them back with ones of his own.

She looks very pleased when they leave the restaurant and insists on taking the driver’s seat. “I’ve decided where we’re going,” she exclaims proudly, and Billy settles back into the passenger seat and promptly falls asleep to the humming of the engine.

---

When he wakes again – gasping, but under the cover of a coughing fit – the grass beside them and the trees above them are very bright and very green. “Welcome to New Hope, pet,” Agatha drawls, and Billy glances at her.

“Philly?”

“Yes, we are in Philadelphia. Astounding observation.” He rolls his eyes. “I knew a Philadelphia once, you know. She particularly enjoyed turning people into frogs to feed to her children.”

“Strange.”

“Yes, well, she didn’t seem to enjoy being turned into a frog nearly as much. Karma, you know.” Agatha shrugs, and Billy settles back into his seat, his breathing returning to it’s normal rate.

“Oh, and you’ve probably got a few speeding fines. It’s not like it’s my fault that they want you to go so mind-numbingly slow. Uh-uh” – when he opens his mouth to protest – “Life is an adventure, witchling. Ooh, I like that. Write it down. Are you writing it down?”

“Eyes on the road.”

“I’m adventuring, Maximoff. Don’t crush my brave spirit. You’re writing. What are you writing?”

“There… will… be… consequences for trying… to… banish a ghost. Best not to… anger the physical form… of death. Again. Full stop.”

“Oh, I disagree. An angry Rio Vidal is particularly lovely,” Agatha says, and doesn’t even have the decency to acknowledge the face Billy makes at her.

---

“I don’t deserve it,” Billy says, his eyes fixed firmly on the road in front of him. He’s driving now, Agatha sprawled out on the passenger seat with her bare feet on the dashboard, despite his many complaints.

“It’s not about deserving,” Agatha replies. Her voice is as soft as Billy’s ever heard it. “Sometimes, you can win survival. You can fight for it - and you have to fight for it, Billy, we always have to fight for it - but it’s not earnt, fair and square, given out like a reward, a gold star. It’s not about moral character. Because then it wouldn’t have-”

She cuts herself off, and swallows loudly. He does her the dignity of not looking at her face. “Well, Billy. Sometimes boys die, but sometimes they live.”

---

They arrive at Erie soon after 9. They left the hotel room this morning at 9 as well. It has been a long 12 hours. Billy gets out of the car, stretching, and breathes in, deep, and out, long. The chill is bitter. This is a life worth living. He reminds himself that he is alive. William is not, but that can’t mean that he doesn’t live every second of this gift. It means he has to try, harder than anything.

---

Agatha wants to stay at Erie for longer. Billy sits down on the front steps outside reception, breathes in, breathes out, and says “Tommy’s not here,” taking the car keys out of his pocket.

“He’s not going to hate you because of one teensy little holiday. Come on. I deserve it, Billikins. I died, remember?”

“I don’t care,” he says, harshly. He doesn’t reverse over her unsolidified body, but he does leave her standing on the curb.

He lasts barely twenty minutes before he curses and turns the car around.

---

See, here is the thing:

Agatha is irritating, pushy, obnoxious, infuriating, loud, crazy, reckless, pointlessly argumentative, and it’s all with a careful purpose. But Billy’s glad she’s here, anyway. The car would be too quiet without her out of time humming. He might not have spoken to another person in weeks if it weren’t for Agatha.

And, despite everything, Billy can’t seem to stop himself from loving her.

(It reminded him, faintly, of his family – slightly out of reach, but Agatha is right here, right here, right here. It reminded him, faintly, of his family – it reminds me, faintly, of mine.)

Chapter Text

Billy wakes up.

He looks down at his hands. They are small and strange. The skin he is wearing feels a little too tight, like he is bursting at the seams. He breathes in, sharp. The ceiling is familiar.

“I can’t believe you fell asleep during Jaws,” Tommy laughs, and Billy sees that the credits are rolling. This is an ending.

“I – you’re here,” he says, breathless in his wonder. “How are you here? I looked for you everywhere.”

“We’re at home, silly,” Tommy rolls his eyes, and pokes Billy’s leg with his cold toes.

He is ten years old. He is home. His panic is fading like all dreams do. His father is letting Sparky gnaw on his fingers, looking utterly besotted. The sunlight is streaming through the window. If Billy were to race Tommy next door, a woman named Agnes would hand him a glass of lemonade and say that she heard them coming from a mile off. She would beat the twins at Mario Cart and laugh very loudly at all of their jokes. The dream is fading, fading. There are the lyrics of an old song spinning in Billy’s chest, but he listens to Sparky’s playful growls instead.

His mother runs a hand through his hair and then presses a soft kiss to it. He turns and looks up at her. She says, “we’re always with you,” reaches out her hand to hold his, “not out of reach, Billy. You just have to look inside.”

“What are you talking about? You’re right here.”

“That’s right,” Wanda Maximoff smiles. “Right here.”

---

Billy wakes up – properly, this time – on the shore of Lake Erie, his hands buried in the sand, right down to where it remained cold and a little damp. Agatha was conversing with a crow. He blinks blearily – the sky is bright and the water reflecting brighter. Billy is alive.

His heart beats faster when the wisps of his dream return to him. His mother, his mother, holding his hand, warm and solid and alive and real, but not real, fake, always fake. This was the extent of her existence – Wanda Maximoff would live on only in the fear she could still strike into the fear of Westview’s residents, and the lingering warmth she had left her family with.

“It’s all delusion,” Billy mutters, angrily, standing up and kicking the sand abruptly. “Just a trick. A hallucination. A goddamn prison.”

And this is true. It was Wanda Maximoff’s delusion. Vision had died before Billy had ever met him. Wanda was a manipulator of reality – the playwright, the puppet master, the prison jailor (and Billy was his mother’s son). The residents of Westview (the walkers of the Road) were the silly little actors, the insignificant puppets, the prisoners slowly losing all usefulness. Toys, discarded, just a little broken.

So, where does it end? Wanda, (Mom,) with her soft lullabies, the socks that knit themselves, the cutlery that danced across the table, was she playing her part in the cosmic joke that was an entire decade of Billy’s life? Was it a three day long game, or was it a life? A set, a stage, a greenscreen, or a home? Where did it stop? How would Billy ever know?

And Billy did not know. He thought, if it was all a strange delusion, than maybe he shouldn’t be standing here, toes in the sand – gone when the curtain dropped, a trick of the light, because a magician never reveals her secrets. But he had not flickered into nothing. He had clawed his way into living. And if Billy had been real – if he had been more than a chess piece, a pawn – then so was Tommy.

Two boys, growing in tandem. Two sides, one coin. Billy had lived three years without his brother, his twin, and he had actually lived them, he had proved that he was something without the puppet master and something without the other half. But the thing he wanted most in the world – more, even, than answers – was his brother. If he could just have Tommy-

If he could reach him-

Not out of reach, Billy, Wanda had said.

“I just have to look inside,” Billy says.

Agatha and the crow turn to look at him.

“Hm,” Agatha considers. “I suppose that could work. Yes, exactly. Well done, I knew you’d figure it out eventually. Test passed, young one.”

“So I guess that makes you the old one?”

“I don’t look a day over one fifty,” Agatha sniffs, and then she turns on her heel, away from the crow, and Billy is forced to scurry after her.

---

“Eat the dirt.”

“I’m not going to eat the dirt!”

Agatha draws herself up, drifting a few inches off the ground, and manages to look haughty. “William Maximoff,” she starts.

“Not my name.”

“William Maximoff,” she re-starts, and Billy shuts up. “That dirt, as you so callously call it, holds the history of thousands of witches. They have lived and died on this earth, fought for and against each other, bled and bred-”

“Did you just say bled and bred?” Billy asks incredulously.

“Lived lives worth dying for and lost themselves before taking the chances bestowed on them, whispered spells and shouted them, saved and sacrificed themselves, laughed and screamed. Do not do them dishonour. They are you. You are them. You will eat the dirt, and you will be grateful for the power bestowed upon you.”

“Oh,” Billy says, reaching for his spell book. “Uh- why?”

“Why, he asks,” Agatha rolls her eyes. “Impertinent boy. These souls are lost, yes?” Her arms do a large, swooping gesture. “They have had centuries to look. If they do not know of your brother’s whereabouts, then I’m afraid no one will.”

She looks to the ground, grave, sombre, expectant.

Billy eats the dirt. He swishes it around on his tongue – it does not taste good, but he can almost imagine that he feels the power sweep through him, the souls that rise up and promise something. He’s not quite sure exactly what it is, yet. Genies, wells, birthday candles and shooting stars are unpredictable. In order to wish, to dream, to aim, you must know what to wish for.  

Billy eats the dirt, and Agatha just about makes herself sick. “You really thought,” she gasps, and then she’s off again, doubled over with the force of her laughter.  

Billy – just about ready to give up on lecturing her about the urgency of his every action – crosses his arms and sulks.

---

Agatha had led them through the trees to a small clearing she had deemed acceptable. When she finally gets her laughter under control – still interrupted by the occasional giggle – Billy crosses his legs and rests his hands on his knees.  

“What do I do now?” Billy asks.  

“Hm?”  

“What do I do? To find Tommy?”  

“You’re not going to find your brother,” Agatha says, like it's obvious, like he’s just asked her how to change the colour of the sky. She is the teacher, and he is the ignorant little pet, tagging along at her heels.  

“ She will make sure of that. She’ll have him hidden away, and you’ll never find him, because you weren’t even supposed to exist. How did you manage that one, Billy?” Agatha is sharp and cutting and harsh, her voice bitter. “Mommy was an inept wretched excuse for a witch and you are the result of shoddy circumstances. You . There it was, your gift, your wish. You only get one, Maximoff, and yours is all used up. And now,” her face is the picture of fury, “you are walking around, crying over spilt milk, because it still isn’t enough . You are alive. You shouldn’t be, but you are. And that isn’t good enough for you?”  

The wind is whistling in his ears. A branch cracks, too loud but not loud enough to drown Agatha out. Falls to the ground with a resounding crash. Agatha does not flinch.  

“He is out there,” Billy insists, shaking.  

“Wanna bet?”  

He closes his eyes, and there it is, rising behind his eyelids, his blood pumping, there, the thousands of entangled lights, white and silver and blue and gold gold gold, and Tommy is there, Tommy has to be there, because Billy knows he is, he was breathing for Tommy – Tommy is the boy who did not drown – Billy would recognise him instantly, anywhere- but how to find him?  

Billy picks through the lights, shoots around and over and through them, an arrow, a comet – is this what it feels like, to have super speed? - look for a pattern, look for data trends, there has to be, there’s something, there needs to be something– Billy stops searching for what he knows and discards them just as quickly. Something that doesn’t belong – inept witchcraft – your gift, your wish – you are alive, but you shouldn't be. Shouldn’t, shouldn’t, shouldn’t.  

“There’s too many,” he gasps, and he thinks he might be underwater again – there are tons of chlorinated water pressing down on him, blocking out the light. There is a shimmering violet string locked around his throat, he is choking, he will die in a public pool, and he will die on a public street, he is dying, dying, dying, and he is so surrounded by death, all the glowing lights that don’t belong, that left, disappeared, crumbled in the wind and were rebuilt by miracles, by sacrifice – is that not Tommy? Crumbling as the curtains fall, stitched together by impossible, impossible magic? But it is not Tommy – there is another name, hidden in the shadows where all the souls reside, echoing, echoing. Thanos , the shadows hiss, and here, the lights that dot the shadows like cities at night, they all belong to him, they still belong to him.  

Death is permanent. Wanda could not bring back the dead, but the Hulk could. Billy could.  

Too many. Too many. No one belongs here. Agatha was right – it's not about deserving. It just is. They brought back the serial killers and the rapists and the abusers and the torturers. It’s never been about deserving. Too many . Choking. Drowning. Dying. Billy is alive. He just is. Tommy is temporarily hidden in the lights, a needle in a haystack, but he is not gone.  

Everyone belongs here. No one does. Tommy is the one person Billy knows more than anyone else. His soul should be instinctively familiar. But Billy can’t do it. He can’t find him.  

When he comes back to himself, there are no tears on his cheeks, but scarlet blood is gushing from his nose, and he is lying face down in the wretched dirt. He sits up, shaking, and there is Agatha.  

“Oh good,” she remarks casually, studying her fingernails, “you’re awake. It was getting dreadfully boring.”  

“There were too many,” Billy forces out, still out of breath. He licks his lips. His tongue is smothered in the metallic tang on blood. This is what failure tastes like.  

She shifted her gaze to focus on him, intense and bright even in the dusk that has somehow fallen. Billy must have been out for longer than he’d thought.  

“These things take a mind-numbingly long time,” Agatha informs him. “Oh, you have power, sure , but nothing’s really the same as honest to God study.” She sighs dramatically. “I know . I can hear it. I’m not going all teacher-ish on you, scout’s honour.”  

“Well...” Billy draws out the word and gives her a look .  

“Oh, Lord no,” Agatha shakes her head emphatically, flying back a few meters for good measure. “Uh-uh. Find someone else, buddy boy. I’m putting up with enough hardships as it is. Case in point: that dratted car. Zero chance.”  

“Yeah, no, that does make sense,” Billy sighs, “I just don’t know where I’m going to find a better teacher than you. High standards, you know how it is.”  

“Better than me? Uh, I don’t think so,” Agatha sniffs, even as she eyes him suspiciously. “I suppose ... if you were truly desperate... you’d owe me, of course...”  

“Naturally,” says Billy, pinching the bridge of his nose to stem the flow of the blood and smiling behind his hand.  

---  

“Why did you say all of that? Before?” Billy asks hesitantly, later that evening, eating Chinese takeout on his bed.  

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Agatha huffs. “I talk a lot. It’s one of my finer qualities.”  

“Before I... looked inside.” 

“Inside the bathroom? The mould isn’t quite so atrocious this time, don’t you worry.”  

“When I looked inside me . For Tommy.”  

“Ah. Yes. Well.” For a moment, Agatha looks uncomfortable, and then she shrugs. “Evidence suggests you work best when fuelled by anger. Can’t argue with the facts, short stack.”  

“I’m hardly short ,” Billy argues, instead of rolling his eyes, because Agatha was possibly actually trying to help, and because Billy does not want to tell her that, deep in the pit of his stomach, an entire ocean of fury lives, waiting to surge up and drown him from the inside.  

In retaliation, Agatha rises until her head brushes the ceiling, looks down down down at him, and says smugly “what about now?”  

Billy hopes, distantly, that the upstairs neighbours can’t see silver hair rising through the carpet. 

Chapter Text

“You need time, honeybun,” Agatha drawls.  

“See, now I don’t know if you mean thyme the herb or tick-tock time.”  

“Youth these days,” Agatha covers her face with one hand and shakes her head. “The herb , Maximator, the herb . As I’ve been telling you for the last fifteen minutes.”  

“Seven,” Billy corrects.  

“Thirty,” she challenges.  

Billy sighs and adds thyme to the grocery list. “Okay, but is this genuine, or do you just like the smell? Because we really do not have the spare cash for another prosciutto incident.”  

“I’m offended.”  

“What, at your doctorate in sarcasm and masters in trickery? I thought you’d be delighted.”  

“They’re both doctorates, actually.”  

“Well then how am I supposed to tell?”  

“Observe, small one,” Agatha sniffs regally, and then floats through the wall before he can follow up on his line of questioning.  

Billy sighs.  

He’s fairly certain Agatha just likes the smell.  

---  

They take it in turns to smooth the maps out on their knees and pick a town. Sometimes, when Agatha is feeling particularly generous, she’ll demand that Billy lets her drive (Billy lives in dread of the day the cops pull them over).  

Billy shoots Agatha a sly look when they arrive at Gaylord. “Michigan,” she sneers, and he knows its because she didn’t choose Gaylord first.  

“What, you think little mister one half of Tom and Jerry is going to be hiding himself away in Michigan?” She snorts derisively. “I’m sorry, I pegged your intelligence as slightly higher.”  

“If I’m going to suffer out the rest of my days with you-” 

“Please, that’s an honour-” 

“Then I may as well do it in Gaylord,” Billy says, satisfied. “And anyway, maybe geographical closeness will help pinpoint Tommy’s location.”  

“Not as much as my lessons will,” Agatha huffs self-importantly, and then has him tilting back the driver’s seat and doing his breathing exercises right there and then.  

--- 

She disappears in the wind sometimes, usually with a faint crackle pop like a champagne bottle being opened. One memorable time, Agatha just fades away into nothing, dissolving, disintegrating, dissipating, like she’s never been there at all. Maybe she hasn’t, muses Billy. Maybe he’s finally cracked it. She died and he accidentally loved her, so there she was, his mind conjuring up what he wanted to see (it wouldn’t be the first time).  

He walks down a winding pavement, one foot after the other, on and on and on, and waits for her return. And then he looks at the clouds – wispy, whispering things, never solid enough to touch – and wonders if Agatha is coming back. If ghosts aren’t as unstable as all the living things, forever balancing on tightropes of sentience. Billy doesn’t know. Agatha’s never said.  

And anyway, what if Rio wants her back? Rio hates ghosts, but Rio loves Agatha, everyone with eyes can see that. Can Rio take her away, grasp at Agatha’s silvery form and reel her back to where she belongs, like a hook being returned to a fisherman?  

Agatha does belong there, Billy thinks. If there’s a there, it’s where Agatha should be. She is dead. It’s the natural order of all things, baby. Nicholas Scratch waits for her, if there is a waiting room. And Rio. Always, always Rio.  

Billy has no ownership over Agatha, he reminds himself. She has no obligation to continue to put up with him. Maybe she doesn’t want to. Maybe that’s it. The great Agatha Harkness has grown tired of little Billy Maximoff tagging along at her heels. She’s gone off to find someone else to irritate the shit out of. She’s tricking someone else into accidentally loving her.  

By the time Agatha does return, looking as corporeal as Billy’s seen her and whistling pretentiously ( not all of us can whistle, Agatha, it’s not another thing to shove in our faces , Billy might have thought, except that now wasn’t the time), Billy’s breath is having trouble making it past his lips, all caught and stuck inside him, snared between barbed wire ribs.  

Flopping down on the bench beside him abruptly, Agatha ceases her whistling, which is a goddamn miracle that Billy can’t currently appreciate. Though her shoulder presses against his, it isn’t warm, isn’t quite solid, isn’t - will never again be - alive.  

When Billy asks her not to leave (implores, beseeches, begs, pleads), his dirty converse are tap tap tapping against the ground, his fingers twirling the ring on one finger, around and around, his eyes firmly intent upon studying the yellow bruise visible through the tear of his jeans.  

“Wow, blanket permission to be a live in annoyance,” Agatha replies. “Don’t mind if I do.”  

She doesn’t disappear, not after that. 

---  

Billy falls into an easy (and, as always, infuriating) camaraderie with Agatha. They stay in cheap motel rooms with free Wi-Fi and drive from state to state. He does his eyeliner with steady hands using the rearview mirror and gets good enough at ignoring Agatha’s distractions and sudden movements to do it in one try. Calls with Robin and Eddie are tried unsuccessfully to be done away from Agatha. Agatha, in turn, is increasingly demanding about her rabbit. When Billy mutters to Eddie about dependency, Agatha sulks and Eddie grins.  

“I’ll have you know it’s co-dependency,” she huffs. 

“Not your best argument,” Billy says, which Agatha ignores, of course.  

 “Senor Scratchy needs me just as much as I need him. He’s hollowed out without me. Half dead with grief. Bereft. Abandoned. Some sacrifices must be made.”  

“Right, for the greater good and all that jazz.” 

“All that jazz, mhm, mhm,” she nods along, and then that’s that.  

The battered notebook gets filled with throwaway lines of wisdom and the accidental good advice, alongside Agatha’s critique and guidance, which becomes surprisingly concrete once he begins to prove himself in their lessons. He doesn’t dream of his family again but thinks about them near incessantly.  

He finds himself thinking, once again, that these past few weeks would be an agonising stretch of time spent labouring over his jagged, broken family, his lost brother, his own survival, if it weren’t for Agatha, sticking her bony elbows in his side and dragging him, often kicking and screaming, back to reality for some (usually) good natured ribbing.  

Dreams of his family don’t greet him, but neither do ones of Lilia, of Alice, of Sharon. In one, the Road rises around him, tendrils of fierce, blazing magic that are sometimes violet, sometimes scarlet, and sometimes electric blue, curling around his ribcage, his lungs, his windpipe. The Road squeezes, plays cat and mouse with him, chases him in circles, getting closer and closer each time...  

He tries to scream, but no sound comes out.  

Billy is trapped, and he cannot escape.  

---  

Whenever he wakes gasping, Agatha is waiting, humming in the wrong key and the wrong pace, and wonderfully, beautifully, here .  

---  

Agatha sits in the passenger seat like it’s a throne as she directs him on an aimless eleven-hour drive halfway back across the country.  

Billy is fairly sure Agatha Harkness, magicless and mostly incorporeal, is a form of torture all on her own.  

---  

“Stop!” Agatha calls, voice urgent and harsh in the calm that had settled in the car, and Billy slams on the brakes.  

“What?”  

“I didn’t know there was a park here,” she says, delighted. “Time for your next lesson, bucko.” 

When Billy asks about the park thing, Agatha only says, “you of all people, Willy, understand an aesthetic,” and leaves it at that.  

They settle in the grass opposite each other. Billy regulates his breathing and pushes away his desperation. When he closes his eyes and falls into the deep well of minds, he can still feel the warm grass under his fingertips, the faint whiff of sage that is Agatha.  

He’s getting better at this.  

The vast tangle of lights begins to become familiar, and Billy tilts his head. “I see stars,” he says, and Agatha says, “you’re not dying, are you,” blunt and a little brutal.  

“Oh, shit,” he says. Oh shit. Oh shit. Two words, two syllables. Why is everything so inconsequential, why are there no words for world shaking, perception shattering shock? Why is Billy saying oh shit, six little letters, when this is so much bigger than any of them?  

Oh shit.  

Oh shit.  

His mind is a train running on the same tracks, meeting the same destination each time, the same blockade. Oh shit. Oh shit.  

The stars are solidifying themselves. The grass is damp through Billy’s jeans. The glowing lights are glowing brighter, and brighter, and Billy always used to think light was inherently good, a natural opposition to the dark and the monsters it fostered, but here he is, proven wrong. The lights in his head are sharp and jagged and fierce, like lightning, and Billy can feel the early onset of ground rumbling thunder, of rain pelting down like bitter, vicious tears.  

The pressure behind his eyelids builds.  

The stars burn.  

A bird in the tree lets out a mournful little cry.  

Billy’s fingers thread themselves in the grass in a desperate grip on reality.  

The bird takes flight.  

He cannot smell the destruction, the wreckage, the rotting flesh. But Billy can imagine, can see horrible, strange humanoid bones, and oh god, oh shit, are those corpses?   

The skin is puckered and ranges from grotesquely pale, the blood pulsing through the near see-through skin, to dark, stark contrasts against the white of bones, hiding blood stains and continuing on relentlessly.  

Their eyeballs have been pecked out by birds. Crows, probably. Sleek black intelligent crows. Think about the crows, Billy, and not- 

Clear and bright and awful behind his eyelids, the disgusting corpse things ferociously take down a city. And then his eyes fly open to Agatha’s panicked face (hastily rearranged to apathy, of course), and he starts to laugh.  

Goddamn zombies. 

---  

“I hate integrity,” Agatha sulks, arms crossed.  

“Zombies,” Billy shakes his head, amazed.  

“I hate them too.”  

He presses his foot down on the accelerator.  

---  

“And St. Louis. I don't even like St. Louis. What's so special about St. Louis? I say let it die.”  

“Did you just reference the Lorax?” 

“Obviously. I have class.” 

--- 

They arrive in St. Louis in good time. There are patches of smoke in the sky and the pavement is littered with shards of glass. Billy looks up at the dark grey mass of clouds, stark against the red sun, and if only he knew to think of Vision, zipping across the skyline, of Wanda, walking on air. Of runes carved into the atmosphere and a synthezoid made of indestructible material that was being torn apart, shredded, disintegrated. But of course he did not.  

He thinks instead of the people in their boxes in the sky, their homes so close to the stars they might’ve been able to touch them if it weren’t for the city’s own light pollution. He thinks of panic, of fear living under your skin, of hearts picking up their pace. Of children in their beds, clenching their fists and crying into their pillows.  

He thinks of tourists at the top of the Gateway Arch, looking down and not being able to see the ground through the wreckage. He thinks of carnage. He thinks of parents pushing strollers, avoiding chunks of flesh on the street.  

Billy can’t see any bodies, not from here, but he thinks the acrid taste settling over his tongue is something like terror. Not his – Billy has his steady, thrumming hands and an inheritance worth of power. Billy has Agatha Harkness at his side. But Billy tastes the fear of the families that fled these streets. He thinks of them, those faceless, disrupted families, because he doesn’t know to think of his own.  

 The battle is raging in these glass strewn streets – the civilians have long since retreated, by now, though a few squadrons of police rush past them.  

One gangly young man jumps when he sees Agatha, floating off the ground and looking too much like the silver skeletal structures that can be seen through the zombies’ patches of burned off, melting flesh. He shoots her, his hands steady and his aim true, and, true to form, Agatha squawks “respect your elders, chickadee!”  

He drops his gun and scampers off after the last of his unit. Agatha huffs “how rude” and “youth these days” and picks the gun off the dusty street with a look of glee.  

“Pew pew” she points the gun at him as she makes the sound.  

“Oh no,” Billy says, because he’s pretty sure that Agatha Harkness with a gun is the end of the world, even more so than zombies.  

“Finally, something good has come out of this day!”  

---  

The corpses are objectively disgusting. They ooze foul flesh onto the pavement – Billy does not envy the inevitable clean-up crew – their distorted skin and muscles melting off their sturdy, pearly white bones, hanging from sinewy frames and revealing the pristine alabaster of bones bereft of flesh. Their faces are twisted into grotesque smirks, their eyes unseeing, or else gone entirely. And when the flesh drips from their chests, their empty ribcages are revealed. 

“You forgot to search for the heart of it, Bubble-O-Bill. That’s very me of you, isn’t it now?”  

“If I get killed by not-dead dead things because of you,” Billy grunts, “I’m going to devote my afterlife to out-annoying you.”  

“Ambitious of you. I’ll look forward to it,” Agatha replies, and winks. 

---  

In the shadowed, spidery cage of ribs, empty of hearts, of lungs, Agatha's projectiles find their mark, dark whispers piercing the veil of night, the dull thuds of bone cracking. In a tempest of leaden fury (or delight, Billy can never quite tell), she vanishes amidst a storm of bullets and chaos.  

Billy engages in a macabre ballet; his hands extended to ward off the spectral foes, the bursts of blue lighting up empty faces in a strange spectacle. The ghoulish throng, those animated remnants of a once-fleshy existence, stumbled forth, a grotesque mimicking of life itself. 

He strives to elude their grasp, yet the wretched forms evade his enchantments, no matter how quickly he casts them, the electric blue stilling them only momentarily before slipping off their heads like oil and water.  

Panic has begun to slow his frantic pace when a round of bullets hits the corpse closest to Billy. He responds by flinging his hands out, desperately pushing back the next wave, expecting Agatha to swoop down from above and relieve him.  

But it is not Agatha.  

A body swoops low through the scene, a beastly, angelic body with intact organs and unbroken skin and long, elegant wings that slice through the bones easy as a knife in room temperature butter.  

Billy doesn’t have time to stare – he barely even registers the man dropping and tumbling across the pavement, springing up abruptly and turning a rifle on the corpses – before he puts his back to the man, opens himself up for an attack and hoping wholeheartedly that ‘the enemy of your enemy is your friend’ applies to this situation.  

The legion shows no sign of slowing down. Billy wishes he had comms with Agatha, so he might ask where the fuck they’re coming from. But he doesn’t, he’s all alone down here, and so all he can do is slam the corpses into buildings until enough of their bones have crumbled and snapped that they won’t get back up. He wipes his sweaty forehead and allows himself a brief second to fantasise about ice cold cans of coca cola. And then he’s back to it, reaching into the resource of all his power and dousing his hands in it, pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing.  

He stumbles and has a split second to resign himself to falling on his face before a steady body takes his weight, helping him over to a quiet wall free of alien guts. “Kid, you gotta tap out, okay? We’ve got this.”  

Billy feels half-crazy with sudden overwhelming fatigue. “Yeah, okay,” he agrees, all previous thoughts of arguing vanishing from his mind. He leans against the wall and turns back to watch the fight.  

It’s not long before it’s over. A drone departs, and upon it’s return, Billy stumbles over to interrupt their discussion.  

“Oh my God,” he says, unsteady on his feet, “you’re Captain America.”  

“Who the fuck is this kid?” Asks Bucky Barnes.  

“Oh my God,” he says, still unsteady on his feet, “you’re Bucky- uh, I mean, Sergeant Barnes.” 

“Bucky’s fine,” the man in question grimaces.  

“This is so cool,” Billy says out loud. His tiredness seems to have erased what little filter he previously possessed. “My boyfriend is going to freak out . Oh my god, I’m freaking out. But mainly Eddie will. He’s got your picture on the wall. Oh, shit, I wasn’t supposed to tell you this. I think I just broke some kind of code.”  

“Hey, he isn’t weird for that. I’ve got Sam’s picture on my wall,” Bucky Barnes says with a sly smirk.  

“Since when have you ever been the standard for normal, Mr Winter Soldier?” Shoots back Captain America. Bucky Barnes kicks half-heartedly at his ankle.  

“What the fuck, man?” Captain America exclaims, staring at the sky.  

“That's my pet,” Billy says quickly, gesturing at Agatha soaring through the sky, pistol in each hand, undoubtedly cackling. His smile would look innocent to all those that did not know him.  

He’s probably not helping his attempt to seem normal. Normal enough. Normal-ish. Vaguely close to normal. At least not evil.  

“Okay, you’ve been avoiding the question,” Captain America snaps his fingers, “and you look like you’re about to pass out. Let’s get milkshakes.”  

“Milkshakes? Really, Sam? Have you not met your quota for sagely mentoring and advising youth this year?”  

“Hey, you don’t gotta come, Barnes.”  

“C’mon now, I never said that. No need to get so defensive.”  

“Just for that, you can buy the milkshakes.”  

Captain America bickers with Bucky Barnes the whole walk to get milkshakes. Most places have been abandoned due to the attack, but eventually they walk far enough away that they enter a near-empty shop and order immediately. When Billy follows Bucky Barnes up to pay, he glimpses the name S. Wilson on the credit card but decides against saying anything.  

It’s certainly a sight to see Bucky Barnes crammed into a sticky booth sipping his chocolate milkshake through his curly straw, occasionally glaring at Billy or side eyeing Sam. Captain America’s shining shield rests against the table. Billy takes a surreptitious photo, just in case Eddie doesn’t believe him on this. The sugar has begun to return his wits to him, the spark of power in the very tips of his fingers, not yet spread to his bloodstream.  

Captain America sips his overly fake strawberry milkshake, side-eyes Bucky back, and then clears his throat. “So. You saw an army of undead aliens and decided to run towards it instead of away. Talk me through it?”  

“Uh, well,” Billy glances nervously at Bucky Barnes, who stares murderously across the table at him. “I didn’t have any homework to do. So.”  

“So jumping into a fight of that scale seemed like a good idea?” Sam says incredulously. “Man, you ever tried knitting? Cause lemme tell you, you need new hobbies bad .”  

Billy gulps down his caramel milkshake to buy himself time. Because the mention of homework has reminded him that he does actually have homework. Just not the usual kind.  

He looks up, makes eye contact with Sam Wilson’s deep brown eyes (he knows better to touch Bucky Barnes’ mind with a ten-foot pool, cool arm or not), gives himself a second to think holy fuck I’m about to do this , and then dives, pushes, reaches.  

Sam Wilson’s mind is a kaleidoscope of colours – the bright blue of the sea, a woman’s favourite yellow top, the purple of his perfectly shaped mug stamped with a bullseye symbol, the lightness of a smile, the blood on the famous shield, and it’s all spiralling now, flipping out of control, Billy is falling through something, falling, falling, a darker colour now, and the sky is bright and the sun is brighter, the sand so hot beneath him, and there’s a bullet and a golden beam of light, and two men are falling, and he is watching, watching, up there just to watch...  

Billy falls from Sam’s mind to the sticky diner. He sips the dregs of his milkshake, making obnoxious noises. He wonders if Sam’s mind is in disarray.  

Billy cannot be the person to fuck up Captain America’s mind.  

He will not be.  

He takes a deep breath and dives back in, thoughts cascading over his head, moving like he is the twin with lightning speed, and he sorts all the right colours and pictures into all the right orderly boxes, and then he blinks, hard.  

Sam rubs his head absently, his forehead creasing.  

 “I know you know I have power,” Billy flexes his hands on top of the table. He reckons he owes Sam Wilson some honesty, after that. “And I just thought- if that was my home, if that was my brother- or, or my cousin, and somebody had the power, I’d want them to stop.” He raises his eyes, tilts his chin. “And if I’m not prepared to stop and use my power to help others, I can’t expect anyone to stop and use their power to help them, when I can’t.”  

The two heroes exchange a glance, opening their mouths to say something – question Billy’s power, maybe, or express their disbelief at his motives. But first, Billy says, “thanks for having my back in that fight. But I have to go now. I have to get to my brother – he's going to fall, Sam,” he says nonsensically, desperately, “and I have to get to him first. I have to reach him. I have to. I can’t-” 

“You can’t be up there just to watch,” Sam says seriously.  

“Yeah,” Billy sighs, relieved, “yeah, exactly.”  

“Sometimes,” Bucky Barnes says quietly, “people are just gonna fall anyway. And that isn’t gonna be anyone’s fault. It’s just gravity.”  

Billy looks at his hands. He wants to say he’s all I have left. But that isn’t quite true. Billy has Eddie, and Robin, and the Kaplans, and despite everything, Agatha. He is very far from alone. He has himself; he is a very long way away from nothing.  

“He’s my brother,” he says instead, three small words that he can only hope convey the impossibly large feelings swelling inside his chest.  

Sam sighs. Slides a card across the table. “I’ve got a sister, you know, and I’d do a damn lot for her. Call that when you need to.”  

“And not a moment before,” Bucky glowers, though he looks notably less harsh than before, and Billy wonders if he ever had siblings, “Sam’s got enough shit to deal with without worrying about your birthday and shit.”  

“Don’t mind him, he’s got alien flesh in his socks, and his manners are spotty on a good day,” Sam reassures. “Good luck, man.”  

“Thanks,” Billy says, and begins to walk away when Bucky calls him back.  

“Kid,” he says, and seems to contemplate his words for a long minute, before finally continuing. “You gonna be okay?”  

Billy thinks about Agatha, streaking through the sky, and Robin, a phone call away, and Eddie back at home, and Tommy waiting somewhere for him.  

“Yeah, I think so,” Billy replies sincerely, and then he walks out of the diner and onto the street, gripping a paper card in his left hand until it digs into his skin.