defenderofdesmoines | MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

Annie, Diego and Five -- along with the other four living Hargreeves -- may have arrived back in 2022 yesterday, but Annie anticipated that it was going to be a long, long while before everything actually felt settled. For one thing, it was a hell of a thing to find a four-bedroom house in Baltimore to rent on a moment's notice -- but thankfully, Annie's salary made things a little easier. (A little. She didn't have enough influence in this universe to do more than throw money at the problem, but she'd still found them a pretty decent house in like, an afternoon, anyway. Magic at work, right there.)

But for another thing, America's Super-Sweetheart had gone completely fucking AWOL for ten days, and thus had spent the better part of her first cup of coffee this morning getting screamed at over the phone by Ashley.

One promise of extra rehearsals with her choreographer and an assurance that she'd be there Friday afternoon for a hair appointment (she wasn't prepared to ask yet, but Ashley had mentioned that this was what she got for insisting on never wearing a wig again, so...there was that) later, and Annie was finally off the phone. She poured herself a soothing second cup of coffee, blew out a sigh in the hopes that some of that yelled-at tension left her shoulders, and sat down at the kitchen table to try to go through the paperwork involved in renting this house and transferring utilities to her own name.

It was fairly slow going, considering she was still pretty much exhausted despite sleeping hard last night, but at least it was a happy, relieved kind of exhaustion? This had been going on for almost a full year, and having everyone back and in one piece (and maybe even with some extra pieces, in fact!) was almost surreal. Surrealism didn't help her scan through real estate legalese any easier, but at least she didn't have much else to do at the moment.

[open for the dude who lives there, his brother who hates doors, or anyone who'd like to check in on these newly-returned time travelers]

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"So what, her strategy was to, like, force the issue until you just resigned and agreed?" Annie asked, frowning. (A tiny, tiny part of her was a little jealous, but that was neither constructive or very mature of her, so she'd just work that out in the gym later.) "I'm glad you were able to talk to her at the end there. She seems -- confused? Is that the word I want? It feels so condescending, but...."

But not like she was a bad person. Just someone who was maybe even more mixed up about her emotions and how to actually express them than the Hargreeves were.

"Most of us figured out our dad was bullshit before adulthood." Basically by the time Ben died, everybody but Luther knew. "So it must be a lot to figure it out as an adult, and not have anyone to lean against."

He felt for her, he really did. It was why he let her go with the briefcase. She definitely needed to sort some stuff out.

"That was her mom, right? At the end, with all the -- fanciness?" Annie asked, trying to follow along. "I mean...yeah."

Annie glanced up at Diego, giving a rueful little shrug. "If anyone can sympathize with being lied to by your own mom your entire life, it's me. And I can't fault her taste in men."

Execution was seriously lacking, though.

"I hope she's okay."

"Yeah, that was her." So Lila had also watched her mother be gunned down as well. "I'm sure she's okay. She's the survivor type."

Imagine how awful that would be, seeing your family gunned down in front of you.

"Seems like you kinda have to be in this line of business," Annie replied lightly. "Man, if all of that had happened to us, like, a year ago, I would have been so much more worried the whole time."

Now she was nearly as cavalier about it all as the rest of them. (Mostly. It was kind of similar to how Diego was able to roll with the merchandising aspect of her career, mostly.)

"Good thing we had all that crap happen to us last summer, huh?" he said lightly. "It prepared us to handle this shit."

"I mean, think about how worried I was about you going into Sage Grove last year, and apply that to waiting for you outside the federal building," Annie replied, keeping her tone light as she went up for another kiss. "We've come so far."

Shame there weren't any giant dicks in that FBI building, really.

There had been dead FBI guys pinned to the ceiling. That was almost as weird as the giant dick guy.

"We have," he said before kissing her back. "Think we can handle just about anything now."

"That's how you jinx us," Annie warned, shaking her head. "We get to handle nothing for awhile. Nothing but, like, moving four adults with wildly varying taste into a single-family home."

Honestly, she was so up to that challenge. Walk in the park after the last two weeks.

"That's going to be hard enough," he said. "I mean, finding a bed for Luther alone..."

"Oh, we'll get him a Cali King from my universe," Annie said, waving a hand. "That is where my specific resources come in handy, beyond just the bankrolling. There's so many built-in resources for supes back home. None of them are ready for that."

Just a matter of making sure they didn't buy anything from that MySheet guy by accident.

"That is a nice aspect of your universe." Did it make up for the other crap? Not really, but it was still nice. "I think he's the only one that'll need the help. Everyone else lived on their own as an adult. His first experience of it was on the moon, followed by 1963."

"Hey, my first experience living on my own was when I moved here," Annie pointed out with a little smile. "We'll help him figure it out. And I'd still like to see if Vanya wants to train with me a little, if she's open to it and we can figure out a way to practice safely."

She might have to take her to the tower or something, and Annie didn't really like that prospect. But at least it was a possibility, and it hadn't been for almost a year.

"Think there is a way to practice safely with her powers?" Diego asked. "You saw her take out all those Commission guys."

"I also saw her very carefully blow up some fruit," Annie pointed out. "So I don't know. There might be something we can use at work. But I also just think she needs to defend herself a little -- the rest of you can fight on top of your powers."

And Annie was fairly evenly matched in size with Vanya, barring being a few inches taller, and could probably take any accidental sound damage that might occur better than most.

"Dad never thought she needed the training for some weird reason." Because he was a liar and an asshole. "But I guess it'd be good for her to know how to punch someone before obliterating them with sound."

"Sometimes you don't want to draw that kind of attention," Annie said, speaking from experience. "It's the downside of showy powers. Sometimes you just want to punch a guy's lights out without making a huge mess, or killing him, or making sure the neighbors look." She shrugged. "Just seems like a good idea for her to have some of that in her wheelhouse."

Otherwise she was kind of a sitting duck if someone actually managed to get the jump on her, too.

"Couldn't hurt," he said. "And nothing says bonding like punching each other in the face."

MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

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