defenderofdesmoines | MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

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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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"Yeah," he said with a nod. "Have to introduce them to cell phones and things like that. I feel kind of bad for them. I got to go back home but they're in a new place all over again."

"Yeah, and it seemed like they were all there longer than you were, even." Allison had had time to meet a guy and marry him (not to mention how long it had likely taken her vocal chords to heal.) Klaus had had time to create and lead a cult (which was something Annie kind of felt like they should watch for in the present, too.) "Well. I'm trying to get everything I can together for them to help -- I think I'm gonna send all this stuff over to my lawyer to look over, so they'll have somewhere to live sooner than later. And I can get them like...hooked up with anything you'd think they'd want."

Phones to start, for sure. Maybe some modern clothes that didn't even have any members of her team on them.

"Thank you," he said, pressing a kiss against her cheek. "You're really saving the day, here."

"It's literally the least I can do," Annie assured him, reaching up to play with his hair a little. In a soothing way, not a sexy way. (Not an intentionally sexy way, anyway.) "I'm just thankful they're here. And I can like...actually get to know them a little, maybe."

Rather than try to form relationships with her eventual in-laws under constant stress and threat of apocalypse.

"Yeah, there hasn't really been time for that, has there?" Not with the apocalypses and all. "Shit, I feel like I need to get to know them again. It's not like we've been able to have a family dinner or anything."

"Well. Except for the one with Dad."

"That super doesn't count," Annie assured him, her eyes narrowing slightly at the reminder. "Like, let's maybe plan on no insults or exploding fruit at the next one? But that can be a priority, once they're moved in and stuff. We can just...like, do normal family shit and hang out with them. Order some pizzas. Play Monopoly or something."

Annie, no, that would probably guarantee bloodshed.

Edited 2022-05-25 13:24 (UTC)

"Maybe we hold off on the board games for a bit." Because, yeah, he knew exactly how that would go. "Because that would lead to insults and possibly exploding fruit."

"Fair." Even if there was totally Seven Monopoly coming. Annie herself was a gamepiece! "Honestly, I'm thrilled to be able to get to know your siblings who aren't Five. Not that Five isn't great, but like...I had so much fun that one afternoon with Klaus and Allison and Vanya."

A little social lubrication helped things a whole lot. The dancing, too.

"Okay, Five isn't great, you don't have to lie about that," Diego joked. "But I get what you're saying."

"Five's Five." Annie had more of an appreciation for what that meant than ever before, considering she'd been stuck with him for awhile there and...even if she hadn't really helped at the time, she could also appreciate how annoying it must be to wrangle six opinionated adults who all wanted to argue with you all the time. (She would appreciate it even more soon, actually.) "But yeah. They're...more fun than I expected."

More normal, really. Diego's siblings had existed as ideas and types for so long that she was already really enjoying getting to know them as actual people.

"And I love seeing you around them," she added, offering up a shy smile. "You're all good for each other."

Despite the potential for insults and exploding fruit.

"Yeah, we are," Diego admitted. "Guess Dad was right about that one singular thing."

"Not the way he probably meant," Annie corrected, shaking her head. "I mean you clearly like being around each other."

Even when they were bickering. Annie had never had siblings, of course, but watching the Hargreeves together was the first time she'd ever gotten a real sense of what she was missing by being an only child.

"But also that, yeah," she added, agreeing. "You are literally stronger together. Like -- did you know you could do that? With the bullets?"

"Uh, no, not really," Diego said. "It was like one of those things where I felt like I could do it, but there was also a big chance I was about to be shot a hundred times."

It hadn't been the smartest move. Luckily it all worked out.

"I'm really glad you weren't shot a hundred times," Annie said, much lighter than she felt, as she went up onto her toes to give him a grateful kiss. "That was actually the second time I got to see you do something like that."

Look at Annie protecting the timeline! It was probably okay to talk about it now, though, right?

"The future Five and I saw at first was -- interesting."

"Oh yeah, you saw the apocalypse." So much had happened in the last two weeks, it was easy to forget. "What was that like?"

"I mean, honestly kind of terrifying because I didn't know what was happening," Annie admitted. "But you were all there -- including Ben, so like...I finally got to see ghost Ben. And you were all fighting, and it was...amazing."

Like, could Allison still blow up people's heads if she just used her powers near her siblings?

"You did a flip and threw a bunch of bullets back at the guys who shot them," she added. "It was pretty -- " Knee-weakeningly hot. "-- unexpected."

"Cool." He wasn't entirely sure he could do that now, but it was cool to know he could do it at some point. "I mean, not cool with the apocalypse, but that part specifically is cool."

"Yeah. And you looked like this," she added, playing with his beard a little. Which had in turn had given her a little blueprint on how to turn his wolfman look into something appropriately apocalyptically badass. "But like, everyone was at like, what I would imagine is max power. Klaus had all these ghosts fighting for him, Allison blew up a couple guys' heads, Luther took, like, a missile to the back like it was a bee sting...."

"Blew up some heads?" He didn't recall Dad encouraging Allison to do that in training.

"Yeah, it was really gross," Annie shared, because that had been the thing that had really cemented that memory for her. "She said she heard a rumor she blew their minds, and...."

Annie just widened her eyes and blew out a little, "Poof."

"Maybe we don't tell her about that," he suggested. "She's already a wuss when it comes to using her powers, we don't want to freak her out more about it."

"Yeah, hers was the furthest departure from what I knew she could do," Annie agreed. It wasn't that big a stretch to assume Vanya could just casually disable tank shells or whatever, but Allison's demonstration there had been -- wow. "And I'm gonna guess you've maybe learned a lesson about taunting her about using her powers, too."

Though also that had been sort of hilarious. Had the rest of the evening not turned out to include resurrected trauma and Annie's forcible removal from a tiki bar and the discovery of a dead body, she would have absolutely made more of a thing of hearing a rumor Diego had punched himself in the face.

"You can't possibly think that's the first time that happened to me." Nor would it be the last.

"Babe, it looked like it hurt," Annie pointed out, gently concerned that he would keep needling Allison if that was the retaliation he could look forward to.

Also, look at that. One of the vestiges of this trip, slipping out in her speech.

"It did hurt." A lot, in fact! "I punch pretty hard."

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