xp_logs | Molly and Artie: Reunion

Molly and Artie: Reunions can be great. Can also be hard.

Molly was in the gym. It still looked the same. Nearly everything did, except for the big and little changes: like the people. She was still trying to get used to that. It'd probably take awhile. Her stuff was gone, so she was borrowing clothes from people, and buying a lot of things in town to replace it. They'd given her things to her parents. She didn't know how to tell them yet that she was back. And older. For all they knew she was dead.

Wearing a pink tanktop, a pair of gym shorts, and some green and pink sneakers, Molly held a stick in her hand and went through her morning training motions. She'd gotten used to doing them while with Sif so it was weird not to. Spinning the stick around like a blade, Molly glided about like she were fighting an invisible attacker.

Artie had gotten the word that Molly was back (not dead! not dead! not a Frankenberry cat person!) earlier that morning when he checked his email. And now, standing in the door of the gym, he stared at her and tapped the wall for her attention before waving hello and walking into the room. Fuck. Molly was back.

Molly was midway through getting in a jab at her 'opponent' when she heard the tapping, then turned to look. "Oh...um, hi!" she said, using the stick to prop her elbow upon. They told her some people were different but she didn't know exactly who. So she didn't know if Artie was a new Artie and was just saying hey, or if it was original Artie.

And she didn't want to end the world by asking.

Artie gave her a broad smile and he held out his arms for a hug. He wasn't normally tactile but the sheer relief of seeing Molly - older, different, changed but still his Molly was overwhelming.

Open arms. That was the only signal Molly needed. Her face lit up like fireworks on 4th of July and she took off running, forgetting the stick on the ground as she took him up on the offer and wrapped her arms around him tightly, burying her face in his shoulder. She'd only grown maybe an inch or so.

"Artie! Holy crap!"

Sometimes she expected them to look older, but it was her whose time had passed quickly and not them. For them it was still fresh, still recent. But coming back, and seeing things for real and not just in her mind was making her remember too.

She was also a little reluctant to let go so soon and kept hugging him for a bit

Artie leaned into the hug and then nudged Molly away, gesturing at the bench at the side of the gym. "Move back, so I can talk to you," he signed, running text underneath as captions. "You're old. What the fuck?"

Molly blinked owlishly. "Whoops," she said, quickly taking two steps back with a giggle. She peered down at herself, then back up at him.

"Oh...! Yeah, that. Um...well....I was in Asgard. And...sorta, other places but....time goes by quicker there. Soo....now I'm 18." she said casually like that happened everyday. For her, weird stuff did. She'd gotten used to it. If it didn't THAT was weird.

"If I would have known I was coming back I totally would have brought presents. But...I mostly just have my armor and weapons and stuff."

Asgard. Other dimensions. Of course. Artie shook his head. Of course. "So, you're coming on my weekend away to Quebec, then, so we have can have drinks, because I think you deserve them and I need them," he said and then, looking at her more carefully, "I bet you have a hell of a story. We missed you." Having Molly here again - it was steadying. A link to everything, before. All of the real people, not the Frankenberrycat people were like that but ... time. She'd had enough time that the rawness of the world ending had faded. Or at least, Artie liked to think that.

The words were honest. He seemed...almost relieved, lighter. Molly smiled. "I missed you guys too! Tandy and Ty did too. It's...kinda weird to be back and everything look the same, though. Like...everyone's the same age as when we...y'know." Blew up. She tried to slip her hands in her pockets but found she had no pockets so she awkwardly folded her arms, trying to look like she meant to do that. Smooth.

"What's in Quebec?"

"A drinking age that will let us sit down in a bar and talk about everything that happened to you," Artie said, still signing, words running underneath as captions. "I remember, when I came back from the Morlock tunnels, it was like... everything here was the same but I'd changed. Or something." He shrugged. "You okay, though?"

Molly tilted her head. "I still gotta get a fake ID," she said thoughtfully. She wasn't sure who she needed to ask for that. Maybe Wademan. She glanced up with sudden realization.

"Did Wade....is he alive?" she said with a quiet look of dread in her eyes in anticipation. No matter what it was she was gonna be strong. Asgardians were hard to kill. It happened, but it was often a huge ceremony. Death was a big deal there. They'd read about Viking funerals in school...the Asgardians did that. Boats, fire....the whole chimichanga. She'd seen it before. It was beautiful. But it wasn't something she wanted to think about doing. Especially if he was someone else now, from what she heard.

That was gonna take some getting used to.

"Please," Artie said. "I got you covered on that front." He paused and looked away for a moment, the crawling wrongness he felt when he met some of these new people, fake versions of people who he cared about (don't say 'loved') or just knew, replaced with facsimiles that were so wrong but sometimes so familiar, running across his skin. "Wade is the same. Don't worry. He's still ours. He's our Wade."

"Oh," Molly said. It was her turn to look relieved, as punctuated with a huge smile. She then blinked, doing a double take.

"You make fake IDs?"

She knew he worked with the spies but she didn't know he actually MADE them. Or maybe he knew where to go to make them. Not that she ever needed one in the past or wanted one.

Artie slipped a hand into his hoodie pocket and held it out with a drivers license with Molly's face on it, fingers angled so that it looked as though he were actually holding it. "Yep. I'm good at it, too," he signed, putting it down on the bench. "Actually, we're going to have to update all of your documents..."

"Yeah, that's what they told me," Molly said. She only looked a little older but enough to where people might wonder.

Reflexively, she reached out to touch it but stopped herself.

"There was a Asgardian who could do what you do. His name is Loki. He's a jerk but he's....how I got back. He was trying to kill me and Tandy and Ty by doing it, though."

Artie noted her caution at the illusion and let it vanish, his face, usually so expressive, going utterly still for a moment as he asked "Loki tried to kill you? I know you're going to hear this again from Marie-Ange but I'm going to recommend that you sit down with her and have a long chat about all of this. You're okay, right?"

Molly nodded, sitting down on one of the benches. "Yep. We were trying to get some frost giants...they were attacking one of the nine realms...and so Loki tried to send us home because he thought it'd break the bond. But...it didn't," she said, forgetting none of them knew what that meant for the moment.

"So we got the frost giants. And then Sif...she released us. So I came back with Tandy and Ty."

She didn't talk about the rest. There wasn't much to say.

"Sif told me she and Mary Ang--Marie Ange worked together in Asgard."

Artie shook his head. "Break the bond? What?" A moment later he held up a hand. "Hold on. I want to put this out here now, before I mess up. You're different and not like... them. I'm trying to keep..." He could sign the concept he needed but couldn't translate it simultaneously, so he switched to pure images - Molly, three inches tall. He reached over to split it in two, dragging out an image of her as she had been, sliding it over to one side and one of her now to the other side. "But I will mess up and I will need some time, okay?"

Molly stared up at the two images, then nodded. "Okay." she said. This was going to be weird for everyone. It already was, really.

She stood up. "So..." she began, then walked over to the doorway, peeking out to make sure no one was coming in, then went back to the bench and patted beside her. Once he sat down, she finally spoke, shrugging.

"I forget sometimes that people didn't know. Don't freak out, okay?" she said, watching the way the rays of sunlight moved across the shiny wooden floor. It made the oils in the varnish they used to keep it that way look like a kaleidoscope of colors depending on what angle you looked at it. It reminded her of the rainbow bridge. Or what was left of it.

"That day when the mansion was attacked...I died. Me and Tandy and Ty and Paige. We all did. And...the Valkyrie, this woman who collects warriors after they pass away....came for Paige and she convinced her to take us with her and for us to live instead, as long as Paige agreed to work with her. And then we'd be working for the gods like...servants? Sort of? In exchange for y'know...being alive. It made us bound to them until we 'served' enough time. Each of us got claimed by a different god."

Molly stood up again, making a face. "But Loki decided to meddle after awhile...and there's a rule if you go back home before your service is over then you die for reals. So he got some frost giants....giant guys who make frost...to attack a village in one of the other realms...Sif knew they had info on a potential invasion into Asgard so they sent us after them. We didn't know Loki was behind it. So when we got there, Loki sent both us and the frost giants to Midgard...Earth. He thought it'd kill us but it didn't since we were still trying to capture the frost giants....which he sent to make a muck cause he's a big jerk. And we stopped them. And....Sif and the other gods made--said....we could stay."

She shook her head. "I dunno how we're gonna explain that to the new people. Or the old people either. I guess we'll figure it out, huh? X-People see a lot of odd things, after all."

Artie looked over at her for a long moment and then stood, stepping forward a couple of steps to wrap her in a hug before pulling back to conversational distance. "You died? You actually died? Holy fuck..." He shook his head in disbelief.

"Jean died, once, saving us at Alkalai Lake. I would have been... eleven, I think." The dates were still confused because it was only after they'd found his family that they'd untangled his date of birth. The day, sitting on the plane, clutching the edge of his seat as the plane took off, knowing the water was about to come down on them was still vivid. "Rachel died. Nate's future ghosts died. Alison... might as well have died from Apocalypse. We'll cope. We coped before, we'll cope this time around, too. It isn't okay, but we'll manage. I mean," his lips quirked into a smile, "everyone got turned into other genders once. How is you being dead the weirdest thing we've ever seen?" There was a pause. "Who did you serve?" Unsaid: were they good to you? Did they hurt you?

Molly blinked at Artie, making sure she read what she thought she read. "Other....genders? Wow, that's kinda awesome!" Weird, but awesome. She didn't know Nate or Alison but she knew the other two.

Artie nodded. Yeah.

"Sif took care of me. She taught stuff. She was really nice. The Warrior's Three helped," she piped up with a small grin, which faded a little as she realized she probably wouldn't see them again.

"Come on. Let's get something to eat." And he could enjoy having one more piece of world fitting back the way it should be. Older, changed, but from his world. "And plan a weekend in Montreal."

Molly stood up, stretching her arms above her head.

"I don't think I've been to Canada before. Do I have to know French?"

"Nope. You're a tourist. Point, smile, look pretty and use google translate when everything fails." Artie held up a hand, typed for a moment and his phone said "Bonjour! Je suis un touristique et je voudrais acheter une bouteille de ce vin rouge là . Merci." He grinned. "See? Easy. And google says it's correct, too."

Stopping in her tracks, Molly blinked at Artie like he'd just swallowed a goat.

"I understood the first part and the last part. And...I need to get a cell phone," she said, squinting. She made a face.

"Midgard technology is so boring, though. Asgardian communicators use 3D projections, like Star Wars."

"I'll have stuff for you by tomorrow morning. How does that sound? Papers, phone... stuff. And you wouldn't want that - people will think you're a mutant."

Molly made a sour face. "Yeah I know. I'm probably gonna take it apart and try to see if I can make something like your powers for like...in the field and stuff. A limited field illusion projector. It got fried any way, but the parts might be salvageable. It would be totally cool to make people think we went one way when we went another way."

She then nodded. "And tomorrow sounds awesome! So...do I get to keep my name or do I have to make up a new one?"

It was Artie's turn to stare. Okay. "Start with an image inducer," he offered. "Do you want a new name? Your call."

"An image inducer? Oh yeah! But isn't the field like...super small?" Molly said. He didn't look like he really wanted to talk about that so she shrugged.

"I dunno if I wanna new name. I might have to, right? If I'm like....supposed to be 16 and I'm not?" Not that she really looked MUCH different.

"I have no freaking idea. I don't need them. But they might be a point to start with. I have no idea. I don't... technology isn't my thing." Artie held his hands out in defeat. "I'm not as bad as Wanda - swear to god, she hexed her computers but I'm not Doug. As far as the name goes - probably not. There are lots of people with a name as common as yours."

"Ooh, I could talk to Kurt! He's got one! He...." Molly trailed off. Artie used the past tense for Wanda. She glanced away. So she was gone too.

"I should probably ask the Professor. I don't want to draw attention, y'know?" she said quietly.

"Talk to the Prof. Talk to Wade. And Kurt. He's not frankenberrycat." Artie ignored the emotion he saw on her face.

It was Molly's turn to look at Artie funny. She blinked. "A what?" she said. She was sure she read that right, but it didn't make sense.

"The new people. The ones that ... happened when Xorn put the world back together again. Them."

"Oh," Molly said, frowning slightly at the way he said the last word, like he were talking about an enemy.

"Why do you call them that?"

Artie looked around, to be sure that there were no observers and began to sign, fast and furious, emotions clear on his face as the captions ran beside what he was saying. He didn't, for once, bother to correct the word choices and syntax of the English - it was a word for word transliteration of what he was signing. "Imagine that all these people you knew and loved and cared about have been replaced by people who are almost the same, but they're different - different ages, backgrounds, pasts, reactions and everything you knew about them has gone out the window and you have to pretend it's business as usual, when they're not the same person they were three months ago and you can't ever say anything. Yes, I hate them. Of course I fucking hate them. They're not real. They're people pulled in from other realities to fill holes in this one and all the world has changed and they will never, ever replace the people we used to know."

Molly fell silent for a few moments. Artie was breathing hard, his face red, brows furrowed, like he wanted to kick something and there just wasn't anything good enough.

Her frown deepened. "But they don't know that, Artie. I know it's bad for us but...I don't wanna judge somebody I haven't met just cause they look like somebody I know. It's not fair. It's not fair that people died and it's not fair that we have to see people look like people we know."

She glanced up at Artie, easily a head shorter than him.

"But I can't blame them. If I did my heart would hurt and I would worry about it all the time and I could never be happy. And I wanna be happy. Being sad and mad takes too much effort. But you can be mad at them if you wanna. If you need to be. Cause....I know it's just more bad stuff for you after the Morlocks and stuff and I'm sorry."

She wrapped her arms around him tightly.

Artie leaned into the hug, resting his head on top of hers. "When did you get to be so smart?" he asked, pulling away.

Molly grinned, peering up at him. "Since always," she said with a shrug. She leaned against his shoulder.

"I missed you. If I woulda known I was coming back I would have brought presents."

"Next time, okay?" Artie said with a smile.