fandomtownies | Trooper Station

The text Annie sent warning him was probably actually too late to do any good, but it came in anyway.

guess who showed up?

And she should have remembered, and she also probably should have warned him sooner, but she'd been exhausted and was actually sleeping instead of running around the island when she'd heard puttering in the kitchen this morning. It was a miracle she'd managed to get that much fired off to him with two excitable teenagers chattering at her.

Though, at least, the more excitable of the two had gotten ahead of her, rendering that warning text useless, and was proudly striding over to Diego's desk with a pair of coffees.

"Hi Dad!"

Diego hadn't even read his texts. He was basically asleep at his desk. Well, until the enthusiastic greeting happened.

"Whoa!" It was only thanks to his weird supernatural grace that he didn't fall out of his chair. "You're back."

"Why are you both so tired?" Autumn wondered, flopping into the chair Annie usually took and happily sipping her coffee -- which, unlike the cup she'd brought for Diego, was a monstrosity of whipped cream. "Mom and Ben are behind me but she's walking, like, so slow, it's annoying. But yeah, we're back."

Mom almost seemed like she had a limp, so whatever they'd gotten into must have been kind of serious.

"It's been a week." Let's just leave it at that for both of their sakes. He reached for his coffee and took a slow, deliberate sip as he tried to get his thoughts together. He wasn't surprised that his kids had come back, it was just too early for this sort of thing.

"Why do you guys keep walking into random portals?"

"I mean, Ben and I have walked through a lot of random portals," she pointed out, smiling in that way that had usually signaled 'I can't tell you more because of paradoxes' last year. "Are you saying we should stop?"

To be fair, they usually had one or both of their parents, or at least an uncle or their aunt with them. It was just kind of a hazard of being a Hargreeves.

Edited 2022-04-02 12:11 (UTC)

"I'm just saying walking into random portals and not knowing what's on the other side isn't very smart." That's how he lost her aunts and uncles in the first place.

Which was more than a fair point, but everyone was spared this turning into any kind of a further negotiation -- because Autumn would have absolutely started wheedling about whether this advice also applied to everyone else, because boy did she have some stories -- by the arrival of the other two members of this family.

"Surprise," Annie offered dryly when she walked in with Ben, eyes immediately going to how Autumn had taken her usual seat. "Autumn, you could have spilled all the coffee running ahead like that."

But also it was kind of cute how much energy she seemed to have. Even if the kids didn't have her powers, stuff like that made sure Annie saw herself in her children.

"Yeah, Autumn," Ben said. "You could have gotten third degree burns on your face and then there goes your social life."

"Psh." Autumn immediately rolled her eyes at the implication that she would lose any social standing if she had sweet burn scars. "I'd make that look so cool."

Though 'I spilled coffee running to see a young version of my dad' was maybe not, like, the coolest reason to have badass scars.

Diego looked over at Annie. "Are we sure we want to have these two in the future?"

"I've said it before, but imagine how they must have been when they were little," Annie replied, lifting a brow as she took a sip of her own coffee. "We're lucky."

But also, yes, she absolutely wanted to have these kids. She was so tired (and this coffee had so much espresso), but it was taking all her willpower not to just sit and stare at the twins and marvel at their existence and how distinctly they were their kids, even if just for a weekend.

"We were great kids," Ben said. "Perfect angels. People were lining up to babysit us."

"Everyone liked babysitting us best. We were definitely better than our cousins," Autumn contributed. "All of them."

It was entirely possible that the twins were popular with their extended family because they were fun, not because they were exceptionally well-behaved.

"Well, I mean, that's a given." As if his siblings would have cooler kids than him. "You got lucky that I'm the Hargreeves your mother chose to have kids with."

"Oh my God, Diego." Thank everything that the pollen seemed to have dissipated, and Annie wasn't treated to especially vivid mental imagery there.

Now they were just asking for, like, a kid she'd had with Luther in some universe to turn up next year.

"Are you guys the same kids who visited us last year?" she wondered. They looked the same, and they acted the same, but Annie was now familiar enough with the multiverse to know that that didn't mean a ton.

Ben looked over at Autumn for a moment. The whole future-sharing thing was so delicate. "No, we're not."

This pair had double the aunts and uncles. Fun!

"Can't you tell?" Autumn asked, grinning at them and raising her brows in a very Annie-like way. "We're so much cuter than those kids."

Also, notably, these twins had not mentioned their favorite cousin, Tim.

Thank god there was no mention of Tim.

"...do I still have long hair?" Important question.

"And the beard?" Annie had other questions about their future -- like, a lot of them -- but she had absolutely straightened up a little and taken notice at Diego's question. "We heard so much about your dad's hair last year."

(Did it give her a little, weird thrill to say 'your dad' like that? Maybe a little. She wasn't ready for them to have babies tomorrow or anything, no, but this was -- it just felt really nice to have this preview of their future. Potential future. Whatever.)

"Yeah, you still look like the wolf man," Ben teased. "It's kind of gross, actually."

Mostly because he knew his dad kept it that way for their mom. Nasty.

"It's kind of weird to see it like this, actually," Autumn added, fishing her phone out and already closing one eye as she looked over at her father. "All, like...tidy. And Mom, you look different, too."

She wasn't going to specify how, no. Paradoxes.

"Can I take a picture for our parents?" Normal questions. Also kind of a genuine question, because she was pretty sure the paradox thing only went one way? Right?

Diego shrugged. "Sure. I already know I look better than your dad anyway."

He wasn't a wolf man, for one.

"But only if your mother is okay with it." Look at him. Natural parent.

"Yeah, I'm fine with it, but I want to know how I look different," Annie replied, smiling at the deference even as she was moving over to make sure she was in frame with Diego for this picture. "You can't say things like that and not follow up."

She strongly suspected she and Autumn got their hair dyed together, even if it hadn't been explicitly mentioned this year. No way she didn't still have those grays the other twins had told her about, and she could tell her daughter probably wasn't a natural blonde even if she wore it well.

"Well, I mean, you're older," Ben said. Then quickly followed it up with, "But still pretty."

She was aging gracefully!

Autumn coughed something that sounded a whole lot like, "Mama's boy," into her elbow as she lined up her phone to frame her weirdly young parents. "Everyone smile and say 'Paradox.'"

Also, she had no room to talk, considering she was something of a daddy's girl herself.

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