Infinity Smashed: Thomas Goes Home
Jun. 22nd, 2016 03:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeThomas Goes Home
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 2000
Summary: After a year and a half in Treehouse, Thomas returns to home in Texas, and has NO IDEA how it's going to turn out.
Notes: This story had no prompter, and was sponsored by the Patreon crew! More notes at the bottom.
Much as he’s grown to love Treehouse, Thomas has always ached to go back to Austin. Treehouse is lush and green, cool and damp. Austin is hot and dry, with oak and ashe juniper and limestone. Treehouse has monsters, friendly and otherwise, who all want in on your business, and he likes and loves a lot of them. But while they are his second family and Treehouse his second home, they can't replace his first.
So when Thomas gets to return home, after a year and a half in Treehouse, he's aching and terrified and set to blow with longing, all at the same time. What if his family has changed? What if he's changed? What if the intricate puzzle of his family, all the colorful, unique pieces, don't fit together right anymore?
He can't just pretend it'll all be fine. He knows what happened with Raige. And Raige offers to come, but Thomas knows he had his own crap to deal with. M.D… well, she can't. Hell, Strong-Legs offers, and even though they both know that it'll never happen (the PIN would flip), it still means something. He hugs the big alien-emu-thing, and it fusses with his hair with teeth and tongue and signs, “I am so glad you get to go home. Jealous too, I think.”
Strong-Legs is currently in the long winding line of people hoping to find their homeland via the Jaunter's League, but they know odds are long. Strong-Legs will likely be in Treehouse for life.
“What if…?” Thomas starts.
“You are a very brave mammal thing. Whatever happens, I know you will manage. I will always have space in my nest for you. Now, take your collar, for bravery.”
Thomas hasn't busted out his Earth clothes in a long time. The army pants and undershirt are frayed and stained and torn; he lost the jacket ages ago. Thank god he was all about the extra-baggy clothes in the eighth grade, or they'd be far too small for him.
He puts them on, and after a moment's hesitation, the ornate flax-and-feather collar Strong-Legs made him months before. It looks weird, all bright and nice next to the beat-up old clothes, but Thomas doesn't feel right otherwise.
Then he takes a deep breath, packs his bags, and goes to join the Jaunter's Leaguer assigned to take him home.
The transition between worlds is seamless and easy, so much so that Thomas doesn't even notice. He tries to stay cool, but his knee keeps jangling so much that the Leaguer asks, “Are you all right?”
Thomas nods automatically.
“Returning from an exile… it's very stressful. A lot of people find it difficult.”
This time, Thomas actually looks at the Leaguer. They—Thomas can't tell their gender and forgot their name the moment they told him-- were pale, with African features, long hair, and a white suit. They were looking at him with concern.
“Yeah,” he admits. “It's pretty intense, you know?”
“I'd imagine so. Is there something I can do to help? Get you a drink, maybe? Or, if you'd rather, we could time this when only certain members of your family are home.”
But Thomas shakes his head. “No, no, I think it'd be better to just do it, you know? Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Thanks, though. For acting like a real person, and not just a government suit.”
The Leaguer's eyebrows go way up for a second, but just for a second, and then they say, “you’re welcome,” and Thomas forgets about it.
Because then they're at his front door, and the house looks the same but different—new plants in the garden, new door, but the doorbell rings just the same, and this his mother is there, and they just stare at each other for what seems like forever.
Her hair is different, braided and bunned. She's gained some weight. But her face is the same, and she's frozen, pale, like he's come back from the dead.
To her, he has.
Behind her, he hears his father shout in Spanish, “Maria? Who's at the door?”
“Hi, Ma,” Thomas says, and his voice cracks. “I'm back.”
And then there's screaming and laughing and crying and everyone is rushing to the door and Thomas has never been simultaneously hugged by so many people in his life.
...
It takes a while for everyone to calm down, at first. Marcus isn't home—he's out in Afghanistan—but the rest of the immediate family is: Ma, Papi, and Thomas’s younger brother Christopher, who's fourteen now and grown a ton, and everyone's emotional. Christopher in particular is almost shaking with it.
When tears and hugs have turned to requests for explanation, the Leaguer steps in. They'd stayed so much in the background, Thomas isn't even sure his family noticed them until then.
Thomas hadn't known how he'd explain to his family—he already knew how that'd gone for Raige. But the Leaguer, in their businesslike (if slightly off, fashion-wise) suit and their crisp (if slightly off) English, lays everything out as though they do this every day. (Which they might.)
At first, his family don't buy it, especially his ma, who has that squinty look like she's wondering if Thomas got nabbed by a cult. His pops just looks confused, and Christopher… well, he’s gotten really still and really quiet and Thomas is a little worried about that.
The Leaguer, who seems to expect this, turns to Thomas and says, “Sometimes, it can ease the transition by introducing your people from your first world to the people from your second. Do you think that would be helpful to you?”
“Um,” Thomas says. “Yeah. That'd be great. Can we?”
“I'd go for that,” says his mother right away, and he can tell that this is her way of wrapping her head around it. If she can see it, touch it, shake it and see if it rattles, she can deal with it.
Christopher, however, isn't taking it nearly so well.
“This is bullshit,” he says. “No way. You can't just come back after all this time like it's nothing! I'm not dealing with this. Screw you.” And he stomps off to his room.
Their father looks pained. “He's upset,” he says to Thomas. “He took it very hard when you were… gone.”
Gone. Dead. And with Marcus overseas… no, Thomas can't really be mad. In Christopher's shoes, he'd probably be flipping out too.
So Thomas's dad stays to help Christopher, and his mom comes to Jaunt Central.
It's bedlam. Now that the League is aware of the place, a lot of people from Treehouse are wading through the red tape in hopes of following Thomas's example. Until everything gets settled, the League has opened a semi-permanent gate between Jaunt Central and Treehouse. (In true local style, Treehouse has already nominated and approved a gate team to keep an eye on it.) Unfortunately, the League and Treehouse have very different ways of doing things, causing a lot of friction.
Despite the weird architecture and unusual beings all over the halls, the paperwork seems to relax his mom some. This, she understands; she does it all day as a cop.
And she gets to meet Strong-Legs, who is very, very excited to meet Thomas's mother after only knowing her from stories and one old worn-out wallet photo.
“Oh, oh!” it signs, practically dancing in place. “The great matriarch! I am so excited! May I do the hug thing? Is that polite?”
Thomas relays the question to his mother, who is watching everything a little guardedly. “It really wants to hug you. That's like, one of the five human things it knows.”
“Sure, why not?” she says. “I always wanted to hug a dinosaur as a kid.”
Strong-Legs is delighted. “Be ready! I will touch you now!” And it wraps wings and neck around her. It even does the three-back-pats thing, which Thomas hadn't intended to teach it but which it apparently presumed an imperative part of the hugging process.
“She is not patting me too? I have done it wrong?”
“Do the back-pat thing,” Thomas says, and his mother obeys, a bemused look on her face.
“Smells kinda like Cousin Carmen's pigeons. I wondered why you smelled like them...”
“Oh,” Thomas says, “we're roommates. Were.”
They can't talk very long, with Thomas interpreting both ways, but it still makes him (and apparently his mom) feel much better. Apparently smell is something so primal that she can accept it and prove to herself that Thomas wasn't abducted by Moonies, and Thomas no longer feels like his Treehouse life is over, full-stop.
And as they head back home, Thomas finds out that the Leaguer isn't just his ride home.
“I'm a League adjustment social worker,” they explain, “or rather, that's the easiest translation of my job.”
“Oh!” Thomas says, “like Bobcat!”
For a moment, they frown, then go, “Oh, you mean Fluji 808C Alpha. Yes, though our specialties are a little different. Regardless, if you or your family is interested, I will not only assist in the appropriate documentation, but offer therapeutic services to you and your family, to help in your adjustment.”
Thomas thinks about it. “I'm not sure. I think my head's still spinning.”
“Do you have a card?” Ma asks. “We'll call you.”
“I have a digital version...”
“No computer at home.”
“I'll get one printed.” And Thomas has the feeling they've just asked for the equivalent of a telegram or smoke signals, but nevertheless, they do get a business card, for a 'Jem EA07 X.' (The dimensions are a little weird. Different paper standards, presumably—not that this seems to be made of paper.)
“Crap,” Thomas says suddenly, realizing why Jem got that weird face earlier about the 'human being' crack, “you're a construct aren't you? Shit, man, I didn't--”
“Thomas!”
“Sorry, I just--”
But Jem's smiling ruefully. “I see you didn't realize. You’re forgiven; please don’t do it again. Now, let's get you home and decide what explanations we'll give, and to who...”
...
For the next three months, it's a huge reunion. Everybody tells everybody that Thomas has come back home, and comes to prove it to themselves, and there are barbecues with neighbors, friends, and people he hasn't seen since kindergarten. Some people get the true story, others get a firm, “we aren't ready to talk about it right now.” It's exhilarating, but also exhausting, with all the paperwork and stuff on top.
One evening, Thomas just staggers into his room, flops face-first onto the bed, and groans, “No mas. I'm done.”
For a while, he just lies there. Then Christopher comes in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Since his explosion, Christopher has been avoiding Thomas and saying little, treating him like an annoying poltergeist haunting the house. Now he says, “I'm sorry.”
Thomas sits up.
“I know I'm being weird. It's just...” and Christopher's voice is cracking, and his eyes are full of tears behind his glasses, “you were dead, man, and it took me forever to get used to it and now you're just back...”
Thomas can tell that after all this, the last thing Christopher wants is for Thomas to make a big deal about it. So instead, he says, “you still got the N64?”
And they play Mario Kart like they used to, and Christopher creams him because Thomas is a year and a half out of practice.
“Man, you've gotten good,” Thomas complains.
Christopher shrugs. “I practiced while you were gone.”
Later, Thomas will find out that even though Christopher is much better than him now, he never beat Thomas's best times. He left them up, digital ghosts that he could race over and over even though Thomas himself wasn't there. But he doesn't know that yet, so he says, “God, I guess the N64 is old news by now, huh?”
“Heh, yeah. Nintendo's got the GameCube out now.” And when Thomas's face lights up, he adds, “sorry, bro. It really sucks. I've switched to Xbox.”
“What? Damn!” Then, “what's an Xbox?”
Which is how they end up playing Halo all night. Their parents don't even try to stop them. And when it's six AM and they're both exhausted, things are okay again.
Notes: Jem is an old character. (This is the only drawing of them, and it's from... god, 2004.) As for how Thomas realized they were a construct, the hexadecimal sequence is a dead giveaway—M.D. also has one, though she prefers to forget it exists. The League-wide legal standard is company, individual ID number, and birth order. (Jem's is X because they have a twin, which gives them a special null value.) There's a whole complicated political argument about the reclamation and empowerment around these names, which aren't relevant here.
Series: Infinity Smashed
Word Count: 2000
Summary: After a year and a half in Treehouse, Thomas returns to home in Texas, and has NO IDEA how it's going to turn out.
Notes: This story had no prompter, and was sponsored by the Patreon crew! More notes at the bottom.
Much as he’s grown to love Treehouse, Thomas has always ached to go back to Austin. Treehouse is lush and green, cool and damp. Austin is hot and dry, with oak and ashe juniper and limestone. Treehouse has monsters, friendly and otherwise, who all want in on your business, and he likes and loves a lot of them. But while they are his second family and Treehouse his second home, they can't replace his first.
So when Thomas gets to return home, after a year and a half in Treehouse, he's aching and terrified and set to blow with longing, all at the same time. What if his family has changed? What if he's changed? What if the intricate puzzle of his family, all the colorful, unique pieces, don't fit together right anymore?
He can't just pretend it'll all be fine. He knows what happened with Raige. And Raige offers to come, but Thomas knows he had his own crap to deal with. M.D… well, she can't. Hell, Strong-Legs offers, and even though they both know that it'll never happen (the PIN would flip), it still means something. He hugs the big alien-emu-thing, and it fusses with his hair with teeth and tongue and signs, “I am so glad you get to go home. Jealous too, I think.”
Strong-Legs is currently in the long winding line of people hoping to find their homeland via the Jaunter's League, but they know odds are long. Strong-Legs will likely be in Treehouse for life.
“What if…?” Thomas starts.
“You are a very brave mammal thing. Whatever happens, I know you will manage. I will always have space in my nest for you. Now, take your collar, for bravery.”
Thomas hasn't busted out his Earth clothes in a long time. The army pants and undershirt are frayed and stained and torn; he lost the jacket ages ago. Thank god he was all about the extra-baggy clothes in the eighth grade, or they'd be far too small for him.
He puts them on, and after a moment's hesitation, the ornate flax-and-feather collar Strong-Legs made him months before. It looks weird, all bright and nice next to the beat-up old clothes, but Thomas doesn't feel right otherwise.
Then he takes a deep breath, packs his bags, and goes to join the Jaunter's Leaguer assigned to take him home.
The transition between worlds is seamless and easy, so much so that Thomas doesn't even notice. He tries to stay cool, but his knee keeps jangling so much that the Leaguer asks, “Are you all right?”
Thomas nods automatically.
“Returning from an exile… it's very stressful. A lot of people find it difficult.”
This time, Thomas actually looks at the Leaguer. They—Thomas can't tell their gender and forgot their name the moment they told him-- were pale, with African features, long hair, and a white suit. They were looking at him with concern.
“Yeah,” he admits. “It's pretty intense, you know?”
“I'd imagine so. Is there something I can do to help? Get you a drink, maybe? Or, if you'd rather, we could time this when only certain members of your family are home.”
But Thomas shakes his head. “No, no, I think it'd be better to just do it, you know? Like ripping off a Band-Aid. Thanks, though. For acting like a real person, and not just a government suit.”
The Leaguer's eyebrows go way up for a second, but just for a second, and then they say, “you’re welcome,” and Thomas forgets about it.
Because then they're at his front door, and the house looks the same but different—new plants in the garden, new door, but the doorbell rings just the same, and this his mother is there, and they just stare at each other for what seems like forever.
Her hair is different, braided and bunned. She's gained some weight. But her face is the same, and she's frozen, pale, like he's come back from the dead.
To her, he has.
Behind her, he hears his father shout in Spanish, “Maria? Who's at the door?”
“Hi, Ma,” Thomas says, and his voice cracks. “I'm back.”
And then there's screaming and laughing and crying and everyone is rushing to the door and Thomas has never been simultaneously hugged by so many people in his life.
...
It takes a while for everyone to calm down, at first. Marcus isn't home—he's out in Afghanistan—but the rest of the immediate family is: Ma, Papi, and Thomas’s younger brother Christopher, who's fourteen now and grown a ton, and everyone's emotional. Christopher in particular is almost shaking with it.
When tears and hugs have turned to requests for explanation, the Leaguer steps in. They'd stayed so much in the background, Thomas isn't even sure his family noticed them until then.
Thomas hadn't known how he'd explain to his family—he already knew how that'd gone for Raige. But the Leaguer, in their businesslike (if slightly off, fashion-wise) suit and their crisp (if slightly off) English, lays everything out as though they do this every day. (Which they might.)
At first, his family don't buy it, especially his ma, who has that squinty look like she's wondering if Thomas got nabbed by a cult. His pops just looks confused, and Christopher… well, he’s gotten really still and really quiet and Thomas is a little worried about that.
The Leaguer, who seems to expect this, turns to Thomas and says, “Sometimes, it can ease the transition by introducing your people from your first world to the people from your second. Do you think that would be helpful to you?”
“Um,” Thomas says. “Yeah. That'd be great. Can we?”
“I'd go for that,” says his mother right away, and he can tell that this is her way of wrapping her head around it. If she can see it, touch it, shake it and see if it rattles, she can deal with it.
Christopher, however, isn't taking it nearly so well.
“This is bullshit,” he says. “No way. You can't just come back after all this time like it's nothing! I'm not dealing with this. Screw you.” And he stomps off to his room.
Their father looks pained. “He's upset,” he says to Thomas. “He took it very hard when you were… gone.”
Gone. Dead. And with Marcus overseas… no, Thomas can't really be mad. In Christopher's shoes, he'd probably be flipping out too.
So Thomas's dad stays to help Christopher, and his mom comes to Jaunt Central.
It's bedlam. Now that the League is aware of the place, a lot of people from Treehouse are wading through the red tape in hopes of following Thomas's example. Until everything gets settled, the League has opened a semi-permanent gate between Jaunt Central and Treehouse. (In true local style, Treehouse has already nominated and approved a gate team to keep an eye on it.) Unfortunately, the League and Treehouse have very different ways of doing things, causing a lot of friction.
Despite the weird architecture and unusual beings all over the halls, the paperwork seems to relax his mom some. This, she understands; she does it all day as a cop.
And she gets to meet Strong-Legs, who is very, very excited to meet Thomas's mother after only knowing her from stories and one old worn-out wallet photo.
“Oh, oh!” it signs, practically dancing in place. “The great matriarch! I am so excited! May I do the hug thing? Is that polite?”
Thomas relays the question to his mother, who is watching everything a little guardedly. “It really wants to hug you. That's like, one of the five human things it knows.”
“Sure, why not?” she says. “I always wanted to hug a dinosaur as a kid.”
Strong-Legs is delighted. “Be ready! I will touch you now!” And it wraps wings and neck around her. It even does the three-back-pats thing, which Thomas hadn't intended to teach it but which it apparently presumed an imperative part of the hugging process.
“She is not patting me too? I have done it wrong?”
“Do the back-pat thing,” Thomas says, and his mother obeys, a bemused look on her face.
“Smells kinda like Cousin Carmen's pigeons. I wondered why you smelled like them...”
“Oh,” Thomas says, “we're roommates. Were.”
They can't talk very long, with Thomas interpreting both ways, but it still makes him (and apparently his mom) feel much better. Apparently smell is something so primal that she can accept it and prove to herself that Thomas wasn't abducted by Moonies, and Thomas no longer feels like his Treehouse life is over, full-stop.
And as they head back home, Thomas finds out that the Leaguer isn't just his ride home.
“I'm a League adjustment social worker,” they explain, “or rather, that's the easiest translation of my job.”
“Oh!” Thomas says, “like Bobcat!”
For a moment, they frown, then go, “Oh, you mean Fluji 808C Alpha. Yes, though our specialties are a little different. Regardless, if you or your family is interested, I will not only assist in the appropriate documentation, but offer therapeutic services to you and your family, to help in your adjustment.”
Thomas thinks about it. “I'm not sure. I think my head's still spinning.”
“Do you have a card?” Ma asks. “We'll call you.”
“I have a digital version...”
“No computer at home.”
“I'll get one printed.” And Thomas has the feeling they've just asked for the equivalent of a telegram or smoke signals, but nevertheless, they do get a business card, for a 'Jem EA07 X.' (The dimensions are a little weird. Different paper standards, presumably—not that this seems to be made of paper.)
“Crap,” Thomas says suddenly, realizing why Jem got that weird face earlier about the 'human being' crack, “you're a construct aren't you? Shit, man, I didn't--”
“Thomas!”
“Sorry, I just--”
But Jem's smiling ruefully. “I see you didn't realize. You’re forgiven; please don’t do it again. Now, let's get you home and decide what explanations we'll give, and to who...”
...
For the next three months, it's a huge reunion. Everybody tells everybody that Thomas has come back home, and comes to prove it to themselves, and there are barbecues with neighbors, friends, and people he hasn't seen since kindergarten. Some people get the true story, others get a firm, “we aren't ready to talk about it right now.” It's exhilarating, but also exhausting, with all the paperwork and stuff on top.
One evening, Thomas just staggers into his room, flops face-first onto the bed, and groans, “No mas. I'm done.”
For a while, he just lies there. Then Christopher comes in.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
Since his explosion, Christopher has been avoiding Thomas and saying little, treating him like an annoying poltergeist haunting the house. Now he says, “I'm sorry.”
Thomas sits up.
“I know I'm being weird. It's just...” and Christopher's voice is cracking, and his eyes are full of tears behind his glasses, “you were dead, man, and it took me forever to get used to it and now you're just back...”
Thomas can tell that after all this, the last thing Christopher wants is for Thomas to make a big deal about it. So instead, he says, “you still got the N64?”
And they play Mario Kart like they used to, and Christopher creams him because Thomas is a year and a half out of practice.
“Man, you've gotten good,” Thomas complains.
Christopher shrugs. “I practiced while you were gone.”
Later, Thomas will find out that even though Christopher is much better than him now, he never beat Thomas's best times. He left them up, digital ghosts that he could race over and over even though Thomas himself wasn't there. But he doesn't know that yet, so he says, “God, I guess the N64 is old news by now, huh?”
“Heh, yeah. Nintendo's got the GameCube out now.” And when Thomas's face lights up, he adds, “sorry, bro. It really sucks. I've switched to Xbox.”
“What? Damn!” Then, “what's an Xbox?”
Which is how they end up playing Halo all night. Their parents don't even try to stop them. And when it's six AM and they're both exhausted, things are okay again.
Notes: Jem is an old character. (This is the only drawing of them, and it's from... god, 2004.) As for how Thomas realized they were a construct, the hexadecimal sequence is a dead giveaway—M.D. also has one, though she prefers to forget it exists. The League-wide legal standard is company, individual ID number, and birth order. (Jem's is X because they have a twin, which gives them a special null value.) There's a whole complicated political argument about the reclamation and empowerment around these names, which aren't relevant here.
