"After a car chase through the streets of NYC, convicted criminal Rhys Barton, found guilty of attempting to murder his sister, died yesterday when his car flipped and exploded on a crowded street. Barton, who escaped from a maximum security prison two weeks ago, had seemingly dropped off the grid when he was arrested for assaulting another man in a bar. Moments before he was due to go back to the prison, he ran away and stole a car, cutting through all traffic and narrowly avoiding several pedestrians.

"I know for a fact Toni and I both would want a girl."

"I mean, it’s whatever. When he or he grows up, they can be whatever they wanna be."

"So if Shay one day decided to be a girl, you’d be cool with that?"

CRIES AT YOU?! oH MY GOD JACOB ACK LOBSTERFACES ABOUT THIS

“Where’s Shanta?” Jack says. He’s never been very good with sincere words. Quips are his thing. He doesn’t like having to use his solemn voice.

The solemnity bounces down the corridor, sounds of heavy breaths and snapped hands grasping for an edge of reality. And then the deafening roar of the sound he feared the most; silence. Nothing, nothing at all. “I’m sorry, Jack.” It has been a long time since Kat has used this word, wrenched it into a sentence that he could understand, but it has been a longer time since Jackson has breathed. “Sorry about what?” Ace asks, roughly. Her broken hands are now folded together into Sam’s, as if they were nothing more but paper and burn marks. Her heartbeats flood her ears like an organ at a funeral. “What happened?” There are eyes—eyes that have seen so much that she would be better off if she could not see at all. “… she went to find Doom,” is only the beginning. And the team knows what they are going to hear over the sound of hearts cracking. “She didn’t survive.” This should not be any different than any other death she has seen—but she can’t look at them and feel nothing. The blonde angles herself away, and her slightly parted lips make it look like she’s smiling at them. A final slap to the face. He is burning with pain that he can’t comprehend, because he is nothing if not numb. He stands rigid, as motionless as a stone soldier, just trying to tell himself that if he doesn’t move, then it isn’t real. Jack’s usually good at telling if people are lying, and this has to be a fabrication because Shanta wouldn’t let her death be so stupid, wouldn’t leave him here alone— —and then it occurs to him. She did leave him. For five years, to be exact. She would do it again, if she had to.

Breathe, Price, breathe, dammit… —if a baby couldn’t manage it, then how can you?

The outline of blonde hair and Ace’s tattoo’s and Sam’s face blur into a smear of dull colour. Ace collapses, unable to support the weight of her own grief and the gravity of the situation, and Sam embraces her and he is only standing still.

—-

When she gave birth to silence, all he had registered was the grayness of fear in his own head. And he didn’t see her again for years. 5 years, and her eyes were still stern, insistent. Perhaps a little more aged, a little more broken, but she was still her. And he could finally see that he wasn’t the only one who was scared. The fear made her beautiful.

—-

But that wasn’t the first time he had seen her like that. He’d seen her in the halls at school, he’d seen her in the labs, but he didn’t see her—no one saw her the way she truly was until she had gotten back up from the ruins of her life and continued to walk. But he guesses that a flame that burns as bright as that isn’t meant to last long.

—-

He goes to see her… finally. He doesn’t know how long it has been since Kat told him. If he had thought that waiting it out would hurt less, he was wrong. > It hurts worse than when she burned him. Jackson plays a game where he tries to convince himself that when he touches her, she will sit up and kiss him or hit him. He sucks at games, but he has nothing left to lose. His flesh hand meets her face. Her skin is cold and unyielding. There is a dark shade of red perched on her shoulder, but she is no longer bleeding. The air tastes like ice. He steps away. “Jack.” There is a voice, reaching for his synthetic shoulder, but the Soldier balks, because he is a shadow, and she was brighter than any star.

—-

SHHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAANTTTAAA! I need a new science project.

...hi Carter why don't you go and pluck your feathers?