#scientist!sol

“Okay.” Sighed Traveler, as they had dubbed themself to the others. “Let’s all go over where our timelines diverged. You-“ they snap their fingers (the metal makes a grating sound) and point towards where ‘Sib’, as the youngest Sol in the room called them, and the youngest were standing. “-you start us off.”

“Oh. I traveled back in time. Grabbed our siblings, and got us all back in the future.” Sib looks a little guilty, remembering how they had killed said children they now care for and would kill for.

“Mhm! Summer, Autumn, Eclipse, Spring and I all live with Big Sib now!” Confirms Winter, the youngest in the room. They sound happy.

Everyone, except for the one with the axe and the one with lighter metal hands looked guilty, surprised, and jealous. Alongside a fondness for a version of themselves far more innocent than they are.

“Okay.” Traveler says after a long pause. That answered that question. “You.” They point towards Prime. “You’re the Prime Sol, right?” They’d learned a bit about primes. The way this one seemed so confused and… normal (normal as a Sol can be, at least).

“I don’t know.” They mumble, looking around the room, clearly in shock at seeing all of these other thems. Traveler gives them an unimpressed look.

The one with the axe scoffs. “You’re all pathetic. I killed the scientist that did all this-“ they wave their metal hands around scornfully, gesturing to each Sol as well. “-to us.” They snarl.

“You killed him?” The one with the lighter metal arms snaps to attention. “You imbecile. You fool.”

‘Axe’, everyone decides to call them, glowers at them. “What do you mean?” Their eyes narrow. Traveler senses a fight, but decides not to intervene. (Yet).

“He rescued us! Taught us how to do experiments!” Retorts the other.

Traveler sighs, mutters something under their breath, the spell for Far Step, teleporting behind Axe and grabbing them before they could lunge at the Scientist.

“Relax.” They mutter into Axe’s ear, but only get elbowed in the stomach for their trouble. They wince and Axe breaks out of their hold, the bullet scar that remained from an earlier incident stinging. And the fact that it was where metal met flesh hurt like hell.

“You work with that freak?” Axe asks, incredulous. They drew their weapon, the metal of the axe (at the end, at least) matching the color of the Scientists’ own arms.

“Yes. Of course.” The Scientist rolls their eyes. Traveler narrows their eyes at them, in fact, everyone does.

“Do you do experiments?” The one with the burns asks, talking for pretty much the first time, their voice quiet and dangerous. Despite their injuries, they were still an emotionally stunted assassin.

“Of course. Idiots.” Sci scoffs at them. “And you called *us* pathetic.” They jab a finger at Axe, who immediately held the axe over their head, bringing it down, aiming for Sci’s head-

-only for it to ping off from a forcefield.

Everyone stares. Axe starts to bring down the axe over and over until they can’t anymore, panting and gasping for air. Traveler raises an eyebrow.

At this point, everyone has surrounded Sci, who is smirking. “Guess this place doesn’t let you kill me.” They shrug.

“I’ll find a way.” Retorts Axe, who is glaring and snarling at the other, impassive Sol. They sound and look like a rabid animal.

Everyone is glaring at Sci, at this point, who sighs, and asks Traveler: “you seem to know this place. How do you leave? I have an experiment-“ they put emphasis on the word, and everyone in the room flinches. Salt in the wound. “-I need to get back to.”

Almost all of the Sol’s in the room are trembling with anger and the urge to murder this stupid scientist. They vaguely look like angry chihuahuas. Especially Axe.

Traveler is gritting their teeth. Sci gives them an expectant look before realizing something. “Oh! You must be the one that fox mutie adopted.” They comment, purposely trying to get under their skin. It’s the closest they can get to dissection in this realm.

It works. Traveler snarls, their calmer front to even the chaos among the Sols immediately torn down. “don’t you dare go there. When did you meet Па- Hemlock?” Their eyes narrow.

“Oh. I had him in my lab. He gave me the same book you have, it seems.” They look smug. “Far Step, for the teleporting, right?”

Traveler twitches, tempted to smack this bastard, or at the very least rip out their jugular with their teeth (Axe wants to rip out Sci’s tongue and keep it as a trophy, and all of the other Sol’s, barring little Winter, felt violent in some other way). The other Sols exchange glances once the red that overtook their vision eased (except for Prime, who looks even more confused). They’d met Hemlock, at some time or another.

Traveler takes deep breaths. They’d talk to Hemlock about giving the worst version of them magic, of all things. If once the man stopped avoiding them. They shoved away the thought of him thinking they’re weak, and biding his time to get rid of them. That was HYDRA-talk. Not Hemlock. They need to focus on this evil version of themself.

Inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale. Imagine you’re sniping Sci. They remind themself.

“Back in the lobby. The exit door. Just walk through.”

Sci waves as they walk out of the room, and Traveler decides not to tell them that leaving would wipe their memory. Pettiness, and all that.

Axe turns to glare at them. “What the hell? Why you just let them leave?” The claws of their metal arms come out, digging into the wood of their axe. They look ready to rip their claws into Traveler.

“Relax. When you leave this place it wipes your memory of being here.” They snap their fingers, in a way that gave off ‘catch up’. Everyone winces at the grating sound of metal meeting metal. This only serves to make Axe bristle, and their eyes narrow further.

“We- I think Winter and I should get back to our siblings.” Sib says eventually, still shaking. What else could you do when you learn that one version of yourself became the very thing that caused you to become a monster? They’re keeping a wary eye on Axe, whom was probably making things worse by the second.

Prime holds out a hand. “Wait. What? First of all, time travel?” They give Sib a pointed look. “Second of all, multiverses?” They turn this look towards Traveler, who fidgets uncomfortably.

“Yeah. I slipped through a time portal, used the opportunity.” Sib says, gently. “At least I spared them from our… lives.” They hesitate, wrapping an arm around Winter, who was only a bit shorter than them. Damned stunted growth.

The Burnt Sol finally chimes in again. “Wait. We were comparing our- our timeline divergences.” They’re fidgeting uncomfortably. They feel far inferior to these other Sol’s (aside from Sci. Fuck Sci).

“Okay.” Sib softens. They seem like the kindest among them, aside from the youngest at their side. “Go ahead.”

“…I’m nothing special.” murmurs Burn. “Just an idiot who forgot that grenades exist.”

That gave everyone in the room enough information to assume what had happened, according to all of their collective winces (including little Winter, whom had had training like the rest of them, though significantly less). Why there was an eyepatch on Burn’s right eye, the burns.

“I’m sorry.” Prime says quietly, resting a hand on their scarred versions’ shoulder.

“It’s fine. I’m alive, am I not?” Everyone winces. Wasn’t that the truth, the thing they always reminded themselves of to make sure they didn’t give up on everything.

They all turn to Traveler, the only one that hadn’t explained. “Right. The base we were kept frozen at collapsed, and I got out just in time. Met Hemlock-“ -everyone (except Prime, who, later, had the fox man explained to them by Burn) nods, and they’re relieved they don’t have to explain who he is- “-and he adopted me.” They smile softly, a rare genuine one. “I have a sibling, Misty, and a grandmother. And a lot of other family members, apparently. Now I travel the multiverse.” They twitch again. If Hemlock didn’t disown- stop. They remind themself. Stop. He wouldn’t do that.

“Lucky bastard.” Mutters Axe. Everyone gives Axe a look of displeasure. (Despite how jealous most of them are, except for Sib and Winter, whom wouldn’t have met their siblings had they done the same. They hated how much longer they had stayed in HYDRA, that hellish place).

“Yeah.” They nod. Their fingers tap at their sides. “…we haven’t been talking recently, though.” Under their breath. The rest of them exchange glances but don’t comment.

“You said we lose our memories if we leave this place?” Asks Burn.

“Yes. But I mean, you can write some things down. Then take it with you. You’ll be confused, but you’ll know about all of-“

They gesture around. “-this.” They take out a few journals from their backpack, tearing out used pages and handing a journal to each Sol. (Except Winter and Sib, they’d share). Traveler was suddenly grateful for their (albeit limited) knowledge of the place.

Winter whispers what to write to Sib, who simply nods and writes both of their thoughts down. Burn is silent as they write, squinting their good eye down at the page. Axe scoffs, putting their axe back and beginning to write, scowling when they know they’ve written something incorrectly while not being sure how to correct it. Prime is writing diligently, trying to mark down every detail, ignoring their writing and spelling, just getting as many ideas on the page as possible.

Traveler sighs, simply writing ‘tell Hemlock to restore my memories when I get back. Other versions of me.’ and ‘He gave an evil asshole magic.’ Into the journal they had originally used when they first came to the hotel. They always held onto it.

Eventually, Winter and Sib leave, saying their calm and excited, respectively, goodbyes. They walk out, hand in hand, and Winter murmurs excitedly about telling the other siblings about their adventure, a bounce in their step.

That left four. Traveler sighed, sitting on the floor tiredly. How had Hemlock managed to never kill any of his other versions?

Axe was pacing, muttering angrily to themself. ‘Kill someone’ was scrawled onto one of their pages in large writing. They’d need a stress reliever after relearning what the scientist version of themself was like.

Burn sighed, resigned to returning home, to being the most useless version of themself. This had only served to show them how much better (barring Sci) their other versions were. The only good thing they’d done here was giving Prime an explanation on things they didn’t know as well.

Prime was in the corner, still writing rapidly as they listened to Burn’s explanation. They need information like a fish needs water.

Burn and Prime both leave next, leaving the angriest and the most knowledgeable Sols to their own devices. A bad idea, probably.

Axe is still snarling and muttering under their breath, pacing like a caged tiger. Traveler has taken to curling up in a tight ball like a fox in winter. They have to make sure Axe leaves without picking a fight with one of their many deities that they knew stayed in this hotel. They didn’t want a version of themself getting hurt. Except for Sci. Fuck Sci.

Axe glares down at them, eventually. They open a previously closed eye and stare back.

Axe simply scoffs. “Pathetic.” They mutter, before finally leaving the hotel. They’d written their other versions of being pathetic, and assholes.

Traveler had fallen asleep. The day had been exhausting. They woke up with a jolt, still curled into a tight ball. They sighed, wrote down a few other things (mainly saying Axe was irritating, Sci was evil and needed to be taken down, Burn needed therapy, and how Prime and Sib seemed the nicest. Winter was naive.). They pull themself to their feet with all of the grace of a drunk kitten.