W I C C A N

They call him Emperor. That’s taken some getting used to. Emperor Dorrek-Vell. Not Teddy. Dorrek-Vell. It’s his name, technically. One of them at the very least. The title shackled to him at birth has been a long time coming. Teddy didn’t grow up in the shadow of his empire and his impending job as its ruler. No. He grew up Teddy Altman, a guy who — while never normal — wasn’t the gosh darn king of space. The days of shapeshifting to fit in at school have long come and gone. Life’s not impressing the Greg Norris’s anymore. It’s about keeping massive galactic empires from literally crumbling in on themselves. No pressure, right? There is so, so, so much pressure. Even though he knows he was quite literally born from it, there are times where the imposter syndrome comes in swinging at full force.

So far, Teddy thinks he’s done a decent job with his balancing act. It’s not perfect, but he’s not an absentee husband. For as important as it is to be Emperor Dorrek-Vell, being Teddy Kaplan-Altman is more important. Billy and Teddy have grown up together. Time has forged them into two separate men who chose to live united. They’re not the kids that they once were, but that was bound to happen. When they had first gotten together, Teddy hadn’t quite imagined that Billy would end up being the Court Wizard for the Kree-Skrull nation, but he’s never known what to expect in general. He loves him. That’s what Teddy knows. He loves Billy no matter what they call him.

The second he sees him sitting there in their room, Teddy knows something has happened. The first thing he does is assess. Is Billy hurt? Are there any signs he’s been physically injured? After that, he listens. He’s not mad at the confession. Billy’s reality warping has been an issue in the past, and it’s more concern than anger that fills him.

“Okay.” The word is spoken tentatively before Teddy maneuvers to sit beside his husband on the bed. “You did magic with Wanda? That’s  — okay.” He repeats. “Tell me. Start from the beginning. But first, are you okay?” He can’t focus until he knows that Billy is fine.

The cushion yields beneath Teddy’s weight and Billy reflexively adjusts, their thighs brushing as he resettles. The bedspread is a shift of blue and grays, intermingling in distinct yet amorphous patterns. Billy absently traces one with the tip of his finger, somehow avoiding this conversation while still finding a way to talk about it. There are no secrets between them -- there rarely have been in the last decade or so that they’ve known each other. Teddy knows Billy can react hastily under pressure, despite years and years of practice and training, but Billy knows that the click of Teddy’s jaw, the way his voice dips and moves, isn’t an indication of his distaste or judgement. It doesn’t make the swirl of memory any easier to share. 

“Yeah,” he moves to picking idly at a loose thread. “I’m fine. I mean, there’s something wrong, I can feel it. But I also know that there’s nothing I can do about it now.” It’s an admission that makes him flinch beneath the reality of it. “Pleasant Hill sorta blew up in our faces. The mutants wanted to murder half the town and we spent so much time arguing that we ran down the clock. The mind control would’ve erased their identities completely -- no turning back. We had to make a choice.” He sighs, the breath shaky as it leaves his lungs. “It wasn’t the right one.” 

“I believe everyone knows.” It’s unfortunate but true. Wanda’s been swamped with people reminding her of the fact. If she can take the brunt of it in order to protect her son, she will. “Billy.” One hand comes to squeeze his shoulder gently. “Please, take a breath. I believe we are covered on the hell demon side of things. Anything else, well, I cannot guarantee.” 

Billy offers a wan smile and covers Wanda’s hand with his own. It’s a brief moment of contact, but it’s comforting, grounding. “Anything else?” His voice sounds so impossibly small and Billy clears his throat, tries again. “How bad is it?” 

“Arra was born of the cosmic energy of Eternity. Or, reincarnated is actually a more accurate term. It was a fairly complicated process.”

Billy pulls a face, his eyebrows shooting up. “I’ve definitely heard that one before. Must be more common than I thought.” 

“I know it is, man, but I wasn’t at that Quiet Council meeting. It was pretty much set from the moment I found out about it. Of course I didn’t agree with it. Maybe if you’d given me a second to explain myself back there I could have told you that.” It was strange, to stay united with Krakoa while Billy split off and entered with the Avengers, but what was done was done. And Tommy was just grateful that those resurrections were actually pulled off, even if it wracked his nerves to think about why they needed to be resurrected in the first place.

Tommy knew his brother well enough by now to know that look, especially in the context of magic. The spell they’d performed back inside of Pleasant Hill had been fragile, from what he’d heard, but he hadn’t got the chance to talk to Billy about it quite yet. And now that he was, suddenly he wished he could still remain blissfully ignorant about what might be fracturing in their reality. “How bad is it? If you had to put it on a scale of one to ten. Ten being everyone in that town staying brainwashed suburbanites.” Even though there was a playful lilt to his voice, he couldn’t mask his frown.

“We didn’t have a second.” Billy points out. “We had a deadline that we barely made as it was.” It was a statement made more for him than for Tommy -- as long as he continued to tell himself that there had been no other choice because there had been no time, Billy can justify the hasty decision. At least, that’s what he keeps going for. 

At Tommy’s question, Billy starts to move around, unable to stay seated, unable to stand still. “I don’t know. They’re not brainwashed anymore,” The spell had done its job, had restored their memories, their identities. “But that isn’t really the issue. It feels like...” He stops before a wall, his fingers tracing circles as he tries to walk through his words. “There’s an anomaly, a split. Something existing that shouldn’t. When I try to retrieve the spell, I can’t. Most of it wasn’t even mine to begin with, but even Wanda knows something’s wrong. It’s like, one bad tug and the whole thing will unravel.” 

They always shift so quickly -- the frustration and hurt Billy feels tilts, reshapes. He knows Tommy didn’t sign off on the death of dozens -- neither of them are capable of those kinds of decisions, but Billy is dealing with such a swirl of emotion he doesn’t quite know how to parse genuine anger from anxiety. So he slips into a conversation he knows he’s feeling -- and it’s easier, trying to explain this to someone who actually knows Billy. Knows what he is and isn’t capable of. 

“I cut my way through the digestive system of a Korglokian Devourer. There’s only on way in and one way out…” He replied with a cold stare. “I smell aromas. I’ve smelt rotten eggs, but I’m not actively sniffing them. All that magic and you can’t tell I’m not sniffing rotten eggs?! Useless!” He ‘joked’ laughing loudly.

“That sounds gnarly.” Billy is smiling, amused. “See, when I chose to visit other planets, I got diplomacy packets and officiations. Though I don’t think carving my way through a digestive system would’ve been the better alternative.” He shrugs. “Not the way magic works, Drax. I do not have a ‘rotten eggs’ radar -- surprising, I know.” 

“What we did was an attempt, and an imperfect one at that. We will not quit, however, until we find some way to fix this.” Hopefully before everyone went to war.

“So you know too -- that what we did didn’t work right. I’m still sorta waiting for half of a hell dimension to tear through space and time and release a bunch of demons but they’re all wearing our faces--” he’s rambling now. 

“Daughter, yes. Adopted. It’s recent. We have been traveling through the realms, protecting the people. I assumed Earth would be able to take care of itself for a time, but I have come back to chaos.”

“We do specialize in chaos here. How was the process? Adopting her. Or did you sorta just--” he makes a woosh sound and scoops his arm through the air. 

He was at a loss for words for a moment with a perplexed expression. No. Is that supposed to be a compliment?

“Um,” Billy’s thoughts sputter a bit. “Would you like it to be? I mean, he’s pretty popular.” 

“Of course I have smelt a colon before! Who hasn’t! But this stench is wore pungent than the ripest of colons!”

Billy drops his face in his palms, groans, tries not to shake with laughter. “I don’t even want to know why you’ve done that.” He lifts his head, wearing a small smile. “What do you smell? Acidic? Or like rotten eggs?” Now he’s just curious. 

Tommy’s figure blurred into view at that point as he got a good look at his brother and frowned, part of him feeling like he should offer an arm or something to help Billy sit down. He didn’t look good at all. If he were feeling more lighthearted about the entire situation, he might even crack a joke about how it looked like that spell aged Billy about five years. But it wasn’t the time, not with how tense things got between them back in Connecticut. “Dude, you’ve been unbelievably busy honeymooning and defending planets. It wasn’t like I didn’t want to tell you. You have to know that.”

Billy twists his fingers, shakes out his hands, twists his fingers again. He remembers how nonplussed he’d been in Pleasant Hill -- Billy knows there will always be a thick, dividing line between the Avengers and Krakoa -- but he’d never considered how that divide applied to them, too. He tries not to let the mix of discomfort and disappoint warp his features, but he knows how obviously he wears his emotions.  “That’s fair,” he tries. The multiple sets of rings on his fingers pinch his skin as he keeps toying with them. “I just...” he waves, directionless. “This was serious. This still is serious. They were talking about rounding up every mutant-possessed and culling them. Resurrection or not, I can’t understand why you would agree to that. And now...” He trails off again, his eyes finding the walls, the nicks in the plaster. “Now something’s wrong. Something happened. I just don’t know what it is.” 

He’s chewing on his nail, biting it down to the quick, his eyes, fixated on the wall, unseeing. Pleasant Hill was fine, he’s trying to reassure himself -- well not Pleasant Hill, but the people trapped inside. Whatever insane plan Krakoa had gone in with had been avoided. Distantly, he moves to rubbing his palms together, still dealing with the remnants of Wanda’s magic that hasn’t fully dissolved yet. 

He knows -- he had felt the shift happen. Reality had altered thirty seconds to midnight and he knows it’s fine. Everything is fine. 

The sound of footsteps draws his attention back into his body. Billy shifts slightly where he’s seated. This is the first time they’ve seen each other since he’d left to join the rest of the Avengers and doesn’t even wait for Teddy to question the look etched across Billy’s face.

“I fucked with reality again,” he says it rushed, like if he doesn’t get all the words out at once, he won’t do it at all. “Wanda too. It was a whole thing.” 

“Don’t run-” Billy steps into Tommy’s path. He’s carrying something invisibly heavy, literally, across the back of his shoulders, like the magic left an imprint that weighed a hundred pounds. It causes Billy to sit on the first surface he finds. Exhaustion runs through him and he scrubs both palms over his face. He doesn’t want to do this -- doesn’t even know where to start. An apology hangs on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows against it, almost relentlessly. “That wasn’t fair,” he says instead. His dark eyes search over his twin, but Billy doesn’t know what he’s looking for. “You should’ve told me. It’s actually,” he’s interrupted by a mirthless laugh “kind of ridiculous you didn’t?” 

“You smell foul. Is that so that predators will think you are dying and diseased so they won’t eat you. That is very wise.”

Billy frowns and lifts his wrist to smell the sleeve of his shirt. “Drax,” he cants his head in question, “have you never smelled cologne before?”

I could be wrong, but it looks like you have something to say.

“I...think that’s just my face. I’ve been told I have a questionable disposition, but I’m pretty sure they mean something different.” He pauses and twirls a finger near his temple. “Anyone ever told you your head voice kinda sounds like John Cusack?” 

“Yes, it certainly has been some time since I have visited. My daughter and I have been traveling, and we have kept ourselves busy. But she has never set foot on Midgard before. And I thought it was time to remedy that.”

“Busy doing what?” He asks, and then, “Wait, did you say daughter?” 

@wicctastic​

“–just put it back.” tommy grabbed it out of billy’s hand before he could blink much less think about it and shoved it back on the shelf. “nobody’s gonna know you broke it.” the use of the word you being used as if tommy wasn’t also directly involved.

“Me?” Billy swat at Tommy’s arm with his free hand as he clutched his other around the expensive piece of memorabilia, trying to fuse the two pieces back into one. “Do you know how much this cost---?” the question was left to die on his lips as Tommy snatched it from his grip and he watched as it teetered, unsteady in two pieces that used to belong to Emma Frost’s collection but now had to be buried in the sea. “We need to get rid of this.”