Bonnie Chase and Freddie Flynn
The Hub - January 26th, 2021
Flynn had been looking into a
lot of things, namely concerning who his family really was. The whole thing with House of M bugged him to no end, and the fact that he'd been Magneto's kid there didn't sit well with him. He was currently sitting in the common area of the Hub of sorts, with a laptop, flipping through a bunch of files that were now covering the screen. Namely, a few things that more or less confirmed his worst fears.
"Are you going to talk about it?" Bonnie asked him, pouring over files on a tablet. She was in the process of confirming the DNA entries of everyone on the Secret Warriors and the sequencing was a bit cumbersome at times. She was doing a lot of it manually in terms of data interpretation, not wanting to leave the results up to a computer - for all they knew, there was a skrull hacking files to change them anyways.
"...Depends on what you mean by that," he responded, glancing over at her. His mind was racing a million miles a minute at this point.
She sighed slightly, setting down her tablet.
"Whatever it is that's eating you up inside - if you're not careful, they'll throw you in a mental ward. I should know." She grimaced ever so slightly. She had become severely depressed after her husband died, resulting in S.H.I.E.L.D. institutionalizing her for a while. It had been the right call, as much as she hated it at the time.
"...Remember during the Christmas thing, when Cass mentioned the whole House of M thing and even though I really really really wanted to punch her at the time, I didn't at least, and she mentioned what my life was like there?" How could she forget? Yes, she really liked her boyfriend but he had a painful temper at times - really, all of the time. Her memories of fighting Deadpool that Christmas were a bit fuzzy, thanks to her concussion, but she had a brief image of Flynn yelling at Tempest over all of it.
"Yeah?" Bonnie said simply, not wanting to discourage him from sharing with her if that was what he felt comfortable doing.
"...What if I told you that a few aspects from that life might actually be real..." "I'd say that you sound a bit like a clickbait article, to be honest," she answered.
"But in our line of work, strange things happen all of the time. Half of our team is made up out of lab experiments. We've time traveled and gone to alternate worlds." "Okay, I'm not dumb enough to click on every single article I see online, those things are annoying," he said with a slight laugh, before falling silent, thinking about how best to word what was going through his head. However, he couldn't really find the words, so instead, he moved over closer to her and just showed her his laptop screen, which still had a bunch of files scattered across it. The most prominent being a DNA test that linked him to Magneto and an adoption record.
Bonnie was silent, studying the records displayed on Flynn's screen. Maybe the DNA test was invalid, but she had re-analyzed Flynn's DNA herself - and she hardly was able to ask Magneto for an additional sample. The adoption record appeared to be even more evidence in favor of this narrative... that Flynn was not biologically related to his parents.
"This doesn't change who you are, Freddie," Bonnie told him gently.
"Now see, you say that, but to me it freaking messes with a lot of things in my head. Like really? I'm apparently related to literally the most well-known mutant terrorist in the entire world. How does that not somewhat change things?" "...It's all about potential, right? Everyone can be pure and everyone can be wicked. But the choices you make, those aren't determined by your genes. You can't inherit things like talents or personality traits or innate goodness. The reason why those cycles tend to continue is because of the parental influence. But in your case, you didn't grow up with Magneto as a father. You had a nice, caring father who loves you - who adopted you and raised you as his own. Statistically, he's who you'll become... not Magneto." "You don't know that at all though. And statistics be damned, some things also can be considered hereditary in some way so odds are I'll probably end up screwed up anyway," he pointed out, rolling his eyes. She was trying to make him feel better, that much he did know, but currently it was not really helping at all.
"Sure, depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder - those can all have a genetic basis but they're also treatable," Bonnie stressed.
"Have you considered trying therapy, maybe? We have in house therapists here at S.H.I.E.L.D. with security clearances, so you can actually talk to them without being fired for revealing trade secrets." "...I never really ever wanted to go to therapy... Since that sort of thing would actually make me feel like I really am going crazy." Once again, her attempts to make him feel better weren't really helping. This is what he got for dating someone who was a scientist and medical person of sorts. Definitely made things like this a bit difficult.
Bonnie did her best not to take that comment too personally.
"Think about it, please? Therapy isn't just for the insane - just like how doctors aren't just for those on death's door." "Fine... I'll think about it..." even though he said that, he knew that in reality he probably wasn't going to and just deny the entire thing.
"Thank you." He nodded his head slightly,
"...So, how are you doing?" "I'm alright," Bonnie said, shifting the way she was seated on the chair so that way one of her knees was propped up. She circled her arm around it.
"I'm trying to confirm that no one on our team is a traitor... This entire skrull thing, it's worse than HYDRA." "Sounds like so much fun, trying to determine if one of us is an alien," he said with a small laugh.
"The idea that an alien might have switched places with someone is more then a bit weird..." "I mean, what if I'm the alien and I'm going to falsify the results to show that I'm human?" Bonnie joked, her tongue sticking out slightly as she smiled.
"So nice Bonnie!" he responded with another laugh.
"How do you know I'm not an alien, Freddie?" she teased.
"I just do," he said with a bit of a smirk.
Raynor Blake and Theresa Sparks
Jacksonville, Florida - February 2nd, 2021
Sparky wasn't too sure about whether or not this was a good idea. It had been a while since she had actually seen her family, but she did talk to her parents every so often, but her sisters were out of the question. They hated her very existence, and were so glad when she left Florida and moved away from them. She wanted nothing more then to see about crawling into a box and hiding far far away from them, but if they just so happened to stop by her parents' house, she couldn't control that. Sparky was taking Raynor to meet up with her family, and she was way beyond nervous to do this. She'd deal with giant spiders before she chose to really deal with them.
"Lighten up, Sparks," Raynor teased, lowering the quinjet down to the ground outside of Sparky's childhood home. He hated flying commercial, preferring to take advantage of S.H.I.E.L.D.'s resources.
"After this, we can take the jet to Vegas, hit the Strip." "You say that, but honestly you haven't met my family at all... Especially my sisters," she mumbled, and she started fiddling with the ring on her hand.
"Can't be any worse than my brother," he argued, powering off the jet.
"If you say so," she said, before she headed off the jet and headed towards the front door.
"My brother invented the Filibuster," Raynor pointed out.
"And the United States Senate," he added. It was hard to tell whether or not he was joking, as he followed after Sparky.
"Also, you might not want to mention that you are an alien to them," Sparky said with a slight eye roll, before she knocked on the front door.
"Just be warned, if my sisters are around, they tend to not be the best of people..." As if right on cue, the door opened, and there stood a blonde with hair that fell below her shoulders, looked to be at least a few years older then Sparky and she more or less made a sort of annoyed face when she saw her.
"Oh hello there Theresa, been expecting you," she said, her words had a bit of a bite to them, and then she glanced over at Raynor, her eyes widening for a split second, before she gave him a smile, "And who might this guy be?"
Raynor smirked slightly, holding out his hand.
"Agent Raynor Blake - and I take it you're the wicked older sister?" "Well that's a little rude Terry," she said with a laugh, shaking his hand slightly. "I'm Laurel Sparks! Why don't you come in?" she asked, stepping to the side slightly to let them in, but it was obvious that she was more of talking to Raynor then Sparky. As for Sparky, she was more or less staring at the ground, wishing that she was anywhere else but there.
Raynor headed into the house, contemplating shooting Laurel, but he figured that Sparky would be cross with him for that. And it was probably a little bit of an overreaction. He then decided the best course of action would be to ignore Laurel.
"So you wanted me to meet your parents, right?" he asked Sparky.
"Yeah..." she said to him, following him into the house, but Laurel tripped her slightly, causing her to stumble before her sister shut the door and walked along ahead of them out of the area.
"...My sisters don't like me at all..." "Do you want me to beat them up?" Raynor asked instantly.
"Uh no... You can't beat them up... I'm honestly used to them by now... I think part of it was because back in high school I was in the same grade level as my oldest sister..." "I mean, I can beat them up. But if you don't want me to, then I won't. They'd probably get hurt way too easily anyways." "I don't want you to beat them up, since that'll cause even more problems..." she said as they entered a living room area. Sitting on the couch was Laurel as well as two other women, both also blonde ironically, and they instantly stopped talking and giggling when they entered the room, and they glanced over at them. Sparky partially shrunk back behind him.
Raynor raised an eyebrow, knowing quietly that Sparky should have picked up something being amiss with all of her siblings being blonde. But he hadn't told her yet that she wasn't from this reality and he didn't intend on telling her until she was ready. That secret would have to wait.
"Where are your parents?" "Probably in the other room or something," she said with a shrug.
"Well Terry, this must be Raynor. Laurel was just telling us about him," one of them said, she looked to be the oldest of the three, and she gave Raynor a bit of a smile.
"He's certainly an interesting looking person," the other said, also giving him a bit of a smile.
"...Ray, these are my other two sisters, Jessica and Marcy," she mumbled, indicating that the one who had spoken first was Jessica, and the other was Marcy.
"It certainly is nice to meet you Raynor," Jessica said, before looking at Sparky, "Mom and dad are in the other room."
"Uh huh," Raynor said. He didn't really want to be nice to Sparky's sisters, as he didn't want to essentially support the way that they were treating her.
"Let's go see your parents, then?" "Sure," Sparky said, glancing towards her sisters and then turning and heading to the next room over. Eventually they'd see her parents there, and they glanced up and looked at them. Her mother was, like her sisters, a fairly pretty blonde of sorts, and she gave the pair a kind smile. Her father was a brunette, his hair fairly short and somewhat messy as he looked at them both.
"Hello, Mr. and Mrs. Sparks - I'm Raynor Blake," he said, introducing himself as he held out his hand.
"A pleasure to meet you Raynor, I'm Wynona," the woman said, still giving him a kind smile as she took his hand in her own.
"And I'm Owen... So Theresa, how have things been for you?" her father asked, turning his attention to her.
"Oh... things have been going alright," she responded, once again fiddling with the ring on her hand.
"That's definitely good to hear."
Raynor put an arm around Sparky, hoping that it would give her some comfort. He was a bit confused as to why she wanted to come here so much, since she was clearly uncomfortable around her family to an extreme, but he supposed that she might have felt obligated to let them know. She also loved them, he knew that much.
"We're engaged," he said, breaking the brief awkward silence.
"Oh you are?"
"Uh, yeah, we are," Sparky said, nodding her head a bit, giving Raynor a bit of a smile now. She did feel better knowing that he was there with her. Also knowing that for the most part he had to deal with her crazy family now too, she did feel somewhat bad that she had to essentially subject him to this.
"And I'm an alien." Now Sparky wanted to smack him upside the head. It was hard to tell just what her parents would believe in terms of this sort of thing. She wasn't sure if they'd believe him or not, and she really was hoping that they wouldn't, since that would make her life so much easier.
"You are what?" her mother asked, sounding a bit confused by the fact that he had just randomly said something like that.
"I'm not from this planet - not even this universe, actually," Raynor added.
"...Where are you from then?" she asked him, raising a bit of an eyebrow.
"...Ray, I told you earlier not to tell them," Sparky whispered to him.
"Norway," he said, breaking into a big grin as he laughed slightly.
"Feels like a completely different world from Florida. It's so.... hot and humid here." "You had me worried for a second about whether or not you were insane," her father commented. Sparky shot a sort of glare at Raynor, before she used her powers and zapped him slightly in the side, so that her parents couldn't see what she was doing.
"He likes to be more then a bit over dramatic." Raynor twitched slightly from the jolt of electricity, but he laughed through it. He gave Sparky a kiss on the cheek, wrapping his arm around her.
"What can I say? It's in my nature." "Well you should try not to be? I will admit it gets more then a little bit tiring!" Sparky said, giggling slightly at that now. This definitely was something that needed to happen, since for some strange reason Raynor loved theatrics and being dramatic.
"You want me to change? To alter my winning personality?" Raynor gasped.
"Award winning personality? I would definitely not call it that!" she said, still giggling a bit.
"Oh? What would you call it then? Magnificent?" "No way! Not to mention the fact that your ego definitely doesn't need to be bolstered at all. Honestly it could do with being knocked down a few pegs." He chuckled a little bit, before looking at her parents again.
"As you can see, we're madly in love." "I thought that was obvious."
Sparky rolled her eyes slightly, before she zapped him again slightly in an attempt to get his ego to shrink back down slightly. In her mind he really needed to learn when to
not flex his ego, now was not the time to do that at all. Hence why she decided that zapping him was appropriate.
Raynor twitched slightly again, but Sparky's powers did nothing to hinder the size of his ego. He had been alive longer than most people currently on the planet and he had the hubris to accompany it.
"Which means I have something to ask... Any embarrassing baby stories about Sparks?"
