everydayhero | Drift Fleet: IC Inbox

[Oh good, it seems to have worked a little.]

Cass is my adopted sister. She's...

We come from a weird situation. But when my parents died, and because hers weren't around, we were both adopted by the same guy. Steph... is a friend of ours. Back home...

[He swallows.]

The last thing Steph remembers is something that almost killed her. Cass is from later in the timeline; she remembers that it did. I'm the only one who - her doctor faked it, to keep Steph safe. But as far as they know, and I can't seem to convince them otherwise, she was...

... gone.

[He nods, shallow.]

You had to go a long time thinking you'd never said goodbye.

Worse. I was a complete jackass. We were - mad at each other. There were reasons, but after that, they were... I was stupid.

... [He swallows, hard. He can't imagine having fought with Tadashi before the explosion.]

I'm really sorry, Tim.

She's back now. I mean - she was, back home, and she is, here. We've both got a second chance. And that's...

[Deep breath. Before that he was coming off emphatic, almost dismissive - he needed that second chance to be the part that mattered.]

... I really didn't come here to talk about me. I just wanted you to know - I've lost people, and had them come back. So you'd know... someone knows.

Edited 2015-03-11 07:28 (UTC)

[Just... nodding. It makes this a lot easier.]

... Back home, he won't be back, though. He went in an explosion, trying to save his professor from a fire. It was... stupid. He was just trying to help...

[He swallows, nods, blinks. Yeah. He gets that, too. He could say more, but it would be making it about him, and it would sound like he was trying to play suffering Olympics, and he knows better. After the first loss, the others hurt, but in a way they don't hurt more. They all hurt the same, because when you've lost someone, there can't be anything that hurts more than that.]

He was a hero.

... Yeah. He was. [Closing his eyes.]

The professor set the fire, though. Callaghan... He wanted to steal those microbots I told you about. He'd lost his daughter, and he wanted to get back at the guy responsible. Tadashi was an accident.

[Oh, no. No. He knows this story, knows it in his bones, has heard it a dozen times, has lived it.]

I hope...

When you found him. You left him alive?

[It comes out as three staccato, disconnected thoughts, because in his mind he's in a rooftop in Gotham, looking down at the man - the worthless, laughable man - who somehow managed to kill Jack Drake. That man was still alive, and on a bad day Tim thinks way too hard about that, and whether leaving him alive was worth it. He didn't need to. He...

He's getting better at catching when he's being self-centered, and he focused on Hiro again, waiting to hear his friend's answer.]

... Almost didn't. My friends stopped me from having him killed.

[Deeeep breath.]

When I had the chance again, I took away his power instead. [There's another pause, where he debates the merits of explaining the next part.]

Callaghan's daughter had been lost in an experiment with portal teleportation. She wasn't dead, she was inside the portal... Baymax, the robotic nurse Tadashi built, found her inside. We went in after her, and just barely got her out in time. She lived... Callaghan got to see her when the medics took her away.