Some egotistical prune with terrible fashion taste snaps his fingers on the other side of the galaxy, and half the world turns to ash. Abby stopped trying to make sense of the world years before, but this broke any remaining shred of normalcy she had. Makes sense it did. It broke everything else.
The day it happened, everything was normal. Mom was gone by the time Abby woke up, a post-it note professing her love stuck to the counter. The car broke down before it even pulled out of the driveway, and Harley spent an hour and a half fixing it while Abby watched TikToks on her phone. When they got to school, the drop-off line was empty.
Abby poked her head out the window, examining the empty school campus. “We’re so late.”
Harley sighed dramatically. “Yes, I know.”
Abby pulled herself back into the car, pouting. “They’re not gonna let me in.”
Another sigh from Harley. “If they don’t, go get Mom.”
“But she’s working,” Abby whined. “She doesn’t like it when we bother her at the diner, and I’ve already skipped school this month ‘cause of that flu I caught, and I don’t wanna bother her.” She kicked the front of the seat with some prejudice. “Can you at least walk me in?” she pleaded.
Years later, Abby would remember this conversation while lying concussed on the floor of an alley, and wonder if Thanos had the gauntlet by then. She wondered how doomed ten-year-old her had been in that moment.
All the way back in 2018, Harley groaned. “Just go,” he ordered. He already sounded so tired and annoyed. The grease on his hands was smeared across the steering wheel. Abby didn’t want to push him. She stepped out of the car, crept silently towards the school. The car puttered past behind her. She turned, waving goodbye like she was trying to flag down a passing plane. She caught a glimpse of Harley’s reflection in the shattered rear view mirror. That was the last time she would see her brother for almost half a decade.
What happened next? Abby wasn’t sure. Somehow, she negotiated her way through the front office and into her classroom. They were supposed to be learning fractions, and she vividly remembered a row of numbers written in green on the whiteboard, but she remembered very little else from the actual lesson. Something was happening in New York, but no one was paying attention. New York was a world away.
The teacher finished her lesson and traded places with another teacher who immediately started on his history rant that centered almost entirely on unproven conspiracy theories. Some kids’ phones chimed with news alerts, but the teacher glared at them when they tried to pull them out. At the time, Abby looked at this and thought it was wrong.
Abby thought of this years later and laughed, then glared at a passerby when they looked at her weird.
By the time lunch rolled around, something was obviously wrong. The cafeteria had two ancient TVs set up, usually playing the news or some sort of mindless, background-noise sitcom, but when Abby looked at them, they were turned off. She would remember it forever: her face reflected in the black screen, kids whispering all around about what was happening (“Dylan said Loki came back, then that arrow guy shot Thor, an’ that’s what’s going on.”)
Then–well, the next part came in pieces. The girl she was sitting across from dissolved into dust. She didn’t even seem to notice, just stabbed at her chicken before melting onto the floor. People started screaming–one of the lunch ladies dusted into the mashed potatoes. Other kids were gone. Everyone was gone.
Then Abby was running. She was outside her school and racing across the football field that stood between her and the high school, screaming at the top of her lungs the whole way. She was crying and her tears were blurring the line between the green grass and the blue sky.
Then there was the high school, oh, the high school. Abby had to fight through a tide of panicking teenagers to get in. The next few minutes were blended together in a mess of random images; ash in front of an open locker; kids screaming and shoving each other as they ran for the exit; some of the teachers were standing in doorways, trying to corral the students.
Somewhere along the line, words came spilling out of her mouth. “I’m looking for my brother, has anyone here seen Harley Keener? Do you know where Harley Keener is?” But the dust clogged her throat and the words stayed stuck in her mouth. She could barely breathe through all the dust.
In the alley years later, Abby closed her eyes. She thought of the doomed little girl, crying and screaming and begging anyone who would listen for help. She thought of her brother, a pile of ash on the floor of a random classroom. She thought of the Avengers and Iron-Man and most of all her mom. Then she sighed and went to sleep.
I don't know why, but I feel like Love's introduction to the Young Avengers is going to have something to do with Thor wildly misunderstanding the concept of babysitting.
Heads up to anyone seeing Shazam 2: It has two credits-scenes. I saw it today, and me and my dad were the only ones who stayed in the theater long enough to see them both.
I wonder if New Yorkers in the MCU play bingo with the heroes who save them.
Like, one day they get mugged in Queens, and Spider-Man stops it, so they cross him off. Someone tries to steal their car and Luke Cage returns it, so he gets crossed off. The Avengers save all of New York and the next day, there's a furious debate on twitter about whether it's acceptable to cross them off for it (Answer: no.)
Then whoever wins gets like a ticket to Rogers: The Musical or something.
I like how Jen breaks the fourth wall in She-Hulk. Like, yeah, this is a TV show, but she's got other shit to deal with, so she's gonna ignore it until she can use it.
Rewatching Daredevil in preparation for the new series, and I noticed that they have the same cup as in No Way Home. Specifically, this cup:
I know it's from a famous coffee shop, but it also opens up for the possibility that MJ served Karen Page, Matt Murdock, and Foggy Nelson coffee. And since it showed up in the Punisher, it means she might have served Frank frickin' Castle coffee.
An incomplete list of things in Peter Parker's new apartment:
A fridge he built himself from cheap parts that is stocked entirely with ice cream and ice packs. It breaks every other day, but replacing it is too expensive.
GED study manuals.
A camera. His main source of income is taking photos of Spider-Man and selling them to newspapers. He specifically avoids selling to the Daily Bugle, but they just use his pictures with the watermark cropped out.
A card for Nelson & Murdock & Page. He can't call them, he knows he can't call them, but he likes to pretend he has the option.
A map of New York with circles around various points of criminal activity.
Approximately 8 boxes of Instant Wheatcakes. He loaded up when he got his first paycheck, tried one, and stopped because it didn't taste at all like Aunt May's.
The remnants of his old suit (EDITH, Instant Kill, some remaining nano bots).
A concerning amount of instant ramen.
A bunch of clothes he bought at a thrift store. He somehow managed to find two Iron-Man tee-shirts, and he wears them at every opportunity to feel close to Tony.
The cup he got the last time he saw MJ. He hasn't thrown it out.
A cutlery drawer that is filled with plastic utensils and cut-out coupons.
A laptop he scavenged from a dumpster. It's dirty, covered in faded stickers, and runs too hot for him to actually put it on his lap without burning himself.
A sewing machine he fixed after finding it dumped on a corner.
A series of articles on various superheroes. Titles include "Ronin: Hero of the Blip (Opinion),""Reports of New Hero in Jersey" and "Luke Cage in Harlem Rumble."
I think I read somewhere that Hawkeye's bow's drawback strength in the comics is around 250, which is insane, but all I can think of now is Kate getting that bow and then just...adapting to it.
Like, she can't really call Clint to complain, and she definitely isn't going to just ditch the bow, so she just uses it until she learns to live with it.
One day, she uses a bow with a normal drawback strength, and she accidentally breaks it in half.
Like, the batfam talks to her all the time, it makes sense someone would overhear. Plus, her even having the codename implies a need to hide her identity. But if the coms are built into the suit, anyone talking to her probably just look like they're talking to no one.
It seems like the kinda thing that would feed into any in-universe "the batfam are all cryptids/vampires/supernatural" theories.
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