SPEED.

thomas ` tommy ` shepherd.

[spccd]

thomas ‘tommy’ shepherd // SPEED.

name. Thomas “Tommy” Shepherd faceclaim. Diego Tinoco affiliations. Young Avengers, Nomads birthdate & age. June 9, 2001 // 20 species. Mutant identity. Secret

traits.

LOYAL: Tommy’s not really used to having people who would go to bat for him, to be honest. Sure, there’s been a few years of being on a team, but that doesn’t override a lifetime of the opposite—which means that if Tommy thinks he can trust someone, then they’ve got a ride or die for life. He may act detached and, in his own goofy way, standoffish, but Tommy’s the kind of guy who would bury a body for someone that he isn’t even that close to. Snitches get stitches, you know? It’s the kind of prison loyalty you get used to after years spent in and out of juvie. 

SELF-SUFFICIENT: If nothing else, Tommy is pretty independent! For better and for worse, a lifetime of having to take care of himself means that he is more than capable of providing for himself (and others, should the situation arise). As much as he jokes about how badly he wants to marry rich and never work a day again, Tommy is pretty streetwise and can get himself out of a bind… usually without causing too much trouble. Sure, that means his credit score is shot to hell because he took out a credit card to pay a lawyer after he got arrested once and didn’t have the funds to pay it back, but what does he look like he is, middle class? The point is, he’s fed and sheltered and he’s good at keeping himself in check in a bind. If he were to get separated from the rest of the gang in some kind of catastrophic event, he could take care of everyone. And himself. 

UNDERSTANDING: Some of these hero types kinda… have a moral superiority complex. And Tommy finds that exhausting! He is Not The One. Sure, he has a unique perspective on the matter, but Tommy knows more than anyone that having done bad things doesn’t mean that you’re inherently bad, and he’s quick to give others the benefit of the doubt. While he may not be immediately trusting—he doesn’t believe people right away, and it takes him a long time to truly open up to folks—he is the kind of person who believes that intentions matter and that people aren’t defined by their pasts. Everybody’s got some baggage; what’s the point in getting hung up on it?

FLIGHTY: Is Tommy deeply loyal? Yes. Is Tommy deeply unreliable? Also yes. Sure, he would do anything for his friends, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll show up on time—Tommy’s still not accustomed to having to really answer to someone, and because he’s so fast, he has a tendency to wander off… and then get distracted and stay wandered off. His brain works faster than most people’s, so he might follow the trail of a thought (literally) before whoever he’s talking to has finished a sentence, which has gotten him into trouble on more than one occasion. 

VOLATILE: Unfortunately, Tommy’s temper has always been the source of all his problems. Angry outbursts are common in those who aren’t used to being heard, and Tommy’s entire childhood has been marked by neglect and worse; while he often has a goofy, fun-loving exterior that can get as good as he gives with teasing, a misplaced word or a teasing insult that cuts a little too deep can send him swinging straight into rage. It’s a minor issue when it’s a spat between friends; it’s a bigger issue when he’s vaporizing his school or dealing with his massive issues with authority.

RECKLESS: Remember that ‘unreliable, thinks faster than everyone else and will run off’ thing? Yeah, it becomes MORE troublesome! Tommy thinks fast, but that doesn’t mean he’s great at thinking before he acts—his body’s just too fast, and he’s going to start moving before someone can stop him. It doesn’t help that he has a compulsive need to keep moving lest his debilitating insecurity catch up to him (sure, most people can’t outrun their mental illness, but what about the fastest guy alive?), and he’d rather run headfirst into danger without a strategy and figure it out later than stop long enough to start lingering on self-doubt. 

abilities.

SUPERSPEED: the name of the game. Tommy’s maximum speed is unknown, but he can easily run faster than the speed of sound, over water, etc.; he takes a lot of pride in having been able to run from the US to Genosha and searched the island faster than Billy was able to teleport there, sucker. His physiology is also adapted to allow him to run at such speeds without suffering from the friction or reduced oxygen, as well as somewhat reduced impact effects. He also has superhuman stamina to allow him to keep moving at incredible speed for several hours.

ENHANCED STRENGTH: With great speed comes great leg strength. Speed can lift about 1 ton’s weight with his lower body strength, and even his upper body is strong enough to bear about 800 pounds – mostly under duress. It’s not, like, his preferred state to be in, holding 800 pounds.

ENHANCED PERCEPTION: Look, when you’re moving way, way faster than everything around you, it kinda feels like the rest of the world is in slow motion. Tommy’s mind processes regular information at speeds aligned with his physical speed, allowing him to be aware of his surroundings while moving (the rest of the world literally does appear to be in slow motion) – and to react just as quickly, giving him lightning fast reflexes. This also means that he can, for example, read entire books in a very short timespan and remember what he’s read. 

MOLECULAR ACCELERATION: The major difference between Tommy’s abilities and Pietro’s is that Tommy can create hyperkinetic vibrations that accelerate the molecules in matter and can make them, uh, explode. It also means he can accelerate his own molecules enough to pass through solid surfaces! But mostly the “blowing stuff up” part. (Pietro can sort of also do this, but Tommy can do it from a distance, therefore he is cooler and also better, thanks!) 

WEAKNESSES. He is still, you know, broadly human; while his body can withstand extreme friction and he can dull the effects of sudden impacts, he is still painfully mortal and woundable in all the usual ways: a punch, a knife, a gun, an energy blast, a broken heart. He is also frankly unaccustomed to people being as quick as he is, and so can be caught off guard by anyone whose speed comes anywhere close to his. …And he’s an impulsive, reckless dumbass, his fatal flaw.

headcanons.

Mostly? Tommy’s here for the free food. Just kidding; Tommy was technically summoned to play the role of emotional support child to Wanda, a thing he has a lot of mixed feelings about—if only because every time he roasted Billy for being like, “you just don’t understand her like I do” about Wanda, it turned out he was kind of right, while Tommy was happy to shrug off the similarities and weird coincidences. But it is true that in a world that no longer has room for superpowered beings who want to live their lives in peace, “apathy” and “staying out of it” are no longer really options. He’s also lonely, but like hell he’d ever admit that one.

 Absolutely did not sign the Accords!!! Tommy has ENOUGH issues with the government crawling up his ass to go willingly sign away his rights like that. REGISTER? No, thanks. That gets in the way of his ability to “get away with doing stuff,” thank you very much. Frankly, Tommy is hesitant to register for anything that would get him put into any kind of database, period, especially as a mutant with a criminal history—but everything that went down with the Accords certainly did not inspire confidence. 

Another great reason to be willing to relocate to Sokovia? Tommy is effectively homeless. He wasn’t welcome back home after he broke out of SuperPrison—and frankly, didn’t want to go back there—so for some time he made an attempt at normalcy by moving in with Billy and Billy’s extremely normal family. It… didn’t really work out. They are extremely nice, and Tommy still makes a point to stop in for dinner and stay for a few days because he has some manners and he’s not about to wholly disrespect the amount of care and compassion that Mrs. K showed him. But a curfew, a sort-of-mom who expected him to be home for family dinner every single day at seven p.m., sharp… none of that really worked for him. He wanted it to! He really did. He wanted to be able to fit into their lives. But at the end of the day, Tommy just felt suffocated—and the lingering sense that sooner or later, he would fuck up the whole thing, earn their ire, and wear out his welcome, so he bailed before that could become a problem. In the meantime, he’s been squatting in a house in New Jersey with an old ex-villain who basically has dementia. Why, who’s your roommate?

Speaking of an old ex-villain who basically has dementia! Tommy has become a great homecare nurse. This is a pretty unexpected turn of events for someone who is pretty selfish and was once called a sociopath by the person he thought knew him best, and for someone who loathes doctors and labs and medicine of any kind. Taking care of Master P gave Tommy purpose in life when the Young Avengers couldn’t really keep operating, and he feels pretty guilty about abandoning him, actually. That means Tommy will still sprint across the whole of Europe and the Atlantic Ocean to check in on the guy and make sure he isn’t stuck on the ground because he fell over and couldn’t get up and to make sure he’s eating and all. Pandemonium’s not completely incapable of taking care of himself or anything, but he forgets.

After the Young Avengers broke him out of juvie, Tommy never bothered to return to high school. It’s that ol’ “fitting in with normalcy” thing again, and a desire to keep himself off the ‘grid’ as much as possible. He did, however, receive his GED, but he hasn’t bothered with trying to go to college—too expensive, first of all. Second of all, not really worth his time. 

Tommy does have a superspeed mutation, yes, but it’s a little more complicated than that—hence his ability to vibrate molecules around him at range. As a product of Wanda’s soul, Tommy contains traces of magic within him, too, and it is the source of his abilities; Tommy’s superspeed is its own kind of reality warping, not dissimilar to time magic—he can move quickly by changing the world around him, so to speak. But practically, it’s superspeed.

In that vein, slowing down can be… a challenge. When you start doing everything faster than the speed of light, it can be difficult—at tims, agonizing even—to operate at a slower pace than everything else; imagine going from the internet speeds we have now back to dial-up. This became a huge factor in why Tommy struggled to maintain real human connections: people just couldn’t keep up with him, and he didn’t want to have to slow down for them. Joining the Young Avengers helped that a little as for the first time he met people who kind of understood him, but his attention span is shot to all hell, and he still struggles with a distinct lack of, uh, patience. 

biography.

It all started with a curse. Frank and Mary Shepherd never really wanted a kid; Mary Shepherd can distinctly recall the moment she saw that little pink plus on a pregnancy test (and the second test, and the third, and the fourth) and burst into tears, damning whatever God was listening for giving her this problem that would make her body unrecognizable, belonging to someone else; for another mouth to feed; for forcing her into a marriage she didn’t really want. The whole fling with Frank had been hot-and-cold, intense passion and even more intense fighting. She’d hid the pregnancy at first, until her then-boyfriend inevitably found out and promised to be the best goddamn dad the world had ever seen. They may not have had much, but they would have love, and wasn’t that everything in the world?

No, it turns out, it was not. The fighting stopped… for a while. Frank and Mary got married, a combination bridal and baby shower that left them with a small house stocked with all the signs of domesticity: a mobile with little animals to hang over the crib, a Kitchen Aid mixer (the ultimate symbol of luxurious suburbia. Mary never imagined she’d have one; now that she did, she hardly knew what to do with it). But the tenuous peace they’d brokered didn’t last long, and Frank started drinking again, and Mary never wanted to have this stupid baby, didn’t he remember that, didn’t he remember how he’d talked her into having this baby and if it was his idea he was going to need to take some of the responsibility instead of going out after his shifts, stupid deadbeat?

Anyway, that basically set the stage for Tommy Shepherd’s life. 

His parents split when he was young, and Mary Shepherd made the choice to reclaim her life, leaving behind the man and the kid. Frank left Tommy more or less to his own devices; he wanted a buddy more than he wanted a kid.  It didn’t help that Tommy was a hyperactive, rambunctious kid as it was, never mind being one starved for attention; even at a young age, it was clear that while sometimes Frank liked him, at other times, his dad found him annoying as fuck, and Tommy struggled to be able to gauge which way the pendulum would swing. When whatever shenanigans Tommy got himself into stopped entertaining him, Frank stopped paying attention.What qualified as “entertaining” got rarer and rarer as Tommy got older, which meant he would start making grander and grander attempts for attention… and in a whirl of anger and every other poorly regulated emotion in the book, Tommy’s outbursts and tantrums took a turn for the violent. Prone to stirring up trouble and picking fights at school, Tommy was regularly in detention or suspended, and before he hit puberty, he already had a knack for finding himself on the wrong side of the law and inside juvenile detention halls.

Most of those stints were short stays for minor incidents—just enough to get a rowdy brown kid off the street, you know? But Frank’s girlfriend always had a funny feeling about that kid, his angry eyes, his unfeeling expression, the way he never flinched at gore, his stupid white hair. She was pretty convinced he must’ve been a mutant or something.

Turns out, she was right. (Or something. Tommy’s not clear on the details.)

When Tommy’s abilities manifested—the same day as that whole Novi Grad Sokovia thing, whatever the hell; he didn’t keep up with world events enough to know how they got there, but he did know where they ended up because you couldn’t escape that particular aspect of the news cycle—all he knew was that he could finally taste the air of freedom. Freedom from the crap of his daily life; freedom from teachers who loathed and distrusted him, who treated him like he was nothing but a lost cause and a trouble maker; from his dad who never wanted him around anyway—for once, Tommy’s life could be really, truly his own.

Anyway, that’s how he ended up vaporizing his school. It was mostly an accident. (Mostly.) No one had been inside—late at night, zipping circles around the track field in a blur too fast for the human eye, all Tommy had been wishing for was the promise that he wouldn’t have to go back to that cursed shithole. And suddenly, the shithole was no more.

He could have run away, of course. He was way faster than any cop car, and the cameras were gone. But when you’ve suddenly blown up your school and reduced it to nothing but ash and scorch marks on the pavement, what the hell do you do besides stand there in awe and start laughing in disbelief? So naturally… he was caught. Before Tommy could really register what was going on, special ops police had encircled the premises and nullified his powers, hauling him off to a unique hell specifically for those bad kids unlucky enough to have superpowers.

For someone who already felt caged within the confines of his crappy life, you can imagine how that went—Tommy did not exactly love superjuvie from the start. When the heads of the prison realized the extent of his mutations, they saw only an opportunity. Ah, war: the mother of invention. From there Tommy became the subject of secret, probably illegal experiments, as a team of scientists hoped to bottle his speed and his kinetic vibrations into something mass producible, or else to find a way to turn him into the United States’ greatest living weapon. They had invented the super-soldier, after all, and that was with a regular human. What else could they make? 

The result was that Tommy had phenomenal control over his abilities in a short amount of time, and the instant the power nullification was turned off of his cell, he did what any sane person stuck in a prison would do: he blew the door right off. On the other side were a bunch of wannabe superheroes his age, in desperate need of help—somebody’s boyfriend had been kidnapped. Somebody, it turned out, who bore an odd resemblance to him; they may not have been identical, but there was an uncanny connection. (Tommy claimed not to notice. No one else was polite enough to do the same, apparently.)

So what was Tommy going to do, say no and keep himself incarcerated forever? The rest, as they say, is history: they saved the boyfriend, Tommy joined the team and adopted the name Speed, they went on their share of adventures. Tommy never returned to his dad’s house; his dad never asked about him. For a brief time, he lived with the Kaplans for lack of any place better to go, but after a few days of having to put up with Billy and Teddy sucking face and Rebecca Kaplan trying to lovingly psychologize him, it was time to go. He found some stability working odd jobs where he could get a month’s work done in a few days’ time and pay rent to a landlord who didn’t ask questions, but as having superpowers became more and more dangerous, so did Tommy’s plans for income.

Eventually, the Young Avengers were forced to disband, and Tommy found his way back to New Jersey. Until the Mistress of Magic appeared, apparently demanding his presence…  

[spccd]

bdrakerising​:

…

Bobby was plenty amused by Tommy going on about jacking off to the volley ball scene. Did he even have a filter? Seems not, but it was still amusing anyway so he just let Tommy eventually bring the subject back to where it needed to be. “Hm, I do have ice ice baby sung to me sometimes. Mostly from people my own age when they find out I’m Iceman. It hasn’t gotten old yet.” Would it ever? Nah. 

Ok, he could pretend that none of this had happened for a minute and let Tommy speak and ask questions. “It has its moments of course and it’s only operated by Charles so there’s a chance he may have missed some over the years.” Bobby knew what he was getting at so hoped his words helped somewhat. 

“Not every time. Some of them refuse to come with us, some have no choice because they’ve been ran out of their home.” Like he was. “It happens. Are you a mutant, Tommy? There’s tests we can do to find out if you have the X gene.”

“‘Ice Ice Baby,’ huh? So does that mean every time I go...” He dropped his head for a moment to put on his very serious performer face, then looked up at Bobby again, and started, “All right stop, collaborate and listen—that’s gonna send you back to a place, eh? Good to know, man, good to know. I’mma keep that in mind. Bobby Drake loves Vanilla Ice.” ( To be honest, at first Tommy had heard the phrase ‘It hasn’t gotten old yet’ as ‘I haven’t gotten old yet,’ maybe because Iceman had mentioned people his own age, to which Tommy had to say... uh, disagree. Ice Ice Baby was so old it was practically vintage. But he managed to stop himself from digging himself into that hole, at least! Unless Bobby was a telepath. But as far as Tommy was aware... no telepath. )

Anyway, the answer about whether Charles might have missed some mutants along his path of freeing Genosha or whatever the hell—to be honest, Tommy didn’t keep up with mutant politics—gave him a spike of anxiety, and his knee started jogging, itching to run. Then why hadn’t this freakin’ Cerebro picked up on him? A chance he might have missed some over the years, Bobby said, as though it was some small, negligible percentage. What might his life looked like if he’d been swept away into the warmth of the ‘school for gifted youngsters’ as a kid? Could things have been different?

“...There’s tests, you said? ‘Cause, like, I gotta tell you, I’ve been sure as shit all my life that I was a mutant, right, ‘cause why the hell else would I be able to run so fast? Running fast doesn’t run in my family, as they say. Hah! And my dad’s girlfriend—no, that part doesn’t matter, point is, we’re all freaks out here, right? And no weird lab experiments, no, uhh, radioactive spiders, none of that shit for me. As far as I know. Or so I thought, for a while.” But this soul fragment business... “So yeah, yeah, yeah, let’s run the tests. And then I can join the X-Gang.” 

[americanwish]

OPEN

The ripple of whatever the hell was going on in Sokovia had been felt throughout the entirety of the multiverse. Just a twinge - something familiar but frustrating pulling at the edges of her awareness. One well-placed stomp of her foot had landed America safely just outside Matchak, in a crackling blue star, before she had started the long hike into town, hair swept up into a twist with rogue curls framing her face.

“Fucking Demiurge,” she muttered to herself, eventually crossing into the square of the town. Sharp eyes scanned for anything unusual.

Nothing as of yet. Reluctantly, she steered herself to one of the benches to park herself for a moment and watch. Someone would come along eventually. Eventually, her gaze locked with someone’s across the way. The moment held for long enough that it looked suspicious. America raised a challenging eyebrow.

[spccd]

Had he heard her right?

Tommy didn’t have Billy’s gift of premonition or foresight or futuresight or whatever the hell it was. The vision of some girl with curly hair and a denim jacket meant little to him—far less, even, than the enormous star she’d arrived in. He’d felt the ripple, of course. Tommy’d been running—Tommy was always running. Faster than the naked eye. Faster than a machine could detect, most of the time. Making his rounds, surveying the area, trying to get some semblance of a read on this place...

...Looking for trouble, maybe.

Maybe. He wasn’t sure yet.

And perhaps trouble had arrived. Quietly, quickly, he’d tailed star-girl to the town square, sizing her up, wondering if he’d heard correctly. Demiurge, she’d said, right? Or was it his imagination filling in the blanks, hoping he’d heard what he wanted to hear, or translating unfamiliar sounds into something he could process?

Ah, shit. He’d stopped too long to think and felt the intensity of her gaze on him. Clocked. “Did you say Demiurge?”

[spccd]

gdikate​:

KATE: I think it was technically some sort of magic conglomerate Wanda brought to fruition through sheer force of manifestation, so maybe more like your vision board clone.

Babies all kind of looked the same to Kate, with their facial features all squished together by fat and a tiny skull, but Wanda’s twins didn’t really look like Tommy and Billy to her. This was exactly why she preferred shooting mafia thugs with arrows; magic gave her a headache. 

Tommy also gave her a headache, and, truthfully, sometimes he confused her just as much as the metaphysics of chaos magic did. There was the Young Avengers Tommy, and there was the Tommy who sometimes fucked her, and then there was another one who was somewhere in-between. They all existed at once, and yet could not inhabit the same space––now that was a real reality warping conundrum. 

KATE: I know you know what it’s called. 

She typed out her next reply and paused before pressing send. Partially, because it would be far too quick to play off as ambivalent, but mostly because she had to give herself a once over in the cracked mirror hanging crookedly over the baroque chest of drawers in the corner. The entire point of their arrangement was things like shaving and dark circles didn’t matter, but Kate would always be a perfectionist. He wasn’t allowed to see her until her hair was combed and her teeth were brushed, regardless of how many times he saw her covered in a slick coat of sweat after a training session or smudged with dirt and blood after aliens attacked Earth again. That was a different Tommy all together.

KATE: Yeah. I’m on the same floor as Damian, so, y’know, enter at your own peril.

She waited another moment before adding:

KATE: Are you staying?  

TOMMY: oh ok miss “conglomerate” and “manifestation” ig we’re really pulling out the 5 dollar words tonight TOMMY: do you really think damian is going to scare me out of the rathole TOMMY: he can’t even scare me out of the batcave. his own house

He stared at the last message, chewing on the inside of his cheek. Tommy was staying, of course. For a lot of reasons—until they better understood this whole soul-splitting business, it was probably safer to keep he, Wanda, and Billy relatively close together. And then there was the matter of the FOMO he would have if the whole goddamn team moved into Sokovia and he was still out living in New Jersey; there were enough reasons for him to feel more like a guest spot than a team member without adding all your friends are off having fun adventures without you onto the list. 

But answering that now felt like a trap, somehow. An admission of something soft that he didn’t want to admit ever, and certainly not now, to Kate of all people. When the entire world moved around you at a snail’s pace, developing some sense of observation was inevitable—and for as dense and up his own ass as Tommy could often be, there were things he noticed, too, like how Kate had been the first to try to make sure he didn’t feel like a visitor or a guest on the team, how she led without asking for her leadership to be recognized, how her presence was loud and demanded their attention and respect, no matter how much she might not want it to. But that was the thing about Kate: once you knew she was in a room, it was hard to look anywhere else. It was what made her their de facto leader and, surely, the reason she’d gone to Sokovia long before the rest of them had even thought about it.

...But he didn’t want her to know any of that. Not from him.

TOMMY: maybe. we’ll see. you know me TOMMY: can’t stay in one place for too long TOMMY: not that im ever more than a 6 sec run away if u need me, toots

Or a few knocks, quick and staccato, against the door he’d determined was hers. “Yo, tell me more about my vision board baby self.” 

[spccd]

onetruewayne​:

Damian glared at him through the smoke. He did hold his breath until it was mostly gone, waving one hand in his face to speed up the process, but he still smelled it when he did breathe in. It was a near thing, resisting the urge to cough just to be dramatic, but he didn’t. “That doesn’t seem like an intelligent way to treat someone you want to ask for money from. I should charge you for that.”

It took him a moment with Spanish. Damian spoke several languages from an early age, but in Gotham it was mostly English, he kept up with Arabic and Turkish more seriously, his French lessons in school kept him practiced with that one, but Spanish always took him a minute longer to turn his mind on to. Maybe because so much of what he heard of it was slang, and he always took a minute too long with slang in general. He didn’t want to say something that would make it seem like he misunderstood Tommy as a point of pride. “How much?”

At this point, Damian had already given in. Really when Tommy asked he’d already decided he’d give him money. What did Damian want with Wayne wealth other than his comfortable lifestyle? They had plenty. But there was a certain point to not making himself seem like a pushover while still letting Tommy know he’d give him the money. He pulled out his phone, prepared either to wire Tommy’s account money, or make a cash request. “Gum can’t be so expensive you can’t pick pocket someone like your brother for it. And you can’t spend money faster than the bank can process transactions.”

Well, no, it wasn’t an intelligent way to treat someone he’d just hit up for cash. Even Tommy knew that; didn’t take a super genius. But the part of him that wanted to roast Damian a little for being such a goddamn square was completely divorced of the part of him that wanted a piece of the Wayne Pie. All of this could have been resolved if Daddy Wayne would just adopt him, finally. He was an orphan, too, you know. A troubled youth. “I’ll take that as a no, not actually prepared for all scenarios.” Smug and satisfied, Tommy snubbed out the cigarette on the stone sill of the castle window, flicked the butt out of it. “You know why I started smoking? ‘Cause of fuckin’ James Dean. That whole ‘smoking looks cool’ propaganda really worked on me. You wanna cure juvenile tobacco addictions? You’ll have to edit every photo of some hot actor of the past lookin’ tight as hell with a cigarette.” 

It helped that it kept his jittering hands busy when he had nothing better to do. Idle hands, devil’s playthings, right?

“Not literally for gum. It’s an expression. Just, y’know. If I wanna fuck around. You ever been gambling, pajarito?” Little bird, but also, technically, a derogatory-if-reclaimed-by-Tommy term for a gay man. You know how it goes. “Bet there are some slick underground casinos ‘round here. We should go. It’d be good for gathering intel on the crime scene, don’t you think? But you have to look like you’re ready to ball, or else it doesn’t work.” 

Really, he’d just wanted some cash to make a pizza run for movie night, hilariously. Enough to buy, like, a fuckin’ cork gun or something from the kids who walked the streets of Matchak, hawking tourist trap goods for a quick buck because they had to stretch every dollar to make sure their oversized families had enough to eat. It felt familiar, and Tommy had a bleeding heart for that kind of thing even if he didn’t have the cash. 

But that didn’t sound particularly cool or badass, but Tommy hadn’t actually thought far enough to an actual amount when he’d made the request—to be honest, he hadn’t expected Damian to say yes. It didn’t make sense, really. Damian nearly always did, in this little back and forth they had, where Tommy wanted conversation but didn’t know how to exist in a world that wasn’t transactional, and with Damian Wayne, the heir apparent to the crimefighting throne, the only transaction he could think of was a literal one. What did he have to offer to the one person in the world who had everything? “And the bank can process transactions faster than you can notice your card is missing if I’m slick enough.” 

[spccd]

riseofthewitch​:

They seemed to both be stepping carefully like the wrong foot placement would shatter something. She wished she could offer him so reassurance but Wanda didn’t even have that for herself. Unlike Billy who seemed so full of hope, Tommy seemed wary. Optimism was hard to come by in a life like the one she’d led and the one she’d seen in his mind. Dead eyes was what the woman who gave birth to him said. They didn’t look dead to Wanda. They looked bright blue and clear and it was kind of painful to look at them directly because it made a warm spread in her heart that was quickly turned icy when she remembered the person typically associated with that warmth.

“Kate,” she said. She was the only friend of his Wanda met. “And Billy but you knew that.” She wondered about the others. She could see them in his mind and she could feel his uncertainty about his place even with them. “Kate missed you all. She told me. It will be good for her to have you here.” 

It was supposed to be good for Wanda too, but she wasn’t past the gaping hole she felt where her babies used to be. She still didn’t think of them like a lie or like monsters. Her arms ached for them. She was grateful to these new twins for appearing and talking to her like they did and she knew they were somehow part of her. She just didn’t know what that meant for them. Looking at their faces she saw men barely younger than her. How could she be their mother? She didn’t even know why they would want her. “I’m sorry if you feel like you must remain though. Because of me.”

“It’s not because of you.” Tommy corrected her immediately—reassured, really. Or tried to reassure. But it occurred to him just as quickly that she might think of it as a bite or a rejection, and he didn’t want that, either, so he hedged: “I mean—I don’t feel stuck here because of you or anything like that.” Did Wanda know what it felt like to be without a tether? She must have. Something in her sorrowful face, the way she moved through the Mousehole like a ghost, told him so. “I just... don’t really have anywhere else to go.” 

Tommy Shepherd had seen the entire world twice over. And not just running through; he’d worked hard, saved enough money to stay at manageable hostels and eat at their restaurants and, when he hadn’t, he would take whatever he wanted, whatever it was that was supposed to make the experience count. Nothing like fulfilling most people’s bucket list dream of seeing the world to know that an accumulation of experiences didn’t count as a life, and it was still empty when there was no one there to get nearly arrested climbing a crane in Argentina with you.

He watched Wanda for a moment, the shy, nervous way she held herself. He studied her expression. He wanted to say, I’m sorry about your babies. Or maybe, It’s okay if you want to hate me. I wouldn’t blame you. Or even Billy’s better at this kind of thing than I am. Maybe you should talk to Billy?

But Tommy had already shot himself in the foot on vulnerability with this I don’t have anywhere else to go business, so instead, he popped on a cocky grin, cupped his chin in his hands. “Kate told you she missed us, huh? What else did she say?” 

[riseofthewitch-deactivated20240]

@spccd

He looked so much like Pietro that it was astounding and enough to pause Wanda sometimes. He wasn’t Pietro, but who was Thomas Shepherd? She wanted to find out. He was the little lost boy while Billy was the one who didn’t need her at all. Wanda wondered what kind of relationship she would have with each of them. If they really wanted relationships.

Her fingers reached out without a thought when he arrived, the familiarity of his face catching her off guard enough that she didn’t even think he might not like to be touched by someone who was basically a complete stranger. She pushed his silver hair back from his face with a warm expression on her face and then realized that she didn’t have that right. She pulled back. “I’m sorry,” she said to him and took a step back from him to give him space. “I just…” She struggled for the words. She what? Saw her brother in him? Or saw a child she ached for? She shook her head when she couldn’t find what she wanted to say and turned her face away respectfully.

“So you’re staying in the Mousehole?” She asked him finally. It was an easier place to start.

[spccd]

To be honest? He still struggled to see his relationship to Wanda as more than what she got in exchange for what she’d lost.

No--that wasn’t quite right. No, Tommy struggled to see Wanda’s relationship to him as what she got in exchange for what she’d lost. Because the problem--the fear--had never been about Tommy’s feelings toward her, whatever those were ( they still required some unpacking, a thing Tommy was keenly disinterested in doing ); it was that she looked at him and saw nothing but loss, betrayal, a thief. She said she’d wanted a family, but how much of that heat of the moment neediness lasted once the heat had passed and she was left with nothing but the cold emptiness of where her babies had once slept?

So when her fingers brushed the hair out of his face, Tommy started a little, stammering out a quick “I’m sorry” at the same time that Wanda did. “No, wait--you don’t have to be sorry. I know this is probably...”

He hadn’t even considered the brother, really. Billy had brought it up plenty, before. But for now, he was focused on the children. “...Weird. Oh, uh, yeah, the Rathole! I’m staying. Here. In the rathole. With my friends, actually, have you met them?” 

[spccd]

gdikate​:

Kate stared at her phone for a solid minute, only remembering to blink when her eyes screamed for moisture. They had come across enemies from alternate timelines, armies from other planets, and several magical entities––but this doozy might take the strange and unusual cake. Wanda, at least the one she had met briefly, was barely older than them…and, holy fuck, the drooling babies she had with her were twins, too. 

KATE: Ew. I think I briefly met you as a baby. 

Billy was going to be insufferable for the next year now that he had proof his conspiracy turned out to be true. Though, he had to have been at least a little surprised that Tommy was his “spiritual brother”; the only thing that the twin’s had in common spiritually was a devotion to worshipping powerful women––and speaking of worshiping strong, independent women… KATE: I suppose I should take pity on you for spending your birthday with demons and smug Billy.  KATE: You know, it’s still technically your birthday in Hawaii. 

TOMMY: the fuck you mean you met me as a baby

Was there a less sexy combination words in the English language than “I met you as a baby”? No. No, there were not. And while Tommy was pretty sure there’d be enough Tinder and/or Grindr action even in a place like Sokovia to make up for losing whatever arrangement he and Kate had going ( they hadn’t really put much thought into defining it besides uncomplicated, which was good enough for Tommy Shepherd ), how would he be able to keep the joy in one-upping Billy and Teddy whenever they were being disgusting on main ( main being the Young Avengers’ shared group chat, plus Damian Wayne ) if he and Kate were no longer sleeping together? He could not, was the sad truth. It was pretty hard to prove to anybody you were a pretty fucking good lay without some brat to corroborate. It was one of the few compliments Kate would willingly give, anyway—after all, it reflected poorly on her if this arrangement kept up and Tommy couldn’t even deliver the goods. Which he could, by the way. He could deliver many, many goods.

All this to say—what a bummer to have to give it up. At least until the next couple of texts from Kate, which put his mind more than at ease, enough for Tommy’s restless leg to start jittering not unlike goddamn Thumper from Bambi all ‘cause he was about ready to start searching the whole of this damn place himself. 

Except, you know. True players could never look too eager.

TOMMY: hell yea bless hawaii TOMMY: the fuck kinda time zone are they in anyway TOMMY: w/e not important. u living in the rathole or what

[spccd]

bdrakerising​:

…

Bobby had been sat at his desk, filling in his reports from the mission he just got back when Tommy walked in and began his barrage of questions. A speedster, Bobby could recognise those from a mile away, they never shut up. “Gay?” He offered the word. “But no, I’m no named after Val Kilmer’s character.” Bobby shook his head, clearing that up. “I didn’t actually name myself w-” then Tommy had already changed the subject so Bobby set his pen down and leaned back in his chair. 

“Well, I never looked at the movie in that way. Guess it’s because of the whole X-Men thing being child-…” He trailed off as the subject changed once more. 

“I am one of the original X-Men yes, we were among the first to be trained for that team.” Bobby nodded a little. “These days? You can’t, but back before the Accords, we did a lot of out recruiting using a machine called cerebro. The Professor would use it to find mutants then we’ll set off to speak to them either to join our school or at least take a look around. Our front is a private school for gifted children but like I said, times have changed and technically, the X-Men are disbanded.” Were they? were they really, Bobby? “But you’re still free to mingle with the other mutants here, we’re like family to one another.”

“Haha! Yeah, you get it! I mean, that movie is homoerotic as fuck, right? Look, if it weren’t for the whole scientology shill thing, I prol’ly would’ve jacked off to that stupid fuckin’ volleyball scene, like, a thousand times, to be perfectly honest. Tom Cruise in that movie? Hot, unfortunately. Kelly McGillis? Also hot. Those leather jackets, dude...” Wait, what were they talking about again? Right, right, X-Men. The whole reason Tommy had wanted to talk to the one and only Iceman. “You should write a theme song, like, The Iceman Cometh. Like that Ozzy Osbourne thing, but better. You know, if the X-Men ever get back together.”

Tommy winked almost cartoonishly at that—as far as he was concerned, none of these superhero teams had actually stopped operating, right? They’d just had to go underground. Or into a castle in the side of a mountain such as this. “But aaaanyway. We’re talkin’ pure hypotheticals here. ‘Cause of course you can’t join the X-Men nowadays, but, you know, let’s pretend that none of this,” he gestured vaguely toward the room they were in with a low whistle, “ever happened. Say you were still sittin’ large and pretty in that estate of yours. So, what, this Cerebro thing finds every mutant ever?”

Maybe he really wasn’t a mutant. Maybe that was why Cerebro had never found him. 

“And then they all just get enrolled into this... school? What if somebody gets missed.”

[spccd]

onetruewayne​:

Billy had been ready to burst with excitement about Wanda, the news bubbling out of him practically before Damian could explain what he already knew. Teddy had been his usual friendly self, already making himself at home in Matchak and the Mousehole. Both very predictable ways for them to be, their usual selves. It shouldn’t surprise him that Tommy’s natural state of being was asking for Damian to spot him cash. Instead of answering him, Damian flicked his eyes to the cigarette. “Second hand smoke is damaging to others around you, you know.”

It wasn’t clear how much it affected speedsters, if Tommy’s enhanced healing factor would simply undo the damage as quickly as it happened, or if it would cause long term damage. Too soon to say. At least he was doing it out a window instead of in the subfloors.

“You have food here, and housing, what do you need my money for?” He wasn’t being malicious about it on purpose, it was just that Damian made everything an accusation or an insult. Tommy should know that by now. He wasn’t picking on Tommy for being without, he just wanted to know. Needed more information on the situation. While sometimes it made for an interesting challenge to try and keep up with the brain of someone moving faster than the speed of sound, other times, Damian didn’t want to deal with guessing what was happening.

“The marvels of online banking mean that you can take my wallet, and I can deactivate my cards. I don’t carry cash, Thomas, it’d be useless to have. Your criminal ways are thwarted.”

“Then maybe others around me should watch their breathing, howzabout that?” And sure, the logic kind of fell apart when Tommy was the one hitting up Damian for cash—any claims of using cigarette smoke to keep away those who might be susceptible to it for the sake of privacy didn’t really hold up to Tommy seeking out Damian, specifically. “Thought you bats were supposed to be prepared for any possible scenario.” Pointedly, he exhaled a puff of smoke right into Damian’s face. “Prepare for that one, wonder boy.” 

Dick move? Probably. But that was what Damian got for making it sound like Tommy wanted cash to go score some drugs on the mean streets of Sokovia or something. ( To be clear—he wasn’t, like, opposed to the idea. But he also knew better than to try to use Wayne money for something like that. Even Tommy’s idiocy had its limits. )

“Para mi chicle, as my ma would say.” Ah yes, to buy some gum; universal Spanish slang for, U dunno, in case I wanna fuck around and buy something random. His parents had always been fighting over that—where the family finances went, when, til there was no “family” to have finances anymore. Too bad. “The marvels of superspeed still mean I could use your card on a bunch of random shit before you even noticed it was gone and had a chance to cancel, you know that, right?” 

[spccd]

“Yo, can I borrow some cash?” Borrow was a mighty bold verb choice when they both knew well and good that if Damian were foolish enough to say yes, that loan would never be repaid. Tommy Shepherd had never paid back money owed in his life -- ironic, considering how much he loathed to be in debt. But he hadn’t made it a habit of asking people for money even when he somehow ended up in the lap of not one but two billionaires; unfortunately, DoorDashing his way through Sokovia had been -- he was told -- expressly verboten. 

Anyway, this was how he ended up here: leaning out one of the stone windows of the Mousehole, anxiously flicking the butt of a cigarette, asking Damian Wayne to spot him some cash. If only this sugar baby business had been more than a running gag. Time was money; living was money; and Tommy was broke but he had no interest in dying.

Besides, it was easier to talk about the crushing weight of his empty wallet against Daddy Warbucks’s fat ass moneyclip than it was to talk about everything else -- why he was in Sokovia instead of New Jersey, what the hell he was supposed to do now that he’d moved in as one half of Wanda Maximoff’s emotional support children.

“It’s a real sign of character growth that I didn’t just take your wallet, I feel like it’s worth noting.” 

( @onetruewayne )

[spccd]

gdikate​:

The audacity in his response was unmistakably Tommy Shepherd, so at least she didn’t have to worry about if he was alive anymore. Now, her greatest fear was how long Tommy was going to hold this over her head. It was much easier to be a tsundere when he didn’t know exactly how long it took for her to resort to panicking at the thought of him in immediate peril. At least, she had more time to calculate her response now. She rolled onto her stomach and crossed her ankles in the air as she gnawed off the last of her vanilla chapstick with her right incisor before deciding on something sufficiently impersonal. 

KATE: Parts of you, maybe.  KATE: Not until you tell me what the hell kept Billy from responding to Teddy for longer than five minutes. 

Ugh.

TOMMY: jjjjjesus TOMMY: ok ok ok ok do you know wanda maximoff TOMMY: bc like

No time like the present to rip off the band-aid, right? Just say it, Tommy. Wanda Maximoff is my mom. Sort of. She's my soul mom. The mom of my soul. A fragment of her soul lives in me, and it makes me her baby, or something, and we had to expel a chaos demon from eating her soul partly because it couldn't get her WHOLE soul because part of her soul is in me. And in Billy. Because we're soul brothers. Like the Blues Brothers, but less jazz. Why were they call the Blues Brothers, anyway? Yeah, they sang the blues, but they weren't the BLUES blues. They were more like the jazz blues. Not the same thing. Tommy sighed, tapped a few experimental messages into his phone, backspaced, typed a few more. Something told him deep-diving into the wonders of having a soul-mom and a soul-brother were not going to end in him getting off that night, or possibly any night in the near future.

TOMMY: so ig she's my mom TOMMY: and also billy's mom TOMMY: but like spiritually. TOMMY: we had to fight a chaos demon

[spccd]

“Yoooo, Iceman! The man with the ice. The ice with the man. Hey, did you choose your alias because of Val Kilmer in Top Gun? ‘Cause I gotta tell you, dude, if you did, that is preeeeetty--” 

Well, gay is what Tommy was going to say. That’s pretty gay. But he remembered that might be a sore subject -- they were in Eastern Europe, and Tommy was Gen Z enough to be totally comfortable with being aggressively bisexual but also poor enough to not exactly be waving pride flags or dropping pronouns in school ( well, before he blew it up ), that whole deal. 

“--cool. Pretty cool. I like that movie, you feel? Even though it’s a whole military propaganda thing, and like, normally I don’t fuck with that, you know? I mean, you spend a couple years in superjuvie, little bit of this, little bit of that, you stop rolling the dice on movies that are specifically designed to get bum-ass poor kids like you to jerk off to pilots and join the Air Force. Aaanyway.”

What had he been looking for again?

“Oh, right, right, right, I just wanted to introduce myself, ‘cause you’re one of those OG X-Men guys, right? And I myself,” Tommy gestured to himself vaguely, “am a mutant. Obviously. A fast one. Mad respect.”

Come to think of it, he was no longer sure that was the case. Was Wanda a mutant? Had his powers been coming from Wanda’s soul this entire time? Of course they had -- his powers imitated her twin’s, just as his own twin’s imitated hers. The fact that Tommy hadn’t stopped to consider this sooner should have shocked him, but to be completely honest... it didn’t. He’d spent so long as a true believer that he was a member of mutantkind -- mutantkin, if you will ( and he would ) -- that erasing that part of himself seemed impossible. Shit, he’d even suffered from the whole mutant prejudice thing. That counted, right? Mutant passing.

Yeah, whatever. He would keep being a mutant.

“So how does one become an X-Man? Like, hypothetically. Like, in a universe where those are still a thing. Because I know, I know, superhero teams, we totally aren’t doing those anymore.” A pronounced wink. Surely ol’ Icemagoo would pick up what he was putting down. 

( @bdrakerising )

[gdikate]

@spccd​

KATE: I’m starting to forget the benefits to being your friend.  KATE: Are you free in like an hour?

…

KATE: Oh yeah, happy birthday ig. I have a present for you. KATE: That’s not entirely a euphemism. 

….

KATE: Okay, don’t be fucking rude, asshole. You can at least say thanks. 

….

KATE: Teddy needs proof of life. He’s spiraling without his emotional support boyfriend.

…

KATE: I swear to god if you aren’t on the brink of death, I will kill you. 

…

KATE: I’ll see if one of these supes can teleport me out of here. KATE: Call me when you can.

[spccd]

oh, FUCK. Shit, fuck, motherfucking god dammit motherfucker--- 

What an idiot he was! An absolute rube! Sure, Zatanna, Mistress of Magic, I’d love to step through your magic little portal of doom into a nightmare mindscape on my birthday, what else do I have going on? The answer, dear reader, was that Tommy had A LOT going on, actually! The proof was in the pudding, in the case where pudding meant nine - nine! - missed texts from Kate Biashin.

But, listen. As if Tommy was about to let some tsundere as fuck little minx know that he was (a) disappointed about missing out on what he could only assume was an awesome birthday hookup and, like, who knows, lingerie if he dared to dream, and (b) sorry for scaring her, so naturally, the only response - which he had to type five or six times; computers were fast, but Tommy’s fingers were faster, and in the flurried panic of having nine missed texts ( after all, how often was it Tommy had someone who worried enough to double text him? ) to answer to, his typing was flying far too quickly for his poor, simple little OS to keep up - he could offer her was:

TOMMY: aw did u miss me TOMMY: shit got wild i’ll explain later but just know billy is gonna be a smug ass lil bitch for so long because of this TOMMY: hey u still free or what

Because spirit moms and brothers and demon magic babies be damned, it was - or, it had been - Tommy Shepherd’s birthday.

[spccd]

buffkermitrising​:

imessage → young avengers + babybat

TOMMY: ( VIDEO ATTACHED: https://twitter.com/SirKatelyn/status/1557221663514603520 )

BILLY: I had heard him cackling and didn’t know what it was BILLY: Everything makes sense now

DAMIAN: I have just completed the Twilight series.

DAMIAN: I do wish the car had crushed them all and ended the series before I was forced to endure it.

KATE: You watched all four of them. You clearly didn’t ‘endure’ anything.

TEDDY: I kind of like twilight, I’m not going to lie. 

TOMMY: OH FUCK I FORGOT THERE’S 4  TOMMY: we’re having a marathon rfn TOMMY: also watching titanic w this filter on it’s sooo good. this is my magnum opus @chaoscentrism​

[spccd]

imessage → young avengers + babybat

TOMMY: ( VIDEO ATTACHED )

[pruningthisbranch-deactivated20]

why does everyone care about being mature for their age like maybe i fucking like drinking from juice boxes and eating my popcorn like a fucking lizard fight me about it