Reformed Thad Thwane but in a wolf-dog way. As in, he's just tamed enough to make you think he's chill... then he howls. Ykwm?
Like,
Bart showing off his game collection to Thad: "Oh man! This was my first shooter!"
Thad: "Yeah I know."
Bart: "Oh, I showed it to you before?"
Thad, with way too casual of an energy: "No. The algorithm I had set up to more effectively study your life accidentally flagged it as training due to the guns."
Bart: "Oh."
Or
Max, catching a glimpse of Thad beating a punching bag with a dangerous level of energy and promptly turning back the way he came: "Nope. Not touching that."
on a related note, Bart hasn’t told anyone that he speaks Interlac because he Barely understands 21st century Interlac anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. Thad has taken the time to learn 21st century Interlac out of curiosity, but still thinks it sounds weird and refuses to speak it. Bart finds this funny.
Standing in the entryway of the room, Ulf feels a little like he’s forgotten how to breathe. His throat feels tight and his eyes burn, and if tears don’t fall it’s only because he knows if his sister hears him weep, she will come, and she will be angry, and there is nothing here anyone should be angry about.
He’d spent the afternoon with her, leaving Thad to find them a place to sleep. Ulyana had teased when they’d parted ways that morning that if he didn’t find them a place with seperate rooms, she’d leave for good. It was a bluff, and she’d held Ulf close to her side as she said it, possessive, so he knew she didn’t mean it.
When Thad had called an hour later, Ulyana had grumbled into the phone too low for Ulf to discern, and then hung up, cursing low in Russian as she frowned. She looked like him, but she sounded like Papochka when she spoke that way, and he’d had to laugh. And when she roughed up his hair and called him a brat, he knew she loved him too.
It was nice to know someone else loved him. With Ulyana, the knowledge was easy.
With others… well.
“Brat. You will help me with shopping, then, laughing at me. Come, Thad left me requests.” She linked her arm with his and led him out of the park, into the city. “Tell me, where do we buy Twinkies from?
She’d kept him out all day, and he’d tried to tell himself it wasn’t to give Thad space, but in his heart, he’d been sure. He clung to Thad like a barnacle, now that he was certain touching him wouldn’t set one of them burning. It was almost certainly annoying for Thad, who Ulf knew had no love for being touched.
At noon, four hours after they’d left Thad in the parking lot of last night’s rundown motel, Ulf had leaned against Ulyana and asked quietly if Thad was tired of him.
James had gotten tired of him. Many times. He’d lock Ulf in a small room in the back of the house, windowless and grey, and leave him there for days. Take him out and dress him up and show him off, his pretty toy. Until Ulf’s clinging became tiresome again, and he had to put him away.
Would Thad need to put him away?
Ulyana had looked horrified for a moment, and then angry, and then her face had smoothed out gentle and sweet again, so close to the creature he saw in the mirror. “Oh, moy dorogoy, of course not. Does it hurt, to be away so long?”
He felt like a child looking for reassurance. “He asked you to keep me away today, didn’t he? That’s why you swore like Papochka when he called to tell us where the next room will be. Do I touch him too much? Am I too forward? I can be still, they taught me, I can --”
Ulyana is never cold the way Ulf gets, but her touch doesn’t shock him, thrill him, like most people’s. She can’t keep him warm.
She could, however, keep him safe, and his spiraling distress loosened when she clutched his shoulder. When his breathing evened out again, she moved her touch to his face, her eyes serious. “He is not tired of you. I promise this. Come, perhaps is time we find address anyway.”
It had taken four hours to walk from where they’d been loitering to the address Ulyana had saved in her phone. Twice they’d gotten lost and once been distracted by a sale window showing a dress Ulyana would have looked fantastic in that she refused to go in and try, until they were two blocks away and she spontaneously had a change of heart.
Arriving at a real, honest to god hotel made Ulf feel oddly uncertain. He wasn’t sure if he was hopeful or nervous. Hotels, before, had meant that Thad was in a good mood; hotels meant luxury, rest, fun. Motel rooms they could rent for a week at a time, or worse, abandoned buildings they pried their way into, were the norm.
It had been a hotel room where he’d thrown the little singing box. It had been a hotel room from which Thad had stormed out and never come back, not until Ulyana found them and made him.
Being in one again made Ulf feel flight, nervous, and his fingers tangled together in front of him when Ulyana knocked on a door on the twenty-third floor and Thad cursed loudly from the other side. He looked wide-eyed when he saw them standing in the hall, pauses, and then held up a finger, disappearing for a second and then reappearing with a key card, which he then pressed into Ulyana’s hand. She’d grinned and given Ulf a kiss on the cheek before heading up the hall to her own room.
“I wasn’t… I had hoped to finish something before you got here,” Thad said, and his voice was stiff the way it always was when he was feeling something and pretending to be unaffected. Ulf had a hard time discerning exactly what Thad was pretending not to feel. Annoyance, he’d assumed. His alone time cut into.
Then he’d taken Ulf’s hand, lacing their fingers together, and the idea that Thad didn’t really want him disappeared. All the cold, frightening darkness that had built through distance was pushed back, giving Ulf a sense of clarity. He’d smiled, and Thad had nodded, leading him into the room.
“It’s not perfect,” he said, shutting the door behind them and stepping around Ulf to fiddle with the vase of flowers on the desk. There’s champagne in a bucket of ice, wet with condensation, and two flutes sitting nearby. The window behind the table with the champagne on it has an actual view, dizzying and gorgeous, of the city below. On the bed is a long, slim box, and a red envelope.
And Ulf can’t breathe. He’s standing there, taking in the room, taking in the care that Thad had put into this, hating himself for his lingering doubts when That was trying so hard to prove his affections.
“You’d told me Valentine’s Day was your favourite -- Ulf, are you alright?”
Ulf blinks at him, and suddenly Thad’s not across the room, he’s standing close, hands on Ulf’s face, warm, sweet, so concerned.
“Did I do this wrong?” Thad hazards, and Ulf bites his lip to keep himself from saying anything stupid. He shakes his head and Thad gentles, some of the tension leaving him as he shifts his stance, one hand trailing from Ulf’s neck, down to his waist. “Is it too much?”
“It’s perfect,” Ulf breathes, and he smiles as he says it, warmth seeping from Thad’s hand to his hip. Thad’s smile is still troubled, concerned, perhaps, by the softness of Ulf’s voice, by the slight waver in his voice.
Ulf does not want him worried, does not want him concerned. So he presses close, and kisses him until he’s gasping, until the unease if gone.
Imagine if max had actually convinced Thad to become good. Do you think Bart and Thad could have gotten along? Became brothers?
I think it’s very possible for Bart and Thad to have become really close. Mostly because Bart’s the kind of person who doesn’t really hold people’s pasts against them. I can easily see the two going on long runs together, racing, maybe going to he same school, and I think that’s what hurts the most about Thad turning out so evil. They could have been really claps. Probably should have been, but they weren’t.
Barts natural hair color is brown, but he dyes it red except he also tends to forget a lot. And uses splat.
Issue 65 of Impulse 1995
The real reason that Carol is surprised is because not only is that hair dye meant for blonde hair, but also it looks like it's decent quality. Bart doesn't spring for quality, he doesn't care.
Anyway, if Mercury Falling took place while Bart was in his "shaves my head every day" phase I firmly believe Thad would just b like. Lolz guys my hair grew back overnight, and also I'm tired of shaving it.
Cause thads hair took like five million years to grow what Bart can in five days.
Trust me, this is all completely canon, and not something i thought of ten minutes ago. Definitely. You should believe everything you see on the Internet.
