MHA #2 | Wednesday Morning

[knife_bender]

The weekend had been weird, but the kind of weird where the good outweighed the bad, so Diego couldn't really complain. The Five thing had been weird. Same with the lack of powers and tattoos. But, he was happily married, and apparently had some awesome kids that could throw a rager. So, really no reason to mope.

Just a lot of not asking questions was happening over here. Instead he was just...very, very focused on the Food Network the last couple days. Maybe one day he'd actually cook something he learned on TV.

[For the fiancée, and open to anyone who wants to stop by for some reason]

Comments

[knife_bender]

"Be a real pain in the ass," Diego said offhandedly. His eye caught the tattoo on his wrist, and not for the first time since the weekend he wondered what the hell happened.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie noticed too, and reached over to very gently trace her fingers along the inside of his wrist, near his tattoo but not touching it. (Considering she generally consciously avoided it, this was already a lot.) "Think we can cook in the future?"

The twins had not sounded, like, malnourished, at least.

[knife_bender]

Diego huffed. "Doubtful. We probably order a lot."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Maybe," Annie replied, leaning to press a kiss to his cheek. "That does sound like us. But it seems like there were a few unexpected things."

Like his missing tattoo. And his missing powers. And her missing job.

"So maybe we both go to culinary school in like five years, who knows."

[knife_bender]

Without powers it was entirely possible Diego would pick up cooking as a hobby. Woof, that would be a rough few years starting out, though.

"Kids had different names." Which was new, and much easier to talk about than the lack of powers or high profile jobs.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Margaret and Benecio." The rager had been fortuitous in a few ways, including allowing Annie an opportunity to use her kids' full names when talking to them over the phone about what was actually going on at home. "I wonder why we changed our minds. Maybe we don't like the fall anymore."

Doubtful, since they were getting married in the fall.

Another thing Annie had definitely not thought about at all and definitely not gotten out scratch paper at one point to figure out: if the twins were eighteen in that future, then some version of her would have to be pregnant in the next year for that to line up.

It probably should have been scarier?

[knife_bender]

Diego had not done the math, but if he had it wouldn't have freaked him out so much either. Their relationship had been on the fast track since the start.

"Margaret's such an old lady name too," Diego joked. "Benicio is cool, though. I like that."

And it was still a tribute to Ben, which was nice.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"She didn't seem to like being called that rather than Maggie, so I think she agrees," Annie noted, smiling fondly. "I don't have, like, an Aunt Margaret or anything, so I wonder where that came from."

She actually knew a person named Maggie fairly well, was the thing. She just never called her that.

"And I like that he's still Ben," she added, echoing the narrative's sentiment. Though it was also kind of weird that they seem to have adjusted their thinking on that, too?

[knife_bender]

"Me too," he said, reaching for her hand. "Think they still have their powers?"

It hadn't really come up, during the rager thing. But it was a totally smooth way of talking about his issue over the weekend without...directly talking about it just yet.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Probably was a hell of a party if they do. Did," Annie replied, struggling a little with the verb tense to use there and threading her fingers through Diego's. "Seemed like I had mine, too."

Or at least, her eyes had lit up when they'd done what you'd expect these two to do in a hotel room away from their children for the weekend.

[knife_bender]

"Yeah, you did," he said. "Wonder what happened to me."

The weird thing was that older him seemed happy about it? Like, absolutely fine without having his powers, which to the Diego sitting here right now seemed unimaginable.

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Yeah," Annie murmured. "Whatever it was took out your tattoo, too. It didn't look like it was laser-removed."

It was like he'd never had it at all, which was -- very weird, and she actually did not know how you did that? Was future Diego like...a clone?

[knife_bender]

"I didn't seem to mind it much. Or maybe I already had my freak out and just got used to it by then," he said with a shrug. "Apparently I should be thankful I still had my fingers."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"Uh, I am also really grateful you have all your fingers, for the record -- now and in the future," Annie noted, drawing his hand up to her mouth to kiss his fingers for emphasis. "Five tell you that?"

It was an educated guess.

[knife_bender]

"Yeah. Seemed pissed off about it, really," Diego said. "Of course it might be because of jealousy since he was missing an arm."

Maybe don't be so clumsy, Five.

"How are you holding up after all that?" She had gone straight to work and Diego had gone straight into denial so the subject hadn't really come up until now. "Your job..."

Well. He didn't know whether it was a good or bad thing she didn't seem to be working for Vought anymore in the future.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie shrugged a shoulder. "I don't know? Like, it makes sense that I wasn't on the team -- honestly, Maeve and Homelander are both kind of old to still be active for most heroes." And Black Noir was old enough to be everyone's dad and yet maintained his spot, not that Annie knew that. "And I always figured I'll take a step back when we have kids. But it was kind of weird that I didn't seem to be...consulting, or anything."

Especially given the fact that Starlight was, like, record-breakingly popular. Vought probably wouldn't have let her take that big a step back unless something drastic had happened.

"Poor Five," she added. He wasn't, like, her favorite Hargreeves (she could provide a ranking on request) but losing a limb seemed pretty fucking horrific.

[knife_bender]

"Five probably had it coming," Diego said with a wave of his hand. "It wasn't even his right arm."

He was just being a baby about it.

"We seemed happy, though. Despite the powers and job thing."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"We seemed really happy," Annie agreed softly, smiling at him as she snuggled in closer. And she kind of wanted to talk to him a little about what she had noticed about the timeline, there -- but she also didn't want to skate right past the powers thing. "How do you feel about it? The no powers, the...being happy without them?"

[knife_bender]

"Can't really complain about it if it was happy, can I?" he said with a shrug. "It's the how that's freaking me out."

[defenderofdesmoines]

"You could complain. I mean, who knows how much time you'd had to make peace with it by then," Annie pointed out. Though, again with the timeline -- if he'd had a lot of time to get over it, it was probably happening sooner than later. "I don't know of anything at home that takes away powers, for what it's worth."

It was also strange that Annie's had been intact, but that wasn't that unusual; the sources of their gifts seemed so different (the Hargreeves' powers might have been a relative mystery, but it seemed to be the consensus that the answer was probably not 'injected with Compound V as infants') that that kind of thing didn't throw her too much.

[knife_bender]

"I think Five still had his?" Diego said. "I mean, I didn't see him use them but he's really dependent on his so I figured a mental breakdown would have happened if his were gone."

Maybe that's how the arm went. Just ripped off his own arm he was so upset.

[defenderofdesmoines]

Sounded about right.

"Yeah, he like, refuses to just walk places," Annie noted. "He kept yanking me all over the place when we were looking for you in Dallas. But to be fair, mine aren't even like...something I depend on, and I'd be lost without them, too."

Like, very possibly not as chill as Diego had been, even given the amount of time that might have passed.

[knife_bender]

"I think you'd manage just fine," Diego said, pressing a kiss against her cheek. "Maybe I'm fine with it because I have you and the kids."

[defenderofdesmoines]

Annie could easily see Diego taking all of that superhero drive and turning it into being Super Dad even with his powers, so that made sense -- and that was attractive in a way that felt wholly different from her usual, baseline, 'Get over here, you incredibly sexy man' attraction to him. Hearing Diego talk about their children kind of knocked her sideways, and she loved it.

"So about the kids," she noted softly. "Did you pick up how old they were?"

[knife_bender]

"Old enough to know how to throw a sweet party," he joked. "They were just out of high school, right?"