Chapter Text
“If you don’t adopt him, I’m going to scream.”
This ultimatum, delivered with deadpan sincerity, came from a little redheaded girl that could not have been older than eight. She stared up at her parents, one a hulking man the approximate size and shape of a fridge with short-cropped black hair and soft gray eyes and the other a petite redhead with the sleek corded muscle of a martial artist.
Both of them were immediately cowed by their tiny daughter.
They were not, as they perhaps should have been, the least bit worried or intimidated by the object of the little girl’s demand. It was a young boy who couldn’t have been older than six, thin as a twig and yet fiercely wielding a steak knife in each hand with practiced ease and accuracy. It was clear this child, young as he was, had been trained to fight. He had savagely ripped out a handful of ginger hair from the other child’s head and given her a black eye before laying hands on the weapons he now held, and yet the girl did not look bothered at all.
Her teal eyes gleamed with determination as she glared down at her parents (staggering height difference between them notwithstanding). When her parents could do nothing but stare and wordlessly babble for her not to scream, she deemed it necessary to elaborate. Plopping her fists on her hip, she declared;
“Nobody ever fights me because they think girls are weak. He fought me, he’s adorable, and he’s my brother now.”
As if that explained anything. A child’s logic continued to be an enigma.
The boy growled. The girl smiled at him guilelessly.
“Well,” the girl’s mother hedged, reluctant. “We did always dream of having two kids.”
—_—_—_—_—_
A group of figures huddled around a magic mirror, the silence around them thick and loaded with mixed emotions.
Amusement, embarrassment, confusion, horror.
“I can’t believe JAZZ used to be feral,” one of the boys whispered, as if the subject of his gossip might hear him.
“Dick,” another voice spoke up. The teenager it belonged to was a young man with bangs that framed his face, ice-blue eyes framed by dark circles that were so distinctive as to be immortalized in nearly every artistic rendering (usually caricature) done of him by the public. “She’s best friends with Jason. They started a book club together. Of course she used to be feral.”
“In hindsight,” a much taller man with broad muscles and a tuft of white in his bangs slowly drawled, as if his words carried a strange flavor on them, “It really shouldn’t be so surprising, huh?”
“Tt,” a much younger teenager with tanned skin and piercing green eyes tutted, glaring at the mirror. “I do not see how this glimpse into the past reveals any useful insight for our mission.”
“Relax Damian,” the first man— Dick— spoke up soothingly, putting a hand on the boy’s head. “I think we need some time to come to terms with how similar you and Danny’s first days outside of the league really were. Tim, stop taking pictures.”
“I need the blackmail!” The sleepy-eyed teen protested, taking as many pictures of the paused scene on the mirror as he could. “Danny is pretty much the most normal out of all of us nowadays, it’s nearly impossible to get dirt like this on him!”
“Jazz will actually murder you.”
“Small price to pay,” Tim responded immediately, unrepentant.
Finally the person holding the mirror, a floating teen with snowy white hair and glowing green eyes threw his head back to whine. “Guyssss! We’re supposed to be looking into my past for ways to cure Jason’s pit madness!”
He was shushed by all his brothers at the same time. Every. Last. One.
“Play the next few seconds, I wanna see your reaction to being given the Fenton name.”
—_—_—_—_—_