We all panic together
Buck rushed around his apartment trying to find his cell phone so he could check in on them, but couldn't find it anywhere. His apartment was quickly turned upside down in his frantic search. Every couch cushion was launched across the living room, various coffee table magazines falling haphazardly across the floor alongside them. Buck may have slipped on a magazine or two in his rush barely missing landing harshly on the woven black rug in the living area. TK would never let him live that down if he saw that. Every kitchen cupboard was flung open as Buck searched through the piles of plates and bowls his cell could have been mixed up with. Not a single bowl or glass matching. Each one representing a different era of his life. An eras tour all of his own. Even the fridge was wide open when Buck thought it had ended up by the milk again. He didn’t pay much attention when he was putting the groceries away sometimes. His bedroom floor was covered in a mix of the sheets he had flung off his bed and a range of clothes that had been tossed out of the laundry hamper.
When he finally found it, dumped in the bottom of his work bag he had forgotten even existed after several years, he stood in the middle of the war zone that had become his apartment in the last five minutes and tried to desperately think of a way to contact his siblings. It's not like he had their numbers saved in his contacts. Until he was taken he didn’t really know any of them except TK. Even then he didn’t know they were related.
It seemed so surreal to think that there was a time not too long ago that he didn’t even know his siblings existed. They were all just out there living their lives, just going through the motions, none of them realising they were not alone. It wasn’t quite a fair thought to his sister Maddie who he had grown up with, but she never really understood him. She hadn’t been in contact with him for years. Now he has ten other siblings. Ten siblings who could be anywhere. Or nowhere.
Ignoring the flash he caught of today’s date on the lock screen, he dialled TK first. At least this way he could hear one of their voices and know one of them was ok.
The ringing of the line rang for long enough that Buck nearly forgot how to breathe. The silences between the rings felt longer each time and he couldn’t help that his imagination was telling him the worst. As he listened to the dialling tone, he thought about his brother.
TK was certainly a character and had been from the moment they met. TK was all about protecting those around him from harm. He would protect a stranger he had just met from a gunman by offering to be a hostage instead. A stray dog from a car by diving into oncoming traffic to retrieve it. He would even chain himself to a tree in central park because a mother bird was nesting inside and the tree had to wait to be cut down until the baby birds had flown the nest so as to not disturb them. Self sacrificing shit! Buck knew TK would do all these things, because he had. All within a month of meeting him when they were in the academy together. They had caused chaos together from the moment they met but had always been a good team too. TK was a handsome and pretty man all wrapped into one and had never been afraid to use that to his advantage to get out of trouble. He had chestnut brown hair with natural golden highlights and the same condition as Buck, meaning he had one eye of rich chocolate and another with an added sliver of pure ruby red. He was the definition of sweetness and mischief wrapped into one. He was the other chaotic half to Buck’s already wild ways, and to others that wasn’t always a good thing, but to them, it was perfect and he was desperate to know if he was ok. He had to be ok. He had to.
The ringing stopped. Buck was already thinking about the hurried message he would have to leave in hopes that he would get a call back. The voicemail didn’t pick up though, and there was a harsh breathing on the other end.
“Buck?”
The quiet uncertainty in that voice told Buck everything he needed to know at that moment. He wasn’t dreaming and he wasn’t crazy. Something was wrong with TK, too. He was just as shocked and confused as Buck was.
“Yeah. Yeah, it’s me,” Buck finally breathed. “Are you okay?”
“I mean I woke up in my bed back in Texas, in dad’s place. The boxes I moved from New York with are all over like I’m leaving again. Or, I guess, coming as it looks like I never unpacked in the first place. Oh, and I have hair again. Can’t say that isn’t weird, right?” TK started hysterically listing on the other side of the call. He didn’t even stop to breathe in his frantic ramblings. “...And I’m missing one of my tattoos, the latest one I got after moving to Texas. Jesus, don’t get me started on how fucking awful it feels having these fucking cravings again. It’s like I’m newly sober and my body still needs that shit. But, yeah, sure, I’m okay!” He wasn’t ok.
Buck could tell TK was trying to keep his voice at a whisper so as not to bother his dad, but that was becoming harder as he spiralled.
“Hey, hey, hey! Take a breath. Don't panic,” Buck shot back.
“‘Don't panic’ he says. Don't panic?” TK laughed like it choked from the back of his throat. “We have gone back in time. We barely know where any of our siblings are. The love of my life doesn't even know who I am. I am now a barely recovering addict again and you are saying not to panic!” He whisper-yelled on the end of the phone.
Ok.
TK was panicking.
“Yes, don't panic, because if you start panicking I will start panicking and we aren't going to get anywhere if we are both panicking so will you please just calm down!” Buck yelled back. He didn’t have to whisper. He lived alone. One score for the lonely people of New York.
“Where do you think they all are, Ev?” TK asked after a minute of heavy breathing on either end as they tried to calm themselves.
“I haven’t figured that part out yet. I have barely figured out where I am,” Buck said as he began to pace his apartment.
What were they to do? They were emotionally unstable nobodies with far too much childhood baggage and powers they barely knew how to control.
They hadn’t quite figured it out at the compound and their bodies hadn’t been through the same training in this timeline. Any training at all, really. Plus, they had twice as much baggage and turmoil to deal with since they apparently seemed to remember some sort of horrible future. A lot of their siblings were still in denial at this stage of their lives, too.They had thought all of the weird things happening around them were just coincidence or were too scared of the heavy control that would come with an Avilion tag. Now they all knew. Now their self loathing was ten times what it was, and, if it was the same for them all, they knew bad things were just around the corner.
“Buck? Buck?”
They were likely far less emotionally stable than they were in the last timeline. That meant that they were far more likely to lose control. They could easily hurt themselves or someone else. What if he lost control right now? What if he hurt someone else? Oh God, what if he hurt Christopher?
“Buck?”
Shit, they didn’t even know if their captors remembered, too. Surely if they did, they’d be banging on their doors already. Have their blacked out cars and falsely marked helicopters circling his apartment.Even so, if he and his siblings were the only ones to remember, one wrong move could alert them and bring the tortured future that awaited them that much closer. What if they were watching him right now?
“Evan Buckley you shit, answer me!”
Buck jumped and looked down at the screen, his arm having dropped while zoned out. He hadn’t even noticed. He just told tk not to panic, but he was panicking himself and if he didn’t stop himself they would continue in this loop. This isn’t going well.
He was right to worry, though.
In his right hand was his phone with TK’s caller ID photo smiling up at him. In his left was a small but growing ball of fire. Buck stared at it with silent concern as it waved and flickered like a bee shook up in a jar. It was angry and vengeful and everything Buck knew he couldn’t be. Even the thought of losing control was causing him to lose control. For once in his entire life, Buck didn’t have a witty answer. He didn’t know what to do or what to say to make the situation better. He attempted to focus himself with deep breaths and clutched the phone back to his ear as the fire receded but the tears had already begun to build. Great an Avilion with the emotional capacity of a two year old that was given the wrong coloured plate. That was what he was.
“Ty, I don’t know what to do,” he admitted with a sob. “We need to find them. We need to find all of them, and quickly.”
“I know, I know, but how? They are all over the world, Ev,” TK sighed.
“Ok. Ok. Ok,” Buck repeated as he sighed for what felt like the millionth time in the last 10 minutes and took a seat at the island. ”Well, what about social media? They’re all teenagers. Surely all teenagers have Instagram or Facebook or whatever, right?”
The idea was thrown out there and TK clutched onto it and threw back some hope.
“Yes! There we go. Hopefully we can find a couple of them. Not all of them struck me as the smart type to make their accounts private,” TK quipped in an attempt to lighten the mood and calm them both some. It was a little comfort that was slightly ruined by the following thought, “We should talk to them about that. We don’t know how theyfound us in the first place.”
“Ok, yeah, we’ll do that, but let's find them first, yeah?” Buck answered after a pause. He nodded along with the idea, then shook his head to dispel the panic and follow the hope. “Grab your laptop and let's get to searching.” That was the thing about Buck, research was his safe place, his comfort. That was how he did and would cope. That was how he would get through this.