ya_assemble | Things that go bump in the night.

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Things that go bump in the night.

Time was strange at the North Pole.

As best Sandy could tell, it was somewhere around two or three in the morning, but she had found that it was often dark outside right in the middle of the day. It probably had something to do with the angle of the Earth, or maybe it was magic. Either way the clock on her communicator told her that it was in fact 2:25 A.M local time.

She had woken up in a cold sweat with her heart racing. A strangled cry muffled on instinct. The sweat beaded on her stone skin and she was curious about how long she'd had her powers turned on.

Chest rising and falling, she willed herself to relax and stared hard at the ceiling of her room. Lines of black had been traced and painted over in patterns like candy and castles. A space ship flying over a moon and a fox with an eye patch riding on a ship right behind it. Sandy had spent a good few hours working on that mural and it was supposed to help calm her down. Tonight it didn't seem to be helping.

Rising to her feet she tugged on a blue and fluffy fleece robe over green PJs with peppermint candies on it. Sometimes after her nightmares she could go back to sleep but not tonight it seemed.

Padding out of the room in her slippers she set off for the shared kitchen, moving quietly as to not disturb anyone who was still asleep. Elves and Yeti seemed to work all through the night in the main workshop area so the noise and activity at there hadn't slowed down.

Still looking pale, peaked and unsettled she was clearly not awake by choice if any other night owls were still up and about tonight.

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Danny Was still up, partly due to the fact that he'd hadn't had a normal sleep schedule since he was 14. He had a carton of strawberry ice cream, and was about to dig in to it when he saw who'd entered.

It took him a bit to recognize her face. It'd been years and he hadn't really interacted with her beyond the stabbing incident.

"Hey Sandy. Brainy said you were around."

Edited 2015-04-28 04:00 (UTC)

Sandy looked up confused at the vaguely familiar voice, and her face went pale when she realized who it was.

"Aw crap." She couldn't keep the words from falling out of her mouth and on instinct her entire body turned to stone for a moment before logic kicked in and she remembered that if he was here, he was on their side.

"Uh...hey...you..." She greeted him awkwardly, the stone on her skin giving her a stiff cement appearance as she moved cautiously towards the fridge keeping her eyes on him.

"Just relax." Danny said, hands up revealing all he at hand was a flimsy plastic spoon.

"I don't blame you for anything that happened back in Panem. You were a kid in a desperate situation. Now, Snow on the other hand? He gets a tiny cell with no windows. doors, or a bed and nothing to eat but live spiders."

Edited 2015-05-04 03:36 (UTC)

That was a massive weight off her shoulders. She sighed and her skin softened again.

"The spiders deserve better. Let's make him eat Tracker Jackers instead.Three a day till his brain is jelly."

Her response was in a light hearted tone but looking at her eyes there was deadly levels of serious behind that soft smile. She opened the fridge and began rummaging around in it.

"For the record...I'm sorry. You deserved better but Pruna-" Her voice caught because it was still hard for her to think about her long lost friend. "She was just trying to keep us on track. Make sure we didn't look totally helpless all the time."

It had been Pruna who'd killed him after all but Sandy acting as bait was the thing that had put him in position to be killed. Degrees of responsibility shifted once Pruna was simply dead and gone.

"Freezing him in carbonite's always a classic," Danny quipped back.

"And I'm sorry I didn't come back to stop the Games. The friend that pulled me out had to block the Capitol from taking anyone else from my world, and the block unfortunately' went both ways."

That was enough to make Sandy derail her thoughts on how to one up Snow's punishment.

"Wait...so someone actually saved you? You didn't just wake up here looking...like a grown up?"

With Brainiac, Lyle and even Harley they'd all arrived the same way. Violent death and waking up in this world.

Could the others really be saved in bits and pieces now instead of waiting to settle this light vs. darkness battle?

"Yeah. I got pulled back home after my second Arena death. From my perspective it's been about 15 years."

He shrugged, not really sure how to explain the time difference. "Don't ask how that works. Interdimensional travel is weird."

Great, after almost three years of having a life constrained by the laws of science it turned out magic might be the only way to win.

"Ok, so you're old or whatever...but who pulled you back? How? Can we do it for others? Maybe get Brainiac and Luke to build something? Or Nico might be able to do the spell..."

There was a fire in her eyes as she focused on Danny leaving the fridge open. Because if there was even the smallest chance she could get her friends out of Panem sooner rather then later she would chase down the opportunity.

Danny shook his head. "Didn't mean to get your hopes up, but it's not an option, Sandy. Clockwork's one of the few people in any dimension with the power to pull off what he did, and he's not going to do it again."

He put up his hands, trying to stave off the angry tirade he knew was probably going to come.

"I know what you're going to say. Trust me, I've made every argument you're thinking of and then some. The problem is both the fact that he's omniscient, so he knows them too, and is responsible for maintaining the stability of every timeline. Which mean's that most of the time he has to let terrible things happen because they have to happen."

As he kept going, Danny's frustration with the time ghost became more and more visible. "And even KNOWING all that I still tried to convince him, but he's not going to budge on this. Nobody else would be able to force him into it either."

Sandy groaned and buried her head in the fridge again coming out with what looked to be five different kinds of meat and cheese bundled in her arms. She spilled them out onto the counter and dove back in for more ingredients to her sandwhich in the making.

"That's how it always is right? People with enough power that they could really change everything and they can't because of rules or whatever. I mean...it's probably not selfish but it's not the same for them." Not that she knew Clockwork but she could make assumptions.

Spreading out more ingredients on the counter she shut the fridge door a bit too hard and set to work stacking various foods on top of bread.

"If anyone told me that the hardest part about surviving the hunger games was everything after it was over I never would have believed them." She muttered. "Somehow it even takes the fun out of living in Santa's Workshop."

"I'd suggest therapy, but I don't think our resident psychiatrist is in the best position to be much help."

And he'd never had a great opinion of Harley to begin with. Even if he had a better one, he still would've felt apprehensive about letting her practice, largely because she was too close to the situation.

"In non-Panem related news, I'm married and have kids now. I've got pictures on my phone if you want to see them."

Sandy knew enough about Harley Quinn to snort at the idea of letting that screwball try to help her with her problems. Thankfully Danny changed the subject for her and she gave a nod. It felt weird talking to him like this...so familiar when she barely knew him. But the horrors of the Hunger Games gave them all at least one thing in common and that was enough to build on.

Moving her items to the table to continue constructing her super sandwich she added "Congratulations. On the family and kids that is."

"Thanks." Danny said, pulling out his smartphone. The picture showed a goth woman who'd only slightly toned down her look out of professionalism's sake, a 5 year-old girl, and a 3 year-old boy holding a green-furred puppy, all three with black hair.

"That's Sam, my wife. She's an enviromental lawyer, vegan, and significantly more bad-ass than I will ever be." Danny had an obvious smile on his face. It was clear he liked talking about his family.

"My daughter's Ida. She's five, and her ghost powers have just started kicking in. Occasional trouble with her intangibility so far, but she's handling it pretty well. Right now, she wants to be a Jedi when she grows up. Neil's my son. Curious little guy, gets into everything he can. He's kind of obsessed with Sesame Street right now. The ddg is Cujo, and yes, he is a ghost puppy. It's a long story."

"It always is." Sandy joked idly but her eyes were focused on the picture. It dawned on her how long it had been since she'd seen a picture like this. A happy family, smiling and probably just barely sitting still long enough to take the picture.

They probably had holiday traditions, chores, all the stuff normal families had. Stuff she'd taken for granted even when she'd been living in her own world.

"Did you ever have to stop doing like...superhero stuff?" She still wasn't entirely clear on what Danny's powers or style was, but she'd gathered enough to know he was something more then human. And if he was here that meant he was probably a hero.

He peered into the carton, trying to scrape out the last of the contents.

"Not really. We had to do some juggling when Ida was born, but I work from home and by that point I'd mastered duplicating myself, so it wasn't as hard as you'd think."

"Dupli..." She let the word die on her lips and laughed shaking her head.

"Man I never even thought of a super power like that. Does the...clone or whatever do stuff on it's own or do you control it?" Her mind was swimming thinking of all the different ways she could have done things in Panem if she could duplicate herself.

Edited 2015-05-13 08:33 (UTC)

"The copies are kind of hard to explain." Danny wouldn't use the word clone. Dani was a separate person. The copies weren't.

"They do stuff on their own, but they're really just extensions of me. All the memories they gain when split off come back to me when I call them back or they get destroyed. I try to avoid that last one, though. It really hurts."

"So weird." She concluded after his explanation. She still wanted powers like that of her own. She'd have to make due with what she had.

He seemed nice enough. A dad, a hero. Exactly the kind of guy she always thought of her own father before he was hauled away.

She put her finishing touches on a stacked sandwich of meat, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes and a smear of mayonnaise before returning the ingredients to the fridge. When she sat down to eat it with a glass of milk she started by squishing the sandwich down to a more manageable size.

"Do you even get scared anymore if you've been doing this stuff for so long?"

"I'm scared of plenty of things. I'm scared I might not be able to stop someone from destroying my hometown or even my planet. I'm scared that someone could try to hurt my family to get to me."

He was even scared of himself, sometimes, given Dark Danny.

"It's not like I suddenly stopped worrying about things. Which is probably a good thing, honestly."

While Sandy was no stranger to the concept of fear being useful, she would never really consider it a totally good thing.

"Sorry, I guess I just figured it had to get easier sooner or later. But I guess some problems never change huh?"

It was comforting in a way to know that even adults felt the same way kids did once in awhile.

It might be late at night, but honestly at this point Peter couldn't even tell anymore. Not only was it a lot harder to tell what time of day it was at the North Pole (months of daylight and months of darkness will do that), he was also frequently stealing snow globes to patrol various cities around the world, all of which were running on different timezones. It was enough to do his head in, really.

Right now though, when he'd just finished one long patrol, sleep would be awesome. Yeah. Lots of sleep. With fluffy pillows. And five layers of bedsheets. And...

...Peter saw a flash of Sandy, as she ducked off into the kitchen. And he knew he needed to talk to her - so he put aside all those thoughts of glorious, glorious sleep, and followed her.

"Hey," he said, in the eloquent language of teenagers everywhere. "If you're up in the middle of the night to steal cookies, leave one for me."

A bit of a startled jump, she hadn't been expecting Peter even if she was expecting someone to be awake. She flushed and then rolled her eyes.

"There's always going to be plenty of cookies around here. They like...never stop baking them. Not even I could eat them all and I eat a lot." She only half joked.

Starvation funny things to a girl, made her really appreciate how much food her body could store on a given day. Also made her infinitely less picky about what she was eating.

"Which doesn't make sense when you think about it. If Santa has an never ending supply of cookies on tap, then why do we need to leave them out for him at Christmas?"

Wait, no. This wasn't what he was here for. He wasn't supposed to be talking about Santa and cookies. Pulling out a stool, he sat down at the bench and tried to not fidget awkwardly. (His success was sadly limited.)

"Um. Nevermind Santa though, I...I need to tell you something. Something that I should have told you before."

Before Sandy was forced to consider the logic behind Santa's mythological history, Peter saved her by beginning a conversation that apparently needed to be had. The intro was almost as frightening as saying "We need to talk"

She squared herself like she was preparing to take a punch and met his eyes bravely "Alright, go on then."

The expression on her face didn't make this any easier. Now he felt like he was about to tell her that her dog was dead.

"I...I lied to you before. You knew exactly who I was, and I said you were wrong. But you weren't wrong." Deep breaths, Parker. "I'm Spider-man."

Her face fell for a moment, and then it scrunched up in irritation.

"Come on really?" She burst out sounding like a kicked dog. "Why would you even...I mean with all of this and you were still protecting your secret identity?" She gestured to the workshop around them before letting her arms fall to her sides.

"Did you think I was a sleeper agent or something?"

In truth if she slowed down for a moment, she'd see that she was more angry about her nightmares and lack of sleep then she was about him fibbing to her. But as it was she was confused, unsure just how she should feel about this revelation.

"I...no! No, of course not, I just...it's just that it's my secret identity, and too many people know it already, and the more people that know the more chances there are that someone will go after my family and my friends, and, and..."

Peter slumped, as if all of his energy had drained out of him in that moment. "It was stupid, I know. I mean, I knew logically that it wasn't even going to be possible to hide here...but like. Telling someone, actually saying to someone that I'm Spider-man...that's a big deal. And I wasn't ready to do it."

She looked like she wanted to shout something but after his apologetic response she felt the wind draining out of her indignation. Her shoulders slumped and she offered a nod.

"OK, I get it. You were just trying to be safe." Then with half a smirk she added "If it's any consolation, my dad tried to kill you a bunch of times so it was probably a good idea to be safe around the daughter of The Sandman."

Never in her life or any of her fantasizing about meeting Spider-man did she ever think she would be making a joke about her father trying to kill him. But she actually felt a little bad seeing him hang his head in shame.

"You're just saying that to make me feel better about the fact that it was also completely idiotic, and was never going to hold up anyway." And the worst part was, he'd known that even before Nova figured him out with practically no information at all. He just hadn't wanted to admit it, and he couldn't afford to keep walking around with blinders like that on.

But even taking the blinders off wouldn't help with that blindsiding. "Wait, what?! The Sandman? The Sandman is your dad?! How the hell is the Sandman your dad?" Peter exclaimed, staring at Sandy with wide eyes. "...And don't answer that literally."

That reaction was enough to make her laugh out loud. All the stress of not being able to sleep was washed away by the expression on his face and the shock he'd registered.

"Good because I don't wanna think about how I literally came to be." She countered. "All I know is he retired when I was born. Went to work, came home. Took care of me and mom until the police came and locked him up for being a known metahuman."

"That's...that's good. I mean, not the being locked up for being metahuman thing - the not being a criminal anymore thing. I mean, I swear most of my time is spent fighting the same idiots over and over again, it's kinda nice to know that at least one of them manages to change and do something better with their life. But...what about you? You turn into a rock. You're metahuman too. They didn't try to take you away too, did they?"

"Probably...because I never told anyone. I transformed once in front of mom and she freaked out so bad I guess I just got scared. Then when I was older I figured out why it would be stupid of me to transform in front of anyone. The police were already always looking for an excuse to lock up kids."

Not to mention instead of standing her ground, whenever trouble came to call she ran as fast as she could.

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Things that go bump in the night.

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/arrives ridiculously late to this party!

Better late then never. ;)

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