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toweringclam · 1 day ago

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i was just more like real life

Link to this fic on AO3. Words: 3709 Date posted: August 12, 2025 Summary:

Her entire pregnancy, Timaeus had been so present. Every doctor's appointment, every ultrasound, every bout of morning sickness and stupid craving, he'd been right there, playing the role of devoted father. When they'd found out they were having twins, it was the most excited she had ever seen him—maybe the most excited he had ever been. A boy and a girl, everything she had ever wanted, and with him, there by her side for everything. It felt like a fantasy. She should have realized sooner that it was one.

Roxy isn't sure exactly when she put it together. She's ashamed it wasn't sooner.

She should have realized sooner that it was one.

If she had left when she was pregnant, she wouldn't have had to choose. The Void, she guessed, was pro-choice, and even in the last weeks of her pregnancy, she hadn't had any trouble taking both of her babies with her.

It was only once they were out in the world having taken their first breaths that she had to choose.

For a joyful, cursed moment, it really had felt like everything was perfect. She had their teeny tiny daughter on her chest, soft breaths tumbling out against her skin. Dirk had their son in his arms, staring at him like he was the only thing in the world.

“They're so fragile,” he said, and she let out a fond, startled laugh, her nose crinkling with her grin. “We'll have to fix that,” he added, and her laugh died in her chest, her grin falling as if in slow motion.

“What?”

“They can't be heroes like this.”

Her eyebrows pinched together with horror and confusion as she tried to figure out if he was joking. “They're not even an hour old yet.”

“They can't even hold their heads up.”

“They're not even an hour old yet.”

He stared at her, jaw tight, expression cold. She'd seen his face like that a million times, but it had never been directed at her before.

“What are you talking about?” she asked, voice barely above a whisper.

“We're two of the strongest heroes in the world. Our kids are supposed to be the most powerful heroes to ever live. And this kid,” he held their son out and her stomach lurched with fear that he was going to drop him, “is nothing.”

“He's—they're babies. They're not supposed to be holding their heads up or—or—They're babies. What are you talking about? You sound insane. You didn't even have powers until you were 13, what… what are they supposed to do?”

“Anything! They're supposed to do anything, Roxy, fuck. I mean, they're not even six pounds. They're tiny and weak and… nothing. Why did we even do this?”

She stared at him in horror, mind reeling, eyes stinging, question unable to tear itself from her throat.

That was the first time she realized she needed to leave.

It had taken weeks to figure out what she was going to do, where she was going to go. She couldn't bring both of them at the same time. That was the biggest roadblock, and no matter how hard she tried or how much she thought about it, she couldn't find any workaround for that. She had never been able to take more than one person with her, and her babies were people, no matter how much their father struggled to see that. She would just have to wait for a time when he was gone and take them one at a time.

It took even more weeks for an opportunity to come up. He didn't look at her or their children with any fondness, but he sure did look at them, vigilant. It was like they were constantly under surveillance, like he was waiting for the precise moment that they'd be prepared to start training or like he had caught on to her plan.

When word came from headquarters about the attack, some giant monster coming in from the coast, she knew that was going to be her chance—maybe her only chance. “Are you sure you don't want me to come with you?”

“You just had two babies,” he said, voice laced with all of the affection and concern she hadn't heard since before she'd given birth. For a moment, she almost sunk into a sense of calm, before she reminded herself how obviously intentional it was. He knew she wanted to leave, and he wanted her to get complacent. He leaned down to press a kiss against her mouth, and her jaw felt stiff as she forced herself to kiss him back. “Just stay right here with the kids. I'll be right back, okay?”

“Be careful,” she cautioned, and she wished that she meant it less than she did. He didn't deserve for her to care so much.

He offered her a smirk. “Don't need to,” he replied, pressing a last kiss against the top of her hair and then flying away so quickly that if she hadn't been watching him do it for almost 20 years, she wouldn't have seen it.

She didn't waste any time before scrambling into motion.

She couldn't move as quickly as she could have a year ago, still only five weeks postpartum. She ignored the throbbing ache in her whole body to force herself into the nursery, where her breath promptly caught in her chest.

They had put so much work into that nursery—both of them. They had argued over paint colors, because he wouldn't let their son have a purple bedroom and she thought orange was ugly everywhere except his suit. He had sat down and built the cribs and refused to let her help, because he was the most capable man in the world and he was their father. They'd carefully stocked the bookshelf with books for babies, and he didn't let her sneak anything in there about chemistry.

There was a sharp ache in her chest, looking at all of it now. They'd settled on pastel green walls, and one of their friends from the League, one of the very, very small handful who knew anything about them or their relationship or the fact that they were having babies, had painted them a mural of a tree with leaves imbued with enough life that they really rustled under the air of the ceiling fan, illustrated vines curling above the cribs to spell Dave and Rose.

They were both sleeping soundly in their cribs, which was most of what they did. They were such easy babies; never crying, not even fussing, just sleeping or staring up at whoever was holding them like they were the most interesting thing in the whole world. Dave had his arms stretched above his head, as if he was reaching out for the little stuffed bird perched at the head of his crib, far enough away that he couldn't grab it, pull it over his face, and accidentally suffocate himself. Dirk had scoffed at the necessity. Rose, meanwhile, was precisely the opposite, curled and scrunched up as small as possible.

How was she supposed to choose which one of them to take first? Her heart throbbed at the thought of having to leave either of them for even a moment.

Then Rose's face scrunched up, and she didn't start to cry, not really, so much as sort of snuffle pathetically. Her little legs kicked, and in an instant Roxy leant over her and scooped her up. “Shh, Rosie, it's okay,” she murmured, cradling her against her chest and rocking her. Rose stared up at her with big, watery eyes, still grey with infancy. “There's my girl. Everything's okay. Mommy's here.”

She chanced a look at Dave, who was still sleeping soundly in his crib. So that decision had made itself then.

With Rose still tucked against her chest, she leaned over his crib to stare at him for a moment. Her eyes and nose stung, her lower lip trembling. “I'll be right back,” she murmured, voice soft so as not to wake him up.

Slipping into the Void was as natural as sinking into a cool swimming pool on a hot day and felt fairly comparable. Rose immediately squirmed against the cold, even with her pajamas and her blanket, and started to fuss, and even though Roxy knew he couldn't hear her, knew no one could hear her, she still shushed her as she rushed through the house and outside.

She couldn't take the car. It was another limitation—no vehicles—and besides, she couldn't leave Rose in the car in the January cold of New York's mid-winter while she got Dave.

She had to sprint three full blocks, everything sore and screaming at her to stop moving. She wouldn't be shocked to find that she was bleeding, but she couldn't stop, didn't have time to stop. How long could he possibly be busy with that fight? How many people had been called in?

Three blocks away, there was a condemned house left unlocked, and she did not want to leave her baby there, everything in her was screaming at her not to, but she had to go back for Dave, and this was warm and hidden and stable enough it wasn't going to collapse in the next fifteen minutes.

She almost collapsed as she ran back for the house. Her legs burned, and she was certain that she had torn open the mostly-healed stitches, and every breath felt like it rattled her lungs against her ribs.

She really did collapse when she got into the nursery.

He was gone. Her son, her baby, gone, and she knew exactly where he was—no, not where he was, but who he was with. How had he gotten back so fast? It couldn't even have been half an hour since he left, and she had been on those sorts of missions with him, she knew how hard they were and how long they took.

Had he been lying? Had he just pretended to be called away for some mission to test whether she'd really try to smuggle them away from him or not? But why? Why would he trust her that much, after he had been so clearly suspicious of her every moment since the twins were born? Did he just want to force her to choose? Or to separate her from the kids?

Her heart lurched, and no matter how much it hurt on a level so far beyond the physical that she wasn't even sure she had a body anymore, she dragged herself to her feet.

She had to get back to Rose. He already had one of them, he had her son, but she couldn't let him get to both of them. Once more sprinting through the Void as fast as her body could move, she burst into the condemned building and found Rose, squirming and crying but exactly where she'd left her. She collapsed again, pulling her baby against her chest and letting her body wrack with sobs. Rose was wailing by that point, only feeding off the grief of her mother, but Roxy couldn't force herself to push through the loss to calm her down.

It must have taken hours for her to finally leave.

For the next eighteen years, Roxy does everything she can to protect her daughter. She squirrels her away to a secluded mansion in the woods in upstate New York. She homeschools her, never lets her leave the house no matter how much resentment she watches it create. She refuses, over and over and over again, to tell her who her father is. And when Rose's powers develop when she’s sixteen and she announces that she wants to train to become a professional hero, she is so fucking petrified.

Because none of it mattered.

Because she’s going to lose both of her babies anyway.

The morning before Rose leaves, Roxy cradles her head against her chest like she’s a toddler all over again and sobs into her hair, and Rose rolls her eyes about theatrics the same way Timaeus always used to.

The morning after Rose leaves, he shows up at her house.

She doesn't have to see him to know he's there. Even when it's been almost as long since she's seen him as it had been that she'd known him and loved him, she can't forget what he feels like.

She's doing the dishes, and she's stupid enough that she tries to grab one of the kitchen knives, covered with soapy water, and turn it on him. He catches her wrist before she can even think about swinging it at him, and she cries out as she feels the bones creak under his grip. “Stop,” he orders.

“Go to hell,” she orders back, moving her other hand to try to take a bare-fisted swing at him, and of course, he catches that, too. She can already feel the bruises forming where he touches her, and she ignores the pain as she tries to wrench herself out of his grip.

“Stop.” His voice is even firmer this time, and whether it’s fear or habit, she does, but she glares up at him. His jaw is tight, expression cold. It makes her heart hammer against her ribs, and she hates how much it feels like it sings betrayal, betrayal, betrayal still. She could be imagining it, but she swears she sees his face soften slightly when he says, “I don’t want to hurt you.”

A bitter laugh bubbles up in her chest before she can stop it, and she feels a sudden urge to spit in his face that she has to try very hard to tamp down. No matter how much he says he doesn’t want to hurt her, she knows how that would end. Eventually, voice a little more measured, she manages to grit out, “Fuck. You.”

“You used to like that.”

She lets out a noise so feral it can only be identified as a growl, edging on a scream, and tries to lunge for him. Of course, she doesn’t get very far before he shoves her back against the sink, squeezing her between the counter and his body. He’s pressed against her everywhere, and it makes her heart hammer against her ribs in what she knows is fear. “How fucking dare you? How fucking dare you try to waltz in here and joke about this?” she hisses.

“Joke about what?”

“What did you do to him?” she says, so coldly that goosebumps prickle everywhere on her skin, and she sees his breath catch in his chest. When she wrenches her arms away from him this time, he lets them go, and she wraps them tight around herself. “What did you do to him?” she repeats.

His jaw hardens, and he tears his gaze away from her. “What I had to.”

She feels tears springing to her eyes again, hot and angry and bitter and grieving. “Why? Why did you have to?” she yells, and it wrenches something from her chest—whatever was stopping her from breaking down into choking sobs. He doesn’t answer her, and she jabs an accusing finger toward his chest and sobs, “You killed him.”

“I didn’t kill him,” he practically growls.

“You killed him to me.”

The accusation hangs in the air between them for a dragging moment of silence where he refuses to meet her eyes. She wants to keep glaring at him, but she can’t force her body to stay upright as it’s wracked with grief, exactly as it had been eighteen years ago.

He’s too close, and when her body tries to fold in on itself, she sinks against his chest. She wants to jerk away from him, but his arms come up around her too quickly and too automatically, and she doesn’t have the strength to—neither physical nor emotional. She just keeps sobbing into his chest, her arms still wrapped tight around herself, like she can try to hold in the enormity of her grief. She can feel how tense his whole body is against hers.

“This wasn’t why I came here,” he eventually says, voice softer than she’s heard it in a long time—maybe softer than she’s ever heard it.

“Then why?”

He hesitates for a moment, and then he says it. Exactly what she knew he was going to say from the moment she felt him. “Rose is on my team.”

She feels like she’s going to throw up. She pulls away from him, and she’s a little surprised when he lets her. For a moment, they just stand there, staring at each other. Her eyes are still narrowed into a glare, and it’s hard to completely read his expression between the mask and the twenty years of no practice, but she thinks he manages to look guilty. Good. He should be guilty.

“I suppose you must be pleased,” she eventually manages to grit out.

“Yes,” he says, quickly and unapologetically. They stare at each other for a moment. Her eyes narrowed. His jaw clenched. “You didn’t have any right to keep her from me,” he eventually says, and his voice is that carefully calculated neutrality he uses when he’s really angry.

“Fuck you,” she spits, and he doesn’t have any witty retort to that this time. “You were going to kill her. You were going to kill both of them.”

“I would never have killed my kids. Our kids. There’s no way you can seriously believe that.” She just keeps glaring at him, and he brings a hand up to run through his hair. “They were nothing, Roxy. They should have been everything, and they couldn’t even hold their heads up!”

“They were babies!” she shrieks, and her whole body burns with the urge to hit him again. “They were our babies and you hated them!”

“I didn’t fucking hate them!” he screams back, and she can count the number of times she’s heard him raise his voice on her hands. She stares at him with wide eyes. He’s panting for breath, like yelling at her was some concerted effort. When he manages to come down from it, he crosses his arms over his chest. “I was… disappointed. Our kids were going to be perfect. Perfect babies, perfect heroes. And they were just… small. And helpless. And it would have been easy to just break them, and they were supposed to be unbreakable, and…” His breath hitches, and if her eyes could widen any more, they would.

She’s not going to make him feel better. He hasn’t earned that from her. What he’s earned from her is a sharp kick in the head, but she’s not as flexible as she used to be, so she doesn’t think she could manage it. He’d probably catch it anyway.

“Did you ever care about me at all?” she asks instead, her voice so soft, so tiny. It’s the question she’s been unable to voice for twenty years, since that first time he asked her why they even did this, like the babies, their babies, weren’t enough.

He stares at her, and she thinks there’s a dozen different emotions there. Guilt. Anger. Betrayal. Disappointment. Exhaustion. Fear. She’s never seen half of them on him before, and admittedly, it’s scary. “Of course I did,” he says, with so much conviction she’s hard-pressed not to believe him even in the face of… everything. On top of all of the existing emotions, there’s something almost pleading about his face as he meets her eyes through the stupid, shitty mask he’s been wearing since they were teenagers. “I could have… Roxy, I could have had kids with anyone. But they wouldn’t have been our babies. Our babies. I wanted it to be you.”

“Why couldn’t the fact that it was me just be good enough?” she says, her own breath hitching and trembling in her chest.

“Because they needed to be perfect,” he says, like this is the simplest thing in the world, like this should explain everything.

She stares at him. They needed to be perfect. Their babies. They needed to be perfect and now he has both of them. She’s never going to see them again—she’s never going to see Dave and find out which one of them he grew up to look more like or what his voice sounds like, or his laugh, or his groans of embarrassment when she tells childhood stories to his girlfriends. She is going to see Rose, probably lots, but it’s not going to be her Rose. It’s going to be the tool that Timaeus is going to manufacture her into.

Her babies are dead.

A sense of calm washes over her that she’s never felt before.

“Okay,” she says, and he stares at her for a second, eyes flashing all over her face, eyebrows pinched together in some mix of confusion and frustration. “Okay, you have them now. They’re perfect. Is that everything you wanted from me?”

“They’re not perfect. Rose is a rookie, Dave is—”

“Is that everything you wanted from me?” she hisses, even though that sense of calm doesn’t leave her.

“I,” he starts, and then that sentence seems to fail him. Like realizing he’s lost some sort of fight, she sees his posture slump, losing all of its tension. “Yeah. That’s everything.”

“Okay,” she says calmly, and she carefully peels herself away from him. It’s a process, with him still pinning her against the sink, but it’s made easier by the fact that he doesn’t fight her, and she tells herself that she’ll go to the Void if she has to, even though she hasn’t gone there since she had to make her grand escape to bring Rose here. He follows after her as she trails from the kitchen, through the living room, and to the door. “Get out of my house.”

“But—”

“I wasn’t asking.”

He stares at her. Maybe it’s because he’s not used to her talking like this and so is a little dazed, or maybe it’s because he’s worried, but he nods and steps outside.

She takes a deep breath as she looks him over one last time. “Okay,” she says again, more to herself than him. “Goodbye, Dirk.”

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