#aunt bee | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bubblegumbeech · 1 year

Text

Preparing for Harvest

Read it here on AO3

Flynn makes it home. And then thinks about what that might mean.

Part of my Exploring the Zone series

---

Flynn let himself be led through the portal by the wrist. It was honestly too late to try and stop everything from happening anyways. Mother would find him and punish him whether he rushed back to her side or hid out here in the Realms’ boondocks.

So he might as well take up Danny’s offer. At the very least it would be interesting to see a mortal realm after so long.

On the other side of the portal was a lab, sterile bright lights and all sorts of mechanical devices. It … wasn’t very clean though, and Flynn found himself inching away from some of the ectoplasm covered walls.

It was weird, breathing in air again. It felt lighter in his chest, a slight burning ache as his lungs worked to filter out the ambient ectoplasm they had gotten used to using in its stead.

He hadn’t even gotten the chance to steady himself before a door above them slammed open and a woman in a terrifying jumpsuit ran down to point a large weapon at them.

Flynn reacted instinctively, shoving Danny behind him and grabbing his staff to hold in front. It was difficult, but he’d gotten good at redirecting ectoblasts and the like with it.

Except… he recognized this human. The purple eyes and vibrant red hair that was so similar to his own…

“Aunt Maddie?” Flynn said, his voice cracking. It couldn’t be— no. It was impossible. There was no way this random kid took him back to the same mortal realm he’d been taken from. Especially not to the basement of his Aunt.

Aunt Maddie looked at him in confusion for a moment, her arm lowering. “It couldn’t be...”

Flynn bit his lip, holding back questions as they bubbled incessantly to the forefront of his mind.

She stepped closer, dropping the weapon entirely to raise her hands to his cheeks. “Flynn? You… you’re alive?”

Flynn nodded, tears finally breaking through as Aunt Maddie pulled him into a spine-crushing hug.

“Jack!” she half shouted, half sobbed. “Jack, come down here right now!”

Uncle Jack… he was here too. Then, was it possible? He buried his face deeper into Aunt Maddie’s shoulder. It was strange, having to lean down to reach her. The last he remembered she had towered so far above him.

When Flynn had finally managed to pull himself away he saw Danny frozen beside him, his eyes wide in confusion. Okay, so he hadn’t known either.

Aunt Maddie sniffed, her violet eyes rimmed in red. “Just a moment dear,” she said, picking up her weapon. “Let me get rid of this scum real quick.”

“What-?”

Before he could react she was attacking Danny, who looked completely not surprised and just faded through the ceiling, scorching ectoblasts following after him.

There was a loud crash and Uncle Jack, this time just as large as Flynn always remembered him, rushed down the stairs.

“I’m here dear, where’s the ectoplasmic scum—“

He froze, his weapon falling loudly to the ground. “Flynn? Kiddo? What are you doing here?”

“I uh …” Flynn honestly didn’t know how to answer that.

“He’s not a ghost Jack! I already scanned him!”

Uncle Jack’s eyes went wide. Mouthing the words not a ghost. Then his eyes caught on Flynn’s ragged clothing.

“We gotta get you help kiddo!” he said suddenly, walking forward mechanically and picking up Flynn like he weighed nothing at all. The touch startled him, not used to casual contact when he was decked out in his blood blossom flowers.

Uncle Jack pretty much just carried him upstairs to a bathroom, where he set him down carefully in a bathtub. It was clear he was panicking, acting in some kind of paternal instinct at seeing his missing nephew after…. After a decade at least. It had to be.

“I’ll uh,” he backed away, bumping into Aunt Maddie on his way out of a room never meant to accommodate his size, “I’ll get you some clothes. Danny never really hit his growth spurt but Jazz is around your size—“

He fled.

Flynn got out of the tub, awkwardly, to close the door and turned on the shower. It was strange, how mundane it was and yet how different from what had become Flynn’s life.

Not cleaning himself in melted ice from the melted-glaciers, but in a shower that just—had water. An unending supply of it. Flynn tilted his head back and drank gulps of it. Quenching what felt like a permanently parched throat.

Eventually he managed to clean himself off, and grabbed a ridiculously fluffy towel to dry off so he could put on the decidedly feminine clothes that had been left piled messily by the sink for him.

They fit close enough and Flynn wandered out to see Danny in his human form waiting just outside. His eyes went wide.

“Danny why—“

“Relax,” Danny said rolling his eyes, “they don’t know I’m Phantom.”

Flynn frowned. “They’re your parents?”

“Yup,” he said, popping the p.

“… So we’re… cousins.”

“Yeah, well… we already kinda knew that—“

“I meant on the human side.”

Danny grimaced. “I guess?” He rubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck. “Honestly I didn’t even know I had a cousin? Much less one that went missing over a decade ago. They don’t talk about you. Never have.”

That was a bit painful in its own way, knowing he didn’t even leave a legacy behind, amongst his human family. Was he not important enough? Or did their grief hold their tongues?

Flynn thought back to some of his other siblings—his ghostly siblings. (He didn’t actually know if he had human siblings now. Did he want that? He really didn’t know.)

When Fido faded… it had hurt, he had been grief stricken and heartbroken and— he never stopped talking about him. Telling his story and keeping his memory alive. Even Mother didn’t just ignore that he had existed. He had failed, but he hadn’t been forgotten.

It left a bitter taste in his tongue.

Then again, perhaps the dead were simply better at grieving.

“Do you know…” Flynn felt his words dry on his tongue and fought to finish his question, “where my-my parents are?”

“They got divorced.” A new, unfamiliar voice answered. A young woman stepped around the corner. She smiled softly and held out a hand. “Sorry, thought you should know. I’ve been looking into certain things since you and Danny got back— I’m Jazz by the way.”

“Flynn,” he took her hand. It was smooth, then again everyone’s hands were smooth compared to his. “I remember you as quite a bit younger honestly.”

“I’m sure,” she smiled again, this time more honestly and let go of his hand. “Honestly the parents don’t know what to do, they’re both having two completely separate meltdowns. So if you want to see Aunt Alicia you’ll have to hitch a ride with me and Danny.”

“Oh?” Flynn asked, ignoring the loud pounding of his heart screaming that he was going home he might finally be going home.

“She has a farm down in Spittoon, Arkansas. It’s a few hours away but we can make it before dinner if we head out now.” Then her eyes moved over him, assessing. “Unless you want to get changed?”

“I’d rather head out now actually,” he said, biting his inner cheek as his heart grew louder.

Jazz sighed. “I thought so.”

Danny snickered and grabbed him by the wrist, headed to the basement. “We’re stealing the spectre speeder, it flies so we’ll get there in no time.”

“You won’t get in trouble?” Flynn asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Ha, good one.” Jazz opened the basement door and led them down. “That would require our parents having a sense of responsibility.”

Flynn felt off center at that comment. Something wasn’t right here, behind the scenes. He looked at the exhausted expression both of his cousins had and how different it was from the curious energetic brat Flynn had gotten to know Danny as.

It was easy enough getting buckled into the speeder, and honestly the flight itself wasn’t particularly long either.

Watching the scenery was something special though, the way it weaved so seamlessly together—instead of the different hod-podged together pieces of the Infinite Realms that always felt like the wrong parts of a poorly put together puzzle.

The farm they landed in front of was unfamiliar to Flynn, and he found himself mourning once more for a childhood home he already knew he would never see again but now knew no longer existed.

“Stay here,” Jazz said, laying a comforting hand on Flynn’s shoulder before approaching the front door.

He did so. Frozen by fear, by indecision. He’d spent so long trying to forget his past, trying to cling to it… building up his memories of his parents as a perfect family to compare them to Mother.

Flynn could almost feel her watching, judging. Waiting for the other shoe to drop and to welcome him back into her open arms after he broke apart once again.

Maybe it was another trap? This one, specific to him alone. A lesson to learn— I am your Mother. This is your family.

The door opened loudly and a deep voice rang out. “Now how in tarnations did you two get all the way out here?”

It hurt all of a sudden. A sharp stabbing pain in Flynn’s chest and if he were truly a ghost he might have thought his Obsession was going haywire or that his form was destabilizing.

He must have zoned out or something because he didn’t notice when hard, calloused hands cupped around his cheeks—a mimicry of her sister’s own actions.

“Flynn? Sweetheart?” His mom said in a soft voice, still steady, still confident, still as strong as he remembered.

“Ma?” he just barely managed to choke the word out when she pulled him into a bone crushing hug that made him feel so wonderfully secure he never wanted to leave these arms again.

But…

He pulled himself away. “I’m sorry for disappearing like that, Ma. I got… really really lost.”

She punched him in the shoulder, hard. It looked like it might have hurt her but she didn’t flinch, just kept smiling despite the tears clearly running down her face.

“You went and grew up without me… gotcha grandpa’s height too, and…” her thumb brushed away some of the tears collecting in his lashes, “you’re such a fine man now.”

He looked away, his gaze lingering on the farm itself. “I have a home,” he finally said, “built it with my own two hands. It’s got a garden, and a pretty cool, uh… fence?”

“Well,” she pulled him down into another tight hug, “you just make sure you keep coming to visit okay?”

And that was when he broke, desperate and weeping, sobbing into his mom’s shoulder like the child he truly felt he was.

It was dark by the time he ran out of tears and his mom led him and his cousins in for dinner. She made it herself, along with a rhubarb pie that wasn’t quite sweetened enough.

He knew Danny was sneaking glances over towards him the entire time, fighting back a confused expression. Flynn sighed, and ignored it.

After dinner his mom sent all three of them to bed. Jazz and Danny shared the guest room. Flynn… had his own.

It might as well have been a guest room, except it had all of his old things. At least the things that wouldn’t have rotted with time, or that he would have outgrown.

His mom had kept a room ready for him, as if he’d just moved out rather than disappeared. It was something about that, the level of trust, of implied freedom, of being a place he could come to when all of it was too much, that made everything feel like a dream— a bubble about to pop. It was too good, too kind. He didn’t know how to feel about it at all.

There was a magic in her easy acceptance of him back in her life, without the chains he’d almost expected to tie him back down.

Honestly, he was so scared to stop moving, he didn’t think he’d ever truly be able to. And his own little farm, so similar to this one, he made that, crafted it from the ground up. He’d be loath to let it rot without him. The Blood Blossoms were so hard to cultivate and it wasn’t like he could get Dokkaebi to help. Or any of his other ghostly siblings.

Siblings he didn’t have to weigh against his mom, didn’t have to choose between the life he’d had and the life he’d made.

He went to sleep on a bed just a bit too soft, with dreams just a bit too dark. But it was the best night of sleep he’d had in a long time nonetheless.

The next morning he helped his mom out on the farm. He was used to the labor and she was appreciative. Jazz and Danny were still asleep.

Flynn wasn’t really surprised, Danny looked like he needed it especially. And it was nice to just be alone with his mom.

They didn’t talk much, caught each other up on the big events in life. His mom mentioned the divorce, Flynn mentioned being taken in by a sort of ‘foster’ system and all his new siblings. She mentioned starting the farm, he mentioned making his house.

She asked when he was going to leave, he said he’d like to stay for a few days more. She nodded, and mentioned getting him some real clothes before he heads back out. He had gone from wearing a spare outfit of Jazz’s to a spare outfit of his mom’s. A bit shorter, but it fit better around the shoulders. A bit loose around the waist and chest though.

They were making a late breakfast when his cousins came downstairs. Both of them whispered quickly back and forth in some kind of argument.

Luckily, they stopped when they noticed Flynn could hear and he didn’t have to try and break them apart or anything.

“Aunt Alicia!” Jazz said, stepping forward, “I can help in the kitchen, Danny has something he wants to talk to Flynn about.”

Danny nodded and grabbed Flynn by the arm, not bothering to hide his strength as he dragged him outside and into the fields.

“Danny, what—?”

He stopped and turned around, a betrayed expression on his face. “You’re going back.”

It wasn’t a question.

Flynn sighed and answered as if it was, “It’s my home.”

“Your home is here! This is your family! Why would you go back to—“

“Danny,” Flynn cut him off, voice sharp. “You don’t get to choose my life. No one gets to choose my life but me. Not even well-meaning family.”

“But…”

“I’m sorry, but I’m my own person. I have a life, and I don’t hate it. I’m really, truly grateful that you brought my Ma back into this life, but she and I don’t need to change who we are for a happy ending.”

He ruffled the kid’s hair until his expression morphed from confused guilt to something that better suited a fourteen year old.

“You already gave us that.”

#Danny Phantom #Flynn Walker #Aunt Alicia #Reunion fic #Bee's Writing #flynn Fenton #DP

50 notes · View notes