Young Avengers Fic: Homefront
Title: Homefront
Fandom: Young Avengers
Pairing: None, mentions of Billy/Teddy
Rating: G
Warnings: minor Civil War spoilers, nothing huge.
Wordcount: 475
Summary: Sometimes, war is hardest on those who aren't doing the fighting.
Wars are always fought for old men by young boys. -- Anonymous
There can only be peace when they will start to love their children more than they hate us. -- Golda Meir
"Yes. Yes, of course. I'll be sure to pass that on. Thank you." Rebecca Kaplan set the phone back on its base, glad that she had managed to get through the phone call without her voice cracking, or the strain she felt all over making its way across the line. That was the third call from Billy's school, wishing him a safe recovery. She didn't want to lie to them, but what was she supposed to say? I'm sorry, Billy won't be coming to school for a while. He and his friends are busy fighting the government?
She bit her lip anxiously. It had been bad enough just knowing that her boy was always running off to be a superhero. She was proud of him, to be sure, but she was still his mother and she couldn't help but worry, even as she watched the news reports, watched the footage of him and his boyfriend and their other friends whose names she wasn't sure she would ever know. They were strong and brave and she knew that they just wanted to do good, but sometimes, especially when they were shown standing next to their counterparts in the Avengers, they looked so very young. They were children playing dress-up, no matter how much they had done to prove otherwise.
Now the news reports made them out to be villains, reporting on the "still-unknown whereabouts of the fugitive Young Avengers" alongside semi-editorial pieces that were still questioning Captain America's allegiance to the country he was named for. If anything, the reports helped to allay her fears. Rebecca Kaplan was a smart woman; she could read between the lines. As long as they were still "fugitives", her boys (for Teddy now seemed as much her son as Billy) hadn't been caught, and all bets were on them hiding out with Captain America's resistance forces. How strange that sounded; but then, they were living in strange times.
She looked down at the kitchen table, where the Times was spread out. After the Bugle's wholly biased coverage of Spider-Man's unmasking, she had cancelled their subscription, and so instead of the constant anti-Spider-Man rhetoric of the Bugle, she found herself looking at the large, bold letters of a headline that asked, TRAITOR?, and the full-color photo of Captain America beneath it. She gazed at it, feeling a mixture of anger and sadness and the barest twinge of hope.
"You take care of my boys." She said to it, softly. "You take care of them, or Iron Man will be the least of your worries."
After another moment, she crumpled up the newspaper and threw it in the trash.
Fandom: Young Avengers
Pairing: None, mentions of Billy/Teddy
Rating: G
Warnings: minor Civil War spoilers, nothing huge.
Wordcount: 475
Summary: Sometimes, war is hardest on those who aren't doing the fighting.
Wars are always fought for old men by young boys. -- Anonymous
There can only be peace when they will start to love their children more than they hate us. -- Golda Meir
"Yes. Yes, of course. I'll be sure to pass that on. Thank you." Rebecca Kaplan set the phone back on its base, glad that she had managed to get through the phone call without her voice cracking, or the strain she felt all over making its way across the line. That was the third call from Billy's school, wishing him a safe recovery. She didn't want to lie to them, but what was she supposed to say? I'm sorry, Billy won't be coming to school for a while. He and his friends are busy fighting the government?
She bit her lip anxiously. It had been bad enough just knowing that her boy was always running off to be a superhero. She was proud of him, to be sure, but she was still his mother and she couldn't help but worry, even as she watched the news reports, watched the footage of him and his boyfriend and their other friends whose names she wasn't sure she would ever know. They were strong and brave and she knew that they just wanted to do good, but sometimes, especially when they were shown standing next to their counterparts in the Avengers, they looked so very young. They were children playing dress-up, no matter how much they had done to prove otherwise.
Now the news reports made them out to be villains, reporting on the "still-unknown whereabouts of the fugitive Young Avengers" alongside semi-editorial pieces that were still questioning Captain America's allegiance to the country he was named for. If anything, the reports helped to allay her fears. Rebecca Kaplan was a smart woman; she could read between the lines. As long as they were still "fugitives", her boys (for Teddy now seemed as much her son as Billy) hadn't been caught, and all bets were on them hiding out with Captain America's resistance forces. How strange that sounded; but then, they were living in strange times.
She looked down at the kitchen table, where the Times was spread out. After the Bugle's wholly biased coverage of Spider-Man's unmasking, she had cancelled their subscription, and so instead of the constant anti-Spider-Man rhetoric of the Bugle, she found herself looking at the large, bold letters of a headline that asked, TRAITOR?, and the full-color photo of Captain America beneath it. She gazed at it, feeling a mixture of anger and sadness and the barest twinge of hope.
"You take care of my boys." She said to it, softly. "You take care of them, or Iron Man will be the least of your worries."
After another moment, she crumpled up the newspaper and threw it in the trash.