He was driving when he got the call. He'd been on his way to pick up Jr. from Collin. One call later, he was doing something completely different.

"Collin, I'm sorry. I just- @#$%in learn to drive! JESUS @$%^IN- Collin, they found her. Sorry, can you watch him just- just a little bit- THANK YOU! Sorry- GET OUT OF THE ROAD YOU- Thank you-" He swerved around an old grandma driver, turning down a cross street that he knew to be a shortcut out of the busier downtown area. Unfortunately, he turned right into a stalled out even older lady in a car.

Of course.

He didn't have time for this. If he took too long, she would be gone again. She always was. He pulled over, and hopped out of the car. It would be faster to go himself. A good solid minute of beating the tar out of himself, and he was able to jump into the air, and fling himself forward with his power. It wasn't exactly flying. It was more... falling with style. But here he was, rocketing through NYC toward the small park at the corner of town.

He made quick progress, deciding not to worry about leaving his car just... sitting at the side of a main road. This wasn't a chance he could just let pass. He just hoped it was actually her, and he wasn't about to freak some other innocent woman who sort of looked like her out... again.

Tunnel vision made spotting his target difficult when he got to the area of the city he was looking for. He managed, though, as he drifted away from the buildings and over grass, to spot a swatch of pink.

Noiselessly, he allowed himself to drop from the air, landing with a bit of a stumble before the woman he was looking for.

"...Shelby?" His vision started to clear as he looked to the woman he had come to a stop in front of.

She liked Mondays. Everyone else was often busy, and that left more time for her to easily get out and practice with fewer people to bother her. There were only so many interruptions she could take before the urge to assault someone with a paintbrush grew too powerful.

She was sat down in a park, criss-cross applesauce with a short easel and a large canvas before her. The artist was practicing her landscaping skills, with a bit of a surrealist Van Gogh twist, as well as playing around with exactly how much influence she had over her power. Leaves from trees and bushes swirled in a variety of greens to form hidden skulls, clouds shifted about like reaching bony hands. She tossed in a large, grotesque monster arm covered in strings of algae reaching out of the lake water, just for giggles.

Wasn't like she was planning on going in this one anyway.

Halfway through trying to add more detail to a sketched out but not yet painted stretch of grass, a sudden shadow blocked the lingering sun and then an honest to goodness body fell out of the sky right in front of her. And it said her name!

"@#$%?!" The artist flailed in surprise, tipped over, righted herself, and grabbed her canvas and paintbrush-like a sword and shield to protect herself.

Who just dropped in on someone like that without calling first? The audacity!

"Who're you?! It came out in a rush as she tried to wiggle her glasses back up into place by wrinkling her nose a few times.

...Wait.

Wasn't that?

Oh no.

@#$%!

She glanced at her canvas quickly, and a cold sweat washed over her.

... He was the guy in all the pictures with that other Shelby.

He was staring. It was her. His eyes darted about her features a million times as he stood there, stuck the pose he'd taken to try and keep his balance. It really was her. She looked so young!. He almost didn't notice she was standing now, paint brush and canvas bares like weapons.

He forced his mouth shut. She asked who he was. "Eh- Uh, yeah. I'm- I'm your-" She glanced down at her canvas, and his eyes widened as he took a half step forward, hands held up.

"Wait! Wait... I just- I just want to talk. I just want to... You're not in trouble, here... Please don't go." He didn't know what to say. He'd been looking for her so long he didn't know what to do now that she was right here.

He took a deep breath. "Please stay. Even if it's just for a little bit... Okay?"

She lowered her wet, paint-covered fabric shield a little.

Shit, this was gonna be harder to deal with up close. She knew what he was trying to say, she wasn't dumb. Just... a little intimidated by it all.

Okay, scared.

No, for real, she was @#$%ing terrified.

Her husband was standing right there, apparently.

"Uh..." He also apparently knew about her escape tactic, which was... concerning. Like, she'd figured he'd know and all, but still!

She glanced around the park, where families were playing with their kids and joggers were on their 3rd laps, and sighed.

"...Okay. But.. not here"

She set her canvas down, leaning against her leg, and reached a paint-covered hand out to him.

Once she made contact they both vanished, with just a small audible pop.

~~

Reappearing not more than a second later inside her still-in-development painting, she released his hand immediately and shuffled a few steps away through roughly sketched graphite grass.

Skeletal clouds above crawled across the sky blindly, trees and brushes wriggled and clacked their leafy teeth. And in the far of a distance, a large arm was starting to surface from the spotty water.

"We can talk here, but, uh... don't go near the shrubbery. Or the water."

She still had a locket on her, tucked under her shirt against her skin, juuuust in case she needed to beat a hasty retreat.

He knew what someone looked like when they were afraid, though he didn't know the context of that fear. He took that half step back again, hands up and attempting to calm. "Hey, hey it's okay. It's okay..."

She agreed to talk... Not here, though. Where? He didn't resist when she reached for him. He felt her touc only for a moment before they were gone.

~~

In a flash they were in a strange landscape. He reached out as she walked away, but didn't grab her. His hand faltered short. Looking about quickly, he opened his mouth "Uh- you... Still paintin... Yeah, right, you always sorta did..." He looked around at some of the unfinished pieces of the work. This place was interesting, to say the least, but it obiously needed more tlc before it could be called complete.

"Why here? And why not go near the, eh... shrubbery?" Like, in the monty pytiono- More importantly. "Shelby... I- uhm... I'm Saphirus... h... How are you... Holding up?"

Wow... How are you holding up. That was what he had? What could he say. He was talking to his deaged wife after chasing her down for months. Actually, that was plenty of time to think of something better to say.

"This is more private for... uh... the conversation we will be having." She didn't want a bunch of strangers eavesdropping on the strange love drama that was about to play out.

The bushes all around them clacked their feet, fruitlessly trying to stretch out to get a bite of both of them.

"I was practicing making hostile environments." She offered, pointing out the hungry landscape. "I based the idea of this place off of an environment that wants to consume us, as much as we consume it."

It was one of the first truly dangerous ideas she had decided to play with, rather than the fun, kind kooky paintings she liked to drag Boy Wonder through.

He introduced himself and asked her probably one of the most dad things she had ever heard, and she barely held back a full cringe.

"... I know who you are."

She fiddled with her drying paintbrush and took careful note of the only two exit frames in the whole space. Someone else was in the park painting, it would appear.

"I've known for a while who you were. Looked a lot of stuff up when I woke up here."

...ah, and there was the guilt again. She frowned and avoided eye contact.

"I know you were married to that other Shelby, and that you have her kid." She waved a hand awkwardly. "Marriage and birth records."

"Oh... Right... eh... What kinda... Conversation?" The landscape was bizarre, now that she mentioned it, but... well, it was also pretty normal for her. He nodded a little bit as he looked around. As she started to explain the reasoning behind the art, he looked to her again, his eyes clouding over as he tried to process it.

"Right... Yeah... Revenge of the plants." That... sounded stupid, didn't it? Could he take it back? @#$% he needed to get it together. It's your wife. Talk to her. She pulled him from his thoughts, stating she knew who he was. "You do?"

She did. He crossed his arms uncomfortably, taking another deep breath. If she knew who he was... why hadn't she come? Why did he have to track her down and ambush her? The thought made him frown as his eyes rocketed about, trying to make sense of something that they wouldn't see. It was right there in front of him, though.

He saw it when she started talking about the... other Shelby. His heart dropped. So, they were going to talk about her like she wasn't here? "Uh... yeah... We, eh... We have a kid, yeah." He was looking at the ground now.

"So... Why didn't you..." He couldn't finish the sentence. The words stopped in his throat.

He didn't need to finish.

So why didn't you come to find me?

She chewed on her lip for a moment, not answering right away. Her excuse as to why she hadn't looked for answers, for him and the child, felt right to her... but she was aware that they wouldn't feel right to everyone. She was certain they wouldn't feel right to him.

"If-" Her voice cracked. She cleared her throat. "..if you woke up somewhere strange, in a different place and year then what you remember, and then you find out that there was this whole other you that had a family and... and a kid, would your first thought have been to jump right back into that foreign life?" She kept her voice soft, not wanting to hurt him and not wanting to sound accusatory or anything, but trying to get her point across.

"I went from being in Seattle, with my girlfriend, to here... in chaos, with a needle in my leg and..." She ran a hand over her face, pushing her glasses up and into her pink hair.

"Look... I'm sorry I didn't show up to figure things out, but.. but I'm not her. I've never even considered having kids, and I didn't know what I was gonna do if I found you and you were, well... like this. I guess. I know who you are from looking you up online and the picture I had in that wallet, but... I can't remember anything about you."

Jesus, he could hear his heartbeat in his ears. Was he going to have a goddam aneurism? He closed his eyes for a moment, and opened them again. She came into view again, chewing on her lip. She used to do that when she was nervous. Well... Apparently, that other woman used to do that.

He swallowed his throat as she cleared hers. He watched her quietly as she spoke. He needed to sit down. "I... I did. I was turned young too. I... Just... got better fast." He turned away, rubbing his face with his hands before turning back as she went on. A needle in her leg. His heart hit the ground. "Injection..." The reports were saying the injections made it permanent. He clenched his jaw, turning away again.

She wasn't her. She didn't want kids. She didn't know who he was, or what they had. And she was never going back to how she was. "I... need... I need to take a seat or somethin..." He looked around for a park bench, numbly walking toward the first one he saw.

Assuming she followed, he took a seat and placed his head in his hands for a moment before looking up. "... How old are you?"

He... had?! He HAD been young?! He got better?!

That was news to her. She hadn't been aware that this was something she could get better from. Like.... she could do back to being the other Shelby? That was a possibility?

He stated he needed to sit, and she agreed. She kind of needed to sit too.

They found a bench and she sat, sorta beside him but at a respectable distance.

"21."

Her brows creased and she was bending the paintbrush slightly while staring pointedly at the painted grass.

"So.. you go better? What was that like? Did... do you remember all the stuff from when you were younger?"

This was partially why she had just avoided the whole problem from the get-go. She didn't feel like she was mentally prepared for... this. This was existential dread material if she'd ever encountered it before.

If she was going to re-age at some point, and presumably go back to being happily married and a doting mother, then... man, she had a lot of questions to ask.

"So, um... what is our kid's name? The baby in that picture? It's just the one child, right?" She looked over at him finally, trying and succeeding at calming herself down a bit.

21... She was just over half his age. Jesus. @#$%. He gripped the railing of the park bench and nodded, his head fixed on the path the bench sat alongside.

"Yeah... I just got hit with the gas... It's temporary. And... Sorta. I guess. It's a bit of blur. I started looking for people I knew back then. Didn't know they were dead..." God, she was just so hard to look at. She looked just like her. She WAS her. He wanted to grab her up, and hold her, and tell her everything was going to be okay. In truth, he was the one who probably needed that.

"Saphirus Jr... We just call him Jr, because, let's be honest, the name is silly. I... I have a daughter as well. Elke. Adopted. She's in college." He couldn't look back at her. He tried, but it burnt his soul more than staring at the sun.

His knuckles were white. He looked like he was crawling in his own skin. He'd wanted to find her so bad. What was he expecting? Did he think this was going to go well? Why did he think that? No, no... he needed to find her. She could have been lost, confused... alone.

"How... How have you been managing? This isn't seattle... have you been okay?"

"Okay."

She could do this. It was fine. What was her old life preparing her for other than chaos like this? If she could survive her parents perpetually divorcing and re-marrying, she could survive anything. ...Right?

"Oookay. This is fine." She nodded, reaffirming it to herself. "Everythings gonna be fine." She shifted on the bench to face him, determined to push through the awkward and just... get it done. No, wait, that wasn't right. Too callous.

Push through it and re-learn everything. Clearly, there had been something that brought them together, made them fall in love, and caused her to want to have this man's children. Child. Whatever!

"...So, we just... I dunno, treat this as one of those really overdramatic soap operas, then. Right? Right. You... probably already know everything about me, but I need to re-learn everything about you. So let's start there?"

She looked at him, how he was reacting to it all, and then down at his hand where he was gripping the bench like he was trying to strangle it.

"...What was our first date like?" That was an easy enough question, right?

Okay. She was doing okay. Okay. That was okay.

None of this was okay.

she said it was fine. She said everything would be fine. As much as he needed to hear it, it just sounded insane. He felt her shift on the bench to face him. He looked up at her. His heart skipped a beat. He fought hard to maintain eye contact. The way she spoke. It was as much the same as it was different.

"Uh... yeah, sure." He replied weakly, shifting in his seat to face her a bit more, and sit up straight.

She asked what their first date was like. He tensed a bit. What a question. She really didn't know anything. "Uhm... well... I should tell you... For... Half of our relationship. Before JR. Eh... There was this guy. More a monster, I guess. He was after you. That's how we met, you and I. I saved you when he tried to kill you. After that it sorta... I dunno. You were in protective custody, and I was protecting you. Other cops, too, but." He looked up for a moment, and then over to her again.

"I fell for you. We spent a lot of time with you sorta hidden away, and our first real date, outside... He attacked. Roach. He took a lot from you, babe- sorry... Shelby. He... What do you know?" Jesus, he was going to have to tell her, wasn't he? She was going to find out from him.

She didn't look surprised when he started to talk about Roach, though she didn't know him by that name. She did frown because it was still a sore spot. She let him finish, not rushing him, and just nodded a little.

"It's okay." She slipped in, responding to his use of the 'babe' pet name. She didn't mind the slip-up.

"It's okay." She offered a tense smile to let him know it was alright. "As I said, I learned a lot online. I know about my mother's passing." She set the paintbrush to the side and offered him a hand if he wanted to take it. Maybe as a way for him to not feel alone.

"I read about a lot of stuff, other people that died who I don't remember and saw a few of the pictures of... older me, in the papers. I don't know all of the details about what happened, but enough that I was able to process it already." At least to the point where it didn't hurt 24/7, just... sometimes.

"I don't recall ever seeing you mentioned in the papers. Musta been part of the whole protection thing?" She sighed deeply.

"Kinda easy to disassociate when it feels like all that happened to a whole other person and not you, ya know?"

What else could they talk about?

"So... who proposed to who? Where'd we get married? How old is Saphirus Jr?" She leaned in slightly, "Did I actually agree to let us call him that, or did you trick me into it?"

He let out a deep breath when she mentioned knowing about her mother's passing. He didn't want to see her have to experience that all over again for the first time. All of this hurt too much already. She forgave his slip of the tongue as well. And... She offered him a hand.

He reached half way, but then faltered. Damnit, she looked just like her. Didn't she understand? He waved his hand a little bit, and set his own on his knee.

"I don't do a lot of interviews... Papers got enough to say about me." looked down, brooding quietly for a bit as she tried to drive the conversation. She spoke about dissociating. He shook his head a bit. "I dunno..."

She changed the subject, thankfully. He looked up and leaned back, taking a breath. "Ahhh, well... You proposed. Made a whole grand thing of it in the danger room. Probably one of the most amazing things anyone's ever done for me... We got hitched in Vegas. Wanted to make a quick thing of it. Jr is three and a half and growin like mad." He resisted shifting a bit when she leaned in, allowing himself a small smile.

"You insisted after I brought it up once...I knew you weren't excited for it, but you got it in your head I wanted it, and were set on it after. His name was almost Clarence."