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Tommy’s eyes open to a blue sky and a pack of worried faces. At least, he thinks they might be worried, since the second that they see that his eyes are moving, their expressions morph into sneers.
“Told you he wasn’t dead!” One says, turning to his friend and shoving him, “You didn’t kill him after all!”
“Tch.”
Tommy opens his mouth to say something to them but when he does, his lungs immediately protest. He feels bile forming in his throat and strains to turn himself around before it comes up out of him, spilling all over the ground. The people around him all collectively let out ‘ew’ noises as Tommy fights for air on the floor, ignoring how much water is leaking out of his nose and airways as he tries to get his breath back.
It’s as he does get his breath back that he realizes he has absolutely no idea how he got here or what is going on or who these people are.
But with that last cough, he manages one word, “Billy?”
“Who the fuck is that Shepherd?” snarls one of the other people around him.
Tommy opens his mouth to snap back, to say something, anything at all but when he tries to respond, he’s kicked hard in the back, sending him flopping down onto the hard asphalt.
This is not the first time Tommy has had his breath stolen from his lungs, but it's the first time he’s been alone when it happens. It’s the first time he’s reached for someone and they haven’t put their hand back in his.
“See, he’s fine,” snaps a voice to his left as Tommy pushes himself to his feet.
He’s not fine, where is he? Where is he? Where’s Billy? Billy?! Billy! Billy!
He doesn’t remember why Billy is so important; he only feels that his not being here feels like a stab in the ribs, and pieces of him are completely missing. He remembers flashes of a young boy, about his age, his hair a couple of shades lighter that scrunched his nose up like his mother did when he smiled. Who hid behind him when meeting strangers and cried when he learned that their dog had been alone.
His brother. He knows him. Tommy is broken without Billy.
“What the fuck is wrong with him?” says one of the boys nearby, his mouth moving far too slowly.
Time is wrong right now, it’s wrong, it’s wrong.
Tommy stands up to face the boys surrounding him, water dripping from his body as he levels the boys with a glower. Time almost seems to come to a standstill as Tommy watches their expressions flicker slowly from shock to fear in slow motion. The world distorts around him but before Tommy can move, someone shouts his name.
“Thomas!”
He turns his head around to see a policeman leaning out of his car. Time warps again and everything comes back to him in a rush. Noises, his shaking hands, the way that his clothes are pressed against his body, everything is wet and loud and lonely and…
The boys around him giggle and snicker as Tommy focuses on what the policeman is saying to him, his frown increasing, “Mary’s going to kill you if you don’t get into this car right now. You’re already on probation, why make things worse for yourself, huh?”
Tommy wants to cry, his head is spinning so much. Whether it’s from the water flooding in his mind and drowning out any memories of who he is except for Billy, or something else entirely, he feels dizzy and nauseous. He finds himself nodding numbly, squeezing his fingers into the wetness of his pants and shuffling towards the police car. The boys jeer behind him, fear of killing him forgotten in their mockery of his walk of shame, but Tommy has the distinct crawling feeling that they did kill him.
That he’s dead and now he’s just someone else in a dead boy’s skin.
The policeman scoffs as he sits down in the car, shooting him a knowing glance before saying, “Well? What were you doing out there, Thomas? Those are good kids, don’t go dragging them into your mess.”
They didn't seem like good kids. Tommy wants to snap at him, but he dutifully keeps his head down and doesn’t say anything, trying to shuffle through what he does know and what exactly is going on.
Fact #1: His name is Tommy.
Fact #2: Billy is missing.
Fact #3: He’d just drowned.
Fact #4: He has almost no idea who he is.
The policeman is yammering on about his mother, whose name is apparently Mary (that doesn’t sound right), and how much trouble he’s in. Apparently, this isn’t the first time Tommy’s been in trouble with the law and the police officer seems to be reveling in the idea of getting Tommy in trouble again.
Tommy doesn’t know what to think about that. He’s always been kind of a troublemaker (he thinks) so this isn’t exactly unusual. But what is unusual is when he pulls up to the home he’s supposedly lived in for his entire life, he doesn’t remember it at all.
He walks up the stairs to the broken home that’s supposedly his and learns very quickly why Tommy Shepherd probably didn’t want to remember where he came from. Tommy lays in bed, wrapping his sheets around the bloody wounds he’d received from his parents screaming and throwing their glass bottles at him and trying not to cry as he remembers the smell of cinnamon and his mother’s gentle touch on his head and his father holding him in his arms.
He knows that he’s not where he belongs.
~
Tommy remembers in waves.
In the nightmares that plague him at night, he remembers. The way his mom had smiled down at him, smelling like cinnamon, his father holding his hands and reading to him out loud, in the feeling of his brother by his side, his presence easing any tension that Tommy might have felt.
And now they’re all dead.
He remembers the terrifying witch who had imprisoned him and Billy in her basement. He remembers the woman who stopped bullets for him and Tommy and he remembers.
He remembers the false uncle and dyes his hair in honor of him. He doesn’t bother to tell his parents about that one and is left to pick up the pieces of himself after that incident when Mary Shepherd takes to his hair with scissors. He doesn’t bother to dye his hair back after that and he hears his parents whispering at night that he’s been possessed by a demon since he drowned.
He starts getting into fights, fighting back against the kids who drowned him. Tommy doesn’t take the same shit that Thomas Shepherd had as easily and his criminal record gradually skyrockets. The violence gets worse, he gets worse.
At night is his only solace, he holds his hands together and imagines it’s his brother, Billy.
Tommy remembers the most about Billy. Billy, his younger twin, who loved the color red and magic. The way his light brown hair fell against his face and the way he had thrown funny faces at him when their mom had broken down and their dad had tried to explain to them what a coloring book was. Billy, who could read his thoughts and always knew what to say and always surprised him by just how smart he was.
He’s dead. Just like everyone else Tommy cares about.
Billy’s dead. Billy’s dead. Billy’s dead. Billy’s dead. Billy’s dead.
Tommy dies a little bit more every time he reminds himself of that.
~
Tommy blows up his school.
He doesn’t exactly mean to. But with his memories coming back, he’s also slowly been getting back control over his powers as well. It had taken him a while to remember what his powers even were, honestly. But the constant time-slipping and the slowing down had reminded him eventually of the way that the world distorts at his fingertips sometimes and he can run for hours without stopping,
What he hadn’t expected was that his powers would change.
Tommy gets faster from what he understands, from what he remembers when he could carry his brother around with him. The world no longer becomes shapes in the side of his vision, but blurs. One night, during a particularly horrible nightmare, he vibrates so fast in his bed that he falls through solid matter down into the Shepherd’s living room, waking up both of his parents.
They smash his head into a table for that one. Tommy wishes he had enough control over his speed to phase through the table just to piss them off.
He wishes his mom or his dad was here. They’re both superheroes. They would be able to help him, stop time from slowing down around him. He wishes Billy was here, because if Tommy’s powers are developing like this, he can only imagine how his brother’s would evolve. They could help each other. He could see his brother.
Tommy blows up his school on an ordinary Monday morning. He’d been hiding in the corner away from the group of bullies that love to harass him, the same ones that he now realizes had actually killed him. He doesn’t have any friends at this school, but he doesn’t want any anyways. He just wants Billy or Dad or Mom. He’d been so caught up in his thoughts and his music blasting through his headphones (Dad would disapprove of the music he likes now) that he doesn’t notice the people approaching him until they shove him into a nearby wall.
He doesn’t phase through it, which is a relief. But what does happen is worse. His hand hits the wall and it immediately starts shaking. Tommy blinks down at it, watching his fingers shudder so much that they sink into the wall, as his cells accelerate so much that he phases through the wall.
And then the wall starts to shudder. The bullies beside him let out noises of shock as dust falls from the ceiling and Tommy stares at his hand as it trembles so much that the walls are shaking. On some fundamental level, he understands that he’s moving so fast that he’s making the very fabric of the wall collapse in on itself.
But the forefront of his mind is more like WHAT THE FUCK????????
The bullies beside him gasp and whip around to run out of the building but they don’t get very far. Tommy tries desperately to pull away from the wall, but he’s trapped there, shaking so badly that he can’t tell anymore if it’s him or the walls. Time warps around him, and Tommy looks down to his watch as each second begins to take more and more time: a minute, two minutes: 5 minutes.
He blacks out when the seconds start taking more than that, but he’s pretty sure that by the time he does, each second is taking hours. There’s a piercing noise in his ears that won’t go away. He’s dizzy, there’s blood in his mouth, he’s shaking, everything’s crumbling. It’s crumbling. It’s all crumbling down.
It’s kind of like his life, honestly.
Tommy wakes up in a prison cell with his hands bound and papers in front of him officially orphaning him. He can’t bring it in himself to care all that much.
~
Prison isn’t as bad as outside of it. Physically, at least.
But Tommy’s mental health has never been worse. At least, on the outside, he could pretend that he wasn’t alone without Billy and his parents. But here, isolated away from the other inmates out of fear, he can’t even pretend. He can’t even access his powers to make the time drift away because the handcuffs he’s in repress them.
He’s started hitting parts of his body against the walls just to feel something.
He loses track of time, but it has to be a couple of weeks when one of the guards comes to knock on his door. Tommy blinks at him blearily, and the guard scoffs down at him as if Tommy was a piece of dogshit on his shoe.
“You have a visitor, Shepherd.”
What? Tommy doesn’t have anyone that should want to visit him anymore. He has no one left. He shuffles out of his cell and down to the visiting chambers, blinking slowly as time moves unnaturally normally. He sits on one side of the glass and looks up to his visitor's room, as they sit across from him, eyeing him through the glass.
Tommy doesn’t know what he expected but the other teenager staring through the glass at him was not that. The boy’s hair is curly and dark, with smudges of dark eyeliner underneath his eyes, like he’d been crying and hastily rubbed it away. He’s nervously twisting rings around his fingers and his nails are painted black. When he meets Tommy’s eyes though, he brightens up, his smile making his nose scrunch up.
“Tommy!”
Tommy blinks because 1) how does this person know his name? And 2) why does that sound familiar?
He frowns, crossing his arms in front of his chest, and ignores the odd tingling in his mind at the other boy’s familiarity. It seems that his non-reaction has dashed the other boy’s hopes because that familiar smile is dropping off his face faster than Tommy could run away from this conversation.
“He probably doesn’t remember you,” says an echoey voice suddenly and it takes all of Tommy’s strength to not let his jaw completely drop open when a horribly familiar person steps into the room behind the curly-haired boy, “ You’re going to have to remind him, Billy.”
The boy’s face twitches with sorrow, but Tommy’s mind is already running at a million miles an hour and time is slowing down and….
Tommy doesn’t remember all of Westview, of course. But he can’t forget his brother’s face. The nervous habits he picked up from their mom and the way he smiles, the dorkiness that came from Vision, and the whispers of his brother’s touch in his mind that would soothe him to sleep. Now that he thinks about it, he can feel it now… because this boy in front of him...
“Wait,” Tommy waves his hand and interrupts Billy before he says anything, “ Billy?”
His brother stares at him for a long moment, completely baffled before a bright smile breaks out all over his face and it all melts into place. Tommy’s chest is tightening, his eyes are burning because… Billy’s okay. He’s not dead. He’s got a new face, just like Tommy does, but he’s here.
“Shitshitshit,” Tommy can’t stop himself from rambling, feeling his face twist into a smile because that’s Billy, “I thought you were dead! Hi!”
“Hi!” Billy’s just as delighted as him, but Tommy can already tell he’s inches away from crying.
Even on a new face that Tommy’s already intent on memorizing, his brother’s tells are all the same.
“Yes, yes, you both said hello,” says the ghost of the witch from Tommy’s nightmares from beside Billy’s shoulder, “Can we get back to the fact that you’re in prison? That’s sort of important.”
Billy is looking at her with an annoyed expression on his face and Tommy’s elation ebbs as he realizes that it is in fact, not a prank that she is here and she is for some reason accompanying his little brother to see him in prison. He resists the urge to punch through the glass separating him and Billy and hug his brother and then throttle him.
“Why are you here, Agatha?” Tommy finds himself saying, just as both Billy and Agatha turn to look at him, surprise on their faces.
“You can see her, Tommy?” Billy sounds like he’s just delighted that he can say Tommy’s name over and over again. Tommy feels the same way.
He nods and gestures at her, “I remember her. She choked us in front of Mom and locked us in her basement.”
Billy blinks, turning to stare at the ghost by his side. He looks horrified. She shrugs at him, but Tommy’s more caught up in the notion that Billy didn’t remember that, “Don’t you remember, Billy?”
Billy’s tears seem to threaten to spill over when he looks at Tommy, as if seeing him for the first time, “I don’t.”
“You,” Tommy’s heart is sinking in his chest.
Pieces are starting to fall into place, his brother’s obvious delight that Tommy had responded to him, the confusion at Agatha being a horrible person and choking them out in the middle of the street. Tommy searches his younger twin’s eyes and gets the answer he needs, “You didn’t remember.”
Billy shakes his head, rubbing at an eye again. When he does speak, his voice is soft, “ It’s been three years for me.”
Three years. Three years alone with no memories. Three years where Tommy couldn’t be there with him. He remembers the confusion he’d felt after he’d drowned, but his dreams had quickly caught him up. He remembers most of it now, but Billy…
Billy still doesn’t and it’s been three years.
He resists the urge to smash the glass and yank his twin into a hug even more now. Billy’s eyes are wet and big the same way they got when he was sad in Westview, when he held Tommy’s hands at night and told him that the people around them were screaming to get free and it made his head hurt and spin and he wanted his powers gone.
Tommy can feel Billy’s mind reading working now, gently weaving through his thoughts like they always used to. He’d grown up familiar with the feeling and to feel it again was like coming home.
“You think so?” Billy says aloud and Tommy looks over at him to see his twin actually crying at him, “I–”
Tommy doesn’t know if he can trust himself to speak with the lump in his throat. His eyes are burning. He’s not crying, he’s not crying, he’s not…
“Shepherd!” The sound of his new name makes him jump and he turns around to see the security guard nearby glaring at him. Billy and Agatha seem to be startled by him too, judging by their faces.
“Time’s up!” The guard is coming fast and Tommy knows he’s faster but now that he knows Billy is there and waiting for him, he can’t afford to add more time to his sentence… He shoots his twin a panicked look, but Billy seems to have snapped back and composed himself.
“ We’ll get you out,” That familiar sensation suddenly shifts and Tommy finds himself surprised as Billy projects his voice into his mind, “Just hang tight… okay?”
Tommy looks his watery-eyed twin in the eyes and thinks as loud as he can, “Okay.”
“I’ll see you soon.”
~
His brother breaks him out of prison.
Billy Maximoff, his sweet brother who was always so emotional, breaks into a high-security prison and gets him out. Tommy hadn’t even been expecting it, lying on his bed after his meeting with his brother and imagining himself and Billy actually hugging again when there was a loud warping noise and Tommy nearly fell off his bed in surprise.
Standing there with a massive glowing portal next to him is his brother, dressed in an outfit that looks disturbingly like his outfit from Halloween in Westview, just more… fashionable. Billy grins at him, his face illuminated in the blue light of the portal. Tommy idly notes the blue crown on his head that resembles their mom’s before he scrambles to his feet.
“Wh–” Billy interrupts him, “Let’s go, Tommy.”
Tommy opens his mouth to reply just as Agatha sails in behind his brother, frowning, “Get that ankle monitor off him, Billiam. It probably tracks him.”
“Right!” Billy steps over toward Tommy, his eyes are dark and sad as he leans down to brush his fingers against the ankle monitor.
Tommy watches startled as the ankle monitor shudders and falls off as Billy’s fingers light up with blue stars. His brother straightens up and tilts his head with a small smile as they meet eyes, and Tommy is taken with the irresistible urge to scoop him into a hug because even just feeling Billy’s magic again feels like a sigh of relief and familiarity.
“Here,” says Billy, his fingers brushing against Tommy’s handcuffs, “These need to go too.”
There’s the heavy sound of the handcuffs falling to the floor and the world is all right again. Time goes back to being normal again, folding under his fingers again and all this weight that was on Tommy’s heart vanishes as he looks his brother’s new face in the eyes. Billy looks back at him, his eyes framed by messy eyeliner and long lashes but he looks just as happy to see Tommy as Tommy knows he is to see him.
Billy reaches down and takes Tommy’s hand in his, “I’m getting you out of here.”
For the first time in 8 months, Tommy grins.
Billy takes them to a hotel room, before quickly vanishing to “grab something.” Tommy takes the opportunity to quietly walk around the hotel room, admiring the soft decor and the feeling of his powers under his command again. Wherever the ghostly form of Agatha is, she’s not here now, or not visible to him, but he doesn’t care. He’s shaking with excitement at the idea of just… b eing with a member of his family again.
Especially because it’s Billy. His twin brother.
“Tommy.”
He jumps, turning around to see that his brother has come back from whatever he was doing. The costume is gone and he looks smaller in the hazy light of the hotel room. His eyes are glimmering in the dark, but there’s a small smile on his face as he holds out green flannel pants and a t-shirt, “I got your favorite color.”
His brother is shorter than him now, only barely. His dark hair is so different from his once almost blonde, and the angles of his face are now changed. But Tommy can still see Billy there in the way his brother smiles at him awkwardly, fiddles with his rings, and holds himself. He can still see Mom and Dad on his face, just like he used to.
There’s a drawn-out silence as they take in each other’s new appearances. Tommy knows Billy is taking in his new form just as he’s taking in his. The awkward bleach dye job, the gap in his teeth, the sun-tanned skin, the crooked nose that Tommy Shepherd had gotten from slamming into a pole.
It seems at the same moment, they both have the same idea because when Tommy rushes forward so does Billy. They crash into each other, clothes forgotten as Billy curls himself into Tommy’s arms and Tommy finds himself thinking that it doesn’t feel that different from when they were ten and Billy crawled into his bed when the voices were too loud.
He can feel that Billy’s sobbing into his prison uniform and that is what does him in. Tommy’s face falls into his brother’s curls (he even smells the same) and just lets the pain of the last couple of months wash over him. For the first time since he’d realized that his powers slowed down time, he feels like he’s living in the moment now. His brother in his arms, tears all over his shirt and all over his face, Tommy could stay here forever.
“Sorry,” apologizes Billy suddenly pulling away, “You haven’t even gotten out of those clothes and here I am…”
“Billy,” Tommy rolls his wet eyes and Billy gives him a blank look, “Shut up.”
Billy smiles, “Got it.”
Tommy does go change and shower to get the blood out of his hair and it amazes him when Billy is still there in the hotel room when he gets back. Billy’s in a Lorna Wu shirt and red pants but he’s also furiously typing on his phone. He does look back up when Tommy comes back into the room and smiles like all is right in the world again.
It’s so nice to see that after 8 months with the Shepherds who hated him and prison. Tommy swallows down his feelings, plops himself down next to his brother, and nudges his shoulder, “Whatcha doing?”
“Texting my boyfriend,” Billy says casually before realizing that he’d just come out to Tommy and dropped that he has a boyfriend all at once, “I–”
Tommy doesn’t miss a beat, “Is he cute?”
Billy blinks twice, his eyes watery again before he replies, “Yeah… yeah he is.”
“Good,” Tommy says sagely, because Billy deserves the best, “I better meet him soon. I need to give him the brotherly shovel talk.”
Billy scoffs a laugh, but he’s smiling, “That would be interesting.”
“Mhm,” Tommy hooks a finger around one of Billy’s own, like they used to do when they were kids. The gesture is casual and familiar, but Billy blinks as if he was surprised by it, before doing the same back.
He might not remember doing it, Tommy knows.
“It’s just us now,” Billy says suddenly, his voice thin, “Wanda and Vision…”
Mom and Dad. Tommy would correct him, but Billy hasn’t been around them for 3 years and likely doesn’t even remember them that well. He knows better than to make his brother feel worse. He merely hums and says, “You know for sure?”
“Kinda,” says Billy, “Wanda apparently died two years ago and Vision…”
He doesn’t say it, but Vision was never there at all. They both knew that. But it doesn’t dismiss everything that they had been through together, that he was their dad. Tommy would never dismiss that, he knows Billy wouldn’t either.
“We’re still here,” Tommy tells him, “That’s important.”
“Mhm,” Billy leans against him.
The two of them sit there for a while, quietly contemplating. Tommy can feel Billy’s powers running through his mind again, and the sensation is just as comforting as it used to be. His hands shake with excess energy and Billy’s hands shift to cover them and calm them down, just like it used to be.
Tommy hasn’t even told him that his powers have changed, but he gets the feeling Billy already knows. If he’s going off what he saw Billy doing during the breakout, his brother has only gotten stronger.
“I don’t actually know if Wanda is dead,” Billy says suddenly, glancing at Tommy through his lashes. He definitely has mascara on.
Tommy blinks, “You don’t?”
“Everyone around me doesn’t know,” Billy says, closing his eyes as if pained, “And… I’m afraid to find out.”
Tommy takes that, spins it around his mind for a second, and says, “Why?”
“I’m afraid I’m just like her,” Billy whispers, and at that Tommy turns his head fully around to look at him.
There’s guilt written all over Billy’s face, and the tears are back. Billy’s always been the nicer of the two of them, Tommy remembers, and to see that gone and this new guilt-filled Billy here is not normal.
“Talk to me.”
And Billy does. He explains that his powers went haywire and created something called ‘The Witches Road’ just like their mom’s powers over Westview. He explains that a total of over 10 people died due to him – his covenmates: Alice, Agatha, Lilia, and Sharon, as well as a group of evil witches known as the Salem Seven. He tells Tommy about Agatha, Rio, and what Agatha did for him. Tommy hates her slightly less now.
He explains that he was the one that put Tommy in Tommy Shepherd’s body, because he had just wanted to find Tommy somewhere to go and it had broken his heart to put him where no one could love him.
“I’m just like her,” Billy mumbles into his shoulder, staining the green dark with his tears, “Hurting the people I care about.”
Tommy frowns, “You didn’t hurt me.”
“But I could have,” says Billy, his voice almost a whisper, “And I killed Tommy Shepherd.”
Whatever this new version of his brother is, this one who keeps blaming himself for these things that simply aren’t his fault, Tommy doesn’t like it. Billy hasn’t done anything wrong from what he understands, this is his twin who cried when he thought that their dog had been alone before them. This is his twin who was always kind, even when he was kinda a dick to him.
“No, those assholes killed him,” Tommy informs his brother sagely, “You just helped him live.”
“He’s dead because of me.”
Tommy gets the impression it’s not just about him. His brother’s guilt is eating him alive, and Tommy doesn’t know how to help him. He silently places his hands on his brother’s shoulders and turns Billy so that his twin is staring up at him, his dark eyes filled with tears. Tommy leans in and says, “Tommy Shepherd didn’t have a life before this.”
“Wh–”
“His parents didn’t love him, he was hated at schools for the simple matter of just existing, people bullied him so badly that he was killed for it,” Tommy says, “What you did, you gave him a chance to be loved, with a family who do love him, Billy. Do you understand me?”
Billy doesn’t reply, but the tears do stop running down his cheeks. He places a hand on Tommy’s own on his shoulders and lets out a soft sigh. Tommy frowns at that and says, “Do you understand?”
“ Yes,” Billy says faintly, “ I do.”
Tommy knows it will take more than a single conversation to ease Billy’s mind, but for now, this is okay. They’re silent again for a moment, each staring at the other for a moment before Tommy says, “You need to sleep.”
“Maybe,” Billy laughs wetly, rubbing at his eyes with the other hand, “That sounds nice.”
Tommy ends up guiding his brother into his bed, maneuvering Billy around until the twins are curled around each other. Tommy knows they haven’t slept in the same bed as each other since the night after Halloween, when Billy couldn’t get the image of their dad dying and everyone screaming out of his head after his powers had awoken. Tommy had offered to let Billy sleep next to him and the two had passed out next to each other seconds later.
Now, Billy’s got this massive guilt complex that Tommy doesn’t know if he can ever get rid of. His brother has been alone for years, with barely any memories of the life they’d shared. Tommy doesn’t want to add to that guilt and make Billy feel even worse about where Tommy was during this time.
He wraps an arm around his brother’s already sleeping form and wishes the scars down them weren’t pale enough to see in the glow of the moonlight. He knows that he won’t be able to hide these from Billy for long, but at least for now, he can pretend they aren’t there.
Billy shifts quietly in his sleep and Tommy watches as small sparks fly from his brother’s fingers. They skitter across the bedspread before vanishing into nothingness. Tommy reaches down to squeeze Billy’s hand and lets his eyes fall closed, timing his breaths with his brother’s until he finds the soft curl of sleep in his mind.
Agatha Harkness peeks her head through the nearby door when she hears the twins’ murmurs die down and smiles to herself when she spots them curled up on a bed together. She knows they’ve clearly both been through so much, but they’re at least together again. That counts for something.
She takes a couple of steps forward and silently makes herself solid enough to place a blanket over the two of them before turning and leaving them to their sleep, together again.