Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"Yeah, just make sure the cable clamp is secure. No loose connections."
Eddie's ragged breathing is breaking into your concentration. Your hands shaking.
"Insert that wire into the empty spot for the ground..." Eddie waiting and despite the situation you laugh internally. A couple days ago you know he'd rather be doing this himself instead of instructing another person
"Got it", you respond
"Insert that wire into the neutral bus. Then tighten the clamp down."
"Connect the hot wire into the circuit breaker."
Done. And you step back so that Eddie can inspect your handiwork. Eddie stands with Volt's support to look it up and down.
"Looks... good." Eddie keeps it short. No time or energy for banter.
You look at the duo. Eddie first, and he looks defeated, tired after feeling the enormity of acceptance. Volt's face full of worry, open, protective, no self preservation instinct.
Eddie nods at you and you don't need words to decipher what that means.

You flip the main breaker off and then on again. Before your hand releases the breaker, however, you feel a weird tingle at your fingertips. It's spreading throughout your body. "What the fuck?" You say, shaking your arm. You feel lightheaded. You've got to sit down. You slide your back against the wall, bringing your knees up to your chest and start pressing your forehead into them. Your mind is filling with static

It seems like ages pass while you're sitting on the floor. A hand is shaking your shoulder, gently. Eddie is crouched next to you. He looks better than you've seen him past, but he's looking at you like you're worse for wear. A reversal of fortunes.
"Hey, Live wire, you doing okay? This shouldn't have affected you at all." Eddie's concern is marked by confusion.
"I should really be the one asking if you're okay," You answer, debating if you should stand. Sitting on the floor wins that debate.
"Can you just stay with me until I feel better?"
"Of course", Eddie responds.
You and Eddie sit side by side in silence for awhile. It feels like the static is everywhere now, in you, in the air. It blurs your vision, so you drop your head to your knees again. This situation should really be more of a victory lap for Eddie, accepting help, making the hard choice. And Volt.. Wait, where was Volt anyways? Had he really disappeared like Eddie said he would?

I am right here, Spark.

"What?" You startle and look up. "I didn't say anything", Eddie responds, as he looks over to your face. His puzzled expression turns into something like alarm.
"What?" You say again, this time directed toward Eddie and Eddie's just staring directly into your eyes, unnerving you. Eddie's hand brushes past your face and touches your hair.
"Ookkaayy", you say, drawing out the vowels. "Something wrong with my face? What is it?"

I would never forget such a striking face. The memory of Volt's voice comes up, unbidden.

You somehow get up and with Eddie's help, reach one of the mirrors around the Breaker Box. You stare at yourself in the mirror. Huh.
The sight answers your earlier question to where Volt's gone.

Different eyes greet you, the color of which you've only seen on one other person before. So too the new colour of your hair, which seems to have taken on a life of it's own. No British accent when you speak though, which is a little disappointing.

You and Eddie stare some more at this new version of you. You think about taking the Dateviators off at this moment and taking a time out, but choose against it. Let Eddie and you process this together for a bit.

"Well, you didn't say this was one of the outcomes of replacing the faulty wire."

"Nope, I definitely didn't say that". Eddie acknowledges.

"Volt? Do you have any input on this?" You ask your reflection. No response, internally or externally. Strange for someone who talks so loquaciously.

Maybe Skylar might have some insight into this? You check her app and summon her.

"What can I do for you in my main -hey, you've really changed your look!" Skylar looks so surprised that she goes off her script.

"Um, yeah, I seem to have merged with another thing in the house... when I was resetting the power. I'm not really sure what happened."

Skylar looks perplexed, and you swear you can feel her suspension of disbelief strain as she takes in your words and appearance. After a moment, she launches into long conjecture about vibrations, wavelengths, aligned consciousnesses and thing theory that somehow makes sense and no sense all at once. You can see Eddie also trying to follow along and failing. You and Eddie share a glance and he takes it upon himself to interrupt.

"-so then the vibrations must have matched up at some point, and-"

"Hey, Skylar? Thanks for the explanation, but what exactly can we do about this?"

Skylar looks back and forth from Eddie to you. Her gaze ends on you.

"Well, what do you want to do?"

Chapter Text

You think about it.

It's just weird. Another weird thing to put on the pile of weird things that have happened to you recently. Eddie definitely would want Volt back in his corporeal form or even just to be part of him again. So now it's up to you to do the obvious thing.

You nod to yourself upon reaching this decision, then realize that you actually have to verbalize it to other people in the room.
"Yeah, let's get Volt out of me."
You realized that Eddie has been tensed up since Skylar asked you what you wanted to do. Eddie's visibly relaxed now that he knows your answer. You wonder how he could even think that you were going to keep Volt away from him.
Skylar looks excited about finding out ways to help you out of this situation and promises to get back to you two tomorrow. She seems to have missed the small emotional changes in Eddie, but she wasn't there for the whole backstory of it anyways. She disappears into the ether or string theory or whatever she came from before.

You're tired after your transformation so you want to go to bed. But this would be Eddie's first night without Volt. You take Eddie's hand. He allows it.
You know that he's going to refuse or give you an out and you don't feel like playing this game with him right now, so you say "I'm going to keep you company until tomorrow." No asking permission and to your surprise, he agrees.

At least the commotion and power outage cleared out the Breaker Box. You and Eddie clean up instead of talking about anything, which is to say Eddie does most of the cleaning and you sprawl out in a booth after 15 minutes. Once or twice, he looks like he's going to say something to you, but he just doesn't. If you had the energy, you would drag it out of him, but you don't.

You open your eyes, when had you fallen asleep? You're covered with a blanket, and Eddie snores away in the seat opposite you. No empty glasses around, so at least he didn't drink his feelings away. You look at your watch and it's 5am, which you decide is too early for an unemployed person to be awake. You close your eyes

You find yourself sitting at the bar. Volt is serving you a Whiskey sour. You reach for it, but you don't feel anything when you hold the glass. You're dreaming.
You look in the mirror behind the bar. Your reflection here is normal, at least.
"Live wire, care for a dance?" Volt's beckoning you out on the dance floor.
"Volt-" But you're drowning in his eyes, and he's sweeping you off your feet.
"It's far too easy to lose oneself with you."
Volt dips you, and you see yourself in reflection again. Except that it's distorted. And in that distortion, there lies something that you can only vaguely recognize because you used the content aware from Skylar to skip that particular individual.

You jolt awake. Your hand accidently hits the underside of the booth table and you yelp. Eddie instantly opens his eyes when he hears you.
"What? What happened?" Eddie looks at you with what is his third or forth look of concern since the reset.
"I got it!" You say loudly. "I know what caused me and Volt to merge!"
Eddie looks cautiously optimistic. "Well, what is it?"
You open your mouth to tell him, but now you're thinking about how Eddie's going to be too abrasive and you need some neutral ground for confronting Daemon about this.
"Eddie, I think I need to do this alone. I'll explain after I sort this out. Please trust me."
After a long pause that reminds you of yesterday, when he allowed you to fix the faulty wire, Eddie nods.
As you race off, your words echo in the emptiness of the speakeasy, "I'll be back with Volt, I promise."

You round the corner to your bedroom. You stare at the dresser. The glitched entity stands before you.
"Daemon."
"Did you like what I did?"
The only options you can say is yes, but you manage to shake your head no at the same time.
Daemon says nothing. You feel every single second pass.
"It's difficult to write dialogue for me when you didn't really talk to me, isn't it."
"What?" You look confused. "I'm sorry for not talking to you!" You say sincerely.
"Your sorry means nothing to me."
"Daemon, I don't want to be like this. Restore Volt to himself."
"As you wish."
Daemon grabs your hand without warning.
You pass out.

You're on the floor of your bedroom. Slowly, slowly, you get up. You check out your reflection in the mirror with the Dateviators on. Amir appears and does a double take.
When he does speak, it is with a curious tone. "Dear, why have you decided to copy Volt's hair and eyes? Have I not been telling you enough that you are enough? That you are breathtaking?" "This is just temporary, just trying it out." You answer, not wanting him to worry about you.
Amir nods. "I suppose. I like it when you're just being yourself." "Thanks Amir, I'll see you around."

You make your way to the breaker closet again, trying to make it take longer, not wanting to let Eddie know that you failed at getting Volt back. Except it takes like ten seconds to literally walk there from your bedroom to the closet. You pause and ponder, is this the longest that you've had the dateviators on? You wonder if it would affect your eyes if you had them on too long? But no, get it over with, stop delaying.
You open the door to the Breaker Box and see Eddie wiping down the bar. The place looks sparkling clean, like someone had too much time on their hands and needed to occupy themselves to stop overthinking. Eddie turns towards you when he hears you coming in, but the sight of unchanged you and lack of Volt drops the hopeful look in his eyes. "I'm sorry", you force yourself to say. "I thought I figured it out."

"It's okay, we'll see what solution Skylar has for us." Eddie comes over and puts an arm around your shoulders. He's disappointed, but not in you.

...The close contact must have been what was needed because there is a flash of light and you start feeling dizzy -but you stand your ground, fuck falling over again or retiring to the floor- and what appears between you and Eddie is Volt.

He looks fine, grinning at you two like nothing happened.
"Volt?!" You both exclaim in unison
"I never had any doubt that dealing with that faulty wire would turn out anything other than okay", He says happily.

"That's one way to put it." you say. And Eddie, the master of downplaying, agrees.