1¹ | Dexter ▷ Scott Summers | ✓

T W E L V E

'My mom says you'll forget about me,' Lionel said as he and Ruth sat in his tree house, 'She says that we make new friends and move away from the old ones.'

'Your mom is wrong,' Ruth decided, crossing her arms. 'We'll be best friends forever and we'll get married.'

He frowned. 'But what if I don't wanna marry you?'

She sighed, huffing. 'Fine. If you and me don't get married by the time we're old like our parents, then we get married.'

The two eight year olds shook on their pact in Lionel's newly made tree house, positive that they would both live to see their thirty-fifth birthdays.

Ruth woke from her dream, or rather her memory, her heart aching. She stared at the ceiling, letting herself cry. She'd been doing that a lot the past few weeks.

She didn't know when she fell back asleep, but she woke up after breakfast with a heavy heart and the sensation of missing something important.

º º º º º

"Are you sure you want to start today? You can take a breather, we can start tomorrow."

Ruth shook her head, looking up at Hank. She was clad in gray sweatpants and a gray hoodie, something that Alex got a kick out of for reasons unbeknownst to Ruth.

"I wanna find Warren," she said, "What do we do first?"

Hank shrugged, looking down at her bare feet. "Well, I'm glad you're already out of your shoes, though I think that's more personal preference for you than anything. Anyways, you said you can now summon the flame in your hand at will?"

She nodded, shaking out her arms. "Yeah. I mean, if I'm mad. I did it a lot when I was just getting used to Ms. Maximoff's house. I got angry a lot. But I still got a lot of the symptoms if I didn't release all of the anger."

Hank perked up. "What were the symptoms? And how did you know if you had released all the anger or not?"

Ruth shrugged, walking around the taller man. "I got really sick for a day, I was throwing up for hours another day, diarrhea, I got so mad I was about to trash Peter's things but I forced myself to let it out of my hair.

"I don't know about the second part. I just kind of felt it? I'm not sure..."

Hank nodded thoughtfully. "That's alright, what you've told me is already very interesting. On moment. Alex!"

Ruth looked over at the blonde who always seemed to be in Hank's lab more often than not, smiling when he jumped, dropping the two vials he was about to mix together.

"I didn't do it!" he shouted, running towards them. "What're we doing."

Hank gestured towards Ruth, rolling his eyes at Alex. "Ruth, when angry, has perfected bringing the flame to her hand, but she displays negative side effects as a result until all the energy has dissipated. Thoughts?"

Alex worried on his lip. "Ruth, how much do you have to release until you're safe from the side effects?"

"I don't know, it depends on how angry I am."

Alex snapped his fingers, looking at Hank. "That's it! We just teach her how to bring the energy without getting upset! If she gets upset while in a fight, she'll already know how to get rid of them." He turned to her. "Do you ever run out? Like, you're still angry but have no more fire?"

She shook her head. "No, because this happens when I'm angry. It stops when I've stopped."

The two men looked at each other. Hank sighed. "How do you synthesize an emotion?"