▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

❛ ʟᴇᴀᴛʜᴇʀ & ʟᴀᴄᴇ​​​​​​​​​​. ❜ ° . ༄
- ͙۪۪˚   ▎❛ 𝐒𝐄𝐕𝐄𝐍 ❜   ▎˚ ͙۪۪̥◌
»»————- ꒰ sʜᴀᴅᴏᴡs ᴏғ ᴛʜᴇ
ᴘᴀsᴛ ꒱


❝ THERE CAN ONLY
BE ONE FARKLE ❞

▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅▅

"'Miya,'" came the familiar greeting from the boy on the other side of the phone. He drew out the vowels of her name in the same tone he greeted his two other best friends as 'ladies.' His bright-colored turtleneck was visible from the way the screen was angled and he swished his bowl-cut hair as he spoke.

The girl in question, Miya, smiled at this as she replied, "Farkle," in her attempt at imitation.

He laughed at her (customary) failed attempt. "'You cannot beat the master, 'Nacci. It takes years of practice to perfect the art of impersonating the greats like me,'" he boasted, before he added his trademark, loud, "ha!" at the end.

"Sure," she agreed, though her brown eyes betrayed her amusement.

There was barely a time that Miya remembered not knowing Farkle. They'd met when they were little, as their parents had known each other during their school days. Farkle's father, Stuart Minkus, visited London to support one of her mom's orchestra performances and had brought his son along with him. During the usual introductory conversations that children have, Miya revealed that she'd been born on August first, 2003— otherwise 08/01/03— at 2:13pm (Farkle was very insistent on knowing all the details.)

He'd been delighted to find out that her birthday was the perfect pattern for Fibonacci's sequence (8-13-21-34), which then resulted in him nicknaming her after the mathematician. (When she had revealed that she didn't know who that was, she was subjected to a very long-winded but excited lecture on "the most talented Western mathematician of the Middle Ages," according to the boy.) He'd then declared them as best friends on account of her birthday lining up with his interests.

Although she didn't see him as much as she would've liked to, they talked on the phone as often as they could. She'd even met his best friends, Riley and Maya, this way. They sometimes made unexpected yet welcome cameo appearances during their calls, where the brunette would give her characteristic positive spin on everything that was going on in her life. Maya was quieter, but they'd bonded because of their similar names— although Miya's was pronounced 'Mee-yah' rather than 'My-ah.'

"So," she continued conversationally, "are you going to see the new Avengers movie that's coming out?"

Farkle grinned at her. "'I don't need to. I just watched the trailer and I can already tell you how it's going to go: Loki's gonna try to end the world with a sky beam, but the Avengers are gonna stop him— not without a lot of quips and insults first, obviously—'"

"Farkle," Miya tried to stop him by getting his attention, but he was too invested in his explanation.

"'And once the catalyst happens— probably an unnecessary death— they're going to finally learn how to work together just in time to save New York— because it's always New York—'"

"Farkle," the brunette insisted, a little more loudly this time.

He continued, heedless of her warning tone: "'I can already see them trying to kill off Iron Man considering his self-destructive behavior in his first movie— and for the shock factor— but since they need him for the rest of the series he'll get to live. They'll be able to stop Loki and get the scepter, which will make everyone love superheroes, at least until the next big disaster.'" He finished his description with a smug smirk. "'Superhero movies are so predictable.'"

Miya groaned and facepalmed with her free hand— the one that wasn't holding her phone. "Farkle. What have I told you about spoiling movies for people?"

"'Oh,'" the boy muttered, sounding a bit put out that she hadn't appreciated his deduction. "'Were you going to see it?'"

"I was gonna," she complained, "but now I might as well skip it since you're always right."

Farkle didn't even look apologetic as he shrugged. "'I know. I guess I just saved you ten pounds and two and a half hours. You're welcome,'" he added cheerfully.

She sighed and leaned back in her seat. Since the kitchen chairs were too tall for her feet to touch the ground, she pushed against the wooden support of the island to tip her chair back slightly. If she was there, her mom— Juliet— would've scolded her for the position, but there was nothing but silence as the older woman had gone out to the grocery store before her call. "Can we talk about something else? Anything else?"

"'You were the one who wanted to talk about the Avengers,'" he reminded her.

"Yeah, I know, but that was before you ruined it," she grumbled. "Now it's your turn to ask a question."

"'Okay,'" he concurred. "'Oh! Have you gotten your yearbook yet? We're getting ours next week.'"

The brunette shook her head. "Nope. We don't get ours 'till June. Do you think you'll get 'most likely to be Farkle' again?"

"'Of course,'" the boy stated proudly. "'There can only be one Farkle.'"

"What if there was another?"

He became very serious— like he'd thought about this (at length) before— as he replied, "'then we'd either fight to the death or take over the world. I hope it's the second one since I'm gonna do that anyway; it'd be a lot more efficient than wasting time battling myself.'"

Since they'd had conversations like this many times before, Miya took the sentiment in stride. "Me too," she decided. "I need my Farkle. How would I pass school without you?"

Farkle grinned brightly at her words. "'Don't worry— once you're friends with a Farkle you're stuck with him, so I'm not going anywhere. I'm quite sure that my alternate self would be easy to defeat since I'm the best version. Besides, I still need your help to woo Riley and Maya. We have a symbiotic relationship.'"

"Sure," Miya allowed with a giggle. For as long as she'd known him— which was all but three years of her life— he'd had two main interests: taking over the world, and the belief that he'd marry one of his other best friends one day. The two girls, on the other hand, had stated multiple times that they wouldn't go out with him, so she wasn't sure how that was going to work out. She was still happy to try and give him advice on what girls liked to see if any of their schemes worked, though. (They hadn't so far.)

They talked for as long as they could until Miya was forced to hang up when her mom came home so she could help her put away the groceries. She was always left with a warm, fuzzy feeling in chest after talking to her best friend and she wished more than anything that they could move to New York so she could go to school with Farkle, Riley and Maya.

There wasn't much she'd miss in London except for her other best friend, Jonah, who lived next door. He was a genius like Farkle too, but he was a lot more. . . normal would be the best way to describe it, but she didn't mean it negatively. Miya loved Farkle's uniqueness and his obsession with taking over the world; she thought those things made him even more interesting and she was quite proud to be friends with him. Except for the fact that she'd have to leave Jonah behind, she thought that she'd be quite happy if she never had to set foot in London again.

🌎🌎🌎

Just as Miya had said to Farkle, her school's yearbooks were handed out almost a month later. There were still a couple of weeks left until summer, which would be enough time for everyone to get their friends to sign them. Miya, however, had only one signature: Jonah's. She wasn't exactly popular and her other best friend lived across the ocean, so her pages stayed mostly blank.

She was currently flipping through her new yearbook as she sat curled up on the couch. Her knees were pulled up to her chest as her eyes roamed over the pictures of the students she'd become familiar with. Some of the faces her gaze fell on caused her to pull her bottom lip between her teeth as she chewed on it anxiously— a habit that she'd subconsciously picked up from her mother. When she got to the Hs, her expression brightened as the corners of her lips quirked up. By his picture, Jonah had drawn a smiley-faced sun. Crammed into the empty column before the edge of the next student's image, he'd written: 素晴らしい日光浴をしてください, whose English translation was (vaguely) have a great sun-mer!

Even though she'd probably see him every day anyway, she still appreciated his message; it made her book feel less empty (even if he did vandalize it with such a horrible pun.) The brunette traced over the sloppily written Japanese Sharpie lettering with her pointer finger as she felt warmth rush through her at how good of a friend Jonah was.

She'd learned early on that reading English was unbearably difficult for her, in ways that made it impossible to decipher. After her mother had taken her to several doctors, the final prognosis had been Dyslexia, which explained why school was so hard for her. Juliet— being the kind of person that she was— had researched ways to help her daughter. Learning another language had been one of the suggestions and Juliet had wanted Miya to be in touch with her cultural roots anyway, so Japanese was what everyone close to her had learned. Her mother had found a community college where she could take lessons and Miya had joined her. Once Farkle found out— as Juliet had talked to his father about it— he learned Japanese as well, even picking it up more easily than Miya herself thanks to his 'genius' status. Jonah had learned it most recently (since she'd been embarrassed to tell him at first) but he was getting better at it very quickly.

Juliet must have seen her pause on the page of Hs as she came over with a plate of apple slices and peanut butter, which she held out to her daughter. "Want me to sign a page?"

The brunette took the snack with a thank you as she shook her head. "It's alright. I'm probably only gonna look at it once, anyway."

The older woman nodded in agreement. "I've only looked at my yearbooks a couple of times, too. At least they look nice on the shelf."

If Miya knew anything about her mother— and she knew a lot— it was this: Juliet never talked about her past. Anytime it got remotely close in conversation, she would change the subject quickly. If she asked direct questions, all she got was cagey, uncomfortable answers before Juliet pretended not to hear her. Sometimes, her mother would start a sentence (especially if it had anything to do with Miya's difficulty with school) by saying "you're just like—" only to freeze and quietly add, "never mind."

This unusual mistake made her look up from the pages in front of her curiously. "Can I look at them?"

There was a moment of hesitation where Juliet pressed her lips into thin line before she relented. "I guess there's no harm in it," she conceded, seemingly to herself. In a slightly louder voice, she went on, "I'll go get them."

Miya contented herself with eating her snack while she waited. She closed her yearbook and put it on the coffee table so she wouldn't accidentally get any peanut butter on it. Her mother returned a few minutes later with a stack of worn, rectangular books in her hands; her dark hair was a bit mussed from where she must have dug through her closet to find them. She retook her seat on the couch next to her daughter and set all but one on the table next to the most recent yearbook.

"This one's from 1993," she shared as she handed it over.

"1993?" the Asian girl repeated. "Wow, mom, you're old."

"Well, I may not be anywhere close to your age anymore, but you wouldn't believe how cool I was," she teased with a grin.

"Were you popular?" Miya pressed, surprised that Juliet was giving away this much information.

The dark-haired woman shook her head. "Not exactly. I think well-liked would be a more accurate description. Do you want to look for me, or do you want me to show you?"

"We can look together," she decided, before she thought of something that made her even more interested in the book in front of her. "Is Uncle Stuart in here, too?"

"Yeah," Juliet replied, some of her discomfort fading into fondness. "We weren't anywhere close to friends back then, but we got along alright."

Miya cracked open the book, which was stiff with age, to the first pages. The older woman waited patiently as she slowly read the large, blocky letters that made up the school's name. "Quincy Adams?" she read. "Hey— Farkle goes to John Quincy Adams. That's funny."

"I guess it is," her mother agreed with a faint smile.

The brunette turned to the As. Her gaze flicked over each of the students' faces as she took in their clothing, which looked close to what she was wearing— just looser and with more layers. The images even had the same blue background that hers had and could have almost passed for a 2000s yearbook. She skipped over the Bs since she was looking forward to seeing what her mother looked like as a kid.

She looked through the first row of Cs (since the second letter of Capelwood was a), but she didn't find her mother at first. This was because she was looking for a girl with black hair, so she had to carefully read through all the names before she got to Juliet Capelwood. The student looked like her mother— they had the same bright blue eyes (although the happiness from the girl in the picture seemed to exude out of her, unlike present day), the same face shape (with her younger counterpart's being a little more round) and the same smile. What was strikingly different was that the girl's hair was red, and pulled into two twin braids that fell over her shoulders.

Miya looked up from the picture to stare at the older woman, whose dark hair loosely framed her face. "Mom, why—? How—?"

"Hair dye," Juliet explained with a shrug. She pointedly ignored the why, which made Miya very suspicious.

"When?"

Her mother thought for a moment and ticked a few fingers as she counted the years. "Over a decade ago, a couple years after I first moved to London."

Aha. Pre-London was the time period of her life that Juliet refused to talk about. The younger girl looked down at the picture again, hardly able to imagine the woman she'd grown so close to with any other hair color besides black. She chewed on her bottom lip as she contemplated risking her mother's usual tactics to try and get some answers.

Noticing the habit, Juliet nudged her daughter. "Don't do that." She pointed to her lips. "You'll chap them."

"You do it."

"And my lips are chapped. I did it all the time when I was younger. It drove— never mind," she finished quickly.

Miya perked up at this and her brown eyes studied the other woman interestedly. "Mom. . . you always say 'never mind' like that. Does. . . does it have something to do with—"

Juliet cut her off by skipping forward quite a few pages. "Oh look," she remarked loudly. "We're at the Ls. I'll show you who my best friends were, would you like that? This is Topanga."

The brunette sighed but decided not to push her luck. She glanced down to the picture her mom was pointing to, which showed a girl who was wearing an off-white lace dress against that stood out from the black clothes that she was wearing underneath. She wore a choker necklace and her long hair was slightly crimped and very poufy.

"I like her name," Miya commented. "It's unique, like Farkle's."

"She is very unique," the older woman agreed. "In the best way; I looked up to her a lot. Her last name was a lot more normal than Minkus, though— it's Lawrence. Or, I suppose I should say was. She married my other best friend, Cory."

She turned to the Ms and pointed to a curly-haired boy. Cory looked a lot like the other sixth-grade boys, the only unusual thing about him being his hair. The Asian girl tried another strategy for finding out about her mom's earlier years. "Did you date anyone, mom?"

Since Juliet dated around a lot now, she wondered if the trend had started in high school. As expected, she didn't get a straight response. Juliet tensed and took a deep breath before she shook her head. "No one important. I pretty much just focused on academics."

Miya couldn't quite believe her since she kept her gaze focused on the book in front of them as she ran her finger along the edge of the pages. She cleared her throat. "Do you wanna see Stuart? He should be around here somewhere."

The girl nodded, and they found Farkle's dad on the next page. He looked exactly as she'd expected him to: the stereotypical nerd, with big glasses and much smaller build than the other students. His smile even boasted that he knew everything. "You never liked Uncle Stuart romantically?"

"Oh, no," Juliet denied with a laugh. "I didn't see him much after we entered high school but in middle school he had some sort of crush on me. I didn't feel the same, but obviously we're still friends."

"I think I'm pretty happy about that. Miya Minkus doesn't sound very good."

Her mother smirked teasingly at her. "That can still happen, y'know. With Farkle."

The girl immediately pulled a face. "Ugh, mom! He's like a brother to me! Or-Or a cousin! No way!"

Juliet chuckled. "That's what I said about one of the guys I dated but we did end up going out for a little while. It's not out of the realm of possibility."

Miya felt a renewed surge of interest as the dark-haired woman shared this information with unusual openness. She looked up hopefully as she inquired, "really? Who?"

That was one question too far, however, and Juliet clammed up. Her expression shuttered as her amusement faded into a stony façade. She clapped her hands to her legs before she stood up. "Right. You can look at those as long as you want, just let me know when you're done. I've got some work to do."

Her mother made an exit that was so fast it almost left Miya winded. Juliet had only gone several steps away to the kitchen, but it might as well have been miles. The brunette sighed again and turned back to the books, still inquisitive enough to look through them. She found her mom, Topanga, Cory and her Uncle Stuart throughout the years, each time looking a bit older. She saw that Juliet lost her twin braids by high school and her hair grew longer with each new picture. Topanga became even prettier, but some of her outward uniqueness diminished over time. Both Cory and Uncle Stuart seemed to stay exactly the same, which she thought was amusing.

Wanting to know more about her mother's past— since Juliet wouldn't tell her any stories, that was for sure— Miya continued to flip through the students. None of the faces held any importance to her, but something did make her turn back a few pages.

As she was leafing through one of the books, she let the pages whiz past her too fast for her to see any faces clearly. A glint of metal caught her eye— so out of place that she slammed a hand down on the book with more force than she'd intended. She searched for it again, this time more slowly. It turned out that the shine belonged to a staple in the top right corner. There was a second one at the bottom of the page to keep the names (which she eventually figured out) Gunner and Ingram together.

Miya tucked her bottom lip between her teeth as she concentrated on gently prying the pages apart. The names that were revealed were all in the H section, from Harold to Hunter. She wondered why her mother would staple a section of the book. Juliet, who revered novels with as much respect as someone would another human being. It seemed almost. . . sacrilegious for her to mar it like this.

An idea came to mind that made her glance at the other yearbooks. After searching through several of the previous years, she'd found that they were all like that: every H section was stapled so that students with G and I last names were back-to-back. 

More curious than ever about her mother's hidden past, Miya glanced up to where the older woman was sitting at the kitchen counter on her laptop. As she stood to bring the book over to her, Juliet's phone rang. She glanced at the number before she picked it up, greeting the man on the other end, "hi, Mark. . . yes, tonight's great. . . Uh huh. . ."

She sent her daughter a quick smile as she got up to take her conversation outside to their tiny balcony. Still, Miya already knew the make-up of the call; her mother's voice always became more girlish and flirty whenever one of her dates called to confirm the evening. It had been like this for as long as she could remember: Juliet bounced from man to man without ever settling down, usually seeing them only once before she called it quits. The Asian girl had once asked her Uncle Kendrick why her mom went out so much, but he'd only joked that Juliet was determined to make it through every eligible man in London before she turned thirty.

She thought it might have something to do with what happened to her mother in her pre-London years but again, she could never get a straight answer from anyone. Even her Aunt Celeste (the only biological relative that she acknowledged) who was the most honest and straightforward person she knew, wouldn't give her any information; her response had been that Miya was too young to understand this type of thing. And, perhaps, she was, but that didn't stop her from being frustrated at how little she knew of her mother.

Whenever her mother's date called, Juliet was usually occupied for half an hour as she charmed them. She was quite good at that, even her own daughter could see it. Her excuse was that it made the eventual break-up was easier; if people liked her before the date, they tended to take it better. This window would give Miya enough time to do something that she wouldn't normally: snoop. She'd given her mother quite literally hundreds of opportunities for her to tell the truth on her own but now with the additional knowledge of the yearbooks, her curiosity had risen to new heights.

It only took a second for her to come to the decision and she quickly gathered up the yearbooks under the pretense of putting them away. She left the bedroom door open so she could hear when her mother came back inside. After pulling open the doors to the shallow closet, she knelt on the ground to root through Juliet's shoes. She didn't find anything there, so she stood and used a nearby chair to become tall enough to look on the storage shelf.

There was a box of Christmas decorations, a container of linens and a couple of other miscellaneous items that her mother kept out of the way. As she shifted them around, another box made an appearance. It was different than the others: it had a round shape and was covered in worn leather with golden clasps holding it closed. Yes! Miya thought. She went onto her toes to be tall enough for her hand to grasp the handle. This was exactly the stereotypical hidden-memory box that she was looking for!

She freed it with a gentle tug and climbed off the chair. Setting it on the bed, she opened it to reveal a layer of black leather that was folded into a compact square. The brunette shook it out to reveal an oversized leather jacket. She shrugged it on and smiled as she stretched out her arms; it was definitely too big for her and the sleeves covered her fingers, but there was something comfortable and safe about the old fabric that made her want to keep it on as she looked at the next items.

There was a vintage cellphone, a polaroid camera, and. . . a ring box? Miya picked up the last thing curiously and opened it. Inside was a simple, ebony band that lay against equally dark silk. She frowned as she lifted it from its cushions to turn it over in her hands. What was her mom doing with a wedding ring? Did it have anything to do with the stapled G and I pages? She put it back in its box and set it aside.

After removing the other items and holiday cards, she found containers of old photos. Since she was most interested in people directly connected to her mom, she skipped over the landscapes and images that didn't contain people. Topanga and Cory showed up in most of them, Uncle Minkus showed up none of them, and her Uncle Kendrick and Aunt Celeste appeared in the later ones. There was, however, one person that she didn't recognize: a boy who came up almost as often as Cory. He was handsome, with smooth, dark hair and blue eyes that rivaled her mother's. And there was something. . . familiar about the black leather jacket that he wore in some of the pictures. (She glanced down at the one she was wearing as the realization hit her.)

There was one image that was particularly funny: the two boys— Cory and the same guy— who looked like fish out of water as they stared at the camera in horror, dressed in (of all things) cheerleading uniforms. 

In one of the pictures, her mother looked at the unknown boy with so much love in her eyes that it was nearly palpable from just the photo. Miya began to think that Juliet might've been lying to her (not that she was surprised) about dating "no one important" during her school years. She wondered what had happened to break them up; it must've been something horrible if they weren't together now. . . since her mother had loved him so much that she'd planned on marrying him.

Remembering the yearbook that was lying on the bed next to her, the brunette picked it up and sat down on the mattress. Narrowing her focus to the H last names, she looked through the pictures of the students until she found one that matched the boy in the images. When she found him, she pointed her finger under his name to read it slowly: Shawn Hunter. Looking at all of the memorabilia around her, Miya started to see the picture of the puzzle forming before her— but it was still missing several important pieces.

A/n: hey— look at that! It's been less than four months! You guys really came through last chapter so now I deliver a faster update :)

I know I said that this chapter would be inspired by Andi Mack— which it is— it's just that it got so long (over 8k words!) that I split them up into two sections, so the actual Andi Mack-inspired part will be next time.

Let me tell you that I was STRESSED when writing the beginning. Canon characters are always hard for me when I'm going off-book (creating my own dialogue for them) especially when I'm doing it before the show even starts. I also have no idea how ten-year-olds speak, which is how old Miya and Farkle are here, so I basically just made them talk like adults, lol. I knew that Farkle's main things are taking over the world, Riley and Maya, and the 'ha!' he does a lot in s1, so I made sure to include those things— and then I remembered later on in the series that Lucas and Zay complained about him spoiling movies, so that gave me a subject for the phone call. Hopefully I was able to keep him in character since he's only going to show up more from now on.

Also, just to clear things up: neither he nor Miya have crushes on the other as of right now; I'm trying to make them at least a little different than Shuliet, which will be explored in future chapters (especially since Farkle is a lot more logical than Shawn is, lol.) I didn't want them to like each other like that right away since a) all of my stories are slow burn (+angst) because that's my favorite trope and b) where's the character development?? Where's the 'oh' when they realize that they like each other?? Because Markle(?) is exactly that— slow realization before it hits them like a truck (just like puberty did with Farkle, haha.) (A little hint— I have BIG plans for the Texas chapters  😉)

I'm going to toot my own horn on the polaroid manips; I think that I did a GREAT job— probably my best work to date. My favorite is the Kendrick/Juliet one since that sums up their relationship very well: silly/goofy and lighthearted. To be honest, I've probably admired them for twenty minutes in total— just staring at them and patting myself on the back because I love how they look. 🤣