Phineas: Hey Ferb! PhoenixWormwood137 is writing a random one-shot! She's gotta do better than last time.

My eyes were on fire - they had been held open for hours today. My eyelids were bloody where they had been wrenched viciously back - it hurt to blink.

I couldn't see anything – I just sat, curled in the corner of the box they gave me for a dorm, and cried my heart out.

It was icy. In the night, the box became a refrigerator; its metal walls seemed to trap the cold. My t-shirt and shorts were useless, I felt exposed to the night and the world.

.

"Take my hand."

I sat up. "F-Ferb?"

"Take my hand."

My brother's British accent echoed weirdly in my ears, and I shrank away before realizing he was surrounded by metal walls, just like I was. Metal that amplified the cold and the sound of his lost little voice.

How could I take his hand? He was in the cell beside me.

I stuck my fingers tentatively out through the barred window cut in my box, and reached as far to the right as I could.

His freezing skin met mine, shocked me with cold so I jerked back and then pressed forward, trying to warm him with my own inadequate body heat, squeezing his hand so tightly I was sure I was cutting off the circulation in his fingers.

"I can't do it anymore, buddy," I said, and my voice was husky. "I gotta let them take me."

His fist became an iron clamp and crushed my hand – I could almost feel my bones splintering at the contact. I could tell what he was thinking just from the touch, but he spoke for good measure.

"Don't you dare," he said, and his voice echoed around the metal box.

I withdrew my arm, feeling my skin scrape the rough bars of the window. "I can't take it anymore!"

"Then we go together."

"What? No!" I shook my head, even though he couldn't see me, and instantly regretted the action. My regular floppy hair didn't bounce around my eyes, and terror pressed down around me more than ever. The only safe place I had left – my own head – had been attacked. An expression of my originality and creativity had been stripped away – my bright red locks were shaved.

I put a hand up and covered my head in shame – even though I was alone.

"Ferb," I whispered, voice crumbling. "How badly did they beat you up today?"

He sucked in his breath. "Pretty badly… but they told me they gave you worse treatment." His voice was low with worry.

"Ouch," I answered weakly. "I can't keep it up any longer. Why should I fight, anyway? Why can't I just admit summer is boring?"

Ferb didn't say anything – I had a feeling he had reached his maximum word limit, and now had to recharge before he could reply. I could hear him breathing, though – loud and clear.

"I just can't believe mom and dad would send us here," I said in a rush.

Ferb's breathing stopped.

My heart went wild in my chest – they'd killed him!

But then he let out a long sigh, and I rested my forehead on my knees, weak with relief.

"They didn't know," he said.

I sniffed.

"I guess not. But you'd think they'd do a little more research on the place before sending us here. What's this place called – Smile Away? The Smile Away reformatory school? Have you seen one person smile since we got here?" I picked dirt off my sneakers. "Besides the sergeant, I mean…"

"You can give up if you want," Ferb said, and his voice was soft. "But I want you to know that you're – you're the only thing that's holding me up right now, and if you go down, I go down as well."

I let this sink in. If I allowed the reformatory school drain me of my ability to imagine and create, Ferb would lose his inventiveness, too. It was a lot to handle. But getting beat up on a regular basis, being brainwashed and knocked around whenever I protested in favour of my worldview was also a lot to handle.

"One last song?" I said. One last stand, one last defiance – then they could have me, then they could persuade me to give up.

"Yes, alright…"

There was silence for a second, and I filled my lungs with air. But Ferb started singing before I could.

"Me and my bro, we're takin' care of things," he began, and my heart sank. Seriously, Ferb? I thought. We aren't taking care of things. We're stuck in a depressing, abusive prison.

"Went from a pair of jokers to a couple of kings," I ground out bitterly.

"But we did, didn't we?" he had stopped the song. "At least we're together here. A while ago, we weren't even acquaintances – let alone best friends."

I shrugged, and sang the next line of the song, heart lifting ever so slightly at the thought of our friendship. Yeah, maybe we were better off here, together, than at home, apart – just maybe. "Goes to show you never know just what a shuffle brings."

"Me and my bro, we're takin' care of things!" Ferb said.

"We're bros, we're brothers," I said, pulse picking up slightly. "Different father and mother, but don't you diss or slam or slide us –"

"We look after one another," Ferb said. "'Cause we're thicker than thieves…"

"And we're cooler than kings!" I stood up in my box, grinning, light suddenly breaking through my clouds. I couldn't leave him. He was depending on me. "On, man, you better believe, we're takin' care of things!"

"Well, I'll tell you up front that I've got your back, and I know that you've got mine!" He rapped, and there was a smile in his voice.

"As long as we stick together, side by side," I said, my volume increasing with every word, defying the sleeping reformatory school around me, "Yo, bro, it's gonna turn out fine!"

He stood up, too, I could hear him. "Yo, bro, it's gonna turn out fine!" he repeated.

I could hear footsteps approaching, but he and I continued to belt out our song.

"Now, me and my bro, we're takin' care of things!"
"Went from a pair of jokers to a couple of kings!"
"Goes to show –"

"You never know –"

"Just what a shuffle brings!"

Our voices rang out together as the song came to a close, and the footsteps stopped in front of our prison cells. "Me and my bro, we're takin' care of things!"

We struck a pose, back to back.

Of course, he was on the other side of two walls, but hey, when you're brothers, you can rely on each other to be there, even when the laws of physics and nature prevent you from reaching one another.

"That's not gonna be our last song," I said determinedly, and then the lid of my box lifted, and the face of the sergeant who ran the reformatory school stared down at me.

There was a hard evening ahead – but I wasn't going to go down without a fight.

Phineas: Not… her best work.

A/N: I normally hate conversations with characters before stories, but I really wanted to quote Phin in "Candace Loses Her Head" when he's like, "Hey Ferb! It's Candace's birthday! We gotta do better than last time." (flashback to a giant gorilla in a cake scaring Candace out of her wits) "Not our best work."

'Cause I didn't really feel this was a great story. Oh well. Do you have thoughts? Like it, love it, hate it, loathe it?