You Cant Go Home Again / Fan Works

• A somewhat common Fandom-Specific Plot in Amphibia fanfics has stories that explore what would happen if Anne, Sasha, and Marcy found themselves unable to return to Earth, leaving them with no choice but to accept Amphibia as their new home. Those plots will either simply address how the Trio may cope with settling into their new lives or show a Time Skip where the Trio are now adults having fully acclimatized to living in Amphibia,
• Discussed in Avengers: Infinite Wars when T'Challa is teleported away from Earth along with other Avengers and Shuri joins the remaining team (including Iron Man and Hawkeye) to find the missing people. Okoye acts as though Shuri will simply help the Avengers find T'Challa and then the two will return home, but Clint points out that after everything both will have seen during their time away from Wakanda, it will be hard if not outright impossible for them to simply go back to the way things were.
  • Meanwhile, in the Star Wars galaxy, at least Matt, Peter and T'Challa have explicitly acknowledged that the world will never be the same even if they can get back to Earth, T'Challa contemplating how Wakanda will have to open up and Peter wondering if he should even bother with a secret identity given the obvious issues of trying to explain how Peter Parker and Spider-Man vanished and returned at the same time.
• A Bridge Once Broken: It happens to Loki at the end of part one, because of his and Odin's actions, in both the fic and in the original Thor movie.
• In Blood That Flows, Filia chooses to leave the Red World, believing there's no place for her there anymore due to her actions and the actions of her clan. Lindy allows her to stay with her on Earth.
• The Dark Lords of Nerima: After she failed to kill the Sailor Senshi when she first appeared, Beneda had held out some hope that she'd be able to return to the Dark Kingdom if she could mislead Ranma and Ryouga into doing it for her. That hope went away after the two of them managed to defeat Jadeite, something that nothing she did would be able to forgive.
• In The Day After You Saved the Multiverse, the Clark Kent form Earth-Prime returns home after helping save the Multiverse from the Anti-Monitor and Darkseid. However, he finds his newly-gained powers are creating a rift between him and both his parents and his girlfriend, and a crimelord kidnaps his family when he tries to play hero. Superboy rescues his parents but he realizes his mere presence is placing them at risk, so he leaves a goodbye note and skips town.
• Dog-Breath and Birdbrain: As far as Loona and Octavia know, they've been abruptly exiled to Earth and stripped of their demon magic. Octavia even fears wrongly that her father kicked her out so he could pursue Blitzo without distraction.
• Dungeon Keeper Ami has the protagonist Ami Mizuno, now Keeper Mercury, Trapped in Another World and as such unable to return home until she can get her soul back from the domain of the Dark Gods.
• Evershade: In the end of Reforming, Karen's father decides to move away from their home, to another city, in order to protect not only Karen, but her family from the possible backlash her aggressors might put her through, meaning they had to leave their home city and be unable to return.
• In From Muddy Waters, Izuku gets an ominous text from his mother that indicates that his father, All For One, found them, warning him not to come home. From then on he's a Homeless Hero living out of a manga cafe.
• In Funeral for a Flash, Wally West Wally takes the Weather Wizard to Earth-Two to save his life. The reformed villain cannot go back to his home dimension without triggering the Big Bad's kill switch, so he is stuck there.
• After contracting and barely surviving the common cold in Futureal, the Time Force Rangers must stay in the 21st century as per their organization's infection protocols, meaning they are unable to return to their families in the future, even after they capture all the Mutants.
• Happens to Nanoha in Game Theory when she joins Precia, since she can't return home without being captured by the TSAB.
• In Gensokyo 20XX, this is why the remaining "Gensokyians" remain in the Outside World, as Gensokyo was destroyed and, from what we can guess, Gensokyo couldn't be recreated either. Later, in the series, particularly 20XXI, Yukari, Ran, Chen, and Flandre have to flee from their house after someone found out that the youkai (and Reimu) were hiding out and, in 20XXIV, a group of kitsune burned down their house, so they have to resettle elsewhere.
• Grey Skies Universe: In the first chapter of Every Generation, Alfred confides in Matthew his desire to go home. In the epilogue, it's all but outright stated that Matthew has brought his late twin's remains to rest in the place he considered home.
  Matthew bit his lip. Alfred's home – the house in sunny Virginia where he grew up and the little farm he'd maintained with his own hands – has been ransacked during the southern colony's period of martial law. All but a few trinkets – childhood toys, portraits and albums that would be worthless to anyone else – were stolen, the house itself all but ruined and the fields scarred from battle. Arthur had abandoned the property long ago and proclaimed that they would never go back.
• Hellsister Trilogy: When Supergirl states aloud she would like nothing more than to be a normal girl from Argo City, Superman reminds her that there is sadly no Argo City to return to, anymore.
• How To Tame Your Demon Beast shows the departure of Caleb for the Boiling Isles, and it's quite somber and glum since he's escaping his own witch trial, that almost ended up with him dragged to the gallows because the village suffered a bad harvest and wanted a scapegoat — it's leaving forever or dying, and Caleb knows what option he favours.
• I Woke Up As a Dungeon, Now What?: The Ahriman Empire's law states that "The Great Gates Only Open Outwards", which means that an Ahriman who sets foot outside the Empire's boundaries for any reason can never return. Two of Fort Aresya's inhabitants are Ahrimans who entered Central for differing reasons and are now stuck there.
• In Kara of Rokyn, Kara has moved to Rokyn, a planet colonized by Kryptonian survivors. When she goes back to Earth for first time in months, Kara goes over her adoptive parents' house and finds a clone of hers is already staying with them. Both her parents and the second "Linda" mean well, but Kara can't help but feel she no longer fits in there.
  Kara sighed and took her "sister's" hand. You can't go home again, she told herself. Especially if another you comes back home first.
• The King Nobody Wanted Lucaeyn Tregaelyn and his sister have spent years unable to return to Pentos because their Impoverished Patrician status and descent from a relatively recent Prince of Pentos nearly guarantee that Lucaeyn
• Kingdom Hearts Ψ: The Seeker of Darkness: In To Bring You Back, Roxas catches Lea in a lie about not having been back to Radiant Garden since the fall (it was where he recompleted) and gives a pretty astute summary as to why.
  Roxas: Let me make some guesses. You didn’t think much of it growing up, but after you became a Nobody, thinking of Radiant Garden brought back your happiest memories. But, the longer things went on, and the further away from you Saïx got, the more painful those memories became. Plus, the very last memories you had of it involved becoming a Nobody, and that can’t have been pleasant. And even now, after the Fall, it's very much not the place you remember. You don’t even really think of it as "home" anymore, not after everything that happened. You’re not really thrilled that you have to go back, are you?
• Lantern Prime begins with the devastation of Cybertron; Optimus is the only survivor and he is in stasis lock until Ganthet repairs him. Even after that, Prime struggles with being the last of his kind ( at least initially). Even at the end of the story Cybertron is still incapable of providing him any kind of home.
• At the beginning of Lost in Camelot, Bo and Kenzi's initial goal after they're invited to stay in Camelot is to find a way back to the twenty-first century, but after Merlin confirms that he can’t send them back himself, they learn from Kilgharrah that Camelot is home for Bo at least. As Kilgharrah explains to Bo, Aife made a deal with the Norn that sent Bo into the future when she ‘abandoned’ her daughter, and Bo coming to Camelot was just her being sent ‘home’ by the sorcerer she encountered; returning her to this time has healed the rift in reality created by sending a being of Bo's power so far, but trying to return her to the future could cause serious damage to time. Kilgharrah acknowledges that Kenzi could be sent back as she is merely human, but Kenzi explicitly turns down the offer in favour of staying with Bo.
• Turtle Heart in The Love Club left his two lovers Frexspar and Melena over fifteen years ago. Frex's eldest daughter Elphaba always thought he was dead. Turtle Heart didn't tell the others but he was actually deported out of the county for practicing magic.
• Maelstrom: Eraserhead forces both Izuku and Shinsou to leave the train car they had made their home after the USJ attack, citing that the League of Villains knew who Izuku was and were coming after him. He takes them to live with him and his husband, Present Mic.
• Metal Gear: Green:
  • The MSF take Izuku as their ward when investigating what happened to his family reveals that the HPSC killed all of them, and they couldn't hand Izuku to an orphanage or foster home out of the possibility of the HPSC re-abducting him for experimentation again.
  • The Soul family find themselves as members of Mother Base due to Humarise marking all of them for abduction on sight.
  • During the Tyrant Arc, many of the refugees fleeing warlord-controlled regions or the irradiated wasteland that was their home where the Tyrant detonated a nuke cannot go home as it is too dangerous for them. The heroes telling them to go home causes them to attack the heroes and free the captured MSF members.
• Metro: Mads and Thomas, Trapped in Another World because while they could return, they wouldn't be given a warm welcome once they managed it.
• Neon Genesis Evangelion: Genocide: After of the Final Battle, the pilots and their guardians are evacuated out of the Geofront and leave for USA, where Misato hopes they will be safe from Nerv at last. While he is being sent into exile, Shinji realizes to his chagrin he will never see his home again, let alone Japan, and he remembers Asuka tried to warn him earlier.
  A hollow ache sprang up in Shinji's chest as the significance of those words sank in. He sat there in silence, staring out at nothing, and wondered if he really could have been naïve enough to think he could go back home at the end of day.
  Sadly, he realized at least a part of him had. But that wasn't going to happen now. He would never set foot in Misato's apartment again, or cook dinner in the crowded kitchen, or play his cello, or lay on his bed and listen to his S-DAT, or go out with his friends. That life was finished.
  And Asuka had known all along—she had tried to tell him as much in the Eva cages, when all he could do was worry.
• In The Night Unfurls, Grace had to flee from her Doomed Hometown, Loraine, which was sacrificed to the orc war bands by Olga in order to have them fight under her cause. This contributed to her animosity towards Olga. In the original version, she is forced to experience this a second time when her new home, Ansur, is ravaged by the war against the Black Dogs.
• In Outcasts (5D's), Aki Izayoi is subjected to this twice over. Firstly because she's convinced that she's a monster and that her family don't want her home anymore. Secondly, she's accidentally shipped over to Satellite with no way to make it back to Neo Domino even if she did want to return.
• The Discworld of A.A. Pessimal:
  • Two girls from Far Überwald run away from a suffocating upbringing in a feudal society to become Witches in Lancre. Several years and a few adventures later, Irena returns to her home town and realises, after Lancre, Ankh-Morpork and a year living among Cossacks, how much smaller it is than she remembers. The fact her birth community practically rejects her for the crime of running away from peasant life and expresses its fears that they'll all be punished for one of their number leaving without the Grand Duke's permission is also a decider. She turns and walks away, red-faced with anger and humiliation at the rejection and flies off, without a second thought, to her new life in Ankh-Morpork. The old village witch who was her first tutor in Witchcraft has a parting word.
    There's no coming back, devyushka. Bloody awful life, being a mouzhik and a kulak. If I was you I wouldn't hanker for it. you got better.
  • Elsewhere, characters from Rimwards Howondaland discover their native country is fine to visit, but after Ankh-Morpork, there's no way they're ever going home permanently.
• Ash Ketchum visits Pallet Town in the beginning of Pokémon Master, and confirms he is not welcome in his own hometown after the Dark Wars.
• People's responses to this discovery in Pokéumans have varied, but much angst and personal drama has been caused over this issue.
• The Portal: This is implied in the sequel Hard Choices when Terrador says to Blizzard's parents, John and Sarah, that he has no idea how they wound up in the Dragon Realms or how to send them back to the Human World. This is most likely reinforced by the fact that the portal apparently destroys itself when John and Sarah are pulled into the Dragon Realms.
• In Rorschach In Equestria, Rorschach is sent to Equestria by Dr. Manhattan, with no way back. Turns out Dr. Manhattan had to kill him in the Watchmenverse in order to make that happen.
• In Scar's Samsara Scar literally says this to Zira, after they're forced to flee from Pride Rock. The reason in this case being that he murdered his brother and can't bring himself to face up to what he's done, as well as the fact that they're trying to kill him.
• In the Steven Universe fanfic Selaginella Lepidophylla, this is the inscription written on the modified Glass of Time Rose Quartz used to come back.
• In Raven Child's The Smurfette Village series, the Smurfettes lose their village to a volcanic eruption in the second story, then ten surviving Smurfs in the third story lose their home in the Smurf Village due to a Synthetic Plague.
• In Sophistication and Betrayal, the protagonist ends up permanently stuck in Equestria after efforts to send him back home fail, resulting in the spell unable to be cast on him again without killing him in the process.
• In Stars Above, Homura's trip from her own time and universe was one-way. Even with her powers, it took a significant boost from another Puella Magi to go back six years, and there's no way to do it again.
• Still Stand in the Sun: For Katara, an escaped waterbender prisoner hiding in the wilderness, living on the run, there's no way for her to find or obtain any transport or passage back home to the South Pole, given that she has to steal food, clothes, and medicine from Fire Nation military outposts just to get by. On a more tragic level though, Katara doubts that her tribe would even want her back, if they knew what she had done to escape the Waterbender Prison.
• Titanomachy: As Shatterglass explains, being struck by the IMC Ark weapon mid-jump overcharged their jump-drives to the point where they were knocked out of their own galaxy and into unknown space, making any hope of returning to the Milky Way an impossibility.
• In To Infinity, it's revealed that it's over two million years after Cortana's rebellion- Roland had to go to relativistic speeds in order to escape Cortana's sensors.
• In Twice Chosen, this issue explicitly comes up when Glimmer asks for Katniss's help in sneaking into District One to steal a few personal items from her room in her parents' house, as Glimmer recognises that she can't just go back home even after Rita is defeated as her District will never understand why she chose to abandon the Games.
• In What Tomorrow Brings, Elfangor told himself throughout the trip to Earth that he was only there to protect the humans and had no intention in trying to visit Loren and his son. Even after he is trapped on Earth, he just creates a basic human morph rather than trying to recreate Alan Fangor, and only starts trying to look for Loren on relative impulse.

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