An Everdistant Horizon
Seed 1.1
It was the same dream as every time before: a world on fire and choked in ash. Of uncountable screams, from all manner of lungs, but also of something else. A world rendered desolate as the last vestiges of life are snuffed out. A barren, lifeless rock adrift in the cosmos, as silent as the grave that it bore witness to in its last moments.
And then something changed. Slowly at first, as activity ruined the utter stillness that had previously existed. Barren rock that had previously only the accompaniment of smoke and ash gave way to clouds containing life-giving water. Dull brown gradually losing its fight to green as life began to return back…
And then she woke up, her eyes opening to darkness.
Only the darkness was infinitely more personal. It existed both to remind and mock her because it was a darkness that was not one birthed by a lack of light, but one of sight.
Releasing a sigh to bury the pang of sorrow and frustration that burgeoned at the edge of her thoughts. There was no point in dwelling in that which she could not control.
For now.
Letting herself lay in bed for a little while longer, her forcibly honed internal clock leaving her aware of what time it likely was, she then finally rose once her mind was sufficiently roused.
Reaching out to her nightstand, her fingers danced over the wooden surface a few moments before making contact with her glasses. Retrieving them, she slipped them on her face, a hint of bitterness creeping as she put them on not to see better, but to hide the cloudy orbs that used to be vibrant green from others.
Getting up, she deliberately bypassed the stick she knew was resting by the door frame. As much as she needed it, she hated the additional physical reminder of her disability.
Taking a fortifying breath, she stepped out into the hallway, her hands lightly grazing the walls to provide tactile sensory input and prevent her from stumbling or worse.
It was bad enough that already, two months on, that she could differentiate the texture of the wallpaper that signified the approach to the stairs that would take her into the living room. Idly, she noted the scent of bacon as she moved adroitly through the living room to the kitchen, only glancingly bumping off the coffee table on her journey.
Finding the chair around the table, she slid into it with a practiced ease even as she listened to her father work, unaware that she was there judging by the fact that he had yet to acknowledge her.
It was honestly still rather strange how her hearing seemed to pick up just a bit better now. Cross-modal reorganization the doctor's had called it, where the brain was trying to compensate for the loss of one of the senses by enhancing the sensitivity of others.
With her father, she could hear the whisper of cloth on metal, or skin, as he moved around, the way his feet landed on the floor with a different timbre. Even she could faintly hear his breath when he moved around and exerted himself. It wasn't superhuman, but it was certainly…different.
"Oh," he startled, obviously now noticing her presence, "morning Taylor, you scared me. Are you up for some bacon and eggs?"
"Sure," she offered with a slight slur in her voice as she offered the best smile she could, which was difficult with the tenderness and pull on the skin even now. It probably came off more as a grimace, if she were honest. But she made do with the best she could.
It was a quiet breakfast that was served up and consumed shortly thereafter, with the only difference between the two of them was that her scrambled eggs were served in a small bowl, while the bacon was served on a small plate. A few times in the process, the spoon slipped from her hands, the numbness and lack of feeling coming and going, but neither of them acknowledged it. It was an unspoken agreement that had taken place almost a month ago.
They just wanted it to be as normal as possible, even in spite of her handicaps.
She could easily recite her injuries, if she wanted. She could easily imagine the scars, having felt them all herself, in spite of the pain it brought. But in the end, it didn't matter to her, because she would live with them, and defeat them all eventually.
Listening as her father picked up the dishes and moved towards the sink, she simply sat there, listening to him, sensing the tension and awkwardness in the air. She knew he was trying to delay this talk, it was the continuance of the talk that they had almost a month ago when she had finally worked up the courage to reveal it. It had taken everything back then to keep herself together, but it was probably even harder for him that day. The full recognition of his failures along with the scars and burdens they both carried now.
It had not been an easy talk, and it had only been because she had doggedly latched onto his guilt that she was able to even get him to give in. To give her the opportunity that she knew was coming now.
The water then turned off, and she listened with rapt attention as he dried off his hands, the cloth rustling on skin, before he put the towel down and walked to the chair. The wood creaking as he sat down in it. However, instead of speaking he just silently brooded, no doubt in her mind that he was staring at her.
She honestly had to wonder what he saw when he took in her scarred visage. Did he see a monster? Did he see a freak? Maybe he saw a cruel reminder to all of his failures as a father and husband.
There was a bitter part of her, one that zealously protected itself with the spirit of a dragon guarding its hoard, that felt it was only right that he felt all of that. He had left her to rot, only giving her a modicum of what he should have as a father.
But then there was another part, that only felt sorrow. Because she was as damned as he was. She had never truly reached out to him and
let him be a father to her after Mom's death. And by the time she had finished grieving it had simply been too late for the both of them.
Maybe that was the bitter truth of all of it. They both were so damnably broken after Mom's death that they hadn't a clue on how to connect without that medium that she provided that it took another tragedy for them to even build a fragile, tremulous connection that could easily break with the slightest of turbulence.
It was a cough from her father that finally broke the tense silence as it appeared he finally worked the courage to broach the subject.
"So Klein called this morning," he began, obviously searching for the right words, "he says a package came in last night."
She knew she shouldn't have, but she couldn't help but perk up at the statement. Klein Saunders was the lead mechanical engineer for the dockworker's union, the man who was the troubleshooter for the union in fixing a lot of their equipment. He was also the only person who could probably have been useful for what Taylor had wanted to do. It had been through him that she had asked for help.
Of course, what she had wanted to be made was something way beyond probably what Klein could do, but he had friends who could help but also be discreet. Because discretion was necessary for what she was trying to do, especially if it led to what she wanted it to.
"So if you would like, we can go down to the dock this afternoon."
Just one more step towards getting the last laugh.
AEH
Danny Hebert was a failure, there was no point in deluding himself from that reality. Not only had he failed his wife, but he had gone on and then failed his daughter. For the rest of his life, he would never forgive himself for what had happened to Taylor.
Even now, it was a struggle not to look over at his daughter in the passenger seat of the truck and not weep at her scarred visage.
Never in a million years would he have imagined Emma Barnes of all people would attack his daughter with an industrial-strength drain cleaner at school. That she would scar his daughter and destroy her beautiful eyes.
But it had happened, and it hadn't been the only thing he would discover over the next week as his daughter was kept in a medically-induced coma to heal.
A year-long bullying campaign led by what he had believed had been a family friend. A school that had willingly refused to do a damn thing despite the preponderance of incidents. All of it culminating in a psychopathic assault that
had been filmed.
He had seen it
once. And that one time had left him emptying his stomach. The screams of his daughter as her face
burned, the desperation as she sought relief by clawing at her face, and the
laughter of those animals.
He was not a violent man. But if he
ever got five minutes alone with Emma Barnes, he would do everything in his power to visit even a fraction of the hell that had been inflicted on his daughter.
But that was a fantasy that he used to ignore what the true cause of this all was. He hadn't been there for his daughter, not for years. And his negligence had caused all of this.
The school has been quick to settle. They had no choice in the matter, the video had been posted on social media and the FBI had become involved because of the nature of the attack. Six million dollars for what they had allowed to be done to his daughter. If it hadn't been for her care, he wanted to make them bleed for more, but with the medical bills piling up and the need to ensure her quality of life would be decent, he couldn't afford to take them to court, not when it would cost her.
So he had chomped the bit, accepted the money in installments, and worked to try and make things better for his daughter. He had tried to get her on the list for Panacea, but the hospital had deemed the majority of treatment as cosmetic surgery, and the replacement of her eyes would have been prohibitively expensive with the payment demanded up front. Attempts to get insurance on the side had likewise been a failure, it simply did not cover 'cosmetic' surgery like repairing the damage those monsters had done to his daughter.
So he could do only what he could to help his daughter, with the limited funds he was provided, as the school had only agreed to pay in semiannual installments. Almost all of the first installment had been consumed by the medical bills, taxes, and the lawyer fees for the trust fund. They had been left with just enough for some quality of life additions to the household and a small spending stipend.
But the money would never be enough to truly salve the wounds. How could they? Taylor no longer had any function in her eyes and the scars on her face from the chemical burns were something that would likely never be removed.
The first week after she had returned home, she had locked herself in her room, rarely leaving it and barely talking to him. He had given her space, because he honestly did not know
how to handle the situation. How could he even bridge the gap between the two of them after so long being estranged from one another.
It was only into the middle of the second week that Taylor had finally emerged from her room, and if he were honest, he had been relieved. He had been worried that she would forever shut herself from the world.
Unfortunately, that relief had been short-lived, as that night she had placed in front of him a stack of papers with intricate and professionally done blueprints and diagrams without a single blemish or correction. It was then that she told him she had powers.
He had honestly been horrified. He knew tangentially about powers and the cape scene, but it was just the basics. There existed a segment of society that had powers, with a predominant part of them engaging in what would best be described as straight out of comic book hero and villainy. The idea that his daughter, who was blind, could even become involved in that lifestyle was chilling.
But that hadn't been the conversation. And frankly, he hadn't even been prepared for what the conversation had been. Instead of anything like the childish notion of being a hero, Taylor had instead said she had wanted to build things, that she had ideas that could change the world. But the first thing that she wanted to do was build something to get back her sight.
He had honestly been incredulous, to say the least, at the very idea. What Taylor was talking about and showing him was so completely over his head he hadn't even a leg to stand on in the argument. What sane parent would be, if he were to be perfectly honest. What she was trying to explain might as well have been a foreign language to him.
But she had been determined, showing a side that he had never before seen in his daughter. It hauntingly reminded him too much of Annette in how driven she was in getting what she wanted. A darker part of him was left momentarily wondering at the time if this was maybe her communicating from beyond the grave.
He wanted to tell her no, that purchasing the various things that she needed for whatever this thing was would stretch their funds beyond their limits, that they would have to tap into the family savings in order to even meet it. But he had held himself back, because, at the end of the day, he was a coward. He had already failed his daughter once, and seeing her being so passionate and driven, he, in the end, simply could not say no to her.
So he had spent the remains of the stipend to purchase Taylor a laptop. After that, he had dipped into what remained of their savings to purchase every single component that she had requested, along with paying for its assembly, but not before ensuring that a patent, at Taylor's insistence, had been submitted in order to protect it. He knew already that there would be questions asked soon, especially by both the trust fund and the child protective services, once they became aware of the spending. If this failed, there was a good chance that they would quite possibly take his daughter away.
That had been a month ago, and now here they were, pulling up to the Dockworker's Union, a broken man holding onto just a modicum of hope that whatever was going to take place today, would be something to restore just a little bit of that relationship between the two of them.
Getting out of the truck, he moved over to the passenger side to open the door for Taylor, who gingerly stepped out, her eyes covered in thick black heavy sunglasses, but the rest of her head and face covered in a hoodie and a shawl. Another one of the victims of the attack had been her voluminous hair, the doctors having to shave it off in order to prevent infection on the burns. Taylor hated it to her very core, having admitted in passing that it was the one thing that truly still connected herself to Annette. Now it was gone.
Settling her laptop bag onto her shoulder, he then reached out and grabbed her by the shoulder, intending to lead her into the building and eventually to their destination. He knew it must rankle on her nerve to be led around like a child, if there was something this new side of his daughter embraced and wanted more than anything, it was her independence.
Thankfully, she remained quiet, accepting the reality of what she was being led into was unfamiliar territory for her. Instead she left her cane unextended, the closest thing to a sign of trust that she could give.
All through it all, eyes were upon them. While it was the weekends, there were still people running the DWU simply because it could not afford to lose work opportunities just because too many others would take Saturday and Sunday off. For his people, any job taken was a meal on the table, clothes on their back, or tuition for their children and he would have been negligent to not try and give them the opportunities.
So he led her into the machine shop where Klein was patiently awaiting them.
"Hey Bossman," the man in his mid-thirties with close-cropped brown hair greeted them before his grey eyes shifted to Taylor and his expression froze for a moment, before he quickly recovered, "Miss Hebert."
"Afternoon, Klaus," he offered back to the man, "I have someone here who has been looking forward to a certain package since I told her this morning. Mind getting it out?"
"Sure thing," the man responded, turning and heading back into his office to retrieve the package, meanwhile, Danny guided Taylor to a table for her to set up. Pulling out a chair, he helped retrieve her laptop, plugging it in, before setting it up. He didn't know half of what she did on the laptop, only in the initial days adding a few programs for her to use. Other than that, whatever she did on it was her own work.
It was as they were finishing up, and Taylor removed her hood and shawl, that Klaus returned, holding a box that could easily pass for a hatbox.
"Here it is," he declared, placing the box beside them, before looking between himself and Taylor, "Hey, Danny. Can we talk?"
"Sure," he then led him away from Taylor, even as his daughter started running her hands over the box. Once they were out of hearing range, he then focused on Klaus, "what did you need?"
"Look Danny, I know you told me to keep things as discrete as responsible," the man started, looking back towards Taylor, before coming back to him, "but some of the things on that list, and the directions for assembly. You know some of the channels I had to use to avoid certain eyes. Questions were asked."
Danny couldn't help but grimace. One of the worries he had, based upon his own research, was the Parahuman Response Team or Protectorate discovering that his daughter was a parahuman. They spent an inordinate amount of resources looking for strange purchases or materials disappearing. Klaus, he knew, had some backroom connections that would have hopefully avoided their gaze. But like any backroom connection, it could also draw the more unsavory types. In this case, he knew it was the Empire Eighty-Eight.
"And did you say anything?"
"Fuck no, Danny. You know how I feel about those jumped-up pricks. I told 'em it was none of their fucking business."
It probably wasn't the best response to the Empire. But honestly, what was there to say? That he was helping out the daughter of his boss? At least there was a chance they would just write it off and go on their way. But if not, then there were other options.
"Just let me know if they keep asking, Klaus, okay?"
"Sure, boss."
Danny's eyes wandered back to his daughter, who already had the box open and the object within it and out. A long cable led from it to her laptop, the computer active, but the screen may as well have been gibberish to him. But to Taylor, she acted as if it made the most sense as she was typing at a rate that honestly made his mind whirl. All the while, her focus seemed to be on it, despite her lack of vision.
The object in question, on the other hand, was the first time for him to see it beyond the various diagrams and blueprints that Taylor had placed in front of him a month ago. It was certainly unique in its appearance, a trio of blocky devices arranged upon a wreath-like headband.
It was like seeing a ghost, Annette had the same intense look when she was deeply focused on something. And to see that from his daughter as well? Well, he really couldn't put it into words as to what he felt due to the complexity of it all. Instead, he merely stepped away from Klaus, a silent dismissal given for the other man who understood it and left them. He walked over to a chair at another desk, settling in the chair and watching his daughter as she worked.
He had to wonder just how she was doing it all. She hadn't been forthcoming on what her abilities really were, but she seemed to be a deft hand with computers and technology, even if the terms and concepts were utter gibberish to him just from the few glances he'd gotten at her work. But he would be the first to admit his strength lay in administration and people.
Honestly, though, he hoped that whatever she was doing would work, if simply because it would give his daughter something to strive for. He had a feeling that if this worked, then maybe things would work out, both for her and also them.
He was suddenly roused with a start, his brain rebooting at the sudden sensation of cold, clammy hands on his face? Where was he? When did he fall asleep?
"It works," a soft, quiet voice, almost in a daze spoke, causing all thought to vanish as he looked from the arms and up to the source of the voice.
It was Taylor, her expression of so many different emotions seeming to hit all at the same time that she was unsure of exactly what she should be feeling. But there was one expression that he would never forget: the tears trekking down her cheeks as sightless eyes conveyed so much emotion despite their damage.
"It works," she breathed, "I can see."