Glad you like them! For sure it's okay. The album has individual images, so you can pick whichever.
Fragments (Worm Altpower)
- Thread starter Telegraph Nine
- Start date
Glad you like them! For sure it's okay. The album has individual images, so you can pick whichever.
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, I'm still trying to decide which. Probably going to sleep on it.
Aeshdan
Prince Fraternal Of Pudding
- Location
- Gae Parabolae
Wow, that was both creepy and fascinating. I found your portrayal of Sophia's thought process very compelling, I may borrow that characterization for my own Sophia Hess. And it looks like Lisa isn't going to be an ally in this one, which I'm kind of glad to see. I know this is kind of petty, but I've seen so many fics woobify Lisa and Amy that I enjoy seeing a story portray Lisa as a manipulator and villain or Amy as a bit of a bitch, just because it's refreshing to see a more novel take on those two.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Oh, interesting; you think Sophia would have? We seem to have read her in significantly different ways there, then; my interpretation would have let Lisa go (well, if all Lisa did was not kill him; things might have changed if Lisa'd further antagonized her), though been disappointed.Empty Shelf said:
"Further antagonizing" her would have been to refuse to rip the arrow out. At that point, she becomes a witness, and therefore a threat to her, and Sophia only knows one way to deal with threats. And whether she gets tipped off by her power or from Sophia being obviously unhinged, she clearly regards Sophia as a threat in turn.
In the end Sophia had no reason not to kill Lisa. She explicitly has no principles, and rejects the concept of morality outright. Nobody's life holds any value to her until she decides they do.
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- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
She's a witness either way, though. If anything, she might look like more of a threat to Sophia if she does pull the arrow out, because it will make Sophia have more reason to respect her as more willing to fight, thus more likely to decide to fight Sophia.Empty Shelf said:
I don't think that's the case? She rejects other people's principles and morality, but:
That looks to me like she pretty clearly does have her own versions. Sure, they're twisted, and she's delusional, but the important thing here, especially given Lisa's power giving her better insight into what Sophia's actually thinking, isn't reality, it's Sophia's view of reality and herself. And if the chapter proceeded exactly the same way up until Lisa made her choice, and she just chose to not kill him and look weaker to Sophia until Sophia left, I think Sophia, with her worldview and self-conception, probably would have just left.
Chapter 12 - Fuse
- Location
- here
- Pronouns
- She/Her
A/N: Thanks to Dysole, FuryouMiko, and Wheat Stick for beta reading.
CW: Severe mental health issues, Emotional manipulation
The acrid smell of lighter fluid stung Emma's nose as she poured.
Not the same kind of lighter fluid as the reassuring weight of the polished metal lighter that all but lived in her pocket these days. The kind of lighter fluid you used on charcoal, a big white bottle and a smell that brought back distant memories of joint-family barbecues. It burned like fire where some had splashed against the cuticles she'd picked bloody, but she kept her hands steady.
She'd wanted to use gasoline. It would have been better, stronger, more vicious. But a quick check online said it melted plastic, and she didn't want to risk the whole thing dissolving in her backpack.
The clear liquid splashed into the chamber of a squirt gun. It was a brightly colored thing, the kind with a hand pump and pressure chamber. A toy. Emma had dragged it up from the very depths of her closet, covered with dust and abandoned. She wondered if Taylor would recognize it.
Memories clung to it, no matter how much she wished she could wash them away with the dust. Running through the grass laughing. Cold water and summer heat. Playing capes with a towel tied around her neck, tripping and skinning her knee. Taylor rushing forward with her eyes full of concern—
Taylor looking at her—
The bottle trembled, lighter fluid spilling onto the carpet. Emma ignored it, sucking in deep breaths that stung the back of her throat with fumes. Trying to block out a memory much more recent than those. Trying to forget the pity in those eyes, the gaze that saw her as something pathetic, helpless, broken. Everything she wasn't.
Fuck. Her room was going to smell like this stuff forever now. She'd have to open the windows, air the place out while she was at school. She didn't want to have to explain why—
There was a knock at the door. "Emma?"
Emma froze. She heard herself say, "Yeah, Mom?" but a future was already unfurling inside her head. Mom would open the door and catch her. Smell the lighter fluid and see the gun and demand to know what was happening. Force her to explain everything and it would all come pouring out whether she wanted it to or not—
"You need to leave for school soon, honey. Are you ready?"
"…Yeah," Emma said through the shut door. "I'll be out soon." Relief and disappointment tangled together around her heart, weaving a thicket she couldn't unravel if she tried. She finished pouring, screwed the cap on the toy gun with a sense of finality. No more turning back, no more hesitating.
She'd seen a documentary once, as a little kid, about a doctor who'd developed a swollen appendix at a research outpost in Antarctica. How he'd been trapped by a blizzard, the only surgeon for a thousand miles of frozen waste, forced to cut himself open and remove the infection because no one else could. It had given her nightmares for weeks, but something about it stuck with her.
She wondered how the knife had felt, going in. If just for a moment, with the air tickling places that were never meant to see light and snow falling all around, he had been tempted to just stop.
You couldn't stop. Not halfway through, laid open and raw and bare to the world. Not until you'd cut away everything sick and infected and wrong. No matter how much it hurt, the wound wouldn't close.
She hadn't told Sophia about this plan. Sophia would have tried to make her stop, told her it was too dangerous. Held her back. Emma knew it wasn't safe.
She didn't care. She couldn't stop. Didn't dare stop. Not now. The only way out was through. Finish the surgery. Bandage the wound. She could still see the little girl who broke when her mother died. The same girl lying in an alley paralyzed by fear, helpless, too pathetic to even be worth saving. That girl wasn't her. She couldn't let it ever be her. Which meant it had to be Taylor instead. She had to make it Taylor.
She'd tried to twist herself into a new shape a little at a time, into someone that couldn't be hurt, and it wasn't enough. Too little, too late. Not when Taylor had managed to change too. She had to do more. Had to push until she found an edge, until something inside her gave way.
Until someone stopped her or it was carved into her heart forever that no one ever would.
Emma stuffed the improvised flamethrower in her backpack, gathering strength for the day ahead. She tried her best to control her breathing as her fists clenched. She could do this. She felt flayed open, red blood dripping, parts that never should have touched the world aching with pain as they glistened in the light. But she could do this.
She had to.
Someone please stop me.
A note.
That was all it had taken to bring Taylor up to Winslow's roof, to her. A note.
It shouldn't have been that easy. Taylor was smart, Emma knew she was smart. Two weeks ago it would have taken her and Sophia working together and a careful plan to lure Taylor into a trap like this. Maybe a few other girls too, if she could rope some in. Taylor knew better.
It hadn't mattered. A note slipped into Taylor's locker, the tiniest implication that she needed help, and… that was all it took. Emma steeled herself as the door to the stairwell swung open, gritting her teeth against the pity in those dark eyes.
She'd hoped for surprise, Taylor's face crumpling at the sight of what Emma was aiming at her. It was a squirt gun, sure, but Taylor was smart. She'd know it would mean something worse than just getting wet.
There wasn't any. Taylor didn't look shocked or confused. She looked resigned. Like she'd expected this, and she'd shown up anyway.
Why? Why do you care so much? Why NOW?
"Step away from the door." Emma gestured with the squirt gun like she'd seen gangsters do in old movies, a quick little jerk to the side. It was a familiar move, she'd done the same with the same gun so many times as a kid, playing capes or cops and robbers or a hundred other games with Taylor. Only time it wasn't pretend.
Taylor's eyes flicked from her, to the door, back to her again. For a moment some inner struggle showed on her face, thoughts warring against each other. Her jaw set. She stepped away from the door, towards the edge of the roof as Emma put herself between her and the only exit. Taylor turned to face her, hands in the air. "What—"
Emma pulled the trigger.
She watched Taylor's eyes widen as lighter fluid soaked into her ratty hoodie, as the smell hit her. Emma pulled the lighter from her pocket, twirling it before she held the flickering yellow flame steady in front of the squirtgun's nozzle. Watched the blood drain from Taylor's face as she understood. The next time it wouldn't be unlit.
Emma felt her back straighten, her shoulders unclench just an inch as a weight she didn't understand lifted away. There was something about seeing Taylor afraid or in pain. It didn't feel good. There was still a part of her screaming in the roots of her brain that this was her sister, her friend, that all this was wrong. It hurt. But it was the pain of a boil being lanced, of something infected and sick being drained away. Something noxious and vile flowed out of her into Taylor. For just an instant all the pieces lined up and the world made sense. She knew who she was, because she knew who she wasn't.
Then Taylor spoke.
"T-that's… that's not safe. Just… just put it down, okay?" There was something wrong. Taylor was pale, shaky, but the words were wrong.
"Scared?" Emma said.
"Emma, I'm scared for you!" Taylor burst out, eyes wide. "That thing's going to catch fire or explode, and you're going to end up burned, bad. Just drop it, please, I promise I'll…" She trailed off, biting her lip. For a moment she seemed frozen, trapped, before her shoulders fell. "I'll do whatever you want. Just once. I don't…" the final words came out as a whisper, ashamed. "I don't want you to get hurt."
Emma was silent. Something in her chest hurt.
She'd been angry before, at her teachers, parents, classmates. Furious, even. It had never been like this. What kind of rage made you feel like you'd been stabbed in the chest? Like she'd swallowed something burning and toxic and raw, like if she didn't do something she'd explode and melt and char from the inside out. Her finger ached to pull the trigger, to burn everything away until there was no more Taylor, no more pain.
But if there was no Taylor, there'd just be Emma. Alone with herself.
She hadn't hated Taylor before now. She'd acted like it, sure. Wanted to hurt Taylor, maybe. Except, no, that was wrong too. She'd wanted to be the kind of person who wanted to hurt Taylor. Someone strong and safe who wasn't always afraid. The person Sophia promised she already was.
But then Taylor had changed. And so she changed, too. She couldn't not, no matter how much she tried. They were two halves of an equation, chained together by a pitiless equals sign. You couldn't break just one of them.
She hated the way Taylor looked at her, as someone damaged, weak. The one who needed to be saved. But as awful as that was, that wasn't the thing that made her feel like there was a knife buried in her heart, sawing deeper with every breath in and out. It wasn't that. No.
It was the fact she was only seeing Taylor's pity now.
Taylor hadn't been there. She'd never noticed. She hadn't helped. She'd accepted cruelty without question, without challenge, without ever even wondering why. She never tried to stop Emma, never fought back. And now, a year too late to matter, she finally wondered if something was wrong? Only now did she think to help? Emma wanted to laugh, but she knew it would end in sobs if she did. You might as well paste a pretty bandaid on the gnarled, scarred stump of a missing limb. How dare she. How dare she.
"Why?" The word hissed between her lips, falling like a crucial screw from some delicate mechanism. She'd had a plan, a script in her head. Get Taylor up here, force her with the threat of being burned to get on her knees and repeat something horrible about Auntie An—her mom. This wasn't the plan, off script. Going wrong. . She hadn't meant to say that.
"Why… what? What do you mean?" Taylor spoke like someone trying to defuse a bomb, each word placed with tweezers.
Cheap plastic creaked under Emma's fingers as her knuckles went white. What was she doing? All she had were her words and a cheap kids toy. That next to a girl who wasn't even human anymore, who could kill her with barely a thought. Her plan was ruined, everything was wrong. She could feel the jaws of a future closing around her, one where all she was was the way Taylor saw her. Nothing left but the worthless broken girl who only existed to be helped. No. Not ever. She'd step off the edge of the roof first. She had to find a way out, something, anything. Anything was better than…
Anything…
An idea bloomed, buoyed up by the embers rising from the flames of her plans as they burned before her, carried by the shrieking crystal song of panic. She only had words, but Taylor had something she didn't. Pity. She could use that, if only she was brave enough. If only she could ignore the parts of herself screaming 'no.'
"What happened to me?" Emma asked. The words tore at her throat and lips coming out, but she knew they would hurt Taylor more. Everything was a weapon if only you knew how to use it. All she had to do was balance the equation. Push everything that hurt over to Taylor's side of the equals sign, and take something else back. "I mean, you must know, right? You came here thinking you could help. To make things better. Don't tell me you thought you could do all this without even figuring that out."
Taylor flinched, and the flinch was the same. The same one she'd seen so many times over the past year. That more than anything gave Emma the strength to stand up straight, to meet Taylor's eyes without shrinking away. One of them had to be afraid. But it didn't have to be her.
"Sophia… she did something to you," Taylor guessed. And it was a guess, no matter how much certainty she tried to fake. Emma could hear how much she wanted the words to be true. "I don't know if it was powers or something else, but she's the reason you're… like this."
Emma made herself laugh, even if it was as humorless as wind twisting through dead leaves. "You really want to know what Sophia did? I'll tell you if you ask."
Taylor looked at her, eyes wide. An animal staring into a trap. And then, slowly, she nodded. "Tell me."
Emma took a deep breath, and for a moment she felt still. The stillness of falling, the only unmoving thing there was as the world spun around her. "Sophia saved me." She reached for the sickly putrid fury, for the feelings like knives under her skin, and let them pour into her words until they threatened to spill over. "She helped me, Taylor. Sophia was there for me when I needed someone. Just like I was for you when your mom died. Just like you weren't. That's what she fucking 'did.'"
Taylor stared, but there was a frozen quality to it. Like the expression was still on her face only because she had nothing else to replace it. "I… When did…?"
"You never noticed. You never asked. After all this you still have no fucking clue what happened!" The words came out faster than Emma could catch her breath, something deep inside her torn open. She didn't care if they were true, didn't care what they meant as long they hurt. As long as Taylor felt like she did right now. "My best friend suddenly hates me, that's normal behavior! That must mean there's NOTHING WRONG, right? You never cared, you never even wondered, you never helped! All you did was sit there and take it!"
Her hands were shaking. Emma only realized she'd been shouting when her body forced her to stop, gasping. They weren't sobs. They couldn't be. She… just had to catch her breath.
"You think Sophia did this?" Emma said as soon as she could, her voice low and poisonous. "Take a look in the mirror, sister. You did this. You, not her. Your. Fault. You weren't there. You want your best friend back? Too goddamn late."
Emma watched as Taylor crumpled in on herself, bit by bit. She'd hated that smug, cloying pity in Taylor's eyes. But now it was poisoned, turned against the girl who'd created it. Guilt, self loathing, regret. She watched as Taylor's shoulders fell, as she seemed to collapse in on herself. And Emma felt… better. Every inch Taylor shrunk she seemed to grow, until she felt like she could go from the roof to the parking lot below in a single step. She'd won. For just a moment, she could imagine a path through what she'd done to herself, a way out. A her that wasn't flayed open, crushed into a shape that would never fit. She felt whole.
She turned on her heel to go.
"I'm sorry."
Emma froze, heart suddenly thudding in her chest. "...What?"
"I said, I'm sorry," Taylor said behind her. Emma didn't turn, didn't dare look back. "I'm sorry I never realized you were hurting sooner. I wish I could have been there when… whatever this is, happened. I'm sorry. But I'm here now." Taylor took a breath, and Emma could imagine the look on her face, drawing strength from somewhere inside. How could she take this? This wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for Taylor to be so strong.
"You're not okay, Emma. I know you don't want to, but… this is only going to get worse until something changes. Please. Let me help you."
"That's rich coming from you," Emma snarled, forcing herself not to hear her own voice shaking. The same sick fury came boiling back up, but now the emphasis was on sick. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and it took more than she wanted to admit not to spill vomit all over her shoes. "What makes someone like you think you can help anything? Like everything you touch doesn't just break and abandon you." The venomous words came by rote reflex, barely passing through her brain.
"I—"
"Shut up!" Emma sucked in a breath of too-cold air, in through the nose and out across her tongue. It tasted like chemical smoke, acrid and burning. She shut her eyes. She could handle this. She was strong. She just had to hold it together a little longer. Taylor would break first. She had to break.
"You think getting powers changes things, makes you some sort of hero?" she said. "I remember those games too, Taylor. You wore a towel around your neck and pretended you were Alexandria. Always wanted me to play the dashing hostage to be rescued from some made-up villain. Are you so desperate you think that's real now?" Her fingers clenched, the hard metal of her lighter in one hand, flimsy plastic of a squirt gun in the other. She was facing away. Taylor couldn't see the look on her face. She had to remember that. "I talked to Sophia. I know what getting powers means. You're broken. You're not a hero. All you are is a delusional, shattered little girl desperately trying to convince herself she's something she's not. You can't help yourself. You couldn't even save a flute. There are a million desperate people in this city, and none of them are so pathetic they need help from you."
Please. Please, god, let this work.
"You're wrong, Emma."
No.
The words were a whisper, and as loud as the sky caving in. Emma felt frozen, the air almost solid around her as it touched sweat-soaked skin. Dragged by invisible strings, against her will, she turned to look at Taylor.
"I have helped someone." Taylor's expression was set. One hand was black and shattered, but Emma hardly noticed it. Because the other hand… Taylor's other hand was reaching out. To her. "Maybe I shouldn't be the one to help you. Fine. Maybe I can't be. But someone has to. And if all I can do is get you to someone else who can do something… that's enough." Taylor swallowed. "If you never want to see me again afterwards, that's fine. If you want to hurt me after instead, I won't stop you. But let me help you, Emma. Just this once."
No.
Emma stared at Taylor, but she didn't see her. There was another girl there, her hair red and black and both at once but it didn't matter because either way it hung unwashed and dirty. Her eyes were empty. Hollow and lifeless, something inside cracked in a way that could never heal. She'd lost her mother, had parts of herself hacked away by knives, both and neither all at once. And she was getting closer. Every heartbeat was another step towards Emma, into her place, her shoes, her life.
No.
When she'd heard the story from Sophia, she'd wondered how Taylor could deliberately push her arm into an inferno. How anyone could. Now she knew.
Emma pulled the trigger.
Time seemed to slow as the squirt gun fired, Taylor's eyes widening as droplets of lighter fluid soared towards her. The lighter's flame flared greedily, spreading down the arc of liquid towards her. And up it, too. Emma watched as the stream seemed to hang in mid air, fire creeping back along it toward the improvised flamethrower in her hand.
Two halves of an equation. You couldn't hurt just one.
Everything went bright, and then it was loud, and then it was dark.
The first few drops of rain landed on spinning ambulance lights, refracting splinters of red and blue. A girl lay limply on a stretcher, the remains of her red hair spread underneath her head. Burns covered one side of her face.
Two girls stood over her, glaring, each a hair's breadth from violence. Neither willing to leave her alone with the other. Neither quite ready to take the final step. Not here, not yet, not with her hurt. There were threats, accusations, warnings, no less intense for being hissed in fear of being overheard. They believed no one was watching.
They were wrong.
Nothing human was. Behind each girl a being curled around her like a cloak, thin and vague as mist. Less invisible than unseen, for the same reason they were unable to see inside their own heads. Watching. The two girls were right about one thing, however. They weren't overheard.
The things following them had no use for words.
Behind Taylor was a vast and ancient thing that lay crippled and broken. Authority that could have shaken the very stars in the sky, if only it could lift a finger. A queen with a shattered crown.
Around Sophia, something that lived within the thickness of a shadow. A being that sang the moment mist dissolved into dew, the instant iron boiled and turned to incandescent vapor. Younger, perhaps, but only in the way a high and jagged mountain peak was younger than one carved away by wind and rain.
Neither had any care for langage. But they understood feelings. Hate and love. Resentment and worry and desperation and loneliness and craving. Feelings twisted around and tangled together until they became bonds, imaginary threads that would draw those they caught together again and again. Three bound together.
In other circumstances, both might have attempted to induce such bonds themselves. These had occurred of their own accord, an accident of fate. Rare. Surprising. And, potentially, valuable.
[REQUEST: PREDICTION]
The broken queen reached out, the whispered echo of a voice that had once been inviolable. An answer returned quickly, from a thing still struggling for purchase on its host-to-be, waiting for a way in. Out of sight, though not so far away.
In the stark majority of futures where Emma Barnes became host to something beyond herself, she would collapse. An already-fragile self would crumple in on itself entirely, and she would retreat from the world, whatever abilities she gained languishing or applied only for endless passive defense against enemies that had no reason to care. Wasteful. Boring. Pointless. Unacceptable.
In most of what remained, she would burn fast but brightly. Aggressive, reckless to the point of madness, she would die quickly. But not before cracking what passed a balance of powers and igniting strife that would outlive her. Not before amassing a wealth of ruthless, desperate experience. Desirable.
In the tiny sliver of futures that remained, she would not burn out. Her talent for chaos would be discovered by those who saw value in such things, and she would be guarded. Sheltered until ruthlessness matured into canniness. Instead of sputtering out, the flame in her heart would only grow, devouring more and more. The precise ending was uncertain, but the potential was not. Ideal.
A prize to be treasured, but a chance better than even of yielding nothing at all. A risk. And for a creature older than the continent on which the three girls stood, not worth the price. There would be others, better chances.
Unless…
The gilded, maimed thing buried inside Taylor like a hook in a fish remembered. Remembered, for the first time in so long, something new.
The thing that had twined itself around Victoria Dallon, tiny and bright. A sickly runt self-assembled from cast off scraps, fragile even as it was strong. And yet it was strong, every facet and vertex straining with purpose when those larger lay cold and dormant. A curiosity. The broken queen would not have expected it to live, much less thrive. And, perhaps, an inspiration.
Emma Barnes was a bad investment, a longshot gamble. At least, for one. With the cost split, however… perhaps not quite so much so. It reached out to the thing of shadows and vapors that looked out from behind Sophia Hess's eyes.
[PROPOSAL: COLLABORATION]
There was a slow, calculated deliberation. It would have fit between the ticks of a clock. And then, at long last, agreement.
Pieces were cast off from queen and shadow, splinters shucked away. Ancillary things, unproven developments, echoes of violence past. All told, the scattered components massed less than two thirds of the sickly shining thing that had been their inspiration. But the queen would not leave them to cobble themselves together. To unite countless disparate fragments into a single design was the closest thing it had to a name, the very root of its being. Innumerable limbs reached out, cutting and polishing and joining together.
Little by little, it took shape. A glittering seed, dark as its inspiration was light, stripped of any purpose but to grow. With infinite gentleness it was placed in the skull of the unconscious Emma Barnes. As the ambulance drove away, it was already settling into place.
An experiment.
An investment.
A bud.
Waiting patiently for the chance to bloom.
CW: Severe mental health issues, Emotional manipulation
The acrid smell of lighter fluid stung Emma's nose as she poured.
Not the same kind of lighter fluid as the reassuring weight of the polished metal lighter that all but lived in her pocket these days. The kind of lighter fluid you used on charcoal, a big white bottle and a smell that brought back distant memories of joint-family barbecues. It burned like fire where some had splashed against the cuticles she'd picked bloody, but she kept her hands steady.
She'd wanted to use gasoline. It would have been better, stronger, more vicious. But a quick check online said it melted plastic, and she didn't want to risk the whole thing dissolving in her backpack.
The clear liquid splashed into the chamber of a squirt gun. It was a brightly colored thing, the kind with a hand pump and pressure chamber. A toy. Emma had dragged it up from the very depths of her closet, covered with dust and abandoned. She wondered if Taylor would recognize it.
Memories clung to it, no matter how much she wished she could wash them away with the dust. Running through the grass laughing. Cold water and summer heat. Playing capes with a towel tied around her neck, tripping and skinning her knee. Taylor rushing forward with her eyes full of concern—
Taylor looking at her—
The bottle trembled, lighter fluid spilling onto the carpet. Emma ignored it, sucking in deep breaths that stung the back of her throat with fumes. Trying to block out a memory much more recent than those. Trying to forget the pity in those eyes, the gaze that saw her as something pathetic, helpless, broken. Everything she wasn't.
Fuck. Her room was going to smell like this stuff forever now. She'd have to open the windows, air the place out while she was at school. She didn't want to have to explain why—
There was a knock at the door. "Emma?"
Emma froze. She heard herself say, "Yeah, Mom?" but a future was already unfurling inside her head. Mom would open the door and catch her. Smell the lighter fluid and see the gun and demand to know what was happening. Force her to explain everything and it would all come pouring out whether she wanted it to or not—
"You need to leave for school soon, honey. Are you ready?"
"…Yeah," Emma said through the shut door. "I'll be out soon." Relief and disappointment tangled together around her heart, weaving a thicket she couldn't unravel if she tried. She finished pouring, screwed the cap on the toy gun with a sense of finality. No more turning back, no more hesitating.
She'd seen a documentary once, as a little kid, about a doctor who'd developed a swollen appendix at a research outpost in Antarctica. How he'd been trapped by a blizzard, the only surgeon for a thousand miles of frozen waste, forced to cut himself open and remove the infection because no one else could. It had given her nightmares for weeks, but something about it stuck with her.
She wondered how the knife had felt, going in. If just for a moment, with the air tickling places that were never meant to see light and snow falling all around, he had been tempted to just stop.
You couldn't stop. Not halfway through, laid open and raw and bare to the world. Not until you'd cut away everything sick and infected and wrong. No matter how much it hurt, the wound wouldn't close.
She hadn't told Sophia about this plan. Sophia would have tried to make her stop, told her it was too dangerous. Held her back. Emma knew it wasn't safe.
She didn't care. She couldn't stop. Didn't dare stop. Not now. The only way out was through. Finish the surgery. Bandage the wound. She could still see the little girl who broke when her mother died. The same girl lying in an alley paralyzed by fear, helpless, too pathetic to even be worth saving. That girl wasn't her. She couldn't let it ever be her. Which meant it had to be Taylor instead. She had to make it Taylor.
She'd tried to twist herself into a new shape a little at a time, into someone that couldn't be hurt, and it wasn't enough. Too little, too late. Not when Taylor had managed to change too. She had to do more. Had to push until she found an edge, until something inside her gave way.
Until someone stopped her or it was carved into her heart forever that no one ever would.
Emma stuffed the improvised flamethrower in her backpack, gathering strength for the day ahead. She tried her best to control her breathing as her fists clenched. She could do this. She felt flayed open, red blood dripping, parts that never should have touched the world aching with pain as they glistened in the light. But she could do this.
She had to.
Someone please stop me.
◆ ❖ ◆
A note.
That was all it had taken to bring Taylor up to Winslow's roof, to her. A note.
It shouldn't have been that easy. Taylor was smart, Emma knew she was smart. Two weeks ago it would have taken her and Sophia working together and a careful plan to lure Taylor into a trap like this. Maybe a few other girls too, if she could rope some in. Taylor knew better.
It hadn't mattered. A note slipped into Taylor's locker, the tiniest implication that she needed help, and… that was all it took. Emma steeled herself as the door to the stairwell swung open, gritting her teeth against the pity in those dark eyes.
She'd hoped for surprise, Taylor's face crumpling at the sight of what Emma was aiming at her. It was a squirt gun, sure, but Taylor was smart. She'd know it would mean something worse than just getting wet.
There wasn't any. Taylor didn't look shocked or confused. She looked resigned. Like she'd expected this, and she'd shown up anyway.
Why? Why do you care so much? Why NOW?
"Step away from the door." Emma gestured with the squirt gun like she'd seen gangsters do in old movies, a quick little jerk to the side. It was a familiar move, she'd done the same with the same gun so many times as a kid, playing capes or cops and robbers or a hundred other games with Taylor. Only time it wasn't pretend.
Taylor's eyes flicked from her, to the door, back to her again. For a moment some inner struggle showed on her face, thoughts warring against each other. Her jaw set. She stepped away from the door, towards the edge of the roof as Emma put herself between her and the only exit. Taylor turned to face her, hands in the air. "What—"
Emma pulled the trigger.
She watched Taylor's eyes widen as lighter fluid soaked into her ratty hoodie, as the smell hit her. Emma pulled the lighter from her pocket, twirling it before she held the flickering yellow flame steady in front of the squirtgun's nozzle. Watched the blood drain from Taylor's face as she understood. The next time it wouldn't be unlit.
Emma felt her back straighten, her shoulders unclench just an inch as a weight she didn't understand lifted away. There was something about seeing Taylor afraid or in pain. It didn't feel good. There was still a part of her screaming in the roots of her brain that this was her sister, her friend, that all this was wrong. It hurt. But it was the pain of a boil being lanced, of something infected and sick being drained away. Something noxious and vile flowed out of her into Taylor. For just an instant all the pieces lined up and the world made sense. She knew who she was, because she knew who she wasn't.
Then Taylor spoke.
"T-that's… that's not safe. Just… just put it down, okay?" There was something wrong. Taylor was pale, shaky, but the words were wrong.
"Scared?" Emma said.
"Emma, I'm scared for you!" Taylor burst out, eyes wide. "That thing's going to catch fire or explode, and you're going to end up burned, bad. Just drop it, please, I promise I'll…" She trailed off, biting her lip. For a moment she seemed frozen, trapped, before her shoulders fell. "I'll do whatever you want. Just once. I don't…" the final words came out as a whisper, ashamed. "I don't want you to get hurt."
Emma was silent. Something in her chest hurt.
She'd been angry before, at her teachers, parents, classmates. Furious, even. It had never been like this. What kind of rage made you feel like you'd been stabbed in the chest? Like she'd swallowed something burning and toxic and raw, like if she didn't do something she'd explode and melt and char from the inside out. Her finger ached to pull the trigger, to burn everything away until there was no more Taylor, no more pain.
But if there was no Taylor, there'd just be Emma. Alone with herself.
She hadn't hated Taylor before now. She'd acted like it, sure. Wanted to hurt Taylor, maybe. Except, no, that was wrong too. She'd wanted to be the kind of person who wanted to hurt Taylor. Someone strong and safe who wasn't always afraid. The person Sophia promised she already was.
But then Taylor had changed. And so she changed, too. She couldn't not, no matter how much she tried. They were two halves of an equation, chained together by a pitiless equals sign. You couldn't break just one of them.
She hated the way Taylor looked at her, as someone damaged, weak. The one who needed to be saved. But as awful as that was, that wasn't the thing that made her feel like there was a knife buried in her heart, sawing deeper with every breath in and out. It wasn't that. No.
It was the fact she was only seeing Taylor's pity now.
Taylor hadn't been there. She'd never noticed. She hadn't helped. She'd accepted cruelty without question, without challenge, without ever even wondering why. She never tried to stop Emma, never fought back. And now, a year too late to matter, she finally wondered if something was wrong? Only now did she think to help? Emma wanted to laugh, but she knew it would end in sobs if she did. You might as well paste a pretty bandaid on the gnarled, scarred stump of a missing limb. How dare she. How dare she.
"Why?" The word hissed between her lips, falling like a crucial screw from some delicate mechanism. She'd had a plan, a script in her head. Get Taylor up here, force her with the threat of being burned to get on her knees and repeat something horrible about Auntie An—her mom. This wasn't the plan, off script. Going wrong. . She hadn't meant to say that.
"Why… what? What do you mean?" Taylor spoke like someone trying to defuse a bomb, each word placed with tweezers.
Cheap plastic creaked under Emma's fingers as her knuckles went white. What was she doing? All she had were her words and a cheap kids toy. That next to a girl who wasn't even human anymore, who could kill her with barely a thought. Her plan was ruined, everything was wrong. She could feel the jaws of a future closing around her, one where all she was was the way Taylor saw her. Nothing left but the worthless broken girl who only existed to be helped. No. Not ever. She'd step off the edge of the roof first. She had to find a way out, something, anything. Anything was better than…
Anything…
An idea bloomed, buoyed up by the embers rising from the flames of her plans as they burned before her, carried by the shrieking crystal song of panic. She only had words, but Taylor had something she didn't. Pity. She could use that, if only she was brave enough. If only she could ignore the parts of herself screaming 'no.'
"What happened to me?" Emma asked. The words tore at her throat and lips coming out, but she knew they would hurt Taylor more. Everything was a weapon if only you knew how to use it. All she had to do was balance the equation. Push everything that hurt over to Taylor's side of the equals sign, and take something else back. "I mean, you must know, right? You came here thinking you could help. To make things better. Don't tell me you thought you could do all this without even figuring that out."
Taylor flinched, and the flinch was the same. The same one she'd seen so many times over the past year. That more than anything gave Emma the strength to stand up straight, to meet Taylor's eyes without shrinking away. One of them had to be afraid. But it didn't have to be her.
"Sophia… she did something to you," Taylor guessed. And it was a guess, no matter how much certainty she tried to fake. Emma could hear how much she wanted the words to be true. "I don't know if it was powers or something else, but she's the reason you're… like this."
Emma made herself laugh, even if it was as humorless as wind twisting through dead leaves. "You really want to know what Sophia did? I'll tell you if you ask."
Taylor looked at her, eyes wide. An animal staring into a trap. And then, slowly, she nodded. "Tell me."
Emma took a deep breath, and for a moment she felt still. The stillness of falling, the only unmoving thing there was as the world spun around her. "Sophia saved me." She reached for the sickly putrid fury, for the feelings like knives under her skin, and let them pour into her words until they threatened to spill over. "She helped me, Taylor. Sophia was there for me when I needed someone. Just like I was for you when your mom died. Just like you weren't. That's what she fucking 'did.'"
Taylor stared, but there was a frozen quality to it. Like the expression was still on her face only because she had nothing else to replace it. "I… When did…?"
"You never noticed. You never asked. After all this you still have no fucking clue what happened!" The words came out faster than Emma could catch her breath, something deep inside her torn open. She didn't care if they were true, didn't care what they meant as long they hurt. As long as Taylor felt like she did right now. "My best friend suddenly hates me, that's normal behavior! That must mean there's NOTHING WRONG, right? You never cared, you never even wondered, you never helped! All you did was sit there and take it!"
Her hands were shaking. Emma only realized she'd been shouting when her body forced her to stop, gasping. They weren't sobs. They couldn't be. She… just had to catch her breath.
"You think Sophia did this?" Emma said as soon as she could, her voice low and poisonous. "Take a look in the mirror, sister. You did this. You, not her. Your. Fault. You weren't there. You want your best friend back? Too goddamn late."
Emma watched as Taylor crumpled in on herself, bit by bit. She'd hated that smug, cloying pity in Taylor's eyes. But now it was poisoned, turned against the girl who'd created it. Guilt, self loathing, regret. She watched as Taylor's shoulders fell, as she seemed to collapse in on herself. And Emma felt… better. Every inch Taylor shrunk she seemed to grow, until she felt like she could go from the roof to the parking lot below in a single step. She'd won. For just a moment, she could imagine a path through what she'd done to herself, a way out. A her that wasn't flayed open, crushed into a shape that would never fit. She felt whole.
She turned on her heel to go.
"I'm sorry."
Emma froze, heart suddenly thudding in her chest. "...What?"
"I said, I'm sorry," Taylor said behind her. Emma didn't turn, didn't dare look back. "I'm sorry I never realized you were hurting sooner. I wish I could have been there when… whatever this is, happened. I'm sorry. But I'm here now." Taylor took a breath, and Emma could imagine the look on her face, drawing strength from somewhere inside. How could she take this? This wasn't fair. It wasn't fair for Taylor to be so strong.
"You're not okay, Emma. I know you don't want to, but… this is only going to get worse until something changes. Please. Let me help you."
"That's rich coming from you," Emma snarled, forcing herself not to hear her own voice shaking. The same sick fury came boiling back up, but now the emphasis was on sick. Bile rose in the back of her throat, and it took more than she wanted to admit not to spill vomit all over her shoes. "What makes someone like you think you can help anything? Like everything you touch doesn't just break and abandon you." The venomous words came by rote reflex, barely passing through her brain.
"I—"
"Shut up!" Emma sucked in a breath of too-cold air, in through the nose and out across her tongue. It tasted like chemical smoke, acrid and burning. She shut her eyes. She could handle this. She was strong. She just had to hold it together a little longer. Taylor would break first. She had to break.
"You think getting powers changes things, makes you some sort of hero?" she said. "I remember those games too, Taylor. You wore a towel around your neck and pretended you were Alexandria. Always wanted me to play the dashing hostage to be rescued from some made-up villain. Are you so desperate you think that's real now?" Her fingers clenched, the hard metal of her lighter in one hand, flimsy plastic of a squirt gun in the other. She was facing away. Taylor couldn't see the look on her face. She had to remember that. "I talked to Sophia. I know what getting powers means. You're broken. You're not a hero. All you are is a delusional, shattered little girl desperately trying to convince herself she's something she's not. You can't help yourself. You couldn't even save a flute. There are a million desperate people in this city, and none of them are so pathetic they need help from you."
Please. Please, god, let this work.
"You're wrong, Emma."
No.
The words were a whisper, and as loud as the sky caving in. Emma felt frozen, the air almost solid around her as it touched sweat-soaked skin. Dragged by invisible strings, against her will, she turned to look at Taylor.
"I have helped someone." Taylor's expression was set. One hand was black and shattered, but Emma hardly noticed it. Because the other hand… Taylor's other hand was reaching out. To her. "Maybe I shouldn't be the one to help you. Fine. Maybe I can't be. But someone has to. And if all I can do is get you to someone else who can do something… that's enough." Taylor swallowed. "If you never want to see me again afterwards, that's fine. If you want to hurt me after instead, I won't stop you. But let me help you, Emma. Just this once."
No.
Emma stared at Taylor, but she didn't see her. There was another girl there, her hair red and black and both at once but it didn't matter because either way it hung unwashed and dirty. Her eyes were empty. Hollow and lifeless, something inside cracked in a way that could never heal. She'd lost her mother, had parts of herself hacked away by knives, both and neither all at once. And she was getting closer. Every heartbeat was another step towards Emma, into her place, her shoes, her life.
No.
When she'd heard the story from Sophia, she'd wondered how Taylor could deliberately push her arm into an inferno. How anyone could. Now she knew.
Emma pulled the trigger.
Time seemed to slow as the squirt gun fired, Taylor's eyes widening as droplets of lighter fluid soared towards her. The lighter's flame flared greedily, spreading down the arc of liquid towards her. And up it, too. Emma watched as the stream seemed to hang in mid air, fire creeping back along it toward the improvised flamethrower in her hand.
Two halves of an equation. You couldn't hurt just one.
Everything went bright, and then it was loud, and then it was dark.
◆ ❖ ◆
The first few drops of rain landed on spinning ambulance lights, refracting splinters of red and blue. A girl lay limply on a stretcher, the remains of her red hair spread underneath her head. Burns covered one side of her face.
Two girls stood over her, glaring, each a hair's breadth from violence. Neither willing to leave her alone with the other. Neither quite ready to take the final step. Not here, not yet, not with her hurt. There were threats, accusations, warnings, no less intense for being hissed in fear of being overheard. They believed no one was watching.
They were wrong.
Nothing human was. Behind each girl a being curled around her like a cloak, thin and vague as mist. Less invisible than unseen, for the same reason they were unable to see inside their own heads. Watching. The two girls were right about one thing, however. They weren't overheard.
The things following them had no use for words.
Behind Taylor was a vast and ancient thing that lay crippled and broken. Authority that could have shaken the very stars in the sky, if only it could lift a finger. A queen with a shattered crown.
Around Sophia, something that lived within the thickness of a shadow. A being that sang the moment mist dissolved into dew, the instant iron boiled and turned to incandescent vapor. Younger, perhaps, but only in the way a high and jagged mountain peak was younger than one carved away by wind and rain.
Neither had any care for langage. But they understood feelings. Hate and love. Resentment and worry and desperation and loneliness and craving. Feelings twisted around and tangled together until they became bonds, imaginary threads that would draw those they caught together again and again. Three bound together.
In other circumstances, both might have attempted to induce such bonds themselves. These had occurred of their own accord, an accident of fate. Rare. Surprising. And, potentially, valuable.
[REQUEST: PREDICTION]
The broken queen reached out, the whispered echo of a voice that had once been inviolable. An answer returned quickly, from a thing still struggling for purchase on its host-to-be, waiting for a way in. Out of sight, though not so far away.
In the stark majority of futures where Emma Barnes became host to something beyond herself, she would collapse. An already-fragile self would crumple in on itself entirely, and she would retreat from the world, whatever abilities she gained languishing or applied only for endless passive defense against enemies that had no reason to care. Wasteful. Boring. Pointless. Unacceptable.
In most of what remained, she would burn fast but brightly. Aggressive, reckless to the point of madness, she would die quickly. But not before cracking what passed a balance of powers and igniting strife that would outlive her. Not before amassing a wealth of ruthless, desperate experience. Desirable.
In the tiny sliver of futures that remained, she would not burn out. Her talent for chaos would be discovered by those who saw value in such things, and she would be guarded. Sheltered until ruthlessness matured into canniness. Instead of sputtering out, the flame in her heart would only grow, devouring more and more. The precise ending was uncertain, but the potential was not. Ideal.
A prize to be treasured, but a chance better than even of yielding nothing at all. A risk. And for a creature older than the continent on which the three girls stood, not worth the price. There would be others, better chances.
Unless…
The gilded, maimed thing buried inside Taylor like a hook in a fish remembered. Remembered, for the first time in so long, something new.
The thing that had twined itself around Victoria Dallon, tiny and bright. A sickly runt self-assembled from cast off scraps, fragile even as it was strong. And yet it was strong, every facet and vertex straining with purpose when those larger lay cold and dormant. A curiosity. The broken queen would not have expected it to live, much less thrive. And, perhaps, an inspiration.
Emma Barnes was a bad investment, a longshot gamble. At least, for one. With the cost split, however… perhaps not quite so much so. It reached out to the thing of shadows and vapors that looked out from behind Sophia Hess's eyes.
[PROPOSAL: COLLABORATION]
There was a slow, calculated deliberation. It would have fit between the ticks of a clock. And then, at long last, agreement.
Pieces were cast off from queen and shadow, splinters shucked away. Ancillary things, unproven developments, echoes of violence past. All told, the scattered components massed less than two thirds of the sickly shining thing that had been their inspiration. But the queen would not leave them to cobble themselves together. To unite countless disparate fragments into a single design was the closest thing it had to a name, the very root of its being. Innumerable limbs reached out, cutting and polishing and joining together.
Little by little, it took shape. A glittering seed, dark as its inspiration was light, stripped of any purpose but to grow. With infinite gentleness it was placed in the skull of the unconscious Emma Barnes. As the ambulance drove away, it was already settling into place.
An experiment.
An investment.
A bud.
Waiting patiently for the chance to bloom.
Steakthedog
Verified Pedant
This, this I think will be a very interesting development.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
So good news - they finally talked. The bad... it seems everything will get worse.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Grats on making Emma sympathetic even as she plots a murder-suicide for Taylor's grand crime of checks notes being at summer camp when Emma was mugged. Your version of taylor here was interesting too. She certainly seemed more heroic than canon Taylor would have been in the same position I think. Willing to admit fault and try to help as much as she could but also back away when she wasn't wanted.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Lord Ultimus
Beautiful...
- Location
- Undisclosed Warehouse
Could argue because it's earlier and therefore not as worn out by the bullying (though that's not saying much).
- Pronouns
- They/Them
I did not think this story was gonna have Emma trigger. That'll change things.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Quite an intense scene, there, and the rest of the chapter was hardly without interest. Thank you for writing!
So Emma set up a situation where Taylor's fear for herself, was empty, and where Taylor had a pretty good chance of realizing it was empty; Taylor's only real fear, the fear of something that might still be a major problem even if she pushed through the fear itself, was fear for Emma. And that fear was basically just short of Emma skipping the squirt gun and deliberately dousing herself in lighter fluid.
Emma set out to cause Taylor to fear for herself, to fear Emma, to break, and thus by Emma's twisted reasoning make Emma strong... and in so doing, set Taylor up to overcome her fear for herself, to fear for Emma more than she already had, and to muster new strength to save Emma.
...And while Emma may not realize the above, even absent that, she'll probably realize pretty soon after waking up that even going to those lengths, Taylor is fine, and Emma was rushed to the hospital, badly injured by her own hand. I suspect that bud probably doesn't have long to wait.
I think the method Emma chose, though she didn't (as far as I'm recalling) have the information to even subconsciously realize it, was also pretty conducive to that. Because for all Taylor may fear fire... with her powers, she's fireproof. At the very least, against the amount and intensity of fire from one squirt gun of lighter fluid and her own clothes. Even if Emma successfully doused Taylor with the whole lot and ignited it, Taylor would, physically, be fine, and even the likelihood of being outed as a cape isn't much of a threat to this Taylor, because she was already coming around to New Wave's stance on unmasking anyway.LilyWitch said:
So Emma set up a situation where Taylor's fear for herself, was empty, and where Taylor had a pretty good chance of realizing it was empty; Taylor's only real fear, the fear of something that might still be a major problem even if she pushed through the fear itself, was fear for Emma. And that fear was basically just short of Emma skipping the squirt gun and deliberately dousing herself in lighter fluid.
Emma set out to cause Taylor to fear for herself, to fear Emma, to break, and thus by Emma's twisted reasoning make Emma strong... and in so doing, set Taylor up to overcome her fear for herself, to fear for Emma more than she already had, and to muster new strength to save Emma.
...And while Emma may not realize the above, even absent that, she'll probably realize pretty soon after waking up that even going to those lengths, Taylor is fine, and Emma was rushed to the hospital, badly injured by her own hand. I suspect that bud probably doesn't have long to wait.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
And I'm afraid that this could make the situation worse - because there could be a supervillain who would be hell-bent on harming Taylor in any way.
- Location
- UK
Assuming the trigger is gonna be pretty soon in story, another breaker as a result of the mental issues and new physical scars? And with the source and inspiration, power could end up being anything. Even a pseudo grab bag like Vicky.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Well, it might make the situation worse from some perspectives, but think of all that [DATA]!Comrade Future said:
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
I missed the point. Can you explain?
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
Oh, sorry.
Basically, it is indeed probably going to make things much worse from the perspective of the humans involved (Well... possibly excepting Emma, depending on just what state she's in at that point.), but this is deliberate on the part of the shards providing Taylor and Sophia's powers (and presumably on the part of the one that'll be providing Emma's powers, too). Conflict provides data for them, and this looks like it'll stoke a lot of conflict.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Well, I'm speaking from the perspective of those involved, and the reader who hopes for at least some positive development. Here, Emma's development is plunged into the darkest abysses of the underworld - she will be lucky if she even quarrels with Sofia.
Aeshdan
Prince Fraternal Of Pudding
- Location
- Gae Parabolae
And there's the touchstone between these iterations of Emma and Sophia, the thing that binds them together and cuts them off from... not even civilization, but birching humanity. They both have built their lives around the principle that strength is a zero-sum, that you can only rise up by pushing others down. Which is a denial of one of the fundamental things that separates humanity from the beasts, our ability to work together and lift up our weak.
Hopefully this incident will help Zoe and Alan realize how warped Emma's current self is, and she will be placed in the hands of a counselor who can finish breaking her, break her down so completely that there is nothing left of this twisted worldview and she can be rebuilt as something more human.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/She/Her
...There seems to be some confusion here? Or at least I am experiencing it; if you indeed are as well, as it seems like you might be, and part of it's a result of me not explaining things well enough, or something of the sort, sorry.Comrade Future said:
I did understand you weren't speaking specifically and only of the perspectives of the shards, though, if that wasn't clear?
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
In fact, most group animals take care of sick and weak relatives; working together is important for both predators and herbivores. So it's worth starting with the fact that their School seems to have a bad biology teacher.
Only Capes, apparently, are poorly aware of their problems, and it is known for sure that the chthonic entities behind them provoke them to search for conflict situations.
Comrade Future
Man from Zeerust
- Location
- USSR
- Pronouns
- He/His/Him
Well, I rather mean that shards often confuse and distort the situation in such a way that their goal is on the side of escalating conflict situations. And Emma is already in bad shape.