Reconciliation 02
- Location
- Florida
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Reconciliation 02
Snapping my journal closed I stepped to Emma's side and grabbed her arm, pulling her with me towards the bathroom. "We'll be right back, Madison! Quick break before shopping!"
As the bathroom door slammed before me, Emma's eyebrows were already lifted, her arms crossed. "I swear you used to be more subtle when we were kids."
"I also used to talk more and had actual friends," I snapped.
Emma winced, ducking her head. "Also true," she murmured.
Holding my diary out to her, I pointed at the new page. "Julia is going to be a problem. Can you deal with this before she talks to Sophia?"
"I thought you left that at home," Emma frowned, taking the journal and scanning the entry.
"I did."
She met my eyes. "Oh. Clingy power? Sophia was always angry that she didn't get the ability to manifest arrows like some capes could do. Miss Militia makes her own ammo with each weapon. Maybe you make a new journal whenever you go into your fugues?"
That didn't…feel right. "I - don't think that's right. We can try experimenting later. Right now, I'm more concerned with the boy-crazy queen-bee wannabe."
Emma sighed. "Julia's not intelligent enough to hold sway for more than a week. She wouldn't get far even if she was able to topple me. Granted, she can do some damage, but I can take care of this."
"How?" I asked, taking back the journal and slipping it into my bag.
"Well, first," she said, pulling out her phone and tapping away, "I reach out to Sophia; mention that you 'finally' showed a spine the other night; I'm curious, and I'm investigating; I'll let her know how it turns out." Before I could do more than open my mouth, Emma was talking again, "I would have preferred a day or two to work on the posse first, but Sophia isn't social so I really doubt it will affect much. This saves us the hassle of playing defensive, if Julia decides to actually reach out to Sophia. She should be busy with her hero stuff anyway today, so getting together with Madison isn't that strange."
"Okayyy." I shook my head. Maybe this was why I was slotted into the role of 'victim' so easily, high school politics just did not make any sense to me. "What about Julia herself?"
"That's a bit harder," Emma said, frowning as she stared at the phone. "The goal is to start getting you accepted by the group. Obviously you're never going to be friends with them, but you don't have to be friendly to get them to stop going after you. I was planning to shift their attention first; that doesn't work anymore. Hmm…maybe…" She smirked and started tapping away again.
"Emma, you have to communicate here. What are you doing?"
"I'm telling Julia that you had a proposal for me and that it was intriguing. I'm implying that it's rather juicy gossip. What I'm actually doing is planting seeds so that when she sees us together at school, I can imply that you grew a spine, it's made you interesting, and I'm seeing how far this change goes."
"Grew a spine?" I snapped. "Because you can't just back off like normal people?"
"Taylor, Sophia and I have been egging on the people in that school on for months," Emma hissed. "Unless you feel like walking onto the grounds and swiping at me with a knife, we're going to have to get a bit creative here!"
"I really don't get how you changed so much, Emma," I muttered, leaning against the sink.
"My father tried to take a shortcut and I listened to the wrong person afterwards," she snapped, the words rushing out almost too fast to distinguish. "You used to stand up to me, Taylor, used to stand up for me. You should have realized that something was wrong, you should have said something, you should have done something, just like my father should have. I'm not -"
She cut off, nearly biting her tongue as her jaw snapped closed. Lowering her phone, she smoothed her blouse and started again, her pace much less frantic and her tone far more controlled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Yes, you did. You're not wrong either," I whispered, squeezing the countertop hard enough to leave my fingers aching. "Are you done?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go. We should get back before Madison starts getting antsy again."
Emma didn't say anything as she followed me back out.
I really hated seeing her as a person again.
\/\/\/\/
We were halfway through the second store and I was three blouses deep into a new wardrobe before Madison finally asked what I had been dreading.
"So," she started, "not that I particularly like rocking the boat, but I figure I've gotten other answers today, so I might as well try. Problems in paradise between you two already?"
I stared at the changing room that Emma had disappeared into, willing it to open and for my…friend…to come and save me. It did not open.
"What are you talking about?" Maybe playing stupid would work.
"You both ran off very quickly before we left Bean Around, and I swear you looked like you'd seen a ghost. Color me curious, Taylor." Then again, maybe it wouldn't work at all.
I sighed, gesturing towards the changing room. "I saw Julia staring at us through the window. I panicked and grabbed Emma to ask her to do something about it before…"
"Before it got back to Sophia? Probably a good idea." She shrugged, pulling out her phone and opened up an app. "Hmm, then again, I doubt you had anything to worry about."
"Why?"
She turned the screen to me. I frowned, reading the status update aloud, "'In a relationship'. Okay, so how does that come into play at all?"
Madison rolled her eyes. "Wow, you really are bad at high school. I don't like any of the people I hang out with, but I know how to understand them and how to play their games. You would do a lot better if you learned how to play too."
"I prefer not speaking 'backstabbing bitch' thanks."
"It's kept me from being the one who was relentlessly bullied."
I raised my eyebrows and held her gaze. After only a few seconds Madison fidgeted, then her hands clenched, then she dropped her eyes to the floor. "I only had to make it through two more years," she murmured.
"Would you have been able to? Even if Emma shifted away from me, you know Sophia would've had her pick a new target. You wouldn't have ever been able to stop being exactly who you hate. Would you have really lasted two more years like that, Madison?" I wasn't even sure myself if I had meant for that to be as barbed or hurtful as it was. Mom probably wouldn't have been proud. She had always said that you shouldn't try to tear down the people around you. It was why she left Lustrum once they had taken a turn for the fanatical - they didn't care about equality, just tearing men down.
"Sometimes you have to blend in to survive," Madison whispered.
"And you'd compromise everything that you liked about yourself just to avoid harassment from some bitches you don't care about? People you don't even like? Are your morals worth that little to you?" I asked.
"I don't know how to fight like a boy. I'm small and delicate and I can't get muscles and I…I can barely even defend myself from a handsy boy; let alone crazy people who think I'm supposed to be supporting them…It's better to fight like a smart girl: be one of the top bitches without being the queen bee or their target. Being on top takes a lot of work to hold steady, being just a lieutenant? That's, well, easy. Morals are great, and I would love to be myself, but, being myself would have made me just as miserable in this school. If I have to choose between being beaten up and standing near the top of the pile…it's hard to remember my morals sometimes…"
Why did they both have to be people? Deprogramming Emma was one thing, stopping Madison from being suicidal was good. Actually feeling bad for either of them? That wasn't supposed to happen. Not this fast at least, not until I had spent more time with them, not until they had proven they could actually be decent people.
Or at least, decent to me.
"Taylor, why didn't you ever fight back?"
I stayed silent, staring at my hands. Biting back the first few replies, I finally managed to speak, "I refused to stoop to that level. I didn't want to be as horrible as she was. And, she was my friend. At some level, I always wanted - always hoped - that she would wake up one day; and she'd be my friend again. I knew that if I stood up to her, I would never, ever see the girl I grew up with again. It would mean that I had given up on her."
Madison was quiet. I didn't know how long we sat there, but the next thing I was sure of was her nudging my shoulder with her own. I didn't look up, but I could hear the soft chuckle in her voice as she spoke. "Guess your patience paid off, huh? Emma did finally figure out what a horrible person she was."
"Yeah, I guess so."
If only I hadn't had to pay such a steep price to get my friend back.
Of course, Emma chose that moment to leave the changing room. She stopped in front of the two of us, doing a small twirl, her chosen skirt flaring. "What do you girls think? I'm partial to the blue one, but this green does contrast nicely with my hair."
"That definitely brings out the red," Madison chirped, her smile back firmly in place.
I could only nod, managing what I hoped was a supportive grin.
"Okay, I think I'll get this one. Taylor, you up for a bit more experimentation? I think you would look fantastic in these slacks I found!"
"That sounds great, Emma."
It was nice to have her back. But…why couldn't I have gotten powers before?
\/\/\/\/
By the time we got back to Emma's house, the car was laden with what seemed like dozens of bags and boxes. I had no idea how we had managed to get so much stuff or how I had lasted so long without screaming. I hadn't enjoyed shopping back before the world went insane and I liked it even less now.
As we finished hauling the packages inside and hanging my new wardrobe up though…I couldn't deny that I was proud of my new clothes. There was an even warmer feeling in my chest knowing that these blouses weren't going to wind up destroyed by juice or soda and that these pants weren't going to have glue permanently messing them up.
Whatever Emma's ultimate plans were for fixing my social status didn't particularly matter. I didn't need to be amongst the In Crowd. I was going to be perfectly happy just not being a target anymore.
"So, I talked to my Dad," Emma said, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it. "He called and said that he should have a lot of the paperwork that you need filled out sometime tomorrow. He's also got the funeral arrangements setup for Monday as well. We are missing school, but I already talked to Madison before we left the mall; she's planting the seeds for when we return."
I just nodded, trying to blink away the sheen over my eyes and steadfastly continuing to arrange the clothes that I had already arranged.
"He said that he got you an appointment with your shrink for tomorrow afternoon. I, uh…I might have asked to get onto that schedule as well."
My head snapped to her, eyes wide. "What?"
"Daddy thinks it's because of Uncle Danny…It's…I don't understand why I listened to Sophia instead of going to you, Taylor. I don't…a large part of me still thinks she's right - that her way of looking at things is smarter, safer. That's…I'm - I don't want to forget why I was friends with you, not again. I don't want to be the monster that she is - that I was just a few days ago. I'm - I'm still that monster, I'm just serving a new master. I don't want to keep doing that."
"That's…surprisingly mature, Emma," I said. Moving to sit down on the bed, I watched as she clenched her fists in her skirt, her shoulders slumping. The contrast from when we were out with Madison was striking.
"Look at me, Taylor. I deflected Mads without a second thought. I was Queen of the Hill when dealing with the Julia problem. And now I'm just like last night, barely able to string two words together without crumbling. This isn't - I can't keep going like this. Not if I want to keep pretending that I'm better than the girl who would leave a kid behind in an alley without a second thought."
I still doubted that was the full story when it came to Sophia, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Emma wanted to believe that a single snapshot showed everything about a person, I wasn't going to say anything; not if she was going to get therapy because of it. Sophia deserved to be treated like a one-note bitch anyway. I could've died when she shoulder checked me down the stairs! Screw Sophia, she would be the villain of my story. She'd already cast herself in that role.
"Emma, I can see that you're really trying to get better. I'll do what I can to help."
She looked up, meeting my gaze, her own eyes glistening. "I don't deserve you. You should be kicking me to the curb."
No, I couldn't do that. Then I wouldn't have anyone. I may not exactly trust her, but as long as Emma didn't betray me again, I could work with her and help her to fix herself. Dr. Klint had helped drag me out of my depression after Mom died, maybe he could actually do something to help Emma too.
I shook my head and forced a smile that was almost genuine. "Come sit down, Emma. Let's try to figure out exactly what I can do. Maybe it'll take our minds off of things and if I'm going to be a cape - even a shadowy one - I should figure out how my power works."
Emma wiped at her eyes and scampered to the bed, climbing up beside me. "Okay, yeah, that's a good idea. So, to start with, the journal. Have you checked to see if there is a second one now?"
I pulled out the copy from my bag, running my hand down the spine and held it out for her to look at. "Just the one. I had left it inside with my duffel bag, it was gone when we got back. Only the copy that I brought back from the mall is still here."
"So maybe I was right and it is a clingy power, just a clingy power that you can summon instead of making a new copy of?"
I touched a scratch down on the back cover that had been left there from when Mom owned it. "I…think that's more likely than anything else at this point."
"That's really useful. Do you think it means that you can only use the journal to do your omniscience thing? Like it's a focusing lens or something?"
I shrugged. "No idea. I didn't even know that I was writing anything at the mall until Madison mentioned it. I didn't even realize I had the journal with me!" Frowning, I flipped it open and ran my fingers down the text. "Also, it's not omniscience. This is more like post-cognitive information than anything else."
"I mean, maybe. That idea works for Sophia and maybe Julia and Madison if you go by a really strict sense of post-cog - like 30 seconds in the past, strict. But what about that first entry? That's post-cog, but it's not any perspective I can understand."
I flipped to the first entry for 'Memory'. "Emma, how much of this did you actually read?"
"Well I just skimmed it," she muttered. "I was a bit more interested in the part that had 'Sophia Hess' in big bold letters."
"Read it again." Handing her the journal, I waited for Emma to finish going over that first entry. Her eyes slowly widened and her breathing increased. Finally she jerked her head up to stare at me.
"Taylor…"
"Yeah."
"What the fuck?"
"Yeah."
"Is this -?"
"I think so."
"We need to tell someone."
I fell back onto the bed, my arms splayed, a grunt escaping from me. "Who are we supposed to tell, Emma? If we mention to anyone that my power can have me write about itself choosing me to be its 'host' then they are going to either think that I'm insane or they are going to want to see what else I can write about. If that happens, then there goes every potential plan of staying quiet and behind the scenes. I think we both know that the PRT would basically force me into the Wards if they got that hint."
"Not to mention that you can unmask capes without even thinking about it," Emma murmured. "Sophia was always pretty clear that that particular bridge isn't something that should be crossed if you want your family to stay safe."
"So again, who are we supposed to tell, Emma?"
"Okay, okay, you have a point," she said. "Still, this is important, Taylor! This thing implies that your power is smart. And if your power is smart then other powers are smart too!"
"And they're apparently aliens."
"What?"
"'Collision with the planet' implies it, how can you collide with something you live on? No, my power is part of an alien, a 'shard' of one. I have a parasitic alien in my head that lets me see the past and seems to really like the idea of 'love'. Tell me Emma," I stated, shifting so I could stare straight into her eyes, "how am I supposed to respond to that?"
She was silent for a long time. Finally, a small smile cracked across her lips and she poked my side. "Well, at least it isn't obsessed with something like anger or rage."
I blinked. Then I started to chuckle. Emma's giggles joined me a second later. We were both laughing hard enough to hold our sides within moments.
"I - have a power - that is - obsessed with - Lifetime movies!" I gasped out.
"We should - have a marathon - of romance flicks! Give it - some good - material!" Emma said around her own laughter.
After what felt like forever, our manic chuckles slowed and stopped. Emma was lying on the bed next to me, both of us staring up at the ceiling.
"Emma," I whispered.
"Yeah?"
"I'm scared."
"Me too, Taylor."
Capes were linked to aliens. Aliens with at least some sort of personality. At least one of them wanted to kill their cape. Mine liked different versions of love, which could be far worse, and it seemed to want to…help me and help the city.
Well. I could work with that.
Snapping my journal closed I stepped to Emma's side and grabbed her arm, pulling her with me towards the bathroom. "We'll be right back, Madison! Quick break before shopping!"
As the bathroom door slammed before me, Emma's eyebrows were already lifted, her arms crossed. "I swear you used to be more subtle when we were kids."
"I also used to talk more and had actual friends," I snapped.
Emma winced, ducking her head. "Also true," she murmured.
Holding my diary out to her, I pointed at the new page. "Julia is going to be a problem. Can you deal with this before she talks to Sophia?"
"I thought you left that at home," Emma frowned, taking the journal and scanning the entry.
"I did."
She met my eyes. "Oh. Clingy power? Sophia was always angry that she didn't get the ability to manifest arrows like some capes could do. Miss Militia makes her own ammo with each weapon. Maybe you make a new journal whenever you go into your fugues?"
That didn't…feel right. "I - don't think that's right. We can try experimenting later. Right now, I'm more concerned with the boy-crazy queen-bee wannabe."
Emma sighed. "Julia's not intelligent enough to hold sway for more than a week. She wouldn't get far even if she was able to topple me. Granted, she can do some damage, but I can take care of this."
"How?" I asked, taking back the journal and slipping it into my bag.
"Well, first," she said, pulling out her phone and tapping away, "I reach out to Sophia; mention that you 'finally' showed a spine the other night; I'm curious, and I'm investigating; I'll let her know how it turns out." Before I could do more than open my mouth, Emma was talking again, "I would have preferred a day or two to work on the posse first, but Sophia isn't social so I really doubt it will affect much. This saves us the hassle of playing defensive, if Julia decides to actually reach out to Sophia. She should be busy with her hero stuff anyway today, so getting together with Madison isn't that strange."
"Okayyy." I shook my head. Maybe this was why I was slotted into the role of 'victim' so easily, high school politics just did not make any sense to me. "What about Julia herself?"
"That's a bit harder," Emma said, frowning as she stared at the phone. "The goal is to start getting you accepted by the group. Obviously you're never going to be friends with them, but you don't have to be friendly to get them to stop going after you. I was planning to shift their attention first; that doesn't work anymore. Hmm…maybe…" She smirked and started tapping away again.
"Emma, you have to communicate here. What are you doing?"
"I'm telling Julia that you had a proposal for me and that it was intriguing. I'm implying that it's rather juicy gossip. What I'm actually doing is planting seeds so that when she sees us together at school, I can imply that you grew a spine, it's made you interesting, and I'm seeing how far this change goes."
"Grew a spine?" I snapped. "Because you can't just back off like normal people?"
"Taylor, Sophia and I have been egging on the people in that school on for months," Emma hissed. "Unless you feel like walking onto the grounds and swiping at me with a knife, we're going to have to get a bit creative here!"
"I really don't get how you changed so much, Emma," I muttered, leaning against the sink.
"My father tried to take a shortcut and I listened to the wrong person afterwards," she snapped, the words rushing out almost too fast to distinguish. "You used to stand up to me, Taylor, used to stand up for me. You should have realized that something was wrong, you should have said something, you should have done something, just like my father should have. I'm not -"
She cut off, nearly biting her tongue as her jaw snapped closed. Lowering her phone, she smoothed her blouse and started again, her pace much less frantic and her tone far more controlled. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."
"Yes, you did. You're not wrong either," I whispered, squeezing the countertop hard enough to leave my fingers aching. "Are you done?"
"Yeah."
"Let's go. We should get back before Madison starts getting antsy again."
Emma didn't say anything as she followed me back out.
I really hated seeing her as a person again.
\/\/\/\/
We were halfway through the second store and I was three blouses deep into a new wardrobe before Madison finally asked what I had been dreading.
"So," she started, "not that I particularly like rocking the boat, but I figure I've gotten other answers today, so I might as well try. Problems in paradise between you two already?"
I stared at the changing room that Emma had disappeared into, willing it to open and for my…friend…to come and save me. It did not open.
"What are you talking about?" Maybe playing stupid would work.
"You both ran off very quickly before we left Bean Around, and I swear you looked like you'd seen a ghost. Color me curious, Taylor." Then again, maybe it wouldn't work at all.
I sighed, gesturing towards the changing room. "I saw Julia staring at us through the window. I panicked and grabbed Emma to ask her to do something about it before…"
"Before it got back to Sophia? Probably a good idea." She shrugged, pulling out her phone and opened up an app. "Hmm, then again, I doubt you had anything to worry about."
"Why?"
She turned the screen to me. I frowned, reading the status update aloud, "'In a relationship'. Okay, so how does that come into play at all?"
Madison rolled her eyes. "Wow, you really are bad at high school. I don't like any of the people I hang out with, but I know how to understand them and how to play their games. You would do a lot better if you learned how to play too."
"I prefer not speaking 'backstabbing bitch' thanks."
"It's kept me from being the one who was relentlessly bullied."
I raised my eyebrows and held her gaze. After only a few seconds Madison fidgeted, then her hands clenched, then she dropped her eyes to the floor. "I only had to make it through two more years," she murmured.
"Would you have been able to? Even if Emma shifted away from me, you know Sophia would've had her pick a new target. You wouldn't have ever been able to stop being exactly who you hate. Would you have really lasted two more years like that, Madison?" I wasn't even sure myself if I had meant for that to be as barbed or hurtful as it was. Mom probably wouldn't have been proud. She had always said that you shouldn't try to tear down the people around you. It was why she left Lustrum once they had taken a turn for the fanatical - they didn't care about equality, just tearing men down.
"Sometimes you have to blend in to survive," Madison whispered.
"And you'd compromise everything that you liked about yourself just to avoid harassment from some bitches you don't care about? People you don't even like? Are your morals worth that little to you?" I asked.
"I don't know how to fight like a boy. I'm small and delicate and I can't get muscles and I…I can barely even defend myself from a handsy boy; let alone crazy people who think I'm supposed to be supporting them…It's better to fight like a smart girl: be one of the top bitches without being the queen bee or their target. Being on top takes a lot of work to hold steady, being just a lieutenant? That's, well, easy. Morals are great, and I would love to be myself, but, being myself would have made me just as miserable in this school. If I have to choose between being beaten up and standing near the top of the pile…it's hard to remember my morals sometimes…"
Why did they both have to be people? Deprogramming Emma was one thing, stopping Madison from being suicidal was good. Actually feeling bad for either of them? That wasn't supposed to happen. Not this fast at least, not until I had spent more time with them, not until they had proven they could actually be decent people.
Or at least, decent to me.
"Taylor, why didn't you ever fight back?"
I stayed silent, staring at my hands. Biting back the first few replies, I finally managed to speak, "I refused to stoop to that level. I didn't want to be as horrible as she was. And, she was my friend. At some level, I always wanted - always hoped - that she would wake up one day; and she'd be my friend again. I knew that if I stood up to her, I would never, ever see the girl I grew up with again. It would mean that I had given up on her."
Madison was quiet. I didn't know how long we sat there, but the next thing I was sure of was her nudging my shoulder with her own. I didn't look up, but I could hear the soft chuckle in her voice as she spoke. "Guess your patience paid off, huh? Emma did finally figure out what a horrible person she was."
"Yeah, I guess so."
If only I hadn't had to pay such a steep price to get my friend back.
Of course, Emma chose that moment to leave the changing room. She stopped in front of the two of us, doing a small twirl, her chosen skirt flaring. "What do you girls think? I'm partial to the blue one, but this green does contrast nicely with my hair."
"That definitely brings out the red," Madison chirped, her smile back firmly in place.
I could only nod, managing what I hoped was a supportive grin.
"Okay, I think I'll get this one. Taylor, you up for a bit more experimentation? I think you would look fantastic in these slacks I found!"
"That sounds great, Emma."
It was nice to have her back. But…why couldn't I have gotten powers before?
\/\/\/\/
By the time we got back to Emma's house, the car was laden with what seemed like dozens of bags and boxes. I had no idea how we had managed to get so much stuff or how I had lasted so long without screaming. I hadn't enjoyed shopping back before the world went insane and I liked it even less now.
As we finished hauling the packages inside and hanging my new wardrobe up though…I couldn't deny that I was proud of my new clothes. There was an even warmer feeling in my chest knowing that these blouses weren't going to wind up destroyed by juice or soda and that these pants weren't going to have glue permanently messing them up.
Whatever Emma's ultimate plans were for fixing my social status didn't particularly matter. I didn't need to be amongst the In Crowd. I was going to be perfectly happy just not being a target anymore.
"So, I talked to my Dad," Emma said, shutting the door behind her and leaning against it. "He called and said that he should have a lot of the paperwork that you need filled out sometime tomorrow. He's also got the funeral arrangements setup for Monday as well. We are missing school, but I already talked to Madison before we left the mall; she's planting the seeds for when we return."
I just nodded, trying to blink away the sheen over my eyes and steadfastly continuing to arrange the clothes that I had already arranged.
"He said that he got you an appointment with your shrink for tomorrow afternoon. I, uh…I might have asked to get onto that schedule as well."
My head snapped to her, eyes wide. "What?"
"Daddy thinks it's because of Uncle Danny…It's…I don't understand why I listened to Sophia instead of going to you, Taylor. I don't…a large part of me still thinks she's right - that her way of looking at things is smarter, safer. That's…I'm - I don't want to forget why I was friends with you, not again. I don't want to be the monster that she is - that I was just a few days ago. I'm - I'm still that monster, I'm just serving a new master. I don't want to keep doing that."
"That's…surprisingly mature, Emma," I said. Moving to sit down on the bed, I watched as she clenched her fists in her skirt, her shoulders slumping. The contrast from when we were out with Madison was striking.
"Look at me, Taylor. I deflected Mads without a second thought. I was Queen of the Hill when dealing with the Julia problem. And now I'm just like last night, barely able to string two words together without crumbling. This isn't - I can't keep going like this. Not if I want to keep pretending that I'm better than the girl who would leave a kid behind in an alley without a second thought."
I still doubted that was the full story when it came to Sophia, but I wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. If Emma wanted to believe that a single snapshot showed everything about a person, I wasn't going to say anything; not if she was going to get therapy because of it. Sophia deserved to be treated like a one-note bitch anyway. I could've died when she shoulder checked me down the stairs! Screw Sophia, she would be the villain of my story. She'd already cast herself in that role.
"Emma, I can see that you're really trying to get better. I'll do what I can to help."
She looked up, meeting my gaze, her own eyes glistening. "I don't deserve you. You should be kicking me to the curb."
No, I couldn't do that. Then I wouldn't have anyone. I may not exactly trust her, but as long as Emma didn't betray me again, I could work with her and help her to fix herself. Dr. Klint had helped drag me out of my depression after Mom died, maybe he could actually do something to help Emma too.
I shook my head and forced a smile that was almost genuine. "Come sit down, Emma. Let's try to figure out exactly what I can do. Maybe it'll take our minds off of things and if I'm going to be a cape - even a shadowy one - I should figure out how my power works."
Emma wiped at her eyes and scampered to the bed, climbing up beside me. "Okay, yeah, that's a good idea. So, to start with, the journal. Have you checked to see if there is a second one now?"
I pulled out the copy from my bag, running my hand down the spine and held it out for her to look at. "Just the one. I had left it inside with my duffel bag, it was gone when we got back. Only the copy that I brought back from the mall is still here."
"So maybe I was right and it is a clingy power, just a clingy power that you can summon instead of making a new copy of?"
I touched a scratch down on the back cover that had been left there from when Mom owned it. "I…think that's more likely than anything else at this point."
"That's really useful. Do you think it means that you can only use the journal to do your omniscience thing? Like it's a focusing lens or something?"
I shrugged. "No idea. I didn't even know that I was writing anything at the mall until Madison mentioned it. I didn't even realize I had the journal with me!" Frowning, I flipped it open and ran my fingers down the text. "Also, it's not omniscience. This is more like post-cognitive information than anything else."
"I mean, maybe. That idea works for Sophia and maybe Julia and Madison if you go by a really strict sense of post-cog - like 30 seconds in the past, strict. But what about that first entry? That's post-cog, but it's not any perspective I can understand."
I flipped to the first entry for 'Memory'. "Emma, how much of this did you actually read?"
"Well I just skimmed it," she muttered. "I was a bit more interested in the part that had 'Sophia Hess' in big bold letters."
"Read it again." Handing her the journal, I waited for Emma to finish going over that first entry. Her eyes slowly widened and her breathing increased. Finally she jerked her head up to stare at me.
"Taylor…"
"Yeah."
"What the fuck?"
"Yeah."
"Is this -?"
"I think so."
"We need to tell someone."
I fell back onto the bed, my arms splayed, a grunt escaping from me. "Who are we supposed to tell, Emma? If we mention to anyone that my power can have me write about itself choosing me to be its 'host' then they are going to either think that I'm insane or they are going to want to see what else I can write about. If that happens, then there goes every potential plan of staying quiet and behind the scenes. I think we both know that the PRT would basically force me into the Wards if they got that hint."
"Not to mention that you can unmask capes without even thinking about it," Emma murmured. "Sophia was always pretty clear that that particular bridge isn't something that should be crossed if you want your family to stay safe."
"So again, who are we supposed to tell, Emma?"
"Okay, okay, you have a point," she said. "Still, this is important, Taylor! This thing implies that your power is smart. And if your power is smart then other powers are smart too!"
"And they're apparently aliens."
"What?"
"'Collision with the planet' implies it, how can you collide with something you live on? No, my power is part of an alien, a 'shard' of one. I have a parasitic alien in my head that lets me see the past and seems to really like the idea of 'love'. Tell me Emma," I stated, shifting so I could stare straight into her eyes, "how am I supposed to respond to that?"
She was silent for a long time. Finally, a small smile cracked across her lips and she poked my side. "Well, at least it isn't obsessed with something like anger or rage."
I blinked. Then I started to chuckle. Emma's giggles joined me a second later. We were both laughing hard enough to hold our sides within moments.
"I - have a power - that is - obsessed with - Lifetime movies!" I gasped out.
"We should - have a marathon - of romance flicks! Give it - some good - material!" Emma said around her own laughter.
After what felt like forever, our manic chuckles slowed and stopped. Emma was lying on the bed next to me, both of us staring up at the ceiling.
"Emma," I whispered.
"Yeah?"
"I'm scared."
"Me too, Taylor."
Capes were linked to aliens. Aliens with at least some sort of personality. At least one of them wanted to kill their cape. Mine liked different versions of love, which could be far worse, and it seemed to want to…help me and help the city.
Well. I could work with that.
