I suppose that, strictly speaking, I wasn't actually checking to see if Sophia was okay. She wasn't. There was no possible way she could be.
Last I'd seen her, half an hour ago at a very generous most, she'd not only been kidnapped by a supervillain, she'd been kidnapped by the same supervillain who'd (presumably) kidnapped her before, and who had messed with her mind so badly she was basically an entirely different person for years.
And it could very easily have been permanent, and she knew that, and there was no guarantee the person who'd accidentally fixed it would be around to break it if he did it again, because said person had also been kidnapped by said supervillain.
And Sophia had been so heavily restrained it was frankly ludicrous, with a noose made of christmas lights wrapped around her pretty neck, probably running too hot to touch comfortably let alone wear, and she'd been forced to read out the demands of her supervillainous captor to said other captive, someone who Sophia, at the risk of being immodest, I think considered a friend. Or at least as close to one as she had, after everything Coil had done to her before.
So no, she was not okay. Even if she'd been teleported right to a physical incarnation of her "happy place" the very instant I'd stopped paying attention to the video call, it would be a long time before she would be. And, even though I was more than a little not okay myself, I knew it.
I was checking to see if she was still alive. Everything else was secondary to that at best.
In that context, if perhaps not many others, I think you'll understand why I found the sound of her sobbing reassuring when I jostled the tablet out of its sleep.
Corpses don't cry.
It really wasn't the best news in the world, but it was just about the best I was likely to get.
The sight of her bawling her eyes out wasn't exactly pretty, but that she could weep like that was a wonderful thing. It meant she was alive, and conscious, and at least reasonably physically intact. That kind of shuddering takes energy, which meant she had at least some to spare, and the way she sounded required her throat to be at least mostly okay or it would have simply been too painful, or even flat-out impossible. And her tear ducts had to have been in better shape than mine, although I could mostly tell that by the way her face didn't have any major burns or other disfigurations as far as I could tell.
More importantly, the sobbing said something important about Sophia.
Specifically, that said girl was Sophia.
Shadow Stalker didn't cry any more than corpses did. She never showed weakness of any kind. Especially not in the face of a potential enemy. I'd met her all of once, mind you, but everything I'd learned about her agreed.
Shadow Stalker was a hard, harsh, tough, fighting and ambushing machine, and that was it. There was no humanity or softness to the "superhero", only violence and the threat of violence. Everything else was buried, though whether "just" from the rest of the world or even from her conscious mind I don't know.
It was a lousy way to live either way. And an even lousier thing to force upon somebody.
I infinitely preferred this weaker, softer, more human version. Even if Shadow Stalker would probably have been more useful in this particular situation.
And then there was the final reason I was glad to see her crying so hard: it meant her eyes were closed, so she couldn't see my face. As reassuring as I hope, (and indeed hoped, if rather more faintly,) it would have normally been, I doubted seeing that version of it would have helped her mental state any.
Burn victims are disturbing enough to see unexpectedly even when they aren't people you specifically care about. All the more so when the wounds are fresh.
That wasn't the worst thing I'd learned that Sunday, but I would have been happier not discovering it firsthand all the same. I doubted Sophia needed a refresher course.
…
I put my thumb on the camera, just in case. If she insisted on seeing me I'd take it off, she had a right to know, but only if she insisted. And I'd warn her first. It was the considerate thing to do.
The tricky thing was the approach. To this day, or whatever this is, I remain unaware of any parahuman who can let people hug other people through an audio/video connection, even if the other people in question really need hugging.
So my default all-solving-hammer approach was unavailable, and I wasn't exactly in peak condition for figuring out an alternative.
…
Silently glaring at the screen waiting for it to tell me the answer probably wasn't the best approach. Spinning up my aura was comforting, even if that comfort was dulled by shock and trauma, but didn't actually contribute anything to deal with the problem I was facing. So I decided to try good old-fashioned straight-up lying.
"It's okay Sophia, it's going to be okay."
It occurred to me that those were the first actual words I'd spoken since my capture. There were probably some grunts and moans of pain, but those didn't count, and neither did incoherent screaming.
All things considered, I suppose they were pretty good ones. They meant something, even if I didn't actually believe a single word.
The sudden gasp of shock coming from the doorway was less good, but it was better than gunfire. I can't say that Vince's arrival didn't take me by surprise, but he also took himself by surprise, and that gave me time to consider what this looked like from his point of view.
It was a touch unnerving, to say the least.
Coil, like I said, was terrifying. And his employees weren't immune to that, even the hired guns. Maybe especially not the hired guns. They were, after all, the ones most likely to have seen what parahumans, Coil or otherwise, could do, and what Coil was willing to do. Last I'd seen Vince, he was literally shaking in his very nice tactical boots in fear of the man.
And now said man, the one he was so very afraid of, was a brutally mutilated corpse.
That was bound to be something of a shock.
The obvious inference, the one that emotionally made sense, that Vince's instincts would be screaming at him if my understanding of crisis psychology was correct, was that Coil had run into something bigger, badder, and more dangerous than himself. Something savage, something vicious, and something very, very, powerful.
Something, in other words, that Vince didn't stand a chance against.
Like, say, the eerily inhuman cape-child with unknown powers lurking in the corner. Who had the room filled with brass clockwork, ticking and ticking away eerily. The one who'd been handcuffed to a chair arm that was now smashed splinters. The one whose skin shone like the sun's own daughter and whose limbs were soaked in gore.
The one Vince had, not an hour before, taunted with a gun shoved in her pretty little face.
The one whose eyes held neither pupil nor iris as she turned her unblinking gaze upon him.
"Boo."
