Many thanks to @Technetium43, @fabledFreeboota, @Assembler, @themanwhowas and @Fenrisulfr for betareading.
Many thanks to @MugaSofer for fact checking.
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In a storybook or a movie, the hero kills the villain and then there's… something.
The screen fades to black, or there's a line break, and the scene cuts. We return to the hero later, after they've recovered, after they've collected themselves.
Real life isn't like that.
I stood there for a time, watching Bakuda stain my spear red. Her last gasp of breath came after a few seconds, and for a little longer than that I studied the woman's blood draining out onto the roadway.
In all likelihood, the humid Brockton summer would provide a warm rain in the next few days or weeks. The rain would run down the black asphalt and wash away whatever stain the cleaners didn't get at. The body would be removed by the PRT, and its equipment would be confiscated. I didn't know what they'd do with the corpse itself, in the long run. Would they bury it? Burn it? Toss it into a pile of refuse and leave it to rot?
Regardless of what was done, I had a feeling there wouldn't be much turnout at the funeral. I wondered how many people even knew her name—her real name, the name of the woman whose dead eyes were staring up at me now, not the name of the red-eyed demon who had terrorized the city. Probably a few, who had known the student who had held Cornell hostage. I wondered how many would care she was gone.
But she had taken my friends, my comfort, and—some would argue—whatever innocence I had regarding death.
No. No one will remember you, Bakuda—except me.
I looked up at the rising cloud of smoke from the site of her garage. My friends' grave. With a heave I drew Aeglos out of the corpse and felt around for a handkerchief or other cloth. I found a small white one in my back pocket and wiped down the spear's point with it, clearing away the gore.
I should carry a proper cloth, I thought. Then I realized the implications. Bile rose in my throat, but I forced it down with a deep breath, in and out. I lowered Aeglos to my side, stepped over Bakuda's corpse, and began walking.
The streets were totally empty. No one moved in any of the houses or businesses. The streetlamps and windows were all still dark—and dark they would remain.
I raised Vilya, and the blue light of the Ring of Air shone around, illuminating the dark streets. "Shadow Stalker!" I called. "Shadow Stalker, where are you?"
"Here!" Her hoarse voice reached me from an alleyway, about a block ahead of me and to my right. I ran for her. Sophia was sitting slumped against the wall, one hand cradling her side. Her chest rose and fell visibly with each labored breath. Her eyes, glittering darkly under her mask, sought mine.
"Taylor," she whispered. "You're okay."
"Yes," I said, coming towards her. "I'm fine."
"Is Bakuda—?"
"Dead."
"Good." Sophia's voice was raw. Her eyes closed under her mask. Her breathing grew a little easier, a little less raspy, as the tension drained from her shoulders.
Aeglos clattered to the ground. On an impulse, I took her into my arms, holding her tightly.
"Ah!" She gave a pained exclamation, tensing, and I loosened my grip. Before I could let go, though, she relaxed and hugged me back. I wasn't sure who was comforting whom. "Sorry," she whispered. "I hit my ribs. Cracked, I think."
"I'm so sorry," I said, my voice breaking as I held her gingerly and buried my face in her shoulder. "I'm sorry for everything."
"It's not your fault," she said, gently stroking my hair where it emerged from my helmet. "It's Bakuda's, and you got her."
"You shouldn't have even been out there. We should have contacted the Protectorate, gotten support from the PRT,
something. I was cocky and you—
they—paid for it."
"We were all right there with you," said Sophia, putting a hand on my shoulder. "We all wanted to take her down, we all knew everyone else was busy. We're
soldiers."
"We're not supposed to be!" I said, my voice rising hysterically. "And you
weren't, until I arrived! The Wards were supposed to be a safe place to train, and I ruined that!"
"I never wanted a safe place to train," Sophia growled. "None of us did, really, not deep down. We're
capes—we're
survivors. We—what's the word?—we
revel in conflict, in struggle. We
thrive in it. Anyone who thinks we want to be coddled is kidding themselves. You
know this—don't chicken out on me now."
"
Chicken out?" I hissed, glaring at her through damp eyes. "I just got most of my friends killed!"
"People die in fights!" she roared, squeezing my shoulder almost painfully. "People fucking die anyway! At least they died
doing something! At least they went down fighting!" She took a deep breath and exhaled; her grip loosened. She seemed to shrink, the energy and vehemence leaving her. "It's how they'd have wanted to go. It's how
I want to go."
I watched her as her eyes closed. Her head fell back against the wall softly.
"You're exhausted," I said.
She nodded wordlessly.
"Can you walk?"
"I might need to lean on you."
"That's fine. Let's get you back to base."
"No." She shook her head. "No, I—I want to go to the garage. I want to… to find them. I don't want you to do it alone."
"I wouldn't do it alone," I told her. "I'd call the PRT, get help."
"Liar," she said, a smile in her voice. She was right, of course.
I considered her. "Fine," I said. "Come on."
I helped her up. She got to her feet gingerly, as though she wasn't sure they'd hold her weight, but they did—with a little help, and a steadying hand over my shoulders. I held her up with one arm while steadying myself with the other, using Aeglos as a walking stick.
We moved through the streets slowly, like competitors at the end of a three-legged race. The star that was Vilya illuminated our path towards the great mess of rubble and debris where our teammates lay buried.
"Aegis probably survived," Sophia said as we walked, between deep breaths. "Might be crippled, but he's hard to kill. Glory Girl, too."
"Glory Girl's invincibility was weird," I said. "Not sure it works as advertised."
"Still. Worth hoping."
I sighed. "Yeah, it's worth hoping." And it was true—Aegis had probably survived. Unless he'd suffocated in the rubble, he'd probably be breathing when we dug him out. Missing arms and legs, gored and crushed to a pulp—but breathing.
We reached the rubble after only a couple minutes of walking. Too soon. I wasn't ready to find Aegis, to face him and own up to the fact that I was responsible for the loss of his team.
We turned a corner and stared at the massive, ruined pile of stone and masonry before us. Water sprayed up in a couple of places where pipelines had broken, and a fire glimmered red at one ruined street corner.
"Annatar?" Kid Win blinked at us. His visor was gone; his face exposed. Several parts of his armor were lying beside him on the ground, their indicator lights dull. "Shadow Stalker?"
Beside him, Aegis whipped around to look at us. His eyes were wild, and his right arm was completely missing slightly above the elbow, with only a crushed and torn stump left. The bleeding had stopped, and with the help of Laureya, glimmering on his left finger, the flesh was slowly creeping back down to where it had reached before. "You're okay," he said, some tension bleeding out of his frame.
"What's going on?" Sophia asked immediately. I just stared, my mouth opening and closing soundlessly.
They were alive.
Aegis was kneeling in a lower part of the mess of rubble. Kid Win had a large block of masonry in his hands, and his hoverboard lay beside him, inert. A single chemical light still glowed in his suit, casting a strange, ghostly beam before him which shone into my eyes.
Aegis gritted his teeth. "The others are still buried down there," he said. "I sent out an SOS with one of Kid Win's flares when I realized the radios were down."
I twitched. "Are they alive?"
"I don't
know," he said, his voice raw, reaching down to pull aside another block of stone. "Shielder and Laserdream protected us from the worst of the blast, but their forcefields collapsed when the building came down on top of us. I dug my way out with my power's help, and Kid Win's hoverboard was able to get him and Vista mostly out of the line of fire before the blast, but I don't know about any of the others."
"Vista's okay?" I asked, looked at Kid Win.
"She's alive." He grimaced.
"What's that supposed to mean?" My voice was getting frantic.
"This."
I turned. Vista was leaning against a wall, fixing me with a steady stare through one green eye. The other was gone entirely, leaving a gaping mess of gore and blood in its place.
"Oh, fuck," Sophia whispered beside me. I, for one, was speechless.
"Took a hit from debris," she said, her voice calm, but still thick with exhaustion. "Lucky it wasn't worse. Kid Win had a tinkertech painkiller, and Aegis slowed the bleeding, so I'm lucid, but I still can't do much."
"You're alive, at least," said Sophia, her voice a low murmur. She glanced at me. "Look, I've had enough talking. I'm going to go down there, see whether I can find any of the others."
"Are you okay to go shadow form?" I asked.
She gave me a frail grin. "I'll be fine, Annatar. My old powers don't take a lot."
"Fortunately, my Geiger counter's still working," Kid Win said, holding up a small ticking device.
Ticking.
I staggered back, but he shook his head. "No, no, don't worry!" he exclaimed. "That's just ambient—background radiation. The bomb wasn't nuclear. We're good to dig and search."
But if it was, I'd have just killed Sophia. Again.
I touched her arm to steady myself and came forward. "Okay," I said after a couple of deep breaths. "Okay. Let's get to it, then."
Sophia nodded, touching my hand with hers comfortingly—a fleeting thing, like a brush of wind. "Thanks, Kid," she said. "Dunno if radiation would kill me in shadow form. Don't want to find out. I'll be back." With that, she dissipated into a dark mist and sank down into the crumbled earth.
I glanced back at Vista, wincing at the sight of her ruined face. "Are you sure you're—"
"I'll be fine." Her tone brooked no argument. "Get the others
out. I'll get them to the hospital once you do. I should be recovered enough to use my powers by then."
I nodded, pulled out my Jewelry Box and swapped Rings. Narya shone red. "Okay," I said, setting Aeglos down at the edge of the rubble. "Let's get to work."
I started to dig, hefting one piece of fallen building at a time and tossing it off of the pile. Aegis and Kid Win joined me. Bit by bit, we worked our way down. We dug through masonry and stone, through rebar lodged in concrete, through twisted metal plates reforged by the heat of the blast into strange shapes, twisted into helixes or blooming iron flowers.
After about five minutes, Sophia returned from below. "I found them. Clockblocker's alive and seems to be okay. He froze his costume to keep himself safe, and he's definitely breathing. Shielder's alive and only cut up. Laserdream and Glory Girl are both alive, but they're… not so well off. And I couldn't tell whether Gallant was breathing under his armor."
"Gallant's alive," Vista said immediately. "I'd know if he was dead."
"How?" Aegis asked. "I know you—"
"We have paired Rings," she said quietly. "The Dusk would know if the Dawn had died. He's alive."
"Then he's injured," said Sophia, her voice even, "and may not be for long. His backplate's fractured, and some of the pieces are digging into him."
I closed my eyes. "We'll get to them in time," I said. "We have to."
The night went on, and we dug. Slowly, the city lit up around us with chemical lighting; torches, flares, and the like cast flickering glows on street corners and in residences, but more than light, they cast deep, long shadows in the places they didn't reach.
We were soon joined by PRT personnel, then by New Wave and the Protectorate. The capes looked bedraggled and tired, sickened by battle and beaten by failure. Lung, I guessed, had not been recaptured.
"Annatar," said Armsmaster through gritted teeth when he arrived.
I stood up and turned to face him. "I fucked up," I said, spreading my hands out to my sides, opening myself up. "I
know that, Armsmaster. But we need to get the others out of here first. I'll take whatever punishment you want me to,
after we've got them out."
He considered me, a frown on what of his face I could see, then nodded once. "Okay. Let's get to work."
Browbeat was with him. He didn't try to speak to me; just gently laid a hand on my arm before going to talk quietly with Aegis as he joined in the effort.
Armsmaster's armor was still working, and the lights in his chest and helmet lit the street well enough to see, even for those of us unenhanced by Rings of Power. With the addition of that, his halberd's ability to cleave through the larger rocks, and an orb of light in Brandish's hand—not to mention the pale glow of my armor—we made faster work of the pile.
Even so, however, the labor was monotonous. There's little to tell of that night. Again and again I returned to the pile, bundled up a handful of rubble, and moved away, putting it aside, away from the mess. With each step, and each load, thoughts swirled maddeningly inside my skull—thoughts of shame, and guilt, and horror. There was little conversation, and what there was was shared in low voices, as if everyone was afraid to disturb the rubble by speaking too loudly.
It reminded me of my mother's funeral.
Sophia allowed me my silence, but she stayed at my shoulder throughout the night, a comforting presence, steadfast in her loyalty. Whenever my guilt threatened to overcome me, she knew; she would rest a hand on my arm or draw me close in a one-armed hug for just a moment to bring my back from the brink.
Bodies started to emerge. Some dead; ABB men the Wards had fought on their way through the building, crushed and brutalized by their leader's last gambit. With each removed fragment of debris came a new question—was that a hand, or just an odd piece of rubble? Was that piece of fabric from a costume, or a curtain? Was that a puddle of dark red blood, or just water from a broken pipe, darkened by the deep night?
And, worst of all—when I finally found my friends, would they have survived my mistake only to die to my slowness?
I didn't rest often. I excused myself once to swap Rings to Nenya and from that point on I was unbowed, digging away at the rubble determinedly. But I still wasn't fast. The work was still slow, taking hours on end of unceasing, seemingly useless toil.
It got more wet as we went deeper, too. Soon we were picking through sludge and mud as much as through solid rubble. The water from the broken piping had seeped into the ground, flowing back into the earth unabated.
We moved gingerly, careful not to dislodge the debris under us for fear of crushing any survivors. Aegis was particularly helpful here, since he could fly up and move quickly without disturbing the ground he walked on. The other Wards and the Protectorate heroes were all trained in search and rescue, and with the help of Nenya I was able to follow their lead without much trouble. In one near miss, Assault slipped on a loose block of concrete and caused a slide of rubble and debris which revealed our first surviving ally—Glory Girl.
One of her legs was broken where it had been wedged between two large rocks, and there were several small fragments embedded in her belly and torso. Blood had stained all over her costume from the inside, and she looked unpleasantly pale in the dark night, but she was breathing with a faint rasp. Brandish had excused herself from the effort then, and taken her to see Panacea, who was currently busy at the hospital.
About an hour later, after sifting through yet more sludge and debris, we found Gallant, curled among large stones. A piece of rubble had dug deep into the back of his armor, fracturing the metal and staying embedded into his upper back and ribs. We handled him gingerly, especially once Miss Militia said a couple of his vertebrae were almost certainly broken.
He was alive, and Vista and Kid Win together took him to the Dallons for treatment, slipping through space with their wounded teammate in Kid Win's arms, Vista's hand resting on his shoulder. With luck, Panacea would be willing to treat him—and Vista, too.
One by one, the others emerged. Laserdream came next, splayed out as on a bed, her hands and one foot all crushed by heavy chunks of concrete and a sharp wooden splinter embedded a few inches into her belly like a dagger. She was breathing shallowly, and her eyes, though open, were filmed over with delirium and fever. Manpower took her to the hospital immediately, looking worried.
Clockblocker stood perfectly still and upright, unaffected by the explosion. His power deactivated once we'd freed his head.
"What happened?" he asked. "How long did the timestop last?"
"Not long," I assured him. "You were out for only a few minutes before the blast."
"And Bakuda?"
"Dead," said Armsmaster shortly.
"Good," said the Ward, a vicious satisfaction in his voice, and began helping us to free him.
Shielder came last. At first he seemed only cosmetically injured; his side was scored by rough stones and a couple of his ribs were cracked, but his worst injury was the concussion that had left him unconscious. Lady Photon took him, looking grim.
With each of my friends that emerged, and with each New Wave cape I'd put into the line of fire, I made it a point to commit the moment to memory. I took note of the wounds—almost clinical, for now, since I still had to focus. But I would never forget it. I refused to forget this long night, where I stared my own failure in the face and had to do my best to overcome.
After that, we left the work to the emergency services. Dawn was already peeking into the eastern sky, the faint gold of the sun glimmering over the sea.
We had survived—barely. My failure had, whether by luck or act of God, been punished only lightly. The worst I would face was the worst Piggot and Armsmaster could do. Compared to the loss of every friend I had in the world, that was nothing.
The twinkling stars gave way to the dawn as the sun rose over us. The city of Brockton Bay was silent. Not a single car engine stirred in the streets. It was a relief on the rare occasions when we passed a residence where a child cried or where someone peered out a window at our procession. It reminded me that the city wasn't dead.
As the stars faded and night passed into day, and as the rising sun bathed the East in light, I made myself a simple, solemn promise.
Never again.
End Arc 4: Sheen
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