Many thanks to @BeaconHill, @Assembler, ShadowStepper1300, and @fabledFreeboota for betareading.
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Colin felt oddly naked as he trudged up the road. The afternoon sun beat down, bright and unwelcome, on his pale exposed skin. He'd stashed his armor and bike in an abandoned house for the moment, which he'd locked up with tinkertech. It wouldn't do to walk around wearing it right now.
He'd called Chief Director Costa-Brown, but hadn't gotten an answer. He'd left a message and fired off an email, but hadn't heard back yet. The same had happened when he'd tried to contact Legend. It was enough to worry him, but for now, there was nothing to do but go to ground.
He glanced back over his shoulder, to the east. The sea glittered in the sunlight, and the Rig rose over the city like a castle spire, tall and imposing. His eyes lingered on it for a moment. His thoughts turned to his workshop, and to the woman who would, by now, have found it empty.
I'm sorry, Dragon. I'll be back.
He nervously patted the radio on his belt. She hadn't called, and it was starting to worry him. He knew she couldn't quit the way he had—the world needed her—but still, he'd hoped to hear her voice. God knows he could use some advice right about now.
Then he turned, adjusted the duffel bag on his back, and went on.
He had been a Protectorate hero for almost as long as he'd been a cape. There had been no question about what he'd do with his powers, once he realized what the interwoven designs popping into his head were. He'd never really understood how anyone could do otherwise. How could someone choose villainy, or the life of a rogue, when heroism was
right there?
I think I'm starting to understand now.
The PRT had set up a quarantine by the time he arrived, but it was unmanned—little more than yellow tape stretching around the house, yard, and a bit of the street. He ducked under it and looked around.
The house was nothing really special. A two-story rowhouse, no different from all the others around it. The parts of the yard that weren't burned were unkempt and overgrown. There were the remnants of once-tended flowerbeds under each of the first-floor windows. The brickwork around the little enclosures was crumbling and loose, now.
The blast radius was clearly visible. It reached out from a central point, almost perfectly circular, darkening as it went inward until the center was black as night. The wooden door was well inside that radius, and had been badly charred and left barely hanging by half-melted hinges. Strips of plywood had been hastily nailed in place over the entrance—a half-measure to deter looters.
He stood at the center of the blast, ground zero, and knelt. His fingers brushed at the stone of the path and came away black with soot. This was where Annatar had lain when she second-triggered. Shutdown had attacked the Wards from the window above, and then the PRT officers had foamed them.
It was tempting to say that this was where it had started. For a moment, as he looked down at the dark scar left by the explosion, he was almost able to convince himself it was true.
Then he looked up again, and saw the moldering flowerbeds, and knew better.
How the fuck
did you miss something like that? Do you not bother with any
kind of oversight? When a girl got shoved into her locker at your Ward's school
, did you not even bother to look?
He stood up, cracking his neck. With a heave, he pulled apart the higher of the two plywood strips. Before he could hesitate any longer, he pushed open the door and went inside, stepping over the other board.
Inside was a hallway, with a wide opening into a living room on the right. It looked comfortable, furnished with couches, armchairs, and an outdated television, but by the dust on the coffee table and the stains on the carpet, it had not hosted guests or even been properly cleaned in years.
He was tempted to keep exploring, but the stairs were visible from here, and he had a feeling he should be upstairs.
The boards creaked under his feet as he started to climb. He tried to keep as quiet as possible, but after only a few steps, he gave it up as a lost cause.
There were two bedrooms on the upper floor. One door was open—the master bedroom. It was disheveled, with an unmade bed, and a few scattered articles of clothing lying scattered around the room.
The other door was closed. He stopped in front of it, raised his fist, and knocked.
There was no answer. For a moment, he wondered if he was wrong.
"Shadow Stalker," he said, and was surprised at how hoarse his voice was. "It's Armsmaster."
Silence answered him. It stretched for almost twenty seconds, and then a voice came from within.
"Come to take me in?" Shadow Stalker asked from inside. Her voice was quiet, little more than a broken whisper.
"No." He opened the door.
Shadow Stalker lay spread-eagled, in jeans and a t-shirt, on the twin bed in one corner of the little bedroom. One hand was twisted in the bedsheets; the other lay, clenched into a fist, over her heart. Her eyes were closed, and her cheeks were glazed with tear tracks.
He stepped into the room and crossed over to her. She didn't open her eyes, even when his shadow fell across her face. Her lips barely moved as she spoke, her voice little more than a dry croak. "How did you find me?"
"You didn't go home," said Colin quietly. "And you didn't go to your friend Emma's house, either. I couldn't think of anywhere else."
Shadow Stalker's face twitched at the name. "Emma isn't my friend," she said—not venomously or sadly, but simply as a statement of fact.
"I did get that impression when I spoke to her father on the phone."
Silence fell for a few seconds. Then Shadow Stalker broke it. "Why are you here, Armsmaster?"
Colin hesitated for a moment before answering. "Because you're right," he said quietly.
Shadow Stalker opened one eye, piercingly green. It sought his face. "You think?"
"Annatar just led the assault on Heartbreaker," he told her. "I… you should be glad you didn't see it."
"How many dead?" Shadow Stalker asked him, her face twisting slightly in pain.
"Six," he said grimly. "She mauled a kid with her mace, ordered Kid Win to destroy a car with a woman still inside, and threw a lightning bolt at another car full of children. And if we didn't have Panacea, I wouldn't like Battery's odds of recovery. It was brutal.
Far too brutal."
Shadow Stalker's eye closed again. "Yeah," she said, almost a sigh. "That sounds about right. What's she saying about me?"
"Annatar claims you've been mastered by Oracle," he answered. "She plans to capture and free you. Obviously, I don't believe it."
Shadow Stalker gasped out something halfway between a peal of laughter and a sob. "
Free me, huh?" she asked. "Fucking hell, Taylor. Guess that's it, then. That's all I am to her now. A broken tool, worthless until it's fixed."
"Annatar just underwent a second trigger event," said Colin, shaking his head. "She's not in her right mind, clearly. But she's also an incredibly dangerous and charismatic parahuman, who now seems to have control over an entire branch of the PRT."
Shadow Stalker didn't answer for a moment. "Why
are you here?" she asked again, after a moment. "What do you want?"
He glanced out the window at the sunlight reflected in the windows of skyscrapers. "I want your help," he said. "I want to fix this."
"Fix
what?" she asked, and suddenly she was sitting up and glaring at him with eyes that were bright with tears. "I don't see a lot
left to fix here!"
"There's a city full of innocent people who need protecting," Colin said, meeting her gaze. "They need
heroes, Shadow Stalker."
"I'm not a hero," she replied. Her shoulders slumped, and she fell back against the bed. "I can't even
care about all those people. The only person I want to save is the one at the middle of all this."
"Annatar may not be beyond helping, Shadow Stalker."
"Maybe," she agreed sadly. "But I can't help her. I can't be who she needs me to be. I don't know how."
"Then why did you leave?" Colin asked. "Why leave without a plan? Why not stay, and try to get more information before doing anything drastic?"
Now Shadow Stalker laughed, and the sound was harsh, mirthless, and seemed to tear itself like claws out of her throat. "God, I wish I could be like you," she said, without opening her eyes. "Just… turn off like that. Stop paying attention to how I feel, and just do what I have to do. Everything would be so much easier if I could."
"I can't control how I feel, Shadow Stalker," said Colin quietly.
"Yeah, but you can control how you act," she said. Her hand rose from her chest, and her eyes opened and studied her fingers. "You can decide how much you want to show. You can put on a mask, and just deal with it." She shook her head, her eyes never leaving her hand. Colin realized suddenly that it was her left hand, and that on its ring finger glittered her Emerald Ring. "Whereas me? No matter how much I tell myself that I can't do something, no matter how hard I try to hide it… it still comes out."
Silence fell for several seconds. Then Colin cleared his throat. "I'm sorry," he said.
She blinked at him. "What?"
"I'm sorry," he repeated. "For implying you should have had more self-control." He spread his arms out. "After all—I didn't have much of a plan, either. It'd be hypocritical of me to criticize you doing the same."
Her lips twitched into a weak little smile. "Yeah, I guess," she said. "I dunno. God, I feel like such a fuckup, you know?"
Colin nodded. "Yes." Then he sighed. "What do you plan to do now?"
She shrugged, staring up at the ceiling. "Lay here."
"You can't do that forever."
"True. I'll die after a while."
He frowned. "This isn't the time for jokes, Shadow Stalker."
"What the fuck makes you think I'm joking?" she asked, her eyes sharpening as she look at him again.
His teeth gritted. "Look," he said. "I don't know exactly how you feel. I don't even know how
I feel half the time. But I know you just lost something very important to you. So did I. Being a Protectorate hero is just about everything I have, and I just gave that up because I felt I needed to. So
why, Shadow Stalker? Why did you give it up?"
She twitched in something like pain and glanced away from him. "I don't know," she said quietly. "I just… I couldn't. Taylor's becoming something she hates, and I couldn't watch her do that to herself. God, watching her stab herself wouldn't have been half as painful."
"But you don't have anything you want to
do? Nothing you want to try to change about the situation?"
"What the fuck am I
supposed to do?" she asked in a sudden, agonized scream, her hands punching the bed on either side of her. "Taylor doesn't
care! Taylor doesn't—" her voice broke, and she bit down on a sob. "There's nothing left to do, Armsmaster," she said, once she'd recovered a little. "Nothing but wait, and see what tomorrow throws at me."
He stared at her for a moment, then slowly shook his head. "Okay," he said. "Fine. I understand. I'm sorry to bother you." He unslung the duffel bag from his shoulder and dropped it on the bed beside her. "I brought the things you left behind," he told her, "from your locker in headquarters. I suppose I shouldn't have bothered, but here they are. I don't need them. Your costume, crossbows, and sword are in there."
He turned around. "Let me know if you change your mind," he said. "Assuming you can find me. I don't know where I'll be."
He strode out of the room, and went to close the door. Just as it was swinging shut, however, Shadow Stalker croaked, "Wait."
He stopped and took a step back in. Shadow Stalker was staring confusedly at the duffel bag. "What did you say?" she asked slowly.
He blinked. "I brought everything you forgot," he repeated. "Your costume, crossbows, and sword. Why?"
"My…?" She sat up, reached for the zipper of the duffel bag, and pulled it open. Her eyes widened. "No," she whispered. "No fucking way."
"What is it?"
"I don't have a sword." She didn't look at him as she replied. Her hands were reaching into the bag.
"Don't you?" he asked blankly. "I found it in your locker."
"Have I
ever used a sword in the field?"
"I assumed you'd been training with Annatar."
"I was," she whispered, pulling the black leather scabbard out of the bag. "Never got my own sword, though."
He frowned. "Then what's—"
With a ringing sound, the sword was drawn from its sheath. It shone red and white in the afternoon sunlight, as though reflecting a sunset and a full moon that were nowhere to be seen. The runes upon the blade seemed to flicker as though they were written in fire.
"
Narsil," Sophia whispered, her eyes seeming almost luminous in the reflected glow. "But… why? Why here?"
"You must have put it in your locker after the fight with Shutdown."
She didn't answer. Her eyes ran up and down the blade, as though she could scarcely believe it was real. "It's not just a sword, is it?" she asked softly. "Any more than they're just rings."
"I wouldn't know anything about that."
Sophia's legs swung over the side of the bed. She stood, holding the blade high as though in salute. Slowly, she swung it through the air—once, twice. Her eyes followed it as it moved like a bar of light through the air.
"Shadow Stalker?"
"She saved me," Sophia said quietly. "She gave me a chance when I didn't deserve one. I wouldn't
be here if it wasn't for her—not
this me." She closed her eyes and pressed her brow to the flat of Narsil's blade. "And now… can I do the same for her? Is that—is it even possible?"
"I don't know," Armsmaster said. She looked up at him, as though she'd forgotten he was here. "But I know that you won't find out unless you try."
There was silence for almost a full minute. Then Sophia smiled. Her teeth glittered white in the sword's glare. "All right," she said, glancing back at the weapon. "Let's give it a try."
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