Nobody spoke into the ringing silence after Coil dropped the call for at least a minute. I didn't know what Skitter was thinking, if anything at all. Her fingers drummed slowly on the desk, one at a time, seconds apart. Her bugs were mostly quiescent, moving aimlessly across the walls. Once or twice she landed a fly or mosquito on me that I didn't have the energy to brush off. But other than that, she didn't make a move.
As for me… I was trying to figure out what to say. Or think. Or do. That call had been more stressful than anything I'd done so far, and that included trying to outfly
Dragon twenty minutes ago. At least I'd had agency there. My notes beckoned to me from the table; ideas and plans for dealing with Coil, potential blind spots and positions of leverage, but I couldn't focus on them. My mind kept replaying Skitter's words.
I need time to convince her that outright conflict against capes is a good idea.
I couldn't stop fidgeting. I laced my fingers and pulled them apart, squeezed each of my palms in turn. My foot bounced agitatedly on the floor in time with my heartbeat pounding in my ears, not stopping even when I tried to quell it. My gaze flicked from the wall chart to the bookcase engulfed in containment foam to my lap; anywhere and everywhere except for Skitter herself.
She'd said she'd be playing a part on that call. She'd warned me about it ahead of time. But how much of her performance came from somewhere real? I couldn't deny that the thought had occurred to me, over my stay here. That Skitter might be playing some kind of a long game, slowly maneuvering me into accepting her morality more easily. Talking me into doing small things that became medium things that became big things. School assembly warnings about slippery slopes never mentioned how
justified the first steps felt. How you could stand up on the moral high ground and look down at a girl your own age bleeding from a bolt through the shoulder, and see stepping onto the greased slide to help her as the only choice you could make.
I knew just
thinking like that meant it was already working. How else would I classify what I'd just done? I hadn't fought Dragon directly… but that was already far closer than the me of two months ago would have ever accepted. And that was just the most obvious example! How many times had she been pitted up against the Heroes in front of me in a way that made me sympathize with her? How many of those encounters had been planned to get me right to where I was? How much–
I dug my nails into my palms, and slowly calmed my breathing. In for four seconds, hold for three, exhale for seven. Inch by inch, my stomach dropped out of my chest. The hard ball in my throat shrunk. My pulse slowed, and the edges of my vision cleared.
Maybe I still had reason to be worried about Skitter. I couldn't say for sure. But I knew for a fact that some of the situations we'd been thrown into were out of her control. There was no way she'd willingly make herself that vulnerable to Flechette, for instance, if it was just a play to make me take her side. She could've
killed Skitter, and neither of us could have done anything about it. It was a miracle she was recovering as well as she was.
"I know that was a lot."
I jumped, instinctively crossing my arms over my chest. Skitter didn't react.
"I told you earlier that I'd have to say things to him. But I didn't have much time to give you a warning, and I still said them. I know how it must have felt, listening."
She didn't move, but I was close enough to see her throat move under the thin silk as she swallowed.
"If you decide that between this and Dragon it's too much, you can leave. Same as before. Just don't get the kids involved, either way."
I stood stock still, staring at her. God, what was I supposed to say to that? My hands were trembling as I raised them to sign, "
Why?"
She cocked her head. The jerky, insectile way she moved put me vividly in mind of her bugs for a second, like the silk-clad cape was just an extension of the inhuman swarm. It only added to the inscrutability of this bewildering, confusing girl.
"
Why say I can leave? Why say those things to him at all?."
"The first one should be obvious. As to the second…" She considered me for a moment, letting the silence stretch. "Coil has too many spies to keep you secret. I don't know if he has any here, but they're definitely in the PRT. From the moment they recognised you that first time we went out, I didn't have a way to hide you. If I tried, he'd know. But he couldn't move against me openly. I'd hoped that by telling him I was trying to cultivate you as an asset, he'd give me discretion."
She folded her hands over one another, gripping tightly. "But I still told him about you. Without telling you first. If that's too much, I get it."
I… couldn't say I was happy with her, or at ease with her telling Coil about me. Not at all. But she'd still warned me as best she could when it mattered. She let me sit in on the call in the first place, which was a risk she didn't need to take. A risk that affected her much more than it did me. And she'd done it, at least according to her, to give me the space I needed.
I looked up to meet her eyes. "
You can't keep secrets from me. Not like this. Nothing further, or I really will leave."
She stared at me for a moment, before nodding. "Alright. That just leaves us with the info from the call."
I sighed, glancing at the notepad from earlier. "
I have my thoughts here. Anything else I should know about?"
Skitter's fingers drummed on the desk. She looked up at the map of Brockton Bay on the wall, considering. "Tattletale will know that our phones are considered compromised until further notice, either by Dragon or Coil, or both. She'll be working the Dragon problem mainly, as that's the most immediate issue. If she gets any traction, she'll send word through her people somehow. Other than that, we wait."
I curled back into my chair. "
What are you going to do about Dragon?"
The pause dragged out like a noose being measured for us. Skitter's fingers drummed on the table again.
"What I have to," she finally said. "I'm still looking for a solution. I know you want something mostly nonviolent. But this has me between a rock and a hard place. If Dragon keeps us pinned here for too long, I'm going to have to do something one way or another. You understand."
I shut my eyes, drawing my knees up to my chest and hugging them. Fuck. I didn't want to think about this. Didn't want to think about one of the world's best Heroes forcing my guardian into a position with no way out, just because of what the PRT said.
"Hey," Skitter said. Her voice was closer, and my centipede nuzzled the soft skin on the inside of my wrist as she spoke. I cracked open one eye. She'd gotten out of her chair to crouch in front of me, looking up. It made for a weird picture. Objectively, the mask was terrifying - insectile, mandibled, with those eerie, inhuman yellow lenses and not a hint of skin.
But familiarity had bred... not contempt. But a sense of ease. The lack of expression in the ant-like visage wasn't offputting anymore. I know by now that Skitter's face wasn't what she emoted with. And the dark, scary design wasn't intimidating anymore, either.
I hadn't known her long. But shared experiences had a way of fast-forwarding that kind of thing. Here and now, I looked at the face of a Villain, and all I saw was...
"I'm not asking you to be a part of this fight," she said, her voice pure conviction. "You said you wouldn't, and I respect that choice. I just wanted to warn you, so that you can decide where you want to be. Trust, right?"
Trust. She was doing what I'd asked of her. I could hang onto that. It would've been so much easier for her to let the situation devolve, as she knew it no doubt would, and let the chaos and confusion force me into action. Like it had when Dragon found us the first time. It would've served her purposes better to do that, given how well it worked out for her in retrospect. But she hadn't. Weirdly enough, that helped.
I nodded without breaking my gaze. She cocked her head, and slowly stretched out her left hand, leaving it in the middle between us. Leaving it to me to bridge the gap, if I wanted to. I reached out and let her clasp my hand to pull me back up.
But as I was in the middle of getting back on my feet, I noticed something. A tiny gap in her step, a hitch in her breath, an ever so slight tensing in her arm.
Suddenly the pieces came together. Fuck, that was the arm she'd taken the bolt in! The same shoulder that had been facing forward when we'd crashed through the door not even an hour earlier!
"
Are you okay?" I signed as best I could.
She tilted her head. Reading her body language was hard, but this head cock seemed more honestly confused than the last. "Why wouldn't I be?"
I pointed at her shoulder. She didn't react for a moment, staring at me. I refused to back down. Things between us were complicated and weird and tense, but this much was simple: if Skitter was hurting, it was my duty to make sure she was okay, just like I would for any wounded person right in front of me. Especially if it was, inadvertently or otherwise, my fault.
She sighed. "It hurts, yes. Is that what you wanted to know?"
God, it was like pulling teeth trying to get anything personal out of this girl. "
Where does it hurt? Does it hurt more now than earlier? Why didn't you say anything?"
"I didn't say anything because it didn't impact my ability to do what needs to be done," she said, as if that was at all satisfying as an answer. "If you must know, the doctor made two incisions into my shoulder; one in the back and one in the front. He left stitches in, and said not to bother it. It hurts, but it's healing."
I glared at her. This was getting ridiculous. "
And the past few days counts as 'not bothering it'?"
The walls buzzed, but I didn't let my anxiety rise further than my stomach. I knew she wouldn't hurt me, and this was important. Even if she didn't like it.
"Probably not," she said through what I could tell were gritted teeth. "But it doesn't matter now. I'm not exactly moving from here, and we don't have a trained doctor in the building."
I bit my lip. She was right. But I couldn't stand just… leaving it like that. I took a step closer, and looked at her shoulder. The light was dim, so I hadn't seen it earlier... Or maybe I just hadn't been paying attention. But there was an ever-so-slightly darker patch on her shoulder. Was that left over from the original injury… or something new?
"
Bleeding."
She glanced down. "Just a bit, yes."
Just a
bit? I swear, it was harder to get her to talk about this than it was her actual supervillain boss.
"
If it's getting through your suit, you clearly need to change the dressing."
She laughed. No. Scoffed. I flinched, and she cut herself off, my centipede immediately curling remorsefully around my wrist.
"Sorry," Skitter said. Around us, the quiescent swarm stirred. "It's just, who would do that? I can't exactly reach it myself."
"
Charlotte?" If nothing else, she was around often enough that I was surprised this hadn't come up.
Skitter looked down at me, her yellow lenses unreadable. "I'm not that needlessly cruel."
My brain stalled out as I chewed on that phrasing. Charlotte had been pretty distressed when she thought I had hurt Skitter earlier, but that was an awful lot of care to take over someone Skitter called her minion. Regardless, I could tell by the tightness in her stance that I wasn't getting any further than this. God, she was so
frustrating. It made me just want to–
I froze, considering. It… was crazy. I had to admit that much. But I also knew that the knowledge of her injury was going to eat away at me if I did nothing. And she clearly wasn't going to get help herself.
My hands slowly came up, even as I was still thinking. "
What if I did it?"
Total silence. The sluggish, placid movement of the insects on the walls stopped dead; not a wing or mandible so much as twitched. The girl in the costume might as well have been a statue. My hands were frozen, one trembling in the question sign, the other held against my stomach. But I didn't take it back.
"You…" For once, I seemed to have Skitter at a loss for words.
"
Are you going to take care of it, if I won't?"
Slowly, she shook her head.
"
Then why not?"
"I don't want to unmask. Can't." There was something in her voice, an edge I couldn't quite put a name to. But I pushed ahead anyway. I was too committed now to stop.
"
Then don't. Just take off enough for me to put a new bandage on. Keep the mask."
She stared at me for what must have just been a few seconds but felt like far, far longer. I wondered what she saw. Was I pushing her boundaries too far? Was this too intimate an ask? It was so hard to know with her, especially when her usual tells were silent. Literally. But… I also had to believe if she had a problem, she'd say so.
"You'd really do that?" she asked at length. "For me?"
I nodded.
Her shoulders slumped, and she let out a breath that was almost a huff of laughter. "You really aren't going to give up, are you?"
I opened my mouth instinctively, but she cut me off before I could get any further. "No, it's fine. I– thank you. The zipper is in the back. I'll get the bandages."
Slowly, almost hesitantly, she turned to give me her back. Part of the swarm on the walls pulled away to go downstairs, presumably to get the bandages she mentioned. But I didn't let myself pay attention to them. The only thing I focused on was Skitter. The rigid set of her shoulders, the lines of tension I could already see running up her spine. She was no Brute. She had no shield, no inhuman resilience, no healing factor. Sitting like this, exposed, vulnerable, she was painfully fragile. I could snap her in half with one hand, and both of us knew it. And yet she'd still bared the back of her neck to me.
I'd been the one to suggest this, but... now that it was happening, it felt different. Was I really sure I could do this? Would it just make things more complicated and confusing?
Skitter seemed to sense my hesitation. "It's fine if you don't want to. I'll be fine. I've made it this long without any problems."
I swallowed, and firmed my jaw. No, that wasn't good enough. Not when the situation with Dragon and Coil and Dinah and everything else was still in flux. If I could help, I had to. Besides, this wouldn't be any worse than any of the wounded Heroes I'd carried off for Amy to heal before. Right? Right.
My hand shook as I slowly reached out and brushed her hair away from the nape of her neck. This close, I could see through the thick black curls to the pale pinkish white of her skin. I slid my fingers over her neck to find the zipper tongue, and I felt a rush of goosebumps spread out beneath my fingers.
Deep breaths. That was just an instinctual reaction; she couldn't help it. I'd done nothing wrong. If she wanted me to stop, she'd say so. I forced myself not to reach higher, to feel for the clasps and elastic bands no doubt holding her mask in place, hiding under her hair. I could take it off if I really wanted to. She must have known that.
And yet.
Slowly, carefully, I pulled the zipper down. Her silks split down the center like a beetle's wings, peeling apart to reveal a smooth, tense back. Her spine stood out in sharp relief against her skin. Was that from stress, or malnutrition? I'd been right about how badly I'd thrown her around escaping Dragon, too. Her pale skin was mottled red from freshly blooming bruises, along with a few older ones in various shades from ugly purple to faded green. It was a living map of pain spread out across the past two weeks.
I shook my head. Stay focused. The silk was far enough away now to see that she clearly had some sort of a sports bra on that I could see the back of. A wave of relief washed over me. I hadn't really considered that aspect when I'd made my offer, but I was suddenly and intensely glad I didn't have to deal with it, as selfish as that sounded.
What I did have to deal with were the side effects of her injuries. As I pulled the zipper down to the bottom, I reached up with my other hand to carefully draw the silk away from and over her shoulder blade. Instantly her back tensed, a sharp intake of breath betrayed by her ribs. That was a bad sign. A severe shoulder wound was never going to be a picnic, but it must have really, really hurt for that kind of reaction. Skitter hadn't made a sound when the actual bolt went in, and no matter what kind of Striker power Flechette had, it couldn't have stopped nerve impulses from the injury after. Her pain tolerance must have been immense. This was bad.
"
Tell me if it's too much, or to stop." I signed. Wait. Fuck, she was in front of me. She couldn't see. How was I supposed to–
"I will. Keep going." Her words were tight and measured, deliberate breath control keeping them quiet and shallow. Right. Omniscient bug controller. Sometimes I still forgot. I nodded, and got back to it. This time I used my right hand to brace her shoulder blade, stopping just before where I could feel the edge of the bandage. Slowly, I drew the silk bodyglove away from her back before pulling it over her shoulder and letting it fall.
Now that it was finally off, I could see what the problem was. Some of the blood had soaked through the bandage, congealed, and bonded to the silk above. No wonder it had hurt so much. She must have been tugging at it with every movement of her arms. Not hard, but anything that made the bodyglove shift would have tugged at the scab.
"Here's the other one," Skitter said, as her returning swarm made its presence known. This time I did jump, if only slightly. I'd somehow managed to forget about anything outside of this room in the last few minutes. Her insects laid the bandage down alongside a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, dangling from silk strings. At least she'd thought to keep it mostly sterile. Though, as I looked closer at it I could see the gauze was still in its plastic packaging. Fair enough.
I set the gauze down on the table next to us, and set to peeling away the old dressing. I hesitated, my fingers just over the old medical tape. This was going to hurt. How could I do it without further aggravating the issue?
"Just do it," Skitter said in front of me. I forced myself not to jump and slowly let my shoulders relax. God, even when she was trying… no, not the time. I slid an edge of one of my fingernails under the tape, and gently peeled it away. I could feel her skin tense under me, felt the tiny tremors of pain nerves firing that she couldn't suppress, but she didn't say anything.
As I pulled off the medical tape and gauze, the smell hit me. Like old socks, mixed with pennies. I scrunched my nose. I had expected this, but the smell was pretty rank even by bandage standards. Was her silk not breathable? At least the wound beneath it wasn't that bad. It was reddish, but that was standard as I understood for something this fresh. There was a bit of blood oozing out from one of the stitches in particular, but the rest were holding. Small mercies.
"
When did you change this?" I asked, carefully setting the used bandage down away from the new one.
"I didn't."
I froze. I really shouldn't have expected anything better, but somehow I had. That meant she hadn't gotten this cleaned or treated in days, almost close to a week. Because god forbid that anyone else see her in a position of weakness.
"
How often should it be changed?"
Skitter hummed. "The doctor said about once every one to two days."
Yeah, that would explain the smell. "
I'm going to have to use the rubbing alcohol to clean it out fully then. It's going to hurt. Next time, tell me."
Her shoulders slumped, and I took that as the admission (or surrender) that it was. I opened the plastic packaging around the gauze, and unrolled a small segment before tearing it off. Thank god for super strength; no scissors required. I tipped a generous dose of rubbing alcohol onto the gauze before replacing the bottle on the desk, turning back to face her.
"Whenever you're ready."
I nodded, and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly with my left hand before I wiped the wound down with my right. Her shoulder tensed, and she quickly grabbed her left hand with her right to prevent it from moving. Around us her insects went wild, diving through the air, beating themselves against the walls, laying into each other in a vicious cannibal frenzy.
She didn't make a sound.
I cleaned the incision as diligently and carefully as I could. Ultimately, I wasn't really trained in this any more than she was. Most of the injuries I dealt with were taken care of by… Amy. So I had to resort to my best judgment for most of it. The dirt and what looked like accumulated sweat and dead skin came off easily enough, but the wound still looked slightly inflamed. I gently passed over it as much as I could with the gauze, making sure to get in the crevasses without pulling her stitches any further apart. All through it she was tense, her shoulder blade and clavicle standing out in sharp relief against her skin, but she didn't move. Her breaths came slow and labored, and around us her swarm continued to kill itself en masse. I rubbed slow, reassuring circles on her back to distract her. I hoped it helped, but if it did, it wasn't enough to stop her taking out her pain on her bugs.
Finally, I set the gauze down. The stitch she'd almost popped was still oozing a thin trickle of blood, but other than that her shoulder was clean.
"
That looks like the worst of it," I signed.
"Good. Just put the bandage on, and I can take care of the front."
I nodded, grateful that she'd suggested that before I had to. I couldn't imagine having her look at me the whole time I did this process; this was bad enough as it was. The gauze was tight as I stretched it out with one hand, holding it in place while I took the tape and carefully applied it to both ends with my other two before smoothing it out.
I stepped back, and inspected my work one last time. The bandage looked good, or rather, as good as I could make it. I'd tried to copy the doctor's work as best I could, but it wasn't perfect. What mattered was that it was tight against her skin, and wasn't coming off anytime soon.
"
Done."
"Thank you," Skitter said. She didn't turn around.
The silence hung in the air. I wasn't sure what to say. Was I supposed to acknowledge just how intimate and vulnerable what she let me do was? To reassure her that she hadn't unmasked to me? That she still had her barrier, even if it was in name only at this point? To try and distract her with plans for Coil?
Ultimately, she decided for me. "I'll figure out the bandage on the front. Could you go downstairs and check on Sierra for me? She seems like she's coming up here, and I'd rather not have her find me like this."
I nodded, taking the dismissal for the escape it was, and left Skitter to finish tending to herself alone.
"Skitter, I was just–oh." Sierra paused mid-sentence, as she got to the top of the stairs on the second floor, and saw me. Her eyes furrowed behind her domino mask. I smiled hesitantly.
"Glory Girl?"
Flinch.
"Oh sorry, Victoria. Right. My bad; force of habit. What are you doing here? Have you seen Skitter?"
I went to sign, only to pause mid-motion. Right, this wasn't Skitter. I didn't have my notebook on me. How was I going to–
"
You can sign at me."
I froze. Sierra… knew sign? She must have read my shock, and rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "I had a… nephew, who was deaf. Needed to be able to understand him. I'll admit that my own sign is pretty rusty, but I should be able to understand you. What's up?"
A flush of warmth shot up through me. I knew that Skitter could understand me, and that already meant so much. But Charlotte couldn't, and most of the people I interacted with on a daily basis needed the notebook too. It was a relief to have someone else I could talk to conveniently. I… needed that, more than I wanted to admit.
"
She's busy upstairs, said I should help you."
Sierra frowned. "Huh. Well that's a problem. I was just rearranging some stuff, and unpacking the next round of rations from the basement up to the fridge. I was going to ask Skitter to see if she could track down where Charlotte or Forrest went so I could recruit an extra pair of hands, but obviously you can't go outside."
I shook my head. That definitely wasn't happening.
"Then that's a problem. I'm not sure what to do, unless…" Sierra paused. "Tell me, Victoria, how strong are you?"
Ten minutes later, I found myself airborne with a cheap plastic box in my arms, playing porter.
"Yeah, it's that crate up there. The one labeled non-perishables!" Sierra shouted up to me from the ground.
I grunted my acknowledgement, before carefully floating closer. This was the last of the boxes she wanted me to get down from the highest stack–I had no idea how Charlotte and the rest did this normally. I supposed Forrest was built enough to do it, but this was just plain awkward. Thankfully, as with everything, flying made it easier.
The plastic was worn and scuffed as it slid along my field, and I was careful not to press too hard as I got a good grip. It could be incredibly easy to damage something unintentionally when you had a Brute rating, and I wasn't willing to take any chances with the food for the kids. Judging from the supplies in the basement, there might not be all that much to spare.
Once I had a secure hold, I gently lifted up until I could feel that the crate hadn't caught on anything below me. There had been a few close calls earlier where I'd almost pulled so hard that a strap or clasp ripped straight through the plastic housing. Luckily Sierra had stopped me before any serious damage had been done.
I drifted backwards before descending back down to the floor, nodding at Sierra in my peripheral vision once I did. The replacement lights down in the cellar were crap, and the window was boarded over with plywood, so in the low light she was only just visible off to my left.
"Alright, same plan as before. I go ahead, you float behind and I'll tell you when to stop or readjust?"
I knocked twice on the side of the box with my right hand–our agreed on signal when we made the first trip and realized the issue of my not being able to sign while carrying something.
"Great! I'll just keep talking so you can follow my voice then."
Slowly, we made our way to the stairs and then up to the main floor, Sierra coaching me the whole way. Like I said earlier, this was a
lot easier with my flying. I didn't want to know what this would have been like if I'd actually had to take the stairs, instead of just gliding over them.
"This is far enough," Sierra said as we entered the kitchen. "Just set it down here, I can unpack it myself."
I nodded, and gently set down the box next to the other two we had taken down earlier.
"Phew! That was a lot easier with you doing the heavy lifting, literally in this case." Sierra smiled at me.
I smiled back "
Happy to help." And I really was. This was, in a way, what I wanted to do when I set out to be a Hero all those years back. Maybe not literally–I still had dreams of beating up Nazi's and punching monsters back then–but this was what I thought it would feel like. Helping people, doing the right thing. I missed it, in the murky soup of motivations and miscommunication recently.
"Hey, Victoria?" Sierra asked.
I looked up. Somehow I had gotten distracted, but now she had a torn look on her face. She was biting her lip, and even behind the domino mask I could see her eyes shifting between me and the opening to the living room.
"
Yes?"
"...why are you here?"
Before I could even start to sign, Sierra blushed bright red as the implications of what she said hit her, and she scrambled to rephrase. "No, not like that! I meant… you're a Hero. I know Skitter helped you at a time when you really needed it."
She rubbed her arm, looking down. "I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't understand that. She did the same for me, it's why I'm here. I asked Battery and the rest of the heroes for help, and none of them were there for me. So I get it."
She looked up at me, and took off her mask. Seeing her whole face, it was clear now that she was older than me. Maybe in college already. But she looked so young when she whispered, "But why are you
still here? I don't have anywhere else to go, despite what Skitter does. But you do. So why?"
My breath caught in my chest. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself protectively. Why. That was the question. Why why
why. It's not like I hadn't asked myself the same question – today even! And I couldn't deny her point. Whatever I owed Skitter, or whatever favor she was doing me, any notion of balancing the scales had ended a long time ago. I couldn't kid myself about that. If I was staying here, it was because I was doing so willingly.
I did have options, much as it hurt to admit. There was nothing technically stopping me from going out and surrendering myself to Dragon right now. Or just leaving the Bay entirely. No one could really stop me if I wanted to leave. And yet, here I stayed. What was keeping me?
I thought back to that girl upstairs, with the bandage on her shoulder. The bowed back, the goosebumps on her neck, the tightness in her spine. I had no idea when she'd last made herself vulnerable for someone like that. I hadn't even thought about it when I asked. And yet, she had. Because she trusted me.
Leaving wouldn't be betraying that trust, not really. She'd said so herself, I could go at any time. But all the same, it felt wrong. Like I'd be rejecting her by choosing something else. And, weird as it was, I didn't want to do that. Not when it seemed like she was so close to choosing someone, some
thing, better.
"
I think," I signed, trying to choose my words carefully, "
I'm here because I want to help. Skitter isn't perfect. We both know that. But, she's also trying, in a lot of ways that don't show, to be better than the people around her want her to be. I respect that, even when she fails."
Sierra stared at me, worrying at her lower lip. "You really think so? It's hard to reconcile that with… her… when she's sending someone running away screaming, or doing god knows what out there."
I nodded, trying to ignore the twisting in my stomach. "
I know. I don't like it either. But she hasn't had any better options for a long time now. That doesn't excuse it, but I don't want to take yet another choice away from her."
"I… guess I can see that," Sierra finally said. "Just be careful. Skitter doesn't let people in close, and that's usually for the better."
And with that cryptic warning she turned to unpack the boxes, leaving me with more questions than I'd started with.
A/N:
Finally, I get to pull out the ultimate cliche of fandom: overdramatic excuses. Sorry for the late posting guys, I was just busy attending graduation. I officially have a Master('s) rating. Wait no what are you doing with those pitchforks–
So this chapter was a lot. One of the quieter moments where the tension and drama lessen, and we get to see just how intimately familiar these characters really are. Oh what's that? You thought I'd make Skitter actually unmask for this? That's adorable.
So… what to recommend this time for my audience of fellow punchbuggy fans. Oh I know, how about more smugbug? More seriously though,
Best of Friends is a lovely oneshot by SilviaNorton, featuring an aromantic Lisa and a queer Taylor trying to get by in a world without powers. It's exactly as long as it needs to be and no further, a rarity in this fandom.
Glances at my own story. A problem I'm definitely not contributing to.
