The line about Renick looking sick makes me wonder: how much of the PRT/Protectorate dirty launder did he actually know about before that conversation?
Silence is Not Consent
- Thread starter justanothercat
- Start date
-
- Tags
- worm
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
CITATION!
Considering that he's in charge of the Wards, including Shadow Stalker? Less than he should have known.Legend Interlude said:
Supernova 5.6
"Tori?"
I turned. Skitter must've seen the look on my face, because she was staring at me. "You're thinking of something," she prompted.
A smile stole across my face despite the subject matter. It was nice to be reminded that Taylor was on my wavelength in this. But she was right. Something was on my mind, and it wasn't anything that could be resolved as cleanly as what we'd run into so far.
Glory Girl was a part of New Wave. Thanks to Carol and the rest of the first generation, so was Victoria Dallon. If I wanted to rebrand as a cape of any kind, I'd need to address that split directly. I wasn't ashamed of my actions or my plan, far from it. I wasn't planning on hiding the connection between me and whatever new cape identity I came up with. I had good reason not to.
But I'd still need to officially break from New Wave, if only for legal reasons. Rebranding as a cape was always… complicated. That was the nature of not-technically-legal-but-mostly-respected secret identities. Carol knew that better than most, having been on multiple sides of the issue at one point or another, and she'd drilled the potential landmines into my head. The fundamental problem I faced now was that if Victoria rebranded as a Hero working with the Undersiders and didn't split with New Wave amicably beforehand, the media could frame that as New Wave tacitly endorsing the Undersiders themselves.
"I'll be headed off then," Tattletale said distantly. "I'm usually all for girl talk, but right now I've got a schedule to keep." I didn't let the noise distract me.
I'd mostly avoided thinking about my family up until this point, at least where the Hero and Villain scene were concerned. I simply hadn't had the energy, between the crisis every five seconds and the increasingly distressing revelations I was going through. My broken power had only made things worse. But now I had no choice.
I knew what Carol's position was. She'd made that abundantly clear. But I hadn't talked to any of the others. Aunt Sarah, Dad, Crystal… they were all big hanging question marks I'd made no effort to fill in. Part of me wanted to call that cowardly. And it was, in a sense. It was far easier to pretend that everyone was like Carol, to cut all my ties in one fell swoop. But that wasn't fair to them, and it wasn't fair to me. I deserved whatever support I could get from my family, after what had happened to me.
But... could I honestly say I was ready to take the risk? If my worst fears were true, and it was all more of the same? My mental state these days was fragile at best, I was self aware to admit that much. Could I handle the same vitriol and… pain that Carol had spewed at me, multiplied fourfold? A week ago I would've said yes.
Now I wasn't sure.
"If you're finished, I'll be on my way as well," Defiant said as he glanced between the two of us. "You two clearly have some things to talk about."
My eyes snapped open. Defiant! He was the perfect person to go to about this! Well not exactly, but if there was anyone able to give a perspective outside of the PRT on cape rebranding, it would be him.
"Wait!"
He paused mid-stride as I jumped in front of him, signing frantically. "Yes?"
I gathered myself as I tried to figure out the right way to phrase my question. I didn't want to snipe at his previous identity like Tattletale had earlier, but I also needed to be frank. "I need help."
The cape straightened immediately. "What with?"
I swallowed tightly. "I need to rebrand. Break from New Wave. And I don't know how." I was leaning hard on whatever predictive software or HUD he had in his helmet to translate my shaky signs, because my eyes were starting to blur.
It sounded like a simple enough request. Breaking from an organization that had mapped out your past to draw a new future. I'd even described it mostly in my terms, so as not to put the emphasis on the question back on him. It was as neutral as you could make it.
As if asking "How do I leave my family?" could ever be that simple.
Defiant's lips thinned. "Victoria, your situation is very different than… I'm not sure how much advice I could offer."
"Anything is better than nothing." I glanced at Skitter beside me who was thankfully still letting me take the lead. "We're in the dark here."
He sighed, and his shoulders dropped. "Very well. There are a few things you can do. The first of which is telling them directly."
"Well yeah," I signed impatiently, "But I don't know where to start. It's not like I could just show up at her door. Not when–"
My breath hitched. Threadbare sheets, fluorescent lights, hands on my chest, fingers wrapped around mine, sweat coating my face–
"...not when she's there."
Skitter's swarm hissed in agreement, and I managed a watery smile, reaching out to where it was pressing in through the door. It rolled over to hug me, the bugs never quite touching skin but swelling up in a dense cloud at my back and to either side of me. I didn't turn my head to gawp, but I knew what I must look like. A vanguard of the apocalypse, probably. That, or a fractured girl in a hoodie and jeans, absurdly out of place against the dark insectile thunderclouds that filled half the room and cradled me in a pocket at their heart.
"Hmm." Defiant paused to consider us, looking at the way the insects had my back and guarded my flanks, the moth slowly beating its wings in my hair. The girl who stepped through the darting, buzzing bodies to my left like a ghost, blending briefly into the swarm and then appearing again at my side. He nodded slowly. "You raise a good point. Skitter and Victoria couldn't show up to New Wave's residence… uninvited."
I blinked. "Pardon?"
"Yeah, you'll have to explain that one," Skitter muttered from beside me.
"I meant just what I said," Defiant said. "Announce your intentions ahead of time. Through me or the PRT. Tell them you're coming in good faith and let them set the date and time."
"Wouldn't that violate the unwritten rules?" Skitter asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Last I heard you can't just show up to a cape's home." I struggled not to give her a glance at that. Unwritten rules? What the fuck was she talking about? Before I could ask, Defiant kept talking.
"That would be true if the capes weren't unmasked," he said, taking one of his spears off his back and fiddling with the shaft. "But New Wave has a public residence, and while a cape showing up unannounced is rude at best, there is... leeway, for a family member and a supportive friend."
I squinted at him, not sure if I'd heard a fractional pause before the word 'friend' or if I'd just imagined it, then nodded to Skitter in confirmation. Even the PRT respected that rule, at least after Aunt Jess's murder.
"So we're just supposed to trust that they won't set a trap?" The droning stormcloud was still building around us, expanding more and more as bugs flooded into the room from the massive swarm she'd brought to the negotiation. A screen of stinging fliers curled around in front of us at chest height and the edges of our little bubble of clear space crept forward, as if she was drawing us further into her power. Between my impulsive jump in front of him and Skitter's display, we'd cut off Defiant's route outside entirely. The door was impossible to see through the bugs that had our back; the light was visibly dimming as the swarm darkened the sky around the building.
Defiant's grip tightened on his spear. But he didn't move. Didn't attack. Didn't even comment. He just took what I was pretty sure was a steadying breath, adjusted something else on the shaft of his spear and then stowed it across his back.
A precaution on an automatic trigger? Or genuine trust?
"Somehow I don't think Brandish is going to be a fan of this," Skitter said, bringing me back to earth. I turned to her, fond yet exasperated. It was sweet that she was concerned, and understandable that she didn't trust Defiant after all their messy history. Or at least, that's what I assumed this threat display was about. But at some point, we needed to take a risk. That was what this all came down to.
A leap of faith.
"Hey, it's going to be okay," I signed, taking shameless advantage of the low wall of insects in front of us to obscure my hands. Hot lines of pain traced down the insides of my fingers and wrists, and I smiled fearlessly through the stabbing discomfort. "I'll be right there with you. There's no way they can take us both down."
"Victoria is right." I turned back to Defiant, frowning, before realizing he probably had some kind of infrared overlay in his helmet that the thin screen of bugs didn't stop. Well, that was something to remember for later. He was glancing between the two of us, keeping a wary eye on the massing cloud of insects but still not making any hostile moves. "Unfortunately I can't be present, given that it's a family member – it's not the PRT or the Guild's place to mediate private affairs. The optics would be bad for all of us. But I can pass along the message for you. And if they act in bad faith, there will be consequences."
Skitter glared at the older cape from within the murder-cloud she'd amassed. "This time, you mean?"
He held her gaze. "Yes."
I leaned into her, pressing our shoulders together. Trust was never easy. Especially not when it concerned someone who'd betrayed you before. Hell, in a very real sense I was asking Skitter to do something that I might never be capable of myself – that I certainly wasn't capable of right now. But I believed in her.
In Taylor.
"... fine," she said at length. "Tell New Wave we want to meet. Strictly for face to face communication. Victoria and I will be present, in costume." She glanced at me. "If there's anything else…"
"She can't be there." My breath caught in my throat, but I didn't take the statement back.
Defiant's mouth firmed. "I promise that will be communicated to Brandish at length."
My hands unclenched, even as the protective embrace of the swarm tightened around me. The bugs still stayed clear of touching me, though. I tried not to show my relief.
"Aside from that, there are my things." It had gotten lost in the… everything that we'd been dealing with, but I'd been effectively living off of Taylor's wardrobe and donated clothes for a month. If I was going to stay affiliated with the Undersiders in the long term, I should at least move my clothes and things in.
It wasn't like I was willing to live in the same house as her regardless.
Defiant nodded. "Alright, I'll pass along the message. We'll be in touch." He paused. "If I may, Skitter?"
She glanced back at the door, and the ten-foot-high mass of wasps and flies and beetles that almost completely obscured it. Slowly, they retreated back outside, the mantle of horror we'd been shrouded in shrinking away and letting the light back in. She turned back to him, maybe only just realizing how aggressively she'd been posturing at him.
He nodded at her, not yet making any move towards us, and hefted the packed-up projector kit up under one arm. Slowly, thoughtfully, Skitter stepped aside, and I moved with her to leave him a clear path to the door. For a man wearing a full suit of power armor, he made surprisingly little noise even as he nimbly stepped through the debris strewn across the floor. He paused at the door, and I thought he was about to say something, but he settled for just nodding to us both again, and vanishing out to who-knew-where. A few seconds later, I couldn't even hear his footsteps striding away over the sound of the swarm.
"So, what now?"
I glanced at Skitter. She sounded contemplative.
"We wait."
"What do you mean they're not willing to meet?!"
I winced at the volume in Skitter's voice. She was on the phone with Defiant, and the past day had not been kind to either of our nerves. I didn't even need to watch the swarm to pick up on Skitter's anger; it was clear in her voice, her usual self-control gone. Not that my own was much better.
I'd expected that Carol would be obstinate. She'd already shown what she thought of my relationship with Skitter. But this went beyond obstinance into outright malice.
"I don't care if she's trying to pull some kind of a power move! That's not on us; that's on her!"
I wanted to say that Skitter was getting mad at the wrong person. That Defiant was on our side, and was helping us purely out of altruism. Well, altruism and guilt over his past actions. But that was beside the point, and I knew it. Skitter wasn't blaming him, not really. She just needed someone to vent at after encountering so many problems outside of her control. Defiant probably wouldn't take it personally. And from what she'd told me, he kind of deserved to be shouted at. At least a little.
"Then why suggest it, if you knew she was going to do this?!" I winced. Telling myself all that was scant reassurance when I was stuck listening to half the conversation. She'd offered to put it on speaker and let me listen in, but I'd told her not to bother. I still didn't know much about the schedule she kept or the state of affairs in the wider city, and that was going to be what set the viable dates and times for our visit. In a logistical conversation like this, I was pretty much dead weight, so I'd elected to keep studying my sign instead.
I was kind of regretting that now. Maybe I should just take a break. Judging from the look on her face and how long the call had already dragged with no progress, this wasn't going anywhere fast.
I glanced at Taylor, and she met my eyes. She had the grace to smile apologetically and gave the door a pointed look and a raised eyebrow. I took the offered out, and left Skitter to her argument.
I didn't find any peace or quiet as I closed the door behind me and made my way downstairs, but the din was at least a different kind of noise. I could hear Naoki and Akiko arguing over some video game yet again as I passed their room – they'd gotten one of the consoles working recently and refused to abandon the thing. Hopefully that meant Dominique was in the kitchen helping Martin. He'd been trying to learn how to cook for Tia; something about being a good big brother. It would at least keep him occupied and away from the twins. Though god knew what the rest of the kids were up to.
I was considering tracking them down and pulling them into some kind of group activity to raise everyone's spirits – none of them could sign, but I could improvise a skipping rope pretty easily and see if any of them had any energy to burn off – when I ran into Charlotte on the second floor. She glanced up and caught my eyes. "Hey, Tori. You escaped."
I grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, bit of a nightmare." I ignored the twinges of protest from my fingers. Charlotte wasn't nearly as good at sign as Taylor or Sierra, which meant I had to finger spell a lot more often. But it was worth it after our last conversation.
"I can imagine." She glanced back at the stairs leading up to the next floor, before looking down to the terrarium she had been in the middle of caring for. "She can get so forceful when she cares about some…thing. Not that you'd ever know it from talking to her."
"Tell me about it." I chuckled. "I'm not sure I could pull her away from this if I tried."
Charlotte was quiet. My laughter trailed off, and I looked at her. She was studying me intently. Ever since I'd cornered her to ask for advice about my feelings for Taylor, Charlotte had been… different towards me. Not in a way that I could easily put words to, but it felt like the hanging dread between us had been replaced by an equally fraught but completely different kind of tension.
"I overheard parts of what you've been talking about." Her voice was deliberately casual.
I swallowed. "What parts?"
She gave me a look that said 'I know what you're doing', but elaborated anyway. "That you might be unmasking. That you want to go to your home to cut ties."
My throat went dry, and I resisted the instinctual urge to pull out my shield. I did not need my passenger acting up here. "And? What do you think?"
"I think what Skitter does is her business." Charlotte idly adjusted the heat lamp on the enclosure. "If she decides to help you, I won't say anything." Her hands paused, and her brow furrowed. "It's not like she owes me anything, after... I mean, I have no right to make any demands of her. "Before I could question that, her eyes met mine and held them. "But if you're serious… please protect her. For the kids. For me."
My heartbeat drummed in my ears. Heat climbed up my neck and across my cheeks.
"Why me?"
Charlotte sighed. She looked at me with resigned acceptance written across her face – but under that, naked envy.
"Because you're the only one she'll let in."
Those words were still on my mind the next day as we flew across midtown, leaving me distracted and seesawing between staring at my partner and avoiding her gaze.
"We don't have to do this, you know," Skitter said, her voice hesitant. I snorted. It was sweet that she was concerned, and she wasn't wrong that I was nervous, but she was probably misreading some of the signs I was showing.
I shook my head for her benefit and tapped out a reply on her thigh. "Need to do it. Only way fwd."
She sighed. "I know. I just…"
She trailed off, but she didn't have to finish the sentence. Her phone call to Defiant had led to him going back to the Dallons, and whatever he'd said to them had got us a meeting an hour before noon. Skitter had voiced her concerns about it – especially since a Sunday meeting meant there wouldn't be anyone absent for work reasons – but we'd agreed to let New Wave set the time, and this was the one they'd set. I couldn't say I didn't share her worries. I just hoped they were unfounded.
We both knew Carol would be antagonistic towards her, of course, even with the concessions Skitter had managed to squeeze out of them. Truce rules or not, regardless of what Amy had done, Skitter was a Villain in her eyes and was to be treated as such. And that was putting aside anything she might say to me.
And yet, it had to happen. This was the only way forward. We'd talked out other options. Rebranding the Undersiders entirely. Disassociating me from the team. Putting out a preemptive PR statement.
In each case we ran into problems. Lack of accountability for past actions. An induced need for me to stay somewhere else. Immediate distraction from the main narrative we were trying to craft. And so on.
No, this break had been coming for a long time. And the decent thing, the right thing, was to do it in person, face-to-face. I owed Carol that much. That, and I wanted to say goodbye to Dad. I hadn't gotten to see him at all in this and that wasn't fair. To either of us. I had my notebook this time. I had Skitter. I was ready.
Wait…
I glanced down at the girl in my arms. Wasn't this, from a certain perspective, bringing Taylor to meet my parents?
I had a sudden wave of anxiety so intense I dropped a few feet. Skitter immediately clutched tighter, fanning out some of the bugs on her person to form a preemptive perimeter.
"What's wrong?" she asked as she scanned our surroundings. I hid my sheepishness as best I could and shook my head.
"Turbulence." Hopefully she'd buy that. From the slowly relaxing tension in her back, it seemed like it.
I was glad to see the landmarks that signaled I was getting close to my old home; they gave me something else to focus on. This meeting was going to be complicated enough as it was. Trying to handle leaving New Wave while thinking about introducing my maybe-sorta-Villain-crush to my family as I was moving out–
Yeah, no.
Navigating didn't take up all of my attention, though, so I tried to distract myself by going over the meeting details. Just because both parties knew this had to happen didn't mean either was happy with it. The concessions had been fought over tooth and nail, and I kind of felt sorry for Defiant having to play messenger, since Carol had refused to call Skitter and arrange things directly. Probably a good move, since that call would have gone nowhere good.
Carol had wanted to set the date and time, of course. A reasonable demand, given we were effectively showing up to her house. But more contentious was that she'd refused to let Skitter bring any more bugs than she usually carried on her person, or bring any at all into the house. Skitter had not liked hearing that, but given our own demands she hadn't been able to argue her way out of it.
Because that was the key concession we'd gotten. Amy wouldn't be in the house while we were there. That was the bare minimum I needed to feel like I could even enter the property. The memories would be bad enough. Carol was still refusing to acknowledge what Amy had done, but Defiant had assured us that our demand had been heard and agreed to off the record.
The rest was more logistical. Skitter showing up in full costume, for instance, and keeping her weapons since she wasn't allowed her bugs. Normally I'd have thought that Carol would put up more of a fuss about that after Aunt Jess, but the fact that she'd been allowed to set the date and time likely helped.
I swallowed, seeing the familiar street below us, and subtly shook myself. No more time for dwelling. I could see the two figures waiting for us outside the front door. Mark and Carol. I glanced down at Skitter. "Rdy?"
She nodded. "On your mark."
I gave her one last strained smile and took us down the last hundred feet or so, landing silently on the ground a few houses down. I carefully set Skitter down, wincing slightly as she climbed off my back and rubbing at my overworked back muscles. Without my shield, I couldn't just effortlessly bridal-carry people anymore, and while Skitter was lean, she was still taller than me and correspondingly heavy. Stupid passenger. Stupid me.
"Victoria?"
Side by side, we looked.
Dad and Carol were staring at us from the front of the house fifty feet or so away. Carol's lips were still pursed from when she'd spoken. Her eyes were narrowed, brows angled sharply over them as if she was barely holding herself back from storming over. I could imagine the rant brewing under the surface.
Dad, meanwhile, was… I was afraid to even try to name what I thought I saw on his face. Hope? Dread? Love? Disgust? Last I'd seen him, he was just barely recovering from being a drooling vegetable for a month. It had been so long since I could lean on him like I wanted to, I didn't dare count on it now.
I swallowed, and waved timidly. It felt awkward, like a moment half remembered but lacking context. How was I supposed to respond? 'Hi, it's your daughter; you know, the one you abandoned and gaslit into thinking she wasn't assaulted?' The sick humor of it made me want to laugh. But at the same time, the look on their faces…
"It is you," Dad breathed as he took a step closer. "I didn't want to hope, but–"
Carol's outstretched arm stopped him from getting any closer.
"Skitter."
Just like that, the air temperature dropped twenty degrees. Skitter straightened, and the now familiar swarm of insects started to spill out of her hair and back compartments – not a true swarm like the one she'd brought to the PRT negotiation, but intimidating nonetheless. The darkness chittered and clicked, swirling into a shifting cloak that folded around to guard our flanks.
"Brandish," she said flatly, echoed by the warbling hiss of her bugs. "Nice to see you too. Glad you didn't exert yourself too much during the groundwork for the Coil assault."
Fuck. I couldn't help but give her an annoyed glance. I'd told her not to antagonize Carol, and now five seconds in and she'd done just that.
"This coming from one of Coil's lackeys," Carol shot back, her hands curling around phantom sword hilts, ready to wield them at a moment's notice. "How did you convince the PRT not to classify you as terrorists? I'm curious."
I jabbed Skitter in the ribs with my elbow before she could shoot anything back. She might have been able to fight Brandish, but debates and lectures were Carol's bread and butter. We were at a disadvantage here, and we both knew it. I'd said as much before we'd even arrived; that she should let me set the pace. Taylor had agreed, but I guess the opportunity had been too much for Skitter to resist.
"You know why we're here, Carol," I wrote in my book. I had to take control of the conversation, regardless of my feelings on the matter, otherwise none of us were getting anywhere today.
"Victoria." Carol softened as she looked at me, giving me a once-over the same way she used to every time I got back from patrol as Glory Girl. Looking for bruises, injuries, tears in my costume.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
"It's nice to see you and Mark," I wrote. I had to be careful not to directly show my hand here, which meant using first names for both of them. I hated treating Dad like this, but Carol would pounce on any potential opening.
That didn't make the look on his face hurt less.
"It's nice to see you too, honey," he said, and this time Carol let him step closer. "We were so worried about you."
My vision blurred as completely unwanted tears abruptly filled my eyes, and I sniffled. God, fuck, no. I couldn't have a breakdown here. I had to control myself. "I'm okay. You and Carol wanted to speak with me?"
"We did…" he trailed off, looking at Skitter.
"But we'd prefer to do so in private," Carol finished. "This is a family matter, it's none of her concern."
"No." Skitter's voice was simple and absolute. The cloak of bugs she had us wrapped in bristled, but her tone was so blunt that it wasn't even a denial, just a statement.
Carol's scowl grew thunderous. "You promised that you'd–"
"I promised that you would be able to talk to Victoria without interference, and that I would keep my insects outside your property," Skitter stated, still in the same uncompromising tone. "I will not break my word. But you cannot make me abandon her."
I blinked the tears out of my eyes and curled my fingers into her palm to tap out "thnk u". She squeezed back, reassuring, and I stood a little straighter before pulling my hand away to write again. "She's right. Anything you say you can say to both of us."
"Victoria…" Carol glanced between the two of us, her eyes lingering on Skitter's hand where it still hung at her side, curled into a loose fist. "... fine. We can say this here." She took a moment to gather herself. "We want you to come home, sweetie. To be here with us. We know you're hurting. And that's okay. But we can work through this together."
My fists clenched, and I savored the way my nails dug into my palms; the pain was a welcome anchor. There was something heavy and hard and swollen lodged in my throat that tasted of tears and betrayal. The thought of forcing words past it made speech feel further away than ever.
"Vicky, you can talk to us," she said, taking a step closer. I barely masked my flinch. "We're here for you. Maybe…" she paused, and gave another glance at Skitter. "Maybe she helped you. That's okay. But we're your family. We're here for you. We love you, I promise."
My teeth bit through my lip. I noted the salty copper tang on my tongue almost absently. They were the words I'd wanted to hear since that disastrous conversation on the rooftop weeks ago.
And yet.
It was hard to trust those three words from family, now.
"What's wrong, honey?" Dad asked. His face… he looked so young. Fresh tears flooded my eyes, and my breath hitched. "I can see you're hurting. We're hurting too. You can tell us what's wrong, I promise."
Could I? Could I really? Could I tell him, and trust that Carol wouldn't twist my words against me, or use me as a weapon against Skitter? The thought paralyzed me. I wanted to run across the gap between us, to throw myself into his arms and cry like I hadn't since I was a little girl. Before all the Bad Days had shaken my trust in him. In my family. In New Wave. In Heroes.
But I couldn't.
"You know what she did?" My face felt numb as I wrote. I didn't need to elaborate.
"We know…" he glanced carefully at Skitter. "We know what the PRT told us. And we want to help you recover from this. I promise we do. We just want you here with us for it. So we can help."
It sounded perfect, when he said it like that. Like it really would be as simple as coming home and talking around the dinner table and letting my mom and dad step in and fix everything...
A moth fluttered its wings, and I snapped back into the moment. My head was swimming, and I was swaying on my feet. Beside me, Skitter was a statue carved from granite. I swallowed. I wanted it to be as simple as Dad thought it was. I wanted it so much.
But it wasn't.
"No," I wrote, my hand shaky. "This can't be fixed. Not as long as she's here." I wouldn't budge on this. I wouldn't. Just the thought of being in the same house, of sleeping near her–
My throat convulsed around a sob, and I bit down on it, choking the crying fit between clenched teeth before it could start. Dad must have seen as much, because his shoulders sagged.
"Okay, honey," he said, and I had to hastily stamp on a flare of indignation at the gentle, pitying tone. No no no; I wasn't going to let them lure me back, but I wasn't here to burn all my bridges either. "Just promise that this isn't goodbye?" he pleaded. "We want to help. I know I've let you down before, but I'm not giving up on you now. I'm on your side in this. Whatever makes you happy, that's what we'll do."
"Mark, that's not–"
He shot Carol a look that cut her off mid-word. "We agreed that it was her choice. Let her make it."
She grit her teeth, but kept her silence. For my part, I was really, seriously struggling not to cry now. I knew I was making the right decision, but it sure didn't feel like it. Meepy fluttered again, moving down to cling to my cheek and brush her soft, dry wings over my cheekbone. A chaste kiss, I thought, then winced and did my level best to forget the comparison. Now was not the time to be thinking about Skitter that way.
"Skitter." For a completely irrational second, I panicked. But thankfully, when I looked, it didn't look like Dad had somehow spontaneously developed telepathy and plucked the thought out of my head. He was looking at her, not me; his eyes were hard and searching. "You agree to the rules we set?"
She nodded. "No one initiates hostilities. We take things from her room, and we leave. So long as Amy isn't in the house." She gave Carol a pointed look.
For her part, Carol looked like she wanted to have some choice words with Skitter and Dad both, but she held her tongue and nodded tightly.
Skitter let out a quiet breath, and the insects around us dispersed into the surrounding trees and shrubbery. Within a few moments the ever-present bodyguards she always carried on her suit and in her hair had vanished. She was far from defenseless still, but I could tell from how reluctantly they left that she felt no less vulnerable for it. I slipped my fingers back into hers, and she straightened up again from where she'd started to almost imperceptibly shrink in on herself.
"Then lead on."
Stepping into the house felt like going back in time. We were only just past the doorway and yet the sheer presence took me aback. The photographs were still on the walls in the entryway. Carol celebrating my first straight A report card. My first PR event as Glory Girl. Dressing up for a date with Dean. Homecoming. Middle school talent show rehearsals. Carol always did like keeping photos.
Dad sent me a worried glance as I slowed, but I didn't say anything. I'm not sure I would've known what to say even if I'd had my voice. Skitter kept close, her hand in mine, hot skin under smooth silk. We kept walking.
The hallway opened into the kitchen, and I had to take a breath as more memories came swarming in like flies. Nothing had changed. The old microwave with the plate that always got disconnected from the base. The refrigerator that never seemed to close right even after we'd had it looked at four times. The coffee machine that I always hated because Carol and Amy invariably got to it in the mornings before–
I took a sharp right towards the stairs. I didn't want to see any more of this, I didn't want to be battered by any more memories. It was too much. Maybe one day I could come back and spend time here without feeling every glance punching another red-hot needle through my heart. But not right now.
"You okay?" Skitter murmured as we climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. I wasn't sure how to answer. How could I possibly describe what I was feeling right now? What words could do it justice? Hell, I wasn't even sure of what all the emotions in the mix were. Explaining it to anyone else? Fat chance.
"Let's just get through this."
Skitter nodded knowingly. Given the turbulent storm I'd glimpsed once or twice beneath her brittle mask, maybe she understood.
"It's just up here," Carol said as we got to the top of the stairs. She was accidentally – mercifully? – standing in front of Amy's door as she gestured at my room. I gave her a thin smile, and pushed the door open.
My childhood stared back at me. A small twin bed with blue floral covers. Prints of the Brockton Bay Brigade on the walls; relics of a time gone by. Photos of Dean on the bedside table that sent a pang through my chest and forced my eyes closed for a moment in grief. I hadn't had the heart to take them down, and now my heart ached to see them. My laptop was still left on my desk; I'd forgotten to take it with me the last time I'd left the house. Maybe that was for the best, otherwise Shatterbird would've killed it. My dirty clothes were still in the hamper, and a book lay askew on my pillow with a coaster serving as a bookmark.
It was a shrine to a dead girl. Fuck. She hadn't touched it since I'd left.
The sobs I'd been forcing down finally broke free. I brought up a hand to my mouth, but it didn't do any good; I was crying now, my whole body shaking with it. I didn't… I couldn't… why? Why now? Why was this what broke me, after everything? I fell back into Skitter's chest and turned to hide my face in her neck. I just. I needed a moment.
"It's okay, Tori," Taylor murmured. Her arm hesitantly stretched to rest across my back. "Take as long as you need."
I hiccuped and sobbed as voices murmured around me. I didn't pay them any mind. Instead I breathed, steady and slow, in and out. I matched my pace to the chest I rested against, gradually relaxing as the hard, clenching grip on the inside of my chest eased up and the lump in my throat shrank back down.
After a few long moments, I gave Taylor one last squeeze and pulled back.
"Thank you," I rasped. "C-could you get the c-clothes?"
Skitter stared at me for a second, cocking her head, before she nodded and moved to the closet. I watched her as she began to quickly and methodically pack away my things. Blouses, skirts, pants, jackets, socks, shoes, shorts, bras… I'd forgotten how much stuff I had here.
"Victoria?" I jumped and turned back to Dad. He was giving me that smile again. The one that said 'I'm not sure how to talk to you but I desperately want to' and 'I think you look fragile and I'm afraid you'll break if I put a single foot wrong'. "Are you okay?"
I sniffled loudly and rubbed my nose before bringing my notepad back out. "I'm fine. It was just a lot."
He nodded softly. "I understand. After Leviathan…" he trailed off for a moment before gathering himself again. "I know I wasn't there for you when I needed to. That we weren't there for you. But I want to fix that. Will you at least let us try?"
Fuck. I couldn't say no. Not when he looked at me like that. A tear traced down my cheek, and I took a step forward. He didn't say anything. Just stood stock still, like he was trying to avoid scaring off a small animal.
I tentatively wrapped my arms around him, and clung like I'd wanted to for years. He was warm. Strong. I was surrounded by the smell of sandalwood and peppermint as his arms wrapped around me. My cheeks were wet.
I let out a long slow breath, and nodded into his shoulder. I'd… I'd let them try. Surely that much was fair.
"Thank you," Dad said as I pulled back out of his arms.
"...Victoria?"
I glanced back at Skitter. She was glancing at the two of us in the doorway. "I finished packing up the clothes." She gestured at the bin that Carol had provided for the purpose earlier. "But what about the rest?"
I swallowed. That was the question, wasn't it? So much of what was in here belonged to another girl. The one who'd died a month ago so Tori could live. I didn't want to take that from them. From her. But some of it…
I glanced at the picture of Dean and I, happy after our first date. At my laptop, probably still logged in from my last assignment for Arcadia. The box of old Lego and board games, peeking out from the top shelf in the closet.
Maybe it wasn't necessarily mine, anymore. But that didn't mean I couldn't reclaim it anyways. That I couldn't make it something new.
"Take it with us." I smiled at Skitter. "It's not like we don't already have baggage."
I was silent as we made our way back downstairs. Partly that was because I was carrying the box with my assorted belongings in it. One of the many annoyances of my condition, as I was so often reminded, was my inability to speak while handling things.
But even if my hands had been free, there was too much on my mind. I felt… strange. Out of place. As if I was three feet to the left of where I should've been. My body seemed to float just above the ground, even as I knew my power wasn't on.
"...taking care of her?"
I blinked. Conversation.
"Not your concern…"
The words drifted in and out of my head. I was crying earlier. Why had I… What was happening? Everything seemed so far away.
"Victoria?"
We'd reached the kitchen. I turned to Taylor. Skitter. She was staring at me. Her face was… her shoulders were tense. Hands clenched at her sides. Tension up her neck.
"Something's wrong." Her words were terse. Sharp. "Someone is in the living room."
A quick inhale. "You swore you wouldn't use insects in my house–"
"I didn't!"
I dropped the box.
"They were in the garden before; they must have tracked them inside."
A step to the left.
"That's still a breach of the agreement, Skitter, and you know it."
Another step.
"And yours said that you wouldn't antagonize or initiate hostilities. How do I know that's not a PRT agent or hero ready to arrest me?"
One more step and I'd be at the doorway. There was metal on my tongue. Prickles up the back of my neck.
"Oh please, that's hypothetical at best–"
I was at the doorway. I looked into the room–
Curly hair. Pale skin. Freckles. Tired eyes. Wet lips. Missing fingers.
Amy.
And then a lot of things happened at once.
A/N:
So. Hypothetically. If I was to write a cliffhanger. This is an example of what one would look like.
Writing Tori coming home was always in the cards. A number of you have pointed out as much before. But having to put yourself in her head when she's seeing the pictures on the walls? The clothes on her bed? The look in her father's eyes? I wish I could put words to what was going through my mind when I wrote this. But as always I wrote this in a fugue at 2 am so your guess is as good as mine.
I do want to say something though. I've read a lot of stories that have ended chapters on cliffhangers or situations that drove my anxiety crazy and sent me into a nasty spiral. That's an issue on my end for the most part, but it still makes reading some media more difficult. If you're also like me, this is for you. Things are going to be okay. It's not going to be nice or easy or clean in the way that these two deserve, but they will come out the other side, I promise.
On a much lighter note, today's rec is Beautifully Horrid Rhydeble. In which Lisa and Melanie are co conspirators to create the worst "showing your partner to the family" meeting in history. But with a notably more humorous bent than what you've just read. It's cute and hilarious in equal measure.
I turned. Skitter must've seen the look on my face, because she was staring at me. "You're thinking of something," she prompted.
A smile stole across my face despite the subject matter. It was nice to be reminded that Taylor was on my wavelength in this. But she was right. Something was on my mind, and it wasn't anything that could be resolved as cleanly as what we'd run into so far.
Glory Girl was a part of New Wave. Thanks to Carol and the rest of the first generation, so was Victoria Dallon. If I wanted to rebrand as a cape of any kind, I'd need to address that split directly. I wasn't ashamed of my actions or my plan, far from it. I wasn't planning on hiding the connection between me and whatever new cape identity I came up with. I had good reason not to.
But I'd still need to officially break from New Wave, if only for legal reasons. Rebranding as a cape was always… complicated. That was the nature of not-technically-legal-but-mostly-respected secret identities. Carol knew that better than most, having been on multiple sides of the issue at one point or another, and she'd drilled the potential landmines into my head. The fundamental problem I faced now was that if Victoria rebranded as a Hero working with the Undersiders and didn't split with New Wave amicably beforehand, the media could frame that as New Wave tacitly endorsing the Undersiders themselves.
"I'll be headed off then," Tattletale said distantly. "I'm usually all for girl talk, but right now I've got a schedule to keep." I didn't let the noise distract me.
I'd mostly avoided thinking about my family up until this point, at least where the Hero and Villain scene were concerned. I simply hadn't had the energy, between the crisis every five seconds and the increasingly distressing revelations I was going through. My broken power had only made things worse. But now I had no choice.
I knew what Carol's position was. She'd made that abundantly clear. But I hadn't talked to any of the others. Aunt Sarah, Dad, Crystal… they were all big hanging question marks I'd made no effort to fill in. Part of me wanted to call that cowardly. And it was, in a sense. It was far easier to pretend that everyone was like Carol, to cut all my ties in one fell swoop. But that wasn't fair to them, and it wasn't fair to me. I deserved whatever support I could get from my family, after what had happened to me.
But... could I honestly say I was ready to take the risk? If my worst fears were true, and it was all more of the same? My mental state these days was fragile at best, I was self aware to admit that much. Could I handle the same vitriol and… pain that Carol had spewed at me, multiplied fourfold? A week ago I would've said yes.
Now I wasn't sure.
"If you're finished, I'll be on my way as well," Defiant said as he glanced between the two of us. "You two clearly have some things to talk about."
My eyes snapped open. Defiant! He was the perfect person to go to about this! Well not exactly, but if there was anyone able to give a perspective outside of the PRT on cape rebranding, it would be him.
"Wait!"
He paused mid-stride as I jumped in front of him, signing frantically. "Yes?"
I gathered myself as I tried to figure out the right way to phrase my question. I didn't want to snipe at his previous identity like Tattletale had earlier, but I also needed to be frank. "I need help."
The cape straightened immediately. "What with?"
I swallowed tightly. "I need to rebrand. Break from New Wave. And I don't know how." I was leaning hard on whatever predictive software or HUD he had in his helmet to translate my shaky signs, because my eyes were starting to blur.
It sounded like a simple enough request. Breaking from an organization that had mapped out your past to draw a new future. I'd even described it mostly in my terms, so as not to put the emphasis on the question back on him. It was as neutral as you could make it.
As if asking "How do I leave my family?" could ever be that simple.
Defiant's lips thinned. "Victoria, your situation is very different than… I'm not sure how much advice I could offer."
"Anything is better than nothing." I glanced at Skitter beside me who was thankfully still letting me take the lead. "We're in the dark here."
He sighed, and his shoulders dropped. "Very well. There are a few things you can do. The first of which is telling them directly."
"Well yeah," I signed impatiently, "But I don't know where to start. It's not like I could just show up at her door. Not when–"
My breath hitched. Threadbare sheets, fluorescent lights, hands on my chest, fingers wrapped around mine, sweat coating my face–
"...not when she's there."
Skitter's swarm hissed in agreement, and I managed a watery smile, reaching out to where it was pressing in through the door. It rolled over to hug me, the bugs never quite touching skin but swelling up in a dense cloud at my back and to either side of me. I didn't turn my head to gawp, but I knew what I must look like. A vanguard of the apocalypse, probably. That, or a fractured girl in a hoodie and jeans, absurdly out of place against the dark insectile thunderclouds that filled half the room and cradled me in a pocket at their heart.
"Hmm." Defiant paused to consider us, looking at the way the insects had my back and guarded my flanks, the moth slowly beating its wings in my hair. The girl who stepped through the darting, buzzing bodies to my left like a ghost, blending briefly into the swarm and then appearing again at my side. He nodded slowly. "You raise a good point. Skitter and Victoria couldn't show up to New Wave's residence… uninvited."
I blinked. "Pardon?"
"Yeah, you'll have to explain that one," Skitter muttered from beside me.
"I meant just what I said," Defiant said. "Announce your intentions ahead of time. Through me or the PRT. Tell them you're coming in good faith and let them set the date and time."
"Wouldn't that violate the unwritten rules?" Skitter asked, crossing her arms over her chest. "Last I heard you can't just show up to a cape's home." I struggled not to give her a glance at that. Unwritten rules? What the fuck was she talking about? Before I could ask, Defiant kept talking.
"That would be true if the capes weren't unmasked," he said, taking one of his spears off his back and fiddling with the shaft. "But New Wave has a public residence, and while a cape showing up unannounced is rude at best, there is... leeway, for a family member and a supportive friend."
I squinted at him, not sure if I'd heard a fractional pause before the word 'friend' or if I'd just imagined it, then nodded to Skitter in confirmation. Even the PRT respected that rule, at least after Aunt Jess's murder.
"So we're just supposed to trust that they won't set a trap?" The droning stormcloud was still building around us, expanding more and more as bugs flooded into the room from the massive swarm she'd brought to the negotiation. A screen of stinging fliers curled around in front of us at chest height and the edges of our little bubble of clear space crept forward, as if she was drawing us further into her power. Between my impulsive jump in front of him and Skitter's display, we'd cut off Defiant's route outside entirely. The door was impossible to see through the bugs that had our back; the light was visibly dimming as the swarm darkened the sky around the building.
Defiant's grip tightened on his spear. But he didn't move. Didn't attack. Didn't even comment. He just took what I was pretty sure was a steadying breath, adjusted something else on the shaft of his spear and then stowed it across his back.
A precaution on an automatic trigger? Or genuine trust?
"Somehow I don't think Brandish is going to be a fan of this," Skitter said, bringing me back to earth. I turned to her, fond yet exasperated. It was sweet that she was concerned, and understandable that she didn't trust Defiant after all their messy history. Or at least, that's what I assumed this threat display was about. But at some point, we needed to take a risk. That was what this all came down to.
A leap of faith.
"Hey, it's going to be okay," I signed, taking shameless advantage of the low wall of insects in front of us to obscure my hands. Hot lines of pain traced down the insides of my fingers and wrists, and I smiled fearlessly through the stabbing discomfort. "I'll be right there with you. There's no way they can take us both down."
"Victoria is right." I turned back to Defiant, frowning, before realizing he probably had some kind of infrared overlay in his helmet that the thin screen of bugs didn't stop. Well, that was something to remember for later. He was glancing between the two of us, keeping a wary eye on the massing cloud of insects but still not making any hostile moves. "Unfortunately I can't be present, given that it's a family member – it's not the PRT or the Guild's place to mediate private affairs. The optics would be bad for all of us. But I can pass along the message for you. And if they act in bad faith, there will be consequences."
Skitter glared at the older cape from within the murder-cloud she'd amassed. "This time, you mean?"
He held her gaze. "Yes."
I leaned into her, pressing our shoulders together. Trust was never easy. Especially not when it concerned someone who'd betrayed you before. Hell, in a very real sense I was asking Skitter to do something that I might never be capable of myself – that I certainly wasn't capable of right now. But I believed in her.
In Taylor.
"... fine," she said at length. "Tell New Wave we want to meet. Strictly for face to face communication. Victoria and I will be present, in costume." She glanced at me. "If there's anything else…"
"She can't be there." My breath caught in my throat, but I didn't take the statement back.
Defiant's mouth firmed. "I promise that will be communicated to Brandish at length."
My hands unclenched, even as the protective embrace of the swarm tightened around me. The bugs still stayed clear of touching me, though. I tried not to show my relief.
"Aside from that, there are my things." It had gotten lost in the… everything that we'd been dealing with, but I'd been effectively living off of Taylor's wardrobe and donated clothes for a month. If I was going to stay affiliated with the Undersiders in the long term, I should at least move my clothes and things in.
It wasn't like I was willing to live in the same house as her regardless.
Defiant nodded. "Alright, I'll pass along the message. We'll be in touch." He paused. "If I may, Skitter?"
She glanced back at the door, and the ten-foot-high mass of wasps and flies and beetles that almost completely obscured it. Slowly, they retreated back outside, the mantle of horror we'd been shrouded in shrinking away and letting the light back in. She turned back to him, maybe only just realizing how aggressively she'd been posturing at him.
He nodded at her, not yet making any move towards us, and hefted the packed-up projector kit up under one arm. Slowly, thoughtfully, Skitter stepped aside, and I moved with her to leave him a clear path to the door. For a man wearing a full suit of power armor, he made surprisingly little noise even as he nimbly stepped through the debris strewn across the floor. He paused at the door, and I thought he was about to say something, but he settled for just nodding to us both again, and vanishing out to who-knew-where. A few seconds later, I couldn't even hear his footsteps striding away over the sound of the swarm.
"So, what now?"
I glanced at Skitter. She sounded contemplative.
"We wait."
"What do you mean they're not willing to meet?!"
I winced at the volume in Skitter's voice. She was on the phone with Defiant, and the past day had not been kind to either of our nerves. I didn't even need to watch the swarm to pick up on Skitter's anger; it was clear in her voice, her usual self-control gone. Not that my own was much better.
I'd expected that Carol would be obstinate. She'd already shown what she thought of my relationship with Skitter. But this went beyond obstinance into outright malice.
"I don't care if she's trying to pull some kind of a power move! That's not on us; that's on her!"
I wanted to say that Skitter was getting mad at the wrong person. That Defiant was on our side, and was helping us purely out of altruism. Well, altruism and guilt over his past actions. But that was beside the point, and I knew it. Skitter wasn't blaming him, not really. She just needed someone to vent at after encountering so many problems outside of her control. Defiant probably wouldn't take it personally. And from what she'd told me, he kind of deserved to be shouted at. At least a little.
"Then why suggest it, if you knew she was going to do this?!" I winced. Telling myself all that was scant reassurance when I was stuck listening to half the conversation. She'd offered to put it on speaker and let me listen in, but I'd told her not to bother. I still didn't know much about the schedule she kept or the state of affairs in the wider city, and that was going to be what set the viable dates and times for our visit. In a logistical conversation like this, I was pretty much dead weight, so I'd elected to keep studying my sign instead.
I was kind of regretting that now. Maybe I should just take a break. Judging from the look on her face and how long the call had already dragged with no progress, this wasn't going anywhere fast.
I glanced at Taylor, and she met my eyes. She had the grace to smile apologetically and gave the door a pointed look and a raised eyebrow. I took the offered out, and left Skitter to her argument.
I didn't find any peace or quiet as I closed the door behind me and made my way downstairs, but the din was at least a different kind of noise. I could hear Naoki and Akiko arguing over some video game yet again as I passed their room – they'd gotten one of the consoles working recently and refused to abandon the thing. Hopefully that meant Dominique was in the kitchen helping Martin. He'd been trying to learn how to cook for Tia; something about being a good big brother. It would at least keep him occupied and away from the twins. Though god knew what the rest of the kids were up to.
I was considering tracking them down and pulling them into some kind of group activity to raise everyone's spirits – none of them could sign, but I could improvise a skipping rope pretty easily and see if any of them had any energy to burn off – when I ran into Charlotte on the second floor. She glanced up and caught my eyes. "Hey, Tori. You escaped."
I grinned sheepishly. "Yeah, bit of a nightmare." I ignored the twinges of protest from my fingers. Charlotte wasn't nearly as good at sign as Taylor or Sierra, which meant I had to finger spell a lot more often. But it was worth it after our last conversation.
"I can imagine." She glanced back at the stairs leading up to the next floor, before looking down to the terrarium she had been in the middle of caring for. "She can get so forceful when she cares about some…thing. Not that you'd ever know it from talking to her."
"Tell me about it." I chuckled. "I'm not sure I could pull her away from this if I tried."
Charlotte was quiet. My laughter trailed off, and I looked at her. She was studying me intently. Ever since I'd cornered her to ask for advice about my feelings for Taylor, Charlotte had been… different towards me. Not in a way that I could easily put words to, but it felt like the hanging dread between us had been replaced by an equally fraught but completely different kind of tension.
"I overheard parts of what you've been talking about." Her voice was deliberately casual.
I swallowed. "What parts?"
She gave me a look that said 'I know what you're doing', but elaborated anyway. "That you might be unmasking. That you want to go to your home to cut ties."
My throat went dry, and I resisted the instinctual urge to pull out my shield. I did not need my passenger acting up here. "And? What do you think?"
"I think what Skitter does is her business." Charlotte idly adjusted the heat lamp on the enclosure. "If she decides to help you, I won't say anything." Her hands paused, and her brow furrowed. "It's not like she owes me anything, after... I mean, I have no right to make any demands of her. "Before I could question that, her eyes met mine and held them. "But if you're serious… please protect her. For the kids. For me."
My heartbeat drummed in my ears. Heat climbed up my neck and across my cheeks.
"Why me?"
Charlotte sighed. She looked at me with resigned acceptance written across her face – but under that, naked envy.
"Because you're the only one she'll let in."
Those words were still on my mind the next day as we flew across midtown, leaving me distracted and seesawing between staring at my partner and avoiding her gaze.
"We don't have to do this, you know," Skitter said, her voice hesitant. I snorted. It was sweet that she was concerned, and she wasn't wrong that I was nervous, but she was probably misreading some of the signs I was showing.
I shook my head for her benefit and tapped out a reply on her thigh. "Need to do it. Only way fwd."
She sighed. "I know. I just…"
She trailed off, but she didn't have to finish the sentence. Her phone call to Defiant had led to him going back to the Dallons, and whatever he'd said to them had got us a meeting an hour before noon. Skitter had voiced her concerns about it – especially since a Sunday meeting meant there wouldn't be anyone absent for work reasons – but we'd agreed to let New Wave set the time, and this was the one they'd set. I couldn't say I didn't share her worries. I just hoped they were unfounded.
We both knew Carol would be antagonistic towards her, of course, even with the concessions Skitter had managed to squeeze out of them. Truce rules or not, regardless of what Amy had done, Skitter was a Villain in her eyes and was to be treated as such. And that was putting aside anything she might say to me.
And yet, it had to happen. This was the only way forward. We'd talked out other options. Rebranding the Undersiders entirely. Disassociating me from the team. Putting out a preemptive PR statement.
In each case we ran into problems. Lack of accountability for past actions. An induced need for me to stay somewhere else. Immediate distraction from the main narrative we were trying to craft. And so on.
No, this break had been coming for a long time. And the decent thing, the right thing, was to do it in person, face-to-face. I owed Carol that much. That, and I wanted to say goodbye to Dad. I hadn't gotten to see him at all in this and that wasn't fair. To either of us. I had my notebook this time. I had Skitter. I was ready.
Wait…
I glanced down at the girl in my arms. Wasn't this, from a certain perspective, bringing Taylor to meet my parents?
I had a sudden wave of anxiety so intense I dropped a few feet. Skitter immediately clutched tighter, fanning out some of the bugs on her person to form a preemptive perimeter.
"What's wrong?" she asked as she scanned our surroundings. I hid my sheepishness as best I could and shook my head.
"Turbulence." Hopefully she'd buy that. From the slowly relaxing tension in her back, it seemed like it.
I was glad to see the landmarks that signaled I was getting close to my old home; they gave me something else to focus on. This meeting was going to be complicated enough as it was. Trying to handle leaving New Wave while thinking about introducing my maybe-sorta-Villain-crush to my family as I was moving out–
Yeah, no.
Navigating didn't take up all of my attention, though, so I tried to distract myself by going over the meeting details. Just because both parties knew this had to happen didn't mean either was happy with it. The concessions had been fought over tooth and nail, and I kind of felt sorry for Defiant having to play messenger, since Carol had refused to call Skitter and arrange things directly. Probably a good move, since that call would have gone nowhere good.
Carol had wanted to set the date and time, of course. A reasonable demand, given we were effectively showing up to her house. But more contentious was that she'd refused to let Skitter bring any more bugs than she usually carried on her person, or bring any at all into the house. Skitter had not liked hearing that, but given our own demands she hadn't been able to argue her way out of it.
Because that was the key concession we'd gotten. Amy wouldn't be in the house while we were there. That was the bare minimum I needed to feel like I could even enter the property. The memories would be bad enough. Carol was still refusing to acknowledge what Amy had done, but Defiant had assured us that our demand had been heard and agreed to off the record.
The rest was more logistical. Skitter showing up in full costume, for instance, and keeping her weapons since she wasn't allowed her bugs. Normally I'd have thought that Carol would put up more of a fuss about that after Aunt Jess, but the fact that she'd been allowed to set the date and time likely helped.
I swallowed, seeing the familiar street below us, and subtly shook myself. No more time for dwelling. I could see the two figures waiting for us outside the front door. Mark and Carol. I glanced down at Skitter. "Rdy?"
She nodded. "On your mark."
I gave her one last strained smile and took us down the last hundred feet or so, landing silently on the ground a few houses down. I carefully set Skitter down, wincing slightly as she climbed off my back and rubbing at my overworked back muscles. Without my shield, I couldn't just effortlessly bridal-carry people anymore, and while Skitter was lean, she was still taller than me and correspondingly heavy. Stupid passenger. Stupid me.
"Victoria?"
Side by side, we looked.
Dad and Carol were staring at us from the front of the house fifty feet or so away. Carol's lips were still pursed from when she'd spoken. Her eyes were narrowed, brows angled sharply over them as if she was barely holding herself back from storming over. I could imagine the rant brewing under the surface.
Dad, meanwhile, was… I was afraid to even try to name what I thought I saw on his face. Hope? Dread? Love? Disgust? Last I'd seen him, he was just barely recovering from being a drooling vegetable for a month. It had been so long since I could lean on him like I wanted to, I didn't dare count on it now.
I swallowed, and waved timidly. It felt awkward, like a moment half remembered but lacking context. How was I supposed to respond? 'Hi, it's your daughter; you know, the one you abandoned and gaslit into thinking she wasn't assaulted?' The sick humor of it made me want to laugh. But at the same time, the look on their faces…
"It is you," Dad breathed as he took a step closer. "I didn't want to hope, but–"
Carol's outstretched arm stopped him from getting any closer.
"Skitter."
Just like that, the air temperature dropped twenty degrees. Skitter straightened, and the now familiar swarm of insects started to spill out of her hair and back compartments – not a true swarm like the one she'd brought to the PRT negotiation, but intimidating nonetheless. The darkness chittered and clicked, swirling into a shifting cloak that folded around to guard our flanks.
"Brandish," she said flatly, echoed by the warbling hiss of her bugs. "Nice to see you too. Glad you didn't exert yourself too much during the groundwork for the Coil assault."
Fuck. I couldn't help but give her an annoyed glance. I'd told her not to antagonize Carol, and now five seconds in and she'd done just that.
"This coming from one of Coil's lackeys," Carol shot back, her hands curling around phantom sword hilts, ready to wield them at a moment's notice. "How did you convince the PRT not to classify you as terrorists? I'm curious."
I jabbed Skitter in the ribs with my elbow before she could shoot anything back. She might have been able to fight Brandish, but debates and lectures were Carol's bread and butter. We were at a disadvantage here, and we both knew it. I'd said as much before we'd even arrived; that she should let me set the pace. Taylor had agreed, but I guess the opportunity had been too much for Skitter to resist.
"You know why we're here, Carol," I wrote in my book. I had to take control of the conversation, regardless of my feelings on the matter, otherwise none of us were getting anywhere today.
"Victoria." Carol softened as she looked at me, giving me a once-over the same way she used to every time I got back from patrol as Glory Girl. Looking for bruises, injuries, tears in my costume.
It felt like a lifetime ago.
"It's nice to see you and Mark," I wrote. I had to be careful not to directly show my hand here, which meant using first names for both of them. I hated treating Dad like this, but Carol would pounce on any potential opening.
That didn't make the look on his face hurt less.
"It's nice to see you too, honey," he said, and this time Carol let him step closer. "We were so worried about you."
My vision blurred as completely unwanted tears abruptly filled my eyes, and I sniffled. God, fuck, no. I couldn't have a breakdown here. I had to control myself. "I'm okay. You and Carol wanted to speak with me?"
"We did…" he trailed off, looking at Skitter.
"But we'd prefer to do so in private," Carol finished. "This is a family matter, it's none of her concern."
"No." Skitter's voice was simple and absolute. The cloak of bugs she had us wrapped in bristled, but her tone was so blunt that it wasn't even a denial, just a statement.
Carol's scowl grew thunderous. "You promised that you'd–"
"I promised that you would be able to talk to Victoria without interference, and that I would keep my insects outside your property," Skitter stated, still in the same uncompromising tone. "I will not break my word. But you cannot make me abandon her."
I blinked the tears out of my eyes and curled my fingers into her palm to tap out "thnk u". She squeezed back, reassuring, and I stood a little straighter before pulling my hand away to write again. "She's right. Anything you say you can say to both of us."
"Victoria…" Carol glanced between the two of us, her eyes lingering on Skitter's hand where it still hung at her side, curled into a loose fist. "... fine. We can say this here." She took a moment to gather herself. "We want you to come home, sweetie. To be here with us. We know you're hurting. And that's okay. But we can work through this together."
My fists clenched, and I savored the way my nails dug into my palms; the pain was a welcome anchor. There was something heavy and hard and swollen lodged in my throat that tasted of tears and betrayal. The thought of forcing words past it made speech feel further away than ever.
"Vicky, you can talk to us," she said, taking a step closer. I barely masked my flinch. "We're here for you. Maybe…" she paused, and gave another glance at Skitter. "Maybe she helped you. That's okay. But we're your family. We're here for you. We love you, I promise."
My teeth bit through my lip. I noted the salty copper tang on my tongue almost absently. They were the words I'd wanted to hear since that disastrous conversation on the rooftop weeks ago.
And yet.
It was hard to trust those three words from family, now.
"What's wrong, honey?" Dad asked. His face… he looked so young. Fresh tears flooded my eyes, and my breath hitched. "I can see you're hurting. We're hurting too. You can tell us what's wrong, I promise."
Could I? Could I really? Could I tell him, and trust that Carol wouldn't twist my words against me, or use me as a weapon against Skitter? The thought paralyzed me. I wanted to run across the gap between us, to throw myself into his arms and cry like I hadn't since I was a little girl. Before all the Bad Days had shaken my trust in him. In my family. In New Wave. In Heroes.
But I couldn't.
"You know what she did?" My face felt numb as I wrote. I didn't need to elaborate.
"We know…" he glanced carefully at Skitter. "We know what the PRT told us. And we want to help you recover from this. I promise we do. We just want you here with us for it. So we can help."
It sounded perfect, when he said it like that. Like it really would be as simple as coming home and talking around the dinner table and letting my mom and dad step in and fix everything...
A moth fluttered its wings, and I snapped back into the moment. My head was swimming, and I was swaying on my feet. Beside me, Skitter was a statue carved from granite. I swallowed. I wanted it to be as simple as Dad thought it was. I wanted it so much.
But it wasn't.
"No," I wrote, my hand shaky. "This can't be fixed. Not as long as she's here." I wouldn't budge on this. I wouldn't. Just the thought of being in the same house, of sleeping near her–
My throat convulsed around a sob, and I bit down on it, choking the crying fit between clenched teeth before it could start. Dad must have seen as much, because his shoulders sagged.
"Okay, honey," he said, and I had to hastily stamp on a flare of indignation at the gentle, pitying tone. No no no; I wasn't going to let them lure me back, but I wasn't here to burn all my bridges either. "Just promise that this isn't goodbye?" he pleaded. "We want to help. I know I've let you down before, but I'm not giving up on you now. I'm on your side in this. Whatever makes you happy, that's what we'll do."
"Mark, that's not–"
He shot Carol a look that cut her off mid-word. "We agreed that it was her choice. Let her make it."
She grit her teeth, but kept her silence. For my part, I was really, seriously struggling not to cry now. I knew I was making the right decision, but it sure didn't feel like it. Meepy fluttered again, moving down to cling to my cheek and brush her soft, dry wings over my cheekbone. A chaste kiss, I thought, then winced and did my level best to forget the comparison. Now was not the time to be thinking about Skitter that way.
"Skitter." For a completely irrational second, I panicked. But thankfully, when I looked, it didn't look like Dad had somehow spontaneously developed telepathy and plucked the thought out of my head. He was looking at her, not me; his eyes were hard and searching. "You agree to the rules we set?"
She nodded. "No one initiates hostilities. We take things from her room, and we leave. So long as Amy isn't in the house." She gave Carol a pointed look.
For her part, Carol looked like she wanted to have some choice words with Skitter and Dad both, but she held her tongue and nodded tightly.
Skitter let out a quiet breath, and the insects around us dispersed into the surrounding trees and shrubbery. Within a few moments the ever-present bodyguards she always carried on her suit and in her hair had vanished. She was far from defenseless still, but I could tell from how reluctantly they left that she felt no less vulnerable for it. I slipped my fingers back into hers, and she straightened up again from where she'd started to almost imperceptibly shrink in on herself.
"Then lead on."
Stepping into the house felt like going back in time. We were only just past the doorway and yet the sheer presence took me aback. The photographs were still on the walls in the entryway. Carol celebrating my first straight A report card. My first PR event as Glory Girl. Dressing up for a date with Dean. Homecoming. Middle school talent show rehearsals. Carol always did like keeping photos.
Dad sent me a worried glance as I slowed, but I didn't say anything. I'm not sure I would've known what to say even if I'd had my voice. Skitter kept close, her hand in mine, hot skin under smooth silk. We kept walking.
The hallway opened into the kitchen, and I had to take a breath as more memories came swarming in like flies. Nothing had changed. The old microwave with the plate that always got disconnected from the base. The refrigerator that never seemed to close right even after we'd had it looked at four times. The coffee machine that I always hated because Carol and Amy invariably got to it in the mornings before–
I took a sharp right towards the stairs. I didn't want to see any more of this, I didn't want to be battered by any more memories. It was too much. Maybe one day I could come back and spend time here without feeling every glance punching another red-hot needle through my heart. But not right now.
"You okay?" Skitter murmured as we climbed the stairs to the bedrooms. I wasn't sure how to answer. How could I possibly describe what I was feeling right now? What words could do it justice? Hell, I wasn't even sure of what all the emotions in the mix were. Explaining it to anyone else? Fat chance.
"Let's just get through this."
Skitter nodded knowingly. Given the turbulent storm I'd glimpsed once or twice beneath her brittle mask, maybe she understood.
"It's just up here," Carol said as we got to the top of the stairs. She was accidentally – mercifully? – standing in front of Amy's door as she gestured at my room. I gave her a thin smile, and pushed the door open.
My childhood stared back at me. A small twin bed with blue floral covers. Prints of the Brockton Bay Brigade on the walls; relics of a time gone by. Photos of Dean on the bedside table that sent a pang through my chest and forced my eyes closed for a moment in grief. I hadn't had the heart to take them down, and now my heart ached to see them. My laptop was still left on my desk; I'd forgotten to take it with me the last time I'd left the house. Maybe that was for the best, otherwise Shatterbird would've killed it. My dirty clothes were still in the hamper, and a book lay askew on my pillow with a coaster serving as a bookmark.
It was a shrine to a dead girl. Fuck. She hadn't touched it since I'd left.
The sobs I'd been forcing down finally broke free. I brought up a hand to my mouth, but it didn't do any good; I was crying now, my whole body shaking with it. I didn't… I couldn't… why? Why now? Why was this what broke me, after everything? I fell back into Skitter's chest and turned to hide my face in her neck. I just. I needed a moment.
"It's okay, Tori," Taylor murmured. Her arm hesitantly stretched to rest across my back. "Take as long as you need."
I hiccuped and sobbed as voices murmured around me. I didn't pay them any mind. Instead I breathed, steady and slow, in and out. I matched my pace to the chest I rested against, gradually relaxing as the hard, clenching grip on the inside of my chest eased up and the lump in my throat shrank back down.
After a few long moments, I gave Taylor one last squeeze and pulled back.
"Thank you," I rasped. "C-could you get the c-clothes?"
Skitter stared at me for a second, cocking her head, before she nodded and moved to the closet. I watched her as she began to quickly and methodically pack away my things. Blouses, skirts, pants, jackets, socks, shoes, shorts, bras… I'd forgotten how much stuff I had here.
"Victoria?" I jumped and turned back to Dad. He was giving me that smile again. The one that said 'I'm not sure how to talk to you but I desperately want to' and 'I think you look fragile and I'm afraid you'll break if I put a single foot wrong'. "Are you okay?"
I sniffled loudly and rubbed my nose before bringing my notepad back out. "I'm fine. It was just a lot."
He nodded softly. "I understand. After Leviathan…" he trailed off for a moment before gathering himself again. "I know I wasn't there for you when I needed to. That we weren't there for you. But I want to fix that. Will you at least let us try?"
Fuck. I couldn't say no. Not when he looked at me like that. A tear traced down my cheek, and I took a step forward. He didn't say anything. Just stood stock still, like he was trying to avoid scaring off a small animal.
I tentatively wrapped my arms around him, and clung like I'd wanted to for years. He was warm. Strong. I was surrounded by the smell of sandalwood and peppermint as his arms wrapped around me. My cheeks were wet.
I let out a long slow breath, and nodded into his shoulder. I'd… I'd let them try. Surely that much was fair.
"Thank you," Dad said as I pulled back out of his arms.
"...Victoria?"
I glanced back at Skitter. She was glancing at the two of us in the doorway. "I finished packing up the clothes." She gestured at the bin that Carol had provided for the purpose earlier. "But what about the rest?"
I swallowed. That was the question, wasn't it? So much of what was in here belonged to another girl. The one who'd died a month ago so Tori could live. I didn't want to take that from them. From her. But some of it…
I glanced at the picture of Dean and I, happy after our first date. At my laptop, probably still logged in from my last assignment for Arcadia. The box of old Lego and board games, peeking out from the top shelf in the closet.
Maybe it wasn't necessarily mine, anymore. But that didn't mean I couldn't reclaim it anyways. That I couldn't make it something new.
"Take it with us." I smiled at Skitter. "It's not like we don't already have baggage."
I was silent as we made our way back downstairs. Partly that was because I was carrying the box with my assorted belongings in it. One of the many annoyances of my condition, as I was so often reminded, was my inability to speak while handling things.
But even if my hands had been free, there was too much on my mind. I felt… strange. Out of place. As if I was three feet to the left of where I should've been. My body seemed to float just above the ground, even as I knew my power wasn't on.
"...taking care of her?"
I blinked. Conversation.
"Not your concern…"
The words drifted in and out of my head. I was crying earlier. Why had I… What was happening? Everything seemed so far away.
"Victoria?"
We'd reached the kitchen. I turned to Taylor. Skitter. She was staring at me. Her face was… her shoulders were tense. Hands clenched at her sides. Tension up her neck.
"Something's wrong." Her words were terse. Sharp. "Someone is in the living room."
A quick inhale. "You swore you wouldn't use insects in my house–"
"I didn't!"
I dropped the box.
"They were in the garden before; they must have tracked them inside."
A step to the left.
"That's still a breach of the agreement, Skitter, and you know it."
Another step.
"And yours said that you wouldn't antagonize or initiate hostilities. How do I know that's not a PRT agent or hero ready to arrest me?"
One more step and I'd be at the doorway. There was metal on my tongue. Prickles up the back of my neck.
"Oh please, that's hypothetical at best–"
I was at the doorway. I looked into the room–
Curly hair. Pale skin. Freckles. Tired eyes. Wet lips. Missing fingers.
Amy.
And then a lot of things happened at once.
A/N:
So. Hypothetically. If I was to write a cliffhanger. This is an example of what one would look like.
Writing Tori coming home was always in the cards. A number of you have pointed out as much before. But having to put yourself in her head when she's seeing the pictures on the walls? The clothes on her bed? The look in her father's eyes? I wish I could put words to what was going through my mind when I wrote this. But as always I wrote this in a fugue at 2 am so your guess is as good as mine.
I do want to say something though. I've read a lot of stories that have ended chapters on cliffhangers or situations that drove my anxiety crazy and sent me into a nasty spiral. That's an issue on my end for the most part, but it still makes reading some media more difficult. If you're also like me, this is for you. Things are going to be okay. It's not going to be nice or easy or clean in the way that these two deserve, but they will come out the other side, I promise.
On a much lighter note, today's rec is Beautifully Horrid Rhydeble. In which Lisa and Melanie are co conspirators to create the worst "showing your partner to the family" meeting in history. But with a notably more humorous bent than what you've just read. It's cute and hilarious in equal measure.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- They/Them
.... MOTHERFU-
Carol for the love of god could you for once in your life try to be anything other than an absolute idiot! Oh god this is gonna be a complete disaster.
- Pronouns
- Male
Carol didn't check with Amy or make sure she was away, I bet. Probably only made sure Skitter and Vicky would arrive when Amy was just "out", Carol's probably convinced she can make sure things will be fine and there won't be problems. Mark is going to have a terrible wake up call.
Oh God I just thought what if this Amy already knows Mark isn't Vicky's dad?
Oh God I just thought what if this Amy already knows Mark isn't Vicky's dad?
- Location
- Somewhere in South America
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Now this is one heavy chapter. Lots of things to like, lots of things to dread. And as always, it's excellently written. Let's get to some highlights.
It always does feel like memories getting caught in resin visiting places abandoned in a panic. What are houses other than the physical accumulation of our pasts'? Everything is related to something else, and, well it clutters together. After events as horrible as the ones lived through, it'd make sense for this to be the thing to break the Dam.
There's hardly a moment that lacks vividness here. The emotional weight attached to this place and these people is just that strong. And opening oneself to that is nothing sort of impressive. However, the tone already makes you weary of this, and for good reason, given the chapter ends like this:
I'm keeping my heart in my throat, where it jumped to after I read those lines, hoping it'll come down by next chapter.
This hit close. When a location is so tainted by an event or a person that never seeing it again is preferable to being there willingly. Thankfully, I've never gone through anything close to what happened to Vicky, but I can relate, and I have no doubts hundreds of other people will be able to do so.
It always does feel like memories getting caught in resin visiting places abandoned in a panic. What are houses other than the physical accumulation of our pasts'? Everything is related to something else, and, well it clutters together. After events as horrible as the ones lived through, it'd make sense for this to be the thing to break the Dam.
There's hardly a moment that lacks vividness here. The emotional weight attached to this place and these people is just that strong. And opening oneself to that is nothing sort of impressive. However, the tone already makes you weary of this, and for good reason, given the chapter ends like this:
I'm keeping my heart in my throat, where it jumped to after I read those lines, hoping it'll come down by next chapter.
Geas
Meat Thing
Well damn, if even Colin is shipping
I want to make a U-Haul joke so badly.
Top-tier Dad energy. 9.5/10, loses half a point for his poor management of his depression prior to Bonesaw forcing Amy to fix his grey matter but damnit, better late than never. 😤👍
...
Well, shit. I'll admit, I honestly thought that Brandish might've had her just hiding in her room until Tori and Taylor left. But Amy waiting in the garden the entire time definitely is NOT a good look. And now...
...
Well.
Shit.
I can't help but hope that the house is fully ensured, because I think Tori is about to have one hell of an epic, mega super-freak-out ,PTSD-ain't-got-nuthin-on-this panic attack moment. Which probably is gonna be 'What house? All I see is a hole in the ground' come next chapter.
Last edited:
- Location
- Somewhere in South America
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Gotta agree with everything here. It's clear Colin is trying his damned hardest, but it's just not enough and it's kind of clear it hurts. A lot.
Krazyfan1
Worrying for the future.
- Location
- Australia
I think you might mean Vicky and Taylor
Ganurath
Literal Enthusiast
- Location
- A Valid Location
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I think you might mean Mark.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Other characters in fiction: take the Idiot Ball as needed when the plot/character beats demand
Brandish: "Amateurs." [is the Idiot Ball]
Honestly, I'm kind of struggling a bit to imagine that Tori wouldn't have at least tried talking to Crystal before taking her chances with Brandish, not to mention that Taylor (who has interacted with Crystal in the past, and prior to this was probably the New Wave member she was most positive towards) wouldn't suggest getting her onside. Like. One of these people has been her best friend and surrogate big sister [heh] for Tori's entire life. The other took one look at Joan Crawford and decided she could better the instruction.
Brandish: "Amateurs." [is the Idiot Ball]
Honestly, I'm kind of struggling a bit to imagine that Tori wouldn't have at least tried talking to Crystal before taking her chances with Brandish, not to mention that Taylor (who has interacted with Crystal in the past, and prior to this was probably the New Wave member she was most positive towards) wouldn't suggest getting her onside. Like. One of these people has been her best friend and surrogate big sister [heh] for Tori's entire life. The other took one look at Joan Crawford and decided she could better the instruction.
- Location
- Somewhere in South America
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I am. Had a brainfart of minor magnitude. Doesn't help my brain seems to be terrible at recalling names too.
Liquid Ink
Contains Sleep Deprived Rambling
I've been wanting to comment on this fic for some time, and every time I've started to type the result has never felt worth posting.
In truth, I could (and would like to) do a chapter by chapter summary, but think I would fail to come close to expressing how much I appreciate this fic, both in terms to the writing, the pacing, various structural elements, and most importantly the brutal willingness and honesty in your handling of difficult and sensitive topics along with the superb charcter work across the board.
But, I was reminded with this latest chapter of one of the elements that prompted me to want to comment in the first place.
Your cliffhangers stand out, and are a breath of fresh air compared to other serialised works. I've long griped about cliffhangers, ending with very final, and abrupt, cut offs. Leaving me in the lurch, with drama and catharsis seemingly not allowed, suspense is often ratcheted up and then held in perpetual uncertainty. But here, you give us one more line, and that line completes the scene and the chapter, without losing the pace, and without sacrificing anything:
Time isn't stopped for the tease or shock of the audience, we're not left in the lurch, you give us an emotionally complete scene and, even more impressively, that emotion is left entirely to us. "A lot of things happened" is not emotional instruction or direction. It is totally emotionally neutral, but it is the perfect capstone on the building of the tension and character, allowing me to invest my own emotion into climax of the scene.
It's not the first time I've noticed how interesting and satisfying the cliffhangers on this story have been. "The Undersiders need to unmask." legitimately had my jaw dropping.
In short, it's so freaking good, and it's just a single detail of something that's also really good overall. I actually feel a bit bad for not having the energy to praise it more. The effort and care that's gone into this fic shines on through in its consistent quality.
I hope everyone who worked on this knows what a great job they've done, and what a great job they keep managing with each update.
Thank you for sharing it with us.
In truth, I could (and would like to) do a chapter by chapter summary, but think I would fail to come close to expressing how much I appreciate this fic, both in terms to the writing, the pacing, various structural elements, and most importantly the brutal willingness and honesty in your handling of difficult and sensitive topics along with the superb charcter work across the board.
But, I was reminded with this latest chapter of one of the elements that prompted me to want to comment in the first place.
In other stories the latest chapter might just see something like this.
And then end there. Unsatisfying. Annoying. Most aggrivating when it happens multiple chapters in sequence. Drama targeted at the audience rather than the characters. An emotional robbery, of sorts.
But:
And then end there. Unsatisfying. Annoying. Most aggrivating when it happens multiple chapters in sequence. Drama targeted at the audience rather than the characters. An emotional robbery, of sorts.
But:
Your cliffhangers stand out, and are a breath of fresh air compared to other serialised works. I've long griped about cliffhangers, ending with very final, and abrupt, cut offs. Leaving me in the lurch, with drama and catharsis seemingly not allowed, suspense is often ratcheted up and then held in perpetual uncertainty. But here, you give us one more line, and that line completes the scene and the chapter, without losing the pace, and without sacrificing anything:
Time isn't stopped for the tease or shock of the audience, we're not left in the lurch, you give us an emotionally complete scene and, even more impressively, that emotion is left entirely to us. "A lot of things happened" is not emotional instruction or direction. It is totally emotionally neutral, but it is the perfect capstone on the building of the tension and character, allowing me to invest my own emotion into climax of the scene.
It's not the first time I've noticed how interesting and satisfying the cliffhangers on this story have been. "The Undersiders need to unmask." legitimately had my jaw dropping.
In short, it's so freaking good, and it's just a single detail of something that's also really good overall. I actually feel a bit bad for not having the energy to praise it more. The effort and care that's gone into this fic shines on through in its consistent quality.
I hope everyone who worked on this knows what a great job they've done, and what a great job they keep managing with each update.
Thank you for sharing it with us.
Last edited:
I don't know, I think you did a pretty good job considering I had to stop writing and physically fan my face from the blush.
Thank you for giving words to something that I honestly couldn't describe properly until now. I have rules about the places I leave readers off in, some of which I've openly described. I don't cut off action mid-beat, I don't fake out death or major harm, it always happens on screen, I try to give some vague idea of what will happen next chapter/what the overarching conflict is, etc. But this is a good sidenote to that. A very important part of chapter endings is that to a point they should give you an idea of what the characters are feeling/doing... but let you fill in the next part. Complete the sentence, as it were. Thank you for pointing that out!
Seriously this is already... I read this comment three times, and I'll read it again before I go to bed. You and people like you are why I keep writing. I'm not going to get everything right (I'm physically restraining myself from trying to rewrite arcs 1 and 2), but as you said it's an honest attempt.
I can't speak for Aleph here... but hearing this helps. A lot of what I judge SiNC by is how close it comes to my idea of the form the story should take. Sometimes that turns out even better than I'd hoped, like 4.5 and 4.11. Sometimes it's worse, like 1.7 and 2.4. But amidst all of that, it can be easy to forget that what people feel is just as important. Thank you for reminding me of that.
You are so very, very welcome. Thank you for reading, for sharing, for caring about my little passion project so much. It means the world to me.
Epsilon Rose
The King of Unrest
If I'm reading this right, was Tori on the verge of having another dissociative episode before Amy showed up? That probably isn't a good mix.
And now I'm wondering if it might have been a lingering Amy thing, rather than her trauma, which ... yeah. Multiple flavors of not good. Without the author's note, I'd probably be speculating about Taylor's proximity and Tori's shield.
Wait, what? I don't think I've heard that one before?
I think this was more about getting her things, so she can feel like she's on more stable footing, before talking to anyone. Going into it, they probably had lingering concerns that Carol would break her word, because they're both a bit on the paranoid side and because Carol, but also likely assumed that she wouldn't be that stupid, with the PRT glaring at them and Skitter right there. In that light, if things had gone to plan, then having Crystal present might have actually made things worse, because she would have been another voice telling Tori they want to try and work things out and asking her to stay, which would have just magnified the guilt she was already feeling from Mark.
Of course, Carol decided to be herself, so Amy's there. Unfortunately, I'm not sure there's much Crystal could have done in this situation. Maybe personally verifying that Amy was elsewhere, but that would require her to have already internalized a lot of distrust for her aunt and uncle, more than even Skitter and Tori, considering they didn't sweep the outside of the house before going in. (Looking back, I'm actually surprised Skitter didn't ask about the person in the garden, before they entered. She should have been in range and, if she walked into the house with bugs on her, then Skitter should have been aware of her.)
This conversation also raises two questions: What was Mark thinking? Did he know that Amy wasn't supposed to be there and hadn't actually left? If so, all of his talk about wanting to give Tori a choice and work through things with her is worth about as much as the noise coming out of Carol's mouth. If not, then Carol betrayed him pretty badly too, and it'll be interesting to see how he reacts. Similarly, how will the PRT and Dauntless react to this, after the immediate fallout, since they were at least tangentially involved in brokering the meeting and New Wave is proving to be extremely untrustworthy?
It's a Ward thing.
In Ward it's revealed that the shield portion of Vicky's power developed specifically from Manpower's shard, and it is heavily implied by her power that it's as a result of an affair he and Carol were having at approximately the correct time for Vicky to be his biological daughter. Note there is never specific confirmation whether Mark is or isn't her biological father in Ward but the story implies heavily that he isn't.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I think if Amy ever knew, she learned it almost immediately she gained her power. She used it to save Victoria's life (Victoria almost dying was her trigger, if I'm not wrong) and she certainly interacted with other family members not long after. It's an element of the stoy that doesn't make that sense for me though, Manpower is almost not a character in Worm, and it feels like drama for dramas sake.
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
I'm thinking orders from on high will turn it into a sting operation. That, or Assault blows it (maybe a leak to Carol?). Or Carol will again find a way to make not cooperating with her hurt more. Maybe Piggot even gets canned and Tagg goes in early to ruin everything as definitely-not-me designed him to.
Actually, I don't remember, was this one of the fics where Calvert managed to pin the Coil identity on his body double?
Piggot might have many redeeming qualities to offset the teenager-firebombing-under-truce and deprioritizing busting Nazis to focus on punishing said teenage warlords for protecting poor people (because their buggy friend still wishes she could be a hero), but a scorpion will always sting. As that was a metaphor, Skitter can't stop them.
Kill her.
...that could also be how this plan goes wrong. It would evaporate a large portion of the blackmail it hinges on.
Last edited:
Amy's power canonically cannot see past the cellular level. So while she could identify similar features, she couldn't see chromosomes to confirm. It seems reasonable that she wouldn't have reason to know or even outright suspect.
Supernova 5.S
The city was quiet as Sarah stepped outside of her house for the first time in days. The morning light glinted off the door handle as she paused for a moment, studying the minute imperfections in the metal. There was still time. Time to go back, to show up when she was asked, to pretend this wasn't happening–
No. She'd already been gone. For far too long. It was time to act.
With a thought, Sarah began to float up and away from her doorstep. She let a slow breath out, and relaxed as her barrier snapped back around her like an old friend. While she could deploy it in shapes and functions outside of herself, this was its primary purpose. To keep her safe. If she squinted, she imagined she could make out the slight distortion in the air where the edge of the bubble encapsulated her. It protected her from much, but not everything.
Leviathan had proven that.
She shut her eyes hard, clenching her fists in midair. No. This wasn't the time for grief. Dwelling on what she'd lost was what had gotten her here. It was past time to get back on the horse and move forward. Neil and Eric wouldn't want her to wallow.
Sarah continued to float up until her house dwindled into a rectangle the size of a matchbox. From up here, it looked the same as ever. Leviathan hadn't wrecked the foundation. Shatterbird hadn't blown out all the windows.
The wind brushed against her jeans, chilly in the early July air. She felt… a lot of things. Apprehensive? Cautious? Angry? Resigned? Something in between all of them, probably, and she was too exhausted to sort it out. But she did know this much:
Her sister needed her.
Sarah's lips thinned as she sighted her destination. The siblings had ended up settling relatively near one another, out of an unspoken mutual agreement. If anyone had pressed them on it, they likely would've said something along the lines of intra-team cohesion, or rapid response. But after… Jess, it was an obvious lie.
The cynical truth was that they lived close to each other because they didn't know what else to do.
Sarah let out a sharp breath through her nose. Despite all their efforts to the contrary, she'd drifted apart from Carol anyways. She knew that she'd relied on her too much, withdrawn inwards after the loss of half her family. Maybe, at any other time, that would've been fine. But they'd died here, in Brockton, to Leviathan. And she'd left her sister in charge of the team during the aftermath of an Endbringer attack. During the Nine.
At the lowest point their family had ever seen.
She drifted forward slowly. It was about a seven minute drive to Carol's home, but she wanted to pace herself, allow some time to think and work out her line of approach. If she was going to do this, she wanted to do it right.
Sarah bit her lip. Technically, she still had an hour and a half before the meeting Carol had called to discuss "the direction of the team moving forward". Odds were that among other things, her sister wanted to call her out on her absence. Willing or otherwise. That was why it was so important that Sarah come early. Of her own accord. To start the conversation herself.
It was the least she could do.
So, what could she say? Sarah pursed her lips as she flew closer to her destination. Being paralyzed by grief was one thing. Carol knew that from experience; her own reaction to Mark's slowly developing depression, and subsequent brain damage had impacted the team, albeit not as severely as Sarah's.
But it was another thing entirely to say "sorry I abandoned the team for a month, but I promise I'm back for real now". How was Carol supposed to trust that? Sarah knew she wouldn't under similar circumstances.
It wasn't like she was at risk of losing her place as part of the team. New Wave desperately needed every cape they could get, and the two of them knew it. Sarah literally couldn't mess up in a way that would fracture them, not without stooping to outright villainy. But Carol could certainly make a strong case that she'd been failing to lead the team properly.
And either way, she still owed her sister honesty.
After about fifteen minutes of slow flight and half a dozen possible defenses and explanations considered and discarded, Sarah came upon her destination. A moderately sized two story house, meant for a couple and two kids. A spacious backyard, with grass and a small patio for an outdoor grill. The Dallon residence.
She paused, hanging in midair. Despite all of her reservations and thoughts over the past twenty four hours she was no closer to knowing what to say. A part of her wanted to just… open up about all of it. To dump everything she'd felt since Leviathan on her sister and let Carol be the judge.
But that wouldn't be fair to her, now would it?
She grit her teeth.
No. She'd come here to apologize. Clean and simple. That was what she'd do. It was why she'd come so much earlier than the meeting time, so Carol had as long as she needed to process. If she didn't want to see Sarah afterwards… that was her decision.
A gunshot sounded from inside the house, and Sarah's breath caught. No. No. Nononononono–
She dropped like a stone, barely paying attention to her speed as she approached the ground. Her forcefield would catch her if needed. It would be worth the half second saved. She couldn't lose anyone else. Couldn't let let another loved one be snatched away; couldn't let that happen to CarolMarkVictoriaAmyJess–
Lady Photon landed on the ground with a crack, her forcefield absorbing the shock of the impact and fracturing the patio tiles. She was up and on her feet before her shield had even recovered, energy pooling in her palms, hand outstretched in a firing position as she prepared to join the fight.
Only then did she register what she was seeing.
The tableau beyond the glass doors wasn't as bad as her worst fears. Those involved blood, and bodies, and the silent guilt of arriving too late. But it was still going to haunt her nightmares for weeks. Amy was scrambling over the back of the couch in the living room, a look of wild fear on her face. Carol was turning towards the sound of her landing, a second blade forming in her hand to match the one pointed across the room. Mark, for his part, was already forming his signature orbs, ready to incapacitate the threat.
Lady Photon's eyes flicked over to the last two figures and stared, her hand falling a little from its firing position. There were two girls on the other side of the room. The first she hesitated even to name, for fear that it would be true. But it couldn't be anyone else. It was Victoria. The daughter they'd all thought lost to them. Why was she here? Did Carol know? Was that why she'd called the meeting? Why hadn't she told Sarah that Victoria had been found? What was–
And then her eyes fell on the second figure. The one holding the gun. The one Victoria was trying to wrestle with even as she watched.
Dark silk. Kevlar ballistic plates. Long curly hair. Yellow eyes.
Skitter.
Time slowed. Lady Photon furiously ran through her options. Why was Victoria here? No, irrelevant; she was, and she had to be protected along with the rest of the family. Why was Skitter here? Was her presence related to Victoria? Her goals here would affect what she'd do and how she'd fight, but there wasn't enough information to guess at them. Sarah would just have to play the fight by ear and sort out the reasons behind it once her family was safe. Her priority needed to be separating the villain from the rest of her family members and incapacitating her. Then get the full story.
All this in a moment. The energy was pooling in her hand, gathering and swelling and folding over on itself. As she brought it up again and took aim, Sarah took stock of the positioning.Amy had just barely made it behind the couch, but while she was out of line of sight she could still be in danger. Carol and Mark were offset from Skitter by about ten feet; the bug cape didn't seem to have her signature swarm present, so her main potential threat was the gun.
Objective: incapacitate Skitter. Difficult. With this much power she'd have to hold back so as not to kill the girl, but if she hit Victoria by accident then it would be wasted regardless of power and drop her shield, making her vulnerable to a knife or bullet and giving Skitter an opening to fire on anyone.
Objective: protect her family from Skitter. Her forcefields would be enough to deflect gun shots, and she had a clear line of sight on everyone in the building. But Victoria and Skitter were too close to separate, and Victoria's shield would only take one shot point-blank. That was too big a risk to bet on.
Sarah's heart fell. She knew what she had to do. Carol would hate her for it, but it was her only good option.
Lady Photon finished rising from the crouch she'd landed in and fired through the glass. The beam cut through the patio door with ease, shattering it and streaking across the room in a bright line, startling everyone inside.
That was all she needed.
With a thought she erected barriers in the room. One across the couch in a shape reminiscent of a conch shell. That would be enough to protect Amy. The other she used to wall off Mark and Carol on their side of the room.
Three people safe. Now for the hard part.
"STAND DOWN!" Lady Photon yelled at the two girls in the center of the room. She raised her hand, gathering more energy into it to form a deadly glowing nimbus of power. She didn't want to hurt Victoria, but if it guaranteed taking down Skitter she'd blast them both and apologize to her niece later.
The two froze, caught mid-scramble for the gun in Skitter's hand. They slowly turned to look at her. Lady Photon took a moment to really look at them. It was plain to see that Victoria was scared. Her body was tense, held tight and ready to blur into action. Her eyes were red, and her face was caught in a mix of relief, anxiety, and dread. Skitter, meanwhile, had her shoulders set and her feet firmly planted, half belligerent villain, half cornered animal.
"Put down the gun," Lady Photon said firmly, taking a step closer to the pair. She didn't lower her hand, more energy gathering in it with each passing second. "We have you surrounded. This doesn't have to be violent."
"Sarah?"
"Doesn't have to be violent?"
Mark and Carol spoke up over one another in their corner of the room. Lady Photon sent her sister a look of apology, and gave a pointed glance at Skitter. She knew as well as Sarah did that they effectively had a hostage negotiation on their hands. Amy, still cowering behind the couch, wasn't likely to be of much help. But at least only Victoria was at risk now.
"I knew you'd screw us," Skitter spat at Carol. "First with her, and now with Lady Photon? This is what I get for negotiating with a hero. I should've figured I'd get stabbed in the back."
Carol's face reddened. "I kept to the terms and you know it! Amy was…" she paused and glared at the girl behind the couch. "...was supposed to stay outside the house. And I didn't call anyone else here!"
Shit. Terms? It sounded like this had been some kind of planned visit. Which meant Sarah's arrival couldn't have come at a worse time. She had to de-escalate or else this would turn ugly.
Movement caught her eye, and she glanced back at her niece. At first it seemed like she was disentangling from Skitter. Sarah opened her mouth to tell her to stop moving, that hostage negotiations only stayed peaceful before an agreement was made if the leverage didn't change… but her words stalled in her mouth.
Skitter was letting Victoria step away. And she was doing so… to put herself between Sarah and Skitter.
What the hell was this? Sarah blinked a couple of times and glanced at Carol and Mark for help, but her sister didn't even notice, busy glaring at Skitter. Mark only shrugged at her helplessly. Looking back confirmed that no, she wasn't imagining things and yes, Victoria hadn't taken the gun. Her niece had willingly put herself between her aunt and an armed villain. With the muzzle of the gun at the back of her neck.
And Skitter lowered it rather than press the advantage.
"... what are you doing?" Sarah asked cautiously. She didn't dare lower her hand now. Too much was in flux, and any movement could set this powder keg off.
"She's trying to–"
Sarah shut Carol up with a sharp look. She had no idea what was going on here, but if Brandish went on the offensive then she'd lose any ability to get Victoria out of here in one piece. That was the only priority right now.
Her eyes went back to Victoria, who was… rifling through her pockets? Her face grew increasingly distressed as she turned up nothing, before eventually giving up and turning a pained, plaintive look on Skitter. The villain's head didn't move, her hand casually holding the gun at her side. She hadn't pointed it at anyone since the end of the scuffle. Sarah got the sense that she was looking at Victoria from behind those eerie yellow lenses, considering. After a moment, she gave a slow nod.
Sarah frowned, deeply uneasy now. What was going on? Why was Victoria so obviously cooperating with a villain? Was it blackmail? Fear of being judged? Some other issue? She firmed her mouth and stepped forward. She had to get the upper hand and reach out, make it clear that her niece still had options. That she could still trust them.
"It's okay Victoria," she said softly. "Whatever it is, you can tell us. However bad it seems, we'll fix it together."
Victoria's face slackened, a look of resignation passing briefly over her. Her hands slackened at her sides from where she'd been rifling through her pockets. She gave Skitter another meaningful glance, and Sarah frowned. Now what was she missing?
"Victoria can't speak," Skitter intoned, low and flat. "She can sign, though. I'll translate for her."
Victoria what?
Sarah struggled not to give away how much she was reeling inside. What the fuck was going on? When did this happen? Why was she only just finding out now? Had Carol known about this?
Before Sarah could even begin to process that, let alone respond to it, Carol spoke up. "And we can trust you?" she demanded, stepping forward with a blindingly white dagger and hammer manifesting in her open hands. "How do we know that you're being honest? You could be twisting her words, forcing–"
A sharp clap interrupted her. Sarah glanced back, only to see Victoria's face glaring at her mother, eyes hard, teeth slightly bared. Skitter's voice was icy with contempt.
"If either of you know sign language, you can translate yourselves. Otherwise, shut up. She's mute, not deaf. If she disagrees with anything I say, she'll make it known." Victoria gave a sharp nod to emphasize the point, stepping back to Skitter's side.
"Fine," Sarah said, cutting across Carol before she could object. She gave her sister another pointed look. She didn't trust Skitter any more than Carol did, but the villain wasn't wrong. And more importantly, it bought them – bought her, since apparently Carol had known about this – more time to figure out what was going on.
She turned back to Victoria and lowered her arm, not letting the energy disperse, but pointing it at the ground instead of Skitter. It was an effort of will to gentle her body language and tone, but she managed it. "Hey sweetie," she soothed. "I know it's been… a while. Are you okay?" Better to open softly and emphasize the fact that this was a family reunion, put the villain off balance. The more that Skitter thought of her as Aunt Sarah, the less prepared she'd be for Lady Photon.
Victoria looked up at her, and began signing. "I'm okay." It was… odd, hearing Skitter's voice speaking for her niece, but at this point Sarah would take what she could get. "I'm glad you're alright. I hadn't heard much from you since… Leviathan. How's the dog?"
Sarah took in a sharp breath. That was… that was promising. Victoria was trying to tell her that she was genuinely free to speak. Skitter wouldn't have been in a position to know about New Wave family dynamics, and she definitely wouldn't have known about the passcode. Either Victoria was Mastered… or this was really her.
"The dog is fine," she said, giving the appropriate counter call. "Why are you here? Why is she here?"
Conducting a hostage negotiation when the hostage was apparently willing to be there was a hero's nightmare, and god, Sarah suddenly understood a lot more about why Carol seemed so stressed. But as much as she'd rather be direct, she couldn't afford to remind Skitter of the position of power she occupied here. She hadn't forgotten about the gun.
"We're…" Skitter paused as Victoria signed. "We're here because I–Victoria–wanted to contact New Wave. To collect her old things. To talk to you peacefully. That's it."
Sarah blinked. What? "Victoria, we haven't seen you in ages. And now you're here with a villain? What's going on?"
Skitter shot Carol a glare. "Glad to see you apparently trust your teammates as much as you trust me." Before the woman could respond she looked back at Sarah. "After you abandoned Victoria–"
She was cut off by a pointed jab in the side by Victoria's elbow. Skitter looked at her, cocked her head, and continued speaking. "... after the Nine left town, I found Victoria..." They shared a look, and Victoria's face twisted in a way Sarah didn't like at all, scared and ashamed and pleading. Of Skitter? It was hard to say. She definitely didn't want Skitter to talk about how she'd found her, but was that fear of Skitter, or fear of whatever had happened before her?
"... injured," Skitter finished. Definitely a word that was covering for something, though what that was, Sarah had no idea. "She needed help. None of her family or team were present. So I provided."
"That's not true!" Carol growled, taking a step closer to Sarah's forcefield. "She was–"
"I really don't think you want to go down that road," Skitter said flatly. Her voice hadn't risen above the monotone she'd had the whole conversation, but Sarah could see the slowly tightening trigger finger on her pistol.
She glanced at Victoria one more time. "That's all of the story that's mine to say. I'm here because Victoria asked me to be. She asked to speak to you, which she's done. She asked to pick up her clothes, which she's done. Anything more is up to her."
Sarah swallowed. The picture was coming together, and she wasn't sure she liked what she saw. She hadn't been that involved during the attack by the Nine and the aftermath, but clearly someone had dropped the ball somewhere, and she had a sinking feeling it wasn't just her. Now it was time to see if she could pick up the pieces.
"I'm sorry we couldn't be there for you," she started, taking a slow step towards her niece. She let some of the energy dissipate from around her hand. Not enough that she couldn't still snap it up and blast Skitter if that gun made any sudden moves, but enough to be a visible show of de-escalation. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I know after Dean…" she paused as she caught a flash of emotion across the girl's face. Fear? Dread? Grief? It was hard to say. "...but I'm here now. We're here to help. If you'll just let us.
For a moment it seemed like it might work.
Then Amy poked her head above the couch for the first time in the conversation, and the sentiment in Victoria's eyes died. "No," Skitter translated as the girl signed emphatically. "I can't do that. I can't stay here."
Sarah blinked. "You… that's okay sweetie, you don't have to. If the house is too much, if there are too many reminders of hi–"
"It's not about Dean!"
Her niece's voice rang out into the open air.
"It's her."
Victoria's voice wavered, but the heat of her gaze on Amy did not. That same turbulent mix of emotions twisted her face; shame and fear and disgust. "She r-r-..." Her voice broke, the words clumsy and awkward in her mouth. Skitter hadn't been lying that she had trouble talking, Sarah could tell; she was trying to form the words but her lips and tongue weren't cooperating.
Then she paused and took a deep breath in. The desperation on her face firmed into anger and resolve. The world fell still.
"Amy raped me."
The words struck with as much force as any blow Glory Girl had ever landed. Sarah's heart caught in her chest even as the world swayed. It was only the barest reflex that kept her forcefield partitions up between the different parties as she grabbed onto the couch for support. The energy around her hand dissolved, her grip on it slipping in the one-two punch of shock and incomprehension.
Amy what?
She looked up to Victoria, hoping she'd take it back. That she'd said it in anger, as a metaphor, as some kind of fucked up joke, anything. But the raw emotion in the girl's eyes stayed her tongue. One look was enough to know. Nothing she said would change the outcome of this confrontation.
But dammit if she wouldn't try.
"S-she raped you?" The words were hoarse and rough coming out of her mouth. Sharp. Wrong. But Victoria's silent, curt nod hurt worse.
Sarah slowly glanced at Amy. "Is this true?"
Her other niece cowered behind the couch. She could barely meet anyone's eyes. "I-I-It's complicated… I c-couldn't… she didn't let me…"
"You can't just listen to her!"
Sarah's gaze turned to Carol. Her sister. She was staring at her desperately, pleadingly. "Skitter kidnapped her away from Amy! It's the Undersiders, this is what they do. Hijack is on their team, and he took Shatterbird as a puppet for fun! They had Shadow Stalker infiltrate the PRT! You can't take her at her word! She's been with them for weeks!"
Sarah slowly turned back to Victoria. Her niece. The girl who was starting to slowly cringe in on herself. Her shoulders hunched, and her back started to bend. Her eyes were red and hard, even as snot slowly dripped from her left nostril. Her lips were thin and bitten. Her hands were fisted, and shaking ever so slightly.
Would she really know if the girl in front of her was Mastered? Hijack could put on a hell of a performance. Carol had been in the loop longer. If anyone knew what was going on with Victoria right now, it was her. Could she really afford not to treat Victoria as potentially compromised?
And yet…
What if she was wrong? What if Amy really had… done that? And all that Victoria wanted right now was to be as far away as possible from Amy? That would mean that even coming here to talk to them was a huge ask; one that Sarah might not have been capable of in her place.
She shut her eyes for a moment. This was what she got for leaving her team behind. For focusing on her own grief after losing half her family, and forgetting about the rest.
Fuck this city.
"How telling that you won't even let her speak for herself." Skitter's voice startled Sarah into opening her eyes again. "She's telling you in plain English exactly what happened. Why she wants to do this. And still you don't listen to your daughter." Skitter laughed, the sound harsh and discordant. "And I thought I had no standards."
Carol bristled. "You have no right–" she started, before Mark's hand on her shoulder cut her off. He leaned over and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said calmed her down, though she still didn't look happy about it. Even so, Sarah could've kissed him. Happy or no, that was one less thing to worry about.
"Victoria," Sarah said, turning back to the two girls. "I understand you're hurt. I know this is hard and confusing. And that's okay."
She took a step closer, only to freeze partway as the pair took an instinctive step back towards the kitchen. Together.
Fuck.
"I– I know this is all out of nowhere. It's a lot to deal with. If you need time to figure this out and be comfortable around Amy before talking to New Wave or being Glory Girl again–"
"I'm n-not her." The words clawed their way out of Victoria's throat. Her eyes glimmered with angry tears. Her mouth opened again, then closed, as she made a few more halting attempts to speak, then switched back to signing with quick, angry gestures.
"Glory Girl died a long time ago. None of you were there," Skitter translated evenly, as if discussing the weather. "No matter who I'm going to be in the future, it won't be with New Wave. Not again."
A sob welled up in Sarah's throat before she choked it off. She was losing her family all over again. And she was too late to do anything about it.
Just like always.
"Victoria, baby, it doesn't have to be like this." Carol's voice was desperate, pleading. Her hand was spread across the forcefield. "Please, just come back to us. I promise we can fix this."
The blonde girl, looking smaller and more fragile than Victoria Dallon ever had in the oversized hoodie and baggy jeans she wore, looked at her with a solitary teartrack carving its way down her cheek. She took a step back. A thousand-strong swarm of hornets, cockroaches, spiders and gnats reared up to meet her, folding her into an envelope of protective violence.
"No," she whispered hoarsely. "You can't."
"What the fuck Sarah?" Carol was screaming at her. The woman was pacing back and forth in the kitchen, only moments away from pulling out her weapons out of sheer anger. "How could you just… let them get away?!"
Sarah for her part, stared at the front door the pair had left through. "I… " she started, but bit back the rest of the sentence. So many things had flashed through her mind as her niece had walked out that door. Regret. Terror. Anger. Helplessness. But more than any of that, it was confusion.
Nothing about what Skitter had done made sense. She'd been in their home, but she hadn't been the aggressor. She'd had the gun, but Victoria stepped in front of the muzzle and that had stopped her. Most of her actions from the moment Sarah had entered the scene had been focused on getting herself and Victoria out of the house, not pressing the advantage. She could've easily tried to incapacitate the three of them with Victoria as a hostage. It might not have worked, but she could've tried, and risked comparatively little beyond what she was risking by being there at all.
If anything, Victoria had been protecting Skitter from her family.
Sarah's stomach curled unpleasantly. It brought to mind another situation, a long time ago. A villain. A fight in a family home. A desperate struggle for violence. The shock and horror of a hostage. The bargaining, the twisting in her gut, the fear–
It wasn't a perfect comparison. Far from it. But it was hard to deny the thought, especially at the time, that the same situation that had brought Amy into their lives might be what took Victoria out of them. And Sarah just wasn't willing to risk that.
Maybe all of her fears were true. Maybe none of them were. But she'd chosen to let them go. And now her niece was out there. Carol's daughter. With that villain. Why her? Why had Victoria so blatantly, deliberately choosen Skitter over her own family? Why had she stepped willingly back into that swarm, a writhing mass of pincers and nightmares, like she was receiving a hug?
Why did she feel safer with Skitter than she did with them?
"Maybe it was the right thing to do."
Mark's voice stopped Carol's rant cold. She slowly turned to her husband. "Excuse me?"
Sarah turned to look at him. Mark was not an intimidating man. He was relatively short, tall enough to break even with his wife but not much taller than that. While he was well defined, he wasn't overly muscular. And more than that, he didn't like playing the tough-guy role. He was always the soft voice to Carol's harsh criticism, the gentler side of the couple.
Which was what made the disappointment in his gaze all the worse.
"You promised her that Amy wouldn't be in the house."
Carol bristled, taking a step closer. "She wasn't!" Sarah watched them from her vantage point in the living room. "She was in the garden!"
Mark scowled. "Like hell that matters! It's the spirit of the thing!" He gestured at the open door. "This wasn't like Jess. We knew the score, what she was here for, when she was coming. Defiant and Dragon both vouched for her!"
Sarah's heart stilled, and her face grew cold. "Dragon what?" She looked between Carol and Mark. "Why wasn't I informed? If we're negotiating something like this with the PRT, why didn't you tell me? I might've been struggling, but I'm still the leader of the team!"
"Because you weren't there!" Carol snapped, rounding on Sarah. "Victoria had been gone for weeks and you weren't doing anything and I had to do something! I tried to help!"
"Help?" Mark bit back. "Honey, she was terrified. You had to have known that would happen. She told us what she thought happened. She felt like she wasn't safe. Even if nothing had happened, you hurt her! For god's sake Carol, she's your daughter! How can you treat her like this?"
"BECAUSE I'M TRYING TO SAVE HER!" Carol was close to screaming herself raw, but she didn't seem to care. "Because sh-she's been gone for a month and you were still recovering and Sarah was gone and there was no one else! Just me! So what was I supposed to do?" Her eyes glimmered with tears. "I did the best I could. I did everything I could to save my daughter! Neither of you could've done better!"
Sarah might've. If she'd known.
Mark looked at her for a long moment before quietly walking to the back of the house. Perhaps to Amy's room, where they'd sent the girl after all was said and done. Sarah didn't turn to check when Mark passed her.
As soon as her husband left, the air went with him. Sarah watched quietly as her sister stared for a long moment at the open doorway. She deflated, sinking down to sit on the couch. Her hands trembled on her knees.
Her shoulders hitched once. Twice. And then, at last, Carol burst into tears. Violent, heavy sobs wracked through her body as her shoulders turned inward; her hair hung over her eyes as she buried her face in her hands and wailed.
Transparency, accountability, the dream of New Wave… this was what it all came down to. A woman falling apart on her couch. For a moment, Sarah didn't see Brandish the hero. Or Carol the mom. She saw her sister. Covered in blood in a dirty disgusting basement. Sobbing over the man she'd cut to pieces to save herself.
Slowly, cautiously, she approached the couch. Step by step, as if coming up on a wild animal without spooking it. Carol didn't so much as twitch to acknowledge her, even as she got within arm's distance. Sighing tiredly, Sarah gently lowered herself onto the couch and pulled her sister in close.
Carol immediately clung to her, burying her face in her neck. "I'm s-s-sorry." Her voice cracked. "I c-couldn't save her. I couldn't keep her. She's gone and it's m-my fault!"
Sarah slowly stroked her sister's hair, and said the only thing she could think of.
"I know. I don't think any of us could."
A/N:
Did you guys get to the end of the chapter before deciding to yell at me? I know I left things off on a bit of a… let's call it "tense" note last time, and we will be getting back to Tori and co as the focus next chapter. But I really wanted to show an outside look on this. For one, frankly, because it hits harder that way. But more to the point, Tori is an extremely internal character. We don't often get the chance to see how those actions and behaviors look to others. This is a way of doing that.
And as for Sarah… she's Complicated. We don't get much of her in canon, which means I had some leeway. She's not blameless in this, and I tried to show that here. She has her biases, and they're pretty apparent. She trends towards defending her family (understandable), thinks in broadly black and white terms (as does Tori at times), and is quick to react with violence (even if she held off here). But she's also the one who is willing to compromise more of New Wave's ideals if it means making things work. Could she have pulled this around if she'd been informed to begin with? Who knows! We're far past that bridge now.
In the meantime, did you guys think this went too well? That there wasn't enough violence or depression or fridge horror just off screen? While this is technically accurate, it is also a woefully bad description of today's rec, Mouse Trap by HorrorGems. And like the author's namesake, this one is a real diamond in the rough. I've seen Mouse Protector ficsand technically tried to write one but this is something else. This is the story of Murder Rat, and the journey of slowly pulling the shattered pieces of two people back together to hopefully make something new. It heavily features the Nine, an OC cape that I would die for, and a Mannequin fight that was as good as canon. If you can deal with the tags, I highly recommend it. Excellent work.
No. She'd already been gone. For far too long. It was time to act.
With a thought, Sarah began to float up and away from her doorstep. She let a slow breath out, and relaxed as her barrier snapped back around her like an old friend. While she could deploy it in shapes and functions outside of herself, this was its primary purpose. To keep her safe. If she squinted, she imagined she could make out the slight distortion in the air where the edge of the bubble encapsulated her. It protected her from much, but not everything.
Leviathan had proven that.
She shut her eyes hard, clenching her fists in midair. No. This wasn't the time for grief. Dwelling on what she'd lost was what had gotten her here. It was past time to get back on the horse and move forward. Neil and Eric wouldn't want her to wallow.
Sarah continued to float up until her house dwindled into a rectangle the size of a matchbox. From up here, it looked the same as ever. Leviathan hadn't wrecked the foundation. Shatterbird hadn't blown out all the windows.
The wind brushed against her jeans, chilly in the early July air. She felt… a lot of things. Apprehensive? Cautious? Angry? Resigned? Something in between all of them, probably, and she was too exhausted to sort it out. But she did know this much:
Her sister needed her.
Sarah's lips thinned as she sighted her destination. The siblings had ended up settling relatively near one another, out of an unspoken mutual agreement. If anyone had pressed them on it, they likely would've said something along the lines of intra-team cohesion, or rapid response. But after… Jess, it was an obvious lie.
The cynical truth was that they lived close to each other because they didn't know what else to do.
Sarah let out a sharp breath through her nose. Despite all their efforts to the contrary, she'd drifted apart from Carol anyways. She knew that she'd relied on her too much, withdrawn inwards after the loss of half her family. Maybe, at any other time, that would've been fine. But they'd died here, in Brockton, to Leviathan. And she'd left her sister in charge of the team during the aftermath of an Endbringer attack. During the Nine.
At the lowest point their family had ever seen.
She drifted forward slowly. It was about a seven minute drive to Carol's home, but she wanted to pace herself, allow some time to think and work out her line of approach. If she was going to do this, she wanted to do it right.
Sarah bit her lip. Technically, she still had an hour and a half before the meeting Carol had called to discuss "the direction of the team moving forward". Odds were that among other things, her sister wanted to call her out on her absence. Willing or otherwise. That was why it was so important that Sarah come early. Of her own accord. To start the conversation herself.
It was the least she could do.
So, what could she say? Sarah pursed her lips as she flew closer to her destination. Being paralyzed by grief was one thing. Carol knew that from experience; her own reaction to Mark's slowly developing depression, and subsequent brain damage had impacted the team, albeit not as severely as Sarah's.
But it was another thing entirely to say "sorry I abandoned the team for a month, but I promise I'm back for real now". How was Carol supposed to trust that? Sarah knew she wouldn't under similar circumstances.
It wasn't like she was at risk of losing her place as part of the team. New Wave desperately needed every cape they could get, and the two of them knew it. Sarah literally couldn't mess up in a way that would fracture them, not without stooping to outright villainy. But Carol could certainly make a strong case that she'd been failing to lead the team properly.
And either way, she still owed her sister honesty.
After about fifteen minutes of slow flight and half a dozen possible defenses and explanations considered and discarded, Sarah came upon her destination. A moderately sized two story house, meant for a couple and two kids. A spacious backyard, with grass and a small patio for an outdoor grill. The Dallon residence.
She paused, hanging in midair. Despite all of her reservations and thoughts over the past twenty four hours she was no closer to knowing what to say. A part of her wanted to just… open up about all of it. To dump everything she'd felt since Leviathan on her sister and let Carol be the judge.
But that wouldn't be fair to her, now would it?
She grit her teeth.
No. She'd come here to apologize. Clean and simple. That was what she'd do. It was why she'd come so much earlier than the meeting time, so Carol had as long as she needed to process. If she didn't want to see Sarah afterwards… that was her decision.
A gunshot sounded from inside the house, and Sarah's breath caught. No. No. Nononononono–
She dropped like a stone, barely paying attention to her speed as she approached the ground. Her forcefield would catch her if needed. It would be worth the half second saved. She couldn't lose anyone else. Couldn't let let another loved one be snatched away; couldn't let that happen to CarolMarkVictoriaAmyJess–
Lady Photon landed on the ground with a crack, her forcefield absorbing the shock of the impact and fracturing the patio tiles. She was up and on her feet before her shield had even recovered, energy pooling in her palms, hand outstretched in a firing position as she prepared to join the fight.
Only then did she register what she was seeing.
The tableau beyond the glass doors wasn't as bad as her worst fears. Those involved blood, and bodies, and the silent guilt of arriving too late. But it was still going to haunt her nightmares for weeks. Amy was scrambling over the back of the couch in the living room, a look of wild fear on her face. Carol was turning towards the sound of her landing, a second blade forming in her hand to match the one pointed across the room. Mark, for his part, was already forming his signature orbs, ready to incapacitate the threat.
Lady Photon's eyes flicked over to the last two figures and stared, her hand falling a little from its firing position. There were two girls on the other side of the room. The first she hesitated even to name, for fear that it would be true. But it couldn't be anyone else. It was Victoria. The daughter they'd all thought lost to them. Why was she here? Did Carol know? Was that why she'd called the meeting? Why hadn't she told Sarah that Victoria had been found? What was–
And then her eyes fell on the second figure. The one holding the gun. The one Victoria was trying to wrestle with even as she watched.
Dark silk. Kevlar ballistic plates. Long curly hair. Yellow eyes.
Skitter.
Time slowed. Lady Photon furiously ran through her options. Why was Victoria here? No, irrelevant; she was, and she had to be protected along with the rest of the family. Why was Skitter here? Was her presence related to Victoria? Her goals here would affect what she'd do and how she'd fight, but there wasn't enough information to guess at them. Sarah would just have to play the fight by ear and sort out the reasons behind it once her family was safe. Her priority needed to be separating the villain from the rest of her family members and incapacitating her. Then get the full story.
All this in a moment. The energy was pooling in her hand, gathering and swelling and folding over on itself. As she brought it up again and took aim, Sarah took stock of the positioning.Amy had just barely made it behind the couch, but while she was out of line of sight she could still be in danger. Carol and Mark were offset from Skitter by about ten feet; the bug cape didn't seem to have her signature swarm present, so her main potential threat was the gun.
Objective: incapacitate Skitter. Difficult. With this much power she'd have to hold back so as not to kill the girl, but if she hit Victoria by accident then it would be wasted regardless of power and drop her shield, making her vulnerable to a knife or bullet and giving Skitter an opening to fire on anyone.
Objective: protect her family from Skitter. Her forcefields would be enough to deflect gun shots, and she had a clear line of sight on everyone in the building. But Victoria and Skitter were too close to separate, and Victoria's shield would only take one shot point-blank. That was too big a risk to bet on.
Sarah's heart fell. She knew what she had to do. Carol would hate her for it, but it was her only good option.
Lady Photon finished rising from the crouch she'd landed in and fired through the glass. The beam cut through the patio door with ease, shattering it and streaking across the room in a bright line, startling everyone inside.
That was all she needed.
With a thought she erected barriers in the room. One across the couch in a shape reminiscent of a conch shell. That would be enough to protect Amy. The other she used to wall off Mark and Carol on their side of the room.
Three people safe. Now for the hard part.
"STAND DOWN!" Lady Photon yelled at the two girls in the center of the room. She raised her hand, gathering more energy into it to form a deadly glowing nimbus of power. She didn't want to hurt Victoria, but if it guaranteed taking down Skitter she'd blast them both and apologize to her niece later.
The two froze, caught mid-scramble for the gun in Skitter's hand. They slowly turned to look at her. Lady Photon took a moment to really look at them. It was plain to see that Victoria was scared. Her body was tense, held tight and ready to blur into action. Her eyes were red, and her face was caught in a mix of relief, anxiety, and dread. Skitter, meanwhile, had her shoulders set and her feet firmly planted, half belligerent villain, half cornered animal.
"Put down the gun," Lady Photon said firmly, taking a step closer to the pair. She didn't lower her hand, more energy gathering in it with each passing second. "We have you surrounded. This doesn't have to be violent."
"Sarah?"
"Doesn't have to be violent?"
Mark and Carol spoke up over one another in their corner of the room. Lady Photon sent her sister a look of apology, and gave a pointed glance at Skitter. She knew as well as Sarah did that they effectively had a hostage negotiation on their hands. Amy, still cowering behind the couch, wasn't likely to be of much help. But at least only Victoria was at risk now.
"I knew you'd screw us," Skitter spat at Carol. "First with her, and now with Lady Photon? This is what I get for negotiating with a hero. I should've figured I'd get stabbed in the back."
Carol's face reddened. "I kept to the terms and you know it! Amy was…" she paused and glared at the girl behind the couch. "...was supposed to stay outside the house. And I didn't call anyone else here!"
Shit. Terms? It sounded like this had been some kind of planned visit. Which meant Sarah's arrival couldn't have come at a worse time. She had to de-escalate or else this would turn ugly.
Movement caught her eye, and she glanced back at her niece. At first it seemed like she was disentangling from Skitter. Sarah opened her mouth to tell her to stop moving, that hostage negotiations only stayed peaceful before an agreement was made if the leverage didn't change… but her words stalled in her mouth.
Skitter was letting Victoria step away. And she was doing so… to put herself between Sarah and Skitter.
What the hell was this? Sarah blinked a couple of times and glanced at Carol and Mark for help, but her sister didn't even notice, busy glaring at Skitter. Mark only shrugged at her helplessly. Looking back confirmed that no, she wasn't imagining things and yes, Victoria hadn't taken the gun. Her niece had willingly put herself between her aunt and an armed villain. With the muzzle of the gun at the back of her neck.
And Skitter lowered it rather than press the advantage.
"... what are you doing?" Sarah asked cautiously. She didn't dare lower her hand now. Too much was in flux, and any movement could set this powder keg off.
"She's trying to–"
Sarah shut Carol up with a sharp look. She had no idea what was going on here, but if Brandish went on the offensive then she'd lose any ability to get Victoria out of here in one piece. That was the only priority right now.
Her eyes went back to Victoria, who was… rifling through her pockets? Her face grew increasingly distressed as she turned up nothing, before eventually giving up and turning a pained, plaintive look on Skitter. The villain's head didn't move, her hand casually holding the gun at her side. She hadn't pointed it at anyone since the end of the scuffle. Sarah got the sense that she was looking at Victoria from behind those eerie yellow lenses, considering. After a moment, she gave a slow nod.
Sarah frowned, deeply uneasy now. What was going on? Why was Victoria so obviously cooperating with a villain? Was it blackmail? Fear of being judged? Some other issue? She firmed her mouth and stepped forward. She had to get the upper hand and reach out, make it clear that her niece still had options. That she could still trust them.
"It's okay Victoria," she said softly. "Whatever it is, you can tell us. However bad it seems, we'll fix it together."
Victoria's face slackened, a look of resignation passing briefly over her. Her hands slackened at her sides from where she'd been rifling through her pockets. She gave Skitter another meaningful glance, and Sarah frowned. Now what was she missing?
"Victoria can't speak," Skitter intoned, low and flat. "She can sign, though. I'll translate for her."
Victoria what?
Sarah struggled not to give away how much she was reeling inside. What the fuck was going on? When did this happen? Why was she only just finding out now? Had Carol known about this?
Before Sarah could even begin to process that, let alone respond to it, Carol spoke up. "And we can trust you?" she demanded, stepping forward with a blindingly white dagger and hammer manifesting in her open hands. "How do we know that you're being honest? You could be twisting her words, forcing–"
A sharp clap interrupted her. Sarah glanced back, only to see Victoria's face glaring at her mother, eyes hard, teeth slightly bared. Skitter's voice was icy with contempt.
"If either of you know sign language, you can translate yourselves. Otherwise, shut up. She's mute, not deaf. If she disagrees with anything I say, she'll make it known." Victoria gave a sharp nod to emphasize the point, stepping back to Skitter's side.
"Fine," Sarah said, cutting across Carol before she could object. She gave her sister another pointed look. She didn't trust Skitter any more than Carol did, but the villain wasn't wrong. And more importantly, it bought them – bought her, since apparently Carol had known about this – more time to figure out what was going on.
She turned back to Victoria and lowered her arm, not letting the energy disperse, but pointing it at the ground instead of Skitter. It was an effort of will to gentle her body language and tone, but she managed it. "Hey sweetie," she soothed. "I know it's been… a while. Are you okay?" Better to open softly and emphasize the fact that this was a family reunion, put the villain off balance. The more that Skitter thought of her as Aunt Sarah, the less prepared she'd be for Lady Photon.
Victoria looked up at her, and began signing. "I'm okay." It was… odd, hearing Skitter's voice speaking for her niece, but at this point Sarah would take what she could get. "I'm glad you're alright. I hadn't heard much from you since… Leviathan. How's the dog?"
Sarah took in a sharp breath. That was… that was promising. Victoria was trying to tell her that she was genuinely free to speak. Skitter wouldn't have been in a position to know about New Wave family dynamics, and she definitely wouldn't have known about the passcode. Either Victoria was Mastered… or this was really her.
"The dog is fine," she said, giving the appropriate counter call. "Why are you here? Why is she here?"
Conducting a hostage negotiation when the hostage was apparently willing to be there was a hero's nightmare, and god, Sarah suddenly understood a lot more about why Carol seemed so stressed. But as much as she'd rather be direct, she couldn't afford to remind Skitter of the position of power she occupied here. She hadn't forgotten about the gun.
"We're…" Skitter paused as Victoria signed. "We're here because I–Victoria–wanted to contact New Wave. To collect her old things. To talk to you peacefully. That's it."
Sarah blinked. What? "Victoria, we haven't seen you in ages. And now you're here with a villain? What's going on?"
Skitter shot Carol a glare. "Glad to see you apparently trust your teammates as much as you trust me." Before the woman could respond she looked back at Sarah. "After you abandoned Victoria–"
She was cut off by a pointed jab in the side by Victoria's elbow. Skitter looked at her, cocked her head, and continued speaking. "... after the Nine left town, I found Victoria..." They shared a look, and Victoria's face twisted in a way Sarah didn't like at all, scared and ashamed and pleading. Of Skitter? It was hard to say. She definitely didn't want Skitter to talk about how she'd found her, but was that fear of Skitter, or fear of whatever had happened before her?
"... injured," Skitter finished. Definitely a word that was covering for something, though what that was, Sarah had no idea. "She needed help. None of her family or team were present. So I provided."
"That's not true!" Carol growled, taking a step closer to Sarah's forcefield. "She was–"
"I really don't think you want to go down that road," Skitter said flatly. Her voice hadn't risen above the monotone she'd had the whole conversation, but Sarah could see the slowly tightening trigger finger on her pistol.
She glanced at Victoria one more time. "That's all of the story that's mine to say. I'm here because Victoria asked me to be. She asked to speak to you, which she's done. She asked to pick up her clothes, which she's done. Anything more is up to her."
Sarah swallowed. The picture was coming together, and she wasn't sure she liked what she saw. She hadn't been that involved during the attack by the Nine and the aftermath, but clearly someone had dropped the ball somewhere, and she had a sinking feeling it wasn't just her. Now it was time to see if she could pick up the pieces.
"I'm sorry we couldn't be there for you," she started, taking a slow step towards her niece. She let some of the energy dissipate from around her hand. Not enough that she couldn't still snap it up and blast Skitter if that gun made any sudden moves, but enough to be a visible show of de-escalation. "I'm sorry I wasn't there for you. I know after Dean…" she paused as she caught a flash of emotion across the girl's face. Fear? Dread? Grief? It was hard to say. "...but I'm here now. We're here to help. If you'll just let us.
For a moment it seemed like it might work.
Then Amy poked her head above the couch for the first time in the conversation, and the sentiment in Victoria's eyes died. "No," Skitter translated as the girl signed emphatically. "I can't do that. I can't stay here."
Sarah blinked. "You… that's okay sweetie, you don't have to. If the house is too much, if there are too many reminders of hi–"
"It's not about Dean!"
Her niece's voice rang out into the open air.
"It's her."
Victoria's voice wavered, but the heat of her gaze on Amy did not. That same turbulent mix of emotions twisted her face; shame and fear and disgust. "She r-r-..." Her voice broke, the words clumsy and awkward in her mouth. Skitter hadn't been lying that she had trouble talking, Sarah could tell; she was trying to form the words but her lips and tongue weren't cooperating.
Then she paused and took a deep breath in. The desperation on her face firmed into anger and resolve. The world fell still.
"Amy raped me."
The words struck with as much force as any blow Glory Girl had ever landed. Sarah's heart caught in her chest even as the world swayed. It was only the barest reflex that kept her forcefield partitions up between the different parties as she grabbed onto the couch for support. The energy around her hand dissolved, her grip on it slipping in the one-two punch of shock and incomprehension.
Amy what?
She looked up to Victoria, hoping she'd take it back. That she'd said it in anger, as a metaphor, as some kind of fucked up joke, anything. But the raw emotion in the girl's eyes stayed her tongue. One look was enough to know. Nothing she said would change the outcome of this confrontation.
But dammit if she wouldn't try.
"S-she raped you?" The words were hoarse and rough coming out of her mouth. Sharp. Wrong. But Victoria's silent, curt nod hurt worse.
Sarah slowly glanced at Amy. "Is this true?"
Her other niece cowered behind the couch. She could barely meet anyone's eyes. "I-I-It's complicated… I c-couldn't… she didn't let me…"
"You can't just listen to her!"
Sarah's gaze turned to Carol. Her sister. She was staring at her desperately, pleadingly. "Skitter kidnapped her away from Amy! It's the Undersiders, this is what they do. Hijack is on their team, and he took Shatterbird as a puppet for fun! They had Shadow Stalker infiltrate the PRT! You can't take her at her word! She's been with them for weeks!"
Sarah slowly turned back to Victoria. Her niece. The girl who was starting to slowly cringe in on herself. Her shoulders hunched, and her back started to bend. Her eyes were red and hard, even as snot slowly dripped from her left nostril. Her lips were thin and bitten. Her hands were fisted, and shaking ever so slightly.
Would she really know if the girl in front of her was Mastered? Hijack could put on a hell of a performance. Carol had been in the loop longer. If anyone knew what was going on with Victoria right now, it was her. Could she really afford not to treat Victoria as potentially compromised?
And yet…
What if she was wrong? What if Amy really had… done that? And all that Victoria wanted right now was to be as far away as possible from Amy? That would mean that even coming here to talk to them was a huge ask; one that Sarah might not have been capable of in her place.
She shut her eyes for a moment. This was what she got for leaving her team behind. For focusing on her own grief after losing half her family, and forgetting about the rest.
Fuck this city.
"How telling that you won't even let her speak for herself." Skitter's voice startled Sarah into opening her eyes again. "She's telling you in plain English exactly what happened. Why she wants to do this. And still you don't listen to your daughter." Skitter laughed, the sound harsh and discordant. "And I thought I had no standards."
Carol bristled. "You have no right–" she started, before Mark's hand on her shoulder cut her off. He leaned over and whispered in her ear. Whatever he said calmed her down, though she still didn't look happy about it. Even so, Sarah could've kissed him. Happy or no, that was one less thing to worry about.
"Victoria," Sarah said, turning back to the two girls. "I understand you're hurt. I know this is hard and confusing. And that's okay."
She took a step closer, only to freeze partway as the pair took an instinctive step back towards the kitchen. Together.
Fuck.
"I– I know this is all out of nowhere. It's a lot to deal with. If you need time to figure this out and be comfortable around Amy before talking to New Wave or being Glory Girl again–"
"I'm n-not her." The words clawed their way out of Victoria's throat. Her eyes glimmered with angry tears. Her mouth opened again, then closed, as she made a few more halting attempts to speak, then switched back to signing with quick, angry gestures.
"Glory Girl died a long time ago. None of you were there," Skitter translated evenly, as if discussing the weather. "No matter who I'm going to be in the future, it won't be with New Wave. Not again."
A sob welled up in Sarah's throat before she choked it off. She was losing her family all over again. And she was too late to do anything about it.
Just like always.
"Victoria, baby, it doesn't have to be like this." Carol's voice was desperate, pleading. Her hand was spread across the forcefield. "Please, just come back to us. I promise we can fix this."
The blonde girl, looking smaller and more fragile than Victoria Dallon ever had in the oversized hoodie and baggy jeans she wore, looked at her with a solitary teartrack carving its way down her cheek. She took a step back. A thousand-strong swarm of hornets, cockroaches, spiders and gnats reared up to meet her, folding her into an envelope of protective violence.
"No," she whispered hoarsely. "You can't."
"What the fuck Sarah?" Carol was screaming at her. The woman was pacing back and forth in the kitchen, only moments away from pulling out her weapons out of sheer anger. "How could you just… let them get away?!"
Sarah for her part, stared at the front door the pair had left through. "I… " she started, but bit back the rest of the sentence. So many things had flashed through her mind as her niece had walked out that door. Regret. Terror. Anger. Helplessness. But more than any of that, it was confusion.
Nothing about what Skitter had done made sense. She'd been in their home, but she hadn't been the aggressor. She'd had the gun, but Victoria stepped in front of the muzzle and that had stopped her. Most of her actions from the moment Sarah had entered the scene had been focused on getting herself and Victoria out of the house, not pressing the advantage. She could've easily tried to incapacitate the three of them with Victoria as a hostage. It might not have worked, but she could've tried, and risked comparatively little beyond what she was risking by being there at all.
If anything, Victoria had been protecting Skitter from her family.
Sarah's stomach curled unpleasantly. It brought to mind another situation, a long time ago. A villain. A fight in a family home. A desperate struggle for violence. The shock and horror of a hostage. The bargaining, the twisting in her gut, the fear–
It wasn't a perfect comparison. Far from it. But it was hard to deny the thought, especially at the time, that the same situation that had brought Amy into their lives might be what took Victoria out of them. And Sarah just wasn't willing to risk that.
Maybe all of her fears were true. Maybe none of them were. But she'd chosen to let them go. And now her niece was out there. Carol's daughter. With that villain. Why her? Why had Victoria so blatantly, deliberately choosen Skitter over her own family? Why had she stepped willingly back into that swarm, a writhing mass of pincers and nightmares, like she was receiving a hug?
Why did she feel safer with Skitter than she did with them?
"Maybe it was the right thing to do."
Mark's voice stopped Carol's rant cold. She slowly turned to her husband. "Excuse me?"
Sarah turned to look at him. Mark was not an intimidating man. He was relatively short, tall enough to break even with his wife but not much taller than that. While he was well defined, he wasn't overly muscular. And more than that, he didn't like playing the tough-guy role. He was always the soft voice to Carol's harsh criticism, the gentler side of the couple.
Which was what made the disappointment in his gaze all the worse.
"You promised her that Amy wouldn't be in the house."
Carol bristled, taking a step closer. "She wasn't!" Sarah watched them from her vantage point in the living room. "She was in the garden!"
Mark scowled. "Like hell that matters! It's the spirit of the thing!" He gestured at the open door. "This wasn't like Jess. We knew the score, what she was here for, when she was coming. Defiant and Dragon both vouched for her!"
Sarah's heart stilled, and her face grew cold. "Dragon what?" She looked between Carol and Mark. "Why wasn't I informed? If we're negotiating something like this with the PRT, why didn't you tell me? I might've been struggling, but I'm still the leader of the team!"
"Because you weren't there!" Carol snapped, rounding on Sarah. "Victoria had been gone for weeks and you weren't doing anything and I had to do something! I tried to help!"
"Help?" Mark bit back. "Honey, she was terrified. You had to have known that would happen. She told us what she thought happened. She felt like she wasn't safe. Even if nothing had happened, you hurt her! For god's sake Carol, she's your daughter! How can you treat her like this?"
"BECAUSE I'M TRYING TO SAVE HER!" Carol was close to screaming herself raw, but she didn't seem to care. "Because sh-she's been gone for a month and you were still recovering and Sarah was gone and there was no one else! Just me! So what was I supposed to do?" Her eyes glimmered with tears. "I did the best I could. I did everything I could to save my daughter! Neither of you could've done better!"
Sarah might've. If she'd known.
Mark looked at her for a long moment before quietly walking to the back of the house. Perhaps to Amy's room, where they'd sent the girl after all was said and done. Sarah didn't turn to check when Mark passed her.
As soon as her husband left, the air went with him. Sarah watched quietly as her sister stared for a long moment at the open doorway. She deflated, sinking down to sit on the couch. Her hands trembled on her knees.
Her shoulders hitched once. Twice. And then, at last, Carol burst into tears. Violent, heavy sobs wracked through her body as her shoulders turned inward; her hair hung over her eyes as she buried her face in her hands and wailed.
Transparency, accountability, the dream of New Wave… this was what it all came down to. A woman falling apart on her couch. For a moment, Sarah didn't see Brandish the hero. Or Carol the mom. She saw her sister. Covered in blood in a dirty disgusting basement. Sobbing over the man she'd cut to pieces to save herself.
Slowly, cautiously, she approached the couch. Step by step, as if coming up on a wild animal without spooking it. Carol didn't so much as twitch to acknowledge her, even as she got within arm's distance. Sighing tiredly, Sarah gently lowered herself onto the couch and pulled her sister in close.
Carol immediately clung to her, burying her face in her neck. "I'm s-s-sorry." Her voice cracked. "I c-couldn't save her. I couldn't keep her. She's gone and it's m-my fault!"
Sarah slowly stroked her sister's hair, and said the only thing she could think of.
"I know. I don't think any of us could."
A/N:
Did you guys get to the end of the chapter before deciding to yell at me? I know I left things off on a bit of a… let's call it "tense" note last time, and we will be getting back to Tori and co as the focus next chapter. But I really wanted to show an outside look on this. For one, frankly, because it hits harder that way. But more to the point, Tori is an extremely internal character. We don't often get the chance to see how those actions and behaviors look to others. This is a way of doing that.
And as for Sarah… she's Complicated. We don't get much of her in canon, which means I had some leeway. She's not blameless in this, and I tried to show that here. She has her biases, and they're pretty apparent. She trends towards defending her family (understandable), thinks in broadly black and white terms (as does Tori at times), and is quick to react with violence (even if she held off here). But she's also the one who is willing to compromise more of New Wave's ideals if it means making things work. Could she have pulled this around if she'd been informed to begin with? Who knows! We're far past that bridge now.
In the meantime, did you guys think this went too well? That there wasn't enough violence or depression or fridge horror just off screen? While this is technically accurate, it is also a woefully bad description of today's rec, Mouse Trap by HorrorGems. And like the author's namesake, this one is a real diamond in the rough. I've seen Mouse Protector fics
Last edited:
- Location
- Minnesota
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This was a good way to handle the cliffhanger imo. I can imagine it being difficult to convey what was going on for Tori in the moment for a bit there? It was interesting to get another perspective on things, I feel like Sarah's POV brought a lot to the scene.
I'm glad that things were resolved peacefully. Somewhat. It won't derail Tori/The Undersider's plans at least. The whole situation continues to boil the blood.
I do wonder what the deal was with the gunshot though? Did Taylor take a shot at Amy?
I'm glad that things were resolved peacefully. Somewhat. It won't derail Tori/The Undersider's plans at least. The whole situation continues to boil the blood.
I do wonder what the deal was with the gunshot though? Did Taylor take a shot at Amy?
Goddamn their family is so fucking awful at communication. I actually love how that plays into Tori generally not being able to speak for herself. Her not being listened to becomes extremely literal, and the whole thing of accountability and transparency becomes a lie. You get Skitter as an outside perspective and voice, and it really pulls the whole toxic dynamic into the light.
Also, cloud of bugs hug for Tori.
Also, cloud of bugs hug for Tori.
- Location
- United States
- Pronouns
- They/Them
A part of me feels for Carol but at the same time, she willingly broke the spirit of the agreement and didn't even listen to her own daughter's askings to not see Amy, she really only has herself to blame for this situation happening the way it did.
nmWarden
Webcomic Glutton
- Location
- Texas
Freckles scoots by once again, free from any of the adults' blame. Carol really can't say a bad thing against her family members, can't accuse her with "Why are you in the house" while in crisis mode.
For real though- did Freckles even know Tori was coming? Did she hear her? That is kind of important.
If we assume Mark was present for the entire conversation where the Protectorate informed Carol about Tori's request, then he did his usual thing. Passively waited. Carol took charge, and it was implied that the Amy factor of the equation was taken care of. He shouldn't need to treat his wife with suspicion.
Ultimately his failure to double check, his failure to be proactive, has brought agony to Tori.
I think Mark and Colin should get a drink in the future. They are so, so different, but now their regrets have very similar components. I wonder what Defiant would say about the old Marquis takedown, and Amelia's adoption pickle.
For real though- did Freckles even know Tori was coming? Did she hear her? That is kind of important.
If we assume Mark was present for the entire conversation where the Protectorate informed Carol about Tori's request, then he did his usual thing. Passively waited. Carol took charge, and it was implied that the Amy factor of the equation was taken care of. He shouldn't need to treat his wife with suspicion.
Ultimately his failure to double check, his failure to be proactive, has brought agony to Tori.
I think Mark and Colin should get a drink in the future. They are so, so different, but now their regrets have very similar components. I wonder what Defiant would say about the old Marquis takedown, and Amelia's adoption pickle.
Last edited: