Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Miss Militia, I understand your apprehension, but… I… Me sharing this information is… borderline illegal, but I have to tell you. They’re planning on sending her to the Birdcage.” Dragon said through the drone, voice soft and worried. 

She could only blink rapidly at the drone. She glanced back at the file. 

“... She’s… fourteen years old. With a single manslaughter charge. And her power has made her body unsustainable without human flesh. Wouldn’t sending her to the Birdcage-”

“Have her starve to death or put down like a dog by the other inmates? Yes. Yes it would. This isn’t a sentence, it’s an execution. Of a child. Because the PRT can't figure out a way to work around her powers, and they expect her to turn into a Slaughterhouse 9 member if they let her go, and nobody will adopt her, and the trial is private, the information is all classified, it’s being buried, and… I know I’m asking for a lot here. But… please, just please consider it? It's the only way I can come up with to save her." Dragon genuinely pleaded, sounding more worn out than she'd ever heard her be before. 

She opened her mouth, and closed it. 

As her eyes closed and she sighed in defeat, she caught a muffled 'yes!' come from the drone.

She stared at the computer screen, brows furrowed.

All the information was there, along with a neat tide of notes from Dragon, all relevant and cited.

She tried to summarize the events in her head, feeling an incoming headache that would no doubt last only five minutes before her regeneration fixed it.

Taylor Hebert. Appeared on the boardwalk, covered in blood, with four crystalline, shapeshifting, gigantic tentacles coming out of her back. Attempted to drown herself, was taken in by Gallant, Aegis and Armsmaster. Did not resist arrest. Her home residence was trashed to the point the house was barely standing. Her father was found half-eaten in the kitchen.

Taylor confessed to the killing and cannibalism, stating that after two months of not eating her powers drove her mad. Has not cooperated or spoken since, only to deny that her father had anything to do with her trigger event. Severely distrustful and apathetic. Claims her power has made her only eat human flesh, and that anything else results in vomiting. Except coffee and water?

That was… bizarre.

And as if the rest were not enough, there was the following few lines.

Rough psych evaluation in cooperation with Gallant indicates that the girl is in a state of despair. Suicidal, refuses to eat, covers ears during meetings with psychiatrists, either cannot or will not put away the growths coming out of her back. Has attempted to severely harm herself many times with them, unsuccessfully. Has requested death penalty.

Prosecutor is the PRT with charges of first degree murder, public endangerment, public use of parahuman power with the intent to intimidate, and then a bunch of citations invoking specific laws and legal precedents that she frankly had no idea even existed.

A brief skim through them revealed that they were basically what she had decided to dub the ‘railroad package’. Obscure, vague to the point of genuine concern for most capes, herself included, and rarely used. A mixture of ‘this parahuman cannot be contained’, ‘this parahuman cannot be worked with or negotiated with’, and ‘this parahuman is of an unsound mind and is a danger to the public and thus cannot be released under any circumstances’.

No mention in the prosecution file of her… peculiar diet.

Which was the thing that most frustrated her.

It was possible to work with this girl. She was a traumatized child who somehow got handed one of the most gruesome powers she’d yet heard of in The Bay, requiring her to eat human flesh.

They could request a regenerator without a sense of pain, like Aegis himself, to chop a limb off every once in a while to keep the girl going, something he could regenerate overnight in his sleep. They could request or commission something from Blasto in Boston, one of his weird biotinker vats that grew humanoid creations whose flesh was as close to a human as one could get. They could give her some space, some time to process, a psychiatrist that didn’t just put her in a padded cell with a little window to peek through and start talking and asking questions.

The security footage was genuinely depressing.

The PRT could do all those things. But they wouldn’t.

The image of a Ward being asked to remove his limbs to feed another ward was not only absurd to even think of, if anyone even heard a whisper of this, anyone and everyone involved would be crucified, publicly and internally, careers irreversibly destroyed. The only other regenerator in the Bay was herself, and her rate of regeneration was abysmal in comparison to Aegis’s. She knew that Piggot wouldn’t let her attempt to feed the kid herself when getting that arm back would take two to three days.

The PRT also would not work with a villain. Blasto could give them a human steak production machine for free and they still wouldn’t accept it. Nevermind commissioning something like that, and having him perform maintenance on it. 

The only other biotinkers she could think of were Bonesaw.

And then, they could give her some space and time to process, but they wouldn’t do that, because she was nothing but a drain on resources and a PR disaster waiting to happen.

They couldn’t put her in the Wards because she refused to cooperate and they had no way of keeping her alive and fed even if she was cooperative, they couldn’t let her go because they were afraid she’d become a second Siberian, chasing and eating people for fun, they couldn’t outright execute her or place a kill order on her because that was ridiculous and dangerous to throw around especially for a single “murder”, and then…

Then there was the guardianship issue, and the sole loophole and angle of attack that Dragon was able to find to save the poor girl.

For someone to adopt a parahuman, they had to read their file, their superpowers, what they might need to accommodate them, and so on and so forth.

When someone, anyone, picked up a file and read ‘needs human flesh to survive, powers rather unknown, has shapeshifting tentacles with tentative brute two rating, severely traumatized’, they would immediately put the file down and run away.

Understandable.

So not only was the girl being tried, but because she had no parents, no next of kin to take care of her, and nobody to come adopt her, she was a ward of the state. Being a ward of the state gave the state guardianship rights, which included voluntarily revoking the girl’s underage status so she could be tried as an adult, when normally, such a thing was a contested decision, as far as she understood.

In short, this meant that in the trial, they would remove her underage status to trial her as an adult, then both prosecute her, and defend her, likely intending to put some bastard on her side to throw the trial completely so they could nail her to a cross and get rid of the headache that she was.

She leaned forward, staring at the letters.

Her eyes flit down, to the adoption papers on her desk, marred on the right corner with a splotch of pink tea.

If someone… somehow, miraculously, was to adopt her…

Then the girl had a chance. She would be tried as an underage because the parent could refuse to revoke that right, which would then be contested by the court et cetera until a conclusion was reached, and she would then get an actual lawyer.

And Miss Militia was unfortunately the only person Dragon trusted with the information of this trial. New Wave was considered, but with their hatred of the PRT, they were just as likely to use this as ammunition against the PRT as they were to help the girl, not to mention that Carol Dallon was an exceptional lawyer that would be best served defending the girl, which she would be unable to do as her legal guardian.

And of course, their ‘open mask’ policy would be a complete and utter disaster for Taylor. The girl needed absolutely nothing like a sudden spotlight on her, especially one she could not escape from, especially with her… condition. It wasn’t like Panacea could make clumps of human flesh to feed the girl, she was just a healer. An amazing one, but just a healer.

If Dragon had brought this up to them, they would likely use this to attack the PRT, while the ethical complications of how they could keep her fed would make them refuse to adopt the girl.

So…

Here she was.

A giant pile of paperwork on her desk, and a monumental mountain of a decision before her.

She couldn’t let a child be condemned to death.

But she also couldn’t raise one.

She wasn’t… motherly. She wasn’t stunted by any means, she knew the basics, the simple psychology behind raising a functional human, but this was a lot more complicated than just raising a child.

If she adopted her, she would have to prove a lot of things to actually gain guardianship.

Including an ability to feed her.

Which was possible. Colin had great anesthetics, and a nanolaser cutter. Chopping an arm off would literally be nothing more than a chore.

But she would essentially be signing herself off to permanently serving with one arm, always having to remove it when it grew back after a day or two to keep the girl fed.

And how often did she feed anyway? Would Taylor hate her? What was she even like?

Could Hannah really be a parent? She was-

She was…

Scared, actually.

Well, wasn’t this nostalgic? It’s been a while since she felt like this. Trapped between a rock and a hard place.

She took a deep breath, and rubbed at her eyes for a moment, before focusing back on the document.

Then she checked the time.

She entertained the idea of checking up on the girl, trying to approach her preemptively, see what she was like, what she might be dealing with.

Not that it would hold sway over her decision.

Even if Taylor hated her guts and vice versa, she refused to let such an extreme perversion of justice take place. She refused to let a traumatized child be sentenced to death via starvation because of a tragedy they likely couldn’t help commiting, as if they were stuck in the middle ages in some muddy craphole.

She grabbed her pen, hesitated.

Took a deep breath. Sighed it out.

Groaned, rubbed at her temples.

Then, before she could stall the inevitable any more or go into her fiftieth second-guessing session, she signed the first paper, then the second, then the third, and so on, until all seventeen pages of documents were signed in the corner with her official name.

Now to get acquainted with…

The girl she was going to adopt.

How the hell did this happen? She just wanted to be a superhero and serve her country.

Now she was going to try and raise a traumatized cannibal.

She almost burst out laughing due to the sheer absurdity of it, but she had a suspicion that it would probably sound at least a little unhinged from all the stress, so she held it in, and grabbed the papers, fixing her scarf.

Time to talk to Piggot.

Then the girl.

Then Colin.

Then Dragon.

Then-

Okay, she had a lot of people to talk to.

She straightened, and opened the door.

Chapter Text

The meeting was a verbal spar.

She liked to think she won.

Piggot couldn’t exactly tell her what to do in her personal time nearly as much as she could while on duty, so they had settled on “there will be no amputations happening in The Rig or any PRT property for the purpose of feeding her”. 

But she had developed an intense dislike for the Director during that discussion.

Trying to set reasonable boundaries was one thing, trying to insinuate she was recklessly trying to cover up ‘for lack of legacy by adopting a danger to society’ was several steps too personal and several steps too far.

No really, she was completely unprepared for just how unprofessional and frustrating the Director was during that meeting, for seemingly no reason. She was usually fairly even handed, if tough on protocol.

Maybe she somehow considered the girl a threat to her career as well? Or did she think the girl was bound to end up a villain and thought Hannah some kind of traitor for trying to prevent her execution ?

The insult was also decidedly untrue, as were the other half-dozen emotionally manipulative barbs the woman tossed her way, actively trying to dissuade her from adopting the girl.

She was only there to declare that she was doing it, she was not there to ask for permission.

But the Director had a tough time understanding that, for some absurd reason.

Whether her adoption application would be approved was another thing, but it was done by a separate agency from the PRT, so it should go through without much issue.
 
Now, to talk to Colin.

“No.”

She sighed, and prepared to give him a short if somewhat convincing explanation for why she wanted something as bizarre as a portable amputation device, as well as to offer payment.

Then Dragon’s avatar appeared on one of the screens, faintly smiling.

He glanced at it.

It silently stared back at him, its eyes placid and calm and not straying an inch from Colin.

He looked back at the workbench in front of him, the infinitely fine pieces, with an air of reluctance.

He turned his head back up to stare at Dragon.

Dragon’s smile widened.

Colin sighed with an air of exasperated defeat, turning his head to give her his usual, even gaze.

“Fine. Come tomorrow, I want to finish this first.”

She cocked her head a smidge, glancing questioningly at Dragon, who practically exuded joyful satisfaction before she blipped out of the screen to appear on a small drone hovering over Colin’s shoulder, not before shooting her a wide, thankful smile and a nod.

They hadn’t quite saved her yet, but half the work was already done.

She nodded back and walked out of Colin’s lab.

The security was rather substandard to hold potent capes, not that they had much proof the girl was a formidable one.

The Rig was not meant to hold prisoners. They only brought her here because people would pay too much attention at the mainland PRT building, have too many eyes around wondering what a stick-thin child was doing there.

This place was more exclusive, more for the ‘big boys’.

Another bit of sneakiness she did not appreciate whatsoever.

The pneumatic steel door hissed open, revealing a tiny screen that showed the inside of the cell, a camera to project her face to Taylor, a high quality microphone, and a chair, tucked into the small booth-like security room attached to the cell.

All behind about five feet of solid concrete with rebar supports and a ten inch thick place of steel surrounding it. Hidden, of course, into the walls.

She ignored all of it, not even bothering to check the state of the inner room, and reached to unlock the safety door on the left wall.

“Maam, you shouldn’t-”

“Understood. Dismissed.” She cut him off, dryly but not aggressively, and the man just sighed and signaled the other guard, hefting the containment foam nozzles in their arms lazily as they backed away from the door to the opposite wall.

She could almost hear their thoughts.

If she dies, it’s on her, and it’s on camera.

Security guards were… not unjustified, again, but it made her uncomfortable to think that they were keeping a child behind half a dozen guards, three steel doors, and a security booth.

Inside a padded cell.

Oh sure, it was about ten by ten feet, so it was quite large for one person, but it was still a cage.

It just rubbed her the wrong way. In every way.

The door swung, and she watched in muted disdain as her boots sunk into the pillowed floor.

Then she glanced up, and there she was, on the pillow-padded corner jutting out of the wall in a strange mimicry of a normal bed.

The girl looked…

Both terrifying and pitiful.

Sitting on her bed and hugging her knees, she was almost ghoulishly thin, her eyes hazy and locked into a perpetual million yard stare. White prisoner’s clothes hung heavy on her frame, drowning her in their bulk, but not their height. Her hair looked greasy, and hung in front of her eyes.

And what eyes those were…

Pitch black sclera, shot through with luminescent red veins that connected to equally unnerving irises, little red rings of light.

And behind her, splayed out over the wall, were four gigantic tentacles, each half again as thick as Hannah’s arm, and softly glowing like something from outer space, overwhelming shades of red mixing with purples and pink and motes of white, the light undulating as if some kind of syrupy liquid just under the skin. Despite that nuance in the colors, they were overwhelmingly blood-red unless she looked closer, the different colors almost looking like a trick of light on iridescence.

The white light from above reflected off the tentacles like they were made of crystal, while the actual color and luminescence made it look like it was made of some kind of thick goop. The juxtaposition was bizarre and beautiful.

And something about how all four of those tentacles were crammed and bunched into the corner like some kind of alien growth coming out of the wall, covering almost a third of the room, it made her heart ache.

Those things were huge, and long. Easily a dozen feet each. That could not be comfortable.

“Hello.” She simply said, and watched the girl’s eyes momentarily sharpen, blink rapidly in confusion, then jerk towards her.

She watched them briefly widen with something light and awed, before shame overwhelmed it, and Taylor buried her face into her knees, hugging them tighter.

She tried not to flinch and somewhat succeeded when the sound of cracking crystal suddenly filled the room. She watched in awed fascination as the tentacles morphed into something like spiky butterfly wings, and snapped shut around Taylor like a protective blanket in two layers, one below and one above, leaving only a thin slit around her knees where she could look out into the world from.

Not that she used that slit, burying her face into her knees even deeper.

And then they were standing there in awkward silence.

What was she supposed to say? How did one approach a situation like this?

Fuck.

She wanted to get the girl to feel comfortable, safe, or at least trusting enough to show her face. But she had no idea what to say now that she was actually here. So, she turned around, and closed the cell door, before taking tentative steps forward, mind racing.

She was good at improvising on the field, and awkwardness was a rare thing for her. It was that combination that allowed her to discard the thoughtful paths of her mind, and just ‘wing it’.

“Hello Taylor.”

No response, not even a twitch.

Just talk. Be honest. It usually worked.

“I’m Miss Militia. I’m a local hero working for the Brockton Bay PRT. Though I’m not here because I was ordered to, in case you are wondering, nor am I here to carry a message of any kind. I am also not here to badger you to talk, or sign things, or draw some kind of result from you. I simply wished to…check up on you. Your circumstances were brought to my attention recently, and I’ll confess that I find this all to be a massive miscariage of justice.” She finished, then prepared to offer an ear should she wish to talk, to offer her some kind of comfort if she wished, some book or some bulky mp3 player. 

“So fix it.” The girl breathed out, the topmost layer of crystal peeling off and down, and her train of thought scattered in muted confusion. “It’s… they won’t blame you. I can take out the camera. You can tell them I attacked you. It was… self defense.” The girl continued, voice so impossibly soft she could barely hear her, and so utterly blank it sounded like she could barely muster the care to speak.

She blinked at her for a moment, not comprehending what she was talking about.

Then the implication clicked, and she swallowed through the lump in her throat.

The very idea of her imprisonment being a miscariage of justice, rather than the fact she was still breathing being one, was so distant to Taylor that it didn’t even seem to come up as a possibility to her.

The worst kind of misunderstanding, great.

How the hell does she address that? Does she even try?

“Taylor, I’m not going to kill you. That’s not what I meant. I meant that you shouldn’t even be in here. You should be free.” She said softly, taking a tentative step forwards, then stopping.

Taylor didn’t reply for a moment, and after ten seconds of patiently waiting for a reply, Taylor raised her head, gaze distant.

Then the growths unfurled, settled back into tentacles, lengthening, looming above her as she gingerly set her feet on the floor and got off the bed.

“And if… If I- I-If… I attacked you?” Taylor mumbled out, still looking so broken down and small that even as the tentacles rose higher, like a snake rearing for a strike, she just knew-

That she wouldn’t do it.

It wasn’t the first time someone tried to commit suicide by cape in front of her. She knew the look of someone who was about to kill, who was willing, who would press his finger down on that trigger when he raised it instead of it being an empty threat to force someone to action, to force someone to kill them.

Taylor’s eyes stubbornly avoided hers, her shaking fingers twitching shut and open. But they were visible.

And all she saw in them was the pulsing, bleeding edges of a person that was broken, glowing softly red.

“Then I suppose you wouldn’t mind if I took some time to include in my will that all my remaining assets be used to provide you with a proper parahuman therapist and some life savings?” She asked, careful not to sound pitying or condescending.

She’d been… not where this girl was, but not nearly as far from that as she would have liked, during the first few days after her trigger. She knew how pity was the sweetest knife that dug into a wound and told you you liked it, how even a well-meaning word could insinuate a thousand insults when spoken the wrong way.

Taylor’s tentacles, tightened, cracked, bunching themselves up into the corner.

In the girl’s mind, it probably looked like she was rearing back for the most devastating strike possible. In truth, it looked like the tentacles were huddling into the corner not unlike a cornered animal, afraid and desperate.

An alarm suddenly began to ring in the back, and the door opened.

She raised her right foot and slammed it into the half-opened door in a picture perfect kick, hearing the guards stumble back and onto the floor on the other side.

She raised her right wrist and fiddled with the bracelet for a moment or two, until the communicator rung for the nearest guard.

Who was right outside.

“Did I not tell you that you are dismissed? Are you deaf or stupid? Turn the alarm off and leave. Now.” She simply ordered, taking extra care to make her voice more frigid than the north pole.

“Maam-” His voice hissed through.

“Are you disobeying my orders?” She spoke with false, acidic calm, knowing full well that any ex-military type would pale at even hearing those words. Her eyes remained on Taylor, who looked increasingly like she was on the edge of hyperventilating, eyes wide and rimmed with something glossy, darting from the floor to Hannah’s chest with naked, horrified hunger.

She rather doubted it was the subtle, covered swell of her breasts that the girl was looking at.

Blood sight, maybe? Enhanced senses?

Her heartbeat was fairly slow right now though. Enhanced senses were unlikely.

Still, it was mildly disconcerting to have the girl staring at her heart like it was a piece of candy wrapped by flesh she had to crack through.

Predictably, the alarm stopped two seconds later.

“No, Miss Militia.”

“Good.” She said, and clicked the device off.

Her leg curled and dropped from the door, and she took a step forward, making sure her arms were behind her but visible, open but not hiding something, a slow step.

Something hard and feral entered the girl’s eyes, and just for a moment, she wondered if maybe the girl would pull that metaphorical trigger.

Then the tentacles flashed forward like bullets. Despite her best instincts, she locked her limbs, and only minutely flinched as the tentacles stopped a mere six to twelve inches from impaling her, displaced air ruffling her hair.

It wasn’t even close to being the first time she’d seen a spike about to go through her head. Kaiser did not play around.

It was a bit of an amusing pun that he gave her nerves of steel from their past fights, but it was true.

The tentacles immediately snapped back and away, revealing Taylor, wide eyed, eyes glistening, stumbling back from her and shaking like a leaf.

“I-I’m I didn’t mean- I- It’s- not again I’m so sorry- ” Taylor stuttered and rambled, her hands rising up to hug herself, her voice cracking, before a sob cut her off and she turned away in a flurry of crystal and writhing tentacles. They shortened with crackles like breaking glass, flattened, turning back into wings.

Taylor collapsed into the corner, and like a particularly beautiful cocoon, the wings moved to cover her and her little corner, hitching gasps and tiny, muffled sobs filling the room, complete with hiccups and sniffles and…

It broke her heart, just a little, to see the girl like this.

She didn’t want to push too much.

But if she left here, it might be worse than if she’d never even come here at all.

So she stepped forward.

“Taylor. I know you wouldn’t do it. That’s why I didn’t do anything.” She spoke, softly, as soothing as she could manage.

The frantic edge to those deep breaths blunted, retreated a little. She was just happy the girl hadn’t gone into a full nervous breakdown and was actually listening, taking comfort from her words.

“It’s okay. You’ve been confined and starved for more than a week since… since. And while I cannot do much, I can do something to make this all easier for you, alright? So, if you want something to help make all this easier, let me know.”

Taylor’s sounds of despair continued to calm, mercifully, sobs quieting into little stuttered breaths, so she continued.

“If you want an MP3 player, some books, maybe some personal object, someone to talk to, or something like that, please tell me. I’ll be passing by here regularly. And if you’re getting hungry, I’d be more than willing to… Help. I’m a regenerator. An amputation or two is no big deal, and the PRT won’t feed you what you need, I’m afraid. I… believe that is all I wished to say. Would you like me to leave?” She asked, finally, fully aware that her presence was the equivalent of taking a starving girl and forcing her to sit beside a full steak dinner without taking a bite.

Taylor took a deep breath, stuttered and shaky enough to make the wings rattle a little, then let it out in an equally jittery exhale.

“I- What do you mean by- by helping? A-Amputations?” Taylor breathed out, incredulous hints to her tone.

“I mean that the PRT cannot feed you. And that the process of… handling all this might take about two more weeks. You cannot go that long without food, and I am Miss Militia. I do not need both arms to operate efficiently, and it will grow back quickly enough. If you feel like you can’t take it anymore, please tell me.” She softly intoned.

Then silence reigned.

That was fine, she had time. And patience.

It took five minutes for Taylor to speak again, her distress having settled down to the occasional shudder.

“Why? I- I don’t… Why? ” The girl warbled out, and Hannah decided to take a slight risk, stepping forward and walking up to the girl, making sure to knock her legs together a bit so it would make sound and not startle the girl.

She raised her left hand, and momentarily hesitated, wondering if this was a good idea.

Then she gently put her palm on the crystalline wing that likely covered Taylor’s hands and head, and felt her turn into a stiff statue.

It was so incredibly warm and smooth that her train of thought almost got derailed completely.

It’s been so long since she last wished to give someone a hug. It was just not a desire that popped up, almost ever. Only when dealing with a pouty Missy sometimes.

But now she genuinely found herself wishing she could just peel the wings off and hug the poor girl.

So when she spoke, she used that emotion to sound as comforting and assuring as she could.

“Because you’re not a monster. And you shouldn’t be treated like one.” She said, softly, and gently rubbed her wing once, feeling it curl and shudder beneath her hand, before retreating.

Taylor didn’t speak for a bit longer, but she also did not tell her to leave, so she stood in place and quietly marveled at the sight of the girl’s appendages. The wings looked a bit more on the purple-red side than the tentacles.

“I… a book. Unconquered. And… a red scarf. It was… my dad’s.” Taylor quietly eked out eventually, and she took that as her politely worded queue to leave.

“Of course. Keep in mind what I said, alright? See you later, Taylor.” She said, and heard a muffled sound of acknowledgement.

As she locked the door back and left the corridor, she reflected on their interactions.

That could have gone better, but in some other aspects, it felt like it could have gone a lot worse.

Not much was done or said, but that was fine. That was what the girl needed. Baby steps.

The girl was sweet, though. She was unlikely to be a problem once she settled in with her.

She smiled. 

Chapter Text

She heard the food chute slide another plate into her cell.

She curled up tighter, mind lost and wandering, replaying the same memory over and over.

For once, it was not the memory of coming to her senses and seeing her dad’s forearm sticking out of her mouth. It was not the memory of being utterly trapped in the locker, feeling a centipede squirm its way into her ear.

It was the memory of a hard, calloused hand, touching a mass of razorblades in the form of a wing, of a firm, soft voice.

“You’re not a monster. And you shouldn’t be treated like one.”

She disagreed. But still, every time she replayed those words in her mind, she felt the gaping, jagged crack in her chest smooth out a little, the edges blunting just a bit. A reassurance as well as a ray of hope that made her fearful.

Her mind warred against itself.

One half was desperate for some comfort, some softness, for someone to talk to that wasn’t hidden behind glass and nozzles full of containment foam, for someone who wouldn’t look and regard her in the same way one would a rabid animal.

And the other half was a rabid animal.

It was a frenzied gnawing hunger that made her shake and shiver, made her teeth grind, made her lower back squirm and crawl-

Made her look at one of her childhood heroes, the only person who’d touched and talked to her in a comforting way in- in months, and see nothing but food, removing their sentience and sapience, removing their emotions, their pain, their very sense of self from her mind, until all she saw was a walking bag of meat.

Until all that was left of herself was a bottomless black hole in the bottom of her stomach that howled and screamed for flesh, without sound nor warning.

She remembered hearing Miss Militia’s heartbeat softly pumping through her veins, how every time she looked at her she felt like she was hearing the world’s most delicious juice pump through a straw, how her mind would blur the woman’s face and focus on her neck, on the soft and juicy flesh beneath-

Her stomach clenched as she dry heaved, a mixture of psychological sickness mixed with physical hunger throwing her into a quivering fit.

She curled up tighter, tighter, and let the tears come, sobbing in her little corner, and wished for someone that would end her pain, whether that was with a soft voice and a calloused hand, or a bullet through the eye.

Hannah stared at the metal box, regarding it for a moment.

A hole in the middle, three buttons above it, a tube at the top, a grate for air, and lots of seams. And surprisingly large. About the size of a bulky suitcase, and a bit longer to fit her whole arm to the shoulder..

Considering Colin’s usual standards, a complete rush job.

Considering Colin’s usual standards however, this would also probably do the job perfectly, so she didn’t much care.

“You just put your arm into the hole, press the button that will hold it in place and let you know exactly where it will cut, then press the button to begin the amputation. The one with a little cleaver icon- yes, that one. It will inject you with a fast-acting local anesthetic from three different points around the limb, then fasten a tourniquet around your arm to lessen the bleeding. It will wait thirty seconds to ensure the anesthetic has finished its work, and then cut. You shouldn’t feel a thing. Then press the button with the two flaps on it, and the metal top will open and you can take the limb out. It’s got blood collection grates and cleaning sprays with anticoagulant and soap, so it shouldn’t need any maintenance besides replacing the fluids and cleaning the refuse collector after every single use. And charging it, of course. I recommend getting some med-spray too to seal the bleeding before your regeneration fixes it. I made an instruction sheet on how to do the more minute things, it’s taped to the top. Read it. Good luck with your project.” Colin finished, and turned around, walking to his nanoforge in the distant corner.

Her.. what?

Puzzled, she went to grab it by the handle at the top, and let out an oomph sound as she felt the weight, bringing it by her side.

Definitely a rush job.

“Thank you, Colin.” She called out, and he let out an awkward backwards salute of sorts as he kept walking.

She went to walk out, only to pause at the approaching buzz she heard, turning her head to the sound.

A little drone with a palm-sized screen on its front, showing Dragon’s avatar.

Finally.

Having a whole night to stew in questions had left her with so many of them.

“Dragon, why did you contact me and not Assault and Battery? Or someone from another department more suited for this?” She immediately asked, and the drone abruptly slowed in surprise, before resuming its speed, in an oddly human gesture.

Dragon’s experience with piloting drones was so deep she could, probably unconsciously, make them almost react the same way she mentally did. Impressive.

And a little sympathetic.

“Because of their past and records.” Dragon softly uttered as her drone hovered next to her ear. “Assault used to be a villain, a fairly well-documented one as well. Battery has no such things on her record, but she does have many minor disciplinary notes about joking on the job and indulging her husband with his unprofessional attitude. And seeing as I do not know how long the chain of… not incorruption extends, I was very worried that those things might be used to deny the adoption application. But your record is utterly impeccable, and well…” Dragon trailed off, only to sigh, then the drone swerved as if she was shaking her head.

“I’m not sure how to say this without sounding a little… odd, but what do you know of parental psychology fields?” Dragon asked, and she just… stared at her. And blinked.

The avatar winced a little.

“Okay, so... The girl needs the best aspects of a mother and a father, in my opinion. She needs the strictness, structure and firmness that a father figure tends to bring to the table, and the affection and understanding that a mother figure tends to bring to the table. Since Assault and Battery were a slight risk however, due to their past, and how someone could pull a string or two and turn away the paper on such dubious ground, I thought about how you conduct yourself, and I think you’re a perfect mix of both. Of what the girl needs, I mean. This might be a little… creepy? But uhm…” Dragon grimaced, flushing, and Hannah’s brows slowly rose, her gaze steady and questioning.

“I’ve watched a lot of footage and reports of how you conduct yourself. An example being how you… confronted Missy after the first time she saw a man die. In that Hookwolf fight. Wasn’t pretty at all, especially for one so young. The mission report had the footage of the lounge included in a link below, with a request for an on-base therapist. You handled it perfectly. You were comforting, but not too comforting, you were sympathetic but not too sympathetic, just firm enough to let her feel like she could cling to you for support for a bit until she got her feet back under her. And a lot of other recorded instances of you interacting with minors in general, though mostly the Wards. Your conduct seems like a perfect middle ground to me, on top of previously mentioned reasons! Not that I have much… good experience with parenting.” Dragon finished, sounding rather subdued at the end, and Hannah inwardly grimaced in sympathy.

She didn’t know the details, but she could guess by the tone that it was not entirely pleasant.

She mulled over her words for a bit, brows furrowing as she thought, thumb tracing the grit on the amputation device’s handle.

“I… honestly don’t see it, Dragon. But I am very flattered. I hope I can meet and exceed your expectations, both for us, and for her. Was there something you wanted before I asked you about this?” She asked, and the avatar’s brows furrowed as it glanced to the side, likely at her office papers or some such.

“Oh, right! I uh, I was going to suggest trying to give the girl blood, instead of just… flesh. I imagine it would be like trying to keep a human alive on nothing but orange juice, but you never know until you try. Maybe the machine is not even needed. Additionally-”

“It would be easier for her too.” She interrupted, eyes wide in realization. “I could uhm, put it in a cup, or something to sort of… hide the liquid from sight. Tell her what it is, obviously, but maybe hiding it would help. Like how some people close their eyes for injections and feel like its much less scary that way. She’s obviously distressed by the sudden change, even now. But if I could progressively let her get over it like that…” She trailed off, pursing her lips as she stared off into space, far past Dragon’s drone.

A very widely smiling drone.

“I’ll still wait until she tells me she wishes to eat. I’m not sure pushing anything is good right now, but when she does tell me, I’ll suggest it. It would also be much easier to regenerate a couple pints of blood than a whole arm, as well as hide it. Not that I have much of civilian identity but…” She trailed off again, realizing that she was starting to rant like Colin did when he got his hands on another poor innocent Tinker soul.

“Right. Good idea, Dragon. Thank you.” She nodded to the drone, and with a mutual smile, she walked outside to go find her motorcycle.

…

How the fuck was she going to fit this thing in the back?

Her bike looked like a drug dealer’s now, what with the tarp and the couple dozen rubber hook ropes wrapped around the machine that was half-stuffed into the open back compartment.

She wasn’t much of a vehicle nut but something about one fourth of her bike looking like a Merchant’s ride made her eye twitch.

She lightly kicked the bike with her foot, carefully watching the machine for any wobbling.

It held, at least.

She walked back into The Rig, satisfied.

Now to hunt down that scarf.

The door closed behind her, and she took a deep, deep breath, feeling her jaw work at nothing.

‘Discarded due to scan showing no signs of it being usable evidence’.

She must admit that she was not familiar with the process of what happened after such an event, but throwing everything away unless it could be used against the girl was ridiculous. It was probably standard process, but still, what was the point of shortening the already short list of things people owned after such a disaster?

Now she was going to have to…

God damn it.

She grabbed her phone, and quickly tapped the number into the pad, pressing the call button and standing in place as she brought it to her ear, stiff as stone.

“Yes? Mayor’s office? I am Miss Militia.”

“Holy shit, we thought the mayor got duped by a prank call. Euh, uh, I mean, ma’am.” The garbage disposal worker fumbled, scratching the back of his head.

“It was not. One moment, please, I’ll try not to delay you further, gentlemen.” She offered, and quickly ascended the small ladder that led to the collection tank.

Then she stared in dread at the waist-high stretch of trash.

“Would either of you mind giving me a hand? I’m looking for a plastic evidence bag with a red scarf in it. You took it from The Rig’s dumpsters about four and a half hours ago?” She asked, turning to look at the men, and watched both of them grimace or frown, staring at the collection tank with a mild sense of disgust.

“I’ll give you each fifty bucks.”

They scrambled up the ladder under her, and she snorted, before swinging her leg over, taking the last breath of fresh air she’d get for the next hour or two, and hopped off into the first ring of hell.

“Ho- lee, shit. Did you go dumpster diving or something?” Assault asked as she stomped past him to her quarters, laughter in his voice as he held his nose shut with one hand and waved at the air with the other.

She glared at him.

“Shut.” She growled, and redoubled her pace as Assault raised his hands in a universal surrender gesture.

She could still smell that fucking rotting watermelon.

She could feel it on her pants.

Anyone who knew that rotten watermelon smells like vaguely spoiled cheese bashed with rotting fruit and had experienced such traumatizing scents would forever be her undying comrade in arms.

She stared at the…

Peace offerings? Comfort bribes?

Gifts?

Whatever they were supposed to be, she had them.

A book called Unconquerable, a very old and ye olde englishe kind of book that was barely even legible to her, and the red scarf.

Cleaned.

Very carefully.

Multiple times.

A better fate than her uniform.

Killed in action and cremated in The Rig’s incinerator, a true warrior’s death. She would remember its sacrifice for the next week, maybe. Hopefully not.

She’d never be able to eat cheese again.

Was she stalling?

Yes, she was stalling.

It wasn’t a conscious choice, she just felt… oddly… not nervous, not exactly. Just… unsure.

She was running scenarios and ways of approach in her mind, more and more, slowly adding up to the internal simulation in her mind until it reached absurdity.

Simplicity worked the first time, even if it had been an uncomfortably close shave with getting decapitated, so it should work again, but it was just… she wanted to do this right.

Did she give the gifts and leave, did she stay, did she try to engage with her or give her some room? The girl hadn’t asked for conversation as far as she remembered.

She licked her lips. Straightened.

No, no, too… official. She looked like she was about to march into the room rather than just walk in.

A deep breath, an equally long sigh.

Okay. Just… wing it.

She was good at improvising. Complex plans were for her superiors and Armsmaster’s OCD to deal with.

She unlatched the door, and walked inside. 

Chapter Text

The door clicked shut behind her, and she turned around to the sight of a ball of crystal wings with one peeled back and upwards just enough for curious, surprised, tired red eyes to peek through the gap at her.

She smiled, a little wider than she felt just so the girl could see it in her eyes.

“Hi Taylor.”

Silence stretched for a little bit as Taylor shifted.

“Uhm. Hi. I didn’t… think you’d come back.” Taylor quietly said, then her eyes flit down to the items in her hands, and slowly widened from a tired look to a rather alert one.

“Well, I did. I also got the stuff you wanted.” She said mildly, and stepped forwards, ignoring how the cocoon tightened with the sound of glass rubbing against glass.

She extended her hands to present the items, and the wings unfolded to show Taylor, sitting on the floor with her chin on her knees. A hand extended forward to take the book.

Red eyes locked onto her wrist, shifted, focused like a laser. Taylor’s fingers curled into clawless hooks. Before she could stop herself and back off, Taylor yanked her hand back, grasping it with her other, pressing them into her own chest as she looked up at her like a deer in headlights, eyes full of fear and guilt.

She had learned that generally speaking, things were only as big a deal as you made them. So she minimized it.

“Ah, my bad. I’ll just leave them on the bed?” She calmly said as she took a step back, and Taylor’s mouth quickly opened and closed, before a jerky nod made her hair bob and rustle against her clothes.

With her permission, she turned to the left on the padded slab of a bed, and put the items on the foot of the bed, as close to Taylor as she could without tormenting the poor girl.

“I know this question is a bit vague and kind of empty, but… how are you holding up?” She asked as she stepped back genuinely curious.

She didn’t imagine she was holding up well to any extent. The girl did exactly what she expected her to. Which was to deny it.

“I’m… okay.” Taylor mumbled, eyeing the book, then glancing at her.

Noting how the girl had yet to do anything but stare at her from the corner, she backed up even more until she was basically at the opposite wall.

“I don’t quite believe you, but I do hope that you’re okay, or getting better. Is my presence, ah… bothering you?” She asked, clasping her hands behind her back.

Taylor shook her head a little.

“No. It’s… I like talking to you, uh M-Miss. But the… hunger. M’sorry.” Taylor mumbled.

“No need to be sorry about something you can’t control. If you don’t mind though, I am curious about said hunger. Trying to work out a solution. Would you be opposed to me bringing you some blood to drink? Voluntarily drawn, of course.” She clarified, thinking to herself how oddly pleasing it was to know the girl liked having her around.

Taylor stared at her, blinking slowly without an ounce of comprehension in her eyes, until finally, her eyes began to glisten, and she buried her face into her knees.

“I don’t think it’ll… do much.” Taylor eked out, a brief shiver passing through her.

“Maybe, but there’s no harm in trying, right?” She asked, and Taylor shook her head stubbornly.

Much as she wanted to, she wouldn’t push.

“Alright. Mind if I sit down here?” She asked, turning her head and waist a bit to observe the wall she was against. Then she turned around and watched apprehension war with something more vulnerable in Taylor’s gaze, eyes barely peeking over her knees.

“I… yeah.” Taylor mumbled, and after a brief moment wondering whether that was a ‘yeah I mind’ or a ‘yeah go ahead’, she decided the girl meant the latter, and crouched, before falling back and stretching her legs out, taking care to put on a small show of how she was just getting comfortable, which she was.

Padded cell or not, the cushioning was comfortable at least.

Then, nothing more was said. Taylor extended a tentacle to the items, flattening it like a ribbon before snaking it under them and bringing them to herself. She mutely watched her take the scarf out of the plastic container, sniff it, then wrap it around her neck with stuttered breaths full of emotion, then bring the book onto her lap.

Then Taylor glanced up at her, licking her lips and fidgeting.

“Thank you.” Taylor muttered.

She smiled, wide and genuine, and nodded, joining her hands together over her stomach and just calmly laying there, upper back and her head against the wall and the rest of her on the floor. The purpose of silently sitting here was simple. She wanted Taylor to get accustomed to her presence, to be a little more comfortable with it. She knew it likely wasn’t doing much to help her with her hunger problem, but even that wasn’t a massive issue. Maybe her presence would break through that stubbornness and make the girl agree to try the blood idea.

And if worse came to worse and the hunger was more than Taylor could handle, she could defend herself. A tentative Brute 4 rating in a cramped room was never a fight she could win, but she could certainly buy enough time to get out through the door and foam her up, if needed.

Though it certainly filled her mouth with a sour taste to consider.

Taylor was a bit jittery about her being there, but never once did she speak up to ask her to leave, simply making a sort of half-open cocoon around herself as she quietly read the book, only occasionally shifting both the book and her wings down to peek at her, something she caught once or twice between bouts of calmly closing her eyes and letting the soothing, quiet sounds of shuffling paper and glass rubbing glass relax her.

It was like… an auditory massage, almost. Calming, relaxing. The cell was extremely insulated too, to the point it was like the outside world simply did not exist. After the chaos and rush and general movement in the Rig, this place was almost meditative. An hour or two later, she couldn’t be sure, her earpiece buzzed, and she mechanically moved her hand up to her ear to receive the message.

She took a deep breath, and sighed, opening her eyes to see Taylor’s glowing red eyes curiously peeking at her over the top of the book, wide and large and oddly…

Was it condescending to think of the way that Taylor was looking at her as ‘absolutely adorable’? It didn’t feel like it. It felt like she had a curious, clueless little bird staring at her. With a wide, involuntary smile, she forced herself up to sit against the wall.

“Have to go, Taylor. Villains doing villain things. Do you mind if I come by tomorrow? This has been the most relaxing couple hours I’ve spent in The Rig, I think ever.” She said as she forced herself upright, quickly stretching and working the stiffness out of her joints.

Taylor blinked at her, and she was reminded of some owl videos she’d seen on the Discovery Channel before it was shut down.

“I- yeah. I’d, uhm. Really like that.” Taylor mumbled. “Could you bring a few more books? Fantasy, or slice of life?” Taylor asked.

She smiled wider.

“Of course, Taylor. I’ll see you later.”

“B-Bye.” Taylor muttered, her chin on her book, hunched over and still staring at her with only her eyes and hair visible, the rest of her hidden behind wings and her own knees.

She turned and opened the door, and heard it close shut behind her, before she broke out into a sprint for her motorcycle.

Now to find why Squealer decided to flatten a pharmacy. And hopefully stop her.

Chapter Text

Without Miss Militia there to fill the empty silence with her calm breaths, the room felt increasingly smaller, more stuffy, more like a tomb.

She drowned her mind into the pages of the book and prayed that it would last until tomorrow, slowing down to savor each sentence and stretch the experience as much as she could.

It felt colder without her in here too.

She realized she was probably being pathetic, but she kind of missed her already. She knew she was likely just being nice to her out of some sense of charity, maybe she was ordered to by her superiors.

But she still craved even the simplicity of having someone around her that wasn’t fearful or disgusted by her, more than she could easily describe. Someone that despite having been a foot away from having their brains paint the wall due to her weak will, could somehow sit inside a monster’s cage and close her eyes with peace writ over her face, smile at her.

She was so horrible. So weak and pathetic. She should be telling Miss Militia not to come by anymore, because half the time she was reading she could focus on little more than the fact there was a warm bag of food across from her, and the hunger was growing unbearable, too much, but when she asked she still said ‘yes, please come back again’.

Because it felt so incredibly nice to have someone who looked like they cared so openly. Not even her dad-

Her hands shook, the book’s pages crumpling and tearing as her fingers spasmed.

She took a deep breath, trying to ward away the images fighting for purchase in her mind, trying to ignore the hunger and the aching chill racing up and down her back, the lightheaded dizzy feeling that left her weak and slow.

Her hands smoothed the pages, and she looked for the sentence she’d dropped when her thoughts first began spiralling, immersing herself into her book once more.

After a mildly more adventurous workday than usual, and a quiet night of exercise and legal information requests being filed for Taylor’s case, she went back to The Rig and went to ask the investigation department again to see what effects of the girl were thrown away and which weren’t.

To her surprise, most of them were apparently there in the storage rooms, it was simply a filing error that had a small chunk of them thrown away, scarf included. Which made sense, in hindsight. It didn't make much sense to throw people's stuff away like that when they still had plenty of storage to hold them.

Among those personal belongings she was led to, was a large collection of books, organized in two giant filing boxes.

Why buy the girl new books she had no idea the quality of when she could instead bring her books she probably actually liked?

So she grabbed three of them, tucked them under her arm, and went to visit the girl again, fully expecting her to be awake despite the ungodly hour of six in the morning.

She was surprised to be stopped by a guard who had quickly informed her that Director Piggot had demanded they thoroughly check any and all items brought in and out of that cell.

While mildly annoyed at how they roughly pawed through Taylor’s books to check for hidden things, she wasn’t particularly miffed about the whole situation. It was good protocol, very responsible. Should have been there from the start, in fact, it was rather odd how they allowed her in and out of the cell without too much questioning.

Then again, these were cells for M/S containment and temporary insanity holdings, the protocol for dealing with these was a bit moot when they were being used as a genuine containment cell. Abuse of power to keep a person contained in these cells instead of regular ones was unfortunately not illegal if they had committed a crime. She checked with Dragon.

That, and regular cells were much less comfortable, actually, so there was no point getting her out of there only to put her in a power-reinforced concrete box.

She took the books back from the guard after the other guard was done patting her down for anything suspicious, glanced at the outside preview camera, and promptly stopped. She couldn’t actually tell if Taylor was asleep or not, as her head was in the bottom right corner with her body practically fused to the wall, just out of sight of the camera, but she certainly looked limp enough to be sleeping, her tentacles flattened over her body like ribbons making a blanket.

For a moment, she was about to walk away, but then she realized that today was going to be an immensely busy day for her and she might not be able to come back until Taylor was asleep again.

So with pursed lips, she very slowly, and very gently, opened the door, closing it with an equal amount of care, ignoring the strange looks the guards were giving her before the door blocked them.

And for what? Being considerate?

Pushing her mild annoyance down, she turned around, and confirmed that Taylor was indeed asleep in the dark room, her glowing tentacles illuminating her peaceful face as they hid her chin, the scarf currently being used as a pillow as she lay chest down on the padded floor.

Taking great care to make her approach silent, she came close enough to be two feet away from Taylor, before she bent down at the knees to gently put the books down next to her impromptu blanket.

She was about to walk away and go do some of her morning tasks before going to visit the Dallons, but was stopped by Taylor’s face suddenly scrunching up, her brows twitching. A soft sound she couldn’t be sure of the nature of came from her mouth as she shifted imperceptibly.

Did she disturb her? Super senses, maybe? Or could she smell flesh nearby? That can’t be comfortable.

Curious but not overly alarmed, she put her hands on her knees, about to push herself up and leave.

Taylor shifted a little more, a small whimper leaving her mouth, like the start of an aborted word, her breath hitching oddly.

A nightmare, obviously.

Hannah paused before she sucked her lips in, wracking her brain, unsure of what to do. As Taylor’s breaths continued growing deeper and faster with every second, her resolve crumbled, and she hesitantly raised a hand.

Wasn’t this crossing some kind of boundary? They were still basically strangers. Would she wake Taylor, and if she did, how would she react? She doubted it would be-

Soft, textureless skin met her fingers, and she was equally startled by the sensation of essentially what felt like feverishly warm porcelain without even the most minute of fuzz or pore on it, as she was by the fact that she’d moved her hand without realizing.

Her fingertips rested against Taylor’s cheek, and she mentally choked, for the first time experiencing what one might call ‘a mild case of social panic’, in a sense. Taylor let out a soft groan, her brows furrowing, a clear expression of distress twisting her features.

She audibly gulped, praying Taylor wouldn’t wake up, and slowly moved her hand down, and up, tucking the girl’s curly hair behind her ear to the best of her ability.

Then Taylor nuzzled her hand as she let out a soft incoherent mumble, and Hannah froze once more.

She had no idea what to do. Should she pull away? She probably should. Why did she even do this? This was inappropriate, right? Right?

This felt like she was way overreaching whatever unspoken boundaries the girl had. If Taylor woke up or even knew she’d done this she would feel completely humiliated, she knew how teenagers were like. Why did she even do this? She could have just shook her awake. The girl said she only had to sleep about three to four hours, it wasn’t like she needed every minute of it.

Despite the heated internal debate she was having in her head, as she watched the distress slowly melt off Taylor’s face, her squirming lessening, she couldn’t help but slowly bring her thumb up and softly caress her cheekbone, hooking her fingertips under the edge of her jaw, pressing down with her palm a little.

Tension bled from Taylor’s body almost instantly, brows smoothing, shoulders settling down, even her tentacles seemingly deflating and loosening.

Then Taylor opened her mouth again.

“Mrh..ph.woo…e…u… mom.” The girl breathed out, barely audible.

For a moment, she idly wondered if she misheard, because the word ‘mom’ could very easily be misheard from a simple hum, but something about the way Taylor shifted to dig her cheek further into Hannah’s hand with a content sigh made that difficult to believe.

And it was like a moment of bizarre whiplash, like a crack in her head that had her eyes widening and realization rushing in to fill the place of higher thought as her mouth fell open behind her bandana.

She had put in an adoption application for this girl. She was going to be a mother. A- A parent, she was going to be responsible for an emotionally fragile life to a bigger extent than she’d ever been before, and something about hearing Taylor say it out loud, even if accidentally, that just made it suddenly feel a lot more real and present.

She was no stranger to pressure, but this was… heavy.

She let out a long sigh of a breath, still dumbly staring down at the sight of Taylor using her scarf as a pillow and Hannah’s hand like a brush, subconsciously using a tentacle to nudge it down, as if seeking more pressure, more firmness, some kind of reassurance she wasn’t sure of.

Then it clicked, in a sense.

Taylor’s mother was dead.

And she was likely in the middle of the ‘dreaming’ phase of sleep, whatever it was called. It was entirely likely she was seeing her mother in her head right now. And she wanted reassurance that her mother was real, and there. Suddenly, the thought of pulling away felt oh so cruel. She wished she could dream of her parents too, what little she remembered of them before the Turks came. Who was she to deny a child of what she once wished she could have herself?

So with a frenzied sense of apprehension and ‘ oh god am I really fucking doing this what is even going on in my life anymore’, she pressed her hand down a little more, a little firmer, and bent down low on her knees low enough to whisper something, hoping that due to the quiet nature of it, Taylor would not be able to distinguish any vocal differences in her dream and wake up.

“I’m here. It’s okay. Relax.” She breathed out, whispered right above the girl’s ear, and watched Taylor’s lips curl into a small, content smile as she pulled away, her features not simply relaxed, but downright peaceful.

She swallowed through a dry throat, unblinking eyes laser focused on the girl’s face, entranced by alarm and confusion, feeling the sudden weight of realization heavy on her shoulders, the responsibility, the odd feeling one had when holding onto a particularly fragile piece of glass that must not break at any cost, mixing with a strong sense of fondness that she had never felt before. 

She remembered when she was a child, watching the other Wards interacting with their parents, complaining about their parents, and wishing she could have some of her own, even if it was only an idle, passing thought. She remembered how the man who brought her to the USA was never really a father or a parent, but a distant provider, one she respected, one she was grateful to, but could never have brought herself to love, for he never tried for her.

And she wondered if she could be the mother she always wished she had, for Taylor. If she was even capable of it. If she was willing to try for something so daunting. Her thumb moved down, until it was almost at Taylor’s lip. Then pressed down, gently pushed upwards.

A content hum came out of Taylor.

She took a deep breath.

She was willing.

She was also scared, a bit. This was not as simple as walking into a battlefield and being ordered around.

No, not just scared, she was kind of panicking, she couldn’t lie. Her heartbeat had been slower during a fight with Lung than it was right now.

After many minutes spent in a bizarre sort of limbo, she eventually took her hand away, ignoring how the way Taylor tried to follow her hand made her chest feel warm and fuzzy, and sneaked out of the room, feeling completely off-balance and oddly guilty for some reason.

She marched back to her quarters and paced in a tight circle for an hour, hands buried in her hair, slowly but surely trying to pick her way through the haze of anxiety and panic clouding her thoughts as a billion and one things and activities and experiences she wanted to give her and rules and not rules because teenagers hated those -right?- and life lessons all mixed and jumbled together and she was going to be a fucking mother why was this just now sinking in-

It wasn’t working.

“... This is the strangest thing I’ve ever done with a drone.” Dragon muttered as the drone sat on a table next to a bagel that was obviously uneaten and would remain so, its screen pointed at her from across the table.

Hannah sipped her coffee between furious, aggressive bites, knowing full well that she was already unmasked to anyone allowed in here in the first place.

“Are you okay?” Dragon asked, and Hannah took a moment to think about it.

Then she ripped another chunk of bread off her sandwich, barely chewing before swallowing.

“I’m going to be a mother.” She whispered after a gulp that felt like she just swallowed a stone, unsure of what to say or how to explain the sudden, mild panic that refused to leave her. “It’s just… sinking in now. I just need to act like everything’s normal for a bit while I digest it. And nobody else is awake or here right now, and you got me into this mess and you’re the only one I can really talk to about this so you’re going to sit there and eat breakfast with me. Then I'm going to visit Carol Dallon in her office.” She said, then took another gulp of her coffee, putting the cup down a little more aggressively than she’d intended.

“I uh, already ate?” Dragon protested.

“If you don’t eat I’m going to tape your drone on top of Colin’s shredder and throw donuts into it so I can pretend im force-feeding you until I calm down.” She deadpanned, and Dragon let out a sudden strange cough sound that transitioned into a wild snickering and barely contained laughter, muffled with distance.

She went to reach across the table, and Dragon yelped, the directional fans on the drone whirring to life as it nimbly dodged her, still peeling with laughter.

“Okay, okay! I’ll go gr-grab a bite, I s-swear!” Dragon said, and Hannah settled back into her chair as the drone landed back on the table, Dragon’s avatar fading as she presumably went to grab something edible.

Hannah continued murdering her breakfast as the fact that she was going to be a mom kept roiling around her head, filing her with excitement and apprehension and hesitance and confusion and joy and probably a whole lot of motherly instincts she didn’t even know she had because Taylor was a pretty cute kid and oh god she was going to have to get an actual apartment now instead of the box she’s living in when off-duty, and-

Dragon returned.

Hannah emptied her coffee cup and stared straight ahead at nothing for a moment with a million yard stare.

Yep.

This was fine.

Everything was fine. 

Chapter Text

Carol Dallon stared at her impassively as she sat on the chair opposite the woman’s desk, trying to think of a way to word this and a way to not break the several dozens of NDAs the case was buried under to ensure not a word of it ever reached the public.

She was allowed to talk about it with lawyers, of course, but she was still just mentally checking all of her bases.

“Hello, Miss Dallon. Thank you for having me.” She said as she scanned the room briefly.

“I can’t say the pleasure is all mine, but the way you worded your e-mail made this all sound rather urgent and very interesting while being as vague as humanly possible, which I must admit I’m not very appreciative of. What exactly does the PRT want?” Miss Dallon asked, and Hannah shook her head.

“No, not the PRT. This is a personal case.” She simply said, and extended a bulging folder of paperwork to the woman, who, after a brief look that she knew from Piggot meant ‘ goddamn it, more paperwork’, took it.

Ten minutes passed in silence.

“What on earth am I reading…” Miss Dallon eventually muttered with clear incredulousness in her voice.

“It only gets worse as you read on.” She unhelpfully provided, and the woman shook her head, closing the folder.

“This is a bit too sensitive for a public space, and I keep some of the more specific things in my office back home. While it’s a tad grating to bring work to home, I think this case warrants it. Would you mind accompanying me?” Miss Dallon asked, and Hannah shook her head instantly.

“No, not at all.”

Miss Dallon nodded, and quickly set to gathering her things and prepping her office for her imminent departure.

Hannah tried not to be too hopeful.

She failed miserably.

Robes, check, phone, check, impending sense of doom and dread, check, an unhealthy sprinkling of depressive exhaustion, check, soul-crushing agony at the thought that Vicky was late because she was busy fucking Dean and then she’d grab her to fly to the hospital and she would have to fucking see it all with her power until she was about to vomit, check checkcheckcheckcheck-

She fisted her hands in her air, and choked down on a… sound, she wasn’t even sure what she wanted to do, she felt like snarling and screaming and sobbing and making incoherent noise because-

Godfuckshitpissdamnit where the fuck was the hairbrush she had to do her hair because oh nyooo, can’t have the fucking walking medic bag looking a little frumpled bad for our image or some shit not like they asked her if she wanted to be unmasked, fuck she’d kill for a mask right now. 

The traitorous implement of beauty now found, she flipped her hood back, and tried to brush the birdnest under control, ignoring the pain of pulling hair.

Then the door opened, and with both an intense desire to just get this fucking over with so she could cry in the hospital bathroom for a hot minute after and go back to work, and a fervent desire to go on a world tour to find someone who could steal her powers, she dashed through her door and leaned over the second floor railing-

Then she blinked in confusion as she watched Carol walk in with Miss Militia of all people, both of them hurrying to Carol’s office on the first floor without even noticing her staring at them in complete confusion from above.

People really did never look up.

With Vicky still being late, and having something mildly interesting to pay attention to for once, she waited until the muted, barely audible sound of talking came from below, and sneaked down the stairs before creeping along the wall until she was sitting around the bend of the door, which was apparently not closed, allowing her to listen in.

“So, for a short summary of this case, just to make sure I’m getting this right. Taylor Hebert, fourteen years old currently, triggered with a Brute-Changer power that makes her unable to digest or even stomach anything that isn’t human flesh.” Carol began, and Amy almost sputtered out loud before she tamped down on it.

Holy shit, what an awful fucking power...

“Following this, in one of the most absurd cases of overreach I’ve heard in my entire career, a few unnamed “experts” tried to interview her and decided she was mentally unwell to the point of being a danger to herself and others, after…”

The sound of shuffling paper.

“Three visits.” Miss Militia cut in. “Then there are about seventeen pages of increasingly absurd excuses so that the PRT officials filing the case don’t have to outright say ‘she’s a walking PR disaster of the career-ending scale, and our Thinkers think its a growing power so we’re afraid of a second Siberian, so we’re throwing her into The Birdcage to starve to death out of sight.’ At some point they start citing student and acquaintance reports from literal children to prove that she is some… attention seeking pathological liar whose opinion and claims of her own power cannot be trusted, despite having exhibited no such behavior during any point of captivity. In fact, that investigation ended with one of our wards having her parole revoked for causing the trigger event, and there is no mention of that either.” Miss Militia finished, her voice clipped in a way that spoke of carefully maintained and restrained frustration.

Amy’s eyes widened so much she could feel her eyes drying from the motion, her brows raising as high as they could go, terror and alarm mixing in her chest.

Alarm because what the fuck, this whole thing just sounded like some fucking evil government conspiracy bullshit.

And terror because the girl’s case sounded uncomfortably close to some of her nightly terrors, of being discovered and getting railroaded into the bottom of The Birdcage simply because of what she was capable of.

Except this chick had it worse because she couldn’t do anything other than the thing that would throw her in an inescapable pit.

“I see.” Carol said. More sounds of shuffling paper. “Then there are your personal notes and suspicions, which I would normally laugh off as conspiracy theory-tier absurdities, but with context, gain uncomfortable weight. Do you really think they’ll abuse her status as a ward of the state to fix the trial?”

Okay, what?

Shit, that was possible!?

Oh she was so fucked if anyone ever knew about her powers, it wasn’t even fucking morbidly amusing anymore.

“Yes. Waive her right to be trialed as a child to make sure she gets trialed as an adult, then choose to give her an incredibly incompetent or bribed lawyer to throw her into the Birdcage and pretend she never existed. That’s why every few pages has its own separate NDA contract to even look at. Much like a gang, the PRT lives and dies on reputation, though the comparison is rather ridiculous. The main point is, they can’t afford her risk.”

“Hm. I must admit, this is by far the most interesting and damning legal case anyone has ever presented to me for the PRT, but… the only way I can represent her in court would be if the PRT hired me to do so, as they are her legal guardians. There might be something I could find to help, but I’m afraid-”

“I’m adopting her. I’ve already sent in my application.” Miss Militia cut Carol off, which took a lot of balls, damn-

Wait, she was what?

“You-.... You’re… adopting her. And if the adoption services… accept your application, you will be free to choose her lawyer and deny waiving the right to be trialed as a minor… the lawyer would be me, judging by the fact you came to me. That… might just work.” Carol spoke slowly and haltingly, an obvious, thoughtful tilt to her voice. “Of course that doesn’t account for the fact the judge and jury might be corrupt to hell and back as well, but it gives her a fighting chance at least. The problem is that they’re not going to accept your application. The most standard question on those forms is the ability to provide food, shelter, and amenities. You can’t provide the first, not unless you go for some very dubious methods that are likely very illegal, or somehow-”

“No, I can." Miss Militia interrupted again. "This is not a widely publicized fact, mostly so that the more reasonable villains and rogues pull their punches when fighting me, but I’m a regenerator. I’ve already acquired an amputation machine from a… friend. Feeding her will be… taxing, and difficult for my combat effectiveness in the long term, but I’m willing to do it until maybe some other solution can be found, and I’ve stressed this immensely in the form I was given.” Miss Militia said, and for more than a few seconds, a shocked silence permeated the house.

I could be that solution. She thought before she could stop it, and immediately stomped that stupid fucking idea into a tiny ball.

Then the ball inflated and she couldn’t help but turn the idea over in her head, again and again.

She wanted to try it. She was dying of boredom being a healer. It was driving her nuts. She hated every time she had to put these stupid fucking robes on. Every inch of her mind soul and body were screaming for her to try something new, something more interesting, to play around a bit, and she never did so because the fact she could even think things like this meant there was something seriously fucked in her head, beyond the obvious Vicky problem, but this…

This could be a method of experimentation that would be good. That would have a purpose and a reason, and one she could probably play off as being part of her healing abilities.

Of course, she knew that down that path lay hell.

But as the days kept coming and coming, each scraping a piece of her soul away to replace it with heart-rending pain and anxious stress, it was becoming difficult not to think about it.

Besides, even if she went to the Birdcage…

Maybe she deserved it. Maybe the world would be safer with her locked away. She was fraying at the edges and she knew it. It was only a matter of time, it always was. She hated Carol, but she was right. She was a little monster, the problem was when the egg would crack open.

But before she went off the deep end, before she became a threat to everyone and everything, maybe she could help someone who was dealt a hand even worse than hers, even if the possibility that it would kickstart said downfall was not insignificant.

Additionally, the thought of having to endure touching Vicky even one more time after her fun time with Dean made her want to shove a knife into her own stomach, and the fact she wasn’t even sure if that was an exaggeration anymore made something very clear.

The Vicky problem was not going away either. It was getting worse.

She was getting worse.

She used to have a crush on Vicky. Then that crush grew to puppy love. By now, it was a kind of obsessive love that made her want to hug her so tight that every available inch of them was touching, for their hearts to beat as one, for them melt into a puddle together.

An idea that she might be able to use to do precisely that rose, as if to prove her point, and she felt sheer horror halt the idea in its tracks before it could bloom as she jerkily turned her head towards the window, half-listening to Miss Militia talk to Carol.

She was losing it, slowly but surely. She could feel it, a sort of odd, purposeless frenzy always in the back of her head.

With a thundering heart and nothing pleasant on her mind, she idly listened in on their conversation, turning half-baked ideas and realizations in her mind, pondering how much she was willing to risk.

Somewhere in that mess, the fact that Miss Militia implied she would not mind amputating her own arm over and over again just to feed a teenager she barely knew finally registered, and she idly wondered, were she in that girl’s position, would Carol ever do the same for her?

She almost let a bitter burst of laughter escape her at how obvious the answer was.

They spoke, on and on.

She knew far more than she should, having even heard Miss Militia’s home address at some point as they continued hashing out details, but she couldn’t bring herself to think or care about it beyond cataloguing the information in her head.

Eventually, she shuffled away from the door as quietly as she could, and stumbled out of the front door, collapsing next to it.

Vicky eventually arrived, and after a few minutes of badgering her to spill what put her in a mood that made Mark look like a ray of sunshine, she gave up and went to carry her to the hospital.

She tried.

She really tried to put fabric everywhere around her so that Vicky couldn’t touch her, despite the choking heat.

But then Vicky leaned down to kiss her cheek, playfully, to try and cheer her up.

The microtears in her vaginal canal, remnants of her spiked endorphin levels, the barely perceptible remnants of semen on her left leg, washed not thoroughly enough, numbed and overused nerves all along her abdomen, signs of an orgasm or two, they all exploded out into her mind.

Usually, she might have had more of an iron will, might have had a better grasp of her emotions, enough to grab everything and crush it into something that let at least get to the hospital without having a panic attack or wishing Vicky would drop her as she flew.

But right now, by some strange mix of overthinking and underthinking and a taunting allure that mixed helping people and experimenting, her head was not where it should be, it didn’t have time to brace and stomp everything down.

She jerked out of Victoria’s grip so violently she almost hit her head on the concrete as she fell down, and it was only the sound of her retching and her flailing, punching arm that prevented Vicky from grabbing her hair and subjecting her to more mental torture, to having to see proof that the person she loved more than even her own life was sleeping with someone else, conjuring images in her head that filled her with murderous rage and suicidal despair and a soul-burning envy.

“Shit, are you okay!? I thought you couldn’t get sick, why didn’t you say anything?! Ah- shit, I’ll go get a bag and some tissues!” Vicky rushed out, before zipping out of sight.

I’ve always been sick, sis. She thought, and she felt her chest and stomach begin to convulse in a manic, unhinged mix of sobs and laughter and retching that she barely withheld, tears blurring her sight.

Maybe one day she should have told Vicky she could tell what and how she did with who, but it was always too awkward, too much of an invasion of privacy, and the more she didn't mention it the harder it got to do it.

Eventually, she found her stomach empty, unseeing eyes staring into her breakfast as she panted through a throat that felt like it was half-melted by acid.

Great start to her Saturday. At least she wasn't having a borderline panic attack like last month.

She was cracking. She was angry and bitter and sad and fucking done.

She couldn’t increase her shifts to the hospitals like Carol wanted, she couldn’t go on that stupid ‘healing tour’ across the US during the summer, it was her fucking summer vacation, she should be free to do whatever the fuck she wanted, and everyone else could just get their ass over here to Brockton Bay like the thousands of people that did that every year just so she could heal them instead of this stupid publicity shit, she wanted to find some random forest and live in it alone like some kinda forest witch with her plant abominations-

...Like Nilbog, actually.

She just wanted to run away.

It sounded so childish when put like that, didn’t it?

But as Vicky’s aura neared, she idly realized that maybe that was fine. Maybe being childish was not the worst thing in the world.

She could be Nilbog.

But she wasn’t, not yet.

So maybe it was for the best to distance herself from all the things stomping on her shoulders, digging her deeper into that pit.

The question was how. 

Chapter Text

By the time she was done talking to Dallon and settling probable payment, which would definitely put a bit of a dent in her savings, she was mentally exhausted.

Perfect time to go on patrol.

Which sounded sarcastic, but it really wasn’t. For all its fame and shame, Brockton Bay was generally pretty quiet, mostly due to being a smaller city than due to any actual quiet from its residents. And it did not require much brainpower to cruise around on her motorcycle

She’d been around the block before she was assigned here, she knew how the real big cities like New York and Boston were like.

Though she heard Accord had made the place a lot quieter recently.

Regardless, her patrol was mercifully uneventful besides a group of drunk men trashing a store as they brawled, which were quickly cowed and put into zip ties for the cops to grab the moment they realized they had attracted a cape.

By the time she was done, it was late in the afternoon, so she headed to visit Taylor.

After another body check and the like, she walked in, closed the door, and turned, ready to greet Taylor as she sat in her usual corner.

Only to stop when she noticed how the girl seemed paler than a corpse, not out of some kind of fear, but something else. Her eyes moved down to her hands, which seemed to twitch every couple seconds as they cradled a book.

Was she that pale usually, or did she just not notice it with how much the girl concealed her face and body all the time?

“Uhm. Hi.” Taylor mumbled, tried for a smile.

It was strained, a little heavy, and a little exaggerated, despite not being a wide smile at all, but it wasn’t fake, and definitely not uncomfortable. Taylor did look pleased to see her, like a pleasant surprise.

Why her visiting was a surprise to Taylor still was unknown, but she’d get used to it, Hannah assumed. She smiled back, considerably wider.

“Hey Taylor.” She said, hoping to appeal a little more casual and drag her into that sort of familiar territory between them. Then she went to continue, only to pause when a thought occurred.

“I just realized you don’t know my actual name.” She mused, and Taylor blinked at her before giving a tiny, slow shrug, as if to say ‘ I guess…?’

She shuffled and pulled her shirt down as she got comfortable, thinking of what to say for a moment.

“Well, I trust you won’t spread this around, but my name is Hannah. Feel free to call me that.”

Taylor’s eyes widened, before she gave a slow nod.

“O…kay. Uh, H-Hannah.” Taylor eked out, and having Taylor say her actual name was oddly pleasing.

“Did you mind that I brought you some of your own books? I was thinking of searching for some myself, but I’ll admit the most I’ve read were law and tactic books, so I went for the safer option. I don’t think I have the eye for that sort of thing.” She shrugged.

Taylor shook her head.

“No, it’s… it’s nice. Familiar.” Taylor mumbled softly, then turned her eyes down to her book to keep reading.

She gave a muted nod, not replying out loud, and sat on the floor.

Then they lapsed into a surprisingly comfortable silence, Taylor reading and stealing strangely intense glances at her.

Still, Hannah couldn’t help but feel a little concerned with all the little details she noticed as she mutely watched the girl. The finger spasms, the way that she would sometimes tense and lock up, tiny quivers of tension making her jaw twitch and her neck tendons stand out of her pallid skin.

She just looked… sick. She could guess that it was the hunger doing that, or maybe she was actually sick from something?

Though the general silence was likely due to Taylor just… not being a person of too many words, it seemed.

It occurred to her that though to herself, this silence might be calm and meditative due to how much calmer it was than outside, it was entirely likely that it was the exact opposite for Taylor, who would likely appreciate some life.

She wasn’t too sure about sharing her odd music taste with Taylor, but it shouldn’t be too hard to get an MP3 player in here with some of her favorites, or just generally popular music.

Eventually, the wall to her left opened like an over door, before a caged tray slid onto said door, showing a small cup of cereal and four water bottles, likely the PRT slowly decreasing her ration sizes because she wasn’t eating them, but not being cruel enough to not at least give her the option to say she’d be interested in actual food.

Erring on the side of caution and all.

Without needing prompting, she grabbed one of the water bottles.

“You drink water, right?” She asked, and Taylor startled for a moment as her eyes flicked up from the book to see her holding the bottle up and shaking it a little.

Taylor nodded.

She half-threw and half-rolled the bottle over.

Taylor’s lips quirked into a small, thankful smile as one of her wings turned into a tentacle and grabbed the bottle, dragging it to her feet before turning back into a wing and taking its rightful place in her cocoon.

Another hour or two passed, before Hannah decided that she’d been here long enough, and with a small groan, lifted herself off the floor, prompting Taylor to look at her in that oddly endearing owl-stare of hers. 

“I think I’ll head out now. Maybe go do some civilian stuff. Take care, Taylor. If you need anything, I’m always willing to help.” She said, as a not-too-subtle reminder that she could ask for food if she needed it, and waited until Taylor nodded to give her a smile, nod back, and walk out of the room.

Then she did something she usually tried to avoid.

She went back to her civilian life. Bought an MP3 player, went home, got out of her clothes, brewed some crappy coffee in her hole in the wall apartment, and stared at the wall.

It wasn’t that she disliked having a normal life.

It was that she didn’t really have one.

She watched some shows, sure. She liked some of Earth Aleph’s bizarre movies and even weirder music. She didn’t mind the relative quiet. And when time and schedule would permit, she would go to the martial arts club she frequented semi-regularly, which was nice, a rather tight-knit group that felt like a bit of a family, with her orbiting around it rather awkwardly like an estranged relative that nobody disliked but everyone was a bit confused about.

That club had recently come under Empire territory however, and as much as some part of her wanted to be defiant and just go anyway, she knew that it would not be worth it with her ambiguously dark skin and would likely endanger the small business and everyone around it should she do so, so she had forced herself to unlist and stay away.

That left her with nothing to do but think about Taylor right now, as she was not in the mood for mind-numbing entertainment.

So she went prowling through her old music libraries and the internet to find songs to put into that player.

The next meeting went much the same way.

They greeted each other, and Taylor stole increasingly odd glances at her as they relaxed together.

Contrary to her expectations, despite Taylor looking more used to her being there, she was only getting more tense, her pupils were shrinking more, her body having random tremor fits that extended down to her wings.

The last part was difficult to hide, and so Taylor would just curl up tight and they would both pretend they didn’t need to talk about the elephant in the room.

With a strained smile and longing in her eyes, Taylor bid her goodbye, and Hannah left the room before going on her patrols.

She was having breakfast with Dragon’s drone in their new strange method of… bonding, she could guess, when an alarm rang out.

It was not the Endbringer alarm, nor was it the A-S class threat alarm. Those were red, and the Endbringer alarm was just a keening siren wail.

She almost wished it was an Endbringer alarm as she realized what the yellow strobe lights and strange beep-beep-beep rhythm meant.

She dashed out of her seat, sending the chair flying, and pumped her legs faster than she’d ever had before, shouldering past people or just outright sending them into the floor in her haste, barely remembering to yank her facemask and bandana up to cover her face.

She forced past PRT officers, past the confused Wards that likely didn’t study the alarm types again, damn near dislocated her shoulder as she took a turn so tight she slammed into the wall, and quickly spun herself to the side somewhat to not bleed off too much momentum.

The trip usually took two or three minutes. 

This time, barely thirty seconds had passed before she was first in the line of rushing uniforms, and rushing towards the two tense guards aiming their foam nozzles at Taylor’s cell.

She slid a foot or two as she came to a stop, then took a hurried step forward and looked into the camera.

What she saw was complete destruction.

Taylor’s cell was a mess of shredded padding, dust obscuring half the room, and a mass of writhing red darting in and out of the dust cloud.

For a moment, she froze, mind whirling with confusion and disbelief, wondering what the fuck happened.

The red stopped writhing for a moment before it burst into movement, and then Taylor was in sight of the camera, somewhat unobscured by dust as she squeezed into the corner.

Her eyes were wide and frantic, her mouth open in an endless gasp, her chest rising and falling so fast and deep it looked like a sped up video, her legs and arms scraping foam and bolts and concrete out of the wall as she tried to burrow her back in it, her gaze full of naked, dazed terror as her tentacles shifted from wings to ribbons and in between and back like a flickering lightshow trying to hide in the debris.

Panic attack.

She was having a panic attack.

She turned and punched the button, and before the guards behind her could do anything more than shout in alarm, she ducked into the room and slammed the door shut.

In an instant, a gigantic 50 caliber rifle formed in her hands.

She turned it, and jammed it against the door’s sole groove and the mangled floor, blocking anyone from entering after her, not without having the ability to bend steel.

Then, the hard part. A simple thing that went against all of her principles. A 44 Magnum revolver loaded with rounds that could kill an elephant formed in her hand. She raised the pistol, careful to keep it out of sight of the camera.

A deafening gunshot made her ears ring and her wrist ache as the camera in the cell exploded into a thousand little fragments, the reinforced glass unable to withstand an explosive round from a Magnum. The pistol vanished.

It was so hard to breathe here, the dust made her first breath feel like she was trying to suck in slime.

Somehow, the sound did not make Taylor stir, nor even look at her. She was not mentally here, it seemed.

The sound of Taylor’s whimpering, wheezing gasps made something in her chest strain like an over-abused muscle, and she already knew how horrible this air must feel to someone panicking. She probably felt like she was in a nightmare, stuck in a void and trying to suck in air that simply wasn’t there.

“Taylor, Taylor!” She hurriedly called as she stepped forward, urgent but very careful to not sound as panicked as she felt, the sound being consumed by the sound of crumbling concrete.

After a moment of hesitance as she watched a writhing tentacle, as if in agony, burrow past a bit of the foam floor and into the concrete by her feet, she steeled herself, and tried to get Taylor’s million yard, horrified gaze to meet her own.

She crouched down, watching her feet, and quickly moved forward, almost crouch-walking, and quickly tugged her bandana and facemask down with one hand, then immediately put a hand right in front of Taylor’s eyes, clicking her fingers as the other gingerly went to touch her quivering shoulder.

Taylor’s eyes focused for a mere moment, wide, glinting pinpricks jerking to her face as tears streamed down her face.

She forced a smile.

“Taylor! It’s me, Hannah. Hannah. Remember me? Can you focus on my face, please, please?” She rushed out, and Taylor tried to speak, only a tiny, tiny wheeze coming out of her pale lips. “Good, good, focus on my face, eyes on me- ” She emphasized as Taylor’s eyes began to unfocus, and so she lifted her left hand from her shoulder to cup her face, and after another click of her fingers, they focused back on her. “-breathe with me, alright, force it, force it if you have to, just try, come on, in-” She breathed in deeply, and Taylor tried, bless her heart she tried, but she was so panicked and out of breath it was more of a series of tiny, shuddering little gasps than an actual breath.

Still better than the alternative.

Taylor’s hands jerked up from below where they had been scraping at foam and digging furrows into the concrete, fingers and elbows spasming so violently she couldn’t even be sure if the girl was trying to grab onto her or just try to touch something warm and alive to ground herself, but she did not fight it.

She leaned forward so that Taylor could reach properly, which she did, her hands jerking around her shoulders and collarbones as she tried to hold onto her for support.

Hannah fought down the urge to flinch or hiss in pain as she felt her scrambling nails tear into her shirt and cut furrows into her skin from their twitching, and managed it.

“-out.” She breathed out, exaggerating the motion, and Taylor let out a wheeze, a little less frantic.

“In-” She breathed in, and Taylor made another attempt to inhale, a little better, her tentacles mostly remaining in one form now, even as their writhing continued destroying the cell and making her words barely audible through the rumbling. A second’s pause, Taylor’s eyes managing to stay on hers, laser-focused with desperation. 

“-out.”

Another wheeze, Taylor’s chest and shoulders still shaking in jerks almost strong enough to be called spasms.

Pause.

“In.” She breathed in, and Taylor tried to copy, a sob and a whimper mixing in there, and her heart ached, almost like she could feel her pain, because it was so vivid in those wide red eyes, so easy to see it when they were so close and neither wished to blink or break their eye contact.

She took a tiny, shuffling step forward on her crouching position, and reached forward, both hands cupping the girl’s cheeks as she rubbed away her tears.

More rushed out, and she kept rubbing them away as Taylor’s hands began to manage to stay mostly on her shoulders, making odd motions like she was trying to drag her closer.

“Out.” She breathed out.

Taylor followed, just a little better than the last one.

Then her nostrils flared, her eyes jerked down to her own hands, and Hannah only had a moment to realize that Taylor’s nails were covered in Hannah’s blood. Taylor grabbed her shirt by the shoulders and yanked her down. From their position, Hannah’s hands slid forward past Taylor’s head, and were forced up by her shoulders as she closed in.

Razor-sharp teeth clamped down around the right trapezius muscle on her shoulder, legs suddenly stable enough to rise and clamp shut around the back of her hips, ten fingers digging through the back of her shirt and opening holes into her flesh-

And freezing the instant Hannah let out a strangled grunt of pain and moved her head to the right, instinctively trying to protect her neck, but accidentally nuzzling the side of Taylor’s head.

For a moment, Taylor panted against her shoulder, her teeth dangerously close to her neck, trembling from head to toe as her teeth pressed in, then wrenched open, before pressing down again, just shy of breaking skin, sobs mixing with heaving and desperate gasps of air.

Hannah’s power flashed to life, a gigantic Desert Eagle pistol with explosive nitro 50cal rounds, enough to harm even a Brute, and her left hand jammed the barrel against the base of Taylor’s head, snug beside Taylor's spine and awkwardly twisted upside down from the angle her hand was forced into to point directly at her brain, bypassing the skull. Hannah's eyes lingered on her power, her heavy breaths warming the barrel, just an inch or two away from her face.

One twitch of her finger was all it would take.

Even if merely firing it from this angle would snap her wrist like a twig and rupture her eardrums.

Her teeth grit as she fought to get her heart under control and not react to the pain of fingers sinking into her back up to the first joint, to ignore the blood pouring down her back as she desperately pleaded with Taylor in her mind to not shift her mouth from its position and bite her carotid artery out. 

Pleaded with Taylor to not force her to pull the trigger. 

If she even could pull it. She didn't know. She didn't want to be forced to find out.

Taylor’s deadly hug tightened, and Hannah felt her ribs creak, her heart slamming into them like a squishy hammer, adrenaline thick in her veins.

Her right arm, locked in place over Taylor’s shoulder, descended, until her hand fell on the back of Taylor’s head, gently threading her fingers through curly locks, and slowly brushing back.

Taylor trembled with pure tension, a choking sound coming from her as she writhed and shook, fighting her base urges, her own power, her tentacles no longer writhing but jerking, then going still with tension like a taught rope, before jerking again, tentacles forming joints like the legs of a spider then shifting back to fluid, jerking motions.

“Taylor.” She whispered softly, a hint of warning in her tone.

She opened her mouth, then closed it, her eyes lingering on the wall, rethinking, readjusting.

Someone was pounding on the door, a fizzling static coming through the ruined sound system that was supposed to allow for interviews from the outside of the cell, likely being used to shout commands at Hannah. She was glad she couldn’t hear them.

The word she considered felt unfamiliar. But it always had a nice ring. It always had that tone that spoke of great care when she’d hear people say it to their children or grandchildren.

“Sweetheart?” She murmured softly, despite the word feeling so incredibly foreign and awkward on her lips.

Taylor’s fingers dug deeper with a heartwrenching sob mixed in with something that sounded like a warbled ‘ I’m sorry’, her teeth scraping at her skin with barely restrained desperation.

Was this caused by hunger? Was it really this severe? How did Taylor even hide something like this? It felt too sudden otherwise. Was it a mixture of panic and hunger that triggered this?

She felt like Taylor’s nails were half an inch from scraping at her rib bones, forcing her to bite down on her tongue and tighten her neck to not make any sign of her pain audible as she carefully shuffled her feet inch by inch so she could straighten up a little from her forward-tilting, muscle-straining position, one exacerbated by Taylor clinging to her like a carnivorous koala that weighed at least two hundred-something pounds.

Her left hand, wrapped around the handle of the gun, carefully adjusted as she mentally prepared herself for what would likely be one of her most unpleasant experiences in the PRT’s service, if not the worst. Her finger twitched an inch off the trigger, hoping she was not about to make a terrible mistake, trying to fight down the adrenaline and fear.

“If you can’t… if you can’t get off … if you can’t pull back, no matter how hard you try… if it will calm you down… then just- just do it, okay?” She whispered, as gently as she could while in this much strain. “Just bite. Eat. But do not go near my neck. I can regenerate from shoulder wounds. If you do that, I’ll be fine in a few days. If you bite my neck, it will kill me. So if you can’t pull back, if you can’t calm down, if your power won’t let you, then just… just bite. I can take it.” She murmured softly, her right hand moving down to the girl’s hairline, then brushing back, gently threading her fingers through black locks as they breathed on each other’s shoulders.

Hot, salty tears dripped from Taylor’s lips. Another mangled sound that she could only guess was a sound of apology, or an attempt at it.

Their heads were still touching, just a little. She nuzzled her, trying to tell her she was serious without saying it out loud.

Teeth bit down, shearing through her flesh. 

Chapter Text

Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t help but let out a small, strangled groan as she stiffened, her right hand stuttered in its motions, her fingers momentarily tightening around the girl’s hair as she brushed back.

Taylor sobbed, even as her teeth clicked shut and she heard her swallow, followed by a small deluge of blood that began to stain her uniform, the familiar feeling of warmth bleeding out of Hannah not quite registering.

A tongue lapped at the blood, lips forming a seal and sucking, and Hannah let out a quiet, long groan of pain.

Did Taylor even chew?

She didn’t know if her brain was trying to distract her from the fact she was literally being eaten alive and in a lot of pain, but she felt her mind wander to random things.

“Shh… it’s okay.” She forced out, as soothing as she could manage, feeling her open blood coagulate in mere seconds.

Another press of teeth, and she prepared herself.

The second bite was larger, and she tasted blood as she bit down on her tongue, her nerves glowing white-hot with agony.

She leaned back as much as she could, until they were almost straight, her left hand being used more to support Taylor’s back and not have her fingers dig into her flesh to stay on her rather than an actual contingency if things went even worse.

Taylor sobbed out sounds, desperate apologies spoken through her flesh and her frantic gasping mixing with animalistic little growls, and Hannah forced her instincts to protect her neck away, nuzzling into the side of Taylor’s head as she forced her right hand to keep brushing her hair back, to gently scratch at her scalp.

“Shh, shhh. It’s okay. I’ll-” She tensed her neck until she felt her neck tendons strain like cable wires, waiting for the feeling of teeth splitting her flesh to fade. The pain did not.

But it was worth it.

Taylor was worth it.

So even if the banging on the door got more insistent, she choked the pained groans down.

“I’ll be okay. You’ll be o-okay.” She spoke softly, even if the mere act of moving her hand to brush Taylor’s hair felt like someone was stabbing her shoulder with a thousand daggers.

She wouldn’t bleed out from something like a shoulder injury. She could take it.

It was a better alternative than letting anyone else walk in here and put down a report about how they had to forcibly restrain Taylor with containment foam, or even worse, have someone get in here, try to force Taylor to comply, escalate the situation, and maybe get injured or even killed.

This way, she could minimize the damage this would do if this got into court as an example of why Taylor was dangerous.

So even as the fourth and fifth bite came, rendering her right arm barely movable, she just kept doing her best to shush Taylor’s panicked, animalistic keens, kept murmuring anything and everything that came to mind to calm her, to brush away the unneeded guilt.

Taylor wasn’t all there when she was starving, but she wasn’t gone either. She could tell in the way each bite came more hesitantly than the last, how Taylor’s trembling only got worse as she fought to snap out of whatever was going on in her head.

Eventually, Taylor stopped entirely, gasping and shuddering in place around Hannah, and it took her a few moments to realize it through the haze of pain and adrenaline and the sensation of her guts churning with bile that she kept down by sheer force of will.

Hot breaths washed over her collarbone and what remained of her shoulder, bitten through almost to the bone, the blood drying too fast on her skin to do anything but give her a slight case of lightheadedness.

Though that could be because of everything else to do with this experience.

“You’re okay. I’m okay. Calm down, Taylor, I’m not hurt. It’ll go away in- no time.” She grit out, then forced that tension away. “Deep breaths, slowly. You’re still panicking. Breathe in slow, hold, breathe out- yes, like that, keep going, keep trying. Don’t worry about my shoulder. You did well. You’re doing well. You controlled it. I’m proud of you.” She murmured slowly, and found herself realizing that her words were not mere platitudes.

She was proud.

She had seen time and time again how people lost themselves to their powers, and that was without the people using them needing to lest they starve or go insane. Taylor did something many did not, or perhaps, could not.

“I… w-why, I- a-again. I d-d-d-did it ag-again, I couldn’t-” Taylor warbled, and her hands moved off her back as she tried to jerk away, her legs unwinding from around Hannah’s hips to try and fall off of her, to scramble away.

Hannah's left hand forced her power away at last, the pistol disappearing, and she grabbed onto the back of Taylor’s head, before yanking her back, closer, on her other shoulder, her right hand slumping down to grab Taylor’s pant leg to keep it in place on her hip, not quite able to move upward enough to hug her.

Taylor froze, half-fallen from her previous perch on her, hesitant, scared, shaking hands frozen in the air, unsure of what to do.

“You didn’t. You didn’t do it again. You did what I told you, and nothing more. You did well. I’m proud. I just wish you’d told me how much you needed something to eat before this happened.” She mumbled softly, and deciding to take a chance due to the moment, leaned her head and neck to the side a little to kiss the side of Taylor’s head.

Taylor just…

Sort of cracked.

She leaned forward, draping her tentacles around Hannah in a loose embrace around her lower body, her arms going around her waist to squeeze her like a paste tube as her legs did the same to her hips, their fronts mashing together with enough force to briefly drive the breath from Hannah’s lungs.

Then Taylor buried her face in Hannah’s neck, which would have had her tense up if not for the broken wail the girl let out as she did so, followed by ugly-crying and sobbing and hiccuping, nothing like the restrained, choking sobs from before, insensate to anything Hannah said as she clung to her with every limb like she’d die if Hannah dared leave her, just barely careful enough to not crack her ribs from the pressure.

She couldn’t breathe much, but that was fine.

With a pained grunt, she let her right hand drop, confident Taylor wouldn’t draw away, and began using her left hand to stroke Taylor’s hair as she slowly shifted her feet in a position where she could actually get up, or try to.

Just in time, it seemed, because suddenly, abruptly, the banging got much louder, deafening almost.

She recalled the second half of her power to remove the rifle from the door.

The door slammed open, and Colin- Armsmaster slid into the room, covered head to toe in his armor, halberd in its half-folded configuration to even fit into the room, a wave of sound following him in.

Taylor flinched, shifting as if to hide her face with her hair. 

Armsmaster took one glance at them, and switched to a stance that was as if he was getting ready to skewer the girl.

Thankfully, he didn’t so much as twitch from that position as he quickly noticed the incongruence with what he thought was happening and her unmasked, relieved face. The loud, hiccuping and sniffling sobs likely helped, despite the mass of tentacles loosely draped around Hannah’s waist and covering her legs like a bizarre dress.

With her attention torn in two, her mind full of pain, and her muscles screaming in protest from trying to stay in place while holding up something that felt like her one rep max on the squat machine, she quickly decided her priority was obvious.

“Shh, it’s okay, Taylor. Relax. Don’t worry about anything, alright? I’m going to take you to a new cell. Don’t worry about the books. Don’t worry about anything, ignore everyone that isn’t me.” She murmured, and the moment Taylor tried to speak, hiccuped, and gave her a jerky nod, she gave a side glance to Armsmaster, gesturing with her eyes to her shoulder, then to her bandana with her chin, loose around her neck. She mimed lifting her hand, and grimaced in genuine pain as her shoulder muscles tried to pull at tissue that wasn’t there anymore.

They worked enough together for him to realize what that vague signal meant.

I’m unmasked, and cannot mask myself.

Armsmaster understood what she meant just in time to block someone else from coming in with but a gesture of his hand and a visible relaxation of his stance.

“The situation is under control. Miss Militia is unmasked however. Give us a moment. And someone go turn that alarm off.” He calmly ordered, and the clamor outside the room immediately quietened, to be replaced by a different one.

And he said that she was a natural leader. 

She nodded in gratitude as he walked over, and did not begrudge him his caution as he came forward with his halberd ready to the side, instead shifting her stance so that Taylor wouldn’t even notice him tugging her facemask up for her, leaving the bandana that usually covered it alone.

“Your shoulder?” Armsmaster asked.

Hannah inwardly grimaced at a particularly gut-wrenching sob, desperately hoping that Taylor would be okay after all this, or at least, not worse off.

“An accident. I’ll be fine.” She curtly replied, before swiftly turning to nuzzle Taylor’s head a little as she began rubbing her scalp with her fingers. Armsmaster nodded, before flipping the halberd, and with a click, a thick needle extended out of the bottom.

“Tranquilizer?” He asked, and she bit down the instinctive urge to snap at him, knowing full well from Dragon’s rambling that he likely did not quite understand how sensitive the current situation was.

“That won’t pierce her skin. Look, don’t worry. I have her. If she does something, which she won’t, just foam us. We’ll be alright. Right Taylor?” She murmured out the last part, nudging Taylor’s head with her own, and Taylor nodded between yipping little sobs, likely to not undermine her rather than any genuine belief in the words.

That was fine. She could doubt, and Hannah could try her damn best.

Armsmaster nodded, but did not retreat, slinking to the side of the ruined room and gesturing her forwards, halberd ready to strike at any moment, visor locked onto Taylor.

It made her uneasy, but it was more than fair enough. He was already giving her a lot of trust and credit by not immediately trying to separate them and foam Taylor up.

She turned, and tried to stand up, finally.

It was genuinely difficult, but she grit her teeth and pushed with her legs until they were upright. Then she took a turning step, grimacing at how difficult it was, the sticky feeling of blood gluing skin and fabric together tugging at her uncomfortably visible injury.

“Taylor, we’re going outside for a bit, until we can take you to the next cell over. There’s people outside. Ignore them, alright? For me?” She whispered, and Taylor took in a ragged gasp.

“D-d-d-don’t- don’t go. I-I sh-should’ve- ‘m sorry, I’m so-sorry-” Taylor warbled into her neck, her voice breaking.

“I won’t go. I’m not going anywhere, alright? I’ll go in with you if I can, and if I can’t, I’ll come as soon as possible. Nothing to be sorry about either. But we’ve spooked a lot of people with that alarm, so we need to move now before they try to make us. Just focus on me, alright? Copy my breaths, focus on my words, ignore everything else.” She softly spoke, petting her head and brushing her hair back with her left hand as her other hung limp, and Taylor went through a quick series of shuddering inhales and sniffles and a hiccup before she finally nodded.

“Alright. Let’s go.” She murmured, and began to walk outside, Armsmaster watching Taylor like a hawk the entire time.

As she got to the door, she saw what waited outside, and grimaced at the line of foam nozzles and extremely confused Wards waiting for them.

Each step was slow and tiring, and she had to make them slow because Taylor had wrapped her tentacles around her legs like a dress and only shifted them when she’d try to move, making her feel even more restricted.

“Who is-”

“ Make room. I’m moving her to another cell, out of the way. ” She emphasized, and after some glances behind her at Armsmaster, who assumedly nodded, the troopers pressed themselves against the hallway walls, thankfully thick enough to give them all some breathing room as she passed them.

“No, okay, but who is this and why are they in our Master Stranger cell? Why am I the only one asking? What is happening?” Clockblocker wondered out loud, and Assault, as casual as ever, tilted his head a little, throwing an arm around him.

“You know, you’re kind of right. I had no idea we had someone in there.” He said, in a way that made it abundantly clear he was talking to Hannah as she passed, in a way that felt vaguely accusatory.

She was glad most of the heroes were off on patrol at the moment, or else this hallway would have been suffocating.

“Ma’am, maybe you should leave this to us and get your shoulder checked?” Aegis commented, a bit louder as he was along the back of the strange mix of troops and Wards.

Taylor’s hug tightened, and Hannah found herself distinctly unable to breathe, even as she slowly walked on, a small procession of cautious nozzles and confused Wards following around and behind her, Armsmaster as its crown.

“Ta-” She paused, thought of everyone in hearing range. “Sweetheart, I can’t breathe.” She wheezed out quietly, gently raking her nails across Taylor’s scalp as she brushed her locks back. Taylor hugged tighter the moment the overly intimate nickname came out of her mouth, then she fractionally relaxed at the tail end of her sentence, shuffling on top of her to completely hide herself from the eyes around them, burrowing deeper into her tear-soaked neck.

Hannah could breathe again. Shallowly.

She’d never get used to saying ‘sweetheart’, it was too intimate and cheesy and it felt wrong on her tongue, but she also did not miss how Taylor had a positive physical reaction to the word.

Eventually, the next cell over was in front of them, and during the short but time-stretching trip, Taylor had calmed down significantly, mimicking her deep breaths until they were synchronized, little more than the occasional hiccup and sniffle to signify that she was still crying. It was a welcome improvement.

Armsmaster moved up front to open the door for them.

“Thank you.” She quietly whispered out, referencing more than the door, and his lips pressed together into a line that spoke of all the confusion and annoyance he was holding back to let her do what she was trying to do.

“Miss Militia, it would be best if you left the girl alone and came with us for the incident paperwork. Or perhaps to let her calm down in solitude.”

She shook her head.

“No.”

He went still in what she assumed was surprise.

Armsmaster frowned.

“Are you sure? If you go in there I’m positioning at least one Ward or Hero to be on watch outside, as well as troopers if necessary.” He said, and Hannah grimaced at the knowledge they’d have an audience as well as the insinuation that implied he didn’t trust Taylor, who definitely noticed that judging by the hitching breath she took.

But at least they wouldn’t be able to hear them, not unless someone was pressing the button that would activate the conversation system from outside. The recording system would, but whoever was outside wouldn't.

“Alright. Thank you.” She repeated, and walked into the cell, barely fitting through the door with her dress made of tentacles, some of them dragging on the ground a little, Taylor still holding onto her with enough force to make her ribs creak.

Her legs were killing her, and she resolved to start hitting the gym even harder so she could carry Taylor if she wanted to, or ever, god forbid, needed to.

With legs shaking in exertion, she slowly put her back to the padded wall, and even more slowly, began to lower herself until she was sitting against it, in full view of the camera.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.” Taylor croaked out quietly, more genuine and present than before, not just babbling her emotions in panic.

“I know. This is why communication is so important, Taylor. If you had told me you were starting to feel manic, or just… really hungry, I would have helped. I’d have drawn blood, maybe done a painless amputation, and you wouldn’t have had to go through that. But aside from that, you did nothing wrong. Alright?” She gently murmured, and Taylor nodded, her tentacles wrapping around them both and molding to the wall in a warm embrace.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” She eventually whispered, and Taylor took in a deep, shuddering inhale paired with a sniff, before nodding.

“C-claustrophobia. And the- the s-soup they put in the room smelled bad, and- i-it’s stupid, but both of them, just- th-the locker, I was just, I was back in there, and- and I was hungry and the hunger spasms and chills and dizziness and it- it all started so fast- but I didn’t feel like I deserv- deserved to eat, so I didn’t say anything and I’m sorry I…” Taylor spoke, her voice growing progressively weaker, until she trailed off to just breathe, harsh and deep.

It took a moment to make the connection between the words and the trigger incident that had been cited as the reason, and which led to Sophia's sacking, but when it did, she winced.

She couldn’t move much with Taylor securely draped over and around her on her lap, so she just nuzzled Taylor and continued brushing her hair back, the soothing motions having done wonders to get her to calm down so far.

“Why do you… care? You- I h-h-hurt you, I- I almost k-killed you the first time we met, a-and-” Taylor’s voice broke, and fresh tears wet her shoulder.”- you j-just keep… books, and talking, a-and sitting wi-with me, and I- I just don’t… ” Taylor sobbed, and Hannah became firmer in her ministrations.

“Taylor.” She whispered, and the girl nodded to show she was listening, even if she continued sniffling and breathing harshly.

“I care because I decided I want to care. Because I can’t look at someone so young and lovely, someone that the world gave up on until she gave up on herself, and just ignore her. I’m not giving up on you. Things get better, things will get better, and even if I have to drag you to those times myself, I’ll do it. Whatever you think of yourself, I think you’re wrong. I don’t see a monster, or whatever other self-punishing things you see. I see a girl who got a power that forces her to do things she doesn’t want to, a sweet, quiet girl that likes books and cheesy poetry about sailors and adventure. Your life has barely begun, and I won’t let anyone cut it short because they’re scared, you included. Alright?” She whispered, Taylor nodded, a tremble building in the girl’s chest until she was silently sobbing into her neck, shoulders and chest convulsing with tiny shudders and hitched breaths and whimpers.

“And I need you to understand something else, Taylor, okay? Harm doesn’t mean anything to me. As long as I’m alive it will fix itself in short order. You’re still thinking in human terms, Taylor, and we’re not humans. We’re parahumans.” She emphasized by digging her chin into Taylor’s shoulder, almost whispering into her ear.

“Had you done this to someone else’s shoulder, sure, maybe you would have really messed them up, hospitalized them, given them permanent muscle damage and disabled them. For me, this is just some temporary pain, a few painkillers a night, and a couple days of waiting before I’m fine. It wasn’t pleasant , of course not, but you didn’t hurt me so much as you made me feel pain for a bit. Okay?” She asked, lowering her hand to wrap around Taylor’s back into a hug before she shook her a little.

A long, long pause stretched before Taylor meekly nodded.

“Okay.” She breathed out, barely audible.

Maybe it was because this was the closest they’d been so far, maybe it was because Taylor still seemed like she couldn’t quite grasp why Hannah cared, or maybe because Taylor was likely about to go quiet and start properly digesting everything that happened, and she wanted to give her a bit of needed information before she went into that familiar after-shock fugue she’d seen and felt for herself sometimes…

She wasn’t quite sure, but she still spoke the words that had formed endless rehearsed conversations in her head and panicked groaning.

“Taylor, I’m going to put in an adoption application for you.” She murmured, and Taylor stopped.

Stopped breathing, moving, shifting, sniffling, everything, a warm statue in her lap.

“You’re likely confused, and that’s okay. I’ll tell you what I told you here again, whenever you need to hear it. Just know that I am not trying to replace anyone. You don’t need to call me ‘mom’ or anything like that either. I am serious about this. I’m not giving up on you. And the next time I visit, I’ll bring a cup with me, and you will drink it, okay? I’ll bring one every time. And if it's not enough, you will tell me. No more ‘I don’t deserve to eat’, alright? Please.”

It took more than a few seconds before Taylor suddenly, all at once, fell limp, melting into her hug, the arms around her waist and upper back going limp to pool low on her hips, her breaths finally resuming.

She honestly worried Taylor had fainted for a moment, before a small, wordless nod was given, and Hannah realized that she probably just needed some time to process. Maybe she was just shocked.

Regardless, she closed her eyes, and relaxed back into the padded wall, shifting to get comfortable, lulled to a calm fugue with uneven breaths in her ears, the scent and taste of blood on the air and her tongue, and an all-encompassing warmth hugging her from all sides, from something that gleamed like crystal, felt like muscled velvet, and exuded warmth like a radiator.

Her eyes slipped shut, her heart finally calming down, and she sighed in contentment and relief.

When was the last time she’d been hugged? Or rested with someone, even platonically?

Too long, if the slowly-increasing flood of content, calmness-inducing chemicals were any indicator.

Outside the M/S containment cell, Vista and Gallant were on watch duty, the most suitable duo to calm the prisoner and to extract Miss Militia without getting in the cell itself.

A temporary solution, they’d been told, since Armsmaster was just as confused as them as to why the woman was here to begin with, and had to go up to Piggot and sort it out. 

Temporary or not, it had been two hours, and her ass felt like it was made of bricks with pain receptors. She was tempted to ditch to go grab an actual chair instead of these flat metal torture devices.

Both of them mutely watched the prisoner girl napping on Miss Militia, who looked far too serene for being in a locked cell with someone that had apparently eaten a not-insignificant chunk of her right shoulder.

Which was just what the fuck.

She saw the indents, there were fucking teeth marks all over that huge, gaping wound and from what she managed to peek, the woman's lower face was covered in blood all around her mouth. And despite that, when Miss Militia came out, she looked calm as rain, more upset with the people blocking the hallway than the chick that had eaten her fucking shoulder!

“So… any idea on why the hell Miss Militia has a secret cannibal girlfriend in the M/S containment cells under The Rig and why she’s in there in the first place?” Vista murmured to Gallant, too distracted by the odd mix of ‘disturbing’, ‘alarming’ and ‘cute’ the entire situation wrung out of her to be flustered about them sitting so close together.

Gallant heaved an explosive sigh of incredulousness.

“Well, I’m not sure because I didn’t get a good look, but I’m not sure that’s what’s happening here. The red girl looked really young. Felt young too.”

She raised her hands in exasperation.

“Okay, sure, so why does Miss Militia have a secret… I don’t know, daughter or something, under The Rig? Nobody had any idea she was in there besides the first two guards, and they refused to say anything to us.”

Gallant opened his mouth, closed it. Grimaced.

“She looked too pale to be Miss Militia's biological daughter. Maybe Miss Militia had like a… runaway adoptive daughter that turned villain, and PR’s trying to keep it under wraps as she readjusts from whatever might have happened to her? Or she found a villain girl and adopted her?”

Vista blinked, then blanched.

“Wait, you mean she might be readjusting to- to what, join the Wards? Like, you know, huge tentacle-dress ghoulish cannibal girl? You can’t be serious, we just got rid of that purple bitch and now we might get a cannibal in our team?” She exclaimed, voice higher than she intended, and Gallant turned to frown at her.

“Vista, we barely know anything about her. For all we know it might be because of her power, or some mental trauma from whatever might have happened to her. For what it's worth, she was practically choking the entire hallway with guilt when she came out with Miss Militia, so she’s definitely not like Sophia. Maybe she will join us, so… you know. Keep an open mind and all that. Besides, come on, isn’t this like… weirdly cute?” He whispered out the last part as if weirded out by his own words, and gestured at the screen.

She went to deny it, then glanced at the screen, where the cannibal chick had slumped down low enough to be resting her head on Miss Militia’s collarbone, and in just the right angle for Miss Militia to rest her cheek on the girl’s head. The sight of dried blood covering half the girl's lower face and the entire right side of Miss Militia's chest somehow did not make it nearly as macabre as it should be, nor detract from the image.

Somehow.

“...Yea.” She mumbled out reluctantly. 

Chapter Text

At some point, she felt the tentacles retreat and the weight on her suddenly lessen, and so she groggily opened her eyes, an inch away from sleep, expecting to see Taylor awake, embarrassed or apprehensive over everything that happened.

Instead, she looked down to see Taylor more peaceful than she’d ever seen her before as she rested on her chest, her tentacles dissipating into the air like gas.

She blinked at the empty air and cold air left behind with a wide smile and raised brows.

Was it because Taylor was calm, because she felt safe enough to put them away, even if subconsciously? Or was she just too exhausted to keep them out?

If Taylor could put the tentacles away at will, she could actually go out like a normal girl, live a semi-normal life.

This was great news.

She smiled, and her eyes moved back to Taylor, gently brushing some hair out of her face.

Even bloodied as she was, the mixture of peace on her face and smooshed cheek as it sat against her collarbone was oddly cute.

Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by a faint static coming through the speaker, likely due to her movement cluing the outside observers that she was awake.

“Hannah.” Colin calmly said, his voice lowered enough to not wake Taylor, something she greatly appreciated and would not expect of him normally.

The inner microphone in these things could catch noise across the room, and the cell was not exactly huge either, so after shifting Taylor a little and covering the ear that wasn’t currently listening to her heartbeat, she turned back to the camera.

“Colin? Anything you need?” She asked, and he sighed.

“There is suspicion that you have been Mastered, so I was told to move you into a vacant M/S cell for a period of at least a day up to the maximum amount. A psychiatrist has been transferred here due to recent events, and will arrive via plane within a few hours and be ready to assess both how intact you are, and develop a proper psych profile on the girl over the course of a week of regular visits before being transported back to New York. Additionally, the girl will be escorted into the bathing area in the meantime, and be given new clothes. You can’t be there for either of those, even if the situation has been judged safe enough to not have heroes or Wards stationed outside the girl's cell permanently.”

She opened her mouth, brow furrowed, then paused as she theorized how this might look from the outside.

Loyal, perfect-record PRT hero without much if any personal life very suddenly applies for an adoption and allows her shoulder to be eaten after ignoring basic response protocol and actively impeding her team leader in his attempts to help her. Via blocking the door with her power.

Well, assuming they knew that. The camera didn’t cover the door for a few inches, and she shot it.

Still, the suspicion made sense from an outside perspective.

“You said suspicion. Do you share that suspicion?” She asked, curious, and Colin sighed.

“Dragon showed me. I do not. But she cannot show everyone yet, or they will bury it even deeper behind a different legal block before she can convince anyone to sign the NDA and see for themselves like she did with us. They'll put it behind some clearance level that Dragon won’t be able to bypass with just some clever loophole wrangling. She's being careful.” Colin said, and she took a moment to process that and what he meant exactly, what he was refusing to directly reference.

She… wait, Colin knew. Dragon showed him Taylor’s file.

Colin knew? It… huh. It was nice to have another ally, actually. Assuming he was on her side, or cared at all.

“I see. Alright, I-” She began, trying to shift Taylor off without interrupting her sleep, then paused as she remembered how Taylor had acted just a few hours ago.

Specifically, how she’d basically begged her not to leave and latched onto her like a leech. Granted, she was overly emotional and borderline manic during most of the thing, but…

Lost sleep was better than having Taylor wake up in an empty cell after that whole… experience, wondering about the ifs and whats and wondering if Hannah didn’t mean it when she said she’d be here.

Especially if Hannah wouldn’t get another chance to talk to her for a few days.

She tried to see it from her perspective, and yeah, it would not be great…

“... Can you give me five minutes to say goodbye to Taylor, actually?” She asked, and Colin hummed.

“I’m currently in my workshop, so you have about twenty minutes before plausible deniability fades and it might look like I’m sandbagging on my duties, at which point I’ll come get you. Or send troopers. Probably send troopers, this booting process can’t just be left unsupervised or aborted, and I can’t just postpone this constantly anytime something pops up…” Colin muttered in that Tinker way, and she smiled.

“Thank you.”

The static fizzled out without reply.

She took a deep breath, pulling her face mask down with her bandana.

Then she began shaking Taylor, gently.

“Taylor.” She whispered, and Taylor just let out a tiny mumble-whine, digging her face deeper into her chest. Her lips wriggled into a fond smile because damn it that was adorable, but still, she had to wake her up.

She kept repeating her name and gently shaking her, until finally, Taylor shifted her head upwards with a mumble, groggily blinking up at her.

With half-lidded, dazed green owl eyes, not a hint of red or black in sight.

Hannah froze, her eyes widening.

It was only the burning sensation in her cheeks that made her realize she was beaming, and she quickly suppressed it to something a little less exuberant and excited.

Taylor’s eyes could shift back to normal.

Taylor could have a normal life.

She felt like… she wasn’t the type to whoop and cheer, but she imagined this was how people that did that felt like when they made a happy ruckus.

Taylor blinked up at her once, twice, slowly, eyes full of fog.

Then they slowly widened into awareness, then even further.

In record time, the black and red was back replacing her natural colors, and Taylor let out a tiny squeak as she came back to, immediately stiffening, her face reddening rapidly as she gaped up at her in shock.

“I- I- u-uhm, I-” Taylor stuttered as she quickly removed her hands from around Hannah’s hips and back with a jerky, panicky motion, leaning back then tensing as if she was about to launch herself off. The tentacles crept back into sight with a rather grotesque squelching, cracking sound like breaking bones and torn flesh, which would have been concerning if not for the complete lack of reaction Tayor showed to it.

Deciding to nip whatever this was in the bud, she tightened her arm around Taylor, and even if it didn’t even budge her, Taylor seemed to freeze up a little, hesitate.

She subdued her expression even more into a slight smile.

“Taylor, relax. Do you remember yesterday?” She softly asked, daring to let her hand rub up and down a little along her back, and Taylor’s eyes immediately jerked to the right half of her chest, still covered in dried blood. Immediately, her eyes glistened, just a little, her shoulders hunched.

She unwound her arm from around Taylor and brought it around to cup her jaw, ignoring the small flinch, and gently tugged her gaze back to her.

“Remember all of it?” She emphasized, raising a brow, and Taylor licked her lips, lowered her eyes, and nodded.

“I… you stayed.” Taylor breathed out, voice softly surprised and on the verge of being a question.

Definitely the right decision to wake her up first.

“I did, and I will. I said so, right? But… I’ve been called in for work. I might be gone for a couple days. Thought it would be best if I woke you up and told you. How are you… taking all this?” She gently asked, and Taylor ducked her head, her hands awkwardly hovering around her own stomach, unsure of what to do with them.

So Hannah let go of her jaw, pushed off the wall and hugged her with her one functional arm.

For a moment, Taylor had frozen stiff once more, and then, gradually, over the course of a few seconds, almost like her body was trying to understand if this was a good touch or a bad touch, she relaxed, until she had relaxed into her hug, marginally.

Enough to not feel like a statue about to struggle out of her grip.

Taylor’s hands didn’t dare move from where they were squished against her own stomach.

“I… I- I don’t know. D-did you really…” Taylor whispered, voice small and scared.

She waited for her to gather her thoughts, gently rubbing her back, feeling how Taylor would tense every time her fingers would almost brush up against her lower back where the tentacles seemed to be coming out of. Reflex of a weakpoint, or insecurity?

“You… said you are going to… adopt me. That- uhm. Was that…” Taylor trailed off, her voice quivering a little.

She tilted and pressed a kiss to Taylor’s hair.

“Yes. I am. I misspoke though. I decided to adopt you after the first time we met. I’ve already sent in the application, from back then.” She half-lied.

Because if she said she decided to adopt her before even meeting her once, it would likely make her feel like something was really off, and this way, she wouldn’t be stuck up on insecurities, instead believing, correctly so, that Hannah wanted to adopt her for herself.

Even if Taylor was a completely different kid, Hannah would have adopted her regardless, but she would have never been attached like this, never would have genuinely been considering being the best parent possible rather than just doing her best to save a child from unjust execution before leaving it mostly to the Wards to raise her.

The Wards pretty much raised Hannah, and she turned out fine, for example.

“I… I d-don’t…” Taylor warbled out, her breaths getting uneven.

Fingers gingerly brushed against Hannah’s waist, trembling and hesitant.

Hannah hugged her tighter, encouragingly.

Taylor hugged her around the waist with both arms, barely touching her as if afraid she’d break with the slightest push, and Hannah simply held her, rubbing her back as she silently cried, with soft sniffles and stuttering breaths.

Taylor never finished her sentence. Hannah didn’t know if she was going to say she didn’t want a parent, if she was going to say she didn’t understand, or if she was going to say she didn’t deserve Hannah, or whatever other bizarre possibility her mind could come up with, but it seemed that by the time Taylor could find it in her to talk, her mind had left that behind.

“I- I’m sorry for th- the hugging, a-and the crying I… it’s…” Taylor mumbled.

“I- I’m sorry for th- the hugging, a-and the crying I… it’s…” She mumbled, stuck somewhere between wanting to curl up into an embarrassed ball the ground could swallow, cling onto Miss Militia even harder, and push her away so she could drown herself in her quickly-returning guilt and self-loathing like she deserved.

And Miss… and Hannah wouldn’t let her do the latter, always doing or saying the right thing at the worst times to drag her back to the edge when she was about to cross it. A pull on her shoulder, a light nuzzle, a light, comforting scratch of nails on her half-naked back, over her slightly protruding spine, and those churning, acid-tasting emotions would just scramble and fade into warmth. She couldn’t focus on the guilt of hurting the only person who had cared, who had helped, who had gone through-

Through getting eaten.

Just to help her.

She should focus on pushing her away. If not because she didn’t deserve her kindness, then just to protect her, because everything wrong that happened to the people she cared about was caused by herself, and somehow, Hannah had climbed to the top of the list already, barring her own mother.

The thought only made her cry harder, guilt and fuzzy warmth mixing, and she couldn’t help but feel like she should have run out of tears ages ago, but they just refused to stop.

“It’s okay. You’re probably just not used to this, and embarrassed because we haven’t known each other for long. Hugging and crying is fine. If anything, it’s healthy. Did you know it took me nearly fifteen years to be able to take a hug without turning into a stiff brick or feeling uncomfortable? You’re doing great by comparison, Taylor.” Hannah murmured into the top of her hair, and felt another piece of herself glue back together. She grit her teeth to keep the sob trapped in her chest.

She had completely forgotten what it was like.

Friendly touch.

The steady warmth of someone else.

A hand rubbing her back, or brushing her hair, an exhale washing over her shoulders and mane.

A steady, calm heartbeat under her ear.

And every time it happened, she just could not stop her eyes from welling up with tears.

It wasn’t nearly as horrifically mortifying as what she knew she was like yesterday after calming down, or whenever that blur of chaos happened, but she was still embarrassed. 

“Taylor, I have to go.” Hannah whispered, and her arms tightened around the woman before she could think about it.

She… she didn’t want her to leave. It felt like this was it, this would be where the illusion would snap and the other shoe would drop. Like if she let her out of her sight, she’d never come back, because why the hell would she? Why did she come back the first, the second, or the third time? Or would something else happen? Would the PRT transfer her away to another branch? Would a villain kill her on her next patrol?

It made her blood boil and her heart twist, burn.

She didn’t want her to leave.

But it also felt like if she didn’t let her leave, something bad would happen to Hannah by her own hand, no matter how illogical it was.

She’d already killed her mother with the phone crap, she’d killed her dad and…

She didn’t want to hurt Hannah too. She’d already come far too close, too fast. She didn’t trust herself not to.

She was scared of letting Hannah leave, and scared of letting her stay.

She was just scared.

That had always been the issue. Scared, and eventually, when everything broke down, regretful.

She always wished she could have hugged her mother more, told her she loved her more, been around her more. Just knew more about her.

There was a second chance there, with her father. But neither of them did anything they should have. They were both scared. Of talking, of touching, of pushing, of admitting anything, of connecting. They’d felt how much it hurt to lose a connection, and were afraid of growing a new one now that the glue of the Hebert household was gone.

And she blew that second chance. She more than blew it, she spit in its face then killed it with her own teeth and nails.

Maybe she could have lived with the guilt of what she’d done, power or not, but the regret on top just made it too much.

“Ten minutes.” A monotone noise came from the ceiling.

She wished she wasn’t scared anymore. She wished she’d have hugged her dad more before he was gone, spoken to him more, been more honest, asked for help and offered it, knew more about him, protected him more, dragged him out of his depressive fugue. She wished she’d have had the courage to ask the PRT for help the first time she realized why normal food tasted like rotten ash in her mouth.

She wished she’d been more open, more outreaching, more honest.

Had she been a bit more introspective and calm, she might wonder to herself why she cared so much about Hannah so fast, might have even found a reasonable explanation.

All she knew was that she’d wished she’d done something differently, twice, and failed, twice.

But… Hannah said she’d adopt her. She sounded so certain, so determined. And… even if it felt like a betrayal of sorts, even if Hannah would never replace who she had lost, in a way, she felt like she’d just been given a third chance. Maybe not with a parent, but with someone she cared about, someone who inexplicably cared about her, someone she felt like she could genuinely trust and talk to, even if that was scary too.

During the first week of confinement, those were the same thoughts she tormented herself with. Just regrets of what she should have done, again.

She couldn’t waste a third chance.

“I- I’m s-scared. I’m s-sorry, I’m being so fu-fucking pathetic, but I-”

Their heads bumped together as Hannah’s hand thumped her back as if in reproach.

“No. None of that, Taylor. You don’t have to think of human emotions and reactions as something to be ashamed of, not around me. You think I haven’t been scared, haven’t cried? I have. A lot. It’s part of life.” Hannah interrupted, voice firm and soft.

“And I swear, I will do everything I can to make sure you don’t get in any trouble for this. Just a harmless accident. You’ll be fine if I have a say in the matter, okay? So don’t worry about that. But I really should go before someone comes down here and forces me to. They need to screen me for some things. Or is that not what you’re scared of?” Hannah asked, slow and calm, and she took a deep breath as she prepared to reply.

“I- I’m…” The words choked her throat, like stones settling down her esophagus. She swallowed them down. “S-scared you won’t come back too. I’m scared to- let go. And to n-not let go. That- that doesn’t make sense, I’m sorry, I don’t know- I’m not sure how to…” She trailed off in a whisper, shifting to dig her face into her shoulder, feeling her neck curl in embarrassment, something like phantom humiliation.

Hannah smelled nice. She smelled like gunpowder, an odd scent of freshness, cold crisp air. Even her blood had a distinct scent she enjoyed, something earthly. It all calmed her, sans the last part.

“As much as I’d like to say that I can help you there, I’m not sure I can. Don’t be scared to let go. I’ll be back soon. But why are you scared to not let go?” Hannah asked calmly, and said nothing more as the seconds passed and she calmed down enough for her breaths to return to normal, soft, slow strokes forcing her to calm.

“I- everyone I like either… turns on me, or- or leaves, or dies. Because of me. Some-sometimes. I- I don’t want you to…” She trailed off, eyes burning with tears again, and she hated herself for them.

Crying was showing weakness. Someone would pounce on it, right away, mock her, load her tears into a barrel and use it as ammunition for the next time. It was ingrained in her by now. To cry was to show weakness that would inevitably be hit upon.

Even if she felt like Hannah probably wouldn’t do anything like that, she couldn’t help it. It was like a survival instinct. Nobody could will themselves into not flinching the first time someone thrust a knife into their face, nor the tenth.

Reflex. Instinct.

Hannah was the only thing beating her regrets and self-hatred away at the moment, brushing it away with each stroke of her hair. Each stroke felt like a tiny reassurance of itself, that there was nobody here to pick up on her weaknesses and fire at them, and that Hannah wouldn’t do that.

“Taylor. I’ve been a hero for over twenty years. The vast majority of capes do not live past their first four. I may not be a brute, but I have a good head on my shoulders and my own power. I know how to survive. I know nothing but how to survive. I’m a survivor from the day I triggered to today. So are you. And I’m never going to leave you, okay? I’m not going to abandon you, or leave, to change my mind or decide I want to hurt you. Dragon has full permission to shoot me if I do that, because that won’t be me anymore if I do. Alright?” Hannah said, her voice so full of conviction and certainty that she couldn’t help but feel it too.

It felt like hearing a professor that had that tone and conviction and steel in their voice that told one ‘I know what I’m talking about, I know I am right, listen to me’.

It was almost military-sounding, in fact.

So she took a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded, cautiously trustful, even if she didn’t really believe her, despite her best efforts to.

Hannah kissed the side of her head, and new tears sprung forth as she remembered her mom doing such a thing, what felt like lifetimes ago. Her fingers shook as they bunched up on the back of Hannah’s blood-crusted shirt, her head ducking lower.

Mom said ‘sweetheart’ too.

It was so unfair for Hannah to do that. And she didn’t even know.

It made her heart warm and fuzz and clench painfully, all at the same time. It hurt and burned and felt too good to not want more.

“You should say it out loud. ‘Alright’. Saying it out loud will make it feel more real to you. Try it.” Hannah gently hummed.

“A-Alright.” She said, and…

Hannah was right. It did make it feel more real. Like it would actually be real, it could be alright.

“Good. And before I go, because we’re running out of time… they’ve sent therapists, from what Armsmaster has told me. One, at least. An actual professional that will stick around, and talk to us, rather than stay for a day or two and bombard you with questions. They’ll try to help, or at least point out what we might not have noticed about ourselves so we can get help with changing it in the future.” Hannah started, and she tensed, a small sense of alarm and imminent betrayal rearing its head.

It sounded like all those fake words and fake people, telling her to talk to them, talking like she could be fixed, like she was choosing to be the way she was. It made her angry, every question a barbed insinuation and accusation of a lie she didn't say, like someone had taken the school’s teachers and mixed them with Emma in one horrid concoction that they tried to shove down her throat, every question a trap and every gesture a lie, every smile empty.

They thought they were such good manipulators. They thought she couldn’t tell from a mile away, even through a small screen. They thought she was stupid and worthless and naive, just like everyone else.

She hated them.

Was this it?

Would Hannah say the same thing they all said when trying to get her to talk to the liars?

Miss- Hannah noticed how tense she got.

“Relax, Taylor. Let me finish, sweetheart.” Hannah murmured, and that word, that damn word, mixing with the warmth and her voice, that soothing touch, it just made her crumple down like folded paper. She relaxed against her will.

Please be different. Please. I can’t take another one. Please.

“I’m not asking you to tell them everything, or even anything. I’m not asking you to take pills or answer their questions. I’m just going to ask you to try to talk to them, and see if it helps. If it doesn’t, that’s alright. We’ll figure out something, you and me. But try to work with them a bit. I know therapy can seem like… it’s you versus the therapist sometimes. Especially when it’s unwanted.”

She was right. And it did sound like she knew, that weariness, that wording. She hugged tighter, and loosened her grip a little when she felt Hannah’s breath stutter.

Too tight, too tight.

How did she not snap her in two yesterday? She shouldn’t even be touching her. Hannah was made of paper and she was made of razorblades. She was so selfish. She shouldn’t be touching Hannah. She-

“Taylor.” A whisper, the hand on her back brushing against the small of her back, over the… the things coming out of her back.

She jerked, just a little, before freezing, thrown out of her thoughts and cohesion.

“Calm. Relax. It’s all good. We’re fine.” Hannah murmured, almost directly into her ear, and she eked out a wordless jumble of letters before she gave up, nodding into her shoulder, still tense.

“Just try to give them a chance, alright? That’s all I want to ask of you. If you don’t want to do it, that’s fine. We’ll work it out together. But I do have to say that I’m worried about you, and I don’t know if I’m qualified with the kind of help you might need. You understand that, right? You’re not in a healthy headspace, Taylor. That’s normal. It would be concerning if you were, after everything that’s happened to you. Can you agree with that?” Hannah murmured, and she gulped, trying to turn that over in her head.

She wasn’t in a healthy headspace. It was all-too obvious.

But Hannah wasn’t talking about fixing her, like she had made problems for herself and everyone else, like it was her fault, like she had to work with some snooty suited snake to set things right. She spoke like Taylor needed help, and…

And if she wanted to live, or at least not want to die as much, she did.

Did she want to live? Was there such a thing as a third chance? Or was it not a chance at all, and she was being deceived?

“I… I don’t know...” She breathed out.

“Alright. Even if you don’t want to do it for yourself, could you do it for me? Because I care about you, and I’d be very happy for you if your mental health improved. I want you to be happy Taylor, even if the journey there won’t be easy or short.”

The hand on the base of her back slowly moved back up, and she felt herself instantly relax, the alien sensation of something touching the fleshy growths both intensely pleasant and uncomfortable. She could only tear up into the already tear-stained shirt, and take in shuddering gasps of air as the timer ran along.

“O…Okay.” She eked out, her voice breaking.

“Alright. It’s almost time up, Taylor. I have to go, and you’ll have to change clothes and shower too sooner than later.” Hannah murmured into her hair, and she could only feel a spike of dread and anxiety and danger. She hugged tighter, just a little, gritting her teeth.

I don’t want you to go. I’m scared. The cell feels like the locker without you here. Too tight, the air smells like plastic and a shut space. You can’t leave me too. There’s nobody left. Nothing left. Please stay.

She wanted to stay all that, beg.

But she couldn’t. It would be unfair. It would just make Hannah feel worse about leaving when she didn’t seem to have a choice in the matter.

“Because I care about you, and I’d be very happy for you if your mental health improved.”

She couldn’t say all she wanted to.

She couldn’t be sure she even saw a future bright enough to try and live, enough to try to get help that she found pointless. But if Hannah stayed, there might be one.

So she could say what Hannah wanted to hear. She could do what Hannah wanted her to, even if just for her. Because she cared. And she had regretted not doing more for those she lost. She didn’t want to die with more regrets, whenever it happened.

“O…kay.” She warbled out, then took a deep, shuddering breath.

“Good. Thank you, Taylor. Now, up, please. I have to go. Come on, sweetheart, up. Up, up.” Hannah patted her back, and she drew back, releasing her. She covered her face with her hands from a mixture of shame and fear, taking deep breaths as she tried to wipe the tears off her face, breathing like Hannah told her. In, hold, out. It helped.

“I- y-you’ll be back, right?” She blurted out before she could stop herself, and cringed. “I- s-sorry, I just-”

A warm hand cupped her face.

“I will. I’ll bring you a whole tower of books too, and we can read them together.”

That made her tear up all over again. Her throat was too tight for words.

She nodded, and feeling like she was peeling her own skin off, she slowly shuffled off Hannah’s lap, onto the floor, still covering her face.

She heard her get up.

The hand on her cheek rose to the back of her head, and a kiss landed on top of her head.

“I’ll be back. I swear on everything. Be good, Taylor.” Hannah whispered into her hair, then let go, retreated.

She nodded, feeling her breaths stutter, mixing together and threatening to make her hiccup. Her palms pressed into her eyes.

She waited until the door closed to wrap herself with the red things.

When the soldiers came, armed with Tinkertech that would have had her baffled and excited to even see before this all happened, she dutifully followed them into the prisoner showers.

At least it had enough privacy to not be weird, even if the room was a metal box with a vault door and sensors everywhere.

She curled up in the corner, under a shower head, and stared at the swirls in the water, watching the red wash off, endlessly, pink and frothy filth leaving as she tried to digest everything, process everything.

At least under the showerhead, it didn’t feel like she was crying. It didn’t feel like she was vulnerable.

She had the scent of gunpowder, freshness and cold crisp air lingering in her nostrils, in her mind, and that felt like enough to keep going, for now. 

Chapter Text

One thing she always found humorous was that people treated M/S protocols like they were, on any level, something that deserved the word ‘protocol’ rather than the bureaucratic equivalent of flailing and hoping they hit something.

It really was not much more than throwing things at a wall and seeing if something stuck.

First, they asked her questions only she would know.

Then, she met her psychiatrist. A nice woman by the name of Elena Moripoul, with European ancestry. Daily visits. Nice woman.

Then, they asked for the monthly password they’ve been given for these kinds of situations, a timeframe which significantly tightened the more threat there was.

Then, it was a long interview while hooked up to two Tinkertech lie detectors. And then two more. Asking if she noticed something off, if she ever felt dizzy recently, if she smelled anything weird, if Taylor had done any kind of hypnotic gesture, if Taylor ordered her to do something.

Then, they brought her to an empty room with a two-way mirror for some Think Tank parahuman thinker to try and guess if she was Mastered while being interviewed, again.

Then she was escorted to an MRI machine with her hands clamped shut behind her back in a plastic box.

When that didn’t show any abnormal brain waves besides the obvious, nor any kind of brain and nerve damage that wasn’t there before, they left her there for another whole day while everyone on base had to endure similar interviews to try and determine if she was acting strange lately, if something concerning had been noticed, et cetera.

It took nearly four days for her to finally be cleared, and by the end of it, she was starting to go stir crazy.

That only made her feel more hurried to meet Taylor again, because how much worse did the poor girl have it? 

Unfortunately, she didn’t even manage to take more than five steps before being accosted by the combined half of all the heroes of the PRT ENE, all sitting on chairs or leaning against the wall outside her cell.

Assault, Battery, Dauntless, and all the Wards sans Kid Win.

A lot of people to just be mutely waiting for her release. This was strange.

Dragon’s avatar on the drone’s screen gave an apologetic smile.

The guard who released her skittered away.

She stood there and blinked at them for a moment, exasperated and a little alarmed.

“Hey, happy freedom from the kooky tank day. By the way none of us met up and this is not organized.” Assault clarified, vaguely gesturing around at the loose gathering, drawing murmurs and halfhearted waves.

“Right.” She said, planning to go straight to the storage rooms to go grab more of Taylor’s books.

Unfortunately, curiosity existed.

“Ma’am, could we get some kind of explanation? This has been a very strange few days. And literally nobody seems to be getting any answers.” Vista asked, obviously exasperated and frustrated.

Hannah frowned, and glanced at Dragon.

The avatar swapped out for a black screen covered in white words.

They will probably put the file under even higher security after we do this, but we should tell them.

“Uh, Miss Militia?”

“One moment.” She murmured, focusing on the text.

We could garner a lot of allies and support here, and we could bring them into court to testify about Taylor’s character. Gallant especially. This would also allow Taylor to have company besides you, even though they’ll probably have to talk through the interview sound system, if they’re willing to in the first place.

Huh.

That… could work. That might be good, actually. She had responsibilities and the like, and Taylor could definitely use more company than just her. It might even do her some good.

The text changed.

I have all the documentation ready to be signed and filed in your room here in The Rig, if you choose to do it now. You decide how to move forward with this.

The text disappeared, the avatar taking its place, right as Assaulted leaned forward under Dragon’s drone to see what was so interesting about Dragon’s face, assumedly.

“Well, alright then.” She sighed, and swept her eyes over the crowd expectantly staring at her, oddly quiet considering their usual personalities. “I can only explain in private. Come with me to my quarters, if you want to know and be involved.” She simply said, and walked through them.

A chorus of footsteps and scraping chairs followed.

Her quarters would have been considered spacious for one person who technically had an external apartment to go live in. Twelve by twelve by twelve feet, a metal cube that could fit a lot of things.

They did not feel spacious with seven other people awkwardly standing, sitting, or lounging around the space. They barely had room to turn.

After some brief shuffling of the papers that Dragon had somehow gotten to her private chambers, a feat she assumed had been achieved due to the mandatory search of the M/S procedures, she judged them sufficiently organized, and passed the stack of clip-folders to Assault, who took them with a raised brow.

“Pass them around. To say anything about all this without breaking the law, I’m afraid you will have to sign these NDAs first, lest I be accused of leaking internal documents and threatening the operational security of The Protectorate and thus the United States.” She spoke, half-reciting and half-exaggerating to impress on the kids how important this was.

While this whole legal fiasco got handled, she couldn’t afford a parking ticket, much less a charge as severe as that.

“I don-” Aegis began.

“Not negotiable. I cannot say anything if you do not sign these. If you do not want to sign them, then please leave your folder and then the room.” She cut him off, and Battery muttered an exclamation of surprise.

“These are pretty… tight.” Aegis mumbled, skimming through the dozen or so pages.

“T- Her case is very high clearance. Technically, I shouldn’t even know about it, and neither should any of you, but it’s not illegal to know yet, simply to spread it without these being signed. So, sign these, and if you don’t want to, please leave.” She said, dryly.

“Okay, but, like, one second? I’m not old enough to be signing things regularly but even I know not to sign something without reading it.” Vista grumbled, and Hannah reluctantly nodded as she leaned back on the thin, spartan desk shoved against the corner.

Five minutes of muted muttering and paper shuffling later, Assault scoffed.

“Pens?”

Hannah was not blushing as she handed everyone a pen, and her bandana would agree.

A minute later, Assault and Battery made a passing chain of NDA contracts, piling them back up on her desk.

“I’ll pass these by Legal right after we’re out of here.” She said, adjusting the pile to be straighter, then turned to the rest of the room, all curious eyes and expectant silence.

Even Clockblocker and Assault.

She licked her lips, taking a moment to think of how to put all this.

She did have the file behind her on the desk, but did she want to give it to them? It was entirely too clinical, entirely too detailed, and entirely too unsympathetic.

So the answer was no.

“So, to start with. This air of secrecy has to do with the girl you all saw during the incident. She’s about your age, actually, fourteen going to fifteen soon. About… I believe three months ago, almost, she gained her powers in an incident that is even more buried than information about this case.”

Aegis smacked Clockblocker upside the head, hissing “ quiet ” at him right as he opened his mouth for what no doubt was a joke or pun.

She frowned.

“Do not interrupt me, please. There’s seven people in this room. If everyone butts in, I’ll never be able to tell you anything.”

Dennis grimaced, but nodded.

“Taylor’s power drove her temporarily insane, from both disuse during the two months after her trigger event, and other factors. I don’t think any of this will make sense unless I explain the caveat of her powers. She’s a Brute-Changer, but her power makes her unable to consume anything but human flesh and mild teas.”

She waited a second for the mumbled expletives and grimaces of sympathy to pass, before continuing.

Or would have.

“Wait, she ate someone. Didn’t she?” Vista suddenly piped up, appearing faintly green.

Hannah grimaced, and nodded.

“Two months and something of starvation, plus no power usage, and something snapped, though admittedly this seems to be purely her power having pushed her to do as such. Long story short, Armsmaster apprehended her after she went for a swim next to the boardwalk-”

“I remember that on the news, I think?” Vista muttered. “Somethin about a red, fox tail cape?” 

That was… close enough?

And it also allowed her not to spill any details about how Taylor had tried to drown herself. A nonsensical action was less invasive to share than a deeply personal one like that.

"What, is she a kitsune or something? A man eater?" Clockblocker snickered.

“Guys, shut up? ” Dauntless, surprisingly, snapped, a frown on his face, likely seeing where this was going, and the kids did as asked, mumbling apologies.

“Armsmaster brought her into custody. This is where the… rougher parts begin. To make short of things, they did some basic interviews, pulled some help from the Think Tank, and determined her power grows, somehow. Needless to say, having an involuntary cannibal with questionable at best mental health running around, one whose power only grows, made a lot of the PRT heads very nervous. There is a possibility of trying to turn her into a hero, but... I guess they think she's just not worth the headache or the risk. The scandal of how to feed her, their fault in how she got her powers to begin with, just... all of it.” She finished, voice slipping into bitter disgust.

At the system she'd been trying to defend all her life. 

God, this whole situation hurt her soul the more she thought about it.

Aegis opened his mouth.

“Yes, Aegis, I know that you would volunteer in a heartbeat to feed her, but you would need parental permission, then the Youth Guard would get involved, and neither the PRT nor the Youth Guard would ever let you help her.”

Aegis’ mouth clicked shut with a frown.

“Even if they did find someone willing and capable, her fate would essentially be tied to them, nevermind her mental state. If any such arrangement was uncovered, it would also be a catastrophic thing for the PRT’s public reputation, career ruining for dozens if not hundreds of people, and would likely never be worth the cost, in their eyes. All that combined with the girl’s personal requests and a fear for a second Siberian due to Thinker speculation considering some kind of growth aspect to her powers. Heroism isn’t a route the PRT is willing to take. They also can’t let her out in the streets. So the PRT upper branch decided to push for the Birdcage.”

Assault’s teeth audibly grit as Battery put a hand on his shoulder.

She took a deep breath, and surprisingly, no interruption came.

“Her trial is coming up sometime soon, and the PRT will try to send her to the Birdcage. Needless to say, Dragon cannot provide human flesh for her to eat down there. Her most likely fate is getting killed or starving to death, or at the best, having the prisoners find a way to accommodate her, somehow, which is extremely unlikely. It’s a glorified execution. The documents don’t say it outright, but Dragon had been present during the meeting of this being discussed, and heard something even more corrupt.”

Having seven people’s laser-focused attention never felt quite so intense as now.

“There’s a chance the trial might be fixed, just in case her apparent desire to volunteer for the Birdcage stops. They will probably argue she is unstable, unable to be contained, and a severe danger to the public, and since she is a ward of the state, they can waive her right to be tried as a minor. They can also pull some strings in the justice system to put either an incompetent or a sabotage lawyer as her defence. She would be all but guaranteed to go to the Birdcage.”

“W- They can’t do that!” Gallant blurted, outraged.

“Bad Canary.” Vista snapped, and a universal wince spread through the Wards.

Assault’s jaw worked back and forth like he was trying to grind a pebble to dust in his mouth.

She could probably guess his habits of breaking people out of unjust Birdcage transports, back when he was Madcap, hadn’t quite faded. Or at least the urge to do what was right regardless of the law hadn’t.

Her eyes moved back to the kids, and she smiled sadly.

She could quite literally see the kids’ faith in the Protectorate fading from their eyes, how they were watching the glitter-covered paint peel off to reveal the rusty beneath. It was a part of maturing, but it was also sad to see.

Ignorance truly is bliss.

“So… what exactly…?” Battery started, vaguely gesturing as if she wasn’t sure how to put her question to words.

Oh, right.

She cleared her throat.

“That is where I come in. Dragon believes that an adoption would give the girl a fighting chance at least. It would give her guardian the right to deny waiving the right of being tried as a minor, and it would let the guardian pick the defense attourney.”

It took a moment for that to sink in, before Battery’s eyes widened.

“Wait, she’s-? You adopted her?” Battery blurted out, her voice incredulous, and a mixture of quiet noise came from the Wards as Hannah turned to her.

“Yes. Or at least, I’ve put in the application for it. You and Assault were the first candidates-”

Assault face-palmed.

“-Oh please you two aren’t even a secret anymore shut up. You were the first candidates, but Dragon theorized that Battery’s imperfect record and Assault’s past and imperfect record, as well as lack of regenerative abilities, means that there is a chance your application would be denied.” She rushed out, and spread her hands.

"Wait, regenerative- you're going to...?" Vista began, appearing faintly green, then made a motion like she was scraping meat off her forearm with a kitchen knife.

She furrowed her brows, not quite a glare.

“Yes. I will. Now, the only reason I’m telling all of you this, is that since you have signed the NDAs and know, I’d like you to positively testify for her when the trial comes. I’d also appreciate it if some of you chose to approach her. She’s been having a rough time, understandably, and I’m sure some contact with someone who isn’t boring old me would be appreciated. Am I understood?” She asked, gesticulating and looking from person to person quickly to emphasize a sense of urgency.

Hurried nods and hums of affirmation.

“Okay, good. Now, please leave. I’ve been in M/S containment for almost a full week and I need to do some things before I lose my mind.”

They quickly filed out, all appearing in differing states of shock, confusion, and incredulousness for the adults. Dragon’s silent drone followed.

The door shut.

She ducked into the shower, then planned to rush to medical to get a blood draw.

Unfortunately, it was not to be, as her phone, her civilian phone, rang with a call.

She flicked it open and brought it to her ear.

“Hello?”

“Ah hello! Is this Hannah?” A chipper young voice asked, and her brows furrowed.

“Yes?” She asked, cautious and wary enough to likely make the caller think she was about to hang up.

“I’m Lia Marken, with the CPS. Are you aware of the conditions set by the USA to allow for adoption? I’m to come and check your living conditions for myself. I believe there are lightening circumstances, but still, we have to verify an ability to provide a proper place of growth for a minor before the application can be accepted in full.”

It took a moment for her brain to process that before she wheezed out a relieved breath, her lips curling into a wide smile.

These sorts of visits were usually done right before the agreement was finalized.

And-

And she still only had a one-bedroom apartment.

She idly tried to remember all the parameters set by the government to accept an adoption.

A room for Taylor, suitable privacy, suitable presence in her life or a partner which can fill such a gap, clean record, and a dozen other things.

Adoption agencies had gotten a lot more lax since the Endbringers came up, but it was still a bit of a list to get through.

One that she hadn’t really began to go down.

Oh.

Crap.

“Right, of course. Would next Monday work for you? Hm. Ah, I understand. Of course. Tuesday it is. I’ll talk to you on Monday for place and time, I’m afraid my line of work within law enforcement is rather erratic with its hours.” She half-lied, rushing through the conversation, then hummed in response to Lia’s pleasantries and hung up.

Then she hurriedly checked her savings accounts, mildly panicking.

Her sort-of-throwaway emergency account had a hundred grand in it.

In a place like the Bay, that was actually enough to get a pretty decent apartment. Bit tight though.

She checked the other one, where her salary and merchandise royalties et cetera were automatically banked.

Then she froze.

She reloaded the app, and blinked in bafflement at the number.

Two million.

She had two point seven million dollars?

She had two point seven million dollars.

She hadn’t checked the account in years since she made her second one, living off of that one instead, but last time it had been six hundred thousand, almost… five, six years ago?

In hindsight, it made sense. A generous six figure salary, no real spending costs beside her motorcycle, and a half-dozen agreements and marketing royalties, combined with years upon years of service, dating back to her Ward days. 

Combined with how she pretty much never even checked the damn account, it made sense.

It was still a baffling amount of money.

Shit. She had to get a financial advisor or something.

Money was goddamn stressful, now that she had someone in her life that it could be useful for.

She had to make sure inflation didn’t turn her money to nothing, she had to make sure to give Taylor useful things that would go up in value over time just in case she died, she had to get a new apartment, she had to… do a lot of things.

With a sigh, she called Carol.

Two hours passed before she could close the phone and do what she actually wanted to do.

She had to spend ten minutes wrangling the location of Taylor’s cell out of a pair of stubborn guards with a bag full of books and other minor things in one hand and a covered paper cup full of blood in the other.

The absurdly slow and thorough search of everything on her and with her was intensely frustrating, but somewhat understandable.

But now, she was free to attend to her most important and enjoyable obligation.

It was mildly concerning to check the camera and see Taylor in the middle of some kind of boredom induced delirium, swinging herself from side to side lazily while her tentacles pretended to guide an orchestra, mumbling to herself with tired gravitas.

It was also a bizarre mix of adorable and unnerving to watch the tentacles making tone motions while Taylor waved her arms at the wall like an overly enthused violin conductor.

She carefully maneuvered her cargo until she was pressing on the button with a black microphone outline, sitting below the camera setup right outside the cell door.

“Hi! It’s me, coming in, don’t freak out.” She called, then turned and opened the door.

Her chaperone practically slammed it shut behind her as the guards watched mutely, but she wasted no time in thinking or perceiving them too much, instead putting the bag on the floor and turning with a smile.

Taylor was staring at her with a wide, wonderfully innocent smile, bordering on a grin. Her expression was delightfully surprised and joyous.

A moment later, a blur of a red mass, and Taylor appeared in front of her, frozen mid-grab, mouth open with a furious blush as she recoiled, curling her arms into her chest like a cat curling its paws in. 

“U-uh, can I hug you?” Taylor eked out, hopeful and scared.

Likely of rejection? Maybe?

She yanked her mask down, carefully put the blood cup down on a less squishy section of the floor, and then yanked Taylor into a hug.

Taylor stood there for a moment, stiff, before a shaky, jittery exhale came over her, and she slumped forward with a tiny, barely audible whimper, wrapping her arms around Hannah, followed by four flattened tentacles all carefully wrapping around the back of her calves, thighs, lower and upper back, tugging her forward until she was almost glued to Taylor from top to bottom.

If it wasn’t for the tentacles, she would have probably begun tipping backwards.

The grasp was still light and hesitant, shaky.

“I’m not made of paper, Taylor.” She hummed, amused, and then instantly felt bad when Taylor sniffled, ducking her head down lower and swapping sides, planting her ear on her chest.

She rubbed up and down Taylor’s back, planting her lips on the top of her head and keeping them there, still.

The embrace tightened, and Hannah smiled wide, her eyes slipping shut.

A slight pressure at the back of her eyes, a warmth in her chest, a desire to cherish and protect, they slowly bloomed like flowers inside her, making her feel like she was full to bursting. While she didn’t really know why or what exactly she felt, it felt amazing.

“Are you alright?” She murmured, and Taylor nodded, still seemingly focused on failing to be subtle about listening to Hannah’s heartbeat through the halter top she wore.

Hannah didn’t get the appeal, but it seemed to be intensely soothing to Taylor, so she didn’t fidget or squirm, even if it felt a little… too intimate?

It made her hyper-aware of her heartbeat, at least. Which was a bit odd to feel.

“Y-Yeah. I was just… Your shoulder’s okay.” Taylor warbled, voice cracking, and her heart melted at the worry audible in that voice. “I- I was worried. A lot. And other stuff. I thought… I thought you lied and left. Noticed I’m… unsafe to be around. I’m sorry.” Taylor murmured, and Hannah hummed.

It was one thing to say she wouldn’t leave her, and another to consistently prove that she would not. The first was reassuring. The second established it as truth.

“No worries. Trust takes a bit of time to build. Also, you’re not unsafe to be around, any more than any other parahuman starving to death is. Speaking of which, how’s your hunger?” She asked, softly, and Taylor let a full-body flinch show, before she relaxed again.

“I-It’s… I’m fine, I… I’m lying.” Taylor mumbled, her voice going from an obviously faked confidence to an embarrassed admission, shrinking into herself.

She began to lightly scratch her back with her nails over the orange shirt, and Taylor shuddered in pleasure, relaxing once more.

“It’s… it’s not great. I’m… getting at that stage again, where if I don’t have something to focus on, I start to feel all… floaty, and dreamy, and delirious. And uhm, unhinged. I was pretty sure I could hear music until your voice came in. I- I don’t know if there’s something wrong with me or if its my power.” Taylor murmured, and before Hannah could consider either possibility, Taylor continued.

“I- I know you brought something. I can smell it. It smells like you.” Taylor said, and while the comment was a bit unsettling, she brushed it off to nod.

“Yeah. I drew some blood, it’s in the cup. Wanted to see if it would help, or if it would be like trying to feed someone with nothing but orange juice, as Dragon put it.” She huffed in amusement.

Taylor’s head jerked back, staring up at her, wide eyed.

Wide, beautiful green eyes.

She smiled down at her as Taylor opened her mouth.

“Your eyes are green right now, you know?” She said, and Taylor’s mouth clacked shut. Incomprehension followed in her slow blink.

With the highest reluctance, Taylor separated from her, and moved to the glass rectangle on the left side of her cell, shading it from the light with her head and tilting herself around.

Hannah missed the warmth a bit, she wouldn’t lie.

Even so, she didn’t do anything but watch with a proud smile as Taylor’s tentacles swirled like the tails of a curious cat, stiffening and straightening and flexing with so much character that she might as well be speaking to Hannah about exactly what she was feeling and seeing.

She could pinpoint when Taylor finally got a good look at her reflection by how the tails all stopped moving.

Coincidentally, Taylor also looked like a little kid at the wrong side of the zoo exhibit, trying to see the elusive animals outside.

She was so damn cute she wanted to just grab the girl and squish her into a vice-tight hug.

…Oh god, she was becoming a stereotypical grandmother.

“I… they’re- they’re normal.” Taylor breathed out in wonder, her face glued to the glass, derailing her despairing thoughts. “I thought I felt something earlier, but I was too out of it to care.”

“I think it’s a… largely subconscious reaction. Both the tentacles and the eyes. If you don’t feel safe, they come out. Seen a few Changers with such issues before. I think you should be able to control it better when you aren’t chronically hungry.” She said, then picked up the cup.

After a few seconds, Taylor turned to her with a small smile, which disappeared when she noticed what Hannah was holding.

Taylor still stepped forward, awkwardly, and extended her hands with great hesitance.

She gave her the large cup, and Taylor held it. Took the plastic top off. Fidgeted. Glanced up, then looked away.

“U-Uhm… c-could you look away?” Taylor squeaked, and before she could stop herself, she let out a sharp snicker, barely stopping herself from bursting into laughter as a hand rose to her mouth, shoulders shaking despite her best efforts.

“I- it’s your blood and you’re- this is so embarrassing.” Taylor groan-whined, still clutching the cup to her chest as her shoulders rose as if to hide her head, and then turned around. The tentacles flared out between them like a giant fleshy wall for good measure as Hannah choked down on her giggles.

Taylor continued to fidget for a bit.

“Y-you don’t mind, right?”

She smiled, cleared her throat.

“I absolutely do not. If blood isn’t enough, I’ll go chop an arm off.”

Taylor gulped, audibly enough for her to hear, then went still and quiet.

Hannah assumed that Taylor was finally drinking.

The tentacles shuddered in what she assumed was delight, and then ten seconds later, a familiar sigh of relief came from her.

“You- you mean that, don’t you?” Taylor asked through the wall, more in wonder than an actual question. “You…” Taylor trailed off, voice wavering. “You brought me books. And you mean it. You mean all of it.” She continued, her tentacles all going limp to pile on the floor like a macabre waist-dress. 

“I do.” She said simply, and then Taylor sniffled, bringing a hand up to rub at her face as she slowly turned, empty cup in hand, crimson on her lips, eyes back to being that eerie series of glowing, veiny cracks before a black background and two red rings for eyes.

Hm, maybe hunger and satiation initiated that response? Odd.

There was a sense of conflict in her stance, how Taylor would lean forward a bit then stop herself, glance up at her then duck her head down, knead her wrist in her other hand as her tentacles slowly rose to wrap around her in a self-hug, hovering.

It could just be awkwardness, because, well, there was something quite awkward about drinking someone’s blood in full view of them. But the body language was both expressive and directed.

She tilted her head, squinted.

“Do you… want a hug?”

Taylor’s eyes darted up to hers. She nodded instantly, twice, then grimaced, face tomato red with a blush as the tentacles rose to hide her, then consciously paused and lowered themselves.

Note to self, make sure to constantly ask if Taylor wants or needs something, because the chance of her saying she wants or needs something will likely remain abysmal for a while.

Why? Was she just that unused to initiating social situations, or was it just a severe lack of positive human touch up to this point? Did she think she didn’t deserve it, maybe?

She could try to help with that. How though?

After a moment of thinking, she hummed, and let her hands go limp at her sides.

“Well, if you want a hug, I believe my schedule is free for one.” She teased, and Taylor blinked at her, before taking a hesitant step forward, almost questioning.

She smiled encouragingly, and Taylor awkwardly stepped up to her, giving her another searching look, asking for permission as she half-raised her hands.

She nodded, smiling wider, spreading her arms. 

Taylor hugged her, dropping the cup to the floor, and Hannah hugged her back. Their almost equal height shifted, and Taylor once again dipped low, hunching a bit and turning to place her ear over her heart.

“Did it help?” She asked, one hand trying in vain to move through Taylor’s tangled locks, and instead skimming through the surface or petting her, the other rubbing up and down Taylor’s back and the base of her tentacles.

Taylor took a moment to settle, tightening her embrace until it was wonderfully snug and restrictive, like being hugged by a needy python, and hummed affirmatively.

“It did. Thank you. So much.” Taylor mumbled, and Hannah kissed the top of her head in reply.

A calm silence settled, and much as Hannah thought it would be awkward to hug someone for so long, it really wasn’t. It helped that no matter how much she expected Taylor to grow tired of holding up almost half of Hannah’s weight, since their shins were practically glued to each other, she simply didn’t.

Eventually, the silence was broken by Taylor clearing her throat quietly.

“You… you talk to Dragon?” Taylor asked, voice calm and with an odd emphasis on Dragon in particular.

It took her a moment to place what the question was supposed to mean.

Then she chuckled quietly.

“Yeah. I forgot she’s famous for a moment. She’s a massive softie and a complete nerd.” She mumbled fondly. “You know, I would not have heard about the fact you were down here if not for her. She found it very unjust that you were being held, and told me. I happened to agree. She’s a wonderful woman.”

Taylor was silent.

“She… Dragon knows me.” Taylor mumbled, sounding very unsure of what to do with that information. “Miss Militia knows me.” She continued, sounding oddly confused.

She chuckled.

“I believe she does.”

Taylor didn’t quite laugh, but her shoulders did shake a little.

Maybe this was a good time to bring it up.

“I… why me?” Taylor asked, and Hannah was suddenly unsure of what to think.

“I just mean… there’s nothing special about me. Why… why help me? Why go as far as adopting me?” Taylor asked, voice small, and though part of her inwardly was exasperated at the constant questions of this type, she understood why the girl asked them.

“I helped you because you needed it, at first. I applied for an adoption because you needed a parent. But, I quickly got side tracked, you see, because I got attached and you’re a wonderful kid.” She started, and Taylor moaned in dismay and embarrassment.

Her smiIe turned into a grin.

“Now, I help you because I want to. I’m going to adopt you because I want to. I think in quite simple ways, Taylor.” She mumbled, and Taylor heaved a shuddering breath, squeezing tighter, the tentacles all shifting around her.

It was such an odd sensation. Pleasant, but odd.

Much like having someone entrust themselves to her, enough to cry in her arms despite their meager attempts to hide it with forcibly stabilized breaths and a ducking mop of curly dark hair.

“Say, Taylor…” She began, and licked her lips, suddenly nervous.

Oh god, Taylor could probably literally hear her heartbeat speed up.

“I’ve been contacted by CPS. I was wondering-” She started, and then spent a moment panicking before resuming. “My current apartment is rather small for both of us. I’ll be getting a new one. I was wondering if you had some kind of preference. A studio room, maybe a uh, view of The Rig, I don’t know?” She shrugged, and Taylor shifted a bit.

“No.” Taylor mumbled, tired and sleepy. “Just you’s enough.” She slurred.

Her cheeks were starting to hurt and cramp from how wide she was smiling.

“How long since you’ve slept?” She asked, her smile audible.

Taylor sniffled again, then cleared her throat.

“Was a little delirious. I don’t know. I’m- sorry for being clingy. You can go if you want.” Taylor mumbled.

“It’s only being clingy if the person wants space and you aren’t giving it to them. I’m quite relaxed like this, for your information.” She mumbled, then sighed in contentment, because damn it she was.

She was destressing at rates she didn’t know were even possible outside of drugs or sex. Not that she’d had either, but eh, comparable experiences had been had.

“You are just adorable, you know that?” She murmured, and Taylor let out an embarrassed whimper as she sagged further into her.

Hannah fiddled with the red scarf the girl still wore, and an idea popped up.

“Do you want me to teach you how to tie a scarf into a face cover?” She asked, blurted out, really.

Taylor looked up at her, eyes back to normal, chin digging into her collarbone. Her eyes flicked to Hannah’s downturned scarf and facemask, and she gave her an embarrassed nod.

She beamed down at Taylor, and tapped her back.

“Okay, let go for a moment and turn around.”

Taylor’s motivation vanished, and she turned her head to place her ear on her heart again.

“Nevermind.” Taylor grumbled.

Hannah burst out laughing as she squeezed Taylor tight.

Chapter Text

In the end, after many more repetitions of Taylor’s insecure questions to do with how ‘clingy’ she was being, and many more reassurances, Taylor managed to cajole her onto the bed, Hannah beneath Taylor as she used her chest as a pillow.

Not that there was a whole lot there, but Taylor didn’t seem to mind that over her strange fascination with Hannah’s heartbeat.

In lieu of conversation, Taylor instead read a book she brought, one of her tentacles twisted into a knot to not only keep the book upright and tilted off the side of the bed, but also so its razor-tip edge could carefully flip the pages.

It was the calmest she’d felt in years, even if this whole situation was a bit odd.

From her research into adoptive families, it was a slow, grueling process to become a family. Time, familiarity, trust, they all moved slowly, according to whoever was willing to answer on the internet. Even the adoptive agency warned her of such.

For her and Taylor, it seemed to come incredibly easy.

She didn’t really know what parents did with their kids, but cuddling was… a thing, right? Probably?

She didn’t really have any perspective on the subject. Her parenting was the Wards, pretty much.

Regardless, she gradually melted into the bed, absentmindedly humming a lullaby she remembered from the deepest depths of her childhood, idly running her fingers through Taylor’s hair, her other gently scratching a tentacle that shuddered with unceasing delight like a wriggly snake and made Taylor sigh in satisfaction. 

The lullaby itself was… not really a lullaby, in truth. All she remembered was a small, specific part of it, the words too muffled and blurred by time to be anything more than a gentle susurrus hum, some sounds that might vaguely sound like words but weren’t legible enough to be.

But she still remembered it, and even if she’d stopped humming it to herself on lonely sleepless nights to comfort herself almost two decades ago, its warmth hadn’t faded.

Taylor seemed to agree, because eventually, she sagged asleep, only to startle awake when her tentacle dropped the book on the floor with a light scrape-thud. After a grumble, her tentacles began to paw around the floor as Taylor began to lift her head.

Hannah’s hand pulled her back down.

“Just sleep. You can read some other time.” She murmured, and Taylor didn’t speak, instead agreeing with her by going completely and utterly limp, wriggling her hands into a better position.

Taylor’s left hand rested on her shoulder, and her right curled up to Hannah’s left forearm as she worked on the mess of tangles in Taylor’s locks.

“Thank you.” Taylor breathed, exhausted and almost reverent, her tone filled with weight the empty words couldn’t possibly convey.

Hannah continued humming the lullaby.

It didn’t take long for Taylor to fall asleep.

Soon, Hannah followed, for the first time in years falling asleep without meaning to, too relaxed and warm and content to fight it, smiling faintly.

Tomorrow, she was woken up by an obnoxious ding, and the slight rattle of a food tray burrowing out of the wall to present itself to the room.

It took her a couple minutes to fully wake up and remember everything that led her to waking up wreathed in a cocoon of velvet steel, her daughter tightly glued to her like a very weighted blanket.

Then she paused at her own thoughts, surprised at the slip of the proverbial tongue. Then she frowned thoughtfully.

She should probably try to think of Taylor as her daughter in her own head. The first time was an accident, but there was no reason for it to be. It would make the transition easier.

That aside, she wriggled a bit, or tried.

Taylor didn’t really let her, her tentacles tightening at the slightest motion in reaction.

The third time she even let out a tiny whine.

Hannah huffed a laugh that blew curly hair away from her face, feeling her own hair tangle and frizz from the pillow and her hours of idly fidgeting on it, whether in sleep or reality.

But she did have other obligations, much to her dismay, so as another hour or two passed in a sleepy haze of drifting in and out of a half-sleeping fugue, she realized what she would have to do.

Waking up Taylor felt much like kicking a puppy, or so she imagined.

But she endured, and Taylor’s embarrassment to do with her ‘clinginess’ seemed to have utterly vanished by now, because even after waking up she still stuck to Hannah like a limpet for a while until she began insisting that she had work to do.

Once again, Taylor asked her if she would come back.

Once again, she smiled and swore she would.

Then she paused, grabbed Taylor by her cheeks, and stuck an exaggerated kiss on her forehead, before briefly ruffling her hair and ducking out of the room, finding it endlessly endearing how Taylor’s face turned to that odd, blushy mix between mortification and joyful satisfaction.

Morning patrol was nice, for once.

She rarely felt sore or stiff, courtesy of regeneration, but she’d never felt so completely and utterly rested before, mind, body and soul.

She let the wind whip her hair, tapped her free foot, smiled at nothing, and hummed to herself the whole way. She even leaned back on her motorcycle, and tugged the helmet off, uncaring of the risk.

Well, not uncaring, just less anal about it. She still drove carefully.

Velocity could stare at her with that questioning, baffled look all he wanted, she was in a great mood and nothing could ruin that.

She stopped by the ocean when they went around the Boardwalk, and luxuriated in the scent of fresh air and ocean, even if only for about five minutes.

Then she quickly went to a few shops to get things for Taylor, and chatted with a barista about how to make actual, good coffee.

It was apparently a lot more complicated than she’d thought. Her appreciation for the faceless people making her coffee rose significantly.

Then she idly spent some time ruminating on the city itself as their patrol continued.

Ever since Golden Dawn happened a year ago, things had miraculously begun to get much better. For the world too, but most importantly for her, the USA and Brockton Bay itself.

She supposed that losing the world’s two strongest parahumans in exchange for killing all three Endbringers had been a fine trade indeed. 

Even if nobody really knew how or why either of them vanished before and after, the world was getting better.

And despite all the ways that made her life better, all that she could think about was how great it was that the world decided to stop sucking so much right as Taylor’s life started.

Like, for example, tourism. That was a thing again.

She could take Taylor on a vacation, just the two of them, have fun, visit Europe or go to a national park for a camping trip. Or visit a water park, or a zoo, or anything Taylor hadn’t done, really.

Hannah just… wanted to make memories with her. It was one of her own personal regrets that she never had someone to make such things with. No father to fondly remember half-baked camping trips with, no mother to teach her how to put on makeup or help her fuss over a social event or another, just harried professionals fixing her brows and nudging her around to ‘stand right’.

Her life up to now was mostly a vague blur of cape activities, nothing that truly stood out, and even less of it standing out because it was pleasant.

She didn’t want that for Taylor.

Once her patrol with Velocity was over, two hours later, she elected to gather some knick knacks she’d gotten for Taylor, her daughter, largely inane things, and went to check on her, bag in hand.

Her plan was derailed by what she saw as she turned the corner. Vista, sitting in front of the depression in the wall where the entrance to the cell was, kicking her feet as she sat on the dingy metal stool, leaning onto the small outcrop next to the sound console with an elbow, staring up at the camera.

She couldn’t hear Taylor, but Vista was a good kid. She could guess they would get along just fine.

With her seemingly permanent smile widening, she turned back and left them to it. She had more than enough chores and tasks to fill her time with.

After an hour of phonecalls, she turned on her laptop, and began apartment hunting.

Unfortunately, things weren’t quite advanced enough for everyone to put their sales up online. Which left her with more phone calls, calling one real estate agency and setting up meetings to check the apartments.

Thankfully, her exacting standards made the selection very small.

Good view of the sea and The Rig, sunny, and large.

There were only six apartments that fit such standards, across the three agencies she called.

Two days and she’d be done.

While scouring the net for other things that she might need to actually fill up an apartment of the size she was looking at, she heard her phone buzz, and frowned in puzzlement as she picked it up.

What would her and Taylor's temporary therapist want right now?

“Miss Elena?”

“Ah, hello Miss Militia. I was hoping to talk to you for a bit. Off the record, of course, this is a more personal meeting than not. It has to do with Taylor. I’m afraid my flight is tomorrow, so we’ll have to do it sometime today if you are willing.”

She blinked, and swallowed.

“I uh, of course. Where do you wish to meet? I’m free.”

Elena hummed, something shuffling on the other end.

“Would one of the meeting rooms in The Rig work? In say, forty minutes?”

“The private ones?”

“Of course.” Elena scoffed.

“I’ll be waiting in the hallway for you then.”

After some brief pleasantries, they got into the room, and took their seats.

Private meeting rooms were essentially an interrogation room without any of the recording equipment or microphones or the rare but still sometimes used one-sided mirror window.

And much more comfortable. Nice carpet on the floor, a small table, and two cushioned armchairs on either side of it.

A little less claustrophobic and with a coffee in between them, it would be a room not unfit to be inside a cape-servicing cafe.

“So, what is it you wished to discuss?” She asked, hands steepled on her stomach as she leaned back a bit, elbows on the armrests.

Elena hummed, leaning back comfortably, tapping at her chair.

“I’m afraid I don’t do things like this often, nor did I have much time to structure my thoughts on this, so, do forgive me for any incomprehensiveness. To start with, are you aware under what circumstances a medical professional is allowed to disclose confidential patient information?”

Hannah tilted her head, opened her mouth, then froze, eyes widening as a bone deep chill turned her blood to slurry. She hurriedly sat straighter, elbows on the table.

“Is- is she still…?” She started, swallowing, dread filling her as her fists clenched.

Taylor’s apparent mental health had improved dramatically since their first meeting, but she had been a fool to think her suicidal tendencies would vanish or fade so fast, it seemed, especially if Elena saw it fit to break patient confidentiality.

“Well, no.” Elena said, dragging her out of her assumptions, and she raised her head to give the woman an angrily curious stare because- fuck, don’t scare me like that woman!

Elena made a complicated face, then a dubious sound.

“Actually, yes, most likely, but that is not why I’m here. Besides in the case of overtly suicidal danger, there is another way a doctor can share information. And that is with permission. Permission which Taylor has given me.” Elena said, and steepled her hands in much the same way Hannah had.

Oh, that… she wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

“On a surface level, when she expressed that permission, I had viewed her apparent trust of you as a good thing. With time, I have come to believe it is more of a double edged sword. Taylor has shared… a lot with me, over the week I’ve been here. Most if not all of it, admittedly, at your request of cooperation. She has told me many, many things, which have come together to form a cautiously hopeful yet fragile view of her potential future development. I have several concerns, however, I am only going to share certain ones that pertain to you and your future custody of her.” Elena continued, and Hannah hurriedly nodded to show she was listening.

Elena took a moment to straighten her hair as she thought, then took her previous pose and resumed.

“The first note of concern is the fact that she has severe abandonment and trust issues. Her view of the actions of others is almost entirely based in pre-emptive mitigation of the harm that may be caused by them abandoning her, regardless of the odds of such an event. For example, she has noted that she has thought of what she would do if you abandoned her, multiple times, despite your constant promises that you will not.”

Elena took a moment to stare as she thought through her following words.

Hannah took a deep breath, and nodded.

Okay, so, time and patience might help with that? Hopefully? It was heartbreaking to think about.

“This mental defensiveness makes it hard to build or maintain trust, and extremely easy to break it. You must take care to make no commitments you cannot keep, as her natural inclination at this point is to view such things as the first step in an inevitable severing of ties. Internally, Miss Hebert has no trust in her own capabilities or worth; the effects of the abuse campaign have shattered her self-esteem, and the incident with her father only exarcerbated those issues. Expect her to be disbelieving and confused about even the most basic of niceties and gestures of kindness for a while.” Elena said.

Even as she nodded, her eyes glazed over, thinking of dozens of small interactions and comments that painted that exact same picture, all eerily accurate with Elena’s assertions.

“Everyone that Taylor has ever had bonds or connections to has either died or abandoned her. Whether that is her grandparents, her parents, her best friend, distant friends, even a pet, everyone. Thus, she still believes firmly, that soon, you will leave her as well, and views the current state of affairs as some kind of dreamland limbo, a temporary thing that is wonderful and she must cherish before it inevitably leaves her again, at which point I believe she will likely… do something drastic, or go down a self-destructive spiral that no therapist would be able to help her out of.”

She took another deep, shaky breath, and nodded, feeling her eyes sting with salt.

Fuck that was… horrible.

She swallowed the rock in her throat, and motioned for Elena to go on, feeling a bone-deep dread form in her very soul.

“So, regardless of what hoops you have to jump through for PR purposes, make sure that you stay alive. It’s not just your own life riding on your shoulders now. Get more body armor, get a helmet, wear power armor if you have to, find a way. If you die, I’m afraid it’s frighteningly likely that she will in one form or another, follow you.”

She closed her eyes and bit her tongue, resisting the urge to moan in despair.

Goddamn it.

“Moving on, she has issues with authority that I find very unwise to ignore. After whatever is going on with her confinement is dealt with, I think it would be a tremendously terrible idea to have her sign up with the Wards, at least not before extensive return to a civilian life and at least a few months of regular therapy. And only if she agrees. She distrusts authority to an extent I usually see in people with paranoid schizophrenia. She was practically glaring at me for the entire two hours of our first meeting, even as she spoke. Further discussion on her opinions paints a grim picture. If she joined the Wards now or in a couple months, every order she received would be perceived as having an ulterior motive or seven, every mundane duty or task or minor criticism would be seen as a discrete attack and punishment, every request a thinly veiled order which would sound like it had an unspoken ‘or else’ hidden behind it… it would be a hellish environment for her.”

What could she do but nod again?

This was so much more muddled under the surface than she’d thought. So much more complicated.

“However, there is another problem that ties to everything I previously mentioned. Both due to low self-esteem and the incident with her father, she doesn't trust herself whatsoever. Ordinarily, most people who distrust authority trust only themselves, and their close friends and allies. Since that avenue isn’t available for her, normally, what would happen is this; she would reduce herself to an automaton. She would listen to no orders, but she would also not make her own choices because in her mind, any choice made by herself is obviously the wrong choice to make. Nothing and nobody is trustworthy, and slowly, she would begin to lose touch with reality. It’s something I’ve seen before, but I do not claim to be omniscient, this is merely a likely possibility. Before you arrived, that was what she was going towards. With you in the mix, this changes. Her way out of the previously mentioned mindset is her connection to you.” Elena said, almost adopting a lecturing tone.

Hannah simply listened at this point, digesting the information as it came.

“What she chose was to pick one person that treated her well, that showed her kindness and treated her as a person and an equal. A single person that she has chosen to put all her faith and hopes in, and latch onto them with tooth and nail. A sort of… last attempt, if you will.” Elena said, and gave her an obvious, meaningful look.

“I… oh.” She simply said, in realization.

Her chest felt tight, and not in a good way.

Elena nodded.

“Exactly. Oh. Consider the fact that after such a horrifically traumatic event, people have a tendency to latch onto the first person that comforts them like a duckling imprinting on its mother…. What this volatile cocktail has ended up doing, is putting you in a unique position where Taylor trusts you and only you. Not herself, not the PRT, not me, nor anyone else she might distantly know. Maybe not even reality itself. In light of contradictory information, she’s very likely to just accept whatever you’re telling her is the truth rather than what she can see.”

That- that was possible?

No, of course it was.

It was how The Fallen operated. Faith over truth and reality.

She felt faintly dizzy.

“You’re in a position where you have both the capability of inflicting genuinely horrific mental damage to Taylor, or forming a deep life-changing connection with her that will allow her to very slowly begin making her way to a healthier outlook on life. If her trust is broken, she might decide that her last attempt at forging a connection will be just that; a last attempt. Or, in this theoretical circumstance of you doing something that breaks her trust, she might twist her mind into knots to avoid such pain, choosing to rationalize that breach and simply follow you to not have to acknowledge that breach of trust, essentially enforcing self-ignorance to avoid further trauma and giving her autonomy and control to you entirely.” Elena said.

She gulped, leaning back, eyes involuntarily widening in what she could best describe as genuine fear.

This- this was all way too much.

Too much power to have.

Not because it was tempting, but because she didn’t trust herself to be able to not trip and drop it all on the floor in scattered pieces. It felt like she’d just been told to try and hold onto a cracked statue that is one strong exhale away from cracking to dust in her hands.

“You- you’re certain?” She croaked out, and Elena grimaced sympathetically before nodding.

“As certain as I can be with such little time given to work and understand my patient. Two dozen hours of therapy are hardly more than the baseline to get to know the rough outlines of a patient. If I’m correct, Taylor has become emotionally dependent on you so fast and to such an extent that it is unhealthy and highly concerning, and this attachment is likely to only grow significantly. But this same dependency is, frankly, the only thing keeping her active and willing to do anything at the moment. She doesn’t care about herself, she doesn’t trust herself, and she trusts nobody else that could possibly try to help her. If you had any notions of backing out of this, I’m afraid you’ll have to abandon them permanently.”

She nodded, gulping audibly.

She had no notions of backing out, but still, this- this was a lot to just throw on a person in the span of a couple minutes.

“I’m not trying to frighten you, even though I can see that I have done so, I am trying to impress on you how important it is that you tread carefully, and tread close.”

She nodded, her stomach twisting into knots.

“I understand.” She croaked out, and then cleared her throat to repeat herself.

Elena smiled, and nodded back.

“Good. Now, to elaborate and expand on some other and already stated concerns. Firstly, you should try to get her to talk more about herself. She is reluctant, but it will help you understand what to do and what not to do better than I probably could. Secondly, according to herself, the last time she had any positive physical contact was over two years ago. All touch-based contact during that time has been highly negative to her. Her father's depression left him contact-averse at most times, and the abuse campaign in her school life has led to a negative association with touch. Expect her to be extremely averse prior to contact, incredibly clingy during, and extremely reluctant to end.” Elena started, and Hannah blew an impressed breath.

“That’s… very accurate, actually.” She mumbled, and Elena raised a questioning brow.

“Oh it’s just… I went to visit her yesterday, and after a brief moment of excitement where she was about to tackle me, she shirked back and asked permission. I had to initiate contact. Then I gave her something to drink, and she was very shy and hesitant about reinitiating, but after some prodding and pushing, I got her to hug me instead for the first time. Then she didn’t let go of me for what must have been at least… thirteen hours?”

Elena’s brows raised incredulously, eyes wide.

“I uh, we cuddled and slept in the same bed, we didn’t hug for that long. But she didn’t let go once. And by the end of it I practically had to peel her off in the morning to go on patrol.”

The woman continued to stare before fixing her expression, which remained slightly puzzled, and clearing her throat.

“That’s… a bit more extreme than I was expecting, but It seems I hit the nail on the head there. Moving on?”

She nodded.

“Now, due to the PRT’s asinine safety rules and proceedings, which leads to a severe shortage of psychologists to send around, I do not have time with her to make any official diagnoses, I can in private confidence tell you at least some of the things I believe might be making her life harder, if only so you know what kind of specialist to go looking for when you get her a psychologist that doesn’t work for the PRT. First of all, PTSD. She claims that imagining corpses or a lot of blood makes her choke up and start shivering, and the girl had decided that the best way to get over that was with exposure therapy. Meaning that she spent most of her first week in captivity imagining scenes of gore and carnage to numb herself to it out of some kind of desire for self-punishment or a way to get rid of a weakness, possibly both. Naturally, that is not a great way of dealing with things, and the trauma of her eating her father is still there, just blunted through self-torture, essentially.”

Hannah raised both hands to cover her face with them, sighing out a miserable breath.

That sounded exactly like what Taylor would have done, yes. She should have thought about that being the case.

“Secondly, we talked about the incident. When you put a barrel to her head,-”

She flinched.

“- according to her, she debated placing her teeth on your neck to make you pull it. She wasn’t thinking of biting, just threatening to, to force you to kill her. The only reason she didn’t is that she was willing to listen to your commands more than she was willing to listen to herself and her own desires. She didn’t really think you would be all that broken up about her death. Prior to the incident, she didn’t believe you had any kind of genuine investment in her beyond being inordinately kind. Again, just a note to further prove my claims. Be very careful with what you tell her.”

She shrunk in on herself, raising her hands to grab at her hair with a groan.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

She had been under the assumption that things had gotten significantly better for Taylor since they began interacting, but that was apparently very incorrect.

“As you can guess from that tidbit, she is, and likely will remain for quite some time, suicidal. I might be repeating myself here, but that is fine, so I will reiterate with this added context; you could easily drive her to suicide by breaking her trust and abandoning her, or you could abuse her horrifically because her trust in you could  possibly combine with her self-hatred to make her believe that she deserves everything she gets or drive her into denial, making her believe you could never be wrong about anything.”

“I would never do that.” She said, lifting her head to glare at Elena, who seemed more approving of her bark than not.

“Good. Frankly, the idea of letting anyone have such power over another person makes me sick with unease, but this specific circumstance leaves me with no other option but to trust in you, your hero career, and your coworkers’ comments to believe you wouldn’t do such a thing, because there really isn’t a much better alternative with how she is like at the moment.” Elena said pointedly.

“To get back on track though, suicidal ideation, if you’re familiar with the term. Even after she is released, be very mindful of her moods, and make frank, deep discussion as normal and frequent as you can get. People are uncomfortable talking about their deepest thoughts, but with how much she trusts you, if you ask, she is likely to answer, and thus you can work on helping her more than the average parent that would likely get stonewalled immediately. Next problem.” Elena stated, like she was reading off a mental list, which she probably was.

“Touch starvation. Good work on fixing that, keep it up. Though be aware that with your lack of parents and Taylor’s current issues, it’s very likely that you will both be interacting in a way that most people will find overly affectionate and strange, or perhaps even creepy.”

She blinked at her, brows furrowed.

“I… what?”

Elena stared, then worked her mouth for a moment.

“Miss Militia, think of it like this. As far as I’m aware, you did not really have parents, even before the events that led you here.”

She nodded cautiously.

“So, you do not really know what most people consider as parental physical boundaries. You just don’t have the experience for a frame of reference. For example, like you said, you spent the night cuddled up to your future adoptive daughter, who is mere months away from fifteen years old. You’re only thirty years old, additionally. Most people consider ten years old to be too old to be doing such things with. Even eight is stretching it for the vast majority of people. Combine that with Taylor’s desire for touch that appears to be much bigger than I’d thought, people might be uncomfortable with the affection shown. Some suspicious people might even see it as incestuous.”

“That’s… Okay.” She said without inflection, faintly disturbed that someone could read hugs and cuddles as something incestuous.

But not surprised. People could jump to some bizarre conclusions. She still remembered how Gallant had thought Vista had a crush on Armsmaster before realizing said crush was directed at him.

“Just be aware of societal boundaries and try not to be too open about how you and her do things. I’m not saying to change how you do things, absolutely not, I actually think your way of handling this is helping her a lot more than the average person who would be extremely uncomfortable doing as you are doing, I’m saying to not advertise it too much. Taylor already knows not to, this is mostly information for you because you lack the experience and social context most people have. Just follow Taylor’s lead on this part. She has a better perspective.”

Additionally, she could easily imagine someone saying something insensitive and derisive over a teenager being clingy to their mother, adoptive or not. People could always be annoying and thoughtless.

And Elena was definitely right that she didn’t really know what parental boundaries were.

“...Alright. Don’t change things, and follow Taylor’s lead when it comes to visibility?” She summarized.

Elena smiled and nodded.

“Precisely. Next problem. Claustrophobia. Her cell is not doing her any favors, but cells rarely come in sizes and they certainly don’t in The Rig. When she’s out however, try to make her living space large and open. Alternatively, light colors, and lots of time outdoors, though I recognize the last bit might be a tad unsafe in a city like this. Next, depression. I don’t believe I need to say much about this. Get her a long-term therapist asap.”

She nodded.

“The moment she’s out and wishes to see one.”

Elena paused for a moment, then hummed.

“Next, her new appendages. She seems to dislike them to some extent, and she is very self-conscious about them. Try to reaffirm them somehow, or include them in her body image, try to help her accept them and feel good about them. Try to make her see their merits, from both utilitarian and cosmetic standpoints. Frankly, the amount and types of therapy this girl needs are ridiculous. From anxiety and depression to hug therapy-”

“Hug therapy is a thing?” She blurted out, feeling more than a little overwhelmed by it all, and Elena snorted in amusement.

“Absolutely. And you’re doing a fantastic job of providing it, so keep going. She also needs stress management therapy. Granted, the task of getting her all of this and having them be effective is nigh impossible, but you should at least have an idea of what kind of experts to look for, and focus on the biggest problems. Keep in mind that therapy is a long and slow process, so don’t be impatient.”

Elena yawned, rubbing at her eyes before hissing out a sigh.

“That aside, I checked the legalities of the situation. Human flesh isn’t considered food regardless of power, so despite my best efforts, it seems Piggot is not doing anything I could get her in actual trouble for. I’ll try to push things higher on the ladder, but the Fallen have been taking up most of the headspace there recently. A short chat with Dragon led me to giving a very glowing and insisting review on your adoption paper as well. I believe that is all I wished to say. I’m going to go now, I have to pack my things. Have a good day, and be aware that so far, you’ve been doing an amazing job considering your circumstances.” Elena said, and immediately got up, pushing her chair back.

“Ah. I, uh, thank you.” She mumbled, still a little shell-shocked from being smacked in the face with how much Taylor needed and how wrong she’d been about the girl’s current mental stability. “Goodbye.” She said absent-mindedly to the closing door, and stared at the table for another half hour, blinking only when the stinging got too intense.

Then with another huge sigh, she pushed herself up, and left the room.

Chapter Text

It took her a few hours to organize all the information Elena had dumped into her lap, and probably just as long to turn them into actionable possibilities.

By the end of it she was both exhausted and oddly hopeful.

It felt like Elena had just given her a map to the minefield she didn’t even know she had been blindly tap dancing through up until now and surviving through sheer chance, and while the information weighed heavy on her mind, it was far preferable to accidentally hurting Taylor in any way.

With a need to clear her head for a bit, she sought out Dragon.

She found her drone instead, deactivated inside Colin’s suspiciously empty lab.

After a quick kidnapping of said drone, she texted her instead.

Eventually, the drone whirred to life uselessly, held firmly beneath her iron grip as she brought it up to eye level like holding an overengineered pancake up for examination.

She stared at the avatar that took up the front screen for a moment, before she raised a brow.

“Anything you meddled in that I should be aware of?”

Dragon chuckled.

“A lot of things actually! I pushed your application up the ladder considerably, got Miss Elena’s commendation as well as everyone else with some weight to their name that you know about, blocked at least two discrete attempts to hush it up and shove it aside, and managed to delay higher clearance for Taylor’s case by a couple days. I also managed to remove the Master 1 rating that Piggot was trying to give the girl.”

Hannah’s brows furrowed.

“Just what is that bitch’s problem?” She grumbled under her breath, glancing to the side, before wincing as her brain caught up to her words. “Er, I mean-”

“I believe her problem is being a bigot with more spite and pride than rationality where anything man-eating and vaguely inhumanly shaped is concerned.” Dragon chirped, brightly, and Hannah paused to blink at the drone for a moment, before snorting a short piel of laughter.

She cleared her throat, and smiled.

“Thank you, Dragon. I don’t mean just for this, I mean… in general. If you ever need anything…”

Dragon hummed.

“Well, there is something, potentially, in the future. Of course, I’m not certain or even suspecting such a case, and this is most certainly not advice nor command under appeasement and protection by the law in any way, but there might be a case in the near future where Colin might decide to do something very unwise and very stupid, and I would like any support you could give him in this entirely theoretical and unlikely scenario that I did not instigate, support, or vaguely encourage in any way shape or form.” Dragon said in a single breath, and Hannah blinked at the drone again.

Then she turned to stare up at the heavens with a vaguely pleading look of exasperation, tugging her mask down.

“What the fuck did any of that mean?” She asked.

Dragon giggled.

“Colin might do something unwise, soon-ish. Help him do it, if you can, because I won’t be able to. Oh and, do not tell me or anyone else, under any circumstances, what he is doing, because it might not be fully within the law, and I must never know of it. That’s all.”

“...Well, that’s not vague at all.” She murmured sarcastically, then shook her head. “Okay, as long as it doesn’t get me in serious trouble, deal. Still, thank you.”

“Oh it’s fine, I had blackmail material in case you refused.” Dragon said nonchalantly, and Hannah absentmindedly nodded, before doing a double take.

“I- what?” She blurted out, and saw Dragon smirk.

“Well, you see, I do have access to the camera feed of Taylor’s cell. And I happen to have a very incriminating recording of you and Taylor being a pile of sleepy sugar. Surely, such a sight would make its rounds online with frightening and unstoppable speed and reach, revealing your heinous manipulations to the public.” Dragon said, voice faux-arrogant and snooty, and Hannah chuckled as she dropped her head into her palm, letting go of the drone so it could hover in front of her like it was trying to.

It was just a joke, she knew, and Dragon would never be allowed to put such footage online, but it was mildly odd to think about the fact their interactions were technically all recorded.

“Truly a terrible fate. In that case, I’m pretty sure Assault still has that picture of your experimental recon drone. You know, the one where you’re tangled in a bunch of wires, looking all sad and dripping wet with sewage water while you pout on the front screen.” She pretended to muse, rubbing her chin with a wide smile on her face.

“Ah. Mutually assured destruction, I see. A valid tactic, albeit crude.” Dragon sniffed, before crumbling into a fit of giggles.

After a moment of shared levity, Dragon’s smile shifted into something more knowing.

“So, what did you really call me about?”

Hannah took a moment to think about her reply.

“I suppose… I’m not really sure. I just… felt a bit overwhelmed. The psychiatrist assigned to me and Taylor took me in for a bit of a private chat before she left. And it seems that Taylor’s going to be needing a whole lot more care and help than I thought. Pile that onto the trial, the new apartment hunting, the meetings, work, patrols, it’s all just…” She vaguely made a swirly gesture next to her head. “All a bit too much.”

Dragon smiled understandingly.

“Ah. And you don’t have any ways to unwind.” Dragon correctly guessed, and she bobbed her head in agreement.

“I never did have good coping mechanisms for stress. My main de-stressing method has been hanging out with Taylor actually, but right now just thinking about her throws me into a spiral of overthinking. Productive overthinking, I’ve come up with quite a lot of things to do and activities and the like, but I feel like I need to do something simultaneously not boring but brainless enough for my thoughts to cool down. I’m going to go soon, but…” She trailed off, and sighed, making the same gesture next to her head.

Overthinking.

Dragon hummed, before gasping.

“Oh, Colin has some music tracks from an acoustic Tinker. They’re all designed scientifically to be perfect destressors. One of them lowers stress by forty percent average, another one induces sleep about twenty eight percent faster on average than any other song, and the third one is semi-hypnotic, meant for meditation practice and such, using specific audio waves and white noise. I could send them to your phone if it would help. I’d suggest we do some group activity, but it would be a tad awkward with me in a drone and Colin off doing god knows what. Everyone else is patrolling or in their civies, I believe.” Dragon hummed.

Well, it wasn’t quite what she was looking for, but it would do.

She smiled.

“Thank you. Sure, send it over. Also, I’m not surprised that Colin has gone with the mathematically correct set of tracks to be his choice of music.” She noted with amusement, and Dragon chuckled.

“I’m afraid I’ll have to go now. The Guild will be helping with a raid on the Fallen soon, and since we won’t be scheduling anything, I think it’s best I go back to work.”

She smiled, and nodded.

Dragon did the same, and then the drone slowly powered down, the screen flicking to black as it dropped onto her bed.

She grabbed it and put it on her desk, before opening her phone and connecting it to the MP3 player she had been planning to give Taylor.

A few seconds later, three mp3 files were sent to her.

“She’s not a Tinker.” She repeated for the third time, feeling any relaxation she might have obtained from Colin’s music choice slowly flee her grasp.

The guard shook his head.

Her brow twitched.

Maybe it was because she was feeling faintly woozy from the blood loss, or maybe it was because this sudden concern of electronics stank of Piggot giving stupid warnings to the guards just to annoy her and try to isolate her from Taylor for whatever reason the woman would cook up.

“Maybe she isn’t, but without official power testing we can’t just let electronics inside.”

She grit her teeth, and let the knife at her belt transform into something else, allowing her power to run free.

“If she was a Tinker she would have gone insane by now, and she would have been transferred to a Tinker-secure cell under the PRT’s building, not in these M/S cells. You can either waste both of our time by forcing me to call Armsmaster to confirm, or you can think logically for a moment and let me take the player with me.” She said, allowing a hint of frustration to peek through.

“Well she sure went insane a week ago, so this argument doesn’t hold much merit, Miss Militia. I’m afraid you’ll have to keep electronics out of the cell for now.”

The second guard nodded in agreement.

God help her and her slowly dwindling patience.

She dug into her pocket, and after a brief consideration, called Dragon, the only Tinker in the world more famous than Armsmaster.

Ignoring the urge to smugly smirk at the guards as she walked past them, MP3 player in her pocket, she quickly located Taylor’s cell and opened it.

One look at Taylor’s upside down deer-in-headlights expression as she stared down at her from where she had been using her tentacles to push her chest against the ceiling took every ounce of frustration and weariness she had been bottling up, and vaporized it.

She tried to blurt out some kind of question, but it jumbled up with a puzzled, baffled sound and a sputter of confusion, followed by a burst of amusement, so she just choked and coughed out a short bark of laughter, one hand shakily lowering the bag onto the floor with the other tugged her mask down and covered her mouth.

She turned back to Taylor, and felt her laughter quickly leave as she took in her expression.

It had gone from surprised to hurt, eyes averted and heavy while she hurriedly lowered herself, stumbling upright and hugging herself.

It took a moment to identify what exactly the landmine she stepped on was, and she quickly made a sound of realization.

“Wait, I wasn’t laughing at you.” She hurried out, and Taylor glanced at her. “Just, I wasn’t expecting that sight, you know? Did you get bored?” She ventured light heartedly.

Taylor grimaced a little, and nodded while mumbling something inaudible, face still adorably red, seeming to accept her reasoning as her expression shifted to something more open.

She stepped forward, arms spread wide in a casual invitation, and Taylor looked at her for a moment, the blush deepening, before she ducked her head even further down, as if she was trying to hide her head into her chest cavity, shoulders slouching, and stepped forward with quick, small steps, like a skittish rabbit.

Then her head met Hannah’s collarbone, and Taylor kept moving, and then they were hugging again.

A dual sigh of contentment left both of them, eerily synchronized, but Taylor didn’t care about that.

She inhaled, slow and deep, and felt her brain turn to fuzzy mush as Hannah’s scent flooded her brain like a physical force, washing away her tension. The complex palette of gunpowder and earthiness and living human with a dash of something entirely unique and Hannah burned itself into her brain, flooding her with feelings of safety and contentment as if she was inhaling sunshine and warmth and a lazy morning.

She slumped forward with a mumble that was supposed to be a sentence before her higher brain functions gave up, sighing again.

“Did you just sniff me?” Hannah asked, voice warbling with laughter, and she had to take a moment to push down the instinctive assumption that the laughter was mocking and directed at her to nod.

“People have… unique scents. You smell nice.” She provided for an answer, and ignored the socially aware part of her brain that was wailing in mortified despair to rub her cheek against Hannah’s chest, ear to heart.

Then the internal wailing turned to embarrassed sobbing and she grimaced.

“I… I’m sorry if it’s- weird?” She mumbled, and Hannah kissed the top of her head in reply, soothing patterns and rubs walking up and down her back, mixed with the light scratch of nails through her shirt.

She remembered her mom doing the exact same thing when she was small, adjusting her middle school backpack straps while she whined about not wanting to go.

A veritable flare of warm, bittersweet emotions drowned the last of her legibility, her eyes stinging with something nostalgic and warm and happy and safe.

This was where she felt like a person, like she was safe and loved, regardless of whether or not that was true.

Nails gently tickled the middle of her back, followed by a soft, soothing thumb, and she felt her spine liquify with an inarticulate mumble as her eyes slipped shut, held up by nothing except Hannah herself and her half-limp arms wrapped around her waist.

“It might be a bit weird, but it’s weird in a cute endearing way, so don’t worry about it, bug.” Hannah murmured into her hair.

“Bug?” She murmured, and Hannah huffed in amusement.

“Your body language reminds me of a praying mantis, a lot of the time. Careful, slow, patient. You move like you think and measure every movement a few seconds before you do it. And I always found some bugs to be cute. Like mantises, and moths. So I find it cute. Bug’s a good nickname. If you want one, of course. Do you dislike it?” Hannah asked, kindly, softly.

She let the tears roll down her cheeks as she made a negative hum.

Her mom had a nickname for her too.

The red things moved to entrap her visitor further, feeling all the stress and restlessness driving her insane just melt away like ice cubes turning to water over a grate with every passing second.

She adjusted herself until she was right over Hannah’s heart, and pressed her ear to the dark green halter top thingie Hannah liked to wear..

Thump-thump , pause, thump-thump, something went inside, followed by an audible rush of liquid, and it was a reassurance that Hannah was alive and real, a heady feeling filling her, to know that she was trusted near something so vital and fragile and so much more important and inspiring than herself.

Trusted to hug, trusted to not lose control, trusted with one of the most famous heroes’ identities. Trusted to one day share a home with her, should the trial not send her to the Birdcage.

Tears of happiness stung her eyes, so she closed them and let them begin their journey.

Her thoughts were tainted by the Birdcage however.

What she had viewed as a nice, quiet hole to jump down into and disappear forever, now felt like a bottomless abyss that would never let her see Hannah again, and that scared her. It worried her.

She didn’t want to go to the Birdcage anymore.

“What’s wrong?” Hannah murmured, in that way that mothers tended to do, like they had some bizarre telepathic skill that told them of dark thoughts, and the comparison made her tears hasten as she sniffled.

“I- I’m just scared. I don’t want to go to the Birdcage anymore. I- I should probably go, but I- I don’t want to. I want to… be here. I’m scared they’ll send me anyway.” She confessed.

The hug tightened to the point it would have been painful for a normal human, but to her, it was merely comforting.

Hannah’s heartbeat sped up, slowly ramping up into a crescendo of life.

Silence.

With a steadying breath, Hannah broke it, voice a tiny whisper, spoken closely.

“That will never happen. Ever. Even if they sentence you to it, which they won’t, I won’t let them take you. I’m not exaggerating to be comforting, Taylor. You will never step foot inside the Birdcage, regardless of what happens in that trial or what shiny career I’ll have to sacrifice. So don’t worry about it. I’m not going to let you go.” Hannah said, voice measured and heavy with confidence, warm.

Taylor didn’t trust her voice, not when she was crying, again, tears rolling down her neck. She just nodded, and hugged tighter, feeling like her heart was going to explode with warmth and gratitude and love.

Some part of her was starting to believe Hannah’s words, even if doubt still remained, even if she couldn’t tell if the words were genuine or platitudes to comfort her. Hope, that insidious, sweet thing, just kept tugging at her to trust and believe, and she couldn’t help but do it.

She meant what she said.

It was actually worrying to her, but she meant what she said. Every last word.

She knew how to find Faultline. She knew how to find and neutralize a transport. She knew how to disappear and how to lay low. She knew how to get funds and how to hide her existing ones. She had no real life outside her career to consider or be torn about. And while it was a daunting thing to consider, she would do it if it came down to that kind of choice.

But she had high hopes for the trial, and she’d done what she could, so thoughts like that wouldn’t help anyone.

So for now, she pushed that out of her mind, and hugged Taylor.

She was so warm. Part of her was concerned that the temperature was a result of feverishness rather than altered biology.

“What is so interesting about my heart beat, by the way?” She murmured into Taylor’s hair, beginning to softly rock from side to side.

Taylor sniffled.

“It’s comforting. And…” Taylor took a deep breath again. “And it means you’re alive. And here. And trust me. It’s- all that. Do you mind?” Taylor warbled out, quietly, and she hummed a negative.

“No. It’s…”

It felt a little too intimate, truth be told, but it was also not… overly intimate in a bad way? Because it was nice to know that Taylor cared about her so much, and it was nice to know her presence was comforting to her. It was nice and warm, even if she wasn’t sure if she could explain why if asked.

“It’s a bit odd, but nice. By the way, think we could sit down? I’m pretty tired and you’re a heavy girl.” She softly asked with a little chuckle, and Taylor nodded.

Now, Hannah, like a normal, sane person, was expecting Taylor to let her go so they could sit on the bed or something.

Taylor had a different idea.

The tentacles and hands both tightened, and effortlessly, like picking up a teddy bear, Taylor lifted her feet off the floor for a couple inches and began marching her to the wall.

After a momentary startle from her feet suddenly not touching the floor, she made a series of sputtering, aborted words, unsure of how to convey the bundle of ‘ I’m not a teddy bear let me down, also you could just let go for a second, not that you have to but you’re the kid, i'm the one supposed to be picking you up and carrying you, brute status be damned-!’ in her head.

Then her feet were on the floor again, next to the bag she brought, and Taylor sniffed the air like a little animal.

She had to physically fight the urge to coo and squish her cheeks with ungodly resolve of mind and soul.

“The uhm. Hunger. It’s… getting really bad. I…” Taylor trailed off, voice thick with something, stiff.

Hannah leaned back and let her legs fold, awkwardly hanging in the air, and it took Taylor a moment to realize that she was trying to sit down, and awkwardly tilt forward to place her back against the corner, adjusting the tentacles to not place pressure on her, before plopping down on her lap, burying her beet-red face into her chest again, turning her face away and using her hair as a shield.

She chuckled again, unable to hold it in, lowering her right arm to a tentacle and softly beginning to stroke it, feeling the flesh ripple and shudder under her palm with a strange, almost uncomfortable squirm. 

But it didn’t let go, predictably.

“You…” She hummed, leadingly, and Taylor audibly gulped.

“I… I thought I could get out of here by pressing into the ceiling. I didn’t think the cushions were foam, I just… I thought I could sink through them somehow, or- I don’t know. I just, ‘ this is soft, soft things part, so I can push through it’. That- that was the… whole thought process. It’s like dreaming. I was doing something, and there just… wasn’t room to question anything. Disbelief doesn’t exist in dreams. I just did it.” Taylor whispered, a distinct note of worry in her voice, tight.

Levity fled with that admission, and she hummed in acknowledgement, a pensive frown on her face.

“Next thing is- is visual hallucinations.” Taylor continued, and Hannah paused, blinking rapidly down at the girl.

Hallucinations? From hunger?

“M-Mixing with- with this. I just, do things, move through stuff like it's a dream, and then I- I started. Hallucinating.” Taylor said, haltingly, hug tightening to the point of considerable discomfort.

‘ Then I started hallucinating.’

Taylor wasn’t just talking about how her power forced her to eat, she was talking about what happened last time her hunger got so bad.

She hugged the girl as tight as she could, softly beginning to rock side to side as her breaths got quicker and her words filled with wavers and shudders.

“I, it’s nothing huge. Just, I’d see myself grabbing the controller then dropping into the couch, then I was in the kitchen, staring out of the window. Another- another time, I was cutting vegetables, and I kept cutting the board until the knife snapped and everything was minced, and- and on the floor, because I just saw a carrot that shed pieces but wouldn’t reduce. It’s- then I’ll start getting shivers. I’ll start f-feeling cold. I’ll start feeling weak, but I won’t be. And- and during all of this, people slowly, s-s-slowly…” Taylor shuddered, voice choking on a sob.

She kissed the top of her head.

“It’s okay. You don’t-”

“They’ll start turning into meat. Someone will smile, and all I’ll see is a complex web of face muscles that will- that will taste good. It’s starting too. Your- your heartbeat’s making me hungry. ” Taylor sobbed with all the guilt in the world, quivering.

She gently thumped her back with a closed fist, shifting her legs so that they were half-raised off the floor between Taylor’s own, tilting Taylor forwards even more, bringing her closer.

“Taylor. That’s about as natural as your power gets. It’s okay. It won’t get that bad. I’ll bring you food, actual food, tomorrow. I only brought you a- about a pint of blood here, in a thermos, but it should hold you over.”

Taylor wiggled her head as if shaking it.

“You- you don’t have to, bring anything. W-we have time. I don't want you to- to hurt yourself, I just, I- I don’t- I don’t want this to end like how- how my- my dad-” Taylor continued, her next word choking on a hitched breath.

She didn’t want Hannah to die how her father had. The reminder of that incident can’t be good for- for her daughter. God, she hated seeing Taylor cry. It felt like someone was scraping blunt spikes across her heart.

“Taylor. First of all, I do have to. I’ll likely be your guardian soon. Feeding you is my most basic duty. Secondly, I want to. ” She whispered softly, and Taylor rose up higher, taking her ear off her chest to bury her face into her neck with a gut-wrenching sob, nails digging painfully into her shoulder as Taylor held on for dear life.

She held the back of her head in place, gently rubbing with her thumb.

“Thirdly, I’m proud of you . Thank you for telling me. I know how tempting it is to keep things close to your chest when you’re young. Now, do you want to drink blood to relax, or do you want to talk about something else?” She asked softly, moving her arms up and down in slow strokes across her head and back, speaking into Taylor’s shoulder, doing her best to muffle Taylor’s anguish with overwhelming affection.

Taylor sniffled and sucked in a shuddering breath, nodding in acknowledgement into her neck.

“I- I can drink, just, later.” Taylor warbled, and Hannah hummed an affirmative.

“I saw Vista when I dropped by earlier. What did you two talk about?” She asked in a whisper, attempting a lighter subject.

Taylor sniffled, then shook her head, staying silent.

If she didn’t want to talk, that was more than fine.

She just held her and vice versa, slowly relaxing.

A few minutes later, Taylor cleared her throat with a seemingly final sniffle.

“Sorry for crying. I- fuck I’m such a crybaby.” Taylor sighed. “And I know you’ll say it’s okay so don’t bother, I’m still going to wallow in embarrassment.” She continued with a miserable grumble into her shoulder.

Hannah chuckled quietly.

“V-Vista, she was doing most of the talking. I didn’t have- much to say. Questions, mostly.” Taylor said, seemingly out of the blue, and it took her a moment to parse what she was talking about before remembering her previous question. 

“What did you think of her?” She hummed.

She was genuinely curious, she wasn’t just talking for the sake of talking. If Taylor ever joined the Wards, which she honestly was starting to not want, it would be interesting to see how she played with people in that kind of environment.

“She’s really cute and really smart. And she’s a lot more thoughtful than I expected. And she’s really, s-surprisingly funny.” Taylor mumbled, admiration clear in her voice and Hannah’s chest shook with silent laughter for a moment, because oh boy was that accurate. “Her power is incredible. She’s just not creative with it for some reason.” Taylor sighed, as if disappointed for her, and Hannah formed a lopsided smile.

Not like PR would let her be creative with it.

“She uh, complained a lot too.” Taylor noted, before her voice shifted into clear amusement, a shaky smile curling against her shoulder, which in turn made her smile.

“She really wants a ‘ big stick to whack people with’ but apparently the ‘hair gel huffing s-skinwalkers in the image department’- ” Taylor continued, barely containing herself from laughing. “- want to use her to capture t-the uh, ‘mouthbreather ameri-tard parent audience so ‘The Babysittorate’ can do the parenting for them instead of a costly ipad’ and t-they can- can get more children to groom into being marketable p-plushies nobody will ever take seriously .” Taylor managed to stutter out, before snorting out a small bout of teary giggles.

The sound made her cheeks burn and her eyes burn with joy, even as she burst out into a small giggling fit as well.

Holy hell, Vista had been creative with her words today, huh?

And she had to do something nice for her, if only to thank her for cheering up Taylor.

“Y-Yep. Sounds like her on a bad day.” She forced out, voice warbling with laughter.

“I really, really like her. It’s a shame she doesn’t seem happy with the Wards.” Taylor hummed.

“Yeah, image matters a lot, and as with all big organizations, the PRT tends to look at people as more… potential tools for potential goals than actual people.” She murmured, voice subdued.

Just look at how they’re treating you for not being usable.

A fanciful idea rose, reasoning riding on its coat tails, and she paused, staring off into space, before pushing it aside to consider later.

“But on the other hand, the PRT isn’t really doing anything wrong. It’s a classic case of a kid being restless and not understanding that a single stray bullet could end her life in a city in America where there are more guns than people, and a bureaucratic government agency who allows that kind of danger for the sake of image because they always have to look at the bigger picture until individuals are too small to be noticed.” She finished, and Taylor was silent for a moment, before she shifted.

“Hm. What’s it like? Being a hero?” Taylor asked, shifting again to lower her forehead to Hannah’s collarbone.

“It’s a mixed bag. Much as I’d like to tell you it’s wonderful, I also don’t want to lie to you. It’s, firstly, very demanding. The first few months and years are usually the worst, but it doesn’t get easier as much as you just get used to it.” She mumbled, lowering her right hand off the middle of Taylor’s back to brush against the area where the tentacles were coming out of.

Taylor jolted and stiffened.

“For example, you’re told how to act, how to dress and carry yourself, how to express yourself or how to not express yourself if you aren’t the type for this kind of job. Then there’s the pressure on looks. For example, you know Assault?” She asked, still gently rubbing the same spot with her thumb as Taylor slowly relaxed again.

“Hm. Red suit, fast. I know him.” Taylor mumbled.

“Well, his image includes a skintight suit. And since changing someone’s image usually isn’t a thing the PRT is willing to do, there’s a lot of pressure on him to keep his physique the same. Same with Battery. It’s like a crossover between a government agency and a modeling business sometimes, depending on what image you were given or chose. They can’t put on a couple pounds without essentially getting harassed by the image department to slim down. There’s other things too, of course. This is an occupation where you’re unlikely to get through it without watching at least a few people die, then go on patrol the next day and still smile for the cameras. It’s also an occupation where you’re expected to save them, and when you do fail, it tends to hurt in ways that are hard to explain to someone who isn’t a hero themselves.”

Taylor nodded in understanding, having mostly relaxed back into her lap by now.

So she moved her hand down a bit, her wrist grazing the base of the tentacles, and Taylor stiffened again.

“Did you have moments like that?” Taylor asked, quietly.

She remembered a young, pale woman in a sunflower dress, and felt her features lower with blunted grief.

“Just once, thankfully. There was a young woman who thought to record a fight between Hookwolf and Oni Lee. The troopers didn’t see her, and she was quite far from the fight, physically. I went with a couple others to stop them, but the fight quickly headed in her direction, then one of Oni Lee’s grenades sent a piece of Hookwolf’s razors to her while we were fighting. Hit her in the neck, severed an artery. By the time the nearest trooper got to her, she was already beyond saving. I know it wasn’t my fault, and that I couldn’t have realistically done anything, but it still weighs on me.” She finished, voice a tad heavier than she’d like.

“I’m sorry,” Taylor sighed, voice full of sympathy.

“Don’t be, sweetheart.” She murmured, smiling, then finally lowered her hand to the base of the tentacles, petting them, and Taylor jerked in surprise, pulling back enough to give her a wide eyed look she couldn’t quite decipher.

She paused.

“Uh, is this uncomfortable?” She asked, genuinely curious, then pet the wriggling flesh just to emphasize.

Taylor’s lips pursed even as her eyes widened further. “I- uh. N-no? Just- weird. Good weird?” She blurted out, seemingly confused, experimentally wriggling a tentacle only to shudder as Hannah ran her nails over its base. 

She nodded, smiling.

She wasn’t sure how she could make Taylor see the tentacles as an actual part of her body like Elena had suggested, but she reasoned that touching them and acknowledging their existence was a decent step.

“Anyways, as I was saying, being a hero has its many cons, but it also has its pros.” She tried to steer the conversation back on track, and Taylor nodded jerkily, still stiff and seemingly confused, but accepting of her ministrations.

So she continued talking about her job in a way that was both realistic, but not bleak, knowing that Taylor was hanging onto her every word.

“Don’t look.” Taylor mumbled as she tried to hide behind the thermos, face practically glowing with her blush.

Despite the eyes being a molten mass of red rings and cracks and looking like something out of a horror movie, it was an adorable sight.

With a slight sigh and a chuckle, she closed her eyes, smiling as she leaned back.

“Not looking.”

Taylor made a huffing sound, then for a few seconds, the only stimuli to her senses was Taylor’s tentacles and legs tightening around her as she sat on her lap, and the occasional sound of gulping.

Then a big, satisfied pwah sound, followed by a sigh.

She opened her eyes, and watched Taylor lick her lips clean of blood, using her fingers to clean up anything left around her mouth.

Taylor’s eyes met hers, and she paused.

Then seemed to curl into herself a bit, averting her gaze as she resumed.

She smiled, and put a finger on Taylor’s nose, making her go cross-eyed for a moment before giving her an embarrassed, questioning look.

She didn’t have anything to say, honestly, she just wanted to boop her nose.

“Feeling better?” She asked, and dropped her hands onto Taylor’s knees as they dug into the floor beside her hips.

Taylor cleared her throat, and nodded, quickly screwing the cap back onto the thermos and putting it aside, still licking her lips.

“Y-Yeah. Thank you. Uhm…” Taylor trailed off, and raised a hand to point at the bag with a questioning look on her face, seemingly trying to find a way to escape her attention.

She turned.

“Oh, right! I brought you some things.” She grinned wide, and yanked the bag closer by a strap.

At some point, Taylor asked how to operate the MP3 player, admitting, much to Hannah’s immense confusion, that she’d never really listened to music much.

So she’d turned Taylor to the side, that way they could both see the screen as she taught her what the buttons did, Taylor cuddled up on her lap with her head tucked under Hannah’s chin as they went through the music choice Hannah had put in the thing, Taylor slowly marking the ones she liked and moving them to a playlist while skipping the ones she didn’t like and deleting them.

Hannah found that Taylor was very picky with her music choice, and very organized.

The moment she knew how to operate it, she began making several playlists with numbers and short acronyms instead of names, their categories only known to her, each with several songs overlapping but also many new ones.

At another point, Taylor had gotten used to her petting the tentacles like they were tails or something of that nature, their velvety flesh rippling and contracting with every pet and leaning into her touch.

It was a really nice and unique sensation.

And at some point, Taylor had finished organizing her music, and roped her into reading a book called an ‘excerpt compendium’ with her.

It was essentially a three hundred pages long book made up of countless tiny stories or interesting parts of other stories, from various times, authors, styles, and more. A rare kind of book, but one that Taylor seemed to love with a genuine earnestness and joy that made Hannah’s cheeks cramp from smiling.

To Taylor, books like that were like getting small hints of a wide array of flavors without attachment nor a large time investment.

It was through these rare types of books that she got introduced to so many writing styles and got so fond of many of them.

Hannah didn’t really know much about literature.

So their roles got swapped.

Now, Taylor had become the teacher, sitting with her back to Hannah’s chest with a tentacle holding the book up for them to read, telling her about the various styles and writers, going to well-worn pages of the book that she’d enjoyed.

Her oddest interest was a writing style she liked to call ‘soviet-style slice of life’, taken from a small excerpt from a translated book about a sleepy town in Russia that slowly turned into a depressive wasteland from factories moving in and not following regulations. The story was of a man growing up in said town, noting the depressing circumstances, and somehow finding light and joy in it all despite them due to the people around him despite his failing health and fading years.

It was oddly magical to read, and so incredibly strange. It was written in a time where capes did not exist yet.

Romanticism was also apparently a writing style that was Taylor’s absolute favourite, one that had grown in popularity over the Renaissance, according to Taylor, and after showing a few passages to Hannah, she could agree to loving that style as well.

It somehow had the power to take the most depressing or mundane of scenes and turn them into something dream-like and enchanting.

There were pieces of Greek literature, some from Spain, and even a few from the Middle East, though the vast majority were from English speaking countries rather than translated pieces.

At some point, their words pettered out, and they simply read together, Hannah’s chin on Taylor’s head, her hands covering Taylor’s on the girl’s stomach, red tentacles pressing into her own gut before curling off to the side to act as a blanket for them both with one tentacle gingerly holding a book up and carefully flipping the pages for them, all the while low static and barely-heard noises worked to suppress the background buzz of thoughts and immerse them into the stories they read.

The music track meant for meditative trances was quite effective for immersion. It became their favorite.

Hannah at some point remembered the brush she brought to fix Taylor’s tangled hair, and dug it out of the bag before leaning back to gently brush and work the knots out of her hair as they read, neither of them commenting about Taylor’s sniffles and shuddering breaths.

What must have been at least five or six hours after she’d first visited, with her legs tingling like they were being eaten by ants, Taylor decided to close the book and half-turn towards her, curling up like a cat on her lap and quickly falling asleep as Hannah continued working on her locks, humming that same old lullaby she vaguely remembered.

The soft smile on her face refused to leave all night, which she mostly spent deep in thought.

Chapter Text

She woke slowly, feeling deliciously noodle-limbed and warm, a comforting smell surrounding her like a cloud-soft blanket, her pillow rubbing up and down her back and shoulder as she snuggled deeper into it.

After a few seconds of waking up, she realized what and who her pillow was, and heard something that vaguely sounded like English being softly whispered in the quiet, the words like the whisper of a demon trying to lure her away from sleepy nirvana.

She mumbled- something, a sound, and her pillow shook.

Another murmur, something probably legible to people who could use more than one brain cell but to her sounded like the cruel calling of distant fairies trying to lure her away from her perfect nap.

She whine-mumbled something that was supposed to resemble a protest, burrowing her face deeper into her pillow and taking a long deep breath, filling her nostrils with Hannah and gunpowder and living person, her brain turning to fuzzy cotton.

Another light shake, another whisper.

Her pillow shook a little, soft puffs of air moving against the top of her head.

She fell asleep again.

She was woken up by the sensation of movement, but didn’t bother herself with it, too comfy to be alarmed by the sensation of moving without any of her touching the floor, nor by the sensation of her back laying on something cold and soft.

Then her pillow tried to leave and wiggle out of her grasp and she vehemently protested by yanking it back and then turning over on her back to trap it between herself and the wall.

She promptly fell back asleep as her pillow uselessly squirmed and struggled against her all-encompassing hug.

Another couple hours later, her pillow woke her up again, her brain slowly rebooting and giving it a name as it- as Hannah whispered stuff about work and patrols with an apologetic tone.

Some childish, petulant part of her wanted to complain regardless, but as her mind resumed normal operations she quickly realized that that would be incredibly selfish, and thus, reluctantly, backed off to give Hannah some room to get off the bed, trapped against the wall as she was.

Unfortunately she miscalculated and backed up too much, falling off the bed with a high-pitched squeak of surprise, suddenly awake enough to hurriedly get up and hide her face in her hands as her skin slowly figured out how to match the surface temperature of the sun.

Hannah burst out into high pitched laughter that made her feel like the world was a warm place and that joy was just a step away, then wiggled off the bed, bent down to hug her, and kissed her head, and just like that, all of Taylor’s embarrassed emotions vanished to be replaced by something warm and mindlessly mushy.

“Love you sweetheart. Gotta go. I’ll be back later.” Hannah whispered against her hair, kissed her head again with an exaggerated ‘ mwah’ sound, then left, throwing a little wave over her shoulder as the door closed.

She waved back with a shaky smile on her face, torn between giddy warm joy for having had her here, and an entirely unreasonable bout of fear and anxiety and cold that seeped into the very room when she was out of sight.

The silence was discomforting, too loud against her ears, the soft thump-thump, pause, thump-thump nowhere to be found.

The room went from a little cozy nest to a cold, padded box. The glass turned from a window to the outside world, no matter how small, to a sinister observation window for any passersby to look at her like a zoo animal. Her new belongings turned from something comforting to something that could be taken away or broken at a whim, ruined for the cruel amusement of others or as a punishment, and she struggled not to immediately disconnect from them as she had with the previous batch of books.

The walls turned from soft fluff to something too soft to be solid, like sitting on a rocking boat, nothing stable left around her.

She curled into a ball, and tried to beat her mind into submission.

Because Hannah would come back.

She would.

Regardless of the fact that Hannah was perfect and a symbol of everything that was good and right and warm in the world, regardless of how much Taylor didn’t deserve her, regardless of how she understood her reaction was as overblown as the last four or five times, her mind was like a piston, pushing forward the idea that Hannah wouldn’t come back, and she had to keep pushing back against it by repeating the same two sentences, over and over.

Hannah would come back.

Because she promised.

Even if she thought herself pathetic for being so needy and clingy to the point where not having Hannah in her sight immediately felt like someone sucked the world of warmth and color and joy, Hannah would come back, because for better or worse, she promised, and she liked Taylor.

Or so she was starting to genuinely believe, one smile at a time.

At some point, the repetitive cycle of having half her mind repeating “ you’re not worth it she’ll find out something about you out there that will drive her away, she’ll decide she can’t really hurt herself for the sake of a waste of space, she’ll die on patrol,’ she’ll forget about you” and the other half repeating “Hannah will come back, because she promised” became too much, and she reached a tentacle out of her cocoon to drag the MP3 player to her, before she closed the gap again and started to fiddle with it.

The ‘meditation’ track helped calm down some of that background panic.

The ‘calming’ track stifled it significantly, and even at two percent volume, when in a closed bubble of flesh, it was easy to hear it.

Slowly, she calmed down.

She still felt unsafe and cold and scared in that unspecified, background kind of way, but she could at least focus enough to read a book if she wished, which is what she did.

Gallant came by for a chat.

She… didn’t really like their conversation.

Vista had come here because she was curious, she was interested in talking to another girl, and she wanted to vent to someone who could get it, who was disconnected from the whole ecosystem and wouldn’t just shrug and say “well yeah, image, am I right?” and dismiss her words.

Vista was cute, smart, funny, and very energetic and interested in what Taylor had to say, even if she didn’t really say anything.

Taylor didn’t trust her and she doubted that she was anything but a passing whim or curiosity to the girl, but talking to her had been very fun. And very enlightening to a subject the world really didn’t know about the inner workings of.

Gallant… it felt like he was here because he felt like he had to be. He spoke like one of the responders who fished her out of the Bay rather than someone here to actually talk to her.

Like he was here to comfort her and talk at her, having made up his mind on what she was like and what she needed and like he was here to provide it.

He was nice, she could tell, but she was in the middle of reading when he came and his way of talking just grated on her in a way. It was both condescending without meaning to be, and in a paradoxical way sounded like he wasn’t actually paying attention to her, despite speaking right at her.

After a dozen minutes of awkwardness or so, he gracefully left with a vague comment of visiting some other time.

She went back to her book, and wrapped the scarf around her neck again.

Then she frowned, because it smelled like her dad, but the room smelled like Hannah, and she was torn.

Feeling oddly like she was betraying her dad, she left the scarf in the corner, and closed her cocoon of flattened tentacles again, their soft glow and her low-tier nightvision enough to read with.

Then she startled in realization, a sort of eureka moment that had her blinking.

Before she could think further on the idea, the intercom fizzed to life, and a trooper's muffled voice came through, making her stiffen and lock up, her chest tightening.

She only took a shower once a week in here. They weren't here for that.

What did she do wrong this time?

The door opened.

She was really jittery.

Which was in some ways surprising, and some others, not.

Hannah was a hero, so she was not unused to injury, but this would be the first time she’d ever purposefully harmed herself, and definitely the first time she’d ever lost a full limb.

But.

Taylor was hungry.

And that was all the justification she really needed, honestly.

She took a deep breath, scooted the chair back to have her shoulder straight, and briefly frowned.

She would be perfectly fit for duty with just her right arm. She could even drive her motorcycle just fine one armed, she tried it.

And her dominant arm was her right one.

So, left it is.

She carefully put her whole arm into the slot of the machine sitting innocently on her kitchen table, and pressed the first button, feeling four thin needles come out of the circular hole’s rim and into her arm.

She pressed the second button as soon as her whole arm felt numb. A tourniquet squeezed the absolute life out of her arm, and she jolted in surprise at the odd sensation, her mind telling her she should be feeling pain but receiving no such signals..

She went to press the third button, and hesitated, some instinctual fear and wild what-ifs making her pause.

With a shaking finger, before she could go down a spiral that would end up with her giving up and breaking a promise she refused to break, she pressed the third button.

She did feel something.

She watched the muscles of her shoulder and upper arm pull back a bit and slacken as the ends of what they were attached to were suddenly cut, a very odd sight, and she felt a strange and sudden sense of nausea and sickness, though she could not tell if that was a psychological or a physical response.

Then, the machine’s light lit up, and she pressed the fourth button.

A bunch of sounds, some hissing and some like spraying, and the tourniquet pulled back into the device, releasing her.

She was prepared for the sight, but it still made her momentarily blink at the sudden nothingness below her shoulder. 

The cut was very clean and already cauterised, so there wasn’t even any mess to take care of.

Then the device flushed itself, or something of that nature, and split open, revealing her arm within, like a piece of meat in a very futuristic, fucked up display.

Now to… prepare it.

She felt oddly queasy, holding her exceptionally limp arm like this.

Twenty minutes later, her arm was on a cutting board with a clamp attached to the wrist pinning it in place on the kitchen table. Her teeth were aching.

Her power turned into a cleaver, which she raised, and paused.

“... Should I season it?” She mumbled, then replayed her words, and mentally recapped her current situation, sitting in her kitchen trying to figure out how to butcher and process her arm so Taylor wouldn’t freak out over it.

She snorted a small chuckle, unable to help herself.

She had to do this and get it over with, she reminded herself.

She also had to patrol again in three hours, and apartment number one was right after, and then she had another meeting with Carol to discuss specifics and strategy and she had to pack the toolbox back up again and figure out how to cook dinner one armed and then figure out how to dodge the questions of her coworkers and try to hide her civilian identity despite the missing arm and she should probably call the PRT and just ask for a ride there and just keep her motorcycle on the job site and she had to renew her licence soon and she had to take it to the repair shop and she was in talks with that merchandise company again because she actually cared about money now and they never closed the offers they’d made her technically and she had to make a phonecall and an email and another email and then cook dinner and then go to the team briefing and she had to place that new armor request for Armsmaster because she could not die under any circumstances not anymore and-

She should probably season the arm.

Should she skin it first? How? Bite the skin and just yank the meat with her free arm like some old-age neanderthal?

Would she even taste good? Maybe she should drink something sweet beforehand? Inject some blueberry juice into her veins like a junkie for the sugar?

The barrage of absurdity and disbelief and mental images was too much.

She burst into laughter, a sharp, shrill thing that was just a slight bit unhinged as she stumbled back and fell into a chair, moving her power to her hip as she rubbed at her face, her chest and stomach convulsing with something so in-between laughter and soft crying that there was no way to tell what it was, giggles weaving with soft coughs and yips that were on the very edge of being sobs but not quite.

She was so fucking stressed.

Five minutes later, breathing heavily and still shaking with giggly-sobbing aftershocks of- whatever that was, she realized that she had a perfectly good target to let out some stress on.

She jumped up, formed the cleaver again, reared her hand up, and swung it down with a yell.

“Uh…” Triumph blinked at her arm, then gave her a questioning look.

She ignored him.

She continued to ignore him for another twenty minutes before he shut up and by god Rory you’re a nice kid but she was another twenty minutes of unsubtle prodding away from trying to find out if she could strangle him one-armed.

In a friendly spar, of course.

She had to remember who actually knew about all this, which was pretty much all the Wards except Kid Win, then Assault, Battery, and Dauntless. And Armsmaster.

This was going to be annoying.

It was extremely annoying.

She was stopped like five times with questions as to unsanctioned cape fighting while out of the job, given looks of all kinds from everyone who wasn’t in on the info, and then when she finally got to Taylor’s cell, it was empty.

She stood there for a solid ten minutes doing breathing exercises, bag clutched in hand.

Then she marched to Director Piggot’s office.

Don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason don't commit treason-

The worst part was that it made sense.

Piggot’s reasoning for transferring Taylor to the PRT headquarters made sense. The girl had destroyed an entire cell from a panic attack, she could have probably burrowed through the wall and dove into the sea if she’d really tried.

It was unsafe to keep her there for both containment and personnel, from a cold, clinical standpoint.

So despite the urge to spit in Piggot’s smug face, she couldn’t risk irrational protests without making herself look far too emotionally invested and unreasonable. Because the reasoning made sense.

It still infuriated her.

She could blame it on the newfound stress being piled onto her already existing mountain of it. 

Right as Taylor got the chance to talk to people other than her, she was moved into a deeper loop of bureaucracy than most people were willing to go through to chat to a relative stranger. It was so unfair. Vista might try to talk to Taylor again because she was stubborn and they hit it off, and maybe Aegis would try too, but she had no compunctions about the fact that Taylor’s social prospects got kneecapped, again.

Beyond that, their time together got kneecapped, and that was driving her up the wall. She had nothing else to destress with other than going wild with her power, and there just wasn’t a place for her to do that. She couldn’t go to the firing range and pull out a cycling grenade launcher, she’d wreck the place in seconds.

Piggot found a great way to inconvenience both of them, and subsequently, to piss them off. Taylor’s new cell was in the PRT Headquarters, in the brute-rated holding cells. To get to her, the new process was proving to be an absolute chore.

This place functioned far more like a prison than the M/S cells on The Rig.

She had to set up an appointment, specify it had to be face to face, then come into a separate monitored room covered in foam sprayers and Tinkertech forcefield restrictors, a room with one metal table and two chairs.

After having everything she brought with her thoroughly checked, which was a very long process because she had a chopped up arm inside a container in her bag and that needed so much context for the troopers to understand and verify, she was allowed to bring her things into the glorified interrogation room, and they’d have a maximum of four hours to talk allotted throughout a day, and not a minute more.

That felt like such little time, when it came to Taylor.

Now, finally standing in front of Taylor’s cell, she felt a strange mix of worry, joy, and anxiety.

She realized something when the troopers gathered around her.

She didn’t trust the PRT around Taylor.

It made her hackles rise to think of leaving Taylor in their ‘care’.

Imagining troopers slapping brute cuffs on Taylor and just dragging her here without explanation made her genuinely upset.

There was no warmth nor softness to this place. She knew how the brute cells looked like here. Just a concrete slab with a stiff memory foam block on it to act as a bed, four steel walls, and hidden containment foam sprayers everywhere. Taylor might be on twenty four seven suicide watch, but the room wasn’t padded since it had sprayers in the corners to stop her by force.

The cell had no screen either, so she couldn’t even look in and see how Taylor was doing.

The only reason she was even allowed to escort Taylor to the meeting room with the rest of the guards was her occupation.

Still, after the mechanisms and cuffs were passed through the door and it opened, she was torn between suddenly feeling like she was able to breathe and suddenly wanting to rebel against the system she’d worked in her entire life.

Taylor was covered in restraints, one being a giant metal mouthguard of sorts, like a dog’s, another being a boxy metal piece with her arms locked inside it, and her ankles were surrounded by two huge cuffs and an equally oversized chain. Her tentacles were pressed together by gigantic heavy duty belts into a singular thick tail-like appendage.

Her teeth gnashed against each other.

Taylor looked so scared.

She used to believe so heavily in law and authority, believing it was what made a country stable and worth living in, but right now she couldn’t feel anything but contempt for the organisation behind all the familiar faces she knew.

Their eyes met between the guard’s helmets.

She tamed her anger to smile at her, using her eyes as much as she could.

Taylor’s eyes widened. A massive sigh of relief left her, shaky and wavering, and she deflated, shoulders lowering, eyes sparkling with relief and hope, looking at her like she was the only thing in the entire corridor.

Hannah didn’t feel like she deserved to be the recipient of such faith, she felt like she’d failed her in some way. But she was, and so she would prove worthy of it or die trying.

They marched to the meeting room, her taking point because who would tell her no?

They got inside, and the guard shortly instructed Taylor on how to operate the odd machine next to the door which locked and unlocked the cuffs, before giving Hannah a waiver that they would not be responsible should Taylor kill her during the meeting, which she signed off on immediately.

Then the guard left, and Taylor quickly fumbled her restraints into the odd clamps, leaving them behind and attached to the wall, followed by her putting her head in a weird machine that made Hannah nervous, and then finally, her leg cuffs.

Hannah took a deep breath, and finally let it out. For the first time in the entire day, she felt relaxed and without worries.

With everything but the belts being removed, Taylor looked a little better, heaving a massive sigh of relief before she turned to her and startled, staring at her arm. Or the lack of one.

“Y-You…?” Taylor mumbled, shooting her an incredulous, disbelieving look.

Elena’s words of incomprehension towards gestures of kindness directed at her came back to her.

She’d told her four times she was going to do it, she had thought it had sunk in, but apparently, not really. Or Taylor didn’t quite believe her until now.

No, she seemed to believe anything she said. Maybe just… didn’t think she’d go through with it?

Taylor was a strange person.

She lowered the scarf and the face mask she had beneath it, and smiled, warm and genuine.

“I did. And I’m really sorry for being so late, it’s like… seven PM right now. It’s been a busy day-” and what an understatement that was considering she was out working since seven AM, “-and then when I went to your cell they told me they moved you here, and security is frustrating to get through. Did they let you keep your stuff?” She asked, mildly concerned, and Taylor kept staring at her missing arm for a couple seconds before nodding, still dumbstruck.

“Oh, that’s good. Now, do you want to eat, or do you want to relax for a bit first?” She asked, turning towards the bag in her hand and laying it on the table as she rummaged through to grab the package.

“I-” She started, and let out the rest of her sentence in a sharp wheeze when arms crushed her torso and lifted her off the floor, Taylor’s face smushing into her shoulder as Hannah kicked the chair with her surprised flailing, its sudden rattle only further disorienting her senses.

“Thankyouthankyouthanktyouthankyouthankyouthankyouth-thankyou-thankyouthankyou-” Taylor babbled, voice warbling with tears, and she tried to speak only for a wordless wheeze to come out.

She felt like a squeeze tube filled with blood instead of toothpaste in the hands of a particularly angry bodybuilder.

Then Taylor let go, and she stumbled, only to be caught again, this time with fretting hands.

“Ohmygod I’msosorry I just got r-really, I can’t believe, you’re so-”

And back in the hug, a tight but manageable one this time as she coughed and gasped for breath.

“Thank you, thank you, I-I’ll make it up to you, I promise, I-”

“No.” She rasped out, and coughed a little again, wriggling her arm out between Taylor’s hug to throw it over her shoulders and gain enough leverage to nuzzle her head and softly bump it with her own.

“It’s not a debt. Just-” She wheezed out, and coughed a little, “- just food. Didn’t feel a prick, I swear. Also, next time, try not to squeeze my organs out of my ears, sweetheart.” She joked, with a cough-giggle-cough sound.

Then she gasped for air again and ow something was definitely bruised in there.

Taylor nodded rapidly with a cute, wordless sound of agreement.

“Sorry sorry sorry. Thank you. I can’t believe- no, I can.” Taylor mumbled, then sniffled. “You’re a saint.” She said, with a reverent, awed, teary tone that was… actually a little worrying because it sounded like she meant that literally .

She probably didn’t.

Right?

…

…Was her family religious?

Shit.

“Thank you. For everything. And for coming. I was scared they were taking me to the Birdcage and I almost panicked, b-but you said you’d come for me anyway, s-so I didn’t. I’m not in more trouble, right?” Taylor murmured, then raised her head just enough to peek up at her from where she was trying to fuse her face with Hannah’s top, eyes glinting with unshed tears and looking like a pleading puppy.

Besides the red glow and all that.

She laughed- and coughed a bit-, and shook her head.

“No, you’re not. They just realized you’re much stronger than they thought, so they brought you here in case you tried to run.”

Taylor ducked back down, and nodded, breathing in a deep breath and sighing it out, most of the tension in her body following the exhale like she was physically breathing out her stress.

Then she took another deep breath, this time much more obvious.

“Aren’t I all gross and sweaty?” She murmured, gently scratching T- her daughter’s scalp, confused, and Taylor shifted.

“I mean… a bit, but it’s fine. You still smell like… you?” Taylor mumbled, then visibly cringed. “Sorry-”

“It’s fine, really. I expect having enhanced senses and a vaguely predatory power theme means you have quite the fixation on scent and all that. I get it. It’s a little bit odd, but if you’re not grossed out, I’m not either. And, since I’m not sure how to move this conversation to something else, I’m just going to mention that I checked out an apartment today, and I was wondering what you thought of it as someone who’s going to live in it.” She offered, and swung her arm back to her hip to wrestle her phone out of her pocket, quickly going to the gallery.

Taylor committed a great personal sacrifice by momentarily shifting to the side to glance at the photos, then gasped.

“T-that’s… big.”

She nodded, swiping to the side to show more.

“It’s three bedrooms, kitchen-living room, two small baths, and one giant balcony. Top floor, large windows everywhere, and… let me find the picture.” She hummed softly, still catching her breath as her power fixed whatever she’d bruised a second ago.

Aha, there it is.

“And it’s got a good view of The Rig while being practically right on top of the Boardwalk.” She finished, smiling.

It was perfect.

“It’s… amazing. It’s perfect. I- wait, h-how much does it cost?” Taylor asked, and she shrugged with a smile.

“Don’t worry about that. I know your family likely wasn’t very well off, but heroes make good money.”

Taylor hummed dubiously.

“I just- I don’t want you to spend a huge amount of money just for me.” Taylor mumbled.

She wished she had a second arm right now.

She settled for resting her head on Taylor’s.

“It’s not just for you. It’s for me and you and maybe your kids in the future. But I could live comfortably in a concrete box, so my opinion doesn’t matter as much as yours here. I’ll check out a couple more, and bring you pictures, but what would you think about living here?” She asked softly, gesturing to the picture showing a vast stretch of sea with The Rig in the distance with her thumb, just over their balcony railings.

Taylor shuddered in that by-now familiar way that meant she was trying to hold back tears.

“It’s- amazing. I’d love to.”

She grinned.

“Alright. This takes the top spot for now then. Do you want to eat, or talk about… well, whatever comes to mind?” She gently asked, shoving her phone back into her pocket and hugging Taylor again.

Taylor audibly gulped.

“I- I’d like to eat in a bit. I can… kind of smell it, it’s distracting. B-but uhm, first, I wanted to ask something.” Taylor mumbled, even more shy than usual.

“Go ahead.”

Taylor cleared her throat.

“Well, uhm. Would it be a bother to… give me one of your scarves? Or, this one? I just… the new cell smells like iron. And iron kinda smells like blood. And your scarf will… smell like you. Nghrhh this sounds so stupid and weird…” Taylor groan-whined, letting out a half-hearted sob right after, and Hannah giggled because it was weird but it was also really cute.

“Sure, just take it. I have a facemask under this just in case the scarf gets knocked loose or burnt off, so I can do my job just fine until I go home and grab another one.”

Taylor’s eyes peeked up, questioning.

“I’m sure.”

Taylor nodded, lowering her eyes to the scarf.

“S-so uhm, you mentioned teaching me how to… tie one of these into a mask?”

Well, technically it was a balaclava she was pretty sure, but it sounded too foreign and… terrorist-y for her tastes. Her and PR agreed on that one, at least.

But that was secondary to the unspoken request.

She smiled, wide and close-mouthed.

“Of course. Might be a bit tough with one hand, but I can guide your hands instead. Let’s go sit.”

Taylor picked her up again, and she let out a long-suffering sigh.

“You can let me walk.”

“Nuh-uh.” Taylor mumbled, then pushed her up to the table before finally letting go, grabbing a chair to turn it around, putting its back between Hannah’s legs, then sitting down.

Hannah undid the loop around her neck, and gave Taylor the scarf, who grabbed it and tried to make heads and tails of where it began and where it started.

After doing so, Taylor turned to give her a questioning look.

She smiled.

“Okay, so first, take the edges, hold them up, and thread both through the center, under each other. Only a bit, make sure the loop is loose.” She began, and Taylor fumbled her way through her instructions as Hannah occasionally extended a hand to indicate what exactly she meant with pantomimes and gestures.

One minute later, Taylor shifted in her chair to turn around, almost posing in her seat for her as she wore an american flag around her mouth and nose, wringing her hands together.

She wasn't sure why exactly, but she felt so proud in that moment that she couldn't help but grab Taylor by the chin and kiss her forehead again, despite her embarassed squirming, then lean back to beam at her.

"A bit more tan and people wouldn't even tell the difference." She chirped, kicking her feet, laughter in her chest, and Taylor's eyes thinned a little with her smile.

Taylor's hand rose to softly brush against the scarf, fingertips skimming it with care, her entire demeanor softening and smoothing over as she continued to stare at Hannah's knee.

"Hannah?" Taylor asked quietly.

She tilted her head, still smiling.

"Thank you. For not making me feel like I'm weird and creepy and evil no matter how... strange I get, or what stupid thing I do, or no matter what weird things I ask for. And thank you for... everything. All the things you've done for me. Just... being you." Taylor breathed out, and looked up at her, eyes shining with both tears and naked reverence.

It was the look of someone who would immolate themselves for another person without a second thought.

Probably without a first thought either, considering how open that gaze was.

Hannah's smile shifted a little, some part of her quite uncomfortable with being the target of such intense and focused emotions, while another part of her was just happy that Taylor was happy and liked her so much.

"You're welcome, sweetheart." She said, softly smiling. Then she flicked Taylor's forehead, and shook her hand out when all it did was make Taylor blink at her. "Also stop being self deprecating, you haven't done anything stupid yet." She added on, and Taylor laughted quietly.

After the moment of levity passed, Taylor took a deep breath, then sighed it out.

"Okay, I... I would like to eat now. If that's okay."

Hannah nodded.

"Sure thing. Just don't get the scarf messy, I'll want it back eventually. Also I'd prefer if you didn't wear it up around me, I like seeing your face." She said as she dug into the bag she brought with her.

Taylor blinked at her a couple times, before she slowly lowered the scarf as if unsure, and nodded.

Then Hannah put the faintly bloody, sealed bag on the table, and Taylor's gaze moved to stare at it, nostrils flaring but gaze puzzled.

"That's... your arm?"

"Yep. Messily chopped to pieces for your eating pleasure," and boy was it messy, if Taylor wasn't even sure if that was her arm in the bag, "And I also put salt and pepper on a few pieces because I don't know how your tastebuds work but might as well experiment."

For the first time, Taylor gave her a look like she was questioning her sanity.

Hannah smiled wider, and brought the bag forward, and Taylor took it, her lips starting to tremble as her breathing picked up.

Hannah didn't push nor rush, calmly sitting there and letting Taylor come to terms with this whole situation.

Eventually, Taylor got up to put her chair back in the right way, facing the table, and put the bag on it, swallowing audibly every few seconds and breathing harder, but still not moving.

That was fine, they had a few hours.

Chapter Text

She wasn’t sure what to expect when Taylor finally took off the scarf, put it aside, and opened the bag before reaching in to grab some of the pieces.

Taylor held up a circular slab of what used to be her forearm, the overpowering scent of blood filling the room as she stared at it, body trembling from tension as she gave her side-eyed glances.

“Want me to turn away?” She asked.

Taylor gulped, licked her lips, then shakily murmured, “I- y-y-y-yeah.”

She lifted her legs and turned, sitting cross-legged on the desk while staring at the wall as she leaned back and supported her upper body on the table with her arm, lightly stretching. 

A strangely animalistic soul-deep groan of satisfaction came from Taylor, the sound deeper than her newly teenaged voice should be able to muster, and she chuckled, leaning forward then extending her hand backwards to place it on Taylor’s head.

The sounds, breaths, and Taylor’s every movement, suddenly stopped.

She gently threaded her fingers through Taylor’s luscious hair, then began to hum the lullaby she knew from heart, leaning her head back to stare up at the ceiling.

Taylor resumed her lunch, the sound of tearing flesh and snapping bone filling the room, her breaths heavy and deep.

While some part of her was fairly disturbed and grossed out by this… bizarre circumstance, an equally large part of her felt proud of Taylor and satisfied that she could overwrite the terrible experiences of her first two feeding with something light and perversely domestic like this.

She had been worrying that Taylor would have a very negative outlook on eating due to her first two experiences, so while keeping her distance might work, she wanted to make it a nice thing. To eat.

Even if it was morbid, at least she wouldn’t have to worry about Taylor starving herself should something go wrong.

“There’s other feeds to look at, Maria.” Simon drawled, swerving his chair with his propped up feet to glance at the other three dozen monitors covering the wall, all vaguely tilted towards their desks.

“I know that, but- but what the fuck.” She snapped, and gestured to the security feed in front of her with both hands like presenting the sight to him.

Simon scoffed, not even glancing her way.

“Have you never seen a Changer before?”

“She’s eating a SUPERHERO’S ARM right in FRONT OF HER! And Miss Militia is patting her on the head!” She exclaimed, her voice rising in pitch from sheer- fucking, incredulous- what!?

Simon paused, then slowly swerved his chair to squint at her screen.

“That’s, that’s not her arm.” He fumbled, half-questioning.

“YES IT IS, SECURITY CALLED US UP FOR IT EARLIER!” She involuntarily screeched, then gestured at the screen again with sputtering half-words, because what is she supposed to SAY TO THIS!?

“Damn, that girl’s got some chompers on her.” Simon said slowly as he used his console to zoom in on the sight of the girl EATING A HUMAN ARM!

She turned away, gesturing at the wall like it was a person, grabbing at her hair then slamming her head into the wall with a miserable keen of confusion before turning back to Simon who seemed morbidly fascinated because he kept zooming in and oh god the girl was eating her fingers now!

Then he unmuted the feed and raised the volume and oh fuck she could hear it she was going to hurl.

“Th-buaha-wa-wuwuwuh-ahwtat-” She squeaked, then trailed off into a confused mewl of traumatised informational overload.

Was she having a stroke?

She was pretty sure she was having a stroke.

Miss Militia! Her favorite local superheroine! Patting someone on the head as they ate her arm! How- why- when- what?! She was going to ask for an autograph and now she knew that if she saw her all she’d want to do is blurt out a million questions that she can’t ask because it’s fucking illegal! Or she’d vomit on her like she did in 5th grade to Miss Wilkins because she could't stand blood and the things she'd seen today alone were making her dizzy!

“No…” Simon gasped, in disbelief.

She opened her fingers to peek at the screen, against her better judgement.

Miss Militia had half-turned to pick up a tiny piece of her arm floating around the blood of the bag, holding it up for examination.

“How do I taste?” Miss Militia asked, and the Changer in the chair paused.

“Good.” She replied, voice strained, then went back to shearing through Miss Militia’s arm, loudly crunching and cracking through the bones with meaty snaps. Then she paused again. “U-uhm, like... gunpowder and smoke and earthy meat. T-the uh, salt is nice. The pepper’s making me a bit- queasy.”

Salt?

Wait, pepper!?

Miss Militia raised the little piece of meat, and put it in her mouth, before making a scrunched up face as she chewed.

“Don’t shee zhe apheal, but ohay swee’heart.” The woman commented softly, voice muffled and expression pinched, looking like she had eaten a whole bag of lemons and was questioning her life choices.

"Did you just-" The changer blurted out, lowering a piece of arm to stare at Miss Militia's back.

"Yesh, thought I'd try it to bond with you but this is making me feel sick actually."

"Wu- just spit it out!"

"We don't waste food in my household." Miss Militia petulantly mumbled as she kept chewing.

“If I could sell this footage on the dark web I’m sure I’d be rolling in money from some very strange people right now.” Simon mumbled.

Maria dove for the trashcan as her lunch rose into her neck.

Chapter Text

The first bite, she almost hurled.

The emotion was hard to describe.

It was like she was there but wasn’t, like she was just eating a piece of meat but wasn’t.

The skin tone was wrong. The taste was wrong. The skin was too tight and young and smelled like Hannah rather than father.

Still, her brain felt like a strobe light, flashing between reality and memory and making her feel like she was about to eat her own heart out of her chest.

Then Hannah’s hand met her head and everything felt alright.

Scary, and new, and uncertain, but there was… there was hope.

She was still queasy, but it felt like it was the pepper more than the gut-pulping guilt and remembrance of what she’d done.

Then Hannah tried to…

She honestly wasn’t sure what had gone through her head when she decided to try a piece of herself, but her evaluation of Hannah became even more charitable because-

Because somehow, she hadn’t vomited from the mere action, then even made a… joke? About not wasting food.

And it didn’t escape her how Hannah had done something that she doubted anyone ever would willingly do, just- just to bond with her. Some kind of solidarity.

It was a nice visit.

And for the first time in a while, she felt human, at least until she was muzzled and shackled like a dog and marched back to her cell.

It was enough.

She couldn’t sleep.

The foam block was comfortable, more comfortable than her old padded block of concrete.

She was warm.

She was… still hungry, but nowhere near as terrible as yesterday.

But she didn’t feel safe.

She couldn’t sleep.

Eventually, her body betrayed her.

She dreamt of a pleading, sobbing mass of bodies and wailing mouths, begging for mercy as she ate and ate and ate and made their teeth her own, and woke up shuddering and sobbing, unable to breathe besides shuddering, wheezing whimpers.

Why?

She had eaten, no problem.

So why?

She was terrified.

She was alone.

She was cold.

She was alone.

She was going to die.

She would never see the sun again.

She was alone.

She-

She wasn’t.

In the relative privacy of her cell, she could feel little shame about how pathetically she whimpered for Hannah with a voice that didn’t come out, delirious, feeling more like she was praying the woman would magically appear in her cell than anything coherent like a plea.

Fingers jerking like the legs of a dying spider curled around a scarf, and she dragged it to her face as she curled further into a shivering ball, gasping desperately for air into it, pretending the oversized tentacle clutched tight in her arms was Hannah.

Or just, anything. Something alive, someone else.

It helped draw the panic attack away, the stress slowly bleeding out.

Her body betrayed her again, hours later.

She was too tired to enter a nightmare.

She just startled awake, heart racing and feeling unsafe and exposed and freezing despite the skin writhing over her flesh being so warm.

She was too dehydrated to cry.

She closed her eyes again.

The shackles and restraints finally fell off, remaining attached to the machine by the door.

“Well, you look woozy today.” A sweet, kind voice said, amused and light.

The world was right again. She turned with an exhausted but ecstatic grin, only to stumble when the room tilted, eyes widening.

Hannah grunted in effort as she caught her, stumbling a bit before stabilizing and staring down at her with open concern.

Concern brought guilt, because she was causing Hannah to feel something unpleasant and that was like- it just shouldn’t happen. Anger followed because Hannah was feeling bad because of her, insignificant useless her, and-

Then rationality came in to grumble at her, because Hannah thought she was worth it, and Hannah thought that she wasn’t a bother, and Hannah was right.

The sky was blue, things fell if you let go of them, and Hannah was right.

So she just pushed the self-deprecating thoughts out of her mind to the best of her abilities and smiled, genuinely.

She wasn’t sure how it looked, but it didn’t help the furrow in Hannah’s brow.

“Taylor? Are you okay? Do you need more… you know?” Hannah asked, straightening them and giving her a telling tilt of the head towards her missing arm.

She blanched, her tails jerking with enough force for one of the buckles to snap and make her flinch.

“Nonononono, I’m- I’m just, don’t hurt yourself, I’m fine, I- uh, I-”

I can’t sleep without you there, her brain filled the sentence and she choked on the words because she was so fucking pathetic and stupid and weak she couldn’t help but get angry at herself despite knowing she couldn’t change.

She couldn’t sleep without Hannah around. She knew that. She tried but all she could manage were five minute naps that would escalate into a feverish, short lucid dream that had her waking up and wondering if she’d even stopped dreaming, then calm down just enough to recognize this was reality and settle back for another five minute nap that ended the same way.

But saying any of that made her feel like a tiny child that had- wet the bed, or something.

She could just imagine Emma’s mocking voice, crooning ‘ oh I’m scawed to sweep awone’ in her ear, could practically hear the choir of laughter that follows.

But.

Did she care anymore?

Why should she care about anyone who wasn’t Hannah?

Nobody cared about her that wasn’t Hannah, so it made sense to dismiss them. Still, would Hannah not think the same, at least inwardly?

Were she in her position, she couldn’t help but think that something like that mocking thought would cross her mind. And it was… scary to consider.

But Hannah told her to talk to her. So she had to talk to Hannah. She had to tell her things, both to protect her from Taylor and because Hannah told her to tell her things. So she would. But she…

“I-” She started, and choked again, averting her blurring gaze, jaw trembling with humiliation.

Hannah’s arm wrapped around her shoulders, and a soft kiss landed on the crown of her head.

She shuddered, and finally wrapped her arms around her, hugging her and breathing in her scent, their limbs slotting together with familiar ease.

Thump-thump, pause, thump-thump.

Hannah hummed pensively.

“...Okay sweetheart. I think I should… establish something. First, you don’t want to tell me whatever is wrong, right?” Hannah murmured.

Even if she told her, it wasn’t something Hannah could do something about. She hadn’t slept in… ever since she got here.

She slowly nodded.

Hannah hummed affirmatively.

“Okay, that’s fair. First, I want to say that you can tell me anything. There is nothing you could have possibly done or think of that would make me hate you, or back away. Absolutely anything. You could tell me you want to kill someone who harmed you, or tell me that you’re still hungry and want a leg next time, and we’d deal with it together. Secondly, communication is really important, sweetheart.”

She nodded into her jacket because of course, Hannah was right.

But she still didn’t want to tell her, and it sounded like Hannah would tell her to say it anyway.

She absorbed the information like a sponge, trying to internalise it.

“Communication draws people closer. It makes bonds, it breeds familiarity, and ensures that there are no misunderstandings or fights and arguments. That said, you do not have to tell me if you do not want to. Just know that no matter what it is, you can tell me. Whether you do tell or not, depends on if you want to tell me. Alright, bug?” Hannah softly swayed in place as she murmured, and Taylor cursed herself as her emotions boiled over.

Crying.

Again.

What was wrong with her?

“I- I can’t…” She warbled out, Hannah’s words echoing in her skull and bouncing around like pinballs.

Communication was important.

She wanted to bond with Hannah. She wanted to be even more familiar with her, and the thought of having an argument or a fight with Hannah made her feel like someone dropped orange-hot coals in her chest.

And the option to not tell her if she so wished, was oddly enough, what made her suddenly decide that she wanted to tell her.

“I can’t… sleep without you. It’s- stupid, but I just- I keep having nightmares and panic attacks and- jumping in and out of lucid dreams until I can’t tell what’s real.” She warbled, shrinking, wishing she could turn into a marble and be crushed to dust rather than deal with how fucking s-

“Not stupid, sweetheat. I used to have a plushie. Once you get used to sleeping while holding something, or just, with something or someone, it can be hard to break the habit. Weird brain chemistry association stuff, the conversation with my old therapist went way over my head. That aside, how long have you been up?” Hannah asked.

She breathed in, shakily.

“S-since I got here. F-forty, hours? Maybe?”

Hannah took a deep breath, working her jaw.

“Thirty nine or so. Did the scarf help, at all?”

She shifted to keep her ear on her heart, and nodded.

“The player?”

She grimaced.

“I had a dream that one of the ear jacks was a centipede burrowing i-in-into m-my ear. Tried without jacks, just playing the white noise track, but, I dreamt that I was in a, a lab, with some kind of helmet playing white noise into my ears while someone was poking around inside my brain from behind me, programming me.” She whispered, her voice wavering and cracking.

The first one wasn’t quite a dream as much as it was a vivid recollection of the locker.

How she wasn’t horrifically scared of insects, she wasn’t sure.

“Eugh, fuck.” Hannah hissed, cussing for the first time in her presence with sheer disgust. “Those are bad, even for nightmares.” She murmured in continuation.

She nodded, using the suffusing scent of Hannah and the song of her heartbeat to relax.

“Well, you said the new cell smells like blood, and the old one smelled like me. So you just gotta… make it smell like me, I guess. Do you want me to pass you my jackets and pillows or something?” Hannah murmured, understanding, soft, so soft, not judging or laughing at how she was acting like a child, and she choked down a happy sob to hurriedly nod and hug tighter.

Hannah made a noise, stiffening.

She loosened the hug, and Hannah relaxed.

They stood there for a while, Hannah playing with her hair and scratching her back, occasionally petting the- the tentacles, like they were some cute snakes or something, making goosebumps erupt all over her back and forcing her to shiver like a lazy cat.

Hannah’s half-closed jacket was loose, and she found her head practically buried inside the collar, breathing the same air in and out, warm and full of Hannah-living person-young-healthy.

The animalistic, instinctual knowledge didn’t even disturb her one bit, not anymore. Not now.

“..we shou… wn. Hm?” Hannah eventually mumbled, as if underwater.

She didn’t have the power or the will to reply, sinking into warmth and letting her thoughts scatter.

She poked Taylor’s tentacles, and despite some kind of squirmy reaction to the stimuli, the girl didn’t budge an inch from where she’d decided to burrow into her jacket and promptly pass out.

She chuckled in sheer joy and fondness, pursing her lips and tightening her lungs as lightly as she could to not jostle Tay… her daughter- and beamed at nothing as she took a deep breath, nose in her hair.

Her nose might not be half or a tenth as sensitive as Taylor’s, but she was right, people did seem to have distinct scents. Or so she thought, she’d never been in close contact with anyone for long enough to notice until now.

Taylor smelled like iron, pure air like crystal, and something predatory she couldn’t quite place, like smelling a wet dog but not a fraction as unpleasant in its actual scent.

It smelled refreshing, relaxing, and dangerous all at once.

Very fitting.

“Cmon bug. Let’s find a corner for you to nap in.” She murmured, and waddle-dragged Taylor and her no doubt hundred-something pound mass of red-crystal tentacles over to a corner, where she would feel most safe. 

Chapter Text

For every visit since and after, Hannah would come with a large thermos full of blood for her.

She squashed her guilt surprisingly easily, because every time she finished drinking, Hannah would just give her this serene, wide smile full of pride.

Her third visit to her new residence, Hannah brought her a leather jacket, and a more normal one, lightly worn, as well as a pillow, then they talked about another two apartments Hannah had checked out.

Despite the repeating mantra of ‘I’m not worth it oh my fucking god this place must cost so much money nooo please don’t waste this much money on me I could sleep on your floor and I wouldn’t care’, she couldn’t help but envision living in a place like that with Hannah and smile.

Hannah’s sheer joy at even seeing a small smile from her made it impossible not to smile, really. It was like a feedback loop of happiness.

Taylor kept her choice of the first apartment, then she smiled, and Hannah smiled, and then she smiled wider because she was happy that Hannah was happy and then Hannah smiled wider for the same reason and it kept going until they were grinning like loons.

That was the happiest she’d ever been, since her mother’s death.

The next visit, Hannah brought a brown trenchcoat she was wearing at home specifically for her, hoping that the long coat would help her conceal any outburst of tentacles coming from her back, something to wear long-term, even if the outfit was a bit dark and edgier than normal.

She did not tear up at a simple gift that was more permanent than a trinket or a passing means of entertainment.

She did not.

She cried for ten minutes straight instead because she was a complete and utter crybaby.

It was quite the hassle apparently to bring clothing into her cell, having to pass the jackets through a half dozen detectors first, but Hannah got more eventually.

Next visit, they curled up in a corner and read a book together, until Taylor fell asleep again and woke up in much the same position as before, her head stuffed into Hannah’s jacket as they sat in the corner, tentacles forming a blanket for them both.

Next visit, after a brief, sleepy conversation where she admitted that she really liked her hair, and half-managed to dodge her other insecurities until Hannah prodded her a bit and she told her, Hannah had decided to bring her a whole hair-care kit, and then immediately set to teaching her calisthenic exercises to get in shape.

Being able to snap steel rods like salt sticks meant that it was more yoga than genuine exercise, but if she pushed on the ceiling with her tentacles while doing an exercise, it did eventually become tiresome and perhaps, beneficial.

The hair-care kit was quite well stocked, considering how much of it was seized for the ability to make ‘firebombs’, like she needed something like that, and thus, her mandatory showers became a lot more tolerable when she wasn’t using soaps that felt like solidified gasoline and shampoos that smelled so artificial they made her feel like someone was trying to make her choke on perfume and plastic.

And her own scent being muted helped her appreciate the cell slowly starting to smell less like cold blood and more like Hannah.

She couldn’t quite sleep, but she didn’t wake up gasping for air anymore.

The next visit, Hannah brought her a casual cardigan she sometimes wore at home, and another scarf, and they talked about the CPS agent that visited their future apartment.

They had apparently given their verbal agreement to everything they’d seen.

It still didn’t feel real.

Hannah was telling her she was adopting her, but it was like tossing a ball at a wall and hoping it would stick, despite how much she listened to Hannah.

It likely wouldn’t feel real for a long, long time.

Another visit passed, and Taylor discovered that she was really starting to like Hannah’s nickname for her.

Bug.

It sounded cruel and mocking without context, but when Hannah called her that, it felt like that little nickname was a condensed, warm, sappy ball of ‘I care about you’ and ‘you’re worth it’ and ‘I won’t leave’, and it made her so happy that if she were a slightly more expressive person, she would probably be bouncing on the spot.

Another visit.

Hannah’s arm had grown back, and she’d brought three giant water bottles, full of blood.

She didn’t have to tell her they came from someone else, they smelled like a young man, but knowing that Aegis had been using his free time to help ease the burden on Hannah made her immediately and immensely like the guy, even if he couldn't really visit.

And she got to enjoy a full, two armed hug again.

She only teared up a little bit.

Next visit, Hannah’s arm, what had regenerated of it, was missing again.

She felt worse this time, because she wasn’t starving to the point of hallucination, but all it took for Hannah to refuse her protests was a slip up mentioning the hunger pangs she felt, and then there was no convincing the woman.

Additionally, as nice as Hannah put it, she was still incredibly thin. Not quite… gaunt, not anymore, but disturbingly thin. She needed actual meat, even if blood helped a lot.

Like trying to stay alive and healthy while surviving on orange juice, Hannah had put it, and it was accurate.

Hannah tasted better this time. No pepper, light salt, less blood.

She had so many questions. How did Hannah not vomit just- just doing this to her own severed arm? How could she think this was worth it? That she was worth it?

But she ate, and Hannah’s palpable joy when she was done was enough to make her forget her doubts.

Next visit, Hannah had brought another bag of casual clothes she wore at home, despite having a giant bruise across her back and a quickly-healing broken shoulder.

It was the first time Taylor realized what it felt like to have one’s veins sliced open and filled with icy slurry.

Upper back. Upper back was too close to the head. Had that piece of rubble gone up a little higher- she imagined Hannah lifeless on the ground, blood covering her head, cracked open like an egg, leaking crimson.

She… panicked, a little. And may have made some very unreasonable demands for a hero. Hannah agreed, but it felt like she was just appeasing her.

What hero went out for work dressed like an armoured soldier, after all?

She was scared. The thought of losing Hannah felt worse than the thought of dying. A hundred times worse.

If she ever got involved in cape things, she’d find Krieg and gut him like a fish before she even worked on a name .

The bundle of clothes was quite big by now.

Slowly but surely, Taylor made…

Well, something that vaguely resembled a bird nest, if she was to be honest with herself.

She just took the foam block, shoved it in a corner, and heaped everything Hannah had given her on and around it before wearing the two scarves and draping the jackets over her curled up body like blankets.

That night, she turned on the player, put on the calming track, and collapsed into the pile, and for the first time, slept soundly.

Not for long, or that well, considering she was startled awake by nothing instead of slowly waking up, but she slept undisturbed, and that was enough to not feel like a walking ghoul.

Hannah stared at her bicep, the arm ending at the elbow.

A day and a half or so more, and it should be ready.

She took a deep breath, and sighed, tiredly shovelling food into her mouth.

The amount of…

Frankly, bitching, the PRT was doing, was astounding.

It was driving her up the wall.

Her existence used to be peaceful because she used to be the perfect hero, but now that she was even slightly stepping out of line, she was practically getting harassed day in and day out by someone over some inane bullshit or another.

Apparently, the image of her riding a motorcycle one-armed and fighting like that as well had finally gotten noticed, despite her vehement avoidance of PR patrols, and now all of a sudden she was getting daily emails and calls to Piggot’s office trying to convince her to stop “mutilating herself” and “sabotaging her team’s performance”.

And PHO was speculating, articles by vapid websites were being written to bait even a few clicks, so people were starting to notice her ‘injury’. 

The wording too was making her feel offended and betrayed, despite her best efforts to calm down.

The PRT talked as if it was her fucking fault Krieg had launched half the corner of a gas station at her, when the only one at fault was the bastard himself.

It hit her from the back, what the- what would having a second arm there have really changed?

They didn’t answer her, just insisting and ignoring everything she said and spewing corporate jargon bullshit so generic her eyes glazed over until they found the end of the page.

Dragon had to deny four fucking complaints about her ‘mental health and self-harm tendencies’ in just two days. Two from the image department. Because none of them knew why she kept losing her arm and it wasn’t like Piggot would ever tell them, so they just assumed she was losing her mind.

Then, her new armour.

It was a whole… thing, now.

No, she can’t just slap on some of Colin’s fragment ceramics and only put on the helmet when in combat, it had to be a huge interdepartmental debate about the specific intricacies of how this would affect her image and the niche she was fulfilling and how it would clash or support one narrative or another just by being worn, weaving with the democrat-republican political landscape. Whatever the hell that was at the moment.

She could not give less of a shit about any of that.

She was genuinely starting to dislike her job.

Oh sure, she’d never get tired of the feeling of seeing someone light up and smile at just seeing her, or the feeling of finally arresting a prolific scumbag with powers or not, but everything that happened in the quiet in-between was nothing but stress, frustration, and to be honest, ungratefulness.

She wasn’t expecting special treatment. She was expecting the benefit of the doubt and an organisation that would listen like it had countless times before, except this time she wasn’t being the perfect hero so she was practically being ignored.

She’d served as a nigh-perfect hero since she was nine years old. Second youngest in the Wards, ever. For twenty three years now.

And she couldn’t even be afforded tiny concessions like armour that would ensure she wasn’t going to get her head popped like a grape by Viktor or Rune now that the gangs were starting to get pressured? Pushed around with sly insinuations and complaints about shit none of them knew anything about, talking over her and about her like she didn’t even exist outside their folders? Like she was oh so clearly unwell and should be taken off active duty until she was back to being their perfect soldier, a thinly veiled punishment for all she could tell?

She knew this was likely going to blow over soon, but all this frustration combined with what the PRT seemed willing to do to Taylor had permanently soured the already imperfect image she had of this organisation. And by extension, the law itself.

That was why she had to start doing things she hadn’t been doing before.

Merchandise and the like, more PR stuff.

The PRT had badgered her into quite a bit of that, of course, but she’d never gone out of her way to accept deals and be proactive and searching about it.

She, frankly, just wanted to gather as much money as she could for a while, not just for Taylor, but in the case she went through with what she was thinking about.

Retirement. Or a… separation, of sorts.

Few capes lived anywhere near as long as she did in the scene, most dying before their first decade, but that didn’t provide her a sense of safety, it made her feel like the near-inevitable demise seen to by statistics was slowly getting closer and closer for her. Granted, with the Endbringers gone, that statistic was getting quite a bit better, but with how things have been ramping up without the Truce around keeping villains out on the streets, the action, when it did happen, tended to be a lot more lethal and forceful these days, so she wasn’t sure how that would affect cape life expectancy.

Point was, she wanted to live until she was old and grey and she wanted the same for Taylor.

She didn’t think that would be a likely possibility with the PRT, not long-term.

Maybe five, maybe ten more years, or maybe just until Taylor was out of highschool, either way, she was starting to consider just… leaving. Or becoming an independent.

There was also the issue of Taylor to consider.

All parahumans were seemingly magnetised by fate and mind both, to conflict.

How Taylor hadn’t stumbled into Oni Lee or something during her two months of starvation, she wasn’t sure, but parahumans were eternally cursed to seek or be sought by conflict.

And so would Taylor.

There were ways to curb that restlessness, that urge, but not many.

It all really depended on what Taylor wanted to do, in the end.

If she wanted to join the Wards, even after Hannah eventually told her about Sophia, Hannah would let her, and they could work together peripherally until she graduated. If she wanted to become a hero after that, Hannah would let her, and would even work with her by her side.

If Taylor didn’t want to join the Wards, she would just let her live her life and hope that any vigilantism or random trouble would keep to a minimum, because Hannah would not bet on her chances of the girl staying out of trouble.

Hannah keeping her from that would likely drive the girl loopy with inaction, something that seemed to be affecting her already after a month in cells.

Regardless, she wanted to gather resources. Invest, make connections, whatever was needed and whatever her daughter could use in the future.

She paused mid-bite, realising that for the first time, she naturally thought of Taylor as her daughter, and smiled, before returning to her food and thoughts.

The apartment hunt was over, but now, she would have to wait for a final reply from CPS on her adoption application, go talk strategy with Carol again, and go talk to a financial advisor on how to use her resources to acquire more.


Namely, she had to learn investing and business. Or just pay someone to make her money for her, but that was a bit iffy.

A bit hard at thirty two, but she was far from incapable of learning. And she would.

She wasn’t exactly hunting for a spot in the billionaire isle, but she wanted Taylor and whoever she put in her life to have that safety.

Besides, a vigilante group of two didn’t exactly swim in income, nevermind what would happen if they decided to add more people to it.

Her mind wandered back to her apartment.

She thought two point eight million dollars was a lot, but the apartment by itself cost four hundred grand. And she still had to find a construction and tile company, a moving company, an electric engineer and a couple plumbers et cetera to fix the apartment up, and that was before she even thought of filling the thing up with furniture etc.

So much to do.

She put her fork down, and sighed.

She was still so stressed.

And working out with one arm was surprisingly frustrating to accomplish. Most things were, but exercise especially.

Maybe a late night bike ride would do the trick.

Otherwise, she’d just have to wait to visit Taylor again to relax.

She pushed the takeout away, and went to find her jacket, changing out of the sweater she was wearing and putting it on the couch to give to Taylor later.

Chapter Text

Stress.

A lot of stress.

And now here she was, pacing in her apartment, waiting for a call back.

“Dragon, are you sure -”

“Yes, Hannah. I did my best, but the case got moved to a higher clearance level. Only Directors and the Triumvirate can check it now. I can’t extend the file to any of the people you wanted to testify in her favour, and since the Fallen investigation took up so much time I didn’t have the option until now. But, we sent the file an hour ago. Give it some time. Legend is a busy man.” Dragon interrupted her, the drone lazily flying about and inspecting her apartment.

She huffed out a sigh.

“I know, I know, but- I haven’t seen the man in years. He probably just remembers me as a late teenager about to get out of the Wards program, playing on that console Hero brought us and being awkward around Chevalier. I don’t know if he’ll even check the email. And if he does, it’s a lot of work for him to reach out to so many capes in our stead and convince them to come to trial in bumfuck Brockton Bay, so he might just not bother.” She muttered, pacing, then tsk’ed. “Less swearing, Hannah.” She quietly chastised herself, and let her nostrils flare in a silent sigh.

Dragon hummed.

“Hannah, we sent him the same email from both of our official accounts. I think he’ll check a joint email from Dragon and Miss Militia, both of whom he personally knows . And if he doesn’t check it, he’ll call us as soon as his secretary can get a hold of him, so sit down and watch some TV or something, please?”

She scoffed a bit, a sardonic smile on her lips.

“Don’t put us on the same tier like that, I’m pretty sure everyone outside Chicago, New York, and Brockton don’t even know who I am. If you didn’t send it I think it’d stay in his unread folder forever. Thank you.”

The drone whirled around with an aggressive buzz of its fans.

Dragon looked incredulous.

“Hannah, on the popularity poll of the USA, you’re usually hovering around number sixteen to twenty . That’s including Scion and the Triumvirate. And you barely do any PR stunts, flashy events, or overzealous marketing. I know these might just be numbers when I say it like this, but you’re Famous with a capital F. Out of thousands of capes in the country, you’re consistently in the top twenty for most demographics above the age of fifteen, despite barely trying and not even noticing it.”

She stopped pacing, blinking at the drone.

“I… am?”

The drone bobbed up and down in tune with Dragon’s nod.

“Hannah, there are literally adults out there that have been watching your career since they were in diapers and you were a little girl in the Wards popping people with rubber crossbow bolts.”

She turned to look out the window, brows furrowed as she digested that.

“Huh.”

That explained why that toy company replied to her interest email with six differing offers within just a couple hours. She thought their acquisitions department was just speedy.

“Way to make me feel old, you plate-crusted lizard.” She grumbled in faux-offence, clearly playful, and Dragon burst out laughing.

“Hm, I do believe you’re due for a mid-life crisis soon.”

“I’ll have you know Taylor says I barely look older than twenty.”

“Fraud and treachery. She’s sucking up to you because she wants more clothes for her hoard.” Dragon smugly chirped.

She giggled, brushing her hair back.

God she loved Dragon.

Then the phone rang, and her heart leapt up into her throat, lodging itself there as she stared at the landline for a moment, before practically jumping forward to grab it.

“Uh, hello. Is this Hannah I’m speaking to?” A meek, small voice asked, one she recognized despite the man’s best efforts to change it.

Her smile threatened to split her face.

“Hey Keith.”

She put the phone down, and put her face in her hands, heels of her palms pressing into her eyes as she took deep, in and out breaths.

He’d help her.

He was eager to help her, and more than suitably horrified at what he saw.

She could get… pretty much everyone she knew into the trial through him, because with his clearance, he could reach out to those Dragon no longer could.

Chevalier, Narwhal, Mirage and Hat Trick, Mouse Protector, and half a dozen more, assuming any of them took the time to come all the way to Brockton's courthouse.

She knew a hero’s word meant more than a civilian’s to a judge and jury, but it wouldn’t be a decisive way to win the trial.

Still, it was a huge boon. What jury could vote against Taylor after having Legend and a dozen other heroes exclaim their disagreement, on top of everything else?

They still had no court date, which was frustrating, but it would come eventually. Soon, likely.

She was just too relieved to care at the moment.

Despite the frustrating discussion that had occurred a moment prior, Piggot had been surprisingly understanding of her new armour.

Her dislike of Taylor, and Miss Miliita’s self-mutilation aside, the woman did not seem to carry that animosity to Miss Militia herself.

Still, the image department had cried an entire river to her, so Piggot had summoned her for a negotiation that led to nothing but two frustrated veterans trying to find a middle ground.

The ‘trouble’ began when Colin gave her the armour she requested, bless his soul.

It made her look ready for war, or at least some bomb defusal, despite its relative lightness and flexibility. A dark army green jacket that covered all her vitals, made of fragmenting ceramic plates stitched onto some flexible material she forgot the name of. The jacket made her look somewhere in between an armoured beetle and a juggernaut, and had detachable portions so she could wear it without an empty sleeve flapping about, it was breathable, and shockingly light. The helmet was heavy but that was due to its sheer thickness.

It could stop a 50 cal bullet.

The sheer impact force of such a bullet hitting the helmet would likely throw her in a coma and rupture her skull if not just instantly snap her neck if she took the shot the wrong way, but those were things that could be regenerated from, given time. Well, broken neck aside, she had no idea about that one.

She had a concussion enough times to know regeneration worked just fine on her brain though.

It was perfect and low maintenance.

Unfortunately, the image department’s bitching had quintupled, which led to an understandably cranky Piggot trying to negotiate her out of wearing this stuff for a solid hour and a half before she gave up.

Likely because the woman agreed with Hannah’s decision, inwardly, even if the image department would cry about ‘escalation’ and ‘the message this sent’ blah blah blah blah.

The end result was a mild insubordination talk to her and Armsmaster before Piggot marked the jacket and helmet clear for combat use, extending an olive branch to her as long as she didn’t wear the jacket and helmet outside of it.

It would take some time to stop and wear it before going into a fight, but it would be worth it, so in the chance that Piggot would not make her life any harder, she’d agreed to that provision.

Only wear armour when heading to a fight or about to be in one.

Better than she’d expected.

And she refused to back down on this.

Taylor’s panicked, fearful gaze as she inspected her shoulder was glued to the back of her eyelids every time she considered giving the PR team an inch.

“Taylor wanted to profusely thank you, so consider this a profuseful exclamation of her gratitude.” She said mildly, and Aegis chuckled as he gave her the bag full of bottles, one hand rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly.

“It’s no big deal to me. Can’t really feel pain, and I’m pretty sure I don’t even need blood to work. It’s more trouble to get these out of the house without mom freaking out.” He shrugged, and smiled.

She smiled at him, genuinely.

“Still, thank you Carlos.”

He smiled, and nodded, giving her a two-fingered salute as he turned to walk out of the Rig’s parking lot.

In her singular hand, a bag swung, loaded with her severed arm- bled out for minimum mess-, a thermos of her blood, and another jug of blood from Carlos.

Taylor still curled into a ball of embarrassment if she so much as glanced at her while she ate or drank, so she didn’t, but in the aftermath, she was free to admire the healthy, lively color of her skin and the vibrancy of her blush, the soft edges peeking out of her shirt where instead of bony protrusions there was now a thin layer of fat and muscle.

Taylor was getting better, physically and mentally. Slowly, but surely.

Unfortunately that gave her daughter a lot more energy so Hannah found herself being used as a tree by a red-eyed koala that literally tackled her the moment the cuffs were off.

She coughed lightly as she remained sprawled out on the metal table, fondly exasperated as Taylor wrapped her with the tentacles like a christmas gift and buried her face in her jacket, again.

“We could-” she lightly coughed again, “- just use the chairs like normal people.”

“‘on’t wanna.” Taylor grumbled, slowly getting more and more limp as she continued to breathe in and out against her neck. 

She blew a strand of curly black hair out of her face, and wriggled, raising her shoulders to block Taylor, to minimal effect..

“Your breath tickles.” She murmured, continuing to ineffectually try to squirm away.

Taylor hummed, a dangerous hum. A playful one. 

“So… you’re ticklish ?” Taylor impishly murmured.

Hannah’s eyes widened.

“Taylor, no- yah!” She yelped, jerking and kicking at air as the tip of a tentacle brushed her neck and Taylor blew air into her ear.

Her struggles were meaningless.

Maria glanced at that feed again, quickly, just in case she saw something… strange.

She saw a struggling Miss Militia wrapped head to toe in flattened tentacles and the Changer herself, the woman jerking and leaning away from the girl as she sobbed, the parahuman’s face nestled against Miss Militia’s head and neck.

“Shit, CALL SECURITY!” She yelped, diving for the alarm button.

Simon’s meaty arm lazily waved her attempt away, and the man yawned, unconcerned.

“The girl’s tickling her, relax.” He rumbled, rubbing at his eyes with his other hand.

She blinked at him for one moment, another.

She numbly turned to the screen, and turned its volume dial up.

Miss Militia’s wheezing laughter and giggling protests filled the room.

She turned the dial back down, and went back to her chair, staring at the screens with a trillion yard stare.

She should ask for a raise.

Next time she went to visit, Taylor was already in the meeting room, talking to Vista while Armsmaster did a massive pile of paperwork on the other end of the table, his helmet on and likely playing some kind of auditory report.

He was likely there due to it being almost impossible to approve a discussion between Vista and Taylor without an adult cape in the room, and Hannah had been running herself ragged today, so she hadn’t been available.

The door closed behind her.

Taylor turned to look at her and lit up like a little sun, eyes sparkling.

Vista turned and blinked, before giving her a lazy salute.

Colin didn’t so much as twitch, continuing to read through a project form.

“Uh, do you want me to-?” She started, throwing her thumb at the door behind her.

Taylor answered in the usual way, darting out of her chair and grabbing her in a bruise-tight hug, lifting her off the floor so she could place her ear on her heart without stooping down, a tentacle hugging her thighs to provide support so Hannah’s jacket wouldn’t rise up her waist, a motion borne of experience.

Her feet didn’t kick this time, because frankly, she’d gotten used to randomly being treated like a plushie. 

She sighed in fond exasperation, and lay her chin on Taylor’s head, lazily blinking at the occupants of the room.

Vista’s brows were raised, looking oddly from her to Taylor and back.

She extended the bag in her singular arm towards Vista over Taylor’s shoulder, and the girl took it.

“Don’t look inside. Trust me.” She mumbled, and Vista slowly nodded.

Hannah poked the side of Taylor’s head.

“Wanna let me down, sweetheart?” She asked, a genuine request for once, feeling a bit odd about the open affection in front of two other people.

Then she remembered Elena’s words, to let Taylor decide what is and isn’t appropriate, and paused. She was about to rescind the request before Taylor spoke up.

“There’s only three chairs.” Taylor answered, then backed up a bit and gasped, staring up at her with a smile. “Wait, I can make you a tentacle chair.”

“I- what?”

Taylor nodded hurriedly, setting her down and extending all her tentacles to the side, staring at them and squinting as she manipulated their shapes.

Their flexibility proved as effective as usual. One formed a rough, flat bridge, a foot and something off the floor, while another acted as the backrest, before the last two formed arm rests.

Taylor’s arms gestured to the side, open-handed and bright-eyed.

The throne made of crystal-like glowing flesh wiggled and undulated in a way she guessed was supposed to look inviting.

Vista goggled at it.

“Uh, ta-da?” Taylor awkwardly asked.

She burst out laughing.