Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

‘They fuck you up, your mum and dad/ They may not mean to, but they do/ They fill you with the faults they had/ And add some extra, just for you’ – This be the Verse, Philip Larkin

After class lets out on Friday, Thea and I head from Winslow to this ratty thrift shop north of the Ridge. We trudge along through narrow sidewalks half emancipated from snowbanks and gritty with road salt. There had been a blizzard a few days back. For a few moments Brockton Bay had been pristine, every blemish concealed, every ugly fault covered over. Since then it hadn't been warm enough for anything to start to thaw. Eventually reality intruded. People had to start going about their lives, the dimensions of which were not built to accommodate a foot and a half extra of picturesque nonsense getting in the way. So the snow was shoved to the side and my home inched back to being what it always was. All of which left the two of us slouching into the wind towards our destination.

We are both reasonably well protected against the chill. Thea, in her typical fashion, found a way to overdress to the moment. She is bundled in a thick wool pinafore dress, snow boots, ear muffs, and mittens. Every piece of her ensemble neat, and clean, and chosen with precision. I have on a particularly shapeless cable-knit monstrosity. I had wrapped an old gold and white scarf around my mouth. I don't remember where the scarf came from. I am toasty for the most part even if my nose and, in particular, my ears are left feeling naked and exposed in the wind. I do have a reasonably healthy assessment of what I look like but in the moment it seems like they must protrude from the side of my head like satellite dishes. For the first time in weeks I almost regret hacking my hair short.

The second-hand shop itself, when we get to it some 50 minutes later, is typical reconstruction fair. It is a narrow, squat building, assembled with tinker-fab materials to thinker specified schematics. There are a dozen like it on this street alone. The style is common enough throughout the rest of the city but they are denser here. The few original storefronts and homes that remain in the area, the ones that escaped the attention of Lupercalia and its brood of monsters, stick out of the monotony like fruit trees in a snowy cemetery. The fighting had been at its worst here.

We're lucky to have them. These brutalist boxes are a badge of privilege. Brockton Bay had been one of the first cities attacked, back when people were still able to confuse 'first' with 'only.' There was no concept of a titan war, not even a shorthand for a titan. So when a monstrously strong, utterly inhuman, cape attacked a small city in New England people responded with sympathy and, more importantly, money. Those buildings were assembled quickly but not cheaply. The reconstruction kept the city from falling into anarchy in the months after the attack and gave it the breathing room to, well, maybe not heal but to start treading water. Then Corvidae marched on Rome. Then Tristophon turned Seattle to iridescent ruin. Reality intruded, like it always does. Years later, after a dozen other monstrosities committed a dozen other abominations, there had been other cities that hadn't been as fortunate.

A bell set over the door chimes as we enter. Against my expectations, the place is not empty. A short girl, face hidden under the profoundly bent rim of a baseball hat, rifles through a pile of t-shirts in a far corner. Near the counter, a blond thug in a bomber jacket and jackboots is having a tense conversation with the owner. The owner takes our entrance as an excuse to back out of the conversation, briefly scowls at me, and then seems to fixate on Thea.

"Can I help you ladies?" He directs the question towards where he assumes the money might come from. Fair enough, she does stick out here and I'm kind of a mess.

"Just looking around. Thought we could find some vintage wear here." Thea's tone is chipper. It helps that it is not quite a lie. We came here looking for the raw materials that I needed to make another costume. We were on the third draft by that point. The first was shredded within minutes of trying it on. The second was melted to slag. Had not been wearing it at the time. This was lucky as I dodged both burn trauma and an awkward conversation with Mom. Genuinely not sure which of the two would have been more painful.

Thea heads towards the counter, I break off and head to a stand of coats. Jackboots doesn't seem thrilled that his conversation has been interrupted but Thea's capable of dealing with that on her own. I dial out most of the ensuing conversation between her, Jackboots, and the owner. For a few minutes, hangers clink and dust is kicked loose into the air.

I find a jacket, and the thing is a mess. There are threadbare stretches at the elbows. The stitching at the shoulders is suspect. There are discolorations where patches have been torn off. I think I recognize a few bits of gang flair by outline alone and it occurs to me that Winslow may just be starting to rub off on me. How long have I been there? Semester and a half, maybe? I run a finger over a broad dark stain near the hem that is slightly scratchy to the touch. Part of me wants to be disappointed that it is even here but I might be able to use it.

There is, thankfully, a curtained-off section that passes as a changing room. In front of a skinny mirror propped up against the wall, I pull off my sweater, unknot my scarf, and try on the jacket. It is too big for me and drapes closer to my knees than my hips. This is not necessarily a bad thing. It might be useful to break up my profile. I roll the sleeves up to my elbows. It is not that my power needs exposed skin. I can generate my constructs if I am wearing gloves, but the gloves won't be good for much afterward. Just for the record, this is exactly how I had already lost one perfectly good bodysuit. Hands and forearms should be enough for the smaller forms and templates. Not that leaving anything exposed at all was an ideal solution in New England in the middle of winter, but needs must.

In the mirror, I superimpose the other elements of my, at this point still theoretical, costume. I picture the combat boots and the armored smock. I imagine the mask I have been playing around with, an angular V-shaped construct. I contemplate adding a few plates here and there to reinforce the jacket across the chest and at the shoulders where the material felt thick enough to support the weight. Yes, I could work with this.

I see myself smiling in the mirror. Then I do the same stupid thing that I've been doing for weeks.

I choose to look at my own face. Not the clothes I'm wearing. Not the way they fit. Both of which recent experience should have taught me were the safer options. Look, in absolute terms it's fine. Symmetrical. Fairly proportioned. Pretty, even, from certain angles. Like I said, I have a reasonably healthy self-image. I do know what I look like. It is just that I also know the context. Can't escape the context.

So I do what I've been doing for weeks, and I play this stupid game. Here's how it works. I stare at my reflection. I try to pick out the parts that I can say for certain are mine. I dock points for anything that belongs to the girl in the posters. The hair, golden blond and just slightly wavy, is hers. The cut is mine at least, frozen ears be damned. I'd seen the lips, cupid bow and a bit thin, in a glossy publicity spread in a well-thumbed magazine that had been hidden away in Mom's study. The scowl isn't hers. The girl in the posters invariably smiles or sets her face in heroic resolve, still dreaming of the better world that she was not entitled to. I can't take full credit for the distinction. Mom's scowls are legendary, her sarcasm infamous. My own is just another inheritance, albeit not the one Mom fixates on. The nose could go either way. I wonder how much of me is left, how much of me that hasn't been given over in furtherance of a grand legacy almost no one knows or cares about. I'm driven towards a truth I cannot escape, and can only just barely accept: I am my mother's daughter. If I had ever been anything else, if I could have ever been anything else, by now she has made me so.

The curtain slithers open behind me, and Thea steps in carrying a few items.

"Oh, are you doing the thing again? I'm catching you brooding aren't I?" She steps up to the mirror and starts to undo the straps of her dress.

"I'm not brooding. Just thinking some things through." Not that I can make it sound convincing.

"Need to work on your resting brood-face if that's the case." She shrugs and pulls off her shirt. Thea stands more than a head shorter than me. She reaches over and tilts the mirror towards herself and away from me. "Like the coat, by the way. Should work out."

"I feel like we're going to need to have another talk about personal boundaries." I pull off my salvage and put my sweater back on.

"Aw, Care-Bear. No. I'm not letting you mope and I'm not going to sit around and wait for however long it takes for you to lose another staring contest with your reflection. We're being proactive, remember?"

"I wasn't. I was just. Fine. But it's not just that." I stumble my way through a half-aborted denial. "It's that." I wave a hand vaguely in her direction. She is thin, extremely pale, and by now naked from the waist up except for a sports bra.

She tilts her head, looks at herself askance in the stolen mirror, and gives a snort of laughter. "It is kind of ridiculous, isn't it? Every time you think the joke is going to get old..." The knuckles on her left hand run down the side of her chest, catching on each rib in sequence. "But no dodging the question. Proactive, yeah?"

"Yeah." On a long enough timeline any conversation with Thea had a tendency to loop back around to her favorite topics. Actively making a difference. Pushing back against the gangs. Embracing the nightmare-war-horror-goddess within. There was a painful sincerity to the way she did it that made you forgive the repetition. "Really. I wouldn't be here if that wasn't the case."

"You'd be missing out." Thea grabs a t-shirt from the selections she brought into the changing room and pulls it on. Light brown with a faded image print. "Girl in the back helped me pick it out. Pretty sure she's not a local. Well?"

The design is a stylized image of a woman in profile. A bandana covers the lower half of her face. Her eyes look off into the middle distance. A long dirty blond ponytail hangs over her near shoulder. One arm is cocked to show off an impressively defined bicep. I recognize the icon immediately, most Brocktonites would. Its a print of Stone Heart.

"Definitely not a local. You can't wear that, Thea."

"Why not? She was a trailblazer. Made a name for herself when that was hard for a woman." Thea does her best to match the pose on the shirt. With how scrawny she is it comes off more comical than she probably intended. "Kinda the cape version of Rosie the Riveter."

"I mean, sure, if Rosie had been a violent, telekinetic, racist, fascist." I resist the urge to roll my eyes. "She ran the Empire goons for years. She hurt people, Thea. Dorothy. She hurt a lot of people."

Stone Heart was far from the only martyr we had from the attack, but she was among the few that stuck in the mind. Unlike the vast majority of the dead, she actually managed to do something to slow down Lupercalia's rampage. If you listened to the Empire version, she stood alone against the great beast and fought it to a standstill. The truth is she died in the process of collapsing half a dozen city blocks on top of the titan. She buried the monster under a ridge of broken earth, broken buildings, and, you have to imagine, more than a few broken lives. It was an unprecedented display of raw power. In the aftermath they had to change the maps of Brockton to account for the new cliffside that bisected the city from east to west. For all that, Lupercalia still tore its way free from the wreckage a few minutes later.

After she died in the effort, the Protectorate and the PRT tried to make her into a symbol. They told this story about a career villain whose last moments were spent nobly, selflessly, defending innocent souls. Trouble with that was the Empire still wanted to claim her for their own and they had her diaries. Three months after the attack a redacted edition, just enough blacked out to protect the relevant civilian identities, was released. The public saw hundreds of pages of racist screed and the outline of a strained homelife. She seemed to morn one anonymous child for reasons that were never clear and did little to conceal her disappointment in a second. She ranted at a husband, sometimes absent, sometimes distant, who she held in naked contempt. The white hats washed their hands of her. It is very hard to make a saint out of anyone who has actually lived their life. It is much easier when they die young and pretty.

"You're leaving out the part where most of those people belonged to a murderous death cult or a gang that ran a literal rape farm. Someone had to push back against the Butcher's murder hobos and the PAB. She kept people safe." The Pan-Asian Brotherhood and the Teeth, both of those were names from the very bad old days.

"Maybe, but only a certain kind of person. You don't get a pass for beating up the wrong people because you've filled out your punch card beating up acceptable targets."

"You make it sound like she went looking for fights." By all accounts I had heard she had. "Did you know she ran a shelter? Not that anybody mentions that now, but she took in mothers and kids_"

"A specific kind of mother. A specific kind of child. She wasn't throwing those doors open to everyone."

"You're not letting me finish. I'm not saying she wasn't wrong about some things. You just can't ignore all the good somebody's done."

"'Some things' is an understatement. There isn't a moral calculus where you can excuse the things she did."

"I'm not the one trying to treat it like a problem you can solve that'll just spit out 'good' or_"

"Somebody who runs a gang of neo-Nazis Monday through Saturday and volunteers at a soup kitchen on Sunday is a Nazi that takes a day off. It doesn't matter that_"

"The fuck it doesn't." Any warmth has dropped out of Thea's voice by this point. "It matters a lot when you're the one in the soup line. It matters when you're the one getting your first warm meal in days and a safe place to sleep for the night. Maybe you don't dwell on why they're helping you and not someone else. Everybody didn't get your trust fund, Carol."

"I'm not saying." Thea starts and stops. "I'm not saying she didn't do some bad things. I just, I kind of owe her. We, my family, I told you we didn't have a real home until Mom got assigned one of the pre-fabs in the reconstruction. I could have died without that shelter, or Mom could have, or I could have triggered earlier. I don't know. I owe her memory, if that makes sense"

Stone Heart had been a fixture of my bedtime stories. She'd been one of the nefarious serial villains that Mom, aunt Crystal, uncle Eric, and the rest of the New Wave thwarted each night before I was tucked in. She'd been a caricature. It is hard, now, to imagine the actual person that buried themselves beneath all of the worst conceivable choices of a lifetime. I can't say that I see it. Thea seems to though. I don't want to concede the point. I want to keep arguing but if I do there's a decent chance I might end up breaking something. I've been doing a lot of that recently. Costumes, relationships, computers, I'd really prefer it if I could avoid adding a friendship to the tally from the past weeks. I'm not exactly willing to trust her judgment here, but I can recognize I might be handling something delicate.

I reach out and put a hand on her shoulder.

"Look, I'm sorry. If you say she helped you, then I have at least one reason to be grateful to her." Thea sighs. Might just be me imagining it. A little bit of tension escapes from both of us.

"It's a really awkward feeling; owing something like that to someone like that." I can sympathize more than I would like.

I give her a short squeeze and let the moment breathe for a minute before re-inserting my foot directly into my mouth. "I still don't think it's a great idea. Even a good one. The wrong person sees you in that it could mean a fight. Steel Heads have been going out of their way to start something with what's left of the Empire."

That actually gets a laugh out of her. "Don't threaten me with a good time, Care-Bear. That'd make my week. Hell, probably my year."

"Yeah, it probably would. What about after though? When the poor dumb goons are done soiling their boxers in sheer terror, when the rumors start going around that Mother Night is playing vigilante again, what happens then?"

"Can't give me more console duty than they do now."

"But they can confine you to the base, right? That or transfer you to some backwater somewhere on the other side of the country."

"A transfer would need the Director's approval. I've looked into it. She's not letting me out from under her thumb."

"Ok, my reasoning is selfish on this point, but think about what happens to me without my moonlighting cape Sherpa. It would be nothing but nonstop brooding and moping." That earns another laugh at least. Thea throws her hands up.

"Alright, alright. You win. I won't wear the thing. You are going to buy it for me though. For the memory."

A few minutes later, after Thea's had the chance to try on the other items she had picked out, I am at the counter paying for one ruin of a coat and one morally dubious t-shirt. It's a mistake, but one I'll work out a way to correct later.

Outside, I find Jackboots living down to my expectations. He slouches against the storefront. His phone is out but it is doing a poor job of holding his attention. His eyes keep drifting south, over the level rows of homogenized rooftops, towards the stony cliff face of the Ridge. Thea and I step onto the sidewalk

I know on an objective level I should just leave him and walk away, but I have this perverse impulse to needle him. I don't like losing arguments. I really don't like giving the impression that I've lost an argument when I haven't.

"It gives it away if you're just going to stare at it." I can't help myself.

After a moment, he pockets his phone and turns to face me. His eyes are a husky-ish blue. "What, exactly, am I giving away?" He sounds, not angry exactly, just very frustrated.

"That you're not from here." That you don't belong here. "Locals don't stare. They barely notice the thing most of the time." It's true, of course, for most people in Brockton, the Ridge is just the shape of the horizon. There had been some surreality to it in the first days of the reconstruction, but with enough time the novelty had faded. With enough time, people can adjust to anything.

"I suppose I'm not." He may have one of the most eminently punchable faces I've ever seen. "Can you imagine anyone actually wanting to be from this place?"

A jeep slows to a stop a bit down the road from Jackboots and he crosses the snowbank. At this distance, the only thing that stands out about the driver is her hair, which is a pale purple that must have come out of a bottle. The two exchange a few words but whatever is said is lost to the wind and the sound of a car door slamming shut. The jeep drives off down the road. We head out our own way.

Chapter Text

I've been trying to stick to a morning routine since my trigger. That's not accurate. I've been trying to stick to a morning routine since I let Thea talk me into being proactive about how I was handling my trigger. If nothing else, it's been useful for staving off idle moments. 'Melodramatic brooding can never creep up behind you if you're jogging fast enough. Melodrama skips out on cardio and is easily winded.'

I wake up early. Mom is a late riser at the best of times, especially so on the weekends, so I'll have an hour and a half, maybe two hours, with the house more or less to myself. Most days the timing works out so that I'm walking out the door right around when she's walking down the stairs. It's enough interaction that she doesn't wonder if I'm still breathing and that I don't have to pretend anything is normal.

After I'm conscious I check my phone. Typically, this doesn't take long. It's a small circle of people that have the number in the first place, almost exclusively family and some people at the Stansfield Memorial Trust. A smaller circle, now, than it used to be. Aunt Crystal had called at some point last night and left a reminder that a family dinner was scheduled for Sunday. There's a message from the trust office, asking about my availability for a PRT donor gala later in the month.

I spend around forty minutes to an hour on a light workout. The house has a small neglected gym. For most of my life that struck me as funny. Mom has never been enthusiastic about her own health. I was an active kid, but nothing in there was designed with a child in mind. When the equipment had been installed it had been state of the art and care had been taken in the layout, but outside of a few weeks every other year, when I got on Mom's case about exercising and she occasionally listened, she ignored the place. It was pretty much a dust trap, something made for somebody who just didn't live here. At least it's seeing some use now.

I spend a few minutes pulling something out of the fridge, then head back upstairs to my room for some resistance training.

There are things my power wants to do, things it can be bent towards, and things it refuses. I am anthropomorphizing and I can recognize that. Objectively, my power doesn't have any more agency than my left hand, but it's been useful in figuring out just what I can do to hold this part of myself at a distance. To think about what it wants, what it can be persuaded on, and what it refuses. It wants to make weapons. The specific kind of weapon seems to be irrelevant, templates for hatchets come as easy as knives or clubs. Though scale is a factor, smaller weapons are better than larger ones. It can make larger two-handed weapons, but there is, for lack of a better way to put it, push back. It can be bent towards making armor plates and simple shapes. It hates art. The first time I thought to try, I'd intended to make a flower and the result had been a clutch of neatly overlapping razor blades.

There is a line, somewhere, in my head between functional and representational. If I can see a purpose for something I can make it, with a varying degree of effort depending upon how violent and immediate that purpose might be. When I just try to make something though, for the sheer sake of making it, or to be decorative or pretty, the power bucks, I get a massive migraine, and whatever comes out, if anything at all, comes out sloppy.

So, naturally, I am dedicating time each morning to giving myself a massive migraine by doing the explicit thing that my power refuses to do. I do not like conceding an argument, even an argument with a nascent piece of my own personality. Hence resistance training, another of Thea's ideas. Work your power like a muscle, figure out what it doesn't want to do, and hammer away at that.

Today's effort is a doll that fits in my hand. It is made of two conjoined spheres of roughly equal size, one for the head and one for the body. Four little nubs protrude from the body making up the arms and legs. There is some detail work, a line at the waist suggests a belt, another around the forehead implies a tiara, little dimples for eyes and a larger one of a mouth, waves and curves on the surface of the head stand in for hair. When it's finished, I deposit it on my desk and reach for the aspirin.

It reminds me vaguely of a cutesy, somewhat more heroic, version of some primitive idol. The Funko version of the Venus of Willendorf, done in cream ceramic, speckled with red. When that had been found, with its exaggerated hips and chest, it was assumed to be a fetish object or the icon of a forgotten fertility goddess. Later scholarship argued that the exaggerated features were the result of an attempted self-portrait done epochs before the invention of the mirror. I liked that interpretation better. An image of the self shared with the world, part as a statement and part as a question. This is what I see when I look at myself, do you see me to?

I start to clean up some of the scrap. I decide I am bizarrely proud of my little statue. Crude as this is, the earlier efforts had been worse. The first few had been little more than lumps of mass and repurposed knives, and even that much had been close to pulling teeth. I may never be an artist. I could keep at this for years without any meaningful improvement. All the same, I feel close to this one.

I grab a quick shower then change into my clothes for the day. I stash the doll in my day bag, along with a few armor plates, hidden under the ruin of a coat from the thrift store. I'll find somewhere I can throw the toy away after I leave. As of now, I can count the number of people that likely know I've triggered on three fingers, limiting the evidence someone could find by just walking into my room is an important part of keeping it that way.

By the time I make it back downstairs Mom is already in the kitchen fidgeting with the coffee maker. Very briefly, I contemplate how quickly I can sprint from the landing to the door, but by then she's seen me. She waves me into the kitchen. I drop my bag next to the island, softly enough to avoid anything clanking, and take a seat. She places a steaming mug on the butcher block countertop and sits down across from me.

"Slow down a minute, Sunshine. Do you want some breakfast? I was thinking I might make something."

"I already ate, Mom. Had a smoothie out of the fridge." One thing to know about Mom is that she doesn't cook. When I'd gotten on her case about that maybe three years ago she'd hired a nutritionist. That had ended up being a bonding experience for us at the time. I complained about the sudden influx of kale in my diet. Mom, being Mom, spot-checked the nutritionist's work and contradicted every health claim. That poor man. "I've really got to be going."

"You're always running off these days. Always busy." She gives a brittle smile between sips of coffee. "I mean It is nice how well you're settling in at the new school. That you're making new friends." Not that it matters, but I wasn't. The only person I'd call a friend at Winslow was Thea, and we hadn't met there. "I just feel like I barely see you..."

Mom reaches across the counter, touches a hand to my cheek. I tell myself that she's only trying to get my attention, to reassure me. "You know you can tell me anything, right?" I could breathe here wrong and she might shatter.

"If something's happened? If something's changed? You can come to me. No matter what. You know that, right?" For most of my life, I had known that. I'd taken it for granted that she was in my corner. It was me and her against the world, right up until about five weeks ago.

"Mom, I've just been busy lately. Like you said." I don't contradict her. I don't try to smile. I let myself feel frustrated with the conversation. Because I am. Because that frustration is honest. Because an honest reaction is safe.

"If you say so." She sighs, and I let myself think she's dropping this line of questioning. "So what's on the docket for the day?" Her hand is still on my cheek.

"Just meeting up with a friend, maybe putting together a new outfit." Not a lie. The plan for today was to put the finishing touches on my costume.

After a moment she moves her fingers from my cheek and grips her mug tight with both hands.

"I don't see why you're in such a rush for just that." She stares at her mug, fascinated by the dregs.

"Because I don't want to be late." Because I want out of this conversation and out of this house. Because I'm already resigning myself to time in front of the mirror tonight looking for anything that might have changed.

After a moment, she looks up and smiles at me. It's still fragile, but there's a warmth there. "…is this friend someone special?"

"That is not remotely what's happening."

"You know Sarah's probably bringing Neil to diner on Sunday. I'm sure the family would love to meet whoever this is, if you wanted to bring them." She drains the last dregs from her mug, stands, and moves towards the sink. "Well, it was just a thought..."

I should just take the opening and leave, but I don't. "Are you planning on coming to this one? To diner."

"Wish I could, but no." Not exactly a surprise, Mom usually managed to find a way around gatherings with the extended family. "I got word from a client earlier. It looks like I'll be traveling tomorrow." That, on the other hand, is a surprise. Usually, Mom's clients came to her. They met her on her terms, at great expense, and they were usually pathetically grateful to even have the audience in the first place. I didn't have the full details, but my understanding was that the list of people with enough pull to get her to come to them was short. "I may be gone for a few days."

"I'll try not to let the place burn down while you're gone. Will you be safe on this one?" Because the kind of people that can command the presence of someone like Mom don't do so for petty little things like curing somebody's cancer. That kind of person comes knocking when they know something ugly is on the horizon, and they think they'll need a miracle worker to make sure enough people come out of it on the other side.

"Safe as I can be, Sunshine."

I sit there for a minute, not sure what to think of this. I don't know which scenario to hope for. I feel more than a little like a traitor for my indecision. I pick up my bag, something rattles inside of it faintly, and start towards the door.

"Though, and I hesitate to mention this, you will have the house all to yourself for a few days. So if you and this 'friend' wanted some priva_"

"Mom!"

Chapter Text

When I get to Thea's blocky reconstruction era house, the Schmidts are just starting to put away their own breakfast. Here, that meal has a surprisingly high minimum course count for one adult woman, one teen, and a four-year-old. Even after they've had their fill there's enough left on the table to feed maybe another five people; whole platters of bacon, bowls of fresh fruit, plates of eggs done in four different ways, more variations on toasts and muffins than I have ever felt were strictly necessary. Miss Schmidt says hello, and offers me a seat at the feast. I decline, I have neither the time nor the metabolism.

Thea and I move to the garage. The raw elements and materials of my costume are spread out on the concrete floor. Boots, smock, jacket, belt, and mask, out of some aesthetic sense, are laid out roughly in accordance to where they would be on a prone body. My bag, with the rest of the loose plates, is put off to the side next to a wooden packing crate with a few cans a ruggedizing spray that Thea had pilfered from her part-time job.

Together, we start combining these elements into something cohesive. Any logos or tags or identifying marks are cut off or patched over. Armored plates are stitched and fixed to the clothes. We improvise a hood as a bit of a last-second thing. It's slow, but forward progress is at least being made.

"Do you ever wonder if your trigger messed with your metabolism and maybe you didn't notice?"

"No. Not really. Getting powers can change people, but that wasn't an issue for me." She inspects some needlework anchoring a plate to the jacket's shoulder, then turns to face me. "Have you been noticing anything?"

"No." I put down the left boot, finished. "Even if I had, I don't know how much of that I could pin on my trigger and… Well, everything else. Why twelve courses for breakfast then?"

She puts down the jacket and chuckles. "Ah, that. That's just Mom. She spent a lot of time worrying that I wasn't eating enough, now I guess she thinks she's making up for lost time. There are going to be at least a few oddities in your life that have nothing to do with cape frippery, Care-Bear. Just people being people, even if they can bench press a tank or tell space-time to go sit in the corner."

That's an oddly encouraging notion. Though I'm not sure how much it would hold up under scrutiny. With the exception of my father, everyone in my extended family was a parahuman. My mother, my uncle, and my aunt had all been caught up in the North East Anomaly. A year or two ago Sarah had triggered. Even my egg donor had been a cape. God, that's a flippant way to think about her. My biological mother? That's hardly any better. For most of my life, I'd just been the token mortal. I still was, as far as the rest of my family was concerned.

Sometime later, I'm working out how to attach studs to the hood. "Do you have a rivet gun somewhere?"

"I should. Try the top shelf, left of the door." I look around, and I do find the shelf but it's out of reach. Most of the shelving in here seems like it was built with someone taller than any of the Schmidts in mind.

"Do you have a ladder? I can…"

"Close your eyes, just for a second." Thea stands and works a kink out of her neck. "And stand still."

I do. The next instant the air cracks as something small and familiar unfurls into something large and strange. In every corner of the room, something scrapes against the concrete. Air washes against my face as a limb stretches past. I can feel the hair on the back of my neck standing on end. The garage feels smaller, more crowded. Something sharp and hard just barely touches me on the shoulder. It, she, radiates cold in a way that just shouldn't be possible for something that's alive. The smell may be the single most disconcerting part of the whole experience. When she's like this she smells just like peppermint.

[HOLD OUT YOUR HAND] Thea's voice is accented by avian chirps, liquid murmurs, and the clinking of bells. Somehow, it's still recognizably hers.

I feel a weight drop into my outstretched palm. I wait another handful of seconds and then open my eyes. Thea, small, scrawny, and noticeably not a 'nightmare goddess war engine,' to use her phrasing, is standing in front of me. If it wasn't for the smirk, she'd look like she'd stepped out of a Norman Rockwell painting.

"Tremble, ne're do well. For I am Mother Night, once scourge of the underworld, now reacher of high shelves and part-time data processor." I have to laugh at that. She joins in.

"What was that like?"

"It is the best damn feeling in the world. I went out every night knowing I was the one making the difference. That I was making a better place for mom to live in, for Justin to grow up in. Knowing that it was me putting the fear of god into all of the assholes." Not just the assholes, it should be noted. There had been a few months where rumors of a juvenile titan prowling the docs at night put the whole city on edge. Lupercalia left deep scars in Brockton, and Thea, whether she could admit it or not, poked at them just by existing. This was a large part of why she provoked the response she did, and why the Protectorate still refused to let her do much more than tend to monitors even now.

"You'll get to find out for yourself in a couple of days." She is never going to be anything other than bitter about the Wards program cutting her vigilante career short.

"You'll be in my ear when I do." I knew, or at least I could guess, why she was helping me with all of this. She was getting back at the minders and overseers that tried to force her back into an ordinary life, she was pushing her pet cause, and she was getting a little vicarious vigilante thrill in the process. She certainly hadn't been going out of her way for the dubious pleasure of my company. "That's not what I was asking though. What's it like changing like that?"

Thea buys herself some time poking at a seem before she responds. "That, is the other best damn feeling in the world. Probably the worst one to, on balance." Thea has stopped smiling.

"It starts with the knowledge of it. You know exactly how your body should feel. It's strong, and it's fast, and it's…" Terrifying? Lovecraftian? Nightmare-inducing? "…beautiful. God, Carol, It's so beautiful you catch yourself tearing up just thinking about it. And you know you can have that, hold it in your hands." She cups her hands at eye level in front of her face. "You can feel how right it is, how it's all supposed to work and fit and move…" She stops and catches herself mid-thought. She claps her hands together.

"…and then the second anyone bothers to look at you, all of that strength, all the grace and the glory, all of it, it just vanishes. Just pops like a soap bubble." She sighs and wipes a hand absentmindedly down the side of her blouse.

"It was someone with more substance than a soap bubble that had every thug in the docks staying home at night."

"I did, didn't I? I really had them running, even if it was just for a while." She goes very still for a time then she walks over to my bag and starts rummaging around.

Eventually, the last of the armor plates are fixed, and the other little details are tidied away. We drape the larger pieces upright over a coat rack and broken lamp which was sturdy enough to support the weight of the now-reinforced, smock. I pull out one of the aerosol cans from the packing crate. It's a matte dark navy blue. There were no markings on the can aside from a QR Code and a blocky logo made up of a capital V and an exclamation point. She'd gotten these from Victorious then. Not sure how I feel about Thea lifting tinker tech from the nominal head of Protectorate in Brockton.

"Are you sure no one's going to notice these are missing? If this is going to get you into trouble it is not worth_"

"It'll be fine. His tour here will be up before the months out. Most of his lab is already in boxes ready to be shipped out. If anyone notices a single crate went missing, they'll think it fell off the truck enroute and they won't be looking here. That's if anyone notices at all. It's not like this is any of his fun stuff." Thea hands me a respirator.

"Now that I'm thinking about it, I could probably get some use out of a hoverboard." Victorious' modular tech was impressive. Each piece was composed of dozens of distinct components that could be combined or rearranged on the fly to fulfill radically different needs. I had seen footage of one of those boards being used as a transport one second, reconfiguring into a force field generator the next, and the second after that converting into an artillery piece. He was versatile, he was reliable, and the rest of the Protectorate trusted that he'd be able to handle any crisis that might flare-up in a parahuman hot spot. That was how capes got tapped to do a tour in a place like Boston, LA, or my own lovely home.

I give the can a few shakes and hose down my kit. When the spray set it would hypothetically lend my costume a degree of stab and bullet resistance. Wouldn't quite be Kevlar, from what Thea told me, but close and much lighter. More importantly, the ruggedizing agent was supposed to impart significant thermal resistance. Consult the molten slag left behind by costume draft #2 if you're curious why that seemed like a relevant detail to me.

"Any idea on who they'll bring in to replace him?"

"Not really. Wards are of mixed opinions. Errant wants another tinker but I don't think there's anyone else with the right profile who they could pull in. Maybe Precipice, but he has his hands full in Houston. Siren and Flashbang want one of the big names, like Vertex. I feel like coming back would be a step down for her. The rest are keeping their opinions to themselves."

"Does that include you? I think most of Gestalt are still in Boston. Maybe one of them could take over here again." Even by cape standards, the Gestalt were an odd case. Their trigger split their original body into half a dozen separate copies, each with more or less the same personality but powers that were subtle variations on the theme of concussive annihilation. They were clannish, fiercely competitive with each other, and, to put it lightly, theatrical. Gestalt-Noir had held command during the tour in Brockton prior to Victorious. Not that there had been much competition, but they had been Thea's favorite commander.

"They wouldn't. It'd be like settling for their sister's leftovers. None of them would want to be the second act. Well, whoever it ends up being, we'll have to find out soon. They have a date for the welcome gala already picked out."

"Right. I think I already got the invitation for that."

"Me too. Public appearances where I show off how cheery and non-threatening I can be are just about the only assignments I'm trusted with."

"Nothing good ever comes out of those things."

"Didn't we meet at one of those things?"

"Thea, I'm sitting in a garage with a crate of stolen tinker tech and a costume that, if past experience is any indicator, will probably explode in a few minutes. I feel the logic holds." She punches me in the arm, but she smiles as she does it.

After a while, we grab some drinks from the kitchen fridge. When we get back to the garage I put up some lawn chairs. At this point, there isn't much more for us to do besides sit, talk, and watch the paint dry.

As the spray cures, it stains the cloth components of my costume a chalky white. I'm resigned to this. Any costume I was going to make was always going to use a pale palette. That was unavoidable given how many of my constructs we were using. I would have liked a few yellow accents, just for preference. The earlier drafts had. But reality intrudes, I guess.

"You give any thought to a name? You need to come up with something early or you're going to be stuck with the laziest, most insulting, label some PRT hack can stick you with."

"That has sort of been low on my priority list."

"A good name is very important. It can set the whole tone of your career."

"You named yourself after a Vonnegut story. I've seen you have to explain why you went with 'Mother Night' to half a dozen different people."

"A good story, with a great message behind it. Besides, I had people afraid to even whisper it. It worked out for me."

"I'm comfortable guaranteeing you that had almost nothing to do with the literary allusion you were trying to make. Besides, if you're constantly trying to explain why it works then, on its face, it isn't really working the way you wanted, is it?"

She rolls her eyes. "Clearly you are a more desperate case than I first assumed. How lucky you are to know someone with a sense of aesthetics. You could play up the bone angle. You could be Fracture or Bone S_"

"Mass." I do my best to cut her off before she can build up any more momentum in this direction. "It is mass, not bone. I don't like the implications that come with bone."

"Weaponry then, more to work with there anyway. How do you like Arsenal or Armory?"

"I don't. I also think there's already an Armory in Toronto."

"Something about how you use a weapon then, Flourish or Brandish." I do like how those options sound. On principle though, I am refusing to concede the point for now. It goes on like that. She props up suggestions, I do my best to pick faults in them. This is honestly the best I've felt in days. I'm not sure a name is really going to have much impact on what's coming next for me, but if there can be more of this on the other side of it, more pointless arguments, more time utterly wasted, that would be something to look forward to.

As I'm moving to stow away the finished costume, I notice this morning's art project sitting at the bottom of my bag. It's shaking. I go to pick it up and I can feel it quivering in my hand. Still one solid hunk of material, but the whole thing is trembling. Suddenly, it jerks itself out of my grip. Instead of falling, it lazily starts to orbit around my wrist. I swing my arm away from my body, trying to fling it off but its position stays fixed relative to my wrist and its slow spin. There's a pop and the doll's sculpted hair, along with much of the detail work, starts to glow with a soft golden light. I see Thea shading her eyes and I realize that I don't have to. That glow aside, all of the color seems to have leached out of the room.

"Well, at least this one's not setting anything on fire." Thea adds after the surprise subsides, still squinting. "Try to keep it away from the paint though, just to be safe."

Chapter Text

I prepare for the conflict to come. I choose my arms and armor with care and review my battle plan. When the chosen hour comes, I go, alone, to the site of the skirmish. My teeth grit, my loins girded, I knock on the door to my aunt's apartment.

My armor for the evening consists of boots, leggings, my old scarf, and one of my better dresses. My chosen weapon is a cheese plate. My plan, such as it is, is just to get through dinner without either screaming I'm a cape at the top of my lungs to the entirety of my extended family or punching anyone in the face. I figure I had at least even odds of pulling it off.

The door opens. The hallway fills with music. I recognize a pop tune from an oldies station. A conversation trails off into laughter. I smell potpourri. Something savory drifts my way from the kitchen.

"Carol!" My cousin reaches out and wraps her arms around my shoulders. The attempt at a hug is made slightly awkward by the cheese plate I'm still holding between us. I'm pulled, inexorably and lovingly, inside.

There's a strong resemblance between me and her. We share a phenotype; tall, pale, blond, a certain body plan. There's still a comfortable distance between us, if you look for it. Sarah's face is narrower than mine. Her eyes are different, purple where mine and aunt Crystal's were blue.

Compared to home, my aunt's apartment feels small. To be fair her place here is smaller than Mom's lair on Captain's Hill, but it's not just the square footage or the blueprint. Crystal's crammed a lifetime of feeling into these walls and it shows. Nearly every square inch is covered with memorabilia and photographs. I'm in more than a few of them. With a bit of twine and some thumbtacks, you might be able to track the course of her career. There's a newspaper clipping showing first responders and capes working hand in hand to clear rubble, the new Brockton rising from the ashes after the attack. Here are a couple of pictures of the whole clan at the annual PRT family picnic. There, beneath a framed display of red and blue ribbons, is a snapshot of me and Sarah from 4-H summer camp. Soldier, peacekeeper, mother. You go back far enough here you'll find scraps from the other roles she's occupied. The apartment feels small but that's not a bad thing. Crowded with sentiment is preferable to haunted by absence.

I choose to relax. I try to let my guard down. It's easy here. I spot Neil and uncle Eric near the couch. They had been talking when I'd been pulled in. Neil smiles in that familiar way that's never quite as charming as he seems to think it should be. I stash the sampler on an end table.

"It's good to see you to Sarah." The hug resumes in earnest. The coarse fabric of Sarah's sweater grates against my cheek. It's an offensively bright violet, patterned with white horses. I have no idea if this is deliberately ugly winter wear worn ironically or something she sincerely likes. She has always been oddly fond of big, dumb, beautiful brutes.

"It feels like it's been months. Is Auntie A going to make it?"

"No. Mom got held up. Some last-minute work thing." Sarah shrugs, more disappointed than surprised.

"Hey Carol." Neil had been in the year ahead of me when I had gone to Arcadia. He is conventionally attractive in an over-muscled kind of way. Wide at the shoulders and narrow at the hips. Built like a romance novelists' idea of a Greek statue. He has a nice face. If you are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and maybe squint a little, he could be considered handsome. If it wasn't for the smile.

"How's Winslow treating you?"

What is there to say? Winslow is so far beneath rock bottom that it could be harvested for hydrocarbons. It's the congealing black ichor two and a half miles below the New Hampshire Department of Education. The facilities haven't been touched since the reconstruction. The staff is an even mix of apathetic burn-outs and enthusiastic incompetents. The classes are a bad joke. Most of the students are running scared from one gang, or running into the arms of another, or doing both at the same time.

I could tell him horror stories. I have a few. Not that this makes me unique. Anyone who has spent time at Winslow has seen the Temps recruiting out in the open, or the Union kids throwing their weight around, or the Steel Head novitiates doing everything in their power to start a riot. I could go off about how, every single day, the place makes me want to break something. It might even feel good to get some of it off my chest. If I start airing grievances though, I'm not sure I'll be able to cut myself off.

"About what you'd expect. How's the alma mater?"

"Less interesting without you." Neil isn't bad company. Even if his shirts are always slightly too tight. Even if that smile always ruins him. Every time.

"I was imagining daily celebrations in honor of my departure." A few feet away, Sarah starts picking through the cheese plate as I'm talking.

"We try to keep the spontaneous singing and dancing to a minimum, but it's been known to happen." Neil shrugs.

"It's terrible. This poor guy can't hold a tune to save his life." Sarah chimes in, smiling. He croaks out a few notes to defy her point. She flicks a tiny hunk of gruyere at him. She does like him. That has to count for something.

"I think I always knew, deep down, that I was the thin line standing between Arcadia and Sondheim. Pity, to think how much you have to suffer now without my grounding influence."

"You've always been kind of a killjoy, Carol, but you were always our killjoy. It's been a weird year without you. You helped keep everyone honest." Sarah gestures absentmindedly with a toothpick.

"Honest and miserable." I know the reaction I provoke from most people. There's no point in pretending that I don't.

"…and there you go proving her point. Still, that's generally better than content and douchie. God Knows we still have some giant douches at Arcadia." Neil sits down and pulls Sarah tight.

"Not everyone is happier without you around. I'm not." Sarah had been the next best thing to my sister for years. We'd shared playdates, camp excursions, baby-sitters, and plenty of awkward family dinners just like this one. Of course she would say that. Her opinion was clearly biased.

"Name one person worse off now. Someone not related to me by blood."

"Ok, your blatant fishing for compliments aside, I do have one point. The basketball team's been downhill ever since you left us." Neil starts and there's a short, sharp intake from Sarah beside him. He fails to take the hint. "I mean part of that is you not being there. Guess the rest would be that Emily's been in traction since you broke her leg_"

Sarah slaps him, not quite gently, upside the back of the head. Uncle Eric chooses this moment to insert himself into the conversation.

"I imagine my sister could use some help in the kitchen. She might also be wondering where her favorite niece is hiding."

I find my aunt doing a more than passable imitation of a domestic goddess. She whirls from the closet to the counter and a baking tray and rack of skewers clatter Into place in front of me. She blurs to the fridge and back and a set of see-through containers are also deposited. She's in constant motion. Her feet do not stop to touch the ground, and I really can't stress quite enough how that is not a metaphor. When she stops a second later, she just hangs there suspended a foot off the ground in front of me.

"Hey kiddo. Give me a hand with the kebabs?"

She's tall in the same way every woman on this side of my family is tall and the flight accentuates this further. I've never been sure if it's deliberate or not, if she set out to be intimidating or just stumbled into it, but the effect is undeniable either way.

I nod. She lifts the lid on one of the tubs and reveals onions and peppers in a red-brown marinade. It smells like heaven. Working together we start to load skewers with hunks of meat and vegetables. It's a family recipe and also a bit of a mission statement. I wonder, briefly, if this is for my benefit. My mind wanders, and I ask myself how often this scene has played out between her and Sarah. If things had played out just a little differently she might have been the one that raised me. In a different life, Sarah might have been my actual sister. The thought isn't unpleasant.

"Amy called." My aunt mentions, offhanded. Just like that, the soap bubble pops. Reality intrudes. "She wanted to know if I could keep an eye on you while she was out of town."

"What did you tell her?"

"That my docket was full with the hand-off. That I had my own daughter to worry about. That she was your godmother. That, a few galling miss-steps excepted, my niece was a charming, intelligent, young woman who was more than capable of taking care of herself. …and eventually, when she kept at it, that I would do what I could."

Crystal waves a half-loaded skewer and the gesture's a perfect mirror of Sarah on the couch with the cheese plate toothpick. They look so much alike. You would expect that. The points of distinction between them are complimentary though. They break from each other and both are better for it. I look a lot like my Aunt too, but then she looked enough like her half-sister that the resemblance is unavoidable.

"This is me doing what I can, by the way. Us having this conversation. You are taking care of yourself, right? Amy seemed worried about something and I thought I'd ask."

"You know Mom. Existential dread is her coping mechanism." It was, after a fact. Mom had a way of fixating on everything that could possibly go wrong that kept her from having to worry about anything that might actually be happening in front of her.

Crystal allows gravity to reassert itself. She lowers herself to the counter across from me and rests her chin in one hand. "Just so you know, that's called being a parent. Sparing a thought for what happens with you ingrates is the entirety of the job description."

"Even when there's nothing to worry about?" I finish loading the last of the skewers. I drop the baking tray on the stovetop and step back a few feet to a safe distance.

"Especially when there's nothing to worry about." Crystal extends a hand towards the stove. There's a strobe of red light. The next second I hear meat hissing pleasantly. I heroically resist a Pavlovian instinct. The kebabs are rotated, blasted again, and put in the oven for a few minutes to finish. There was something in the way the meat and the marinade were flash caramelized that locked in the flavor and elevated the taste as a whole.

The recipe for laser-seared kebabs wasn't that complicated but Crystal was the only person in the world who could actually make them. The mundane alloyed by the miraculous. That was more or less how she tried to live the rest of her life. She didn't put much effort into pretending to be normal. She didn't try to define normal on any terms other than her own.

"I do worry, you know. Mostly about Sarah, I'll admit, but I do think about you. Sometimes you have so much of your mother in you." It occurs to me that she's not referring to Mom. I take half a step away from the countertop. If this is where the conversation is heading it might be a good idea not to have anything sharp within reach. At this point, completely unbidden, a dozen templates for knives suggest themselves.

After a second, I collect my thoughts and push the templates out of mind. I put on a smile that I hope is reassuring. "I don't think I'm that delicate.'

Crystal gives a half snort. "No. Not what I was getting at. There are days when you look almost as angry as she used to get. Your mom was one of the angriest people I've ever known. Angry at everything that was wrong with the world, angry with the black hats for making it worse, furious with herself for not doing more to fix it. You've got a little of that in you."

"That's, uh. That's not an impression of her that Mom ever gave me."

"Not sure why I'm surprised at that." Crystal sighs as she pulls the finished Kebabs out of the oven. "Amy spent a lot of time cleaning up Vicky's messes back when we were younger. I do have some stories I could tell you if you're interested."

During dinner, Eric and Crystal take turns swapping anecdotes from the bad old days. The content isn't new. I think I've heard about this particular fight with Tempus four times already, the first time when I was in braces. I do spend some time re-evaluating the context.

As I'm walking out the door, after I've said my goodbyes, one particular keepsake catches my eye. It is a signed and framed poster showing off the original roster of the New Wave. A collector's item, in this case, because shortly after it had been released that roster was reduced. Everyone's wearing these old-fashioned costumes that are pretty much just jumpsuits with the odd bit of padding. Eric and Crystal are there in clashing iridescent red and blue. Mom's there in her original grey and whites, with a few curly wisps of brown hair peeking out from under her cowl. Pride of place goes to a girl in a gold and white dress.

Victoria Stansfield.

Hi Vicky.

How do I even talk about you? My egg donor? My biological mother? Are you Mom's unrequited childhood love or her singular lasting obsession? You're my rough draft, my charcoal sketch, my artist's proof, my blueprint, my mold, my form, my sheet music, my schematic, my reference material. You are the crucible I've been poured into for the past seventeen fucking years. You are the coffin in which she's going to bury me alive.

I study her face in the poster. I look at my own reflection in the glass. I look for the differences that I know I won't find.

Chapter Text

Aunt Crystal's apartment is on the edge of a few cramped blocks south of the Ridge. The walk from there to my bus stop skirts around the edge of downtown and usually takes a little less than twenty minutes. It's taking slightly longer tonight. At about two minutes in I notice a twitch at the back of my throat and a flutter in my diaphragm. At about four minutes, just as I'm getting out of line-of-sight of Crystal's building, I have to stop as I try not to hyperventilate.

It's not a bad neighborhood. The area is close enough to the PRT complex out in the bay that parahuman crime isn't a primary concern. Most days, the black hats aren't going to do anything where it might cause a confrontation with someone that can actually fight back. It takes a special breed of idiot to pick a fight with Victorious or Laserdream in their own backyard. There's no point to it, not when there are so many other softer targets where the gangs can take what they want without having to prick the PRT's ego in the process. There are exceptions, of course. The Steel Heads might start something because according to the warrior ethos nonsense they try to pass off as a philosophy the fight would be an end unto itself. Tempus might try something just because he thinks it's funny. The knock-on effect of falling within the PRT's shadow is that the actual police feel secure enough to do their jobs. The more visible and blatant mundane crimes are kept in check. The Wards do costumed patrols here, just like they do Captain's Hill, the boardwalk, and the hospital ward. It's a neighborhood where they at least do a better job of shoveling the snow off of the sidewalk.

By Brockton standards it's safe. If the PRT excels at anything it's carving out these little islands where people expect to feel safe. In these area codes, law and order applies. Between this street and that one, justice is maintained. The approach is cruel in that way you can only really get at scale. It's cruel to the people who are left outside those bright arbitrary lines. It's cruel to the people, like my aunt, who have to maintain that illusion of security when they could be making an actual difference. It's cruel to the people that just go about their lives believing the lie until reality intrudes.

Maybe I'm romanticizing the past, but I feel like there has to have been a time when people tried to make things better. Maybe before the titan war started, or the PRT got entrenched. That's what the New Wave was supposed… That's what they intended…

I don't care.

I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.

I don't give two shits about any of this.

There's so much that's wrong with the PRT. There's so fucking much that's wrong with Brockton. But, tonight, I'm not angry at the PRT. I'm not staring at a filthy snowbank trying to find a coherent rational thought, any fucking thought I can, to distract myself from the state of Brockton.

I can actually recognize exactly what I'm doing. I'm focusing on the external and I'm ignoring the personal. Because it is easier. Because it is infinitely easier to take up arms against every wrong in creation than it is to confront your tiniest hangnail. If you can find that spark of righteous rage there's even hope in it, in being that tiny light against all that darkness. That hope is never there when you examine your own wreckage. I can't even count how many times I've seen her do this. I'm turning into Mom. If that isn't ironic under the circumstances then nothing is.

Alright.

I can do this. Let's try something different. Just for the sheer novelty of it, how about we actually talk about the corpse?

Here are the relevant facts about the dead girl, my egg donor, Victoria. She didn't live long. She went young and pretty in her early twenties. She achieved nothing. She died, and all that was left behind was squandered potential and a lingering impression in those closest to her. Like a stain. Like a sad joke scribbled in the margins of a better story. There. That it. That's all anyone needs to know about fucking Vicky. She died. The sun didn't fall from the sky. The sea didn't dry up. She died, and most of the world was able to move on just fine without her.

The sidewalk scrapes against my shins. When did I even get on my knees? I can smell road salt and I taste bile. I wretch the contents of my stomach into the snow.

Fuck. That wasn't fair. Not even to her.

Can I try again?

I want you to imagine something for me. You're very young, maybe five years old. You still believe in fairytales. Do you remember what that was like? The most important person in your whole world comes to you. They tell you they have something special they want to share with you. Then they show you a treasure chest. It's so big that your head doesn't even come up to the lid. It's carved in little intricate details you can't even begin to follow. You know It's beautiful though. You know this because of the way the person that brought you here treats this marvel. Concepts like 'devotion' and 'reverence' don't quite have a home in your lexicon yet. You know just enough to understand this thing means something to them. You see the value of it in the reflection in their eyes.

The person who brought you to this place puts one hand on the treasure chest. They lean all the way down to look you in the eyes. 'One day,' they whisper. 'One day this will be yours. When you're ready.' They tell you how it'll be a big responsibility, but they add that they'll be there to help you. They smile for you. Just for you. Even then, you know that this is a precious commodity. They tell you you're the only one in the whole wide world who can do it. It was meant for you.

Vicky is the treasure chest.

I find my way to my feet. I try to brush the grit from my clothes and just end up smearing it further into my leggings. I lean over the snowbank and spit, trying and failing to get the acid and kebab marinade taste out of my mouth. I take a few lurching steps on boneless legs.

I was raised on Victoria Stansfield Stories. The scholar, the warrior monk, the saint. She wasn't a person to me back then. She was this ephemeral presence that permeated my world, a thread of radiance stitched into my life, into me. She was the angel painted on Mom's arm, with her wings unfurled and her hands clutching the sun in splendor to her stomach. Back then, she made me special. She promised me a place in a bright future. She bound me closer to Mom.

I always knew what she meant to Mom. There's a specific tone of voice for love. I used to be grateful that I got the chance to grow up knowing what that was. I got to know what it was supposed to sound like. Not everybody does. I thought it was beautiful. Like a chivalric romance. Like Mom was Lancelot morning her lost Guinevere. I know, not the neatest translation of the plot. You'll have to forgive me, I was six. I liked that interpretation because it meant I was a princess. I missed the part of the story where Lancelot lost his fucking mind and the kingdom burned to the ground.

There's something wrong with me. I need to move. I need to get out of here. I'm supposed to be better than this. I can't let anyone see me like this.

Victoria grew up here in Brockton. Same place. Same geography, plus or minus a few additions. But the context she grew up in was so far removed from anything I've ever known, it might as well have been the dark side of the moon. There were no capes rewriting what was or wasn't possible. There were no titans breaking cities and lives. The stakes were smaller for her. The horizon was closer.

Sounds like the start of a fairytale, doesn't it? That's the problem.

I shouldn't be the one saying any of this. I never even met her. Not in any way that actually matters. Everything I knew about her came from fairytales. Fairytales, and bedtime stories, and the anecdotes I pried from Mom and the rest. That's all I had from her. That's all I used to have from her. It was all second-hand, and hand-me-down, and hearsay.

I spit again and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. My breath turns to fog in front of me. I should have skipped dinner. Should have just found an excuse. I feel numb in a way that's only tangential to the cold.

Now, I want you to grow up a little. See yourself at nine or ten. You still want to believe in the stories. You want to believe in Good and Truth, but it's just a little harder for you to see them as proper nouns. See yourself sneaking back to that special place. You're taller now and you can see over the great rounded lid of the treasure chest. The inscriptions are still a mystery to you. Maybe they always will be. You trace a finger along the patterns, relishing the feel of the polished hardwood.

You're curious. You decide you want to know a little more. You're old enough now to steal just a peek at this thing, aren't you? You're life's been shaped around it. You deserve that much. So you steel your courage and with a great deal of effort, because you're still a child and it's still very heavy, you lift the lid. You see the interior is as magnificent as the façade. You take in the cushions and the satin. It takes you a long moment to realize that the treasure chest is empty. Imagine the confusion. I need you to hold onto the disappointment.

Vicky is the void where something should have been.

The early history of parahumans isn't recorded in textbooks. Those do exist, but they provide an incomplete narrative at best and sanitized propaganda at worst. Anyone listening to one of Mr. Veder's parahuman studies lectures who think they're learning anything real is kidding themselves. The true story is preserved in news clippings, old fan magazines, and speculative articles in fringe journals. It is archived on message boards in the less reputable corners of the internet, painted on the walls of buildings, and etched in the footsteps of the titans.

Can't even walk right. My left ankle twists underneath me. This time I'm present enough that I register the sensation of my body hitting the concrete.

I made a summer project out of it when I was ten. I wanted to track down everything I could find out about my childhood heroine.

People know about the New Wave. They're obscure now, but not forgotten completely. The group lingers on in the penumbra of heroes and villains with bigger names. They're background characters in Vertex's rise to glory. They are the ones that squared off against Tempus, back when he was less of a back hat. Then there's Pandora. Everyone has heard about Pandora. Some of them even know that before she was the world's greatest anything, before she was teaming up with Salvatrix, before she defeated Kore, she was on a minor league team that finished falling apart a few years before the rest of the world started.

If you have the time to kill you can still track down a few weirdly dedicated fans. They have a circular trade in memorabilia, which they'll sell their own kidneys to afford, and stories, which they'll give way for free. These idiots will attack Laserdream for selling out and joining the Protectorate or talk about how Shielder, and not Pandora, should have been the one that joined Cloister. They'll recite statistic after statistic from memory, as if any of it actually matters. These people have developed concerningly strong opinions on everything from which iteration of costume was superior to my Mom's body art, and even they can barely remember that anyone called Glory Girl ever existed. The pathologically obsessive set might have a few anecdotes about 'the backup blond,' but that's the extent of it. She's barely even a footnote.

My breath comes to me in sharp needy stabs. Too shallow to be helpful. If I could just breath, just one single deep breath, this would all end. I could leave. I could get away from this. An infant could manage that. It's the first thing they do before they scream at the horror of the world. It's beyond me.

There's a voice from over my shoulder. The words are drowned out, but there's something in the tone that's comforting.

It is actually easier to track down more for Victoria Stansfield than it is to find anything substantive for Glory Girl. There is a wedding announcement that documents a cliché of a romance with her childhood sweetheart. I found an article in a scientific journal, A Proposed Framework for Parahuman Transference by S. Livsey, that credits her under her maiden name as a contributing field researcher. Mom always did insist she was brilliant. Of course, there was that insult of an obituary. A whole life broken down in five terse lines. Whatever else she'd achieved, everything she might have been, reduced to just 'local philanthropist passes.'

"…going to be OK…"

I went looking for the heroine from my fairytales, chased after her for months like she was a will-of-the-wisp. I couldn't find her. Which, somehow, manages to make it all the worse to know, and I've known for a while now, that I don't measure up. That I'm the consolation prize to a mirage. I know that when Mom looks at me she doesn't see me. That she's always looking at some small, much diminished, remnant of her friend. Since I was a child I tried to be this person I thought I was supposed to be. I tried out for the basketball team because that's what Victoria played. Turns out I hate team sports. I kept at it anyway. I grew my hair out because that was how Victoria wore hers. I called people out because I thought that's what Victoria would have done. It's pathetic. I know. I do know what I must sound like.

My mind floods with swords and knives and things with too many barbs and hooks.

A hand traces circles on the small of my back.

"..need to get you out of here…"

I could have lived with that. I could have lived with the heartbreak and the disappointment. I have been doing it for years. I have practice being the pathetic token mortal, being the sad cowbird in a flock of swans. I'm not going to say I was ever at peace with it, but I was at least resigned to it. Except. And fuck you very much Vicky. Except, now I'm dying for her.

That's not really the right word. I'm sorry. Precision is important. You should always call a thing by its name. It's embarrassing, but my vocabulary is failing me. I can't think of a name for this. I'm going to be cracked open. They smash cowbird eggs when they find them. Did you know that? To give the songbirds a chance. Everything in me, everything that still makes me 'Me,' is going to be spilled out. Then the pieces are going to be scraped clean and stitched up again around a seed of imperishable, athanasic, love. That's a flawed metaphor. Let me try again. I'm going to be put up on an altar and butchered. Afterward, God will work a miracle and an angel, immaculate and terrible, will rise from my worthless viscera. That's not any better. How about this; I'm being eaten alive by centimeters. Every day! Every single day I am less me and I am more her. Most nights I lie awake and I wonder when the balance has to tip. An inflection point is going to come, and I have to imagine it is coming sooner than I want when the thing haunting my reflection gets its turn.

How much of me is left?

I try to force my legs to move but they refuse. I try to say something but I just wheeze. This is what it'll be like, isn't it?. A spectator in a stranger's body. Screaming at limbs that won't obey me. Struggling just to scream in a voice that isn't mine.

There is a surge of vertigo as someone pulls me up from the ground.

"..Just a little longer. Just ride it out…"

Someone lets me lean against them. I'm barely functioning. I'm present one minute and I'm lost in an archive designed just to hurt the next. I need to be somewhere else. Whoever this is they're helping me put one foot in the other. They guide me down backways and through unfamiliar streets. Each step forward takes me a little farther away from the paralysis and the weakness.

She, and it starts to sink in that it is a she, keeps whispering a steady stream of reassurances the whole time. Her accent's bizarre. She sounds like she's from the Midwest, with a sort of pneumonia rasp, and, I don't know, tilted somehow.

I come back to my senses to the half rain sound of snowmelt dripping off awnings. I'm propped up against a brick wall in an alley I can't recognize. Brick likely rules out the Ridge. No snow here, just road salt and dirt, which meant there was enough foot traffic here to justify someone breaking out a shovel. Could be nearer to the Docks, but it's not like I'm able to tell one alley from another.

My Samaritan. The person who took me here leans against what's left of a mural on the opposite wall. She's has her hands shoved in the pockets of a puffy canary yellow jacket. Huge brown eyes look out at me from under the brim of a battered Beaneaters cap. There is no pity in them.

I guess I should be grateful, she pulled me out of a bad situation, but I just feel empty. Empty and humiliated over falling apart like that. Over nothing. Empty and, if I'm being really honest here, angry. Honest is safe. I try to center myself in that.

It still takes me two tries just to stand. I have to use one arm to brace myself against the wall behind me. My legs aren't jellied by now at least, but there's still a ghost of a tremor when I try to move. I pluck at the tears in my leggings.

"Are you back?"

The mural on the opposite wall consists of two distinct elements. The first is a realistic portrait of a dark-skinned woman in her middle age. I think it was meant as a kind of memoriam. There's some damaged scrollwork beneath the reposed and smiling face that might have once held a name and dates. All that's left is an understated epitaph in blocky print, "SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER US." The second, a later addition, is a tag that I can't place. From the nose up the woman's face has been painted over, replaced with a sky-blue cartoon heart offset in a white backdrop. This last bit was sloppy work. Thick lines of color bleed away and drip down the subject's cheeks.

"Yes," Even as I'm saying it I can hear the tremble in my voice. I hate that feeling of weakness. "For now, at least."

I look at the old work cannibalized to feed a younger one. I feel like reality isn't so much intruding at this point as grinding my face into the rug as if I were a naughty puppy. It's too on the nose. It's too neat. But the metaphor is hard to deny. Through the fog and the fatigue, the specific term comes to me. It almost fits. There's the dull sensation of satisfaction that usually follows knowing where to put something. Just for a moment, I let the small petty joy of learning the truth linger.

"Was that you're first panic attack?"

'Is there even a good way to answer that? It's like 'when did you stop beating your wife?' I say 'no,' and I admit it's happened before. I say 'yes,' and I'm admitting it actually happened.'

"Would it be so bad if it had? I'm just giving you a chance to talk it out. If you want. It can help. Your call though." She shrugs. "If you want, we can pretend. Your diner disagreed with you. A bad kebob or something."

It doesn't sound condescending coming from her. Something to do with her eyes. Again, there's no pity or revulsion there. Maybe something like curiosity. Like she's waiting to be surprised.

Part of me is tempted to take her up on the offer. I could just go home. I could pretend for a few more hours that I'm going to be able to sleep tonight. After weighing the option I decide against lying to myself.

"No." I cough to clear my throat. As if I can scrape the doubt out of my lungs. "It's not the first time." I want that to be the end of it.

There is more than one kind of silence. There are positive silences, things with weight and substance that blot out the possibility of interruption. Then there are negative silences. These have hunger. They sink their teeth into you and gnaw until you can find something to fill the void.

"Just the worst one for a while. This keeps happening. Every time I think I'm going to be able to string two good days together. Every time I think I'm going to be. I just. I need to be better than this. I am better than…" I want to finish that thought, I really do, but I just decided I was going to try honesty.

"It fucking sucks." Says hat-girl. Hat-girl? Really? That's the best you can do Carol? "It sucks when you're not the person the moment calls for. Please believe me when I say I get that. Sometimes I lose a thread or flub my lines. It messes everything straight the fuck up."

"Is this the part where you tell me it gets better?"

"No. What you're going through sounds shitty. It's probably going to stay shitty for the foreseeable. I'm sorry you're going through it." I stare at her. She tilts her head and then starts up again in that raspy voice. "Wait. Were you expecting platitudes?"

"Honestly? Yeah. I was. You were pretty free with them a few minutes ago."

"That's what you needed to hear then." Hat-girl shrugs. "Surprised you remembered that. You seemed pretty out of it. Do you want me to tell you how it all works out in the end?

"No."

"Do you want me to say 'you should follow your dreams' or 'you just need to really believe in yourself?' She steps away from the wall and squints. "Even if you just want an excuse to really shout it out. I don't mind. You could prove your pragmatic bonafides. Break me on the wheel of your rhetorical prowess."

"…maybe." That slips out of nowhere before I can even get my thoughts in order. Hat-girl doesn't so much smile as show me her teeth. 'No! Look, no. Just. What am I supposed to call you?"

"Didn't think this was that kind of a story anyway. I prefer Tyche. But my secret identity is Fortuna." She pulls out her left hand and waggles her fingers like a stage magician. "Don't let that around though."

"Carol Stansfield. My secret identity is a judgmental bitch."

"So pretty much the same as the public one?" Hat-girl. No. Tyche takes another step toward me before stopping in the middle of the alley.

"You're nickname is the Greek version of your actual name?"

"Secret identity," she insists, "but yes. Hate using it, anything Latin makes me melancholy. Most people miss that."

"I've got a hand-me-down interest in the classics. It's a long story." Something finally clicks for me and the accent suddenly falls into place. "You're Peninsulare aren't you? Sorry if that's-'

"It's fine. You're actually pretty good at this, you know that? Yeah. After the Beak-Faced-Fuck cleared out the rest of my hometown, my folks ran all the way to the other side of the world. By which I mean Akron. My own long sad story."

"About earlier, I want to say-"

"Don't" She cuts me off.

"What?"

"Don't say 'Thank You.' It's just going to make this more awkward." She pulls her right hand out of her coat and something dark and blocky comes with it. I look down the barrel and into those huge brown eyes. It takes far too long to process that she's pointing a gun at me.

"This is the way it has to be. I need you to give me your phone, your wallet, and your keys."

Chapter Text

I feel myself reaching for surprise like I'm groping for a light switch in a dark room. I know there should be a space for it here. The structure of the moment demands it. It would be the normal, healthy, response to having a weapon pointed at your head out of nowhere. I really do try to find it. One normal, stable thing in my life would be fantastic right about now.

So I blindly rummage through the corners of my own head. I find outrage. It's dampened by layers of fatigue but it comes through in waves and tremors. If it weren't for this nightmare of a day, if it weren't for the burn-out that's been creeping up on me for the past month, I would probably be phenomenally pissed right about now. I find templates, littered carelessly around and poking out from under the corners of slightly more cogent thoughts. Does 'knife' count as an emotion? I'm starting to think it does. Or at least there's a part of me that's increasingly insistent that it should.

Shock lingers outside my reach. Maybe this is what phantom limb feels like. The knowledge of what should be and the tangible evidence of what is gnawing away at a few raw nerves that insist on clinging to both simultaneously. I know the shape of this by now. I don't have the luxury of pretending. This is reality.

"Just give me what I need and that's the end of your part in this." Tyche says in the same maybe bored, maybe indifferent tone. I find it slightly less endearing now than I did a few minutes ago when I'd thought she'd been, maybe not quite flirting but trying to toy with me in a way that wasn't unpleasant. "Phone. Wallet. Keys."

I need to be better than this. I need to be able to catch my breath, to catch my own reflection without decompressing.

"Not how you thought tonight was going to play out. I get it. It's going to be that way for a lot of people." I'm not sure why I ever would have expected anything else. I had threat aversion training when I was younger. Not a cape thing, just a consequence of sharing a last name with a few hospital wings. 'Don't follow anyone into a dark alley' wasn't the first thing they covered, that was to always aim for the crotch, but it was first day stuff. I think right after avoiding white panel vans and strangers with candy. Even as compromised as I had been, following Tyche, letting her lead me to god knows where, had been objectively pretty stupid. By the nose. And for what? A pat on the shoulder? Pathetic.

At least it wasn't as stupid as some things I can think of.

"Do you know where you are?" I try to keep my voice slow and clear, but anger bleeds through at the edges. "I don't know what part of your sob story took you to this city, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt." Not that she deserved it. "I'm going to assume you haven't been in Brockton for too long. You can't do this. Not here." I pull my arm away from the wall and gesture broadly, taking in the alley before indicating the gun in her hand. "Not with that."

I can more or less keep my balance without bracing myself. This is encouraging. I may be needing it.

Tyche's bright, cold, eyes track back and forth across the alley wall and settle, eventually on a point somewhere above and behind my right shoulder. "I mean, it's kind of a dumpster-fire, isn't it? If you wanted, I could give you the statistics. Higher crime rate than you'll find outside one of the exclusion zones. The sort of place where a little freelance expropriation isn't going to raise too many alarms."

I try to picture Thea, think of what she would do in my place. I see her smiling, patient and polite, waiting for the lights to flicker just long enough.

"Maybe it didn't occur to you, and far be it for me to correct a criminal mastermind, but you picked the wrong god dammed neighborhood. This is one of their 'safe' spaces." I can taste the hypocrisy even as I say it. "The authorities may pretend not to notice what goes on everywhere else in the city limits, but they pay attention here. They patrol here. The cops and the capes. If you fire that they'll be here in minutes."

"I'm sure that'll be a consolation to your remains." She says in perfect dead pan. "How many minutes do you think? Just estimate for me. No? I don't want to double guess the local, but are you sure you know where you are?"

"We weren't moving that long, and it's not like you were sprinting." There's something there, I know it, but I can't quite get a hold of it. "There's a limit to how far we could've gotten. Say, do you want to meet the local Wards? I think they're annoying little pricks for the most part but if you just stick around a little bit longer you can judge for yourself."

"You seem awfully confident that there's someone coming. Have you had a lot of success waiting to be rescued or is that just a side effect of growing up around too many capes? I swear this city has kids in capes, crooks in capes_"

"Too many capes. Period." I cut her off. "You're standing at ground zero for the North East Anomaly. Brockton has a higher density of parahumans, heroes and villains, than anywhere else on this coast."

"Fascinating as that trivia is, I'm not sure why it's relevant."

"It's relevant because using a gun for petty theft risks just pissing off the wrong person." It occurs to me that the wrong person might, from certain angles anyway, look a lot like me. Somewhere in the back of my head, a few templates start to volunteer themselves. Not insistent. Just present. Letting me know they're available if I need them. Maybe, if I wasn't standing some ten feet away from Tyche, if she wasn't holding a gun, some of them might have even been remotely useful. "It's like trying to rob a fireworks factory with a blowtorch."

"Except you aren't a hero, Carol. Not when it matters. Isn't that right? If you get shot by chance tonight, do you think the bullet is just going to bounce off?"

Could I survive a gunshot at short range? More than likely no. I wasn't bulletproof. I did heal faster where the constructs broke the surface. That was a given. As far as I knew though, that was all peripheral. I'm not comfortable assuming the same mechanism that knits the scrap back together is going to mend a kidney. I'm reasonably confident my armor plates could stop a bullet but I can't just blink those into…

"Jesus. You're actually having to think about it." Tyche massages the bridge of her nose with her free hand. "You know, for most people that's one of the easier questions. Let me help you out. Here's what happens If you get shot tonight: First, my life gets slightly more complicated. Second, you end up lying on your back, bleeding into the asphalt, watching all the little lights. Third, and this is the really important part, I will still get what I want out of tonight. That does not change. That's everything, Carol. Just give me your phone, your wallet, and your keys."

I'm not a violent person. It's just that sometimes I have these thoughts in my head that are blueprints for violence. 'Here's a weapon. Here's how it'll feel in your hand. Here's how you use it.' If I focus on one of them, or if I can't stop focusing on it, it gets pulled close enough to the surface that a twitch will bring it the rest of the way. Sometimes, because this is what the power wants to do, the templates suggest themselves. Right now, for instance, there is a cluster of throwing daggers demanding my attention.

They're asymmetrical, with curved little handles and sloping leaf-shaped blades.

"You're doing this all_"

"Wrong?"

"Stupid. Just. Suicidally stupid." If I moved my hand just so, with the right flick of the wrist, they would swim through the air like living things. Like they were born to it. "You're taking too many risks. If I'm going to be robbed, I'd at least like to think the perpetrator is going to live out the rest of the week_"

"It's Sunday evening. Not much week left to worry about."

"And the way you're acting you'll be lucky to see Monday." The template shows me the way to aim for her hand. It would be messy but it would probably disarm her. Might even do it before she can pull the trigger. "You can't just, I don't know, flail in a place like this and hope for the best. There are supposed to be rules."

"First of all, realpolitik 101: There aren't any rules." Tyche pronounces it 'Paly-Tech,' like it's something she's read somewhere without ever hearing it said aloud. Either that or she's trolling me. "Not beyond whose hand is on the knife. So do me a huge favor and stop trying to quote laws at the folks holding swords. And are you seriously nitpicking the etiquette? Are you more upset that you're being robbed or that you're being robbed in the wrong way? Sorry, but Roberts Rules for Larceny aren't a thing. You know that."

"Ignoring the fact that you sound like a little sociopath."

"Again, I am holding you at gunpoint. Why are you expecting niceties?" The knife in my head, the part of me that is the knife, that is my power, whispers to me. It tells me how, with the proper gesture, I could send those clever little wedges of mass and potential energy straight across the alley and into Tyche's big, luminous eyes. "Check your assu_"

"I am talking!" I shout, as much to shove the templates back as to squeeze a word in edgewise. I'm not a violent person. I swear that I'm not. "Get it into your head that I am trying to help you. I told you this already. That thing in your hand is as least as dangerous for you as you seem to think it should be for me. If you tried this with the wrong person it wouldn't end well. You said you could give me the numbers earlier? Then you should know that the odds of provoking a parahuman here are too high. You need to see reas_"

"You haven't given me one reason to stop."

"Have you heard a single thing I've said?"

"Have you? You've told me I'm doing it wrong, that I'm in the wrong place, that I'm taking risks. Here's the thing though, all of those are reasons this shouldn't have happened to you in the first place, not reasons it stops happening. There is a difference."

"Are you actually insane?" Which, hindsight, is probably an obvious question.

They're all supposed to be damaged. The Peninsulare are the scattered diaspora left behind by history's greatest mass suicide event. They have all been touched by an utterly alien intellect. They are living time bombs, primed to go off at a moment's notice in some subtle and cataclysmic fashion. That's what the conspiracy theories say anyway. Not that I believe them. As far as I'm aware, no one who's actually done the research or looked at the theory puts much faith in those rumors. Corvidae, for all its monstrous inevitability, isn't subtle. Across years of encounters and attacks, the titan has only ever asked one thing of its victims. There are rules that define its inhuman existence, that confine it to a dark winged shape, drifting out of nowhere, heading to nowhere in particular, and leaving a trail of the dead between.

Theory aside, I'm starting to feel like I am wasting my breath arguing with a lunatic.

"There is a difference. If you can't see it for yourself I'm not going to spoil it. But look, I'm going to cut you off here. You're maybe one or two arguments away from just shouting 'Do you know who I am?' I might actually give you an honest answer, Carol, and neither of us really wants that. Do you mind?"

"Screw you! You don't know anything about me. You think that because you found me in a moment of weakness you get to act_"

"It was rhetorical! You've been telling me exactly who you are since you opened your mouth, Carol. It's not even that complicated! You're a sad little rich girl playacting at actual pain. The kind of person that thinks they can get out of this precise situation by demanding to see life's manager. I'm sorry, princess, if daddy doesn't love you the way you want to be_"

"My Dad's been dead for years you incandescent douche_" Barring those occasions where the PRT finds it convenient to dredge up his corpse.

"What did you say your name was again? Stansfield. Right! Guess you really are nobility. Or what passes for that here. Maybe not a princess, but you're at least one of those inbred lesser titles. Like a viscount or an earl. Hmm, maybe a_"

"That would make you, what? The countess of cunts?" I'm not proud of that. She seems to find it amusing. Which makes it worse.

"Language!" She laughs. "You kiss your mother with that mouth?"

It's so juvenile. It shouldn't hit as hard as it does. There's no reason for it. I can feel my molars grinding together though. I'm wasting my time trying to argue with a child. That's it. She's making guesses and getting lucky. Just throwing out arbitrary insults and seeing how I react. The inputs have to be random. Don't they?

"Oh, that one struck a nerve. Yeah. Momma's girl. That's a better fit. So what is it that you actually have to complain about Carol? Does mommy look the other way while stepdad sticks his hand up your skirt?" There's a shift in my templates, a sudden vogue for serrations and crescent hooks. A voiceless monologue insists on walking me through use cases. 'These teeth applied thus will maximize damage to soft tissues_'

"Or is it finally starting to hit home that you're not everyone's extra special little girl after all?" I'm not a violent person.

"Stop talking about my family. You know nothing about what she… About what we have done for this city. What we've given up. Do you have any idea who_" There it is. That same asinine question she was taunting me with is on the tip of my tongue. I have just enough time to bite down on it with a paroxysmal spite. Because fuck her. Fuck her presumptions. Fuck her for being anywhere near a valid point, even if she's stumbling into it backward and half blind.

Across that gap of four, maybe three and half, steps, the gash across Tyche's face tightens just a little at the corners. She's noticed. Of course she notices the stumble.

I hate this night.

How is she so consistently infuriating? She's just a chimp with a typewriter.

She doesn't know anything. She can't.

No real understanding of what she actually knows.

'This particular curve here? That bit flays_'

She doesn't know why. And, this is surprisingly hard to admit, neither do I.

I collect myself. I push back against the templates. I give myself the brief moment it takes for whatever this rage induced strain of lockjaw actually is to play itself out. When I can speak again, I do what I should have done from the start. I ask the obvious question.

"Why?"

"Why do I want your phone?" Just my phone this time. "Would you believe me if I said I didn't bother to ask?"

Was it money? Did she think she could use it to get to the trust?

"Screw you if you're not going to take this seriously."

If it wasn't money, then what? What good would it be to her?

"I don't think you understand what it is you're asking. Do you get the sheer masturbatory self-indulgence that's required to ask why any little thing has to happen? Children ask why. Then they grow up."

Did it actually matter?

"I couldn't care less about your motivation. I'm asking why you didn't just take it already. Right when you first found me. You could have just grabbed it and walked away. I wouldn't have been able to stop you. Probably wouldn't have even noticed. So why did you feel the need to waste both of our evenings?"

"Would you have prefered it if I went through your pockets in the middle of the street? I didn't figure you for the type that liked an audience for that sort of thing."

"Fine. Then why wait after the first turn into the first alley? Why wait until we were here? Until I was back to my senses? You had every opportunity to get what you say you wanted. So why bother pretending to care how I was feeling? Why are we even talking?"

"Because I felt sorry for you. You cut such a pathetic figure back there, Carol. On your knees hacking up your guts with no one to hold your hair back_"

"No." I remember the way her eyes looked. "Try again."

"You looked so fragile, so very delicate. I just wanted to rob you, not to break_"

Ignore the lies. Stick with what you know. She wants my phone. She is an irrationally infuriating little gremlin, but she's been consistent on that point. Focused. Can I use that?

"No. I'm not buying that. I think you need something from this, and you can't get it if I'm not giving it to you. I think you need me."

I just need an opening. I just need her distracted for long enough and that the gun isn't pointed at my head and I can end this.

"The fun part! The really fun part about standing here, on this side, is that I don't have care what you think. You're trying to treat this like it's a debate. We are not having a polite conversation over dinner. There isn't a cunning argument you get to deploy that has me shaking my head walking away empty handed. That is not the format. Even if it were, when it comes right down to it, 'I have a knife at your throat' is a more compelling argument than you seem willing to credit. This is an act of violence. Now act accordingly."

So, fuck it. I give her what she's been asking for.

I take a step forward and I hurl my phone as hard as I can towards the mural on the opposite wall, aiming for a spot just over her left shoulder.

It's not a complicated plan. If she actually wants it, and doesn't want it in pieces, she's going to have to do something to catch it. When she looks away I'll have the time I need to disarm her. Hopefully I can take her down without hurting her too badly. If it goes the other way, and she keeps her eyes on me, then at least I get to know she walks away with nothing. Which, though it probably shouldn't be, is actually a very comforting thought.

As the phone leaves my hand, I'm taking another step forward. There's a pin-prick sized ember in my forebrain. I'm insisting on a dulled blade here, I'd prefer to avoid taking off a finger if it can be helped. Apparently, while this isn't enough of a deviation from the blueprint to actually slow anything down it is enough for a formal complaint to be lodged.

Another step forward. My momentum builds. The distance between us closes. The mass knife breaches. I cock my other hand back to throw it. Then, just as the phone should pass her, just as she should be forced to make a choice, it happens.

Her free arm hand just snaps out. A finger grazes the phone by the corner of its case. The object's inertia isn't so much removed as redirected up and end over end. The phone oscillates in a short-lived little three dimensional kinetic ballet, then falls placidly into her waiting hand.

The knife, and I don't even remember having thrown it, flies through empty air where Tyche's other hand had been just an instant before. The whole time, her eyes never leave me. I keep going towards her, towards the barrel of that gun, which is still very much pointing where I would prefer it not to.

Tyche rolls her eyes. Her finger tightens on the trigger.

It makes a sound halfway between a cough and a mechanical snap. Something fast and hard hits the right side of my forehead. It's an external mirror to the migraine I gave myself trying to keep this miserable bitch from a maiming. Absurdly annoying. More painful than it has any right actually being.

Tyche steps around me. I swear I hear something clicking and rattling. The noise stands out against the ambient liquid backdrop of the alleyway. I keep moving forward, now past and away from her.

When I turn around, I see Tyche stowing the phone, my phone, somewhere under her sunshine-yellow jacket. The gun, the toy, is held loose at her side. This whole time, she's been holding me hostage with a toy. I must be doing a poor job of concealing my frustration because her smirk just gets that much wider.

She's going to get herself killed if she's allowed to keep acting like this. That's not hyperbole. That's not just her getting on my last nerve. It's a certainty. There are, despite what some budding nihilist might claim, actually rules in life.

I reach out to the templates trying to find something less-lethal.

"Still waiting for the bang?" She's insufferably pleased with herself. She waits until she knows she has my attention and then flings the airsoft-gun at my head.

The first template I can find is for a club roughly the size and shape of a softball bat. My left sleeve, along with the scrap beneath it, goes to shreds as the construct moves from potential into reality. One hand white knuckled on the grip, I swat the toy out of the air. It shatters as it hits the alley wall.

When you think about it, its absurdly lucky that of all the people she could have tried this stunt on she stumbled on me. Because I'm not a violent person. So I'm only going to hurt her. Just a little. For her own good.

My first swing is wild. Gets her attention though. She starts to stumble backward. My follow up, two-handed this time, comes closer. As it arcs up past her face it clips the brim of her hat and tears it off her head. Dark hair spills out from underneath, untidy and slightly kinky. The contrast against her complexion, and against the vibrance of her clothing, is striking. Pity its wasted on such a bitch.

Another step backward puts Tyche up against the wall. The next swing brings the club thudding in to the brick beside her shoulder. I take the construct in both hands and hinge it down across her chest, trying to leverage my height to pin her in place.

I look down at her, into those oversized hazel-eyes set in that face with its outsized arrogance. I get this impulse that I recognize I should probably just ignore. Because nothing that's happening here is about proving her wrong or me right. But I can't resist the chance to throw her words back at her.

"Not how you expected your night was going to go." I snarl. I increase the pressure, just enough to let her feel it. "Oh, I fucking understand." This isn't about beating her. That's what I tell myself.

She has the absolute gall to actually laugh. "That's a cute_" I squeeze. She gasps. "_cute party trick, princess." She's still treating this like a joke. Like consequences are a theoretical concept at best.

"Glad you think this is so funny. We'll see if you change your mind when I frog march you into the nearest police station." Just as soon as I figured out where I actually was.

"I think it'll be hilarious when you have to explain to_" She coughs, and starts again. "_explain to anyone how this went down. Call me crazy, but I doubt this is what you planned for your coming out. Or is this how you pictured it? Spoiled little Carol Stansfield with no mask to hide behind? Just a plucky attitude, vomit on her leggings, and one arm partially degloved?"

In a moment of awful clarity, I see the chain of mistakes that led to this moment. Losing my temper and reaching for my power. Trusting Tyche and telling her my name. Being weak enough that she was able to take advantage

"How long does that usually take to grow back anyway?" When I don't answer quickly, she fills the silence herself. "You don't even notice, do you?"

It would get back to Mom, of course. Tyche would tell the cops. Who, because there was an insinuation of parahuman involvement, would reach out to the PRT. The PRT, because Tyche would use my name, because I'd been stupid enough to tell her, would notify my aunt. Professional courtesy. Crystal would tell Mom. That would be the end of it. Of this. That wasn't an acceptable outcome.

My fist is swinging towards her face before it even registers that I'm throwing the punch. I'd like to say that if I were paying better attention, if I were more myself, that I would have made another choice. She flinches, moves out of the way just enough so that my hand brushes against her hair on its way to the bricks. Pain reverberates all the way up from my knuckles to my shoulder.

I wince. She capitalizes. As I'm recoiling, as the pressure is easing off her chest, she slides under my arm. This close to the wall there isn't enough room to swing the bat. I try to elbow her.

I have a hard time following what happens next; One hand takes hold of the joint as its offered to Tyche. The other reaches up and touches me by the cheek. Those pale fingers are almost gentle. Tyche takes my momentum and, without force or suggestion, guides it to where she wants. Like the trick with the phone. She puts the side of my face against the alley wall, and drags it down along the bricks.

Through the agony, I understand the impossibility that this is chance.

She steps away. I lurch after her. I howl. The bat swings. But she's stepping under it almost before it's moving. Her hand snakes inside my guard and takes a handful of my scarf. I feel her knuckles against my throat. She pulls down, kicks up, and slams the crown of her skull into the bridge of my nose.

My sense of balance disintegrates and I grab for something to hold myself upright. My hand closes on her jacket. She sloughs out of it. Like one of those lizards that can tear its own tail off as a defense mechanism. One moment I have her and the next I'm falling on my ass holding her laundry.

Tyche, that impossible maddening bitch, actually takes the time to curtsy as I try to get to my feet.

"Let’s play again some time." Then she's running down the alley and away from me, as graceful as anything.

I don't have much time to think things through. She knows who I am. She knows what I am. She has my fucking phone. Worst of all though, she thinks she's won. There is no world in which I can allow that to stand. I need to follow her but I can't do that as Carol Stansfield. I've already been too reckless about my identity tonight.

I was eating dinner with two members of the Protectorate hours ago, I can't exactly be fighting crime in the same outfit. I look down at Tyche's jacket and come to a decision. I tear off my own coat and replace it with hers. It's a tighter fit than I would ordinarily choose.

I start running down the alley. As I do, I think about my mask. I picture the clean angular lines sloping back from my nose to my ears. I feel resistance immediately. I know that with time and effort I could force the issue the way I've done it in the past. That kind of time seems like an impossible luxury now. I meet myself half way. I sharpen the edges to knife points, I draw a line down the middle of it from nose to crown, honing it almost like an axe head. The resistance lessens slightly. I visualize my mask slamming into Tyche's face. The resistance evaporates like morning dew.

I reach one hand to my temple. I feel the new template waiting just beneath the surface. I rip the scrap away. It'll be back before long. Fresh and rosy pink. A little less me. A little more her. But that's a problem for the morning. For now, I leave her behind me and I move forward.