Chapter Text
“It’s okay. I got the answer, myself.”
I looked away.
I looked up. My eyes were wet.
So many stars. The universe so vast.
We’re s- so very small, in the end.
The first bullet hit me from behind, where my mask offered no coverage, and I slowly toppled. The second hit me before I could fall, before there could be any pain.
The first thing I felt was a massive burst of pain in my head. I clutched my head with my hands and curled my body up; my skin hurt like it was being bitten by a thousand insects, and I writhed in pain and fell to the floor. My mouth was dry and I tasted bile at the back of my throat, and dry heaved a couple of times from the dizziness and nausea. The pain was timeless -- hours of agony squeezed into moments -- but once it receded my recent memories came rushing back.
I was…in a forest? And there was a person talking at...or with me? I stood up and they…shot me. In the back of the head.
Twice.
I gasped, my head still throbbing, and touched the back of my head, trying to find a wound, a scar, stitches or something .
But there wasn’t anything there. Just the familiar softness of my black curly hair, the same as my mother had. I clutched my head again, trying to remember what happened before that, but my memories were fragmented, odd in such a way that it felt like I was remembering the memories of someone else. Scenes I didn’t understand flowed through my mind, alien and disconnecting, like I was watching a recording of someone else’s life, burnt and frayed like a roll of discarded film.
I licked my lips, dry and chapped, and slowly got up into a sitting position, and tried to parse through my memories a second time.
I remembered how the end of the world started: in the ruins of Los Angeles, the city’s landscape morphed and distorted by Bohu’s attack on it. Jack Slash whispered something to Scion, causing him to go on a rampage and cause untold destruction across not only Earth Bet, but also several other alternative earths. We tried to fight back, we failed, and all our petty differences and infighting got in the way of actually providing a united front against him. I lost my arm while we were in the bowls of Cauldron’s base, and Lung had to cauterise it.
It was then that I realised that
I was clutching my head with both hands. My left hand, and the missing right one too.
I moved my arm to take a look at it, as my limbs no longer ached and itched, but my limbs still felt unresponsive and limp, like I had fallen asleep on them. My body felt completely alien, but yet familiar to me; some part of my brain, despite the pain and nausea I was feeling, knew that something was wrong. My arms and legs felt shorter than I was used to, my skin didn’t have the scars or signs of injury accumulated over the years as a cape. But my curly black hair fell in front of my eyes, meaning that whatever body this was, someone must’ve have made it to be similar to my own.
Discarding that train of thought, I continued searching my memories. After we came back from the abandoned Cauldron base, I made Panacea and Riley do….something to my brain?
Everything after that was still fragmented and disjointed, like trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle with most of the pieces missing. There were brief flashes of things I could understand, like having a one-sided conversation with Glaistig Uaine, as I couldn’t talk, for some reason. I remember interacting with Dragon.
Oh. It was good to know that she didn’t fully die from Saint’s kill switch. I hope she doesn’t hate me, for what I did.
I made a mental note to go punch Saint at some point.
Dragon was the best of us, and one of the few heroes I liked, genuinely. The hug she gave me after my announcement of becoming Weaver… it stayed with me, for a long time.
I kept sorting through, and I remembered...gathering? Controlling? Every single parahuman I could use to fight Scion with.
Did I mind control everyone, forcing them to fight, heal, create , using them like they were an extension of myself, like my insects?
I briefly shuddered, and curled into myself. That would be something I would do. Controlling them like a puppet on strings, while they were completely helpless, unable to do anything themselves, all to force everyone to work together to defeat Scion?
Yeah. That sounds like something I would do.
As guilt pooled at the bottom of my stomach, I continued searching my memories, but everything else were impressions , or too fragmented and confusing.
I remember the feeling of taunting Scion with the death of his other half.. I used someone to heal a writhing mass of limbs and body parts, returning it to a human form. I remembered that I had some people behind me, with me , that I refused to control. They felt too important to me, to remind me of….something. Something important, intrinsic, like an anchor for my self-hood.
Who-who were they again? Why can’t I remember their faces?
The pit of guilt and self-loathing that was pooling in my stomach widened.
Would they hate me too, for what I did?
But before my thoughts could continue to spiral, there were a series of knocks on the door, interrupting my stupor and reminding me that I had completely forgotten to examine my surroundings.
That was a fucking stupid thing to do . Waking up in an unfamiliar place with damaged memories, with my right arm healed, and with no idea how I got here, or who brought me here – the first thing I should have done was figure out how to escape the trap.
I glanced around the room, unfamiliar to me, but something in the back of my mind felt safe, being in here. It was a fairly nondescript bedroom, with a single bed that had tangled sheets and blankets hanging limply off the side. There was a bedside table next to it that I somehow managed to not hit my head on, with an alarm clock, a pair of glasses, and a photo frame sitting on top of it.
Oh, right. I can’t see much because I need my glasses. Whoever brought me here was nice enough to supply me with a pair. I reached upwards as I pulled myself into a sitting position, and fumbled as I grabbed the glasses, my right arm still feeling heavy and numb, like it wasn't quite my own.
As I put them on, I glanced around the room for a second time, everything snapping into focus. The room was relatively clean, with only a few clothes strewn about, a computer desk situated in the corner, and a small, very old looking, pc and monitor on it. The room felt faintly familiar, in some way, that tugged at the back of my brain.
There was only a moment to look around though, before another series of knocks landed on the door, louder than last time. Adrenaline filled my veins as my heartbeat quickened, my muscles tensed, as I glanced around for an escape or a potential weapon. I was about to reach out to my insects, to give me sight, information, before a voice said something from behind the door.
“Taylor, are you alright? I heard you yell out.” The voice said with concern, before I realised that it was very familiar to me.
“D-Dad?” I croaked. My mouth was dry like it was full of sand – my throat sore and raw like I’ve been screaming.
I didn’t realise he survived Scion’s attack on Brockton Bay. I felt tears well up in my eyes. What did he think of me now? Was he scared of me, this monster that took away his daughter?
He gently opened the bedroom door, walked in, and closed it behind him. The first thing I noticed about him was that his green eyes, the ones I got from him, didn’t look at me with the mix of fear, anger, and hopelessness that I was used to seeing on him. My father was wearing a loose pair of pyjama shorts, and a familiar blue bathrobe that Mom got him for his birthday once.
As he looked at me, his face softened, with a look of hesitance and concern on his face. He then walked to where I was sitting up in front of the bedside table, and leaned down and put the back of his hand on my forehead, moving my hair out of my face.
“Well, it doesn’t seem like you have much of a fever,” he said, as he moved to a crouching position, and moving his hand off my forehead, “But I can call up the school to tell them that you aren’t coming tomorrow, and maybe schedule a doctor’s appointment, if you want?”
“School?” I murmured, as I broke eye contact with him and looked at the floor.
My dad looked at me, his frown deepening.
“It’s Sunday, sweetie, and tomorrow is Monday, which means you have school tomorrow?”
Things were slowly coming together. This was my room , at my dad’s house, at Brockton Bay. I had my arm back, and there were no scars or stitches at the back of my head.
I swallowed, and looked back at my dad, who was looking more and more concerned with each passing second.
“W-What’s the date today?”
His eyes narrowed at that, and he leaned back down to check my temperature again.
“It’s the 10th of April, sweetie. I might have to drive you to the hospital if you managed to forget the date.” He said, attempting to add some mirth to his voice to cover up his panic.
April 10th. That was a date forever burned into my memory, like a roll of decaying film. That was the day I first went out as a cape, in a stupid attempt in running away from my shitty school and home life. I remember the angry look on Lung’s face as I fought him, the vulpine grin on Tattletale afterwards, the suspicious look on Armsmaster. It was the flap of a butterfly’s wing, the start of many events that cascaded into becoming that thing and defeating Scion.
Which was three years ago, but now it’s the present, with everything I did now a possibility, not a certainty.
Fuck.
“Taylor?” My dad whispered, as he put his hand on my shoulder in reassurance.
“I-I’m fine. It was a bad dream, I think. Not sick with anything.”
Dad looked at me with suspicion at that, but didn’t say anything as he stood back up. He walked back to my bedroom’s doorway, before turning around and speaking again.
“Well, my offer still stands, if you aren’t feeling better. I’ll be around the house if you need anything though, ok?”
I could stay quiet about everything. He might not believe everything, or maybe he’ll sign me up to the Wards (That still had Shadow Stalker, I shuddered) out of a misplaced attempt at keeping me safe. Or maybe he’ll forbid me from doing anything, not accepting that I was a different person, like he originally did?
But I had to be better. I didn’t want to make the same mistakes as I did before. I didn’t want to become an uncaring, ruthless crime lord like Skitter was, or a distant, unfeeling ‘hero’ that was only a means to an end like Weaver was, who pushed away everyone who ever cared about her.
Or whatever that thing I became, at the end.
I wanted to be better, to not cross so many lines, to not hurt the few people who cared about me, to trust other people, and not try and carry everything myself.
Which meant I had to start with the most difficult person first.
I swallowed, my throat raw and parched.
“Dad, there’s some things I need to talk to you about, could you stick around, please?”
For a second he blankly looked at me, as if he was taken by surprise by my question. But then he smiled and nodded.
“Of course sweetie, I can cook us some breakfast while you go on your morning run, if you want?”
I gave him a small smile as he left, and stood up and sighed, and looked out of the window at the city that was just waking up. Brockton Bay was a city that one could ever describe as a shithole . It was infested with human-traffickers, a drug epidemic, and neo-nazis, with an over-worked, short staffed Protectorate, which in turn was controlled by the PRT, an organisation that could only ever see things in black and white, and ran with such little oversight someone like Coil was able to gain power through it.
But despite that, the people that lived here carried on, day by day, second by second. They survived Marquis, the Teeth, and Allfather.
And then they survived Bakuda’s bombing, Leviathan, the Slaughterhouse Nine, Echidna.
Me.
It was an ugly looking city, to be honest. The difference between the rich, wealthy suburbs with their two story mini mansions and well kept flora, and the slowly dying working class suburbs that were being taken over by gangs, that had little or none investment to keep things from falling into ruin.
But it was my city, and for the first time since mom passed away, it felt like home.
And in this moment, it was breathtakingly beautiful, with the orange, yellows and blues of the rising sun mixed with the fading night sky, with some stars still visible, twinkling faintly.
I glanced at the framed photo of my mother on my bedside table and looked back at the city.
I closed my eyes, pulled on that familiar feeling at the front of my head, my sensors expanded as my power came back to me, letting me feel the warmth of the morning sun through my insects. I took a deep breath, and opened thousands of tiny eyes, all seeing the same city in thousands of different ways.
It felt like I was forgiven, somehow.
The air was crisp, and the rising sun was only just starting to warm everything up as we were still in the middle of spring. My morning jog took me through a city so different than it was in the past, before all the destruction happened. The discord between my memory and reality was jarring; enough that I stumbled for the third time since I started.
I gritted my teeth, forced to slow my jog into a walk. I hated this younger body of mine – everything about it felt wrong in a way that only compared to the monstrous form Lab Rat’s tinkertech drug turned me into at the oil rig. Despite technically being my own body, I felt so…out of place in it, with the shorter stride and lack of upper body strength.
Which also meant needing to relearn how to fight with it, as well as having to do more workouts that weren’t just running every morning. I unclenched my jaw, and changed my walk back into a proper jog, and continued my wandering thoughts.
There was so much to think about; so many angles to consider. So much to do, and decide, and only a few hours to start.
As always, my power was feeding me information on everything that was happening around me, still its six city block radius that it was before Panacea and Riley changed my corona pollentia. It felt good to use it, like it was stretching after a good night’s sleep, eager to get back into things.
There’s a small park that I sometimes went through during my morning runs that was near the Boardwalk, close enough that it received the funding to properly maintain it, compared to the other public parks in Brockton. There were a lot of people around, despite how early in the morning it was, a combination of the richer citizens from the southern part of town and the tourists who stayed in the nearby motels of the Boardwalk. All within my range, there were other people on their morning runs, walking their dogs, or meeting up for breakfast and coffee, enjoying the warmer weather of early Spring.
As I reached the Boardwalk, I changed my jog to a slow walk, fitting into the crowds of walkers going about their days as businesses were starting to open. It was an odd feeling, being here. The Boardwalk was my territory after Leviathan hit, and it was…..nostalgic, in a way.
I was intimately familiar with the layout of the Boardwalk, with the small office building that was my main base, the storm drain that was a secret entrance. It was here that I first started my actual efforts into trying to improve things, into being a certain kind of hero, as well as where I fought Mannequin, the first of many enemies fought with the odds stacked against me.
I don’t know how I’m going to fucking do it, but I am going to make you regret that.
If there ever was a pivotal moment for Skitter, it would be that fight, for better or worse. It was how I built myself up as her; always escalating, never compromising, fighting unwinnable odds. It was easier to be the bigger monster than a person.
With a shake of my head, dispelling my thoughts, I reached my first destination: a tech store. As much as dad would still disapprove of me having one, I really needed a phone, and a cheap pre-paid one would do nicely. Instead of hoping that Lisa would work her magic, I needed some way to contact her after meeting the Undersiders, , and Armsmaster too. The next destination was a little cafe called the Hummingbird.
I walked in, ordered a large black tea and a cinnamon doughnut, sat down at one of the booths at the back of the cafe, grabbed out my notepad and pen, and started thinking. What I should do, what I should plan for, but more importantly, who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be Skitter, with her iron will, black chitin, intimidation and paranoia. Well, maybe some of her intimidation, her ruthlessness, but only when really needed, like against the Slaughterhouse Nine, but not when interacting with my friends, or regular civilians.
I didn’t want to be Weaver, either, as she was born out of the naive hope of a younger me, and was only used as a means to prevent the end of the world. She was a hero, yes, but was constrained by the PRT, with its incompetent directors and its obsession with PR.
The barista gave me my tea. I sipped a little of it, and ate a couple of bites of my doughnut. I looked out of the window that was next to me, and considered.
So, what did I really want to achieve? Who did I want to be, outside of the labels and systems of Hero and Villain?
Well, I needed to unlearn my bad habits of pushing my physical tics and expressions onto my swarm. It was useful as an intimidation tactic, and for messing with thinker powers, but I ended up using it too much. It was easier to focus on my swarm; use it as a tool to compartmentalise my emotions, shoving them somewhere and not having to deal with the regret, guilt or self-hatred. I needed to turn down my other habits of escalation and paranoia, especially with any of my friends or allies. I wanted to be someone worth following, not out of necessity or intimidation, but out of actual trust and loyalty.
Well, defeating Scion without sacrificing my humanity was the biggest thing, but there was no way I could plan for any of that right now. Making the city better and safer was the other thing, but that involved a series of smaller problems, both easy and difficult. The gangs were surprisingly the easiest thing, as they all collapsed without much on my part, other than taking down Lung later tonight. The Empire collapsed with their civilian identities being outed and Kaiser’s death at the hands of the Endbringer. The Merchants were wiped out in a night by the Slaughterhouse Nine. Noelle, Leviathan, and the S9 were things I couldn’t plan around either, so I moved on.
Which led to the biggest problem: Coil, and by extension, his civilian identity, Thomas Calvert. I needed to take him down, and I couldn’t do that if I joined the Wards or Protectorate, which meant I had to do it as a villain. Trying to be an independent or rogue would only give me a target on my back. Which then meant I had to join the Undersiders and be forced to go along with what he wants, and knowing him, he would engineer events to make me look worse in the eyes of the public.
I needed to be a cape that looked and acted with experience, like I was a hero that was doing illegal things for an unseen goal. Which wasn’t really a lie, but the PRT would eventually link me to my civilian identity, and realise I must have triggered back in January.
I adjusted my position, took another drink of my tea and finished my doughnut.
Joining the Undersiders was always something I planned on doing, anyway. I wasn’t exactly a good friend to them, and I knew deep down they really weren’t friends with each other, only together as a team out of their own circumstance.
Starting out as an experienced cape would also give me more credence with the public, as I wanted to look like I was reigning in the Undersiders’ villainous tendencies, like Lisa whispering someone’s darkest secrets with a sadistic grin, Alec and Aisha’s penchant for fucking around at the wrong time, and Rachel being Rachel. And Brian…..
I could trust him with not taking things too far. But he had his own problems, like doing whatever he needed to do to satisfy Coil, being a little overprotective of Aisha, and his complete lack of principles.
With another sigh escaping my lips, I rested my head on the cafe’s window, looking at the clear blue morning sky. I knew I still loved him; but our relationship in my original timeline was a complete disaster, and as much as I wanted to be with him again, I had to treat him as a teammate and a friend this time around.
All of them were in shit situations and had nowhere else to turn to. It was logical that Coil sought them out in particular, with his carrot and stick routine that would give them just enough to feel like they’re getting somewhere, but not enough so that they would be able to leave him.
Lisa was recruited at gunpoint after escaping from her parents who only cared about her because of her thinker ability, and would only be able to escape Coil, and his threats of becoming his little pet thinker, with his death. She was too valuable to him to lose.
Brian wanted to gain legal custody of Aisha, to rescue her from their drug addicted mother. Which would still force the both of them to work for him, and even if Brian managed to get custody of Aisha, that would just turn the both of them into leverage for Coil to manipulate.
Rachel was brought up in an uncaring, broken system, lashed out, and had to carry that weight with her, when all she ever wanted was to be left alone with her dogs. She has difficulty with bonding with other people, and for Coil, he would use her until she became enough of a liability that he could just discard when it was convenient for him. His position in the PRT would make it so easy to send her to the Birdcage.
Alec was raised by fucking Heartbreaker and had his capacity to feel his emotions sandblasted off, and was recruited only to avoid being arrested or bring found by his shitstain of a father. Alec was easy to please from Coil’s point of view, and if Alec got any ideas about leaving, or doing anything that would go against Coil, well, Heartbreaker was only a phone call away.
I made another quick mental note to properly befriend Alec this time, and to also personally kill Heartbreaker.
All of them were dealt a bad hand, and I truly believed that all of them had the chance to become better people, all they needed was someone to guide them. The PRT would either force them back to their parents, in Lisa’s case, or force them to join the Wards with the threat of prison for Alec and Rachel. Brian wouldn’t be able to do anything about his sister. Coil would use all of them until they broke or became too detrimental to his plans, always dangling that carrot, but never giving them it. They were all stuck between a rock and a hard place, with nowhere left to go or run.
So it had to be me that helped them, to give them the chance to be better people that no one else has given them. It was the least I could do to make up what I did to them the first time around. They didn’t have to be heroes, they just needed to be better people.
I finished my now cold tea, thanked the barista as I left, and started jogging back home.