Chapter Text
As I booked it from the gathering of capes after everything had gone to Chelsea I tried my best to shunt my emotions away. It wasn't really working all too well, I couldn't get the image of Armsmaster betraying me out of my head.
Of Lisa having already known.
The scene ran through my head over and over and over and OVER!
"FUCK!" My scream echoed around the block, my fist giving pulses of pain after I had punched the composite stone wall. The veneer pulled away as I stared at the gray material underneath, the tears crawling down my face under my mask making everything blurry.
There was nobody around. I was aware of that much before breaking down. Before folding to the wicked gross mental fit. It wasn't pretty. It wasn't something I could see Emma or Lisa doing.
My forehead hit the wall, I had a choice to make. I didn't have a place to go to tonight. This place was empty, it would hardly be the worst thing I've done. I looked at its layout: the single floor, 3 bedroom 2 bath, an extra closet just filled with blankets on the floor and some on a shelf up high in the middle of the house, with a basement below seemed lived in. Though, as with the outside, everything seemed cleaned by some hardo wanting to show off as some rich Wellesley in Northside. There was a bedroom in the down cellar, or, what looked like one. It had a half bath. It didn't look lived in, at least. Not like the other bedrooms.
It looked like a family lived here. It looked like people had lives here. Fuck, was I really going to break into a random house in the suburbs to get some fucking sleep? Nobody should be returning for a bit, not for a good 10 to 12 hours at least. I've done worse.
Why am I hesitating?
They all said it, I'm not a fucking hero. Not even a proper villain. Just some basic broad with a lame power. Why should I hesitate?
Staring at the simple door, looking like it was made from some cheap fake material, I decided.
I would sleep in comfort tonight. Nobody would stop me. Not even myself.
I used bugs to flip the lock, keeping watch around me as I tried to calm down. As I tried to be me.
It didn't work. I kept seeing Lisa in my head, her smug grin replaced by Emma's. She knew the whole time. Strung me along. Made me think we were friends as she made me believe whatever she said.
What had I done? Is it worth it to look back?
I should be looking to the future, using what I can to free Dinah now that the emergency is over, but I am in some house in Northside listening to my stomach growl. I knew the fridge would have something in it, probably even enough for a grinder, but did I want to do more? The floors were pristine, they didn't creek as I walked through. There was nobody around for blocks. I could take it and be fine.
I didn't. I made it to the kitchen, small, table large enough to seat more than double the rooms would suggest. The family was probably like this for a reason.
I walked through the house, grabbing some blankets from the center closet as I went. The stairs to the down cellar were dark, but I used my bugs to see at this point. Sensing the old telly, table and chairs on one end, a bed on the other. Simple. Easy. Just sleep and leave.
It was well past midnight when I had broken in. It was well past midnight when I got any sleep. It was probably some cursed happenstance that led to my dreams being nightmares.
Nightmares of the Undersiders laughing at my naivety.
Nightmares of the Protectorate unmasking me.
Nightmares of Sophia following me everywhere, leaving my blood on white couches.
Nightmares of Amy Dallon staring at me with those judging eyes as I ran away into the night.
Nightmares of waking up surrounded by heroes because nowhere was safe for me anymore.
I must have gotten a few hours, my bugs could tell the sun was up, but I was more exhausted than when I had stripped myself of my mask, washed my face, and laid down upon the old bed.
I was such a fucking tool.
The world was smucked. So off, I could barely tell up from down. I deserved it.
The slap I felt to my face, the clarity suddenly appearing as I noticed the faces around me. The light, the colors.
Fuck.
On the couch, the two I had seen after I picked up a halberd for the first time sat together. Blond, not supermodel good looking, but you could see they were both gorgeous women. Both wore full white bodysuits, tight, form fitting and showing off how well the exercised. Both had heart shaped faces, plush pink lips, and both…
Both reminded me of when I lost my mother. The dead eyes, the staring into space, the slow blinks. They hadn't recovered since I saw them last. Though the younger of the two was more active at least, looking at others in the room rather than just me.
They were beaten and haggard. Not broken, but beaten.
I was in restraints, my hands held by something behind my back as I was forced to lay upon them. This was not the most important detail.
That would be the three surrounding me as I lay in the Parlor. The trio consisted of a blond woman, looking to be a sister to the one on the couch, and her two children.
The severe woman in a white and orange bodysuit, stretched tight over more extreme curves than her sister's, holding a glowing rod to my chest. The blond in a tiara wore a white suit that hugged her tight body so well I could see the way it held her down. She was oddly still for how well endowed she was. Especially with the level of movement she had moving the last figure away from me.
That last one… Amy Dallon. Wearing her white and red cloth, baggy and showing nothing. She was held by her sister while they moved away, her eyes meeting mine and I could just barely make out the odd way they quirked. The odd way her mouth shifted. The odd way her face went red.
New Wave.
A family that now consisted of spinners one and all.
I was surrounded by New Fucking Wave, in the house I went to sleep in last night, in the parlor.
"Was the slap really necessary?"
I was fucked, wasn't I?