Kapitel 2435: 18
Chapter 18: Trust 3-1
Trust 3.1
Let the Alighted Wind be as a Wall.
The ride home was a blur, spent in total silence without even the meagerest of attempts at conversation. I stared out the window the whole way, not even seeing the city as it passed me by. I was too angry.
Within five minutes of leaving, I was back to simmer. I had nothing to do except think about it all, the more I thought about it, the more that blackness I'd felt in the office started to curl up inside of me like a hissing snake.
Sophia was Shadow Stalker. I was still struggling to wrap my head around it. Sophia was Shadow Stalker. My own personal nemesis, one of the three girls who had spent the last two years tormenting me for some sick, twisted form of amusement, was a government certified hero. The biggest bitch this side of the Bay, a girl who seemed like she'd fit right in with all of the E88 gangers if she'd been born a white girl, was a fucking hero.
And she'd tried to kill me. She'd brought a crossbow to my house, and if it hadn't been for the Dragon Teeth I'd sown into the yard, she would've killed me. And she was a hero.
I wanted to scream, to hit something, to pull out Medea and blow something up. How? How could Sophia be Shadow Stalker? How could she be a hero? How could the psychotic bitch who'd locked me in my own locker with a pile of vile shit, who had spent the last two fucking years making every day of my life a living hell, be a hero?
It wasn't fair. Where was the karma, where was the justice, where were all those good and wonderful things that were supposed to shine through, in the end, like all of the books and cartoons said they would?
I was jolted out of my thoughts when the truck trundled to a halt in our driveway, but the familiarity of home didn't do anything to make me feel any better.
When Dad twisted the key and the battered old pickup stuttered off, we just sat there. For a long moment, neither of us said anything, and Dad neither reached for the door nor looked in my direction. When I glanced over to him, he was staring straight forward at the house, brow set and mouth tight. I swallowed around some of the acid that was waiting on my tongue.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked at length.
My brain stumbled for a moment, and anything I might have been prepared to say slipped from my fingers like sand. "Tell you?"
"About the bullying, Taylor!" Dad barked. He scowled and closed his eyes, and when he continued, his voice was somewhat calmer, although still angry. "Why didn't you tell me that the bullying had never stopped?"
The blackness coiled in my stomach wound tighter, fueled by two years of frustration and anger and hatred that was quickly piling up all at once, and my head started to feel fuzzy and hot. The words, biting and sarcastic, came out before I could stop them.
"And what would you have done if I had told you?"
Because that was the very thing that had stopped me from telling him in the first place.
Because I already knew how it would have gone.
"I would have gone to the principal!" Dad said loudly. "I would have given her a piece of my mind, because she promised —"
"And what would that have done?" I demanded. "What would that have solved? You think Blackwell would've given a damn? It was lip service after the Locker, it would've been lip service then, too!"
And even if it had worked, what then? It was like I'd just told Gladly yesterday: even if I went and complained, even if I managed to get them suspended or in detention for a few days, all that would accomplish would be to give them time to plan how they were going to get back at me. It wouldn't have solved anything.
"Then we go to the police!" Dad insisted. "Or we sue! Taylor, I wouldn't have let them get away with this kind of thing!"
"No, you wouldn't!" I shouted. "We didn't have the money to sue after the Locker! That's why you had to sign that settlement in the first place!"
I didn't really blame him for that, but I knew he blamed himself, so I said it anyway.
"We could've gone to —"
He cut off. I laughed, harsh and cruel and mirthless. "Alan Barnes, right? Except his precious, little girl is one of the ones who put me in that locker. I can just imagine how that one would've gone — 'Sorry, Danny, I tried, but you just don't have enough of a case.' Emma would've been using that as material before he even finished apologizing!"
"And what about Emma?" Dad changed tracks. "Why didn't you tell me she was one of the ones picking on you?"
"Because it wouldn't have helped! Because you couldn't have done anything about it!"
"I would have talked to Alan! I would've tried —"
"Tried and fucking failed!" I spat. "You would've confronted him, shouted at him, yelled at him when he fucking lied to your face, and then he would've slapped you with a restraining order so fast, we'd be selling the house just to keep the minimum distance!"
I wanted to stop, but I was on a roll, and every bit of frustration and impotence of the past two years came spilling out.
"That's all you've been doing since Mom died!" I said, even though I knew I was going to regret it. "Trying, failing, giving up! Spiraling in a sad little circle, so wrapped up in being miserable that you didn't even notice Emma wasn't my friend, anymore!"
My heart was pounding, my eyes were burning, and my stomach churned with every repressed feeling I'd been trying to hold in. My tongue continued on, and I wasn't sure I wanted to stop it, anymore. Dad looked as though I had slapped him, but I couldn't bring myself to care.
"You haven't even been handling your own problems! How could I trust you to handle mine?!"
"Because you haven't told me!" Dad roared. "You didn't say anything! You didn't tell me before the Locker, you didn't tell me after, you didn't even tell me Emma was one of the ones who was doing it! I can't help you if you don't let me, Taylor! I can't help you deal with these things if you don't tell me about them!"
"Because it wouldn't have made a difference!" I yelled back. "Because I almost died in that damn locker, and nothing you said or did changed anything after that! Because you would've tried your damnedest, done your best, and when you failed, you'd go back to moping around like someone had killed Mom all over again, like just because you failed, you didn't deserve to even pretend you still had a daughter!"
"Taylor," he started.
"You spent four fucking years like that!" I screamed over him. "Four fucking years where you barely said one word to me! 'Good morning.' 'Good night.' 'I'll be home late.' You haven't even told me you loved me since the funeral!"
Then, without mercy, fueled by the fire boiling in my gut, I delivered the final blow.
"If that's what happens every time something bad happens and you can't do anything about it, I might as well not even have a father! I might be better off, that way!"
I knew, immediately, that it was a step too far, that it was something I really shouldn't have said, but it was far too late to take it back. They were words designed to hurt, and hurt bad, uttered from the deepest, darkest cruelty in my heart. Even if the feeling behind them was real and raw and completely mine, I'd never wanted to actually give it voice.
It was the look of startled pain that managed to cool some of the anger, or at least snap me out of it enough to realize exactly what I'd been saying. For an eternity compressed into a handful of seconds, we just stared at each other, Dad's mouth working but not saying anything and cooling tear tracks carved into my cheeks.
Then, the guilt started to set in, and the horror at myself followed it quickly, and suddenly, that pickup truck was too crowded and small. I needed to get out, get away, be somewhere, anywhere, else, somewhere where the walls weren't so tight.
The door was opening before I even thought about what I was about to do, and then I was sliding out of my seat and onto the driveway.
"Taylor!" I heard Dad call after me, but I ignored him.
Instead, I rushed into the house, taking every stair in my way two steps at a time as I made my way to my room. I didn't bother to change or throw myself on my bed; I grabbed my backpack and a small, black case, then emptied my bag onto my mattress, uncaring of how haphazardly all of my books and papers landed, and shoved that black case into my bag.
Maybe if I'd been thinking more clearly, I might have done things differently. Maybe I would've grabbed some lunch or maybe I would have grabbed the little scrap of paper with Lisa's phone number on it. Maybe, if I wasn't still riding along the realization that Sophia was Shadow Stalker, if I hadn't just blown up at Dad, if this wasn't the capstone on two years of hell, I might have stayed and just had a civil conversation.
But I didn't. The minute my bag was zipped back up and slung over my shoulders, I was out of my room again and bounding towards the back door.
"Taylor!" Dad called again, and I could hear the front door as he came inside. "Taylor, wait!"
I didn't listen. I didn't want to listen. Even if I'd said some things to him that I hadn't wanted to, it didn't mean that I hadn't meant them, that somewhere inside of me, some part of me wasn't howling each and every one of them over and over again.
I just… I couldn't be there, right then. Not right then, not with Dad.
I was out the back door a few seconds later, then I was taking off — where to, I had no idea, just that it wasn't at home and it wasn't with Dad. My feet carried me along without any input from my head, and even when my lungs started to burn and my muscles started to ache, I kept going. Taking a run every morning since January was probably what helped me along.
By the time I finally stopped, I found myself downtown, again. The streets were mostly empty, with a few stragglers here and there who were probably making their way back to work after their lunch break, and most of the buildings around me were short, one-to-two story things that served as home to fast food restaurants and minor real estate agencies. A few office buildings were interspersed here and there, but nothing like the Medhall building.
For a few moments, I just stood there dumbly, panting and sweating as my racing heart started to slow, and I felt lost.
But I had had a vague idea of what I was doing. Maybe I hadn't exactly planned it out or anything, hadn't even bothered to think about where I was going to go, but I'd at least had an inkling of what I would be doing when I got there.
So, I found there nearest abandoned alleyway, waited until I was sure no one was watching, then jogged over to it and ducked behind a dumpster. A moment later, I was in my base Breaker form, costume and all, with my bag still settled on my shoulders, and I used my increased strength to vault up and onto the nearest rooftop.
The gravel crunched softly beneath my feet when I landed, and when I looked around, there wasn't much up there with me: a raised, narrow structure with a door that likely led back down into the shop or whatever it was beneath me, a few pipes that spewed steam — probably from the furnace or whatever — and a squat, boxy thing that was probably the AC unit.
I strode over to the raised structure, slid my bag off of my shoulders, then dropped down and leaned back against it. I let my head fall into my hands — if it weren't for the mask and lenses, I would've been pressing the heels of my palms against my eyes.
It was so fucking stupid. So Dad hadn't been the most engaging father since Mom died. So he wasn't that helpful most days and he couldn't do anything about my problems. So I'd felt lost and frustrated and alone because he hadn't been able to handle Mom's death. So he'd thrown himself into his work to try and deal with it all. None of those things made it okay to throw it all back in his face like he'd dropped me on a street corner and told me to figure things out for myself.
Dad wasn't the only one who'd fallen apart, after all. I had, too. I'd been getting better, before Emma turned into a massive bitch. I'd been…not coping, exactly, but managing. Surviving. One day at a time. That wasn't much different than Dad, really. Just…things had gotten shittier for me because of Emma and the Trio, and Dad and I…when it came down to it, we just didn't have the same weight to throw around and get things done.
Dad couldn't get the city to restart the ferry. Dad couldn't throw around the same weight as Alan Barnes. Me, I wasn't popular enough or pretty enough or rich enough to be more than a blip on the radar for Winslow's staff and bottom line.
Just…fuck, I wished Mom was alive. She always seemed to know how to do anything.
I reached around for my backpack and unzipped it, pulling out the black case I'd put inside it. Then, I let the bag drop and opened the case, and there, sitting pristinely in three different parts, wedged perfectly into the slots that had been molded for it, was my mother's flute.
It had taken a lot of work to get it back, a couple of acts that I was fairly sure were illegal in some way or form, but I hadn't cared, since it'd been stolen out of my locker to begin with. Once I'd stolen it back from the hidey hole where Sophia had stashed it, I'd had to sit down for several hours over the course of about a week to return it to its original, untarnished condition, but I had, in the end, gotten it back to the way it'd been when it was stolen.
It might have been an incredibly mundane usage for powers that could bend the fabric of reality to my will, but out of all the things I'd done with them so far, this was the one where I'd been most thankful for Medea's magic.
And of course, once it was back in shape, I'd gone further and enchanted it to be unbreakable and stainless and eternally clean… Half a dozen different properties had been added to it, just to make sure that Emma and Sophia could never ruin it again. In fact, it would probably remain, perfect and pristine, long after Brockton Bay had decayed into dust.
An eternal memento to remember my dead mother. That suited me just fine.
I slotted the pieces together with practiced efficiency, connecting the three parts together so that they formed the united whole. When I was done, I held the gleaming silver flute as one, long item, stretching across my folded legs from knee to knee.
I couldn't start just yet, though. There was one more thing missing.
I closed my eyes and let out a breath. I reached out and through myself, into that vast beyond.
"Set. Include."
The hero I'd chosen connected to me, infused me, and I felt her power become my own — but only a fraction, a fragment, not her whole might.
Mentoring Great Heroes
"Aite Láechrad."
It would be another incredibly mundane usage of a mind-boggling power capable of twisting reality to my will, but I'd already done this sort of thing before — had been doing it for almost two months, before I started playing around with magic and got distracted. Doing it again would be nothing new.
I picked the skill I'd chosen, "Flutist," and I could see the progress I'd already made. Rank E, to put it into words. Barely competent. Knowledge of the basics, ability to reproduce simple melodies, but not the sort of thing you'd take to a concert hall or something that would get you into a symphony orchestra.
With that Noble Phantasm active, I lifted the flute to my lips, aligned the mouthpiece, closed my eyes, and started to play.
I was terrible. I could freely admit that. There were kids half my age who were probably much better and more experienced, and even to a high school orchestra, I would have sounded like a halfway decent hack, if even that. I didn't care, though, because I was getting better. I didn't care, because even at such a low level, I was already good enough to match someone who'd been playing the flute for a year. I didn't care, because Aite Láechrad would let me master this before summer was out.
This was a connection to my mother, and I wasn't about to let anything stop me from keeping it.
I must've played for nearly three hours, working my way through a few melodies I knew more by instinct than by memory. Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Frere Jacques, and eventually, Ode to Joy came out and echoed over that little rooftop, and as I sat there, playing them, for a few moments, I could almost imagine Mom sitting across from me, playing them, too.
Then, aggressively, I moved onto Fur Elise, and Greensleeves, and finally, Danny Boy. The last one had a weird feeling to it, because Dad's name was Danny, and maybe that was a strange connection to make, but it was one I couldn't help making.
When at last my lips were too numb to keep going, I opened my eyes and set the flute down on my knees. The position of the sun had changed drastically, and the stairwell I'd rested my back against cast a long shadow that engulfed me entirely.
For several minutes, I just sat there. I felt…calmer, somehow, than I had when I'd come up here. Not better, perhaps, because the Sophia-Shadow Stalker problem still gnawed at me, but more like I could handle it, now.
Dad was probably worried sick, though.
I pulled the flute back apart into its three pieces, then carefully put them back in the case I'd brought them in and snapped it shut. Once that was done, I stuffed the case back in my backpack, slipped it over my shoulders again, and walked over to the ledge where I'd first come up onto the rooftop.
My base Breaker form made the landing easy, as it had yesterday when I was meeting Lisa. When I was sure no one was coming to investigate the sound of me hitting the ground, I dropped back down to normal, ordinary Taylor Hebert and stepped back out into the street, where rush hour traffic waited.
For a moment, I thought about trying to catch a bus and make my way back home like that, but rush hour traffic in Brockton Bay was hell. Not as bad as, say, New York City was supposed to be, but from the stories I'd heard from Dad, and even from what I was seeing now, it wasn't unusual to spend fifteen or twenty minutes stuck in the same spot. Dad was already going to be worried enough; I didn't want to add waiting another hour and a half to it, not when going by foot was probably going to be faster.
Fortunately, my shoes were one of the things I'd enchanted when I figured out enchanting, so even though they hadn't really been designed for running, they were still comfortable enough that they wouldn't kill my feet for running in them.
So, I ran. I made sure to pace myself better than I had on my half-frantic sprint from the house, earlier, so it took me about twenty minutes, in all, to make it back to my neighborhood, where I slowed down to more of a jog. It was another five before my house came into view.
And there, sitting on the front porch and obviously waiting for me, was Dad.
I hesitated. A handful of seconds passed as I stood there, half-ready to go back to him, but they felt like hours, and as I stayed there, just across the street from our front porch, I worried.
What if he was still angry at me?
What if he couldn't forgive me, after the terrible, terrible things I'd said to him?
What if we just started arguing again?
What if he didn't want me back?
I'd run off after saying a bunch of really mean, really awful things that felt good at the time, things that I'd said just to hurt him as badly as I could. Some of those things…I didn't know how I could forgive them, if I was in his shoes, especially since they seemed now like the sorts of things Emma might say, the sorts of things she'd used to torment me for two years.
I… I'd just started to get Dad back. He'd just started to really smile and laugh, again. It'd barely been a few days since he'd started making those corny jokes and quoting his favorite movies, again. What if I'd ruined that, driven him back and away, again? What if all of that disappeared, and we went back to the past four years, where we barely talked and never said more than two words to each other at a time?
I didn't think I could bear it. Not again. I'd lost Mom, and then in the aftermath, I'd lost Dad. I didn't think I could bear to lose him again, just as I was getting him back.
But Dad took the decision out of my hands; he looked up and saw me, and as something like relief stretched across his face, he shouted, "Taylor!"
Then, he was running towards me, crossing the lawn in great, loping strides, and before I could think about it anymore, my legs started moving on their own and I was running towards him, too. We met somewhere in the middle, colliding with a force that nearly left me breathless, and he wrapped me in the tightest hug I could ever remember getting, and I hugged him back just as hard.
"Thank god, you're home," he murmured into my hair. "You're home, you're home, you're home!"
"I'm sorry," I said into his shirt, and suddenly, I was crying, and I didn't know why, and I didn't care why. It felt like all of the nastiness I'd leveled his way earlier was being washed away, like I was being wiped clean of all those terrible thoughts and feelings, like with every tear, they were leaving me. "I'm sorry, Dad. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," Dad told me soothingly. The hand in my hair started stroking the back of my head. "Oh, Taylor, it's okay."
I could feel something wet soaking into my hair, and I realized that Dad must have been crying, too. He rocked us back and forth from side to side, and I felt like a little girl, again, like I'd just come running to him after a nightmare. The years of just surviving, of barely talking, of saying so little that we'd become two strangers living in the same home, they melted away, and Dad and I were a family, again — still broken, still missing a very important piece, still missing the third part that would complete us, but still a family.
"You're home. That's all that matters. It's okay."
And for the first time in almost four years, I believed him.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Wöchentlicher Energiestatus
-- Power-
Rangliste 
-- Power-
Stein