章 2438: 21
Chapter 21: Trust 3-4
Trust 3.4
I was frozen. I couldn't move. I was barely breathing.
"This isn't Die Hard," Tattletale was saying. "Alan Rickman isn't gonna fall out of the window at the end. If you try to be a hero, someone's gonna get hurt, and no one here wants that. So don't. Just don't. We're not here to hurt anybody, and all the money in the vault is insured anyway. You won't lose anything other than a few minutes of your time. Trust me, trying to play the hero here? Really not worth it."
I wasn't even seeing the others, anymore. The tall, dark figure that stood at one side, billowing black fog from every crack and crevice in his costume, the stocky girl with her prowling monsters standing at the other, the crowned visage of royalty behind the rest of them — they'd become part of the background. My eyes were fixed on Tattletale.
"That means you, too," she added, pointing suddenly to someone in the crowd. I couldn't even turn to follow her finger. "That taser you've got hidden in your coat pocket? Forget about it. I guarantee you that it won't do you any good. You don't even have enough charges in that thing to get more than one of us, anyway."
My heart was thudding in my chest. The world swam around me, swirling dizzily until my head spun. My stomach squirmed and tied itself into knots of anger, pain, betrayal, and despair. I didn't even notice myself squeezing Amy's hand tightly in my own, probably too tightly, and the pained hiss she let out as she tried to wiggle out of my grip didn't even register.
Everything was focused on Tattletale — on Lisa, the girl who had lied to me from the very first moment we met. The girl who had had me convinced that she was my friend, who I had shared tea with, who I had shared my deepest traumas with, who I had told the story of Emma and her betrayal. The girl who had been feeding me lies and falsehoods and stringing me along all the while, letting me think she was some tragic, misunderstood hero trying to make the best of her situation.
My throat was tight. I couldn't swallow, because it felt like there was a giant lump lodged halfway down. My eyes burned.
Traitor, something inside of me seethed. Liar. Deceiver.
Why? I wanted to know. Why? Why had she done this to me? Why had she told me, let me believe, that she was an independent hero trying to scrape by, if she was just going to do this? Why had she pretended to be my friend, bought me tea, comforted me in the wake of the Sophia mess, taught me about the Unwritten Rules — why had she helped me, shown me kindness, if it was just going to end in this?
Had this been her plan from the beginning? The rest of it, all of it, had it all been a bunch of nicely packed lies, while she laughed to herself about how gullible I was? Had she done all of this just so she could see the look on my face when I finally realized how badly I'd been duped? That story about her Trigger Event, had it even been real, or just a sob story she thought would feel real enough to make me trust her?
I wanted to shout. I wanted to scream. I wanted to demand an answer and shake it out of her if I had to, but my lungs were frozen and my mouth felt like it had been glued shut.
"Taylor," I vaguely heard Amy murmur. "Taylor, you need to calm down. You're hyperventilating."
I couldn't answer her. My tongue was just as frozen as my lungs, and every muscle in my body had seized. It was like I had become a statue, staring unblinkingly ahead at the girl who had just torn my heart from my chest.
"Taylor," Amy said again, "you need to calm down. You're gonna pass out, if you don't, and I can't help you, because I can't see you clearly, remember?"
"Just to make sure that everyone plays nice, Regent here will be keeping an eye on everyone." Tattletale gestured to the boy in the blouse and tights, with the coronet and porcelain mask. "The rest of us have business elsewhere."
Two of the dogs and the ren-faire guy peeled off and made their way to the front steps, just by the door. I could only watch as Tattletale and the two others, plus one dog, made their way towards the back and the vault. A few moments later, they disappeared around a corner, their footsteps clacking off of the marble tiles.
It was only once they were gone that I managed to loosen up at all. The tension in every part of my body eased, not because I was relaxing, but because I couldn't hold it all in anymore. The breath left my lungs as an explosive sigh mixed in with what might have been a sob, and I felt the pair of tears that had been hovering at the corners of my eyes finally fall.
"Are you okay?" Amy whispered.
"I… I…"
No, I wasn't. Not at all. I was nowhere even near okay. But how did I explain everything to this girl I had just met? How did I tell her exactly what had just happened, exactly how I knew Tattletale, and exactly why I was so upset to see her? How did I tell her all of that here, in the middle of a bank, while it was being robbed? How did I explain the situation, the betrayal, the anguish that was still churning inside of me, even then?
The irony that I had done much the same with Lisa did not escape me.
I felt my lower lip wobble, and I bit it to try and center myself in the storm of emotion that was raging inside of me. I would not cry. I refused to cry. I wouldn't give Emma — Lisa. I wouldn't give Lisa that satisfaction. Not now, not ever again.
It felt like an eternity had passed before Tattletale returned back onto the main floor, missing her two teammates.
"Well," she said, "while Grue and Bitch are loading up, I happen to have some business to take care of in the back, and I think I'm in need of an assistant."
A wave of tension swept through the rest of the people in the bank, and several of the other hostages flinched back as Tattletale lifted her hand, finger extended, and swung it around the room. Everyone in its path recoiled, like watching a wave ripple across them. That trademark grin still stretched her mouth from ear to ear.
I was only a little surprised when it landed on me.
"You," she declared. "I think you'll do just fine."
I didn't move. The pointed finger turned around as she twisted her wrist and made a "come hither" motion.
"Come on. We don't have all day, after all."
I felt Amy grip my hand tightly.
"I-I'll go!" someone said suddenly. A man in a business suit started to stand up from his seat on the floor. "I'll go with you! Take me instead!"
He took a step forward, but quick as a whip, Tattletale had reached for her utility belt and snapped out a pistol.
"Up-up-up!" she said. "Remember what I said before. No playing the hero. I didn't ask for you, I asked for her." She gestured with the gun. "So, just sit on back down and chill. I said that we didn't come here to hurt anyone, and I meant it. As long as everyone cooperates, we'll all walk out of here without so much as a bruise."
After a moment, the man sat back down, head hung. I could see the sweat dripping down the side of his head.
"Good." As soon as he had, the gun turned in my direction. "Now, you and I have a date, Tall Girl. We don't want to be late."
My heart skipped a beat. The strangeness of the wording… A date? Here, now, she was going to make that reference?
Was… Was she mocking me?
She gestured with the gun again. "Come on. Clock's ticking, Tall Girl."
I started to stand. I'd moved past hurt and into angry. I was half tempted to go over there and clock her in the face, everything else be damned. Amy's hand holding me back, squeezing as though to keep me from going, was probably the only thing that gave me enough thinking space to stop myself.
"Don't worry so much," said Tattletale, looking past me and at Amy. "We'll have your girlfriend back before you know it. Promise."
It was another long moment before Amy finally let my hand go.
I walked up to Lisa slowly, methodically, each step plodding and heavy. My pulse roared in my ears the entire way, and it seemed to get louder the closer I got, until I was standing right next to her. I could have reached out and disarmed her in an instant.
Tattletale took a step back and gestured down the hall with her pistol.
"Go on," she said. "We need to make use of one of the offices in the back. You get to go first."
For another moment, I stared at her, met those bright green eyes, looking for… what, I wasn't sure. Recognition, maybe? Mirth? Sadism? Some sign that she was enjoying the merry hell she was playing on my thoughts and my emotions? But up close, all I could see was that her grin didn't quite reach her eyes, and what that meant, I couldn't even begin to imagine.
I turned away from her and towards the offices in the back, but didn't move. Something prodded me in the back a few seconds later — a finger or the barrel of that pistol, I had no idea.
"March."
I started off down the hall, still that same slow, plodding walk, and I heard Tattletale's footsteps following behind me as I went. We walked past the tellers' desks, around the corner, then down the hallway she and her group had come in through, and I had no idea what she was looking for or which office she wanted to choose or what she was going to do when we got there. Gloat? Explain her evil plan? Tell me how stupid I was to trust her? Anything I thought I knew about her was probably wrong.
"This'll do," she said as we came to one of the last offices in the hallway. "Go on. Get in."
I hesitated for all of a second, then stepped inside the office and turned to face her. She was still pointing her pistol in my direction, and I had a moment where I regretted leaving that project unfinished in my room.
"Stay there," she ordered, waving the pistol at the chair in front of the desk in the middle of the room.
Slowly, I moved to the spot she'd pointed at, smack dab in the center of the room. I watched her, still mostly angry but starting to get very confused.
Tattletale closed the door behind her, turned back to me, and offered me a smile — a real, genuine smile, one that felt a lot more earnest than that Cheshire grin.
I had no fucking clue what was going on.
"What —" I began.
"Hold on a sec," she told me. She set the gun down on the desk, just out of casual reach, and pulled a second chair towards the corner of the room — where, I could see, there was a security camera overlooking the office. She stood up on the chair and tugged one of the wires loose, and I watched as the glaring red light on the camera winked out.
When she was done, she stepped back down, strode around the desk, came up to me, and she pulled me into a tight hug. I was so shocked I didn't even have the capacity to think about whether I should hug her back or wring her neck.
"You came," she breathed into my ear. "Holy fuck, you actually came."
What?
Just…what? Was this another manipulation tactic, another game of hers, another way of messing with me, or… Fuck, did she actually mean it? Was she really, actually glad to see me? For whatever reason?
I… I really had no idea what was happening, here. What was going on. It felt like everyone was acting out a script that I hadn't been given the lines to, and I was left floundering, trying to figure out whether this was Romeo and Juliet or fucking Hamlet.
Just… I… What?
She pulled back away from me, looking up into my face, and cringed.
"Ah, right," she said ruefully. "Yeah. Explanation time, I guess."
"I…" I struggled to form a coherent sentence. "Yeah. That would be…"
"Nice" wasn't a good word. It had too many positive connotations to fit my mindset, right then — halfway between utterly baffled and nail-spitting furious — but I didn't have the capacity to string together a word larger than two syllables, at that moment.
"Gimme a sec, here, and I'll explain everything."
Tattletale didn't wait for my response; she briskly strode back around the desk and wiggled the mouse to bring the computer sitting there out of standby mode. After another few seconds of glancing around at the keyboard, at the desk itself, and rooting through the drawers, she set her fingers down on the keyboard and started typing.
"So, by now, you've probably figured out that the Undersiders — that's my team, by the way — aren't exactly the independent hero type," she began.
"That's…"
No shit.
No, Lisa, I hadn't figured that out, thank you for telling me.
She glanced at me for a moment, winced, then went back to whatever it was she was doing on that computer. Looking through financial records? Draining bank accounts? Pulling up blackmail material? Hell if I knew, because obviously, whatever I thought I'd known about Lisa was wrong.
"Right, yeah, kind of obvious, huh?" she went on. "Yeah. Sorry. We're…kind of a villain team. Kind of. Most of the jobs we've done have been against other villains. Snatch and grab heists. Get in, grab some of their money, maybe take a few souvenirs, then skedaddle before Lung or Hookwolf or the Protectorate shows up. Petty thieves, when it comes down to it."
"Why…?"
Why did you let me believe you were a hero, then? Why construct this whole charade, why try and be my friend?
Those questions screamed inside of me, and I wanted to shout them in her face, demand an answer to them. She kept going before I could even try.
"Because I am your friend," Lisa told me simply, like it was an obvious fact. Something in my chest ached. "But, yeah, nothing I said that first night was technically false, but the way I said it was a bit deceptive. Sorry. I really am. But you wouldn't have talked to me at all if I'd told you the truth right then and there, so I had to fib a little to keep you from bolting."
That was…
No, it wasn't necessarily untrue. I wouldn't have stayed if she'd said she was a villain outright. I might even have fought her, and probably have lost, considering how tired I'd been in the aftermath of Lung.
That didn't make it any better, though. The lie was still a lie.
"Yeah, that's fair," Lisa admitted, as though I'd said all of that out loud. "I still let you believe I was a hero, and maybe that was wrong, and maybe in a better world, I'd give more of a damn about more than the fact that it's obviously hurt you, but it's not. This is a crazy, fucked up world, and sometimes, the only way to survive is to do some stuff you don't really want to."
She looked up and met my eyes, and for a moment, she stopped everything else she was doing.
"But I didn't lie about anything else," she told me sincerely. "Everything else we talked about? All the stuff I told you? About my…my brother? That was all true. I meant every word."
I hated the pang of sympathy that curled in my gut, just then. I wanted to keep being angry, to find excuses to make her out as some kind of monster, so that I could justify hating her and wash my hands of everything. I wanted to pretend that she had never cared, that it had all been one big game, so that I could have every reason in the world to want nothing else to do with her.
I could do angry. I could do loathing. I could do hate. I'd been doing them for almost two years, and I'd gotten used to those sorts of feelings. It would have been so much easier to deal with Lisa if I could just paint her with the same brush as Emma and be done with it.
But I was finding that I couldn't. Not that I wasn't still angry and confused, not that I didn't want more, better answers, but I couldn't just throw aside that beautiful, burgeoning friendship that had been kindling inside me for the past few days. I just couldn't.
I still wanted to know, though.
"Why?"
There were probably better ways she could have done it, if all she really wanted was a friend. I still didn't quite know what Lisa's power was, but she'd as good as admitted it was a Thinker power, yesterday, when she was telling me about her Trigger Event. There was no way she couldn't have found me in my civilian identity as plain, ordinary Taylor Hebert and struck up a friendship that way.
So why hadn't she? Why hadn't she skipped this whole thing and made friends that way?
Tattletale stopped typing, but she didn't look back up.
"Why, huh?" she asked under her breath. She sighed, then she lifted her eyes to meet mine. "Do you remember what I said that first night? About how some capes are forced into a gang? Told either to join or get buried in a shallow, unmarked grave?"
A thrill of icy cold shot through my stomach. She could have stopped there, and I would have been able to fill in most of the rest myself.
"After I left my parents and made my way up here, I was living on the streets," she went on. "I supported myself by using my power to pickpocket the kinds of people who could afford to lose a few hundred bucks, here and there — you know, rich, snobby types with six-figure salaries and a whole closet full of pricey suits. The kind of guys who buy Rolexes straight-up instead of cheap, knock-off brands. The kind of guys my parents were, if we're being totally honest."
She glanced down, frowning.
"I'm still not quite sure how he found me. I wasn't making waves. I wasn't gaming the stock market or draining bank accounts dry. I was just getting by. Then, a couple of goons dressed up as enforcers pulled me aside on the Boardwalk one day and handed me a phone, told me I had a call. The guy on the other line gave me a choice: I could either work for him, or take a one-way trip to the morgue."
Some of the anger was starting to come back, but it wasn't all aimed at Lisa. It occurred to me, then and there, that this could still be part of her game, that this was all a lie carefully concocted to garner my sympathy, but I wanted to believe her. God only knew why, but I wanted her to be telling the truth, that the last few days hadn't been one big, giant scam.
"Who?" I asked a little harshly.
"He calls himself Coil," Lisa told me. "Bond-type villain. Megalomaniac with dreams of conquering the world or whatever. After he slipped the leash around my neck, he scrounged together this team: me, Grue — the darkness guy — Bitch — the girl with dogs — and Regent — the renaissance faire reject. He gives each of them something they want, pays us to do jobs, and has some master plan that we figure into, although I'm not sure how, just yet."
"Even with your power?"
Lisa chuckled wryly. "Bond villain," she repeated. "Paranoid as all fuck. Decoys, body doubles, voice modulators, scripted speeches and responses, the whole shebang. Plus, as much as I like to tell people I am, I'm not actually psychic. My power gets less accurate the less data I have, and guys like Coil would come up with a dozen different ways to spoof it before ever saying a single word to me."
Oh. Yeah, that would make sense, wouldn't it?
"But… Still. Why…?"
None of this answered the question of why she hadn't just befriended me outside of the costume.
Tattletale closed her eyes and let out a breath through her nose.
"Because I wanted your help," she admitted at last. "Because I had no way of getting out from under his thumb, even if I could convince the rest of my team to help me out, until you came along."
Me?
"Me?"
"Yeah, you." She smiled sardonically. "You're Eidolon Lite. You have a dozen different ways you could really screw up his day, and that's before considering that apparently your power really messes with his."
So, she really had been using me from the start, hadn't she?
Lisa's face twisted into a scowl. "Damn it, no. Look, I'd like your help, I'd love it, actually, and I'll pay you, I'll beg you, I'll do whatever you want, if it means you'll get me out from under him, but if you say no, I'll still be your friend, okay?"
No, it really wasn't.
She sighed tiredly and leaned back into the chair.
"Besides," she added, "if you're going to keep being a hero, you can't avoid dealing with him, eventually."
My left hand curled into a fist.
She was right, after a fashion. If I was going to keep being a hero and Coil was a villain, it would probably only be a matter of time until we clashed in some form or another. That still didn't mean…
"Let me clarify things, a little," Lisa said. "At the very least, Coil wants control of the city. Where he goes after that, fuck if I know. He's got his fingers in the PRT. He's funding at least two villain teams. If he does get control of the city, any hero or villain who doesn't work for him in some way or fashion will end up either floating face down in the Bay or driven out of town. Your power messes with his power. It's only a matter of time before he tries to put a bullet either through your skull or into your heart."
She looked me straight in the eye.
"And if he can't get to you, he'll go after the nearest available target that will get you to do what he wants. Family, friends, lover — whoever it takes."
My chest went cold.
Dad.
I knew what she was doing. Whether or not this was all the truth, it was all in the telling. She was doing her level best to make Coil into a problem that would become my problem no matter what, box me in so that I could only say yes. Whether she really would stay my friend, even if I said no, I couldn't be sure, because someone like Lisa would have a better poker face than me, but it was easy to imagine that it was another way of hooking me.
That didn't mean it wasn't working.
I wanted to believe her. I wanted it so badly. She was the first friend I'd made in two years, the first girl my age I'd been able to speak more than two words to that didn't involve either of us slinging insults at each other. She'd given me kind words, an understanding shoulder, and an ear to bend. She'd reached out her hand and brushed away my loneliness, and in only a handful of days, she'd wormed her way deep into my heart.
But she'd done all of that with this hanging over her head and hidden behind her smile. She'd done all of that with the intent to one day ask me to pay it forward. From the beginning, she'd known she was going to ask me for this.
I wanted to trust her, but how could I trust her? I wanted to be her friend, but how could I be a friend to a girl I couldn't trust? I'd already opened my heart to her; knowing that she held a knife, now, how could I be sure she wouldn't stab it?
I looked down at my hand, furling and uncurling my fingers.
That was the problem: I couldn't. I'd extended my trust to her, and now she'd shattered it. Maybe, if I was a different kind of person, I could have just forgiven her, maybe not right then but eventually, but I'd been betrayed already. I'd lived with those consequences already. I'd felt that pain too keenly already. Forgiveness was not a thing I knew how to give.
But…
Even if I didn't know how to forgive, anymore, there were ways around that. That was really, in the end, what I'd spent the last few months doing, after all: finding ways around my weaknesses, finding ways to protect my blind spots, so that no one could exploit them and use them against me.
"I could agree to help you," I said slowly. I looked up to meet her eyes. "But you'd have to make me a promise."
"Whatever it is, consider it made," she replied immediately.
And one of the things I'd discovered in the Irish myths, when I was studying Aífe and Cúchulainn, was that the ancient Celts had had ways of making oaths stick. They'd had ways of ensuring that a king acted kingly, that a great warrior never betrayed his principles, that deals made were always kept. They'd bound themselves and each other, and those who betrayed those bonds suffered great misfortune.
I stepped forward and held out my hand. Vaguely, I was aware that this whole thing had started with her on the other side and me refusing to take it.
"I promise to help you escape Coil, if you promise to never betray my trust again."
"Done." She reached out to grab my hand. "I prom — oh."
She stopped halfway, looked down at my hand. Part of my costume had materialized, just the underlayer, so that smooth, skin-tight black cloth covered my hand, stretched up my arm, across my shoulders, and wrapped around my chest. With my hoodie on, it was practically invisible, but I wasn't surprised that Lisa had noticed.
That was how Cúchulainn had died, after all. Through trickery after trickery, he'd been forced to break his oaths, and with each one he broke, he became weaker and weaker, until at last, he was too weak to avoid the blow that killed him.
"Oh," she said again softly. "Oh, shit. You… You're really serious about this, aren't you?"
I didn't smile. I didn't nod. I didn't change my expression at all. There were only two ways this scenario could end — in one, we'd part ways and be enemies, and I would curse her with everything I was. In the other, we'd remain friends, and maybe one day, I could let go of the anger and the hatred that was still simmering in my gut, and we could recapture the feeling of those first few days.
An oath that neither of us could betray… A promise that neither of us could casually break…
"Do you promise?"
For what it was worth, Lisa barely hesitated. It was less than a second of thought and consideration, less than a second of doubt. Then, she reached out and grasped my gloved hand with hers.
"I promise."
The geis snapped into action, shooting up from our joined hands like a crackle of electricity and winding its way around my heart and hers. From this point forward, neither of us could betray that oath. We were bound together, now, closer than lovers, by a vow more lasting and stronger than death do us part.
Anmain a n-anmain. Luige a n-luige. Immalle, sní téit co ar úag.
"Life for life. Oath for oath. Together, we go to our grave."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Like I said, probably a bit divisive.
Don't think that this is where it ends, though. There will be consequences to what Lisa has done, this arc. Even if they seem like they're mended, pay close attention to some of the things Taylor says in the aftermath of this whole thing. It's going to be quite a while before she's willing to earnestly put her trust in Lisa again.
As always, read, review, and enjoy.
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