Capítulo 2482: 65
Chapter 65: Promise 7-4
Promise 7.4
I left the meeting with Director Piggot with an appointment of a kind scheduled for later in the day, so that I could demonstrate my Celtic martial arts and Aífe's Noble Phantasm to her, and the promise that whatever was leftover afterwards was mine to do with as I pleased — to make more links in the chain for my imitation of Lord Camelot.
As for preparing the spell itself, that would have to wait until all of the paperwork was finished processing and I could officially leave the building; they weren't even letting me out to go to school, which said something about how seriously they were taking this "protective custody" thing. I wasn't willing to try pushing the boundaries just yet by doing something like sneaking out.
So, without much of anything else to do in the meantime, I made my way back to the Wards section of the building. I still hadn't talked to any of them since my brief conversation with Gallant the night before, and when the retina scanner chimed its acceptance and the metal doors whirred open, I found it almost entirely empty. The others had probably already left for the day to go to school.
All except for Dennis, who had hastily tried to slip on a spare mask — and failed, leaving the thing crooked — and had a piece of toast hanging from his mouth.
For a few, short seconds, he just blinked at me, then he grabbed his toast, bit off the section in his mouth, and ate it, before offering a kind of half-hearted, "Good morning."
"…Morning," I replied.
"Car — ah, I mean, Aegis and the others already left for school," he told me, "so if you're looking for any of them, that's where they are."
"Oh," I said, like I hadn't figured that out, before. "And, um, you?"
Fuck, I was bad at small talk.
"Me?" he parrotted.
"Aren't you going to school, too?"
"Oh. Yeah," he said. "Um, I just live closest to here, so I can take my time a little bit more, you know? Sleep in a little."
"Oh."
"Oh."
A long silence stretched between us, and we both fidgeted, trying to come up with something to fill it. Dennis, at least, had his breakfast, so he had that as an excuse not to say anything, and he was taking full advantage of it to slowly chew on his toast. Me, I wasn't that lucky, so I had to stand there awkwardly, wracking my brain for something intelligent to say that wasn't commenting on the weather.
Finally, Dennis let out a sigh and gestured to his lopsided mask. "Can I take this thing off? I feel kinda ridiculous."
"Oh. Yeah, sure," I said. "I know who you are."
That…sounded better in my head. Out loud, it probably made me seem like a stalker.
"Well, I wasn't exactly trying to keep it a secret, back then. I was a little more concerned with other stuff," he said with a smile as he pulled off the mask. "Maybe we should do it properly this time, though? Hi, I'm Dennis, but you already knew that. I'm seventeen, an official, card-carrying superhero, and I like pina coladas and getting caught in the rain."
My lips twitched, and for a moment, I wanted to smile. It wasn't funny, exactly, but it was approachable and friendly and normal, and it was completely unlike Gallant, who could avoid pitfalls and awkwardness and know what he needed to say because he could literally read the mood. Paradoxically, it was more difficult to open up to someone who could actually see through you.
It was also a little hard to reconcile with the Dennis who had first shown up at the table with Amy and I, tossing out jokes and memes and making references that went right over my head. If I had to guess, I would have said that he'd been trying too hard, back then, because he'd been trying to drop hints all over the place that I just hadn't caught.
I decided to humor him.
"Hello, Dennis," I said. "I'm Taylor, but you also already knew that. I'm about a month away from sixteen, and I'm also now an official, card-carrying superhero. I like long walks on the beach and candlelit dinners for two."
I felt a little bit silly saying it, but it seemed to amuse Dennis, because he grinned and chuckled.
"Whoa, there, that's going a little fast, don't you think?" he said, laughter in his voice. "Talking about long walks and candlelit dinners? Let's get to know each other a little bit, first!"
I floundered a bit and my cheeks began to warm. "I-I didn't mean…"
"Hey, hey, relax a little. I'm joking."
I flushed.
"You seem to do that a lot," I mumbled pathetically.
Yes, Taylor, and the sky is also blue, and the grass is also green.
He shrugged.
"Seems like a better idea than being dour and miserable all the time, you know? If nobody told a joke and everyone was serious, all day, every day, then we'd all be just like… Well. You-know-who."
For a second, I didn't. It actually took me a moment to figure out who he was talking about.
"You can say her name, you know," I told him.
He shrugged again, awkwardly.
"I…wasn't sure," he admitted. "Considering…well, everything. I think I'd certainly never want to hear her name again, in your shoes."
I didn't, if I was totally honest, but I wasn't about to flip out or start cringing away from it. I was done giving her that kind of power over me, especially since she was dead.
"No," I agreed, "but I'm not going to bite your head off about it. It's not like you're trying to defend her or anything."
He laughed a little.
"Wow, no. She was hot, I'm not gonna pretend that she wasn't, but she had the worst personality. Total bitch, you know? Like, the complete opposite of a butterface."
My brow furrowed. What?
"Butterface?"
Dennis' expression froze as though he'd just realized what he'd said, and then he cringed.
"It's, um, a slang term that some guys use," he admitted reluctantly. "It means, um, well, that, uh, everything else about a girl is great, but her face."
I felt my eyebrows start to rise.
"It can be used for guys, too!" he rushed to add. "And, uh, I meant that Sophia was hot and pretty and everything about her was great, except for her personality, because that was garbage and she was mean, and she may have been hot but she was about as friendly as cranky alligator and I'm going to shut up now so I can stop digging myself deeper into this hole."
He cut himself off there, cheeks flushed and eyes wide.
After a moment, I said, "Butterface, huh?"
Dennis let out an explosive sigh. "Can…we just pretend I didn't say that? It's slang and it's stupid and I don't usually say stuff like that, but it popped into my head."
"You're right, she was hot and she did have a pretty face, too," I agreed at length. A little smirk curled at the edges of my lips. "But even if she'd been less of a bitch, I don't think she would've given you a shot. I'm pretty sure she played for a different team."
It was petty and it was mean, and fuck, it felt good to take a jab at her, like that.
Dennis blinked, then grinned. "You think? I kinda wondered, because, I mean, not to toot my own horn or anything, but most of us Wards are in pretty good shape, and, well, from a straight man's perspective, I can admit that Aegis and Gallant are pretty good looking. But she never gave any of us a second look, so…"
No, I thought, she was too busy ogling Brian to pay any attention to you guys.
A muscle in my cheek jumped, and I reminded myself: that hadn't happened, here. I hadn't gone out with Brian, I hadn't been on the bus with him, and Sophia hadn't gotten jealous and tried to beat me up because of it.
"Have you seen Amy?" I asked, changing the subject. "I have something I need to talk to her about."
"Amy?" Dennis parrotted. "Yeah. Uh, last I heard, she was heading to the cafeteria for breakfast. That was about…ten, fifteen minutes ago?"
Good. I wouldn't have to search the whole damn building for her.
"She getting ready to go to school?"
Dennis grimaced.
"Um, no, not, uh, not really. She's been kinda…not going, the last two weeks? Since the thing that night, I mean, because things are a little…you know. Tense. Between her and the rest of her family."
Translation: she and Vicky were still fighting over her healing Brandish.
"She's been here the whole time," he went on. "I don't think she's actually left the building, since then."
Oh, Amy…
"All right," I said. "I'm going to go talk to her, then. It was…nice seeing you, Dennis," I added awkwardly, for lack of anything better to say.
I made to turn and leave.
"Wait!"
I stumbled and landed strangely as I tried to walk away and turn back towards him simultaneously.
"Yes?"
"There was, um, something I wanted to ask you," he said a little uncertainly.
I turned back to face him fully. "Yeah?"
He didn't answer immediately. He frowned, looking away, and fidgeted a little, like he was trying to find the right words. I saw him glance down at his half-eaten breakfast a few times, too, before he finally looked back up and, squaring his shoulders, stared me straight in the eyes.
It was like he was preparing himself to go into battle.
"Do you want to go out with me?"
Everything stopped. My heart, my brain, my lungs, they all stuttered to a halt as I tried to process those words. I blinked at him stupidly, like I was some kind of witless fish.
"What?" I asked lamely.
"Do you want to go out with me?" he said again, a little bit less confident this time. "This Saturday."
"I… I don't…"
I struggled to wrap my head around the idea, but all I was getting was the mental equivalent of 404 errors.
Guys didn't ask me out. They never had. Even back before Mom died and I was just starting to figure out the idea behind the whole dating thing, it had always been Emma who got the attention from our male classmates, because she was the pretty one, the one with the modelling prospects and the vivid red hair.
No boy had ever asked me on a date, before, and after Emma turned on me, none of them would have dared try, if they had ever been interested. The closest I'd ever gotten was Greg Veder, and Greg was… Well. He was the sort of boy who had no idea how to talk to a girl, so he was easily impressed when one gave him something as simple as the time of day.
"No pressure," Dennis hurried to say. "Don't feel like you have to or anything, if you don't want to. Or…you don't even have to think of it as a date, really. We can just go as friends, getting to know each other better. It could be a teambuilding exercise, just for —"
"No," I interrupted him.
He stopped, face twisting into something between confusion and disappointment. "No, you don't want to, or no, you'd be happy to?"
"It's fine," I said.
I almost rejected him out of hand. For a lot of different reasons, really. For one, well, Dennis wasn't really the kind of guy that I would have said was my "type" four months ago. His features were a bit softer, a bit closer to guys like Leonardo DiCaprio, compared to the lantern-jawed ideal that existed in my head. He wasn't quite a pretty boy, but he was no manly heartthrob, either.
And considering Medea's Jason — asshole extraordinaire — was a pretty boy, it just put me off the look even more.
For another, I mean, Leviathan would be here in about three days. Even if I could fit it into my schedule between all the work I'd be doing in that time, during preparations for an Endbringer battle — you know, the creatures so named because they were apocalyptic forces of nature — seemed like a bad moment to be going on dates.
And… And some part of me thought that this was either a trick or a pity date, meant either to humiliate me or make up for the other Wards' attitudes toward me, particularly Browbeat and Kid Win. The former was a suspicion left over from the paranoia of my treatment at the Trio's hands, and I recognized that it wasn't a rational response, exactly, even though I couldn't shake it that easily, but the latter was very much a possibility, and I didn't want a pity date.
But… In spite of that…
"I think I'd like that," I told him, mustering a smile. I had no idea if it was convincing enough, but if it wasn't, he didn't let on that he knew.
"Really?" he asked, smiling.
I nodded. "Yeah."
"Okay. Okay!" He laughed. "It's a date, then!"
No. Those were all really good reasons why I shouldn't.
But maybe…maybe it was a good idea, anyway. Because there was no telling what would happen, come Sunday. There was no telling if either of us would survive the fight, even if I was going to do my absolute damnedest to ensure nobody died. I could at least give him this, couldn't I?
And… And it would probably be a good idea to decompress, a little. Relax. Get my mind cleared, so that I could sleep well and devote the entirety of my focus to the fight the next day. Wasn't that something Doctor Yamada had said was important, once upon a time? Taking a day to just…let it all go?
This could be good. A way to forget about all of my troubles for a few hours.
"Sure," I said. "It's a date."
And it wasn't like we were pledging undying love or committing to marriage or anything. It was just a date.
"Yes!" he cheered. Then, he glanced at the clock, and the flush of happiness drained from his cheeks as his face dropped. "Oh, fuck, no! I'm gonna be late!"
He turned back to his breakfast, wolfed down his omelet with all the speed of a teenage boy in a hurry, gulped down his glass of orange juice, and then he rushed off, stopping only long enough to boldly plant a featherlight kiss on my cheek.
"Saturday!" he promised as the doors whirred shut behind him.
I lifted my hand, tracing my fingertips over the spot where he'd kissed me. It tingled faintly, a sort of phantom sensation that wasn't good or bad, it just was.
I…didn't know what to think of it. I didn't know if there was anything I should think of it.
"Saturday," I echoed quietly.
In the end, the reason why I'd accepted mostly came down to something really simple: he wasn't Brian. He wasn't Grue.
And maybe that was a terrible reason to date someone, but it made sense to me. Because dating Dennis? Wasn't Khepri.
"Okay," I mumbled, giving myself a figurative shake of the head. "Let's go talk to Amy."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The cafeteria wasn't quite empty when I made my way down there, but it wasn't full, either. The smell of food, hot and freshly cooked, wafted from the adjoined kitchen, and while large swathes of tables were barren, smatterings of PRT agents huddled together with trays of bagels and bacon and cups of coffee.
Some of them were undoubtedly coming off of a so-called graveyard shift, getting a final pick-me-up before they headed home to sleep. Others, they were starting their days and getting ready to go on call or out for patrol. I even saw a few who were half decked out in gear and armor, stripped of the padding, helmets, and bulletproof vests, but still dressed in the chain mesh undersuit.
Amy sat alone amongst them, singled out for her solitude at an otherwise empty table in the far corner. In a sea of bodies dressed in navy blues and blacks, her red cardigan and faded blue jeans stood out like a traffic light, a beacon.
I got a few side-looks as I walked over to her in full costume, and a couple of agents muttered as I passed, shifting as though to prepare to foam me, but I made it over to her otherwise unaccosted. She was playing with her half-eaten food as I came upon her, pushing the last remaining bit of some scrambled eggs around her plate absentmindedly.
"Amy."
She jolted when I set my hand on her shoulder, and her plate screeched as her fork skittered across it with a sound like nails on a chalkboard. I heard a few discontented murmurs from the nearest table.
Amy turned to me and blinked up into my lenses.
"Jesus H Christ," she muttered. "You just about scared the shit out of me, Taylor."
I nodded my head towards her food. "You finished eating?"
She glanced back down at what was left: that little bit of scrambled egg, half a strip of bacon, and an almost empty glass of milk, then sighed.
"Yeah," she said. "Yeah, I think I'm done."
Under her breath, I heard her add, "Wasn't all that hungry to begin with."
My lips tightened, but I didn't comment on it. The middle of an open cafeteria wasn't exactly the best place to air all of her issues.
"Can we…talk?" I asked.
"Talk?"
She glanced at the seat across from her, which was as empty as the rest of her table.
"In private," I added.
"Yeah," she said, sighing again. "Sure."
She dropped her fork onto the tray with a metallic clatter and pushed herself to her feet. For the first time, I was really struck by how much shorter than me she was — had to be at least half a foot. With the way she slouched, as though carrying a great weight on her shoulders, it seemed even more pronounced.
I jerked my head in the direction of the door. "There's a conference room we could use just down the hall."
"Sure. That's fine."
"Let's go," I said.
Amy fell into step with me wordlessly.
Once we were there and the door was closed, I let out a sigh of my own and dropped out of my costume, into my normal clothes. It was going to take some getting used to, walking around all over the place while hiding my identity.
When I turned back to Amy, she was reaching for her pocket, froze halfway there, then sighed again and let her hands drop, like she didn't have any idea what else to do with them.
"How are you?" I asked, but it was a stupid question; she looked up at me with a dead-eyed stare over the dark bruises under her eyes, and there was this indescribable quality about her — a kind of aura, or maybe just a culmination of a dozen different little cues, that said she was completely exhausted.
"Fine," was her curt reply.
I cringed.
Freaked-out, insecure, neurotic, and emotional.
I knew her tone well. I'd used it for the better part of two years, every time Dad asked the same question. I knew it meant she was anything but.
"How are you, really?"
"I said I'm fine," she snapped back at me.
"Amy…If there's something you want to talk about…"
"Oh, fuck you!" she snarled. "If I wanted to have my fucking brain picked apart, I'd go and talk to fucking Tattletale!"
"I'm not going to yell back at you," I told her calmly but firmly. "If you want to shout at me for a little while, get some stuff off your chest, go ahead. Let it all out."
"Fuck off! I said I'm fine! I'm not gonna stand here and listen to someone else try and act like my psychiatrist! If that's what you want, then you can just turn a-fucking-round and leave!"
"No," I said.
"The fuck did you just say?"
"No, I'm not going to leave," I repeated. "You're my friend, Amy."
For a moment, she stared at me, brow furrowed, a look of uncomprehension on her face, like I'd tried speaking to her in a foreign language.
"Bottling everything up just makes you miserable," I went on. "Take it from the queen of bottling shit up. I tried it for about two years and it never made anything better."
Something in her expression flickered.
"You have to face your problems," I said, feeling like I was parroting Doctor Yamada. "If you try to run away from them, then all that'll happen is you'll be too exhausted to deal with them when they catch up with you."
Amy looked away from me.
"Is that what happened with you?" she asked quietly.
My heart skipped a beat.
"What?"
"That night, in the Trainyard," she clarified. "With Noelle. Fuck, Echidna, I mean."
"Noelle," I corrected her firmly. "Call her Noelle. Not that dehumanizing label."
"Noelle, then," she agreed. "So?"
I took a deep breath in through my nose, let it out slow.
"Yes, Amy," I confessed to her gravely. "Yes. What happened that night in the Trainyard, that was me being forced to confront something I was running away from. Everything that went wrong that night went wrong because I was too scared to face my problems and actually deal with them."
"So it's true, then?" she asked. "That hero you used that night, the one that took control of everyone, the one in the black and white costume, with the cape, that was a version of you from the future?"
A part of me wanted to lie — wanted, even now, to deny Khepri's existence. But that was just mental inertia, a way of thinking that had been my default for almost four months.
"Yes," I admitted, frowning. "Tattletale?"
"She just filled in the blanks," Amy confirmed. "But…that hero, she looked like you. She talked like you. Same face, same eyes, same hair, same voice, same…" She trailed off. "There weren't… I didn't have any ideas that made more sense."
Under her breath, she added, "Not like this one makes a whole lot of sense, either."
"Khepri was the name they gave her," I explained. "Yes, Amy. She's a version of me that I could have become, for want of a nail. She was the first hero I ever used. She came to me in the Locker, during my Trigger Event — and in that moment, she nearly took me over. I've been running away from her, and everything she represented, ever since."
"Why?" Amy asked, but she sounded like she already knew the answer.
"Because the only thing you can do when faced with your worst mistakes is look away," I told her. "Khepri…she showed me what I could become, at my worst. She was a spotlight on all of the parts of myself that I didn't want to believe I had. She was a roadmap for all of the terrible decisions I could make and all of the ways I could rationalize making them."
I smiled a little without happiness or mirth. "She was who I could become, and who I absolutely didn't want to be. Because she may have saved the world, but she turned herself into a monster to do it."
"A future version of you, huh…" Amy mumbled. "Does that mean…all of those heroes you use, they were real people, once?"
"I don't know. Some of them were, at least. Even then, for those who were, how much they've been changed by the myths and legends told about them after they died, that's something I don't have the answer to, either."
Everyone I'd used took their abilities for granted. Medea remembered learning magic. King Arthur remembered wielding Excalibur against enemy armies, against a dragon. Galahad remembered acquiring the Holy Grail. Nimue remembered her tutelage under Merlin. Aífe remembered training her students in martial techniques that even the fittest of modern men would be utterly incapable of.
The reality of their existences was something I couldn't answer, and the existential questions that arose from them were ones I didn't care to explore, anyway.
"And…time doesn't matter, either," Amy reasoned, "not if you have a version of yourself from the future. So…as long as someone became celebrated as a hero…or even a villain, right? You have villains in there, too? People who did incredible but terrible things?"
The semantics of it were messier — everyone was technically the hero of their own stories — but if you had to simplify it…
"Yes. As long as they were talked about, as long as their stories were transmitted and spread throughout the people, then even those who were called villains are in my repertoire."
Because that included Medea and people like her.
"Amy," I said, "this conversation wasn't supposed to just be about me."
Liar. The major thing I meant to discuss with her today was this very thing.
She scowled. "Are you going to try and get me to talk about my feelings and my argument with Vicky? Because if you are, I already told you to fuck off with that. Gallant tried that, too."
"No," I said, even though that was a lie, too, "because I already know what your argument is about."
Her expression closed off. "You do."
"You told me the other day, remember?" I reminded her. "You're scared of doing brains. That's why you don't want to heal Brandish's brain damage. Because the idea of exactly what you can do to someone by messing up their brain just the tiniest bit frightens you."
"Right," she muttered. "Yeah, I did tell you about all of that."
"I can heal Brandish," I told her.
She blinked at me, nonplussed.
"What?"
"I can heal Brandish," I repeated, "but I think…maybe I shouldn't."
Her expression twisted; her eyes went wide and her lips started to curl. "What?"
I looked her right in the eyes. "I think you should do it."
"No," she spat immediately, "no, fuck you, fuck you and the horse you fucking rode in on, you don't just get to —"
"So you're just going to keep running away from it?" I cut across her. "You're going to let a fear of what could happen and the person you could become ruin your life? Because that's what you're doing, right now. You're doing the same thing I did, only you're not running from a defined, concrete future, you're running from an abstract, shapeless fear of a future that you don't know even exists."
I hesitated a moment, then reached out and set my hands on her shoulders. Amy flinched, but didn't pull away.
"You can't run away from it forever, Amy," I told her solemnly. "At some point, you'll be backed into a corner. Someone you care about will be hurt, and the only way to save them will be to break your rules. Do you think it'll be better, when it happens then? Do you think you'll be making better decisions, when the pressure is on and life is on the line and there's no time to be careful and meticulous?"
Softer, gentler, I added, "Wouldn't it be better to do it in a time and place where none of that pressure is on you? Where you can take your time and do it right?"
She looked down and away, and for a long moment, she didn't say anything.
"…You have me in there, right?" she asked in a small voice.
I stilled.
"What?"
Don't be asking what I think you're asking, Amy.
"You have some version of me in there, right?" She turned her head back up to face me. "An Amy Dallon who…who threw away her rules and made something of herself with her powers?"
I closed my eyes briefly. Took a breath. "Don't do this to yourself, Amy. Thinking of the future as inevitable only makes you miserable."
I didn't have a leg to stand on, she was right. Not when I hadn't yet worked through all of my issues with Khepri. That didn't mean I would wish those same problems on her.
"Show me," she said, ignoring my advice. "You want me to break my rules and heal Carol? Show me what happens when I do that."
For a long, tense moment, I stared at her, considering it. I thought about the idea long and hard, about showing her exactly who she could become in the future, exactly the trials and tribulations she went through as a result of all of the decisions she made — decisions that, now, she might never make anyway. I wondered if it would really be all that bad an idea to show her that future, even if only to help her avoid it.
I even got so far as reaching out for her, for the Amy who became a Heroic Spirit in a distant, alternate future —
No.
And I realized, showing Amy that version of herself, the one she would have become in Khepri's world, that was the absolute last thing I should do, right now.
Instead, as though summoned by my aborted reach for that future Amy, a familiar presence prodded, gentle but insistent, at the edge of my mind. My first instinct was to push her away, but after a moment of consideration, I braced myself, and for the first time, I willingly let her in.
Help me help her, I told Khepri.
And unlike the last two times, Khepri settled in, a featherlight nudge at the back of my head, carefully steering the direction of my thoughts, rather than the overwhelming domination she'd been before.
"I can't," I told Amy.
"What do you mean, can't?" she demanded.
"Because it wouldn't be you," I said. "It would be a…another Amy, a different Amy. She wouldn't have made the same decisions or mistakes or lived the same life as you will. It'd be the same as me and Khepri — someone you could have been, if only things had gone differently." After a moment, I added, quietly, "If only you hadn't had me."
"You?"
"Khepri and the Amy in her life were never friends," I admitted. "Khepri… Some of the things Khepri did, they only made things worse for her Amy. Only pushed her to make worse decisions. The Amy Dallon of that world, that timeline, the life she lived was one where she had no one she could rely on and no one to stand by her. Not even the sister she loved so much."
Because Khepri and the Undersiders had helped destroy that, too. Maybe it hadn't been the one thing, the only thing, but the beginnings of that wedge had been sharpened by the things that had happened in the bank, during that ill-fated confrontation between Vicky and Amy and Tattletale and Khepri.
Amy's eyes went wide. "You… You can't mean…"
"That Amy had a lot of…of regrets," I went on. "She made a lot of mistakes. She did a lot of things she hated herself for, and she punished herself for them, too. I… One of the things Khepri regretted was that she wasn't able to do more to help that Amy."
There had never been any time for it. Never a moment where it had been possible to reach out to Amy and help her, for one reason or another. Whether it was just because there were so many other things going on or because it was the middle of a fight or just…not being able to focus on it, Khepri had never been able to help Amy.
Not even in the moment where she needed it most.
I offered Amy the brightest smile I could. "But I'm not Khepri, and you're not that Amy. You don't have to be alone, and you don't have to make those decisions alone. You have me to rely on. You have me to stand beside you. And you have me to pick you up if you stumble and fall, okay?"
Tears gathered in the corner of Amy's eyes, and she reached up to wipe them away as she sniffled. "You're so fucking cheesy," she said, but it lacked any heat.
And all the other times? Amy… That Amy would never have accepted it. Because their first interaction together was as enemies, and it was one that had done irrevocable damage.
I didn't reply to that. "You can't keep running away from the things you're afraid of. Eventually, they'll catch up to you, and you won't be prepared to face them. But…when you do face them, when you're ready to face them…I'll be there to face them with you."
She sniffled again, shaking her head. "I-I don't know… I d-don't think I… I can't…"
I hesitated a moment. Khepri directed me, and I had a quick, blink-and-you'll-miss-it flash of a woman with Asian features smiling, before she pulled the memory back like she was reeling in a fish.
"If you can't do it now," I allowed, "then I'll heal Brandish. And when you're ready to meet those fears face to face, I'll be there to help you."
Amy offered me a half-hearted but grateful smile. "Th-thank you."
I let out an internal breath of relief, and to Khepri, I gave my own silent, Thank you. Then, she slipped away, and I was alone again in my own head.
I still didn't know if my friendship with Amy was built upon my own feelings. I didn't know if it was Khepri's guilt that drove me, for not helping her timeline's version of Amy Dallon. What I did know was that I'd regret it if I just turned my back on her, here. I would be making Khepri's mistake, again, by not being there to help her keep herself together.
Even if this wasn't quite real, even if it wasn't all me, for Amy's sake, I couldn't abandon her, here.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
Shipping goggles...well, actually, don't activate. In fact, when you read Taylor's actual reason for going on that date with Dennis — hinted at here, but not elaborated on — you might want to call her a bitch, because it's nowhere near as simple as, "Sure, I like you well enough; let's give it a try."
If you want to support me as a writer so I can pay my bills, I'm on P A treon (p a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes), and if P a treon is too long term, you could buy me a ko-fi (ko-fi . com (slash) jamesdfawkes).
L
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