Capítulo 2474: 57
Chapter 57: Tyranny 6-11
Tyranny 6.11
I woke to a head swaddled in cotton, with ears plugged, nostrils congested, eyes burning and swollen shut, a tongue coated in wool, and worst of all, a brain that was obviously two sizes too big for my skull. That said nothing about the bone-deep ache that seemed to plague every single one of my major muscles groups, from my arms to my legs to my stomach and even in places I didn't know had muscles, like someone had injected molten iron into them and it was only now cool enough that I wasn't burning alive.
I'd had the flu once when I was a little girl. I'd been achy and exhausted for almost two weeks, throwing up for about five days straight, nauseous enough for three people, and so miserable that even Emma and Mom's best efforts hadn't managed to make it bearable. Those last few days of it, when I'd been getting better but not quite gotten over it, where I'd been sore and tired but the nausea had passed and the worst of it was over?
This was like that, only about five times worse.
I took a deep breath, and shoots of pain lanced through every muscle in my chest. I gasped and flinched, squeezing my eyes shut as tears gathered at the corners, but that only made it worse, only sent the pain elsewhere and let it spread through every twitch and every minor movement, until I was paralyzed in place, trying not to set anything else off, as tiny shocks of agony radiated from my head to my toes and back again.
It felt like forever before it dulled down into a persistent but manageable ache. Until it felt far enough in the background that I could take another deep breath and blink my eyes open around the tears.
My glasses were missing, and my watery eyes made my already blurry vision even blurrier, but even like that, I could tell that the ceiling above me belonged to a room I didn't recognize.
"Wha…?"
Carefully, gingerly, I tried to sit up, wincing around the twinges of pain that lanced through every one of my muscles, but a strong, sturdy hand — although, in that state, any hand at all might have seemed strong and sturdy to me — gently pushed me back down.
"Take it easy," rumbled a familiar voice. "You shouldn't push yourself."
I blinked and followed the hand up to its owner, a fuzzy, fleshy blob outlined in a brown haze.
The finer details were indistinct, but that voice, that beard, it had to be…
"Armsmaster?" I murmured.
Suddenly, it all came back. The underground base, the mercenaries, Coil, Lisa and Amy being captured, Noelle's rampage, the Travelers.
Khepri. The hero I'd been trying to avoid for so long, the one whose very existence I had to deny as much as possible. The hero whose power had been so instrumental in saving my friends.
Then, switching to Medea to heal Noelle, switching to Aife to block her passenger from reconnecting and starting this whole thing all over again. Switching, without letting each hero go in between Installs.
Oh. Hotswapping. No wonder I felt like shit.
"It's me," he said softly.
I let him guide me back onto the bed, and I couldn't stop the sigh that passed through my lips as I relaxed back into it. The muscles in my chest and arms throbbed faintly, as though to protest that short bout of exertion.
"My glasses," I mumbled.
His hand moved away, reaching for something out of my view, then came back and lifted something up towards my face and slotted it over my nose — my glasses, just like I'd asked. I blinked as the world came into focus, and the bare face of Armsmaster, of Colin Wallis, looked back at me.
I glanced around slowly, but the room was no more familiar to me now than it had been when I couldn't really see it.
"Where…"
"You're in a private room at the PRT Headquarters," Armsmaster informed me without preamble. "You were brought here to recover, following the events of the battle with Noelle Meinhardt, codename Echidna. You've been resting ever since."
My mind snapped onto those words. Ever since? The way he put that…
"How long was I out?"
The last time I'd tried hotswapping, the first time I'd ever done it, I'd felt sick for almost a week afterwards. I'd actually had to skip school entirely for three whole days. Dad had thought I'd come down with the flu.
"Almost seven days," he replied gravely. "We brought you here shortly after three a.m., Monday, May Second. It is currently…" He checked the clock. "Five-thirty-six p.m., Sunday, May Eighth."
My heart leapt in my chest. A week. I'd been out for almost a week.
"What?" I croaked weakly.
That…that seemed like way too much time. A few days, I could understand. I'd been expecting that I might pass out for a day or two, after what I'd put myself through to get it all done. But a week? One whole week, or near enough that there wasn't much difference?
"You entered cardiac arrest shortly after losing consciousness," he went on severely. "Panacea was almost unable to resuscitate you, although I'm not sure I understood the exact nature of the difficulty."
"I…what?"
Cardiac arrest? What? How?
I tried to wrap my brain around it, but it was like he was speaking in technobabble: I recognized the words, even knew what they meant, but I couldn't comprehend how they came together to form a sentence.
Armsmaster leaned forward and pinned me with a dark-eyed stare. "You almost died," he enunciated clearly.
After a moment, he let out a breath through his nose and sat back in his chair.
"Although I don't quite understand how," he continued, "you put your body under so much stress that your heart shut down. First aid administered by Miss Militia and the efforts of Panacea managed to keep you alive, but I've been told it was a very close thing."
He shifted a little in his seat.
"How are you feeling?" he asked awkwardly.
I shifted a little myself, wincing as new shoots of pain accompanied the motion.
"Sore," I settled for.
"I see," he said, frowning. "Originally, we put you on a standard hospital bed. However, after the first day, at the suggestion of Tattletale, corroborated by Panacea, we sent a team to your house to bring in your own personal mattress, on the understanding that it would help accelerate your recovery."
Wait.
"This is my bed? From my room at home?"
The one I'd enchanted, so that three hours of sleep was just as restful as a full eight hours would be on a regular mattress? This was that bed?
He nodded.
"Yes. At that time, your father had already contacted the police to file a missing persons report, and it was deemed unavoidable —"
But I'd been doing the mental math as he spoke, only half paying attention to the rest, and shot up as I realized exactly how long I'd been asleep.
"I've been sleeping for almost three weeks!?" I shrieked.
A moment later, the throb of my protesting body hit, and I sank back down like a limp noodle with a groan. The sudden movement had done me no favors at all, and right about then, I was regretting a whole lot of things — like ever having been born in the first place.
Three weeks, though? Or, well, about eighteen days, give or take, but it was close enough. That was basically a coma. Wasn't it? Fuck if I cared about the medical definition, it was definitely long enough that it should be one.
How…
The thought sent a cold jolt through my stomach, and I swallowed around it nervously.
How close did I actually come to dying, that I slept for the equivalent of eighteen days and still feel this shitty?
I'd known it was going to be bad. I'd known going into it that it was going to put a lot of pressure on my body, on top of the strain from using my other heroes. I'd even, back when I was talking to Alexandria, considered the possibility that I could accidentally kill myself, if I pushed too far or tried to reach beyond my limits.
But…
It was one thing to say it and think it. To face the reality of it was…frightening. Daunting.
No, the best word was…sobering. Like getting dunked in ice water.
"Eighteen days?" Armsmaster asked.
I swallowed thickly again, and it was almost like I was looking on from outside my body as my lips answered him on their own. "My bed is enchanted so that three hours is equal to a full night's sleep. If you've had me sleeping in it since the Monday night, then I've slept for the equivalent of about eighteen days."
I wetted my lips.
"What… What happend, after I…"
He frowned a moment.
"Fortunately, there were no fatalities on our side. Everyone who was absorbed by Echidna is expected to make a full recovery, and there are no apparent negative side effects as a result of exposure. There are still a few people in Master-Stranger quarantine, but we don't expect any complications."
My heart leapt in my chest. "Wait. But Alexandria said…Brandish died!"
I remembered that, specifically. I remembered, because it felt like the biggest fuckup of the entire night, that my stupidity and my hang-ups had gotten Amy's mom killed. I remembered what a fucking punch to the gut it was when Alexandria told me about it.
He grimaced, working his jaw a little.
"Brandish is currently in a coma," he said at length. "Her condition is stable, but if or when she'll recover, we simply don't know. She was pronounced dead at the scene, but through the efforts of both Scapegoat and later Panacea, she was resuscitated. However, as a result of the trauma and oxygen deprivation to her brain, permanent damage occurred. Scapegoat was unwilling to risk a bad interaction between brain damage and his power, and Panacea is well-known for her inability to affect brains. We are…currently examining every available option, to aid in her recovery."
You're wrong, was on the tip of my tongue. Amy could do brains. She was perfectly able. That was how I…that was how Khepri had been made, after all. Amy had used her powers to induce something akin to a second trigger event, by directly manipulating my Corona Gemma and Pollentia.
Except no one knew that her limit was entirely self-imposed. No one except me and Amy and maybe Glory Girl. To everyone else, it was accepted fact that Panacea's Manton Limit included brains. To everyone else, it wasn't that Amy refused to affect brains, it was that she couldn't.
My mouth closed. I let the comment evaporate off of it. Maybe later, I could do something for Brandish. I…wasn't sure brain damage was as easy to fix as an arm.
"And the clones?" I asked eventually.
He grimaced.
"Dead."
"What?" I started to throw myself up again, but managed to stop halfway and slowly lower myself back down. More quietly, in a calmer tone, I managed to groan out, "What do you mean, dead?"
"Once you were stable and everyone had been rounded up, Panacea examined them in the aftermath," Armsmaster explained. "According to her, they all suffered from numerous defects and malformations in their major organs and other vital tissues, particularly in the brain. She estimated their average life expectancy to be somewhere between three to five days."
He looked distinctly uncomfortable.
"It was considered…more humane to sedate them and let them die painlessly in their sleep."
"Every one of them?" I whispered.
Even those like the Fingerpainter, who hated what they were and what they were doing, but followed Noelle's orders because it was what they'd been programmed to do?
"I'm…sorry," he said awkwardly. "However, as Panacea is unable to affect brains and they would likely have spent the rest of their lives, short as they would be, locked away in an asylum, it was the…best answer we could come up with."
Except she can!
I swallowed the words before they could even make it to my tongue, closing my eyes for a brief moment.
It was unfair, placing that on Amy's shoulders. In another life, in another world, Lisa and I had helped to destroy Panacea, however unwittingly we'd done it. We — they — had been the first shove that sent her teetering over the cliff. Here, now, she was my friend, and the least I could do for this Amy was to be better to her than Khepri had been to the Panacea of her own world.
It didn't remove the sting entirely. They had been clones, yes, and they'd been twisted — irreversibly, it seemed — by Noelle's power, but in the end, hadn't they still been people? Even Khepri had hesitated, at first, even when faced with their violence and vitriol. Wasn't that proof enough that they were still human beings?
"And… And everyone else?"
"As I said, they are all expected to make a full recovery. Aside from you and Brandish, everyone has already been cleared by both Panacea and the PRT's medical staff."
Which meant Battery and Grace were okay, too.
Take that win, Taylor. You didn't screw up everything last…last week.
Fuck, I still hadn't quite wrapped my head around that. Eighteen days.
"So, what now?" I asked him quietly. "Where do we go from here, Armsmaster?"
His lips thinned. "As soon as you're able to walk there on your own, Director Piggot has requested a meeting with you, to debrief regarding the events in the Trainyard and discuss the issue of future cooperation."
'Requested.' At least he'd been polite enough to make it sound like I was being asked, rather than told. 'Future cooperation.' In other words, they were going to try and press me into joining the Wards.
I wasn't sure I wanted to refuse them, anymore. Some part of me still rejected the idea, insisted that I remain independent. After all, I still didn't completely trust them, and knowing what I did now, about the corruption and the puppet strings in the background, it seemed all the more justified. Putting myself at the mercy of Alexandria? That alone was almost a dealbreaker.
But some other part of me found the idea attractive. Having a team to rely on. Having people at my back. Having someone else to make the big decisions, so that I wouldn't be to blame for any screwups. Even Khepri, after all, had eventually joined the Wards.
Although that, too, might be reason enough to say no.
"And my dad?"
"On his way," he answered. "We contacted him as soon as you showed signs of waking up. He should be here shortly."
If he was going to be making a trip to visit me at the PRT headquarters…
"How much does he know?"
Armsmaster shifted uncomfortably, again.
"We did our best to respect your apparent wishes, regarding your secret identity," he began. "However, since he filed a missing person's report and we brought your bed here, there were some things that were…unavoidable. He is aware, now, that you are a cape. In our attempts to respect your privacy, we didn't tell him which one."
Great.
I let out a little sigh. There was no avoiding it, now. The cat was out of the bag, and Dad officially knew I that I had powers.
Well, I thought wryly, I did promise myself I'd tell him once the whole thing with Coil was over with.
This just wasn't quite how I'd thought that would happen.
"In the meantime," Armsmaster went on, "there are other people who would like to visit you, if you feel up to it."
My brow furrowed. "I have visitors?"
My friends.
I perked up a little. "Lisa? Amy?"
"Tattletale is…currently under PRT protective custody," he admitted. "While she is assisting in the seizure of Coil's assets and the dismantling of his organization. Panacea, however, has been onsite monitoring your condition and asked to be informed when you woke up. She should be here —"
A knock came at the door.
"— momentarily."
He stood with a creak from his chair, then went to the door and opened it. He'd barely gotten the knob turned before Amy flung it wide, brushing past him as though he wasn't there and crossing the room at speed. She threw herself onto my bed, wrapping me in a bone-crushing hug that tore the breath from my lungs, and over her shoulder and through her hair, I saw Armsmaster quietly leave, shutting the door behind him.
"Oh my god!" Amy said into my pillow. "You fucking bitch, do you have any idea how fucking badly you scared me? Don't you ever do something like that again!"
Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!
"Air!" I wheezed breathlessly. I slapped weakly at her back, which was all I could manage in my condition. "Air, Amy!"
"What?"
She pulled back, and I winced, shutting my eyes against the wracks of pain that radiated out from where she'd hugged me. Tears gathered in the corners, and as I took in gasping breaths, it only got worse.
"Oh fuck," I heard her mumbled. "Shit. I didn't even think…"
She fumbled around with my hand a little bit, held it firmly but gently, but after a moment, she sighed and let it drop back to the bed.
"Damn it."
I blinked through the tears as my breathing started to calm back down and the pain faded back into the dull throb from earlier. When I could see properly again, Amy was looking down at my hand, a miserable expression on her face. She glanced up, only for a moment, to meet my gaze, then back down, again.
"I can barely see you, anymore," she muttered, running a finger over the back of my hand. "So I can't do anything for the pain. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," I managed.
"It's not okay!" she burst out. "I could only barely see enough of your heart to get it beating again and keep it beating! I had to work around the fuzzy bits, trigger nerves whose location I knew only because I had enough examples and enough experience to know where they're supposed to be! I was doing heart surgery blind, Taylor!"
Her grip on my hand tightened, painfully.
"You were clinically dead for almost two minutes! If I hadn't gotten your heart started again, you…!"
She sniffed, wiping at her eyes with her other hand.
"I almost wasn't good enough," she continued, quieter. "If…If I'd screwed up, if I'd done just one thing wrong, you…you wouldn't have made it."
Wouldn't I? Would Alexandria, would Contessa have let someone with a power like mine just die like that? How much trouble her power had with me…I had no idea. But Alexandria could have flown me to any hospital in the city in a matter of seconds. With Doormaker, they could have me at any hospital in the world in the blink of an eye. If they wanted me and my power badly enough, they could definitely have saved me.
But…
I squeezed Amy's hand back, as much as I was able.
Even if they could have, they didn't. Whether they'd trusted Amy would manage it or…whatever else the reason might have been, it didn't matter. What mattered was —
"But you did," I told her softly. "I'm here, Amy. You managed it."
I held out my arms invitingly, and her lower lip wobbled just a little, then she threw herself back onto me in another hug. It still hurt, but I was prepared for it, this time, and Amy was gentler, so I didn't feel like I was being crushed. I hesitated for a moment, and then I hugged her back.
I'd had Khepri in my head — twice, now; once during my Trigger Event, unwillingly, and once during the fight, intentionally — and I'd been privy, as a result, to her thoughts and feelings, her regrets and her traumas. I knew the mistakes she wished she could have fixed, the ones that had haunted her, in the quiet moments, that she didn't tell anyone about. The ones that she buried in the dark, so that they couldn't stop her.
What had happened to Amy was one of them.
Never being able to see Lisa, her best friend, ever again, that was another.
My other heroes… They had influenced me in subtle ways, over the last few months. Ways I didn't fully understand, to extents that I would probably never really know. Especially those with whom I'd drawn a special connection, with whom I sympathized and empathized, that influence was likely all the stronger.
What would that mean, then, for the Heroic Spirit with whom I shared the greatest connection: my own identity? How much had Taylor Hebert influenced the thoughts and feelings of Taylor Hebert?
How much of my friendship with Lisa was me, and how much was Khepri's lingering sentiments, leftover from my Trigger? How much of my friendship with Amy was my own feelings, rather than the echo of Khepri's regrets?
How much of my willingness to bend over backwards for them, to forgive the fiasco at the bank, to overlook manipulations and ulterior motives, was a result of my own hang-ups and how much was Khepri's own desires?
I didn't know. That was part of why I'd been so afraid of Khepri. Not the only reason, maybe not even the biggest reason, but it was definitely a significant part. If I used Khepri, at what point would her influence be great enough that I stopped being me entirely and became her? At what point would I become a twisted, even more broken mockery of myself?
In the end, I decided to think about that stuff later and deal with my existential crises when I had time alone. Right then, Amy needed me more than I needed to get my head sorted.
A few minutes later, she pulled away, sniffling and wiping her eyes with her hand.
"Sorry," she mumbled. "I just… I almost lost you, and… Yeah. Um. Anyway. Uh. How… How are you feeling?"
"Sore," I said, "but otherwise, fine."
"Ugh." Her cheeks burned. "And I just… Fuck. I probably shouldn't have…"
"It's fine," I told her.
She didn't seem to agree, but didn't argue the point.
Changing the subject, I asked, "How are you?"
"Me?" she parroted incredulously. "I'm not the one who spent the last week in a bed!"
"I mean, after Noelle… No side effects?"
There hadn't been, for Khepri, not as far as I could tell. Not as far as she remembered.
But as much of Khepri's knowledge had held true as it had, she was still from a different world, a different timeline. I… There were still a few things I wasn't willing to take her experiences as gospel for.
Amy frowned. "No. Everything cleared up…pretty quickly. And, well, my power means I can just kill any infection, so…"
She trailed off for a moment.
"Lisa's fine, too," she added, almost reluctantly. "And…everyone else that got absorbed. No lasting symptoms. No long term problems."
She hesitated, fiddled with the hem of her shirt. By now, I recognized it as the urge to grab a cigarette.
"I can…go get her, if you want. Lisa, I mean. If you'd rather see her."
"…No," I said at length. "I can…talk to her later."
My feelings for Lisa, after Coil, were…complicated. Khepri had only made them more so. I'd have to confront them, at some point, figure things out, but for now, there were other things on my mind. Lisa could wait.
And as long as she was here, she was safe.
"Are…you going to be okay? I mean, your mom…"
Amy grimaced and looked, suddenly, as tired as I'd ever seen her. She let out a heavy sigh, rubbing at the bridge of her nose.
"I…haven't been home, since the incident," she admitted wearily. "I've been…avoiding it, I guess. Because if I go back, then Vicky…"
She pulled her other hand out of mine, almost guiltily, like she expected me to blame her.
"I…can't do brains," she said slowly, haltingly, like she didn't want to even say it out loud. "Not…because my powers don't let me, but…because it's so easy. Everything is so delicate, all it takes is one, little tweak, and I can remake someone however I want them to be. Just…turn down dopamine production and they're miserable for the rest of their lives, turn it up and they'll never be sad again. Fix this, change that, and I can erase memories, cripple motor skills, or turn a sociopath into a functioning, well-adjusted member of society."
She fiddled with her fingers.
"I can't… It's too much," she went on. "I…I can fix Carol, undo the damage, but what if I don't stop there? It's so easy, I could just make a few tweaks, and suddenly, I'll be her favorite daughter, the one she's always doting on, and if I do it to her, why not Mark, why not Vicky, why not…"
I reached out and weakly took hold of her hands.
"I know," I told her softly.
She blinked.
"You… you do?"
"The Heroic Spirit I used…gave me some insight into things," I confessed vaguely. "I've seen what each of us could have become. Where we could have gone. I'm the last person who has any right to blame you for being scared of what you can do."
Because even having used her, Khepri still scared me. I still couldn't stand her or what she'd become. It was just that ignoring her, pretending she didn't exist, and handicapping myself that way was no longer an option.
It wasn't just Khepri, either. There were some Heroic Spirits that I'd been staying away from, to avoid the problems they had. Letting troublesome personalities bother me…now, it seemed kind of foolish. Compared to Khepri, the one hero I couldn't approve of no matter what, they were more like annoying quirks than actual issues.
I was going to have to look at it on a case-by-case basis, though. There was a difference, after all, between a troublesome personality and those who were outright destructive or reductive, like Jack the Ripper.
"So…you're not the only one, you know…who knows how much of a monster you can become," I said. "In some ways…I could be worse."
Amy smiled a tired smile, but it didn't quite reach her eyes. I wasn't sure she believed me. "Thanks, Taylor."
A knock came at the door, and Amy jolted, then turned to it and shouted, "All right! I'll just be a minute!"
She pulled her hands out of mine, almost reluctantly, like she would've preferred to stay there with me, and said, "I've…gotta go."
"Go?"
"There are other people who want to visit you," she explained. "Um, privately. I'll…still be here, I'm…technically your attending physician, so I'll be sticking around until you leave, but after that…"
She shrugged helplessly.
"I…guess I'll just have to go…home."
"You…could stay in the castle," I offered. "Or…with me and my dad, even. If I explained everything…"
I couldn't see Dad saying no, if I told him what Amy was going through. I was almost certain he'd let her stay as long as she decided she needed to.
"I'll…think about it," she hedged as she stood. "And I'll be back later, too, to check on you."
Then, she turned, went to the door, and as she opened it and left, I vaguely heard someone say, "…in now, Miss Alcott."
A moment later, a young girl came into the room, with long, brown hair and big, gray eyes.
Dinah Alcott. So much stuff had happened, with Lisa, with Noelle, with the fight and everything else, I'd forgotten about her completely.
"Hi," she said nervously.
"Um…hi," I replied.
I…didn't know what to say. A part of me wanted to apologize, for playing a part in her kidnapping, however small, except I knew those were Khepri's feelings, Khepri's regrets. Me, I, hadn't been involved, not even tangentially. I wasn't an Undersider in this life, I hadn't gone to the bank to rob it, and so I wasn't connected to Coil's kidnapping of her from her home.
But I had delayed dealing with him. Out of spite, I'd left it in Lisa's hands, and as a result, Dinah had spent longer in his clutches than if I had just gone and dealt with him immediately. The least I could do was apologize for letting her suffer because of my own problems.
When I went to say it, though, I couldn't find the words. No matter how I put it, it still felt like I was justifying my own pettiness, after the fact.
"87.94 percent chance you let me hug you," she said suddenly.
I blinked, thrown.
"What?"
Without any more warning, she threw herself onto my bed and wrapped her arms around me as best as she could. I was so surprised, I almost missed what she said next.
"83.28 percent chance you join the Wards if you don't use your powers during the negotiations," she whispered into my ear hurriedly. "91.42 percent chance if you don't explain things to your father."
"And if I do use my powers?" I muttered back.
"I don't know," she admitted. "The numbers get strange when your powers get involved."
Then, she extricated herself, leaving sore spots behind where she'd landed. Fortunately, she was all of four-and-a-half feet tall and maybe eighty pounds soaking wet, so it didn't hurt nearly as bad as it had taking a ballistic hug from Amy.
"Sorry," Dinah mumbled. "I just…wanted to thank you, and this was the only way I could figure out how."
It took me a moment, longer than it really should have, to figure out what she meant: not the hug, but the numbers she'd given me during it. That was her way of thanking me for saving her.
I didn't feel like I deserved it, because Lisa had been the one to kill Coil, and I'd gotten so distracted with everything else that I'd never managed to go back for Dinah.
"Dinah," I told her, "I didn't…really… It wasn't me who…"
But she gave me a small little smile, tinted with something I couldn't quite describe. "You came for me," she said simply. "That's all that matters."
It didn't feel like it. It didn't feel like I'd done anything at all that was worthy of her gratitude. She should be shouting at me, demanding to know why I'd left her locked up while I went to chase after Noelle and my friends, not trying to help me keep my independence as a cape.
"…You're welcome," I muttered at length.
But she seemed to have made up her mind on it, so I wasn't going to argue.
"You're…okay, though, right? You weren't hurt or anything?"
She winced. "I… The withdrawal has been…hard, but not as bad as it could have been."
Right. Yes, she'd been kept by Coil longer in Khepri's world. At least several more weeks. Here, now, it had been less than a month.
"So…you're going to be okay?"
She hesitated, then gave me that smile again, "Not…not immediately, but…I'll get there."
Had she asked her power about it? I had no idea. It must've been a cold comfort, if she had, in the face of what she knew was to come.
But…she seemed much better off than she had been for Khepri. More stable, less jittery, less rattled about things. Calmer. Not happier, necessarily, but more at peace and less worried. I didn't know if it was because she'd spent less time with Coil, or if it was just that she'd had a week to get herself sorted, get over the worst of the symptoms.
I…hoped things were better for her. The Dinah Khepri had known, if only fleetingly, had been welcomed back by her parents with tears and hugs. Here…without me, without Khepri there to hold her hand and force the issue, had she even gone home, yet, at all?
A pang of sympathy curled in my gut. Somehow, I doubted it.
"Either way," she said, "I just wanted to thank you for saving me. So…thank you."
Then, she turned and made to leave.
"I hope everything goes okay for you, Dinah."
At the door, she stopped a moment, standing there, and I barely heard her whisper, "Me, too."
The door clicked shut behind her, and for the first time since I'd woken up, I was well and truly alone.
Dad was next, wasn't he?
The thought made my stomach churn. They said they hadn't told him much, so…what must he be thinking, to explain to himself why I'd been in a coma for a week? Had they even told him that, or just said that he couldn't visit, yet? Did he even know I was okay? Did he even know how close I'd come to dying?
A swirl of guilt swam in my chest.
He must have been worried sick. He probably spent the entire last week wearing a hole through the living room floor, imagining all of the different things that could possibly be wrong with me, all of the different injuries I could've taken that would have me in a private room at the PRT headquarters.
He'd probably spent the last week without sleep, too.
I should have told him much sooner, I really should have. Not that it would have made things any better, really, but at least then he'd have had some idea of what was going on or where I could be and he wouldn't have just woken up Monday morning to find my bed empty and all three of us gone.
I couldn't even imagine the first thoughts that went through his head, that day. What he must have been thinking, what conclusions he would have drawn, how terrified he must have been that he'd lost me, too —
A knock sounded at the door, jarring me out of my depressive spiral, and Armsmaster, fully armored with helmet in place, leaned in.
"Miss Hebert?" he said. "Your father is downstairs, checking in with security. However, there's still one other person who would like to see you, if you're up for it."
One other person? Lisa, maybe? No, probably not.
"Um, okay," I said. "Send them in, I guess?"
He stepped out of the way, and past him, through the door, walked —
I straightened, heart fluttering nervously in my chest.
She smiled a little awkwardly and flattened down the hem of her shirt. "Hello."
— Noelle Meinhardt.
"You're…"
She laughed, self-deprecating. "Yeah, I wasn't sure I'd get the nerve up for this, either. I guess, in the end, I just…couldn't leave things unsaid, you know?"
"You're okay, right?" I blurted out. "I mean, everything's…you know…"
"Um, yeah." She patted her thighs, as though to reassure herself that they were actually still there. "Yeah, everything's…okay. No sign of relapse. Um. Panacea says I'm okay, and I guess she'd be the one to know, you know? So…"
She trailed off.
"Oh," I said lamely. "Good. That's…good."
We fell into a long moment of awkward silence.
"So," Noelle broke in suddenly. "I'm…not going to stay here long and commiserate or anything, so I'm just going to say what I came to say and go."
"O…kay," I said.
"I can't thank you enough," she told me. "Because of you, I'm back to normal. I have my legs back. I have my normal life back. My head's clear, I don't have my powers messing with me, body or mind. You saved me — in almost every way imaginable. I owe you a debt I can never, ever repay, and I mean that. But…"
She looked away, folding her arms as though to hug herself.
"But," she went on, "it's also because of you that Krouse is…is dead. He…wasn't the best man in the world. Maybe he wasn't even a very good man. In fact, he…made a lot of questionable decisions. But he loved me, and I loved him. And you…you're responsible for him being gone. You're the one who got him killed! If it hadn't been for you, he'd still be…!"
"…I'm sorry," I said quietly. It seemed woefully inadequate.
Her fingers curled, digging into the flesh of her arms, and her shoulders trembled. She looked as though she was trying very, very hard not to reach out and strangle me, and at least some part of me wouldn't have blamed her if she had tried.
"…I can't," she said brokenly. She shook her head, a single pair of tears trailing down her cheeks. "I can't forgive you. Not… Not for Krouse. Not now, maybe…maybe not ever. I…"
She shook her head again, then she turned and almost dashed for the door, choking out, "I'm sorry!" as she went. A moment later, I was alone again.
…Another one of my fuckups from that night. I hadn't liked him, Khepri hadn't really ever either, but he was still a person with people who cared about him and I'd still gotten him killed.
And yet, all I felt was…not quite ambivalence, but something close to it. Maybe it was because some part of me blamed him for how things had gone that night. That it was his own fault he'd gotten killed, because he'd made some equally stupid decisions, that night.
Was that how Khepri had slid down that slope? Rationalizing and making excuses for why she shouldn't feel guilty about this death or that person dying? Was this, now, more of her influence, or was I just destined to follow the same kind of path she did?
Paper crinkled as I adjusted myself a little, and I reached down underneath me to pull out a small slip that looked like it had been torn from a notebook. In a small, tidy scrawl was written:
98.61% chance he forgives you.
Dinah.
Something trembled inside my chest, something so powerful that I felt tears forming in the corners of my eyes. A great swell of gratitude rose alongside it, and my quivering lips drew up into a smile.
Thank you, Dinah.
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
The week before last was...a lot of dealing with real life problems, so I didn't have the energy or drive to get any writing done, which is what pushed this back a week.
Anyway. There was a lot of stuff that went into this chapter as it is now. Originally, Danny was going to be in it, too, but it was getting too long, so I left his part out and decided to put it into the next chapter, his interlude. The confrontation with Piggot should also be next chapter, too.
Also, at the end of this arc, I'll post the Essential Material section. I've been trying to figure out a way to give those to you guys without making you visit an external site or a separate story link on this site, and the conclusion I came to was what I originally didn't want to do, but I don't have a better idea. It'll get updated every time I have a new entry to put in.
Also-also, I do commissions, now. You can find prices at my deviant art profile. Right now, I'm trying to recoup my losses from my ridiculous string of bad luck in FGO (almost 1300 SQ before I finally got a SSR Servant, the majority of that spent trying to get Enkidu, and it was fucking Orion, rather than Musashi, who I was rolling for, or...you know, any character I actually wanted).
If you want to support me as a writer so I can pay my bills, I have a (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).
Or if you want to commission something from me, check out my Deviant Art page to see my rates.
As always, read, review, and enjoy.
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