Capítulo 2490: 73
Chapter 73: Promise 7-11
Promise 7.11
I woke up again feeling much as I had the week before, after the Echidna fight. I was sore and tired and felt like I was coming down off the worst flu ever. Everything hurt, and every breath sent little shocks of pain through my chest and stomach.
I scrunched my eyes shut tight, then pried them open through a supreme effort of will.
I was in a hospital room, again. The same sterile, white walls and ceiling as before, only this time, there were curtains that blocked my bed from view, so it seemed like I wasn't in a private one, this time. No idea who could be in the bed next to me, though, if there even was anyone, not with the curtain in the way.
One hand came up, shaking from the effort, and rubbed at my eyes — and with a jolt, I realized I wasn't wearing my glasses. How was I…?
Oh, right, I remembered after a moment of confusion. I'd come up with a quick, easy vision correction potion that night after the date with Dennis, because I'd gotten annoyed with being basically blind when I wasn't using my powers and didn't have my glasses on hand. Acute myopia sucked.
I turned my head, ignoring the shoots of pain that throbbed in my neck and shoulders, and looked at the other side. I was apparently at the outer edge of the room; instead of more curtains, there was a wall with tinted windows, overlooking the city. All I could see from my angle was the mottled, overcast sky and the city's skyline.
And there, sitting in a chair by the window, was a sleeping Amy Dallon. Dressed in a white robe with her hood down and a scarf hanging loose about her shoulders, she was slumped in her seat, head lolling towards one side, with one hand in her lap and the other dangling towards the floor. A line of drool trailed from one corner of her mouth and down her chin, pointing incriminatingly to a suspicious wet spot on her shoulder.
She snored quietly, oblivious.
She must have fallen asleep waiting for me to wake up.
"Amy?"
She snorted and smacked her lips, then her head rolled a little and she resettled, still out cold.
"Amy?" I tried again, a little louder and a little more forcefully. Again, she didn't respond, just kept snoring.
I flung the sheets off of me, then swung my legs off of the bed and tried to push myself to my feet, but a sudden bout of dizziness drove me back down, and I swayed. One hand went to my head as I grimaced and closed my eyes, while the other went down to the mattress to help steady me, only it got caught up on something on the way down.
Something attached to my chest was ripped off with a sound like velcro and flopped against my hand.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, went the monitor next to my bed.
I startled and whirled around to look back at it at the same time as Amy jerked awake, mumbling, "Huh, what? Whazzat…?"
When I looked down at the bed, there was a small patch of fabric connected to a wire, and the wire itself stretched and wound and connected to the monitor, which, it seemed obvious to me now, was set up to monitor my vitals. Specifically, my heart-rate. It got tangled and pulled off when I tried to get up, and that was why the monitor was currently screeching bloody murder.
Whoops?
"Taylor?" Amy asked.
I turned back to face her and gave her an embarrassed smile.
BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP, the monitor continued to scream.
Amy gave a tired little sigh. "Hang on, let me just…"
She levered herself out of her chair with a soft grunt and walked around my bed, deftly pressing a few buttons on the screen with what was obviously practiced efficiency, and then she pressed another button on a device hanging next to my bed.
"This is Panacea," she reported clearly and concisely. "Disregard the alarm. Someone accidentally disconnected herself when she woke up."
"Sorry?" I said, cheeks burning.
She just sighed again and rubbed at the side of her face. "Whatever," she mumbled.
Then, grimacing, she wiped away the drool on her chin, face twisted in disgust.
"So, what'd I do this time?" I asked her.
"You don't remember?" she asked back. "You collapsed about six hours ago, after Leviathan was confirmed dead."
Leviathan…
It hit me like a speeding train and knocked me back on my heels.
Collapsing as I let go of King Arthur and my strength left me — Leviathan's dessicated corpse falling to the scorched ground — the bright light of Excalibur that shone through the gloom — yanking on Medusa's chains as I drove Leviathan towards the Boat Graveyard like my personal mount — the rush of Herakles' raw power as I matched fists with Alexandria — the pavement crunching beneath my feet as I rampaged through the city streets.
The echo of the armband, announcing the fallen. A piercing scream that cut off suddenly.
Lisa. Lisa dying.
"Oh," I said faintly.
I leaned back against my pillow, feeling suddenly lost. A great, yawning emptiness had opened up in my stomach, and a terrible coldness had settled in my chest and in my lungs.
Lisa was gone.
My friend — and she was my friend. It didn't matter how it had started or why it had started, whether it was all me or Khepri had had some measure of influence in my choice to trust her and give her so many chances; at the end of the day, when it was all said and done, Lisa was my friend.
And I'd let Khepri get in the way of that. Again. I'd let my hangups about my alternate future self make my decisions for me. Again.
How fucking stupid was I? You'd have thought I'd learned my lesson the first time, after Echidna, but no, I'd gone and made the same fucking mistake a second time less than a week later.
I took a deep breath. Forced myself to move past it, for now. I could hate myself for screwing up with Lisa another time. Later, when I was alone and had the privacy to deal with it on my own time.
"How…" I swallowed around the lump in my throat. I needed to ask. "How bad was it?"
How many people died because I lost it and flipped out?
Amy hesitated.
God. Had my fuckup with Herakles gotten that many people killed?
"A bunch of people were injured," she said at length. "I think it was…almost two dozen? And, um, a few of those were…too bad off to save. They were DOA — Dead On Arrival," she added, like she wasn't sure I knew what it meant. "They might've been alive when they went down, but by the time they were brought to the medical teams…"
She trailed off and let the implication hang. It wasn't hard to imagine at all; Khepri's back had been snapped during her fight with Leviathan. If the attack that had done it had broken her ribs instead, left her to choke and drown in her own blood, then she could very easily have been one of those DOA cases: alive when she was knocked down, but dead by the time they managed to get her back to the medical teams.
I took a deep breath in through my nose.
Two dozen. It sounded bad. Any other day, that sort of thing would probably be a horrific number. There were gang wars that didn't hurt that many people. There were school shootings that had fewer victims.
But…
But I had a distinct, vivid memory of the Endbringer memorial from Khepri's Brockton. If I closed my eyes, I could still see all of the names of those who had died fighting Leviathan carved into its surface, could still make out the patterns in the black marble, the whorls and the white veins that spider-webbed across it.
The number of dead on that monument was at least double just our wounded.
So… That made today one of the "good days," didn't it? One of the days where only a small number of capes was lost in the fight, where we could look at the casualties, look at the outcome, and in spite of the bodies, declare a victory.
Even better, Leviathan was dead. Not just driven back, but killed. If we'd lost half of the capes attending the fight, the mere fact that we'd killed Leviathan in exchange would have made this a good day.
"I see."
It didn't feel like a good day.
"But," Amy went on, "um, most of the people who came in made it. I think the number of people who actually died during the fighting was…seven? Maybe eight? Pretty sure it was less than ten."
I swallowed. My stomach squirmed and twisted in my gut. My heart beat wildly in my chest.
I didn't want to ask. I didn't. The answer was something I dreaded, but I couldn't not. I couldn't.
"And…Tattletale?" I managed to force out of my mouth. "Lisa? Did… Did someone find her…"
Her body?
Amy's brow furrowed and she frowned.
Before she could answer me, however, there was a chuckle from behind the curtains, coming from the next bed over. It was followed shortly by a litany of soft curses and a barely audible, "Fuck, that smarts." Then, a moment later, a soft, resigned sigh that made my heart skip a beat and my stomach lighten with hope.
No. No way. I swallowed around the lump in my throat, even as my eyes burned. There was no way. Don't… Don't give me hope if you're just going to take it away. Don't let me think that…
"Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated," said a familiar voice, filled with humor. "Always wanted to use that line."
Amy gave an exasperated sigh, even as I looked past her and over her shoulder.
The curtains retracted with a hydraulic whirl, revealing the occupant of the bed next to me, and there, sitting on the mattress, was a girl about my age with long, blonde hair wearing a familiar black and purple catsuit. Her boots and her gloves had been removed, so her feet and hands were bare, with an IV drip taped to her right, but the mask hiding her freckles had been left on.
Tattletale. Lisa.
I'd never been happier to see that familiar smug grin than I was right then.
"You're alive," I said wetly.
She shrugged. "Well. Mostly."
She gestured to her left arm — or rather, the space where it was supposed to be. Her shoulder was swaddled in white bandages, faintly stained through with red, and everything of her left arm from there on down was just…gone. Like it had been shorn clean off.
"The team that brought her in said they had to amputate her arm to get her free of the rubble," Amy explained. "It was crushed, but that's probably what kept her from bleeding out until they got to her."
"Naturally, the armband was toast, too," Lisa added. She giggled. "Toast. Get it? Cause it was fried? Because it got water in it? I've always wondered about that. How does something fry by getting wet?"
"She's also hopped up on enough morphine for three people," Amy said dryly.
"They gave me the good stuff," Lisa confirmed happily. "Did you know I had ten toes? I have ten toes. Only five fingers, though. I wonder where the other ones went? Maybe they eloped with someone else's hand. Someone else had to have lost a hand somewhere, right? Speaking of, I need to find mine. Have you seen it?"
I eyed her. "Are…you okay?"
"Oh, I'm fine," she replied easily. "Better than fine, actually. My arm hurts a little and I think I have a concussion, but this is the best stuff, you know? I feel like I'm floating. Am I floating? Better close the window or I might float away."
I chanced a glance behind me, but the window was already shut, and there were bars on the outside anyway. Wouldn't stop a strong enough Brute, probably, but a regular flier would've been unable to get in — or out, in this case.
Discreetly, I used the moment I was turned away to wipe my eyes and sniffle quietly.
"Is she really okay?" I asked Amy.
"Aside from her arm, you mean? Yeah," Amy answered. "She's got a mild concussion that'll clear up on its own in a few days, but I already healed all of the stuff that needed attention."
Other stuff?
"What other stuff?"
"Three broken ribs," she listed off. "Cracked skull. Spine was broken in three places. Broken hip. Ruptured spleen. Internal bleeding. Perforated intestines. And, um…" She trailed off and seemed just then to realize how bad that all sounded.
Because Lisa? Had escaped death by a hair. If anyone but Amy had been the one to put her back together, she probably would have died on the operating table, if they even bothered to try.
"A-anyway," Amy went on, "I took care of everything I could in the time I had. I couldn't really do anything about her arm and I didn't touch the concussion, but everything else was handled."
Meaning Amy was the only reason Lisa was alive.
"Thank you," I told her sincerely.
She gave me a small, hesitant smile.
"Yeah," Lisa cut in loudly. "I'd have been a goner. I was really messed up. Not that I was awake for it, though. At least, I don't think I was. Am I awake now? Asking for a friend, because she can't feel my nose. I have a nose, right? I'm pretty sure I do, but I can't feel it. Speaking of, you know yours is really cute, right, Panpan? Like, cute as fuck. I think it's the freckles. I mean, I have freckles, but they've got nothing on yours. Can you share some with me?"
Amy rolled her eyes and sighed.
"Hang on a second," she said, and then she turned around towards Lisa and lifted a hand. For a moment, Amy fumbled with where to put it, and I could only imagine the expression on her face when her head tilted down and she considered Lisa's feet, but finally, she pressed her fingers to Lisa's cheek, instead.
"Oooh," said Lisa. "Your hands are cold. Did you know your hands are cold? It's probably because you smoke. That's bad for circulation, you know. Did you know? I mean, I'd have thought I'd think… I'd have think I thought? I thought you thought I knew that."
"I'm flushing her system as much as I can," Amy explained. "It'll bring her down, make her more coherent." Under her breath, she added, "She's enough of a pain in the ass to deal with when she isn't high."
"I like being a pain in the ass," Lisa announced happily. "It's so much fun! I… Oh. Oooh…"
She lifted her remaining hand to her head, rubbing at her brow.
"Oh, fuck, that hurts," she said thickly. "And my tongue, and my mouth…"
"I numbed the nerves in your shoulder, but the side effects of the morphine are harder to deal with, so you'll just have to live through them. Sorry," Amy told her, not sounding very sorry at all.
She pulled her hand away from Lisa's face and stepped back, and Lisa hissed, a low, seething breath that pushed through her teeth.
"Anyone ever tell you your bedside manner sucks?" she asked grouchily.
"I'm the most versatile healer this side of the Atlantic," was Amy's reply. "Most people only care that I healed them, not whether I do it with a smile or a snark."
Translation: I'll be as much of a bitch as I want to be, and there's nothing you can do about it.
I sighed fondly. These two…
Well. Even if they sniped at each other every time they were in the same room together, I was happy to have them as friends. I wasn't sure I wanted to imagine a version of me who hadn't had either of them there to keep me grounded.
"I'm glad you're okay, Lisa," I said quietly.
"I think 'okay' is a pretty relative term," she groused, squinting against her headache. "Like, I'm not feeling all that okay. Feeling pretty shitty, actually. I think I was happier with the morphine."
"You were also loopier than a möbius strip," Amy put in dryly.
"Didn't know you even knew what one of those was," said Lisa, snorting. Then, she winced. "Ow, ow, ow, don't make me laugh."
"I'm not stupid, you know."
"No, but that was a nerd joke," said Lisa. "You have to be a nerd to make nerd jokes."
One of Amy's eyebrows rose. "I must have missed the rule that said that."
"It's an unspoken one."
"Right, because those work out so well, don't they?"
"When people actually follow them, yeah."
"Fleur would like to have a word with you."
"Guys," I cut in. "Please?"
They both glanced at me, then at each other, and then back to me.
"Sorry," said Lisa. "I'm no fun when I'm in pain."
Amy rolled her eyes, then reached out and poked her in the cheek. Instantly, Lisa relaxed and let out a long, relieved sigh.
"There," Amy said. Under her breath, I thought I might have heard her add, "You big baby."
"Oh, thank fuck, that's so much better," Lisa breathed.
"I just temporarily boosted your endorphin production," Amy told her. "You will crash later, when your body readjusts."
"Yes, but later, I'll probably be back on the morphine. Everything'll be copacetic." She relaxed with another sigh. "Anyway. Yeah, I should be good as new as soon as someone replaces the missing arm."
She gestured vaguely at the empty space where her left arm would have been.
"I can't exactly just magic one up, you know," Amy told her sardonically. "I need a bunch of extra biomass and about an hour to adjust the material to prevent rejection. You'll just have to wait."
"Yeah, yeah, powers have limits, can't make something from nothing, I know the drill." Lisa grinned. "Think I can apply for handicapped status in the meantime?"
Amy groaned.
I snorted. "I can fix it for you, don't worry."
When I tried to heave myself out of bed, however, my muscles protested, very vigorously, and with a grunt, I had to settle back down on my mattress. Shoots of pain radiated through my body, as though to tell me exactly how stupid I was to think I was ready to be standing again so soon.
"Later," I amended. "After I've…had some time to recover."
Lisa chuckled lowly. "Quite the pair we make, huh? Me, constantly escaping death by an inch and losing an arm, you, driving yourself to an early grave through overexertion. A match made in heaven, huh?"
Slowly, I offered her a tentative smile.
"Personally," said Amy, "I'd prefer it if you two would stop getting into so much trouble all the time. It'd mean a whole lot less stress for me."
"Well, we just survived an Endbringer," Lisa pointed out. "On top of that, I just survived an attempt on my life by that bitch called Karma by what I'd say was the narrowest of margins. I think we're due a little bit of slack."
We fell silent, for a moment. The air felt thick and awkward.
"Who all did we lose?" I asked at length.
Amy glanced at me, frowning. "Menja, Woebegone, Erudite, Saurian, Humble, Acoustic, and Brigandine."
"I see." Seven people. It was so small a number for an Endbringer fight, but even still, it felt like too many. "And the injured? Was there anyone who won't…"
Won't fully recover. The kind who had injuries Amy couldn't — wouldn't — heal.
"No, actually. Aunt Sarah was a little touch and go for a while, but everyone is expected to come out fine. They're saying it's the best Endbringer fight there's ever been."
She looked at me again. "Because of you."
"Because I killed Leviathan."
"Because we actually had a solid plan," she corrected. "We weren't just…wailing on him until he decided to leave or Scion came to bail us out."
Scion…
I frowned.
"Yeah. I guess so."
— o.0.O.O.0.o —
NOTES
In the end, I just couldn't kill Lisa. Several of you even theorized that I hadn't and came up with ways that her death could have been misreported. Some of those were either really close or on the nose, but some were a little too clever — the one where Cauldron rescued her at the last second and let Taylor think she'd died so that they could motivate her to go all out had me eyeing the screen weirdly.
Anyway, the aftermath here is closer and more personal than something like everyone celebrating and cheering Leviathan's death or whatever, but I like it better this way. Also, loopy Lisa was a lot of fun to write.
New Goal! "A Monument to the Goddess of Cinnamon Rolls!" In other words, the Ereshkigal figure is coming out in a few months and I want it badly. It's a little more manageable and the end goal is a more tangible thing than some pixels on a screen, so donations can go through my Ko-fi page and I'm open to commissions to make up the difference! In fact, I'd kind of prefer to raise the money through commissions, so if there's a oneshot you want written or a picture you want drawn, please consider it.
P a treon . com (slash) James_D_Fawkes
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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