บท 34: 34 Interlude: A Healer's Remedy
Brockton Bay General Hospital
18:00, January 3rd, 2011
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"As always, thank you for your work, Panacea. Have a good night."
Amy very carefully does not roll her eyes at the nurses platitudes, even when she returns a tired and almost entirely fake smile while giving her thanks and returning the well wishes.
Some days it feels like she's acting in a shitty movie or something, that the only thing that's real about her is the tiredness that seeps deeper into her body every day.
With steps that belay her lethargy, Amy makes her way to the rooftop exit where she will wait for Vicky, her beautiful Vicky, to come pick her up and fly them home.
She finds her mood rising as her thoughts turn to the sun in her life that is her dear sister.
Vicky is just about the only light in her dismal life, she's one of two people in the whole world that she feels like she can actually talk to, that she will actually hear her.
It baffles her, frequently, just how much life can change in such a short amount of time.
Her life has never really been great. It's never really talked about, not even at home, but it's hardly much of a secret that she's adopted. Really, it's not exactly hard to put it together.
Her 'father', Mark, is tall, broad, handsome. The kind of guy you'd expect to see in movies just because he's hot rather than any actual ability to act. Her 'mother', Carol, is a bombshell blonde with a perfect figure and sizable curves.
And Vicky, much like Carol, is a bombshell blonde, with an even better figure than her mother, at least in Amy's opinion anyway. Vicky is the kind of girl who just seems to have everything going right, like she's some sims character some alien god modded to have perfect stats.
Damn, she needs to stop getting dragged into playing games all night.
Then there's Amy. Small, mousey Amy. Her hair is brown, curly and frizzy to her 'family's' straight blonde. She's short where they are tall, she's covered in freckles while their skin is clear, she has no curves where they have all the curves.
In short, Amy is the Ugly Duckling.
Even the extended family is the same. Carol's sister, Sarah, is just as much a bombshell blonde, so is her daughter Crystal. Even Sarah's husband, Neil, is seven foot of pure athletic muscle, looking like he was crafted instead of born.
Even Eric, her cousin three years her junior is probably going to be breaking hearts soon, if he isn't already.
She doesn't think anyone could possibly understand how it feels to be constantly surrounded by models, with everyone looking at them like they are a family, like they are the same. All except the one who stands out of course, the only one who doesn't get second looks, the only one who doesn't get ogled, the only one that can't dazzle a crowd with a smile.
Not that she really wants to live that kind of life, she certainly doesn't want people to start ogling her, but that doesn't mean she can't complain about how she can't complain about it!
Kicking the rooftop access open with more force than necessary, she huffs as she stomps onto the roof, her good mood evaporating as fast as it came.
Because all of that crap isn't even the worst of it. Honestly, by itself, she could deal with all of that, especially since she knows Vicky will be by her side no matter what anyway.
Her problem with her 'family' is a lot more simple.
In short, Carol is a bitch and Mark is depressed.
Her entire life, Carol has never once smiled at her, and that? That hurts. It hurts a lot more than she would ever admit.
Because Carol loves Vicky. She can see that in the smiles they share, the banter they trade, the way Carol lectures her with fond exasperation whenever Vicky accidentally breaks something.
But Amy has never seen those smiles directed to her, the closest she's got to banter was one time she backtalked and got grounded for a week, and whenever she messes up, there is not an ounce of fondness in Carols tone when she yells at her.
God she just wants to go to sleep and never wake up sometimes.
But then, a little over a year ago, Vicky got hurt, and Amy got powers.
With the power to heal anything short of death with just a touch, Amy was so happy. She was happy that her sister was safe, alive. She was happy that she could do something now, that she wouldn't just have to sit on the side-lines as a useless bystander while Vicky went out Heroing.
Most of all, she was so excited to show Carol.
That day, she smiled brighter than she had in as long as she can remember, and probably brighter than she ever will, because she thought that finally! Finally, Carol would smile at her. She would see that Amy can be a Hero too, just like her, just like the rest of the 'family'.
God she was such an idiot.
It was only a year ago, but she feels so much older already.
Instead of the acceptance, or maybe even love that she was foolishly expecting, the look Carol gave her when she explained her powers could only be described as a mix between horror, disgust, and... and fear.
That. That hurt too.
She thought that getting powers would be the missing piece in her life, that they'd fix everything.
Instead, things just got worse.
Carol went from neglectful at best to not letting her do anything without supervision and a hundred and one rules to follow.
Now, her days consist of waking up, going to school, then straight to the hospital for volunteer work, then home to sleep. Over and over again, with no rest.
The only lights in her life are Vicky and-
"Hey Hey, A-May~!" A familiar voice snaps her out of her thought and has her spinning around in surprise.
Sitting on top of the roof's exit, with her long red cape billowing in the wind to her side and her similarly coloured boots dangling just above the door she came through, the ever cheerful Falcone's blue and red clad, sandy skinned form grins down at her.
Amy very carefully does not gulp, and she simultaneously wishes she could use her power on herself to quell the growing blush on her face.
See, Falcone and her met not long after she triggered, and they got to talking while Amy regrew her arm. One thing let to another and they ended up meeting up again. Falcone, or rather, Maryam, is the one who got her to start playing games, even if she's not any good at the fast paced ones.
And as they continued to hang out, Amy found her feelings of friendship slowly changing into something... more. She can lie to the world all she wants, but Amy has never been capable of lying to herself. Of course, it's not like she could ever confess her feelings to the older Hero.
Not only is she still a minor for another few months, but Mary is too busy to waste her time dating her. Luckily, she is used to admiring from afar and repressing her feelings.
But damn if Mary doesn't make it difficult sometimes.
Amy has no idea if she's doing it on purpose or not, but with the way she's sitting there, with the sun shining behind her, her cape blowing with the wind and one hand on her hip while the other other is propped on her thigh to rest her gently smiling head against, it's just too much.
She just looks so.... cool.
Amy realises she's been staring too long when Mary tilts her head curiously before hopping off the small rooftop access structure and floating down to her, the sight snapping away Amy's awe and making her narrow her eyes at Mary.
"You okay, Amy? You're gonna get frown lines."
Amy chooses to ignore that last comment. "Have you been bullying Joan again?"
Mary briefly stiffens at the accusation before swinging her hands to rest on the back of her head and averting her eyes. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
Amy's lip twitches at the blatant lie. "How'd you get on the roof?" She asks with feigned casualness.
"Uh... Okay, so maybe I convinced her to give me flight, but hey, I wanted to check in on you and it's faster to fly."
Ignoring the flutters Mary's smile causes in her heart with practiced ease, she doesn't let up her glare.
"She's only recently joined the Wards and she's still dealing with that whole thing, you shouldn't push her so hard."
"Mah mah, you're looking at it wrong, Mrs Not-Actually-A-Doctor," Mary waves her hand dismissively, and she twitches at the nickname, "Joan's dealing with some survivor's guilt right now. It'll pass with time, but for now she just needs to feel useful, like she's doing something. Even if it's just giving me a two minute Mover buff, it'll help her mind settle."
And there Mary goes, being more Heroic than she could ever hope to be once again. Like Mary said, she's not a doctor, and she's certainly not a psychologist. The only way she knows to deal with trauma is to just ignore it. She must be especially tired if she thought she would know how to help better than Mary.
Because her mind is perverse and full of vile, unforgivable fantasies. She is no Hero, not like Mary is, she could never be as universally kind as the woman in front of her. Is it any wonder she fell for her, when she is so incredibly kind?
"Besides, flying is dope and she was a Nazi anyway so who gives a shit how she feels?"
Aaand there she goes ruining her own image again.
Amy groans and turns pleadingly to the sky, "you're the worst."
"I don't hear you disagreeing."
At that, she can't respond. Because yeah, Joan was a Nazi. Hell, she is still racist. It was only last month that she debuted with The Empire as Othala.... And flying is 'dope'.
"Nice power she has though," Mary states, continuing the conversation where she stalled.
"Yeah, uh, what was it again? Flight, fire, regeneration..." She trails off, and Mary picks up the thread.
"She can also grant super-speed or strength or invincibility. Honestly the strength and speed ones seem kinda redundant most of the time, cuz the rest are way better. Especially flight. Man, flying is so dope."
Amy snorts when Mary wistfully sighs, a longing look on her face that quickly turns downcast.
"The flight wore off," she whines in a low voice, making Amy fail to suppress her smile, a short laugh leaving her lips that immediately causes Mary's forlorn expression to brighten into a smile of her own.
"There you go," Mary says, her voice warm and comforting as she rests a palm against Amy's cheek. "You're much prettier when you're smiling."
Spinning around so that Mary cannot see her blush, Amy walks to the edge of the roof, leaning against the railing while mentally counting down from one thousand to get her blush to go away before Mary sees it.
"So," she says in an attempt to further distract herself from the warm fluttering feeling suffusing her chest, "you said you wanted to check in on me? Why? Did something happen?"
"What, can't I just want to visit my favourite Fake?" Mary teasingly responds while taking her own place leaning against the railing by her side.
"How many times," she mumbles under her breath before rising her voice, "I've already told you, I'm not a fake doctor because I've never claimed to be a doctor. And stop dodging the question, whenever you're just visiting you usually drag me around and force me to play games and stuff. That's different to 'checking in' on me. So what happened?"
For a moment, there is silence, and then Mary lets out a sigh and turns to face her, leaning only her forearm on the barrier.
"I happened to hear that there was a particularly.. ah, how to put this... yucky yucky gross kinda thang today and I wanted to check in to make sure you're alright. It's nothing new for nurses to get traumatised by a bad case, I just wanted to make sure you were good 's all."
Amy stares at her friend slash crush slash mentoring(?) figure, she's not too sure about that last one, for a moment before she finds her voice and responds in a tone as dry as the Sahara.
"...That's how you decided to put it? 'Yucky yucky gross kinda thang'? Since when did you even say 'thang'? That's just not a thing you say."
"I'll have you know I was raised in a barn," is Mary's imperious response.
"Aren't you like a super rich princess or something?"
"Way to remind me of my orphaned status, very cool of you." She rolls her eyes at the thumbs up Mary gives her.
Amy retorts while crossing her arms and definitely not pouting. "You started it."
"Yea well you're gay."
Amy flinches at that, looking away with a frown. They've been periodically hanging out for nearly a year now, and in that time Amy has been very careful about steering conversation away from her sexuality, not wanting to, or believing that she even could, deal with rejection.
So having it get thrown in her face like that, by a woman she has feelings for at that. Well, it's not a nice feeling.
Suddenly feeling a firm hand on her shoulder, Amy doesn't resist as she is pulled into a warm embrace.
"Sorry, I didn't know." Mary whispers into her ear.
It's weird. This isn't the first time they've hugged, but still, just like every time before, Amy finds herself surprised that they're about the same height. Mary just always seems so much bigger than life that Amy forgets that she is only a couple inches taller than her.
"By your reaction," Mary continues, "I'd wager you haven't told anyone, right?"
Amy nods into her shoulder, not wanting to speak or trusting her voice to be steady.
She feels Mary sigh more than she hears it. "That's probably been pretty stressful for you, huh? Keeping such an integral part of yourself secret, presumably out of a fear that you'll be rejected, or that someone will disapprove?"
Amy tries to pull away, not liking having her struggles that have been plaguing her for ages now pointed out in such a clinical manner. But Mary is a Brute and she is not. She considers using her power to make Mary let go, but the woman in question continues talking before she can come to a decision.
"Well, it's probably redundant to tell you that that's not healthy, but I'll say it anyway." Mary pulls her away, holding her by the shoulders and staring right into her eyes. "You shouldn't ever repress who you are. More often than not, the people around you will accept you even when you think they won't, and if they choose not to accept you in your entirety, then fuck 'em, maybe even literally."
Amy just glares at her stupidly grinning face, ignoring the warmth in her heart like she's a pro.
"And if you don't think you can do it for yourself, then do it for me. Happy, smiling, cynical and acerbic. That's the Amy I like. Much better than ashamed and depressed Amy. Besides, I'm gay too."
Amy's head snaps to Mary's so fast she could have gotten her own Mover rating. "You- Wha? You're-? But what about Cain?" She all but demands, her heart clenching at the reminder of Cain.
"Okay technically I'm bisexual, but yeah. Emma and Carlos are gay too, and Ivor's got some kinda thang goin' on."
"Stop saying thang, that's not becoming a thing," is Amy's immediate response, but despite her words she's kind of glad Mary said it, because it gave her something to focus on that wasn't the incredibly attractive woman who just admitted to being gay currently holding onto her.
Part of her thinks that Mary said thang specifically for that reason, because that woman always seems to know the right thing to say. If Amy didn't already know her power, she'd honestly suspect she's a Social Thinker.
She remembers asking about it, but Mary just said something about some saying about medicine and poison before getting distracted by something else.
"...You can't put their names to their faces can you?" Mary stares down at her with lidded eyes and half a smirk, and Amy gleefully takes the offered opportunity to neatly segue away from any talks about sexuality.
"I know Carlos..."
It's not her fault she's bad with names! She doesn't exactly spend a lot of time with any of the Heroes that aren't Mary, and there are a lot of them so it's difficult to get them all right.
"Emma is Redemption, the fire one, the one that promoted to the Protectorate before Triumph." Mary explains, speaking like she's explaining something complicated to a dumb child, making Amy kick her in the shin, not that she seems to feel it. "Carlos as you know is Aegis and Ivor is Mimic."
"Don't talk to me like that, you don't have to be a dick."
"I think we both know that's not true."
"Should you even be revealing their identities so casually?"
"We're alone and you've already signed the NDA right? So it's fine."
"Still, you shouldn't break the unwritten rules so casually."
"Okay, my bad, my bad." Mary easily acquiesces, raising her arms in casual surrender, "you're right, I'll take more care in the future."
She knows that Mary is just letting her get a 'win' to make her feel better, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.
They descend into a comfortable silence for a while, just watching the evening traffic pass below them.
"So," Mary eventually breaks the silence, "you didn't answer my welfare check. You good?"
"Yeah," Amy answers after a moment of thinking. "I know the case you were talking about, but while it was undoubtably horrible for the victim, it was just kinda gross for me, nothing like that time with the bus."
She almost shivers as images of twisted limbs and protruding bones fill her mind. That particular case was the result of Hookwolf getting thrown into a full bus by hysterically laughing Clown.
"Really? That's nice. Well, not really, but y'know what I mean. What even happened anyway? All I heard was that some kid came in covered in blood and other yucky yucky gross stuff."
"You know I'm not supposed to talk about my cases don't you?"
Mary just winks at her. "I won't tell if you don't."
Releasing a huff of air, she takes a moment to think back on her day and the specific case in question. "There's not a lot to say about it honestly. Some girl was apparently found stuffed in a locker full of used tampons and pads, as well as bugs and faeces and stuff. She was catatonic last I saw, but her body's healthy now so that's all psychological, so there's nothing more I can do."
With an ease that comes naturally to her, she ignores the guilt at the fact that she could do more. Because that is a line she promised herself she would never cross. To make even the slightest change to someone's brain is no different from killing them and stuffing their corpse with a puppet. And so, no brains will be touched by her power, she refuses to even look at them.
Maybe if she did look a bit closer, she would have noticed...
Mary lets out a long whistle. "Damn, I'm all for shoving nerds into lockers, but holy crap that's gross. Someone must have a real hate boner for that girl. I bet she goes to Winslow, doesn't she?"
Amy's sigh is enough of an answer and Mary cackles.
With a slight smile on her face, Amy goes back to watching the city, simply content to be in the moment.
She doesn't know how long they stood there, shoulder to shoulder watching the world in companiable silence, but the quiet is eventually broken when Mary tilts her head and hums curiously.
Turning to face her, Amy then turns again to follow her line of sight just in time to see Vicky floating down to them from the sky, all but glowing to Amy's eyes, as if she's watching an angel descend from heaven.
"Hey Ames! Sorry I'm late! Nice to see you too Falc! What're you doing here?" Vicky greets them, and Amy gives a small wave while Mary answers.
"Just hanging out. I've got about ten more minutes of free time before my next patrol starts, so I figured I'd chill with Big-A 'till you got here. Speaking of, you're looking frustrated. What had you held up?"
Is she? It takes Amy a moment to notice it, but now that she's actually looking, she can notice faint signs of annoyance on her dear sister's face. The familiar feeling of shame wells up inside her at the fact that she didn't even notice something was wrong with her sister even when Mary could tell at a glance.
At least the shame is abated slightly by the fact that Mary is insanely perceptive, so expecting to match that is a little unrealistic in the first place.
Vicky lets out an explosive sigh as she touches down on the roof with them. "It was that bitch Jester again."
Amy is immediately moving, stepping closer to her sister and making skin contact. It's only when her power reassures her that Vicky is completely unharmed that she comes back to the world, blushing slightly at the amused looks both of them are levelling at her.
"You seem unharmed," Mary dryly comments, making Amy cough in embarrassment.
"Yeah, she didn't really even try to hit me. Bitch was just wasting my time until I guess she got bored or something and let me hit her. Then she just sucking turned into spaghetti and disappeared into the sewers. Annoying bitch. Punching her isn't even satisfying because she just folds around the hit like putty. God I hate her."
She's not the only one, Amy will tell you that, even if she'd prefer to just not think about the insane Clown at all.
Jester doesn't seem to be affiliated with anyone in particular. She just shows up every now and then and causes a bit of chaos, plays with a parahuman or three before disappearing. At least that's all the public sees her do.
In reality, Jester also seems to be playing some kind of sadistic game where the aim is to make people break. She doesn't even limit herself to Parahumans, just showing up and taunting and bullying people for a while before leaving.
Unfortunately for her, Jester seems to have some kind of fixation on her adoptive family and shows up irregularly every now and then.
Amy herself has had to deal with the insane woman thrice now, and it's only thanks to Mary that she's even managed to stay sane.
Because Jester clearly knows that her power can do more than just heal. That in truth it is just pure biological manipulation. She can kill with a touch just as easily as she can heal, easier really.
And Jester seems to really want her to start doing that, to turn the city's healer into a monster of her own creation.
Well, Amy won't let that happen. She won't be a Villain and she won't stop helping people. No matter what that insane bitch says, Amy, Panacea, is a Hero.
"Well anyway, Mom's expecting us back soon, so we gotta go," Vicky says, bringing her out of her morose thoughts.
"Coolio. See you later then, Amy, Vicky."
"Later," Amy answers while letting Vicky pick her up in a princess carry that would be a lot more embarrassing if she didn't enjoy the position so much.
"Later Falc!" Vicky yells, and then they are off, flying through the sky together.
But despite the warmth she feels at her current position, or her earlier bravado, she still feels a deep seed of worry gnawing at her.
Because for all the Clown's madness, sometimes, while she is alone in the middle of the night, she finds herself thinking back on the things Jester has said, and sometimes the words just... click with her, doubts about who she is filling her mind.
They shouldn't. Jester is a Villain, completely insane and proud of that fact. Nothing she ever says should be even slightly worth consideration.
So why. Why does she doubt herself? Why can she see herself falling into the madness that woman described to her.
She shouldn't be be giving any thought to these ideas that woman has put in her head.
She is Panacea.
She's a Hero.
Right?
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A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!
I'm pretty sure I forgot to write a bunch of stuff I wanted to write in this chapter but whatever. It's time for canon to start! Whoop whoop! I wonder how long it'll last?
Also, I was gonna write more details about what Jester's been up to, but I couldn't think of how to put my thoughts into words so I just kinda skipped straight to the end.
Also I made some art, it's on my discord and pat-reon but if I remember too in a week then I'll put it under the para comments here cuz I'm rlly proud of it =D
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