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Rating:
Mature
Archive Warning:
Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Category:
Gen
Fandoms:
Parahumans Series - Wildbow亜人 - 三浦追儺 & 桜井画門 | Ajin - Miura Tsuina & Sakurai Gamon (Anime & Manga)
Characters:
Taylor Hebert | Skitter | WeaverDanny HebertBrockton Bay WardsLisa Wilbourn | Tattletale
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Canon-Typical ViolenceCanon-Typical Body Horrorshard-altered psychologytags to be added as we go
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English
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Timballisto's Curated Works
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Published:2019-05-24Updated:2020-03-11Words:99,568Chapters:29/?Comments:226Kudos:730Bookmarks:266Hits:29,370
(Restricted) The Shadow Over Brockton Bay
Temeritous
Chapter 18: Wraith 3.2
Chapter Text
"You thought this was a trap," Lisa accused as she climbed over the edge of the fire escape.
"I thought it might be," I defended myself, "And then I realized it would be pretty stupid for you to stage a trap for me that puts us both on a roof."
"Us three," she corrected, and turned around to haul someone else up behind her. I'd known he was there, of course, but he couldn't have looked less threatening if he was soaking wet and giving puppy-dog eyes.
It was a boy, my age or possibly younger, pale and with wrists as skinny as mine, I saw when Lisa wrapped her hand around one to pull him up. As he stood he batted Lisa's hands away and smoothed down his white V-neck shirt, fastidiously checking it for dirt.
"That fire escape is filthy," he said, curling his lip at Lisa. "I've never had a tetanus shot, you know. I could die."
Lisa rolled her eyes. "We should be so lucky." She turned back to me. "Taylor, this is Regent, AKA Alec. Alec, say hello."
Alec waved and said, "Yo."
"...Hi." I glanced at him once more - those were very tight pants, no wonder he had trouble on the fire escape - and focused on Lisa. "Okay, I'm meeting you, here, in person. Can you tell me where to find Krieg now?"
"I was thinking we could socialize first," she said brightly. "Life's not only about Nazi-hunting. Let's go get coffee!"
"Don't like coffee," I muttered, staring at her with narrowed eyes. I looked at Alec again. "Are you trying to recruit me for your team?"
Alec snapped his fingers and pointed at me. "That's right! You're that Lazarus bitch the news won't shut up about. Hey, nice work with the Nazis."
"Thanks," I said, slightly stunned. It took him this long to catch on?
"Tats wants you for the team?" he folded one arm over his chest and propped the other elbow on it, hand to his chin. "I guess I could see it. It would put the balance of murderers over the fifty-percent line though… Unless she's replacing Bitch?"
"Bitch stays," Lisa said dryly.
"Damn. Guess that's me out, then. Did you guys bring me up here to off me?" He seemed very casual about the possibility; I couldn't tell if he was joking or not. "'Cuz I gotta say, you don't have to do that. I'll just leave."
"Nobody is dying or getting kicked off the team," Lisa rolled her eyes. "I really, honestly, truly just want to get some coffee with my friends."
"Aw, I didn't know you cared, Lees," Alec smirked. "Gross."
She ignored him. "So, Taylor, you in?"
My lips were sucked in between my teeth; I wasn't fighting a smile, but it felt almost like being back with the Wards. One drink wouldn't hurt.
Still… I pointed at my face and said, "I'm kind of Brockton Bay's most wanted right now."
Lisa produced three pairs of massive sunglasses from her purse, grinning. "Don't worry, I got us covered."
Even with sunglasses that covered half my face, I felt exposed.
"We look ridiculous," I muttered, ducking to hide my face as we passed another group. Giggling preteen girls moving as a group along the Boardwalk, one harried-looking father trailing along behind them.
"Speak for yourself," Alec adjusted his shades. "I look great in everything."
Unfairly, he did look quite good. I wondered if fashion was an in-born talent or something you had to work on.
"Do you guys have a shop preference? I was thinking Yellow Bird, but last time I was there the muffins were kind of stale." Lisa pointed to a storefront we were coming up on, two tiny yellow tables on either side of the door with kitschy yellow folding chairs around them.
"They really went all-in on that theme, huh," Alec observed. "Nah, fuck them, they never put enough flavor shots in. Let's go to Baybucks."
" That knockoff?" Lisa sounded offended. "Taylor, any input? Come on, tiebreaker."
"Which one has better tea?"
That gave them both pause. Then Alec said, "What are you, eighty? This isn't Great Britain anymore, grandma."
"Alec!" Lisa elbowed him sharply in the side, but I found myself smiling. Alec was reminding me of Dennis a little, injecting levity even when I didn't know I wanted it.
"How much farther is Baybucks?" I wanted to get this little excursion underway as soon as possible; Lisa owed me a location.
Alec pointed a little way down the Boardwalk, to another cafe that had a line coming out the open door. At Lisa's withering look, he said, "That's how you know it's good ."
"Yellow Bird doesn't have a line, so let's go there." I decided, starting forward. Lisa had a goal or a plan in mind before she'd tell me where to find Krieg, and the sooner I could move her plan the sooner I moved my own.
"Fine, but Lisa's paying!" Alec said, shoving his hands in his pockets. Only up to the first few knuckles - the pockets were too shallow to fit anything else.
"Obviously. You didn't bring your wallet and Taylor's a guest."
"I could pay, though," I offered as we got into the short line. "I took the money from Stormtiger last night, and it's not like I've got anything to spend it on." Idly, I wondered what would happen to the house, now. It was probably mine, right? Did the PRT have authority to seize my assets, or whatever?
"They'd have to charge you with a crime and get a conviction to take your house, as long as you keep paying taxes and keep it in good repair they can't touch it."
"Creepy," Alec remarked.
"Are you sure you're not a mind reader?" I asked. How could she possibly know what I'd been thinking about?
"Come on, I didn't even need my power for that. It's pretty easy to track money to money troubles, house-mortgage-repairs, with dad gone what's going to happen to the house, will it be taken away. Simple."
"Must be exhausting being you," Alec said, pushing his sunglasses up to rest on top of his head. "Having to know everything all the time."
"Some of us like to use our brains," Lisa squinted at him, feigning offense.
"Yeah, like I said, exhausting."
I got to the front and ordered my tea, moving to the side for Alec to step up to the counter next.
"Are we going to talk here?" I asked Lisa, tipping my head from one side to the other to indicate our rather public surroundings.
"Yeah, get us a table outside?" It was her turn to order, and pay.
I picked up my tea from the counter and went back out into the bright, slightly chilly morning. Some Dust wrapped around me kept the breeze off my skin and, surprisingly, seemed to be keeping my body heat in. I made a mental note to experiment later with the insulation properties.
"Hm," Alec said as he pulled out a metal chair, the legs scraping against the ground. "Weird. You doing something fucky with the wind?"
"You curse kind of a lot," I said, sipping my too-hot tea. "Yeah, I have a Dust shield up. I'm wondering if it blocks sound, too." I couldn't tell; I could hear everything both inside and outside it, through the Dust, but separating the sources when they were so close together was nearly impossible.
"Start talking," he said, then stood and walked away. I smiled slightly, opening a hole in the Dust to let him through. The thin shell wouldn't be enough to stop him, but he would have felt the resistance.
"I don't know why Lisa wanted to meet for coffee before she tells me where to find Krieg, and frankly I'm starting to get annoyed with the delay. Stormtiger was already on his way out when I found him, and there's still more of them to hunt down."
Alec, facing me from outside the shell, made a thumbs-up sign and jerked it upwards. I raised my voice a bit.
"There's still Krieg, Victor, Othala, and Crusader left to go, and possibly Purity, Night, and Fog after that. I don't want to let any of them get away. I want… I want someone to pay for what happened to my dad." I released a shaky breath. Alec made another up motion.
" Someone has to!" I said it at a level just below shouting.
Alec came back in, joined by Lisa holding her coffee and a paper bag with a couple muffins in it. "No blueberries," she said, setting one down in front of me. "What was that about?"
"Seeing if sound can get through this Dust shield I put up," I muttered, slightly embarrassed and regretting letting myself get so riled up. I took a deep breath and centered myself again. "Could you hear any of that, Alec?"
"Yeah, heard all of it, it was just funny making you shout like a lunatic," Alec said, putting his feet up on the table. Lisa reached over and shoved them off, glaring at him.
"He only heard you when you were shouting," she told me. "Same as me. That's a neat trick. God, you won the fucking power lottery. It's so weird… usually powers run along one theme, unless it's a grab-bag cape like Circus. But you triggered alone, right? And everything comes from your Dust. But why do you come back from the dead? How does that fit?"
I shrugged, unwilling to share more details about my power. "Does it matter?"
"I think…." she seemed troubled, trailing off. She shook her head. "I think the Dust is different. It's not a power thing, that's the only thing that makes sense."
"Well, yeah," I said, blinking. "I don't make it, it just… comes through and I control it."
"Comes through from where ?" she groaned, rubbing at her temples. "And why? And how?"
"Happens when I die, mostly," I sipped at my tea again; it was almost cooled enough to drink. "I can kind of force it to come through, if I try really hard. That's how I got Coryn. But making more is almost impossible since I brought her through, like she's my limit. At least… until a couple nights ago."
"When you got a whole lot more," Lisa nodded. "So probably strong emotions either make it easier for you to pull Dust through from wherever, or strong emotions attract it through without you needing to pull at all. Which one sounds right?"
Had I pulled, or had it pushed? I couldn't remember, and I didn't want to. The moments leading up to that were burned into my mind's eye. "I don't know. Both, maybe."
"Shit, alright, I gotta stop thinking about this for a while. Headache. Distract me."
"You could tell me why you wanted to meet up in person and get coffee," I suggested. "Or, better yet, just tell me where to find Krieg."
"Come on, Taylor, you aren't stupid. You know why." Lisa gave me a look.
I was trying to give her another out, but okay. "I'm fine," I snapped. "You aren't my mother, my sister, you're not even my friend. Don't try to manipulate me into being something I'm not. I am here until the Empire is gone, that's it."
"Cold," Alec muttered into his latte.
"And after the Empire is gone, what's your plan then? Are you really going to go out and kill Nilbog, maybe wrap it up with the Slaughterhouse Nine? How damn boring is life going to be if you never talk to another human being again?"
"Hey, if you're taking prompts I have an idea for someone you could gank," Alec volunteered.
I sat, stone-faced, trying to come up with a riposte without thinking about her words.
Lisa's voice gentled a little. "I know it hurts. You're in pain, and it's making you angry, and you want to make it stop and avoid feeling it ever again. But that's human, Taylor. You feel like that because you're still human. We're just people, with powers."
Am I?
"For now, yes. You… don't have to be. You of all people can choose not to be. But I don't think there's any going back from that decision."
For a moment I was in the past, staring down at the knife in my hand. In front of me, a printout from the library detailing the location of the carotid artery. I was kneeling in the bathtub, naked, alone but for Coryn. Dad was at work. I needed to know if it was a fluke; I needed to know if I came back every time.
I took a deep breath and plunged the knife into my neck.
With one decision I was freed from mortality. I set my feet on a path that took me away from Emma and Winslow, that found me new friends and lost them too soon after, that got my father killed. He died alone in an empty gray room, and he didn't get to come back.
I blinked, two tears pushed out of my eyes and trailed slowly down my face. I wiped them away.
This was another choice like that one. To remain untethered, drifting through life unbothered by mortal ties. Life would be as dull as it was now, plodding from one thing to the next. I'd have to find something to occupy me, provoke interesting reactions from strangers that caught my eye. A bored child with a magnifying glass eventually finds some ants.
Or I could take what Lisa was offering me. A new connection to humanity. Friends. More pain and anger, and frustration, and all the things that came from being human and caring about them .
Lisa asked me, softly, "What's the point in living forever if you're just going to be alone?"
No point at all, really.
She reached over the little table to me, hand outstretched and palm up. "So, what do you say - can we be friends?"
I stared at her hand. I wanted to take it, and because I wanted to I didn't. Was I letting childish desires make my decisions for me again? Had I thought things through to the end? I wanted this - to get coffee with friends, be a part of something bigger than myself.
"It doesn't have to be me, I guess," Lisa continued. "But the Wards are out, unless you plan on kidnapping some of them and hoping Stockholm Syndrome sets in quick. I've noticed you tend to prefer people around your age, which means that your options in the Bay are basically us, Parian, and possibly Uber and Leet." There was a smile in her voice, although I didn't look to see it.
I didn't have any other good choices, did I? "Okay. Friends."
I looked up to see Lisa grinning at me, her eyes nearly closed with self-satisfaction. I pressed my lips together and glanced away, drinking the last of my now cold tea.
"Are you two done being gay together?" Alec asked. "Because if not, I'm gonna go throw up this nice muffin I just ate - thanks Lees - and then go back to base."
"Why did you bring him, anyway?" I asked, jerking my head at Alec. I could admit to myself that I was enjoying his company and the way nothing was too serious for him to take lightly, but he seemed to get on Lisa's nerves.
"You and him have a lot in common." Lisa pulled back to take her drink again and crumple up the empty muffin wrapper into the paper bag. "But he was mind-fucked - " "Hey!" " - into what you came by naturally. And I didn't think this would get as deep as it did."
"Fuckin' rude," Alec complained. "I don't ask you guys to sit through my sob story, do I?"
"We might if you ever felt like telling it." Lisa replied.
He shrugged. "Nah, it's pretty boring."
What did being friends with her mean? It was easy to say it when I didn't know what she expected for follow-through. Being friends with the Wards was easy, we were regular high school friends except sometimes we fought villains together.
"What do you want from me, then? I still don't want to… be a villain." I might have to fight the Wards at some point, and I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't going to be the one to betray them.
"Right now all it means is I'll tell you where Krieg's going to be tomorrow," Lisa said. "And we'll hang out, like this, and I'll show you that it's okay to unwind and enjoy life sometimes."
I sat forward at the mention of my enemy. "I'm listening."
"Which one?" I asked.
"See the guy in the white shirt?"
"White or like… off-white? Maybe cream?"
"No, pure white. He's a Nazi, they have a thing for purity."
"I think they're all wearing off-white. What's the contrast on your monitor?"
"Lazarus! It's the guy in the white shirt, black pants, and… ugh... brown shoes. If I didn't already know he was single, that would have tipped me off."
"What's wrong with brown shoes?" I had a nice pair of brown shoes I used to wear to church with mom.
"With black pants? Are you kidding?"
I shook my head. "We've gotten off track. I see who you're pointing out, are you sure that's Krieg? He looks… normal. The one next to him looks more evil."
"Positive. His ID wasn't that hard to track down - for me, at least."
I was perched on the roof of the building next to the one Krieg was in, Tattletale in a coffeeshop across the street with a laptop, in their camera system. I was probably still seeing more than her, with all the sensors I could make now.
"Oops… my PRT alert just tripped. You been moving a lot of Dust?"
I smiled to myself. "Yeah, that's on purpose. They're pretty predictable. What's their ETA?"
"Hm… traffic, so probably between five and ten minutes. You know, you could've just called them."
"If they're going to fucking hunt me, I'm going to use it. I hate buying new burners."
I could have stayed outside. It would be faster and easier, probably, to just send in enough Dust to choke him and have Coryn carry him outside; but that wouldn't send the message.
I wanted to see the fear in his eyes as he stared down the rest of his life in the Birdcage, same as Stormtiger.
I spread the wings of my Dust cloak. "Going in."
"Have fun, don't do anything I wouldn't do," Tattletale chirped, and hung up.
My focus narrowed down to the window on the third floor of the office building, behind which I watched eight businessmen in a meeting, one pointing at a display behind him. Krieg was on the left side, sitting between two other white men.
My Dust in the window finished its work, expanding from within, cracking it as I dove. The glass shattered before I reached it, falling straight down instead of flying into the room. They might be Nazis who deserved to be hurt in there, or they might not; I didn't have the time or the inclination to investigate. I was here for Krieg.
My wings flared and brought me to a stop on the edge of the window, then folded down into a mantle again.
"Krieg," I said into the stunned silence. "Tell me you're going to try to fight."
Several of them started speaking at the same time, babbling their fear in tiny half-formed words. I silenced the unimportant ones, sealing their mouths with Dust.
"Shhh," I said. "The parahumans are talking now. I'm hoping, for all of your sake, that you didn't know before that your friend Mister Fleischer over here is Krieg, as in Empire Eighty-Eight."
I watched their faces. Some had known or at least suspected.
I shook my head. "Disappointing. You know, all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing. I don't know who said that, but it sounds smart, right? Krieg, are you going to be smart?"
He found his voice. "I'd come quietly, but I don't think you're with the Protectorate anymore so under what authority, exactly, are you arresting me?"
"Citizen's arrest," I said. "On the basis of you being a patricidal piece of shit."
"I think it's only patricide if I killed my own father."
"Shut the hell up." I sent a stream of Dust down his throat, choking him. "Fuck, I was really hoping he'd try to fight me." I glanced down at my hand, flexing it in and out of a fist.
My sensors caught sight of the PRT trucks wailing their way through traffic, on their way. I sent more Dust to Krieg's body, picking it up and having it follow me as I flew down to meet them.
Miss Militia was one of the first ones to step out of the truck, her weapon sheathed as a sword on her back. She put her hands on her hips and tilted her head up at me.
"Lazarus, you can't keep doing this."
"Nazi delivery," I said, dropping Krieg the last two feet to the ground. He probably wouldn't have brain damage. "Thanks for the pickup, I was going to just drop him off at the Rig until I heard you guys coming."
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tattletale edging her way out of the coffee shop. If I didn't know better, I would've assumed she was just an innocent bystander.
"Lazarus!" Militia drew my attention back. "Please. Come back with me. You won't be imprisoned, you can leave at any time. We just want to talk."
My wings stopped their rhythmic beating, holding me still in the air. I stared down at her.
"You're a bad liar, Miss Militia."
She sighed. The troopers had finished cuffing Krieg and were now dragging him into a truck, as he started to come around. He fought back, but then he saw me and went quiet.
"I'm not lying. There's more to the situation than you know."
I dropped a few feet, until I was just barely hovering above the street. "Tell me, then. Talk to me here."
She glanced around. "This isn't secure, Lazarus."
"Taylor."
"What?"
"I said, my name is Taylor. You can say it. Everyone knows." My jaw clenched for a moment, until I pushed the anger away. "That's the problem, right? Everybody knows. And all of them think that I broke the rules first."
She glanced down for a moment, gathering herself. Then, "We released footage of the fight, and the official statement was already out there. The evidence backs up our version of events."
I rolled my eyes. "Yeah, but your video was edited and their story is so much more colorful. It's sensational. It's something to talk about over dinner with your family ."
She didn't reply, just looked at me, sad and pitying. It raised my blood to a boil again, until I pushed it away.
I rose into the air again, sending Dust into the nozzles of the confoam guns the troopers pointed at me. Miss Militia didn't give the order to spray.
She called after me, "They miss you. You could stop by just to see them, you know."
I hesitated. It was so, so tempting.
But I'd sacrificed my dad so they wouldn't be dragged down with me. I didn't know it at the time, but that's what I did. I wouldn't let that sacrifice be in vain.
And maybe I was afraid that if I saw them again, I'd let myself be talked into something. Lisa had already showed me that my resolve wasn't as strong as I thought it was.
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