Valentine's Day

Taylor Hebert/Skitter

February 16th, 2013

Getting out of my costume felt nice, after spending a day in it, fighting the Horsemen and Chain Gang and then after that spending all yesterday in quarantine with it, it felt amazing to finally get it off.

The silk had clung to my body like a second skin, my alter ego clawing at my frame and the silent mask demanding that I keep it on, that I keep fighting the rot of Brockton.

It was tempting, enough so that when I stepped out of the shower, I almost ignored my civilian clothes for the bundle of chitin and silk.

The urge to get back out in the city, to keep fighting, was almost overpowering.

But then I remembered the boy upstairs, the one I risked my life to save and I pushed down the call and got my regular clothes on.

After ten days of wearing my costume, normal denim jeans and a green cotton sweater felt almost uncomfortably soft against my skin.

That alien feeling wears off as I step out of the bathroom, my beat up costume held in my hands and a billow of steam chasing after me. It’s a good thing Rachel’s shelter has an isolation room ready for me… well, to be honest it was meant for a dog but the bed and bathroom inside are definitely meant for her, probably so she can keep a new arrival from panicking. 

The room was good enough to stay in while I was quarantined, with only the worms in the dirt underground to give my powers anything to focus on. The shelter itself didn’t have anything for me to use, some people might have expected such a place to be ripe with fleas, worms, and other parasites that cling to dogs but Rachel has always prided herself on keeping her pack as healthy as possible.

Logically, that’s the right move, less parasites means healthier dogs but for me it just meant there was less to throw myself into when Diane came down for her interrogation.

It’s a harsh word, I’m sure if she heard me think that she’d probably correct me, tell me that it was an interview or a questionnaire but it wasn’t either of those things. 

Diane is a good teammate, her power is versatile, she has experience in combat situations and even more with interpersonal conflicts. But she also suffers the same problem every Thinker I’ve ever met suffers with, that being that she seemingly can’t just leave stones unturned.

Again, she’s a good teammate and maybe… maybe even a friend but yesterday put a strain on whatever we had. I know she was just trying to help, I know she was only trying to understand the problem more but that didn’t give her the right to probe my mind so deeply.

I shake my head with a sigh, anger warring with the cold logical parts of my brain before I give up on the fight all together. Thinking about what happened doesn’t help me now, and right now I—

“Okay,” 

I almost jump at the voice but thankfully, there’s enough worms around here to put that tiny bit of surprise into as I brush my hair away from my face.

Charlotte stands in front of me, wearing a black skirt and tights with an equally dark sweater as her top. The lack of color is somewhat surprising even after this became her default outfit. At Winslow, I remember her and most of the girls wearing bright colors, trying to spice up the otherwise drab environment with their outfits.

But now, ever since she became my right hand full time, she’s gone for black on black on black and I’m starting to realize that it isn’t for blending into shadows like she often claimed it was. I think she just genuinely likes being a goth.

She brings a hand up to push her glasses further up her nose as she looks down at the clipboard she’s holding, a good sized pack of papers held inside the vice.

“While things with the Horsemen and Chain Gang have been defused for now, we should be mindful of the Elite. Bastard Son is in PRT custody but whatever Cherie did to him has made him near catatonic and while I don’t think we’ll have to worry about his personal crew in Oakland, the organization at large might take it as a reason to escalate.”

I nod at the information she gives me, walking past her towards the elevator with her following in step behind me.

What she says is true, the Elite aren’t going to take this lying down. Before, when we sent Uppercrust and his sect back to New York, we did it with minimal casualties on both sides, Lisa and the others had to reign me in from taking Paris’ eyes but because of them, the Elite didn’t have any personal vendetta against us.

It was just business, that’s what Uppercrust had told me and because we had made him sink more money into his plans than he wanted, his loss in profit drove him back. But with Bastard Son… I struggle to think of any way this could’ve been about money.

No, he probably just stole everything he needed. This wasn’t about money, about making a new venture for his organization, he…damnit.

I stop walking just as I get in front of the elevator, my mind playing over how badly we got tricked.

They sent their most volatile head, alone, with backup outside of the organization knowing that when we took him down, he was going to make it difficult, It made Bastard son a martyr and his catatonia—

“Get Panacea to heal him,” I order Charlotte, hitting the button on the elevator as I try not to growl under my breath. “I put good odds that whatever happened to him didn’t come from us.”

“A false flag?” Charlotte asks, pulling a pen out from behind her ear and flipping to the last page in her clipboard. “Do you think they’ll move forward with the Heartbroken in the city?”

Her question douses the rage and suspicion in my chest, all thoughts of the Elite and what to with them vanish as I step into the metal box, Charlotte stepping in with me as the doors close.

She continues scribbling on her clipboard for a few more seconds, the elevator starting up as I grip the bundle of silk and chitin with all the strength I can muster. What the hell am I doing? Why am I worried about what the Elite will do? I just spent a day in quarantine, away from my friends, away from the boy I risked my life to save, what the hell am I doing?

“Sir?” Charlotte asks again, her pen no longer scratching on her paper. “Do you—”

“Thank you,” I interrupt her, turning a bit so that I can get a good look at her over my shoulder. “Thank you for keeping me up to date, I appreciate it but… right now I’m more concerned with Alec.”

“Ah,” Charlotte’s brown eyes look away from mine, focusing dimly on the floor for a second before she bites her lip, confidence shakily rising. “Sir— ma’am… if I may speak?”

Her courteousness almost makes me snort. There was a time I thought her timidness was a bit grating but now, hearing her refer to me like a serf might speak to a queen, it’s amusing enough that even I can admit it. Plus, it helps ease some of the tension on my shoulders.

“You may,” I answer, knowing that if I tell her she can speak her mind whenever she wants to, she’ll ignore it.

“Diane and I have been talking—” and just like that, all amusement fades as I turn my eyes back towards the door, the floors flashing by us. “—and I want to be more involved in this going forward. I know I asked to take a step back when the Tower was completed and though I’m… thankful of the position you offered me, I can do more than just sit behind the front desk.”

For an instant, I want to slap down her plan. When the territories were more disorganized I needed her and Sierra to act as my hands but things are different now, I don’t need to bring in nonparahumans on something like this.

I know that’s a selfish idea but it’s a true one. Sierra and Charlotte can’t do the things we can and by putting them this high up when I don’t need to, I risk their lives for no reason, I—

I have to let her in though.

That’s one of the things that made it so easy for Heartbreaker to destroy me. I put myself up in a gilded cage, interacted with the others as little as I could, I told myself I was just retreating to my roots, that I was more comfortable by myself but that wasn’t true.

I enjoyed Charlotte and Sierra’s company when I had it and I just… threw it away.

“I think…” I pause, carefully judging what words I should say. “I think that’s a good idea.”

The mites on Charlotte’s shoulders jump up with her, the surprise in her posture showing through my power when I turn around to face her. I place my hand on her shoulder, staring into her eyes for a moment.

“I pushed you and Sierra away, that… that wasn’t good of me, both as your superior and as your friend. I…” the words get stuck in my throat, my lack of social awareness punching me in the face as I force something out. “Do you think we could get tea sometime? You, me, and Sierra?”

Charlotte jolts up again at my offer, her eyes blown wide as she nods her head.

“That… than sounds nice!” Her smile is wide enough that it’s become infectious, my own lips rising up despite the butterflies in my stomach.

“That’s good, I’ll send you some times I can make work and… I’m sorry.” The mood changes with my words, going from happy to somber as I gulp. “I’m sorry I pushed you and Sierra away, I’m sorry I haven’t been as attentive as I should’ve been and… thank you. Thank you for being more understanding than I probably deserve.”

The silence stretches for a while before the elevator grinds to a halt but with my bug jar still above me, I know this isn’t my stop. I hadn’t even noticed Charlotte had pushed a button.

She steps around me, one hand holding onto her wrist in front of her and the other holding the clipboard over her lap.

“Taylor,” she says, looking back at me with a small, tender smile. “You don’t have to apologize, I… Diane made it very clear that what happened, it wasn’t your fault.”

The reminder of what Diane thinks about the whole situation is grating. I don’t like that sh can just handwave the things I did away but…

“So you’re not mad?” I ask as she steps over the threshold. “You know it would be okay if you were.”

She laughs as she turns away, hedging down the hall that leads to her apartment.

“Why would I be?” she asks as the doors close. “The man who did it is dead.”

I smile when the elevator starts up again, Charlotte’s words reminding me that yeah, the bastard who did this to us, the one who took Alec… he’s dead. His body was burnt up down to the bones and even though we wanted to keep going with it, to pound it out into the ash, his children wouldn’t let us.

I don’t know why, maybe out of some sense of duty, maybe because his wives would’ve wanted it or maybe… even as fucked up as he was, he was still their father and something made them bury him outside Montreal, with a simple grave.

I hated stopping for it, I hated that Alec actually got out to attend it, dressed in simple pajamas, the snow falling around him and his siblings as they buried their father’s charred remains. None of them had any words to say, whether that was because there was nothing to say or because none of them had anything, I don’t know.

All I know is that I stood with Alec until the snow caked over the grave, the pile of rocks serving as the headstone gathered frost and the Heartbroken left with us, piling back into the trucks and cars as we returned to Brockton Bay.

And coming back here, to Brockton Bay… it wasn’t any easier than when we left it. 

The elevator ticks up and I can’t help but think it’s going slower now with just me in it, just so I can replay all the mistakes I’ve made here. It was only a week or so ago when I jumped out of the tallest window and… I think I might be genuinely afraid of the place.

I chuckle to myself, the sound hollow as I move past my bug jar. This place, the penthouse, it used to be homey despite its dimensions, it’s large and extravagant but we still managed to make it cozy, to make it a place I would sigh in relief after a long day of work, it used to be a home… but that was before it became a monument to my greatest failure.

The chuckle makes itself into a laugh as the meanest part of my brain rears its head, like a devil on my shoulder, whispering all the fuck ups I’ve made in my career.

Before this month, before Fullstop cleansed me of that bastard’s influence, I always thought my greatest failure was in Dinah. The little Thinker is fine now, working with the Protectorate’s thinktank in a location I bet is a federal offense to look up. 

Physically she’s fine now but that doesn’t mean she’s okay. The shit Coil put her through, the shit I was too weak to stop and too stupid to prevent… she calls me sometimes, not to leave me predictions or cryptic warnings but just to talk, to tell me how her day went and what she’s been up to lately.

Lisa puts good odds that she’s trying to boost my morale, that she calls me as a way of saying ‘look, I’m still here, you didn’t kill me and that bastard didn’t either’ but… I can hear it in her voice. She isn’t the girl she should be.

She’s still so young, young enough that she should be worried about homework and playground bullies, not the fate of the world.

The devil on my shoulders asks me what’s the difference between Dinah and everyone else I want to protect. Sure, Skitter can save a few hundred civilians and then force a thousand more to pay protection money, but when it comes to her friends, the people that really matter to her… has she ever been good at it?

I force my hand up to my mouth, silencing the laugh before it can become a whimper. 

It’s true. 

It’s true and I hate it, I hate it so damn much, I hate that when it matters, when it really fucking matters I always fail. With Dinah, when the Nine captured Brian, with… with Alec. I… I can’t save them, no matter how hard I try to push the threats away, no matter how much effort I put into my swarm, my armor, there’s always something, some little crack that I didn't , some flaw in my defense and I—

With a thought, all of my mind goes into my swarm, my actual body going still as I force out my frustrations into a mindless mass of chitin. The feel of it, the vastness of my swarm smothers the hate, leaving my mind feeling cold and analytical.

What I’ve said here, to myself, I know it’s true. But I also know that it isn’t helping me right now. Right now, all that matters is the penthouse, all that matters is being there for Alec when he needs me most.

That’s all that matters, that’s all I need, to hold him, to protect him, to tell myself and him that things are going to be fine now, that I—

My emotions slip back into my head like water under a door and I shake my head with a chuckle that has a bit of life to it. That reflex I used to have, to pour myself into the swarm whenever I wanted… it’s all but gone.

Lisa and the others wanted me forget that particular coping mechanism, I can’t remember the arguments she and Alec especially made but I remember their faces when they said them. That’s really all it took, not so much the content of their words but just in how they said them.

PHO would probably find it funny that Skitter, the eighth plague given form (not a nickname I chose or endorse), would do absolutely anything for her teammates if they asked her to do it with a frown.

The elevator keeps on clicking by and with the brief moment of reprieve I forced for myself, I take stock of my swarm. Some of them managed to get out of their terrariums despite the advertisers claims that they wouldn’t be able to but that’s more a statement on bugs themselves than false advertising.

Really, it’s only my power that can keep bugs from escaping wherever they’re placed. 

A few of Panacea’s creations have been altered since last I controlled them, their mouths altered to passively suck in whatever’s placed in front of them. It’s something she must’ve had to do. Aside from Atlas, all of her and I’s collaborations are brainless, needing my control to do even the most basic of tasks. 

Speaking of Atlas, I smile as my awareness ghosts over him, feeling the barely tangible echo of his joy send shockwaves through my swarm.

Right now, he’s happily munching on the neon green slurry Panacea made for him. It’s some kind of seaweed bass nutrient sludge that smells like pine to me and tastes like candy floss for him. It has everything his body needs and it actually tastes good enough that he’s willing to eat it without my say so.

Although, that might not be that much of a complement given that I’ve caught him trying to eat shoes.

He feels my control, my power just a thought away from taking over his actions but despite being aware that I could subjugate him whenever I need, he isn’t afraid. If anything, he feels even happier knowing I’m nearby.

He’s a strange creature, with the metallic body of a Hercules beetle and the brain of a dog, he’s my perfect Frankenstein like amalgam and I breathe a sigh of relief just knowing that he’s alive. There was a time I would’ve convinced myself that his death wouldn’t have mattered to me but that was before he became my pet.

If he had died in Montreal, when the Heartbroken Biche had made him a sitting duck for the horde of thralls, I don’t know how well I would be doing right now. It’s a miracle he survived then, with all the people stabbing at his elytra, poking holes in his wings and shooting at his eyes, I was sure he was going to bleed out.

But he pulled through and like all of us, the moment we got home, Amy made us better. We’ve all got some leftover scars but physically we’re fine. Physically we’re… we’re okay.

And like that, any brief joy I might’ve had fades away. There are some things even Panacea can’t fix and knowing that what’s wrong with Alec, his silence and desolation, is something beyond her, it’s… harrowing.

I want to think things are going to be okay eventually, that someday Alec is going to be how he used to be and the past year will be nothing more than an awful memory but I… I can’t help but think that that isn’t true, that—

My thoughts cut themselves off when a ding echoes in the elevator, the doors opening up to reveal my stop.

The penthouse is busier than it’s ever been, with many of our members inside along with a fair number of repairmen Lisa vetted. A pair of burly workers walk by me as I step out of the elevator, both carrying a large sheet of glass.

I turn my head in the direction they’re going and can’t help but wince when I see that they’re making a beeline for the window I destroyed. The meeting room as a whole doesn’t look much better than the shattered glass, the table is broken, cracked right down the middle, there’s scorching on the walls and one of the chairs inside looks like it’s been cut with the sharpest knife in the world.

Seeing the damage inside, though horrific, does make me happy it started in there rather than outside. In there, we had the ability to escape, we had positioning to run and most of them didn’t have the capability to chase us, if the fight had started in the streets though…

The hypothetical scenario barely begins before I cut it off, deciding instead to take stock of the room. Most of the Undersiders are here, Victoria and Trevor are in the meeting room, the former helping the repairmen from the outside while the latter helps them from within. Both wave to me and I wave back as I recall that Victoria is thirty feet away from most of the penthouse, her aura unable to reach some of our more sensitive members.

Diane, Ray, and his girlfriend Bad Apple are in the den, chatting with some of Alec’s siblings. I know the short girl is named Darlene but the lanky giant next to her escapes me. He's tall, all elbows and knees and I think his name might be Sebastian but I’m not a hundred percent sure on that.

Both he and Diane wave to me, with Blasto offering a short nod when I try to focus on the conversation happening in the kitchen. I think I might hear Chrissie and Sabah but before I can actually go there and investigate, a pair of heavy footsteps sound down the stairs and when I look up to greet them, I find Brian’s arms locking around me like a vice.

The moment his hands tie behind my back, I sink into him, my eyes fluttering closed as exhaustion hits me full force, my tired mind reminding me of my complete lack of sleep. His hold is warm, comforting, but beyond that there’s something desperate about it, like we’re a pair of shipwrecked survivors and the only way we aren’t going to drown is if we hold each other.

The conversations around us slow, not quite dying but definitely losing speed as attention shifts to us. I don’t care, if anything I just hold Brian all the tighter as I put all my focus into him, into feeling his skin on mine, into the pulse I can feel against my face, into the breath that tickles the crown of my skull.

Here’s he, he’s okay, and we…

“Alec,” I mumble against his neck, my eyes already starting to fill with tears. The single word is enough for him to understand and he pulls back just enough that I can look into his eyes when I open mine.

Brian came out the worst of our fight with the Heartbroken, although none of us got out without some scars to show for it.

I’ve got a sizable white gash right above my right hip, where a bullet tore through my costume and into me. My right arm has a criss cross spider web of slash marks, some deep enough that if it weren't for Amy, I’d never be able to clench a fist. Both wounds would’ve crippled me one way or another and both were inflicted courtesy of a boy that couldn’t be older than eight.

A boy with red hair almost dark enough that it looked like blood, a boy who’s power insisted he was my little brother Baptiste. Even knowing that I don’t have a brother, I don’t doubt that if I saw him again, I’d still be protecting him like my life depended on it.

That’s the thing, some Master powers can be fought against, some you really can just ‘push through’ but Heartbreaker and all his children… that doesn’t work and in the best case scenario, in my scenario, you end up walking away with more scars than you came with.

Brian is definitely the worst off though, having been the one that kept the Butcher busy while we dealt with the rest, I’m genuinely not sure how much of him isn’t scarred. 

His deep brown eyes look into mine, the pupils and sclera thankfully stitched back together by Amy’s power. The rest of him is a different story.

Six thin lines rake over his left cheek, starting at the ear in a set of three parallel scars before pulling away and continuing the old wound maybe a quarter of an inch back down to his lips. That’s right where Cherie dug at his face and on instinct, my hand rises up to trace the scratches, the skin darker and raised where the pad of my thumb traces.

Brian leans into my touch like a housecat, greedily soaking in the attention as his eyes close, his cheek cupped in my palm. The soft need for comfort makes my heart melt with relief, just knowing that he’s here with me, that despite the scars, he’s going to still be safe.

That relief is tempered when my eyes drag over to his neck, gulping quietly when I see the damage. I don’t know when he was shot there, I don’t know how he’s even standing but just looking at the circle of scar tissue makes me wince. I know that if he tilted his head the other way, I’d see the exit wound, the hole directly opposite the first, like the bolts in Frankenstein’s Monster’s neck.

He holds me as gently as he can, his hands sliding down to my waist as he slowly closes his eyes.

“He’s okay,” he answers me, voice soft before he nods. “We can… let’s go see him.”

I nod at his idea but before I can move past him to head up the stairs, he pulls me into another embrace, one hand wrapped around my back and the other rising up to hold my face like I held his.

His thumb brushes at my eyes, wiping away the tears the moment they fall as he takes in a deep breath.

“Sorry,” he apologizes for some reason. “I just… I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“I’m okay,” I answer, trying to ignore that my voice comes out as a broken sob, not quite crying but definitely too wet to be normal. “I… I’m fine, Amy just told me to eat more and… I asked her not to get rid of it all. She said she didn’t have enough to make them fade but… I don’t think I—”

“I know,” Brian interrupts me, his hand gliding down to my chin to lift my eyes up. “I know what you mean, I… it’s the same for me.”

The smile I give him is tight but it’s the only expression that feels appropriate. 

The scars that we carry from this, the marks on our skin, they’re… they’re always going to be there, they’re going to serve as a reminder of something we’ll hopefully never need reminding about.

It’s going to be heavy, to carry them all day, to see the flashes of them in the mirror and on each other but it’s better to have those moments than to let it sink away again. Heartbreaker got us for a number of reasons, not least of which is that we felt we were invincible, that if the Nine, Echidna, and two fucking Endbringers couldn’t kill us then what could he do?

That might actually be the first domino in a long chain that led to getting these scars. That false sense of invulnerability shouldn’t come back now.

Without any more words to pass between us, Brian takes my hand as he turns back up the stairs he came from, his grip holding mine tightly, grounding me as the butterflies in my stomach start to stir.

We’re heading towards his old room, the one that used to be Brian’s office not two weeks ago.

There’s not a doubt in my mind that Brian cleared it out already or at least, he ordered someone to clear it out while he was in quarantine but…

My feet start to drag a bit but Brian doesn’t tug me along. He isn’t in that much of a hurry and I know why. It’s because, while we finally have Alec back with us, safe and sound, we… we don’t have all of his things.

I know why we did what we did, I know that when we threw out his bed and his sheets and his… even his paintings, I know that it wasn’t us who hated those things. I know that but I still can’t help but choke up at the memories that plague me.

Most of it was just thrown away without a second thought, thrown down the garbage chute in the kitchen and probably burnt to ash but some of it… I choke and feel another wave of tears start up. Some of his things… we took a personal joy in destroying.

Realizing that makes me gag, that there was a time we laughed when Brian found one of Alec’s paintings in his closet, a gift he made for him the Christmas before we moved in. I don’t know how many hours he spent making it, how many days he slaved over it but I remember that when Brian found it last November we… we tore it apart.

We mocked it, laughed amongst ourselves like there were any actual errors in it and when we got done calling it ugly in every way we could think of, we defaced it, we spat on it, ripped the canvas, smudged the oils, and finally Rachel broke it over her knee before sending it down the chute.

It’s only because Heartbreaker made us think so lowly of him that we didn’t bother digging in Alec’s closet, where most of his things probably still are, if we had even the slightest bit more motivation, we would’ve plundered it like pirates and thrown what was left from the windows.

But as it stood, we didn’t bother. Alec wasn’t worth the effort of rooting around in there.

“How…” I gulp, stopping with Brian at the last corner and looking down the hall towards our rooms. “How much is left?”

He knows exactly what I’m asking about and his other hand clenches into a fist as he tries to keep his voice steady. 

“I…” he shakes his head a bit, not quite giving me a negative. “I found a bit, his easel, a few canvases he hadn’t touched, a few half finished paintings, a lot of his old clothes but… that was all I… that was all I could—”

His voice cracks and his free hand rises up to his lips, trying to keep the sad sound locked in his throat as his knees buckle. I press myself into his side, urging him to lean on me and when he does, I hold him up as best I can, my knees bracing as he turns, his hand leaving mine to wrap his arm around my shoulders.

“It’s okay,” I lie, doing my best not to crumble at the confirmation that there’s basically nothing left of Alec here, that we destroyed the majority of his things. “It’s… we got him back and… and—” my mind whirs for a second, the butterflies being pushed away when I try to offer some modicum of comfort. “We didn’t get rid of everything, he’s still got things here and… I know Chrissie raided his jewelry box whenever she could and… the motel! He must’ve had some things there.”

“I hope so,” Brian acknowledges, wiping at his face and standing just a bit taller, not quite fully recovered but voice steadier. “That’s where Rachel is, she… she wanted to get as much of his stuff as we could and Lisa thinks someone downstairs might’ve been pocketing the things we threw down the chute, that maybe not all of it went towards the incinerator.”

“See?” I ask, “Not all of it is gone, we can still—”

One of the doors at the end of the hall, the second to the last, creaks open loudly with Amy stepping out.

Her eyes are fixed on the floor in front of her and even at this distance, I can tell there’s a glassiness to them, a hollow kind of disassociation when she turns to face us, ready to go back downstairs when she sees us. 

Her expression flashes into something sad and mournful before she forces it into something I’ve heard Diane and Victoria call ‘doctor Amy.’ It’s a good name for the face I suppose, grim but soft, like a doctor ready to give some sad bedside manner. 

“Is he okay?” I ask her, tugging Brian along into step with me as Amy goes to meet us in the middle.

“I got rid of his bruises and the more severe cuts.” She answers, her voice just as steady and unwavering as the face she’s making. When she doesn’t elaborate, a slimy kind of anger fills my chest, the kind that promises it’ll flip into sadness at the worst time.

“Okay,” I try to be cordial, acknowledging the little info she was gave. “What else? Is he going to be alright, is he going to—” I look over her shoulder, to the door she just left and my mouth tries to turn dry. “Will he be moving soon? Talking? Is—”

“His muscles have atrophied,” She interrupts me, her hands in front of her and nervously picking at her nails. “You… do you two know what that means?”

“It’s…” Brian takes a deep breath, the encyclopedic definition he’s about to give impeded by the cause of Alec’s condition. “It means his muscles have wasted away. I… I figured that might be the case. How bad?”

“Pretty bad,” Amy answers, deciding not to sugarcoat it for us. “He can maybe walk a few feet before his legs give out but honestly, I don’t want him standing up on his own for a while. At least until he gives me enough biomass to work with. Well… that and he’s going to have to go through some extensive physical therapy.”

Before either of us can ask who we should call about getting that set up, Amy pushes on, giving us more bad news.

“Right now, he’s being given nutrients intravenously, his stomach has shrunk a lot since I last saw him and in my professional opinion, he needs to avoid solid food for at least a few days, then you can start with small things, bread, eggs, gelatin, oatmeal— things that are easiest for him to digest.”

“Do you—” I try to ask another question but she already has a hand up to silence me.

“I’ve already drilled a diet plan into Lisa and I’ve emailed you all a pretty extensive treatment plan. There’s also…” she looks past me down the hall, checking for eavesdroppers before she moves in. “Look, he’s going to be okay, I erased every trace of it but he did test positive for certain…” she swallows thickly and when I blink, I see Alec tied down to the bed and I know what she’s implying. “Y’know.”

“We do,” I answer for the both of us and the lump in my throat finally manages to go down. “Is there anything else we should know before we go in there?”

“Yes,” she answers, turning on the spot and deciding that she’ll lead us into the room she just left. “So, just to be clear, physically, Alec is going to be okay. I’ve healed him of all life-threatening injuries and the things that are still present are just the wounds that I don’t have the biomass to work with right now, a nurse should come in every few hours to replace the bandages. The major problem right now is… Alec isn’t very present.”

“Present?” Brian asks, picking up enough speed to flank Amy’s right side while I take the other. “You mean he’s dissociative?”

“Yes and no,” Amy answers as we reach the door, an explanation on the tip of her tongue before she sighs, her hand on the knob. “It’s better if you see it for yourself.”

And with that, the world’s greatest healer opens the door, the light from the window illuminating the hall for a brief second as we walk in.

The room is mostly the same as when Brian had it, the only real difference is that he took out his desk and the three chairs, replacing them with a large bed, the same brand that Lisa bought for all of us when we moved in.

Other than the bed and a trio of wooden chairs off to the side, the room is completely bare, even lacking the TV Alec had when he stayed with us.

The first person I see is Lisa, sitting in one of those hard, uncomfortable looking chairs. Her blonde hair is done up into a wild and loose bun, the bundle tangled and frizzy. She looks up from the bed to greet us, her eyes wide for just a second before she recognizes us. Her eyes are rimmed with red and when she wipes at them, it only accentuates how much she’s been crying today.

“Hey,” she greets, sniffling as she puts on an almost genuine looking smile. Her eyes well up again but before any more tears can fall, she turns her focus back to the person lying on the bed, with both of her hands holding his knuckles. “I guess it was too much to hope he’d wake up with all of us here.”

My eyes turn to Alec and the lump I just managed to swallow rises up as I take him in.  

Lisa lifts his thin knuckles up to rest against her forehead, the grip she has on them just tight enough to hold without hurting.

Alec… he’s… I’ve never seen him so thin.

It almost hurts to look at him, even before all this, he never ate enough, Brian, Lisa, or Rachel or I always had to remind him when to eat but even then… it never got this bad. Before he was just a little too thin, the kind of thin that you didn’t think of as dangerous unless he was your friend but now… now, he looks skeletal.

His face is gaunt, his cheekbones accentuated by the pale sag of the skin. Every single part of him is thin enough to see the skin wrap around his bones, the muscle barely enough to keep the layer away. He’s so small I can count every bone by the bumps of their ends, every rib is obvious, even through the sheet he has on top of him.

And the bed only makes that smallness stand out more, it seems like the IV has to travel half a mile to get into his arm and even when it gets there, the limb is so tiny it feels like the needle could poke out the other side with the slightest movement.

He… did he already look like this when we got him back? Did the blood and wounds hide it? Were we just too worried about everything else to notice or… we tried to feed him solid food on the drive back, we tried to help but he wasn’t there, not really.

He’d blink, breathe, and notice people all the same but he never talked, never moved unless we moved him and… fuck.

It’s when the door closes behind me that I realize something else. There’s something floating in the air.

A black cloud floats above Alec’s head, a shimmering, multi faceted layer of pure black shakes like an annoyed beehive and when my eyes try to look away from it and back to Alec, I watch as a thin sheet of black peels out of the skin of his cheek.

The dark rises out of his skin like driftwood rising up from a wreck and when it floats up past him, it leaves the skin unblemished. More and more of those flakes peel from his flesh, rising up into the air and carried on invisible gusts of wind until they turn into an impossible collection of dark geometry.

The shapes are the same color, or lack thereof, of Brian’s dark, completely nebulous except for their fronts, looking like little holes in reality.

When I finally look away from the display, I find that Alec is staring blankly ahead, his eyes fixed on the window in front of him and glazed over even more so than the days before.

Another flake of dark slips out from under his eyes, the edges of it disintegrating into nothing as I look back at Lisa.

“What…” I ask, walking around her to get on the other side of Alec’s bed. “What’s happening to him?”

Both Amy and Lisa try to answer me at the same time but the healer backs off to let Lisa speak.

“It’s his power,” she answers, squeezing his hand a little tighter as Brian steps over to her side, his hand on her shoulder. “It… I don’t have it all figured out yet and I don’t think he does either but… it’s kind of— it has compulsions to it.”

“Compulsions?” I ask, the chair beneath me scooting sharply on the hard wood as I lean forward, my knees against the bed.

“Involuntary,” Amy answers this time, her eyes fixed on Alec before she steps away, backing closer to the door. “I took a look at him earlier and there’s enough going on in his brain that I can tell he doesn’t want to do this. That’s all I can say though, neurology is… still a pretty big blank spot for me.”

Amy takes another step to the door, her eyes darting to the handle before she clears her throat.

“I can… I think I’m going to leave you guys alone, if that’s alright with you all.”

“That’ll be fine,” Brian answers for us before he turns, his hand leaving Lisa’s shoulder and falling to his side as he looks at Amy. “Listen, I’m— about when we left. I didn’t mean to hurt—”

“I know.” Amy cuts him off and her voice is stern and tight, like ice right as it cracks. “Trust me, Diane was very thorough about why I shouldn’t be upset with you. Which isn’t to say I’m not, but… I understand. If somebody had taken her or Vicky from me I’d…”

She trails off and again, she doesn’t need to finish. We hurt her girlfriend trying to escape from the rest of the Undersiders but if it were swapped, if AMy had been the victim of what happened to us… I shudder to think what she wouldn’t do.

“Still,” I start speaking before I even know what I’m going to say. “Thank you. Thank you for helping us.”

“It’s my job,” she brushes off my thanks and opens the door. “Just tell him to take it easy when he wakes up from… whatever it is he’s doing.”

The door closes behind her and in the wake of her absence, the silence creeps in like a shadow under a door, slow at first but quickly gaining speed before Brian breaks it.

“You said it was a compulsion.” He says, grabbing for the seat closest to the door and placing it on Lisa’s right. He looks at her for just a moment before his eyes trail up to the dark cloud above Alec. The shapes continue to flutter and dance, like confetti trapped in the air, the edges slowly disintegrating as more flakes rise up from Alec, the cloud never shrinking or growing.

“Yeah,” Lisa reaffirms, her eyes fixed on the same odd display. “It’s like… look over there—” she points to the window, at the mile of city and the ocean beyond that. After a brief second of trying to scan what she wants me to see, a black bird flies by, a crow or maybe raven briefly flashing the window for just a second.

And then, five seconds later, the bird does it again, with a smaller pigeon slowly trailing behind. The pattern repeats two more times and I lean back in my chair when I realize what Lisa is trying to imply. 

“Alec’s power is… a lot.” She takes my attention away from the window to look at the dark. “The darkness can control things, just like his power did before but it… it comes in preselected modes, there’s this—” she points to the dark and leans up to touch it, the flakes flying away from her skin as if her arm is giving off a flow only they can detect. “That thing he made to take over Cherie and… the shadow.”

The mention of the last thing Alec made makes the air sour, the atmosphere becoming sickly when I remember what he did with that odd stretch of light. He… he tried to control his father, the man who abused him and he… he didn’t do it to get justice or even revenge, he was doing it to… to try and keep him alive.

I don’t why he did that but before I can start thinking of reasons, Lisa keeps going with a clearing of her throat.

“His power is very different, I don’t know everything it can do and honestly, I don’t think he got much time with it either. I know some things though, it’s similar to—” she cuts herself off and when her eyes dart over to the man on her right, she gulps, realizing the massive mistake she’s just made.

Brian doesn’t like to talk about his trigger, no parahumans do obviously but Brian is especially guarded about it. It was the worst day of his life after all, somehow worse than what he went through the first time and for the second time to take what it did, I can only imagine how bad the first was.

It scarred him deeper than anything we’ve come across before and I’m sure that if it were Chrissie or Ray making this mistake, he’d be screaming at them to leave or throwing his dark around.

But it’s Lisa that made the mistake, the same girl that has comforted him just as much as me or Rachel. She knows every single detail of what happened to him, everything he was willing to tell her and all the bits he wouldn’t too. She knows how much of a sensitive topic it is and for her to make this mistake, even once, speaks to how rundown she is.

And it’s because of those things that Brian doesn’t blow up at her. He just wraps his arm over her shoulder to display his forgiveness as he finishes the thought for her.

“There was a tradeoff,” he surmises, “The same way my power doesn’t spread as quickly as it used to but made me able to copy others.”

His defusion makes Lisa deflate with relief and with a heavy nod, she goes back to explaining.

“Yes, I can’t be sure how much of his old power is still with him but I know it isn’t as versatile as it used to be. Before, he could take over maybe half a dozen people but I’d be surprised if he could control even two now. It works through the darkness he’s making, if it touches something living, he can instantly take it over. It’s powerful but I think the darkness builds up after a while.”

“Builds up?” I ask, “Do you mean like Lung?”

“No,” Lisa shakes her head, “It’s more like— okay. So, think of it like a glass filling with water. Overtime, he can use a lot of it all at once or little bits of it over time but if he doesn’t—”

“It overflows,” Brian says, completing the metaphor.

“Yep,” Lisa nods, pulling Alec’s hand just a bit closer to her. “If he doesn’t let it out, it forces its way out. The flakes—” she points up to the display in question. “Control small animals, if he put all his power into into it, I bet he could control a few dozen birds at a time but even when he isn’t like this— forced to let his power out— I doubt he’d be able to move on his own. I think… the more dark there is outside of his body, the less he’s in his own.”

“You mean…” I try to understand her words as Brian lays his hand over Lisa’s, both of them gently taking Alec’s knuckles. “All he can do right now is breath?”

“That and maybe listen?” Lisa answers but it sounds more like a question. “I’m sorry, it’s— I don’t have all the pieces and—”

“Hey,” Brian cuts her off, holding her gently into his side as her explanation becomes a sniffle. His voice is soft as he rocks the both of them, his eyes fixed on Alec’s catatonic body. “It’s okay, we… we can’t expect you to have all the answers Lis’.”

“Yeah,” I affirm, tempted to lean over Alec and place my hand on the Thinker’s knee. “It’s going to be okay, we’ll just… play it by ear, alright?”

Lisa looks up at me with a shaky smile and I lean back in my chair as I watch the dark fractals glide into and through each other, their shapes lost to my sight after just a second of fluttering. The power’s beautiful in a way, like someone took Brian’s dark and made it into the opposite of a lightshow.

“Is there anything we can do to help?” I ask, my head trying to come up with something to do. “Maybe I could give him some bugs to work with, see—”

“No,” Lisa cuts me off. “That… maybe for another time, right now I don’t think we should be experimenting with this. You saw how bad he got when he tried to possess Cherie, his cramps are probably worse now when…” she trails off, her mouth opening just a fraction, her power clearly telling her something.  “Actually, go ahead but only give him the safe ones, roaches, flies, the things that can barely even bite.”

“What did your power say?” Brian asks, having already caught on to the same thing I did.

“Alec’s power only gets like this when it doesn’t have a use, I think if he keeps this up, it’ll eventually burn off but… I think we can speed it up, at least a little, if we give him something he can control.”

“Okay,” I nod, the answer good enough for me and my swarm already answering my call. I summon as many as I can from my jar, the bugs on the outside opening up some of my tamer terrariums and making the long journey up. While we wait for them, I bring out the few bugs I have in my hair, the ones I managed to hide before they put me in quarantine.

I know that having them kinda defeated the point of being in quarantine but I gave up most.

The roaches, flies, and web spinning spiders crawl out, the flying ones carrying the ones who cannot and all of them heading for the dark smokestack over Alec’s bed. 

The moment they make contact with the fractals, I lose all control of them. The roaches and flies fall out of the air with tiny thuds against the bed, their bodies completely frozen up. A few of the dark flakes split off from the main cloud, lazily drifting to meet the still incoming bugs and splitting into even tinier pieces to take them over.

Losing control of them is a… awful sensation. I’ve been a cape for years now and not once has my power ever been… so completely ignored. Even when Brian uses his smoke on me, I still have some modicum of ability to disrupt his control but with this… there’s nothing. 

I can’t even sense them anymore, it isn’t like they’re paralyzed or asleep, they’re… they’re just not mine anymore. I lean up in my seat, wondering if Lisa got it wrong, wondering if the dark actually just killed my swarm when the first roach’s wings flutter.

I can’t help it, even having had that roach in my hair just a few seconds ago, there’s some primal part of me that shrieks in fear. I clutch my chest as the ugly, oily, disgusting thing gets up on all of its hairy legs and oh my god it’s so gross!

The chair nearly topples back to the floor as I throw myself on it, my legs tucked underneath me as all the bugs I had in my hair leave to join Alec’s regime. Watching them twitch on the bed makes me hug my knees tight to my chest and then, with an eerie synchronicity, they turn towards the window and fly for it as quickly as they can.

Alec doesn’t have nearly the same experience I do though and he leaves the flightless beetles and spiders behind to crawl down his legs and oh my god is this really what everyone else sees when I control them?!

“Huh,” Lisa speaks up and I’m so focused on the bugs that I jump in my seat when I look up at her. She and Brian are both staring right at me, neither of them as horrified as I am and after a second, Lisa tilts her head, a smile forming on her face. “I thought you liked bugs?”

“I like bugs when I’m—” a spider leaps forward and I yelp as it comes just a bit closer to me before heading for the window. “When I’m the one controlling them!”

Lisa giggles for a moment and Brian, traitor that he is, smiles a bit too widely as the skittering mass heads for the window, the three or so dozen different kinds of bugs all clinging to the glass when I realize something that makes my stomach drop.

The window is clear.

I can see it all, the lake beneath our tower, the city beyond that and the ocean beyond that and all I can think about is him, how he took control. My swarm isn’t going to be here for another few minutes and just looking at the window, at all the possible vantage points, makes my stomach churn and—

“It’s okay,” Lisa speaks up again, all earlier traces of mirth gone.

“Are you sure?” Brian asks for me, his voice just as deathly worried as I feel.

“Positive,” Lisa answers, and after a second of shifting, she reaches across Alec to touch my knee, forcing me to lock eyes with her. “From this side there are forty seven possible angles for anyone to see into this room and all of them would require a telescope of some kind.”

“But—”

“And—” she keeps going, completely ignoring me. “I have people monitoring every single one of them and a whole team working on either buying or demolishing all those spots. I’ve given them… a not insubstantial amount of money to buy out the stubborn people and if that doesn’t work—”

“I’ll deal with them,” I offer, the butterflies in my stomach settling as I let my feet hit the floor. Lisa tilts her head at my offer and I can’t blame her. There was a time the idea of pushing someone out of their home would’ve appalled me and while it still isn’t, and hopefully won’t ever be, my first choice… I’d do it.

And with that, the room falls into a shaky silence, not quite uncomfortable, awkward, or tense but an even mixture of all three. For maybe five minutes, we just sit here with him, watching the steady rise and fall of his chest and breathing little sighs of relief ourselves.

He’s here.

He’s back where he belongs and the absolute fucking monster who took him, who made us the ones to leave him, is dead.

I smile and hold his hand up to my own, my thumb gracing over the pulse of his wrist and almost crying as it drums steady heartbeats. He's here. 

It’s still so hard to believe. That morning, when Fullstop lifted the curtain we didn’t even know was there, I was sure he was gone. I thought he was alive of course, I knew that Heartbreaker wouldn’t let Alec die after all the trouble it took for him to get him but still, I was sure he wouldn’t come back to us.

But he’s here.

He’s here and he’s safe and I’m giving him bugs to control and it’s still just as creepy as when he first did it but it’s nothing compared to the relief.

Eventually, he has enough of them under his control that the bugs on the window stop remaining static, the dozens turn into hundreds and all of them start to crawl in lazy, drifting circles and spirals, with a column of roaches hanging on to the far left. It… I know it from somewhere, with how the light is poking in behind the carpet of bugs, it’s—

“Starry Night,” Lisa says, her voice cracking a bit when she looks away from the organic painting and back to Alec. His eyes are still glazed over but the cloud hanging above him is barely a tenth of what it used to be, with most of the dark controlling his bugs. “He’s not really awake yet but he’s getting there.”

I nod with her words, my hand leaving his and idly rubbing over his shin. I almost pull it away, remembering that in the car and the one motel we stayed in that he flinched away from our hands but now, his leg actually leans into my touch.

It’s a little thing, maybe something I can just blame on the mattress dipping oddly but I’d like to think it’s because he’s getting more comfortable with us, that maybe one day he’ll… be back to his old self.

There’s a spider resting on his thigh and I would swear the little arachnid is squinting up at me, the eight beady eyes trying their best to get a look at me and… honestly it’s a little cute knowing that Alec is the one controlling it.

He’s not going to get a good look at me though. While spider’s eyes are a lot better than my flies or roaches, their sight isn’t very comparable to a human. He’d need dozens of them to actually parse anything and even then it took me years to manage that trick.

Still… 

I let go of his shin and glide my hand up the limb, offering the tip of my index finger for the spider to climb up on. The little bug takes a step back from me and I realize that though our control looks similar, I never had to fight muscle memory. To Alec, and to the spider, my finger looks like some colossal instrument ready to crush him and the spider’s instincts are urging him away from me.

But still, he gets it to obey and after just a second, the spider is on my fingernail and I raise it up to my face, offering it a better look. It’s odd viewing what’s basically my power from the outside, this little spider doesn’t have any appreciable venom and even if it bit me, I doubt I would feel it.

But even given the lack of danger, there’s something uncanny about it, something that adds to the already fear-inducing arachnid. I don’t know what to call the feeling but I guarantee it’s the same one others have whenever I do this.

“Well,” Lisa says and I almost go cross eyed, staring over my finger at her. “I suppose I shouldn’t have expected that to last.”

I’m about to tell her that I’m still not adjusted to all of Alec’s bugs but the second I open my mouth, a rumble sounds from my stomach, loud enough that I go red in the face.

“Ah,” Brian gets up, deciding to be a good friend and not acknowledging the sound I just made. “That reminds me, have either of you had any food since yesterday morning?”

“Diane brought me food last night,” I say, remembering the bland sandwich and chips. “But I haven’t had breakfast yet.”

“Me neither,” Lisa tells him, her hand lingering with his before she looks back to Alec. “If you could—”

“That’s where I’m heading,” Brian cuts her off, their fingers slowly dragging away from each other as he steps away. “I’ll whip us up something nice and easy, be back in half an hour at most.”

“Thank you,” I tell him and Lisa echoes me as our tallest teammate steps away and out into the hall, his heavy stomps echoing through the door he closed.

With Brian gone, the room lapses into somewhat of a warm silence, the only sound being the rise and fall of Alec’s chest and the skittering wall in front of him. The bugs are turning into something else when I give Alec the last few dozen he needs to stop… smoking? I don’t know if that’s what he would call it but regardless, the final black flake takes control of a defanged tarantula as the painting shifts into something else.

I’m not sure what it is yet, the last one was very familiar to me but it’s a bit difficult to pick out a scene when the colors he has in abundance are brown and black. 

Regardless, the sound of them crawling over each other doesn’t give me nearly as much anxiousness as when they’re up close, I don’t know why that is to be honest but I’ll just take it as another quirk of power desensitizing me to bugs.

Lisa and I don’t chat for a good few minutes, both of us are too busy looking at the teen on the bed and it’s with a heavy heart that I realize something. 

We missed his birthday. 

I actually gasp when I remember that. 

He… last October, the one before last actually, Alec had let it slip that he didn’t actually know when his birthday was. Of course we were shocked, we all knew that, given how he had grown up, Alec had some… gaps that we didn’t.

His education was sporadic at best, if you want an in depth discussion on Psychology, Fine Arts, Criminology, or even French History all the way up to the second World War, Alec is an expert but when it comes to the things I learned in school, he acts like he’s never heard of it.

Well, I thought it was an act, at the time I couldn’t wrap my head around the idea that someone wouldn’t know what a Rhino was but—

Anyway. 

His spotty education was one thing but not knowing his own birthday was… it struck me as terribly sad. When we met, he said he was fifteen and then, when he told me he didn’t actually know, I asked why he thought he was fifteen and apparently he’d just been using his siblings as mile markers for the years.

But he wasn’t actually that far off, according to Amy, he was about fifteen given the condition of his bones but he was going to be turning sixteen that October.

Needless to say, we went all out, for the first time in years Brockton Bay was relatively safe and… we told the mayor we wanted to do some kind of festival for Halloween, a week long bash. Lisa had rationalized it as a PR move, something PHO could crow about, that it was because of the Undersiders kids in the docks could trick or treat but really, we just wanted to give Alec a birthday to remember.

But last year… he didn’t have that.

“He’s seventeen,” I say, staring down at him, my voice solemn. 

It doesn’t take any more than those two words for Lisa to get what I mean and her head jolts up in recognition.

“Oh…” she says, the silence shifting into something heavier. “That’s right… he turned sixteen last… yeah.”

She’s at a loss for words and I can’t blame her and I… I want to listen to what Diane said, I want to tell myself that it wasn’t my fault but how couldn’t it be?

We went through so much together, we gave Alec the whole city his last birthday, we strong armed the mayor into organizing something last minute just for him and I… how the hell did I forget what he meant to me?

“We’ve got to do something big next year,” I suggest, Lisa nodding along. “Something huge, maybe we could rent a yacht or something? It needs to be grand, something he won’t forget, something we—”

I freeze up when someone starts walking down the hall towards us and Lisa catches on immediately. When I brought my bugs up for Alec to use, I dispersed some of the smaller ones, gnats and mosquitoes mostly, through the penthouse.

It does spit in the face of the rules we set up when I moved in but I don’t care, old habits die hard and someone is walking towards the room, someone with almost silent steps. Lisa gets out of her chair and shifts it a bit towards the door, ready to use it as cover as her left hand moves to her back holster.

On instinct, I make Atlas aware of what’s going on and have him move towards the window, ready to open it and fly up towards us if we need him. Lisa spares a glance towards me and I bring the few venomous bugs in the wall closer to the exits, ready to leap out as my brain whirs with possibilities.

Lisa was sure she got rid of all of Heartbreaker’s moles and without Crucible, none of them should have access to this floor anyway. So that either makes them a Stranger or one of Alec’s less volatile siblings, one of them that could hide their loyalties better than the others, maybe—

Knock, knock… knock

The person on the other side waits patiently to be let in and I’ll admit, I wasn’t expecting them to be courteous. After a beat of silence, with Lisa carefully putting her hands back to her sides, a voice speaks up through the door.

“May I come in?” he, and it’s definitely a he, asks.

“You may,” Lisa answers and though she tries to get her tone back into its usual nonchalance, she doesn’t quite manage it and if I can tell that she’s rattled, one of Heartbreaker’s kids definitely will too.

The door swings open to reveal the lanky giant I saw downstairs, Sebastian is almost as tall as Brian but unlike him, he doesn’t wear his height as well. Where Brian is proportional, his muscles filling out his frame, Sebastian is all limbs, with long arm, long legs and a skinny torso that honestly makes him look a little awkward.

His platinum blonde hair falls down his shoulders in bright curls and as soon as he walks in, he can tell that Lisa and I are both on edge, his lips rising up into a lazy smile as he puts both his hands up.

“Don’t worry,” he tells us, putting both of his hands into his front pockets. “I’m cool, don’t have like, a grenade or whatever shoved down my pants.”

“Why are you here?” Lisa asks, cutting to the chase immediately. Sebastian might not have snuck up here exactly but we’re both still wary of him. The wariness is heightened when someone new comes into the hall, his stomps heavy and hurried and given that he’s the only person here I haven’t marked, I know who he is.

Brian reaches into the room as quickly as he can, his hand shooting out to grab Sebastian by the scruff of his neck, his darkness rising up from his fingers as Sebastian’s eyes widen.

“Hold on,” he says before any of us can question him. “I swear, I’m literally just here to check on him alright? That’s all.”

“Really?” Brian asks rhetorically, stepping into the room and tightening his grip. “Is that why you snuck past me? Because you just wanted to see him that badly? Why didn’t you ask me first?”

Even being held in place, his power subverted by Brian’s, the tallest Vasil still has plenty of bite in his voice when he replies.

“You’ll have to forgive me if I didn’t want to be told no, I know how smitten you are with him alright and I’m not here to fuck that up, but just because he’s your beau or whatever doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to check in on him, alright?”

“You didn’t seem all that eager to check in on him before.” I point out, ignoring his accusation. He turns his blue eyes to me and for just a second I think I see a flash of hurt behind them. I know what I’m implying is cruel, I know there were extenuating circumstances and reasons for why he didn’t help (Lisa made that abundantly clear on the drive back) but still, I don’t trust any of them and if saying rude things get them to leave Alec alone then—

“He’s not here to hurt Alec,” Lisa says, nodding to the singer and then looking over his shoulder to Brian. “You can let him go.”

Brian does as he’s ordered and Sebastian raises a hand up to rub at the back of his neck as he turns to look at his captor. 

“Y’know,” he starts, “Even if I wanted to hurt him, I couldn’t, your healer didn’t repair all the damage the bees did.”

He looks back to me and a cool impassiveness takes over his features, looking utterly unimpressed with me.

“Did you have to do that?” he asks, “I know my power can be a bitch to work around but seriously? Tear gas would’ve worked just as well as shoving actual wasps down my throat.”

“It was what I had on hand,” I answer coolly, my glare cracking a bit when I look him over. Before, when he said he was just here to check on Alec, all I was thinking about were the worst possibilities. I thought he was asking if he could defend himself, that he was just looking for weaknesses to prod but looking at him now, there’s an earnestness that I don’t think he can fake.

His eyes are heavy with a lack of sleep, sunken and with bags on top of bags, his hair has the slightest sheen that says he hasn’t showered, there’s dirt under his fingernails even. All those things are the same signs Alec gives when he’s stressed and Sebastian only has one explanation for it.

He really is just worried about his little brother.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him, actually feeling a bit of remorse when I gesture to the bug-covered window. “But you’ll have to forgive me, the last time one of Alec’s siblings came to the Bay, she nominated him for the Nine.”

Sebastian snorts.

“That sounds like Cherie, she was always dramatic.”

Hearing him say that makes me bristle, a Nine nomination is no joke to just brush off. Alec might not have gone through the same trials Amy did but I know without a doubt that if he had been forced to go through with it…

It’s enough to force bile up my throat.

I don’t want to think about what those psychopaths would’ve done, Alec’s already been through enough without going through that particular wringer.

“So,” Sebastian says, leaning on the tips of his toes but not actually stepping closer to Alec. “He’s alright then? He… he isn’t going to die right? Your healer fixed him?”

Even as monstrous as he is, or as monstrous as I think he is more accurately, there’s still enough concern lacing his voice that it almost sounds normal. His eyes scan over Alec, wincing slightly at the complexion of his skin but shoulders sagging just a bit when he sees that his brother is breathing evenly.

“No one told you?” Brian asks and Sebastian hums for him to elaborate. “Your brother is going to be fine, hurt but… he’s going to be okay.”

“Thank you,” the eldest living Vasil says, falling back to his heels. “And for the record, no, we’re all being kept in the dark right now and though I can understand the suspicion… he is still our brother and… please try to keep us posted, as much as you can.”

None of us offer to fulfill that request and after a beat of silence, the blonde Vasil rocks back on to his heels, his hands clasped under his chest.

“Well, I can see he’s still breathing and I’d rather not be so close to a window when Ms. Bitch comes in. Tata for now.”

And with his odd farewell said, he turns around and slips between Brian and the door, his light footsteps becoming completely silent just a few steps later. This time I tag him with a few more bugs and send them skittering over him as slowly as I can, Lisa might’ve said his voice still wasn’t good to sing but I’m not gonna chance that he doesn’t have a gun or knife or—

“Taylor,” Lisa chastises me, her head tilted at the chin and her green eyes pointed towards me accusingly.

“I know,” I reply, already knowing what this is about. “I know the circumstances I just… I can’t believe they say they care when—”

“They do care,” Lisa cuts me off, her voice hard. “I know it doesn’t look normal to you, I doubt it looks normal to anyone besides them but they do care. It’s just… they don’t— they can’t show it like you or I can. But they do care.”

This must be the third time I’ve heard this lecture and while I try my best to absorb it, there’s some fundamental part of my brain that refuses to. Siblings don’t let that happen, they shouldn’t let that happen, they don’t get to suddenly start caring after the danger’s gone, I don’t get it

Sebastian alone could’ve done something, any of them could’ve done something to stop him, they were resistant to him but it didn’t work the other way around and… I know I’m not being fair, I know it but there’s still some part of me that can’t let it go, that can’t let them just waltz in here and suddenly start caring.

Lisa’s lecture peters out and without another word, Brian goes back out into the hall, probably returning to the kitchen as I look at the new landscape Alec’s made. I’m still not sure what it is honestly, but I think this one isn’t a painting, at least, it’s not a classical one.

There’s some kind of symbol on the left of it, a weird diamond shape with some kind of lizard or dragon motif in the middle and on the right of it are words I think but the bugs I’ve given him are too big to actually form letters.

“It’s a game screen,” Lisa says, one hand up and pointing at the image. “I can’t remember what it’s called, the Elder… something. I know he paid way too much for it but scalper’s for earth Aleph games don’t charge less than 500 dollars.”

She laughs, leaning back in her chair and staring up at the ceiling, lost in some memory.

“He played it so much the disc ended up cracking and then it did the same for the next three.”

“He bought it four times?” I ask, wondering how good it could possibly be to be worth buying that many times.

“He bought it six times,” Lisa corrects and my jaw almost drops. Even with how much money we have now, I don’t think I could spend 3000 dollars on a single thing, let alone a game! A book maybe but definitely not a game. “And for the record, he didn’t even think it was all that good but he did enjoy it.”

When she says it like that, I get what she means. Alec had a few different things he bounced around with and though there were some of them that he swore were a pain in the ass, he went to them like I go back to the Hobbit.

Like, if you were to ask him if he enjoyed sketching, he’d probably tell you that it was a pain and that if he skip the pre work he would but he always went back to it when he had a free moment to himself.

He… he was actually very passionate, if you looked in his eyes, you would see that same drive that all artists have.

God.

I want to talk to him again.

Looking at him now, my chest aches with the need to just ask him how his day’s going, what he’s planning to do this evening and… I just need him to tell us we weren’t too late. I need him to move, to talk, to laugh, I need him to do something— anything that proves we made it in time.

But he hasn’t done… anything.

Ever since the day after we killed Heartbreaker, he hasn’t been himself or I guess more accurately, it’s like he isn’t there. His eyes will follow us, he’ll walk with us if we hold his hand but otherwise, he’s completely catatonic, we’ve even had to force him to eat.

It hurts. Even when he isn’t going through whatever his power is forcing him to do, it feels like he isn’t there, like we failed, like the boy we knew and fought with and… and loved is gone and this is all we have left and it hurts to think that.

I want him to come back to us, I want him here and making his stupid jokes but he isn’t and it’s not fair.

I reach down and place both of my hands around his own, the spider cupped between our palms as someone starts walking down the hall, someone with heavy but distinctly different stomps.

Rachel just barely manages to get the door open on her own and when she comes through it, she almost falls through the door, her hands going back up and securing a heavy cardboard box.

“There wasn’t much,” she says in lieu of a greeting, “Just a game console, a lot of clothes with the tags still on, and a lot of liquor that went bad.”

Hearing what she’s brought with her, I deflate. I know it was too much to hope that we’d find more of Alec’s things but I wanted there to at least be enough for him to be comfortable.

“That makes sense,” Lisa says, getting up from her chair and helping Rachel root through the box. “He wasn’t there for very long and… he didn’t have much of a reason to leave before we…”

She trails off and when she tries to take a steadying breath, her façade cracks right down the middle, her calm demeanor shattering as Rachel reaches over the box to hold her, pressing their foreheads together as Lisa starts to sob in earnest.

That’s how Brian finds us, us three girls holding each other over a box of dusty clothes. Lisa keeps sobbing the whole time and it isn’t until Brian urges her to eat that her cries start to slow. I can’t blame her for breaking down, I’m sure whatever weight we have she does too, just that with her, it’s piled on by whatever her power informs her of.

“There has to be something in there,” I say, not even really registering the food Brian’s brought. The sandwiches are good of course, nothing he makes is ever bad but my attention is too focused on other things. I point to the closet, “How much do you think we put in there?”

“Not much,” Rachel answers around a mouthful of her own sandwich, “Me and Brian just sort’ve… threw shit in there. Anything that didn’t fit we… yeah.”

I nod, the spike of remorse dulled by how many times it’s stabbed at me today. Getting up and to the door is easy enough but opening it is harder. I’m not prepared for how much or how little is left in there but the only way to know is to walk in and with a deep breath, I do just that.

I flick on the lights as I step in, noting that a fair amount of his clothes are still here, a few copies of his old costume, and in the far back, leaning against the wall are two things I’m both happy and not to see.

Stepping over paint bottles and old sheets, pushing past the nightstands, I gently lay my hand on top of the wooden easel, happy to see it’s in good condition and almost weeping to see how much dust is caking it.

A few canvases are scattered around it, some of them plain and untouched and some with barely half formed sketches laid into them. One of them lays on top of something, tilting it off to the side and when I lift it up curiously, I find a worn shoebox, the corners of it lighter than the rest. It must’ve been picked up often.

Lifting it up only whets my curiosity, it’s too light to just have a pair of shoes in it but with the bulb above me burnt out, I decide to leave the closet before I open it.

“What’s that?” Brian asks, his voice just barely back to the steadiness it’s supposed to have. 

“I don’t know,” I answer, walking past my chair and to the other three, “It doesn’t have shoes in it I think.”

The others crowd around me and, mindful of where his legs are, I sit on the bed on the left of Alec’s feet. I don’t know what I expected to find when I opened the box, a cloud of dust puffing up at the jerky movement but I didn’t expect to find photos.

Dozens of them, little glossy polaroids that have started to fade around the edges.

And on all of them, every single one, is a picture of us. 

Seeing them makes me gasp, each one sparking a flood of memories.

The one laying on top of them all is a selfie on the couch downstairs, Alec’s face in the center with the rest of crowding around him, Lisa’s chin on his right shoulder, my hand on his left and my head tilted towards his and with both Brian and Rachel leaning down to be a part of the frame.

At the bottom it reads, “Valentine’s Day… 2012.”

“The day we moved in,” I point out needlessly, the others know that of course but still. This was the day it all started but by this point, his influence was so weak that… that I still remember this night being lovely. It was supposed to be a new beginning, a place where we could all settle and kick up our feet and… that isn’t what happened. “What did he take this with? I don’t remember him having a camera.”

“He doesn’t,” Lisa says, grabbing the polaroid from me and pointing out some smudged text at the bottom of the photo. “He took the pic with his phone, then had it developed. He’s…” she shakes her head, a fondness infecting her voice as her thumb runs over the text. “He’s such a dork, getting this made it… I bet all of them were taken with his phone.”

“Yeah,” Brian chuckles, grabbing for another photo and barking out a laugh as he flips it around. Seeing it gets me to laugh too and even Rachel chuckles when we look at the glossy polaroid. “We spent so much money on those costumes.”

“They look good though,” Lisa argues, tilting her head and snorting. “I mean, they look ridiculous but at least they’re professional.”

I don’t say anything, my mind too focused on the actual photo. It’s last Halloween, the last one that mattered I mean, at Diane’s house. The five of us are standing in front of her ridiculously sized manor, the party behind us just now starting, with all of us dressed as the inaugural Wards.

I went as Miss Militia, Brian went as Chevalier, Rachel was Firebrand, Alec had way too much as Mouse Protector, and Lisa looks visibly annoyed that she had to go as Reed.

“They look nice,” Brian says, shaking his head. “But there’s no reason for the replica to cost as much as my actual costume.”

The others start talking about that night but I’m still fixed on the photo. We all look so damn happy in this, even with most of our faces hidden, we still look so damn happy. Remembering that just makes me remember the rest of the night and though the others probably have the benefit of being drunk, I didn’t touch a drop.

No, my memory of it all is crystal clear. 

This was the night we all ended up kissing.

“Is that why you wore that lip balm?” I ask, not taking my eyes off the almost neon green of Lisa’s lips. “The green apple one?”

“Uhhh…” Lisa trails off, clearing her throat and my lips tug up into a smile when I hear how off footed she sounds. It’s rare that I’m the one who does this to her, usually it’s the other way around. “Yeah, it um… I thought it worked with the outfit. Thanks for reminding me by the way.”

I snort at her sarcasm and look up, feeling my own cheeks flush as I watch the blush on hers start to rise. She remembers that night, she might’ve been drunker than any of us but I remember how she leaned into me, confessing that she always wanted to kiss me.

I remember thinking how odd that was, that the girl who proclaimed she had no interest in anyone would want to kiss me of all people but then again, she did say she was probably demi the day after it all.

“No problem,” I say, smiling just a little wider when I see how flustered the others are. They know if they say anything, it’ll just incriminate them. At the time, I had thought that we were just drunk, that maybe what we did was typical for a raucous night of drinking but… I’ve a week to wrestle with my feelings on that.

I’m still not sure where those feelings will lead and just thinking about some of the possibilities makes my stomach flutter with butterflies. It’s a topic left for another day I think, when all of us can discuss it maybe.

Brian sets the photo down at the same time another catches my eye and when I lift it to the light, Lisa groans in annoyance.

“Of course he developed that one,” she grumbles as Brian and I laugh. To be honest, this photo would’ve damned us when we had first started out but now I could see Alec posting it just for shits and giggles.

“It was so stupid,” I say, still giggling a bit. “Didn’t you tell him to delete this?” I ask Brian, tilting the photo more so he can take a look at it.

It must’ve been taken right after the bank robbery, at least given the date scrawled on the bottom. Alec is flashing a middle finger to the camera, a smirk on his lips and three duffle bags full of money right behind him, laying on the kitchen island we had back in the loft.

“I sure did,” Brian says, a bit of faux outrage slipping into his tone. “And I thought I made sure he deleted this one.”

“You did,” Lisa replies, a fair amount of smugness in her voice and a grin on her lips. “But he just downloaded it from the recently deleted folder.”

“There’s a folder for that?” Brian asks, looking up at Lisa and rolling his eyes when Lisa laughs.

“I swear, you’re like the first forty year old teenager.”

“Oh c’mon, not every teenager knows about that.”

“Yes they do,” Rachel speaks up before Lisa can, igniting her giggles. “Even I know that and I hate fucking phones.”

“Still,” Brian tries to shoulder on despite the laughter he’s making. “He shouldn’t have taken this, it’s the most incriminating thing I’ve ever seen.”

“‘Incriminate schimimate,” I quote the comatose boy on the bed. “Those were his exact words and y’know what? He still—”

“Hello,”

The voice behind me makes me freeze, makes all of us freeze. Rachel drops her sandwich to the floor, I drop the photo and nearly drop the box too. Lisa and Brian and all of us look back towards the bed, all of us deathly still, hoping to god what we just heard wasn’t a collective illusion.

It isn’t.

Alec’s eyes are still glazed over and not entirely present but he’s absolutely looking at us, his blue eyes dulled by the haze of his power. Flakes of dark rise up and out of the wall, slowly drifting back to him and with each, a bit more color comes into his face, his awareness heightening.

He tries to lift his head up and to the side but when it starts to dip forward, I lunge for him, the box of photos clattering to the floor and sending the pictures scattering as I gently hold his head up.

“Alec!” I just barely keep myself from shouting, my gaze raking over his face as his eyes gently droop close, blinking slowly. He stares at me with tired blue eyes and it’s only because a dozen new bugs form in my awareness that I look away from him.

The bugs on the window are steadily becoming mine again but unlike the flakes in the wall, the dark shapes don’t start floating towards Alec quite yet, instead, they form a loose collection in front of the window, becoming a pure black ball as more and more of the swarm become my own.

The room is dead silent, half us watching the blob of dark and the other half watching Alec when a hand pokes out of the blob, the dark fingers dripping with the blackest black as a silhouette starts to take shape.

The creature in front of us puts me on edge, even knowing that it’s just an extension of the boy on the bed, the uncanniness of it still makes my spine shiver and that feeling doesn’t go away when Alec’s will vanishes from all of the bugs. 

I call my swarm to me, having them skitter underneath the bed and into the walls as the figure steps on to the ground, it’s footfalls completely silent as I gulp.

“It’s okay,” Lisa tries to assure us but the shake in her voice just puts me more on edge. “It’s just him, it’s… it’s just going to be going back to him, alright?”

I nod as the figure’s features sharpen, the edges of it turning into a dancer’s build, with a mop of equally black curls.

The thing that might as well be an otherworldly Alec steps towards the bed and I’m about to get off it when it suddenly picks up speed, passing through—

The instant it slips into my skin, I fall to the floor, my head pounding as my awareness jumps into a higher gear. I can sense it all, the bugs in the jar, the bugs underneath this build, the bugs a dozen blocks away, I can control them all, every single one, if I were at a lower point in the tower I might be able to see a whole third of the city.

And what I mean by see is exactly that, the eyes and ears of every single member of my swarm has suddenly sharpened, becoming just as good as my own eyes. I can see it all, a couple is fighting over rent ten blocks to the south, an older woman with a walker is trying to mug another elderly woman down by the docks, a kid has a string wrapped around a fly, I can—

And just like that, the awareness slips back to what it’s supposed to be and I find myself back in my actual body, gasping for breath as I look up to the teen holding me.

Brian is brushing my hair away from my eyes, Rachel is looking me over for injuries and Lisa and I both watch as the specter slips back into Alec’s skin.

And just like what happened to me, Alec jolts like he’s been struck by lightning, his chest rising up and off the bed as he takes a deep, shuddering breath. His limbs jump out from his sides, stretching like he’s on a rake before he lets them fall back to his bed, a lazy smile on his face as he turns his eyes to us.

“Oh…” he says, voice dry and rasped. “Hey guys… what… what happened?”

We all lunge for him, making him the center of a group hug as the tears start to roll.