Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

“You did what I asked, now leave before I make you.”

I blinked, trying to place the voice. It was familiar, but it had been so long since anyone other than her spoke to me, I felt…

“No, I need to explain, to tell her why -“

I flinched back, tensing as I grabbed the edge of the bathtub I was in. Porcelain cracked and splintered under my…fingers? Fingers. I had fingers. I don’t know why, but that felt important.

“I don’t care. Leave. Now.” The voice came out harsh, as swarms of blackness chittered over the walls behind us.

I shut my eyes, clamping my hands over my ears. It was too much, I couldn’t process. I couldn’t let anyone see me, smell me, touch me. There was the distant sound of a door closing, and then silence.

“Glory Girl?” the voice said. I shut my eyes, my nails digging into my palms. God I never thought I’d be so happy to be able to do that again.

There was a pause.

“Victoria?”

I blinked my eyes open, and stared up at the figure standing by the door. She was dressed in black, with armored plates over her forearms, chest, and thighs. A face-mask shaped like the face of an insect, with yellow eyes met my gaze, and I shuddered. Skitter.

“I need you to tell me what happened,” Skitter said.

The porcelain beneath me was cold and hard. The hand wasn’t. It was warm. Warm hand on skin, reaching, grabbing, pulling, twisting. Clothes slipping off to the floor. Sight line bleeding and bending around the edges. The sound of breathing, hot and desperate. 

I screeched and flinched back into the corner. Nononono not that… not her, never her, please don’t make me go back, please I don’t want it. I’ll do anything just make it stop-

“Hey,” Skitter said, breaking me out of my spiral. I focused back on her, my vision blurry and dim. “Are you with me?”

I nodded, almost reflexively. I felt like I was floating above my body in a haze, my thoughts just vague suggestions hovering above me.

“Are you able to talk?”

I opened my mouth and-

“        “

“Okay,” Skitter said, even as my thoughts kept spinning, “different question. Do you want to talk?”

I shook my head. Talking led to thinking led to remembering led to— no. Easier not to. Safer.

“Do you have anyone to go to, right now? Somewhere safe?” Skitter said, evaluating me as I looked over myself. Clearly she was thinking the same thing that I was, namely that I looked like I lost a fight with a food processor. My skin was red and irritated in uneven splotches across my body. My hair was longer than I’d ever kept it, and dark with fluids I didn’t want to name. My body was slick with… the point was, I looked like I crawled out of a nightmare.

I shook my head rather than try and talk again.

Skitter took a deep breath. “Do you need help?”

Did I need help? Of course I did, but… could I trust her? Could I trust anyone ?  … What choice did I have? The heroes, my family, no one else was here. It was just her.

I nodded.

 “Then you’re going to need clothes,” Skitter said, before tossing something at me. I flinched as it covered my head. I pulled it down only to realize that it was a set of bath towels and a robe. God knows where she got those from.

Skitter turned around. “I’ll get you something more permanent to wear. Go get cleaned up.” She paused as she headed out of the door, her hand catching on the frame. It was minute, but I could see her fingers twitching. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think I was talking to a girl just as out of her depth as I was. “I didn’t see anything. I won’t watch. Knock on the door when you’re done.” Then she left.

I let my breath out in a giant sigh and just sat for a couple of minutes. I tried to process, well, anything really, without much success. Why now? Why her? Why help me? I wish I had answers.

There were some voices outside of the bathroom door, but it was too muffled to hear anything. I tried to make something out, but whoever it was, they were too far away.

I shivered. I was getting cold.

I slowly uncurled from the fetal position I had woken up in, groaning as my muscles tensed for possibly the first time ever. I tried not to think about that too much.

I patted myself dry, wincing as the towels invariably came away soaked in god knows what. Whatever, it wasn’t like Skitter cared, so why should I? I stood up, and deliberately didn’t face the mirror as I pulled on the bathrobe and cinched it around my waist. I didn’t want to see what body she had left me with. It was too recent. I could deal with that later, when this nightmare was a bit further away.

 I paused before the door to the bathroom, my hand inches away from the wood. What reason did I have to trust Skitter? The last time we met, I almost smashed her and her team into paste at the bank. And that bitch Tattletale was the one to set off this whole mess. This could all be some sick joke to get under my skin.

There was a creak, and I looked down. My other hand had latched onto the towel rack nearby, and it proved no match for me as I clenched down, immediately crushing and bending it. The metal squealed as I pulled it away and stared.

Okay, so that’s at least one thing that hasn’t changed. I let the twisted clump of metal drop down to the floor. The familiar assurance of my strength finally brought my heartrate down. At least if Skitter and the rest turned on me, I had a way out. The Undersiders were slippery for a reason – they hated straight up fights. I doubt they had a way to keep me there if I wanted out.

“Victoria?” I started as Skitter’s voice called out from the room outside. “Are you there?”

I knocked on the door. The wood creaked ominously. Shit.

“Do you want to get dressed there or in this room?”

There was a pause as I thought about how to respond. “One knock for bathroom, two for this room.”

I knocked once.

“Open the door a crack then. I’ll close my eyes, but I need to pass the clothes to you.”

Was this the moment where her patience finally ran out? Where she blasted past what remained of my boundaries and forced me to dress in my old clothes? If not now, then when? Was this even still the same Skitter that I met back at the bank so long ago? The one who casually held the lives of everyone in the building in the palm of her hand. The one who led to this entire mess in the first place. She certainly didn’t seem to be acting like it. That Skitter would have just… left. At best. In retrospect, the Undersiders’ MO until that point didn’t match the bank job or everything that came after. It was also Skitter’s debut, and I couldn’t help but think the two were connected. How much of that had been…?

I opened the door a crack.

The dark hand of Skitter’s costume entered briefly, holding a nondescript pile of clothes. She pulled back as soon as I grabbed them, closing the door behind her.

The clothes were worn in much the same way anything was after Leviathan passed through (and I suppose Slaughterhouse Nine as well). The jeans were a faded blue and ragged at the edges. The shirt was dark with what looked like a logo for a defunct band on them, the letters long lost to time or water.

Perfect. I closed my eyes, and started pulling the clothes on. Okay. It was time to consider my options. My history dictated that I make a break for the heroes as soon as possible. My… family wasn’t exactly an option. Even if they took my side — and god, I didn’t even want to consider the alternative — they weren’t here. Maybe if Mom, or even Aunt Sarah were here, things would be different. As it was, I just didn’t want to bridge the gap myself. Call it cowardice, but part of me just didn’t want them to ever see me like this.

I buttoned my jeans. Alright, what about the heroes then? I wanted to believe the best of Battery, of Miss Militia, of Assault. But there were too many holes. Everyone heard what Armsmaster did during the Leviathan fight, to Skitter in particular. Yeah she wasn’t exactly a saint, but even villains didn’t deserve to get treated like that. The Truce existed for a reason. And Dean… Dean . I knew myself well enough to say that I wasn’t anywhere near processing… losing him. Did he know what was going on with Amy? Maybe not specifically what, but given what he’d told me he could sense from other people, total ignorance wouldn’t make sense. It also made some of the way he seemed to tread on eggshells around her…

I shook myself, and pulled the shirt over my head. Regardless of what Dean might or might not have known, I couldn’t exactly ask him about it. Besides, I couldn’t afford to think about that right now. 

I caught a bitter twist of a smile on my face as I turned to put up my hair with the hairband Skitter had left. Speaking of which, that left my final option. Skitter. One of the… maybe not the biggest villains in the bay, but the scariest. This was a villain who had chosen to keep an entire bank hostage with black widows, who fought Bakuda head on without flinching, who put down Lung when her partner had already been out cold. Someone so unpredictable that the Protectorate regularly told me not to engage with if I spotted her. A villain who, when deprived of any other options, picked up one of Armsmaster’s halberds, ran up to Leviathan, and stuck it where it hurt. The same person who… helped me, when she had no reason to.

Skitter had been, well, not nice, but definitely not who I remembered her being. And that brought up a whole other issue. How sure could I be of any of this? I couldn’t exactly trust my memory since… that had happened to me.

I shuddered, and leaned back against the wall. The cool tile felt slick with my sweat and… whatever else was left on the back of my neck.

Okay, I could at least acknowledge that my recollection of events was suspect. And more to the point, nothing said that anything before that point couldn’t have been altered. Maybe Skitter herself really had been planning this all since the bank, and I couldn’t know any better. For all I knew this was a scheme between the two of them and—

“Victoria, let me know when you’re done. My team is coming, but I’ve told them to stay back until you’re ready. Truce rules.”

I grimaced and tried to turn the sink on, only to flinch as the brittle metal handle shattered in my hands. I guess that was one way to shock me out of my thoughts. Good thing that running water was a rarity after Leviathan—can’t believe I tried to turn the sink on to begin with.

I closed my eyes and tried to gather my thoughts. There was only so much I could do about any of this. Maybe Skitter was some mastermind that had me exactly where she wanted me. Maybe my family or the Protectorate were on the way right now, begging for me to resist for just a little bit longer. But none of them were here. Skitter was. And like it or not, she’d saved me. I at least owed it to her, and maybe myself, to hear her out. At least she’d been honest, telling me where her team was.

I glanced at my body in the mirror. As clean as I could get without running water, I supposed. I opened the door and stepped out to meet Skitter.

“Are you comfortable?” were the first words out of her mouth.

I gave her a look, and to her credit she had the decency to leave an awkward pause. “Considering the circumstances, at least.”

I wished I could laugh at that. Comfortable, sure. At least she’d given me a familiar setting to focus on. Truce rules. No mastering, no secret identity tricks, no going after people for whatever else they did in costume. Fine, I could deal with that. The last thing I needed was Skitter going after the rest of my family. My identity was a matter of public record, sure, but there was a difference between fighting one of us at “work” and showing up at midnight unannounced. Aunt Jess had found that out the hard way.

Taking my silence as a response, Skitter continued, “My teammate is close by. Do you want to talk beforehand?”

I paused. She mentioned her team earlier, but she didn’t say which one was coming now. For all I knew, it might be that bitch Tattletale again. Or Hellhound with those nightmare dogs of hers. Or someone even worse. I didn’t know what to expect with the rest of her team. Skitter might be terrifying, but at least she was a somewhat known quantity.

I nodded.

“Alright,” Skitter said before gesturing at two chairs and a table she had presumably pulled out previously. We sat down across from each other, her yellow lenses looking directly at me. For my part, I tried to really look at her for the first time again. Skitter’s costume was, for the most part, unchanged from the first time I saw her. And that itself was notable, because that was the first time anyone saw her. Now that I was looking closely, I could see that the material of her dark bodysuit wasn’t made of traditional fabric. Rather, it was tiny gray threads superimposed on each other, woven together into some kind of a lattice. That weave extended down past her waist before flaring out into an almost gauzy skirt. Something like that looked handmade, and my family would know. In my early days, my skirt used to break constantly. At some point, I don’t remember when exactly, I got better at keeping it out of the line of fire. But until then, the bill for replacements was outrageous. Mom wouldn’t stop talking about it.

The armored plates on her forearms and chest looked different than I had first thought. I (and many others) assumed she used kevlar or some tinker equivalent. But now that I looked closer, they were actually tiny… were those beetle shells ? That was some frankly insane attention to detail for the sake of maintaining a motif. I hoped for her sake she hadn’t run into any gunfire yet. Those didn’t look like they’d stand up to higher calibers.

“She isn’t going to hurt you again.”

There was a pause as we both looked at each other. “I know that I said we were under truce rules earlier. And I meant it. But I thought you should know, you don’t need to worry about her right now.”

Right now? What did she mean right now? Was that a promise or a threat? I remembered earlier that she thanked her for ‘doing what she asked.’ Was Skitter going to call her back if I wasn’t cooperative? 

“W-w-what d-do you w-want?”

My raspy voice surprised me, and even her, judging by the way her attention snapped to my face. She tilted her head. “Immediately? For this to end better than the last time we met. Anything more is up to you.”

More… my brain started to stall out as I tried to consider what that could mean. Would she hand me back to her when the time came? Could I go back to the heroes if I wanted to? My family? Would I even get a choice at all? A part of me didn’t even want to think about all the ways this could end.

“For now, can I bring my teammate in to negotiate? You’ve been… out… for at least a few days, and we can fill you in.”

Well. That was certainly better than most of the offers I’d gotten lately. 

Chapter Text

“Well don’t sound too excited to see me,” Tattletale drawled as she settled into the chair across from me at the table.

I tried to not react to that as Skitter settled in on the third side, completing our little triangle. Okay, time to focus. The Protectorate didn’t have much on Tattletale’s powers up until now, and I doubted that changed recently. Ironically, I might have more experience dealing with her than most.

Tattletale smiled as I let out an involuntary twitch at that thought. “Not looking so hot there huh, Glory Hole?”

There was a faint whining in my ears as I was thrown back almost a month ago to that day in the bank. God, was that really how it had all started? I remembered Dean had told me to hold back, but they’d had my… sister. She was so scared, she’d barely got a text out before they took her phone, and I’d needed to go in–

No. Focus. Useful information. Tattletale was a Thinker, I knew that much. There was no way she could’ve known any of… that otherwise. I still didn’t believe her psychic schtick. But given what she found out, and how little she had to go off of, it was probably safe to assume she could figure out anything she wanted to.

As if to punctuate my point, Tattletale leaned back, her eyes running across my form. I tried not to shiver. “So Skitter just found you here?” I opened my mouth– “Yes, a coincidental meeting. On both sides, I would think. Certainly not planned on Panacea’s part.” I couldn’t maintain eye contact. The ringing in my ears grew louder.

“Now, how did Skitter convince her to fix you? I guess it doesn’t matter really–” It sure mattered considering I was free again “–but you’re still here. Given that your Brute rating is fine, you could leave if you really wanted. But you didn’t. Seems like our friendly neighborhood wrecking ball is feeling anxious about seeing Mom and Pop. How am I doing so far?”

Most people think tunnel vision happens when something makes you so angry, so emotional, so vulnerable, that everything seems to fall away. Your vision narrows, the periphery goes dark, and everything seems tinged with red. Well, it’s nothing like that.

Maybe tunnel vision isn’t even the right word, but in this moment, I couldn’t find anything else that felt like it fit.

Everything seemed sharper, harder. My vision never felt clearer, but instead of Tattletale’s words, it was the tiniest things I found myself focusing on. The crease at the corner of her eye behind her domino mask. Was she angry? Nervous? The incessant ticking of the clock on the wall. I hadn’t even noticed that when I sat down, yet now I couldn’t unhear it. The low grinding of my fingernails into the hardwood of the table as I tried to keep myself from… doing something I knew I’d regret.

A word cut through the noise.

“Tattletale.” Skitter was looking at her, posture loose and relaxed.

“Hey, I was playing nice, no need to get upset,” Tattletale said, almost deliberately casual as she glanced over at Skitter.

“No, you weren’t,” she said.

The noise was all around me now, the constant whining and scratching. I turned my head to the side and suddenly I understood why. Skitter hadn’t raised her voice – she didn’t have to. The wall behind her was writhing, cockroaches and wasps and spiders and ants and who knew what crawling over each other in a frenzy. It was enough to drown us. A distant part of me thought back to my Parahuman studies course. Was this an instinctual reaction? A display of power? How fine was her control over these insects? Was the Master component all I had to worry about? 

I swallowed roughly. Skitter was staring – glaring – at Tattletale, who seemed to be equally as worried about the situation as I was. Her eyes were wide, one hand clenched around the armrest as the other seemed to slowly be moving towards her belt. Shit. I had to break up this situation, but I couldn’t think of the words. 

My hand knocked twice on the table. I held my breath, and the buzzing lowered in intensity, pitching down to a low drone. 

Skitter’s voice drew me back to the conversation at hand. “She doesn’t know what’s going on, and she needs you to tell her. Talk, or leave and I’ll do it myself.”

“Fine, fine. So Glory Girl, up for a bit of a chat?” Tattletale said as she turned her attention back to me.

I gave her a look.

Her mouth curved up into a grin. “No, I guess you’re not as chatty as last time. Fine. Confirmation is important, even if I’m doing the talking. So one knock for yes, two for no, three for I don’t know or clarify further. Alright?”

I could feel my teeth grinding. The worst part of it was that I couldn’t argue. That I couldn’t throw her words back in her stupid face. I proved her point just by looking at her. I wanted to be sick.

I knocked once.

Tattletale smiled. “Good girl.”

I glared at her as the hissing and clicking from the walls increased. “Alright. Since you’ve been out of the loop for a good while, I’ll give you the short version. Crawler’s acid got on you and took you out. We had to get your sister–”

I knocked sharply on the table, twice. There was a long pause, as Tattletale looked at me with what might’ve been the closest thing to respect I’d ever seen her give.

“Alright. Amy then. We had to get her to heal you since you were beyond any other help — the acid had gotten too far. Do you remember up until then?”

Did I remember…? I remember going in for a punch, the wind whistling in my hair. I was unstoppable. Then a hit, and pain. Pain like I never felt before, searing through my skin, my clothes, my hair, my eyes– 

I knocked once.

Tattletale let out a sharp breath. “Okay, that’s good. At least we don’t need to cover up to that bit. Here’s where things are going to get tricky. There’s a lot that happened to the Bay, and to you, that none of us were directly there for. Or that we were only present for in pieces. I know most of it, and I’m gonna try to get through it, but you two have to promise not to bite my pretty little head off for saying something you don’t want to hear. If you need me to stop, knock twice on the table. Deal?”

I nodded mutely. Skitter must’ve done likewise out of my sightline because Tattletale took that as her cue to continue.

“Right. Let’s start with some background. When you came to us to prep for the bombing run, you were already mastered by Amy somehow. I don’t know the exact details, none of our team saw it happen, but it was bad. Bad enough that even after Crawler got to you, you didn’t want her help to heal you. You were so out of it that I judged she needed… convincing to heal you anyways. She did, but after that, she paralyzed you and flew off.”

I stared at her, my focus narrowing. This was it. Tattletale. She was the reason why Amy got her hands on me in the first place. I had taken such pains to pull away, to police myself, despite that thing that she put in my head, and yet she got me in the end anyways. Turned me into that wretch.

Grey fingers snapped in front of me. “Breathe, Victoria.” 

I gasped, air flooding into me, into my lungs. Mine. I controlled them. I flexed my joints slowly; hands, elbows, shoulders, knees, ankles. Head to toe. I opened my eyes—when had I closed them?—and looked into Skitter’s eyes.

“Are you with us?”

I nodded, not breaking her gaze. Her mask gave nothing away, like I was talking to a wall. Right now, that was almost a relief. I took the moment to organize my thoughts. Tattletale handed me over to Amy. I was not okay with that. At all. But she said to begin with that it was bad. That she wanted time to explain. Fine, I’d give her that much. But if I wasn’t satisfied by the end, I’d make it her problem, one way or another.

I knocked once on the table.

Skitter nodded and turned back to Tattletale, who had been staring at us with an expression of not quite fascination on her face. She shook herself and continued.

“So I’m not going to pretty it up, things were bad. And we contributed to that. But this next part is important. The minute you weren’t at risk of dying, we called her out. Told her she had to fix you immediately and leave you behind.”

My eyes snapped to hers almost involuntarily.

“All that shit she did to you? Came after she saved your life, not as a byproduct. Yeah, you weren’t fixed, but you were alive. I asked, argued, everything short of begged her to fix your head, and she refused. She took you, had you fly her off instead.”

The room was oddly loud. The clock ticking in the corner, an occasional groan of water-warped floor against concrete as the natural expansion of the sun gave way to the evening, the nonstop scraping of a million tiny legs against plaster.

I registered none of it.

“The next time any of us saw you was at Arcadia. The firebombing plan worked – even though it almost killed us – and it caught Crawler and Mannequin. Bonesaw retaliated by threatening to release a virus on the entire city. Skitter was trying to stop her and ran into Amy in the process.”

Her words came faster now, as if she knew she had little time to get them out.

“You were in a sort of cocoon, made of biomass she sourced elsewhere. It wasn’t people, if that’s what you were worried about.”

It wasn’t.

“It was supposed to heal you. And from what Skitter told me, it mostly had. She used you to drive Bonesaw off. Skitter got her to heal the disease Bonesaw had unleashed and make that cure spreadable. Then–”

Skitter knocked twice on the table. I startled. Why had she knocked? Surely she could’ve said something.

“Let me tell this part Tattletale, you weren’t there.”

Tattletale opened her mouth as if to argue but paused as she stared at Skitter. She slowly closed it then gestured at me, though whether it was mocking or sincere I couldn’t tell.

“By all means then, the floor is yours.”

Skitter turned back to face me. Her hands were laid flat on the table. Even the insects behind her were silent.

“I asked Amy to cure me from the agnosia plague Bonesaw had infected me with. It was causing me brain damage, and I needed to get the cure to the rest of Brockton. But that meant…”

She took a deep breath. “It meant leaving you behind. With her. I knew what she did, I told her to fix you, told myself that the Nine and the rest of the city were too important, but what matters is I left you there.”

My mouth opened before my brain quite realized I had nothing to say. What could anyone say to that? To someone admitting to your face that their mistake led to you getting… I swallowed tightly. Okay. I wasn’t… able to deal with this right now. But I could focus on one thing. Skitter didn’t need to tell me this — it served her purposes much more to gloss it over — but she was highlighting it rather than letting me put the pieces together myself. It didn’t make it okay… but it was enough to make me want to hear the rest of it.

Skitter waited for me to nod at her before continuing. “We confronted the rest of the Nine down at the shipyards and drove them off. From what we can tell, that left Amy with you here for about three days before I found you.”

I swallowed and tried to clear my throat. The hacking sound that came out was wet and angry, but it felt more genuine than anything else that had come out of my mouth in the past hour.

Tattletale found words for the question I hadn’t asked, and for once I was grateful for it. “No, there isn’t anything else. Well, technically a whole bunch of other stuff happened. Battery died at some point. The Siberian turned out to be a projection, and now she’s in the wind with the rest of the Nine. They also snagged Hookwolf, in exchange for Cherish. She’s stuck in hell at the bottom of the Bay now,” she paused and took a breath.

“But as far as the stuff related to you, that’s all we know about. Normally we wouldn’t go so far out of our way for a hero, but...” She gave a meaningful look at Skitter. “Well, the Rules may be Unwritten, but that doesn’t mean that we don’t treat them seriously. Unlike some people.”

I let out a slow sigh as I tried to gather myself. It was more difficult than I’d like. You grow up with your family telling you your whole life that you’re going to be someone – somebody important. That you’re going to help people, put a smile on kids’ faces, beat the bad guys black and blue and red, and the fantasy gets to you so bad that eventually it becomes reality. You throw yourself so hard into it that afterwards that, at some point, you forget you were anything else. 

Eventually, things start to make sense again. Everyone has a role, and you get the one you were told to fit in since you were a kid. But then, when the chips are down and the people you… care for… turn on you. It’s the villains you were fighting against that bail you out. How is someone supposed to respond to any of that? What was I supposed to do with that? Even if I assumed that what they just told me is true, which I had no real reason to, that meant what? Did I arrest them? After they saved me? Did I leave and tacitly ignore two of the biggest villains in the Bay right in front of me? If I left where would I go? To the family that had abandoned me? Would they even believe me over her? To the PRT after they hung the villains and me out to dry when bombing the Nine?

(Would the Victoria who went into that basketball game recognize who stared back at her in the mirror now? Should she?)

None of that made me feel any better. But I did know one thing: I needed a bed.

The rest could come later. 

Chapter Text

Brockton Bay had seen better days. I knew that much before I stepped outside into the gloomy June air, but it bore repeating. Leviathan had crashed into the boardwalk and coastline with all the impact and subtlety of a bomb, and the weather hadn’t been kind on what remained. Warehouses and open lots, already left in a state of disrepair from decades of economic stagnation, were literally rotting at the seams. The temporary camps and edifices that were starting to replace them weren’t much better.

The scars of the Nine covered and crossed all of this. I could see the blackened crater of Piggot’s plan to fire bomb them towards downtown. Tattletale hadn’t mentioned any civilian casualties in her summary of the past few days, and I still wasn’t sure whether to thank or curse her for that. There was still smoke rising from somewhere in between the bomb site and wherever we were. I had no idea what had caused that, but I doubted the fire department would be getting to it soon– if ever. The average time to get running water restored after a Leviathan attack trended towards six months on an optimistic estimate.

All of this flashed through my head as I squinted into the late evening sun. It had hardly been more than an hour since I woke up, but it felt like years.

“Victoria.”

I brought my gaze back down to see Skitter looking at me.

“Are you ready to move on?”

I nodded, and Skitter started to lead me to the street where Tattletale was waiting.

“Come on, slowpokes! We’re burning daylight, and I’ve got places to be,” she said, her eyes scanning the gaping holes that used to be windows on nearby houses. Shatterbird wasn’t kind to the places she visited.

Skitter took that as her cue. “Are we expecting trouble?”

Tattletale shook her head. “No. It was a good idea to keep patrolling for the rest of the Nine, but it was more of a holding action anyways. More important that we be seen doing it than actually trying to find anything. Glory Girl excluded.”

She glanced back up at me. “No, our problem is more her.”

Wait, me? How did that work? I tensed, my hands curling into fists. I thought we were under Truce rules as Skitter laid out earlier. Was that only for that meeting? Was this where they showed their true colors? We were out in public, surely there was only so much they could do. I couldn’t scream, but I could still fly away… right? Shit, I hadn’t actually tried until now, I had no idea if Amy left that part of my power intact.

Skitter must have been thinking similarly. “I thought we cleared her, Tattletale. Did one of the others say something? L, pear.”

Tattletale blinked then rattled off, “A, banana. No, it’s nothing like that. Our issue is that we can’t walk her into your place, public or private.”

I let myself relax, if only slightly. Right, that made sense. I didn’t want to be publicly seen with the Undersiders as Glory Girl either.

Skitter paused. “She’s public. You’re right,” she said, turning to me. “I assume you don’t want to be publicly affiliated with us?”

I shook my head. Regardless of my intentions, I knew that wasn’t a step I was willing to take yet, one way or the other. I was following them because they were offering relative safety with few strings attached, the last thing I wanted was to make a decision out of haste. That was how I got into this mess.

Skitter turned back to Tattletale. “That makes this complicated then. Victoria can’t be seen entering any of our places. Options?”

Tattletale paused, her gaze distant as she seemed to turn over data. “Hmmm. Bitch wouldn’t house her and doesn’t have the facilities anyways. Regent wouldn’t care, but that would never end well. Grue’s territory is too close to old Empire territory to not catch flak from a move that public. That leaves just you, Skitter. You comfortable taking her in altered civvies?”

Skitter cocked her head. “Depends on how recognizable she is. What do you have?”

Tattletale looked at me as if sizing me up. “Tell me, Glory Girl, how do you feel about hair dye?”

Well, this was the second time today I was looking in the mirror and not quite believing what I was seeing, if for very different reasons. Tattletale hadn’t cut my hair—I drew the line at anything permanent—but otherwise, the difference was stark. Gone were my long blonde waves, replaced by straightened black locks that fell down towards the middle of my back. She’d pinned my bangs to the side in a way that looked asymmetric but really wasn’t, another way to throw people off the scent, she assured me.

My usual style of bright blouses and white skirts were, of course, nowhere to be seen. I had worn darker colors and shown less skin before, obviously, but when combined with the hair change, it really was something. Dressed up like this, I could probably walk right by my mother on the sidewalk and not get a second glance.

Tattletale nodded to herself as I continued looking myself over. “Damn if I don’t do good work.”

I had to nod despite how it rankled me to agree with her.

“Now, basic info. The dye we used is garbage, so it’ll stay in your hair for about a week, but that’s only if you don’t wash it.” Tattletale’s snort covered up my instinctive clench. “Though with running water being as scarce as it is, that shouldn’t be a problem. I did a bit of contouring on your face to hide your cheekbones, that shouldn’t really last beyond today but that’s all you need it for. Don’t go outside until we get those colored contacts sourced for you. Got it?”

I nodded.

Tattletale gave me a smile that was only a little mocking as I moved to get up. “Thanks for letting me do you up, it’s always fun to play dress up when I have a willing subject.” She gestured at Skitter in the corner. “Especially now. It’s been ages since this one let me do anything interesting.”

Skitter muttered something too low for me to catch as she stepped back towards us. “Tattletale, are we ready to go? We’re too exposed.”

Tattletale waved her off as we got to the door. “We’re good, Skitter. I would’ve gotten a ping if things were going south. Your territory’s fine. Better that we do this slow and right the first time.”

Skitter grunted and opened the door back outside. The sun had set in the time that we spent back in the house waiting for Tattletale’s minion to deliver the hair dye and then for it to set properly on me. It was remarkable just how much the mood had shifted during that time. Skitter was dangerous on a good day, but at least in daylight you could more or less see her and her swarm. At night though? Her sleek profile and mask combined with the ever present clouds of insects and their accompanying buzzing to leave behind something dangerous and inhuman. Even Tattletale wasn’t entirely comfortable, judging by the line of tension up her back.

“We’re alone for at least one thousand feet. Let’s move before that changes,” Skitter replied as we started walking.

I followed behind. It was difficult to tell where we were going in the gloom, much less how far we were walking. I had never spent this much time down by the docks, especially not at this time of night. Mom never would’ve let me out this late, and even when I snuck out, it was only to fly out to Dean’s house–

I flinched and tried to force the thought out of my head. The point was, the city looked entirely different than I knew it to be. Houses looked large enough to swallow us whole, with gaping mouths and empty windows. The trash piled up on the sides of the streets looked like it had been here long before Leviathan appeared, and the time since hadn’t improved matters. Some flies spiraled up from one of the bags in particular and buzzed by my face. I slapped them out of the air on instinct.

“Don’t swat at my bugs.”

I jumped.

“I use them to scout, maintain a perimeter, and deal with threats,” Skitter said. “If you’re going to be staying with me, don’t limit my ability to do that.“

I swallowed and gave a slow nod. She didn’t look at me, but evidently that was enough to signal my agreement.

I could hear the sound of the water against what remained of the boardwalk over the drone of the swarm. We must be getting close to the waterfront.

“Do you have any restrictions or requirements I should know about?” Skitter asked, breaking my train of thought.

I paused, then took a moment to look at her. This had to be the most surreal conversation I had ever had. I was taking a midnight stroll with one of the biggest villains in the Bay, who was asking if I had any allergies before she had me over for a sleepover. If only the Victoria from a month ago could see this…

Skitter evidently sensed my confusion, stopping to look back at me along with Tattletale. “The heroes are already after me for enough manufactured grievances. I don’t need them to also think I assassinated Glory Girl… Victoria Dallon… by accidentally feeding her peanuts.”

I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing. Maybe it was the stress of everything I had gone through, maybe it was the sheer absurdity of the situation, I don’t know. I had tears in my eyes as I tried to gather myself.

I finally looked up at Skitter, who without missing a beat said, “I carry Epipens on me, but they’re expensive,” which sent me into another round of helpless giggling.

“We’re here.”

I looked dubiously at the storm drain entrance.

I glanced back at Skitter. “You wanted the incognito entrance. This is it.”

Fair enough. That didn’t stop me from letting her take the first steps into the dark pipe though.

Tattletale let out a faint sigh as she stepped in behind me. “You know, if we wanted to kill or kidnap you, there are simpler ways to do it than this.”

“Tattletale. Enough.”

Skitter’s voice was harsh, almost metallic as it bounced off of the sewer surrounding us. It was hard to tell how much of the effect was the echo and how much was the swarming masses covering the walls. I didn’t even want to know how many insects she had access to down here. In a way, the darkness was almost a relief. At least I couldn’t see the walls writhing half a foot in front of my face.

“Alright alright, we’re almost there anyways,” Tattletale snarked, as we turned yet another corner.

I tensed at the reminder. I tried to remember my reasons for coming here, for following these villains. Were my family really not an option? Even the Protectorate? I knew for a fact that Armsmaster hated these villains even more than I did before this mess, surely he had some reason to. The moment after Leviathan proved as much.

Then again, that just reminded me of the context surrounding my presence here. Skitter and Tattletale both confirmed that the Truce rules were in effect before escorting me here. Surely if there were any villains that would obey those rules, it would be them right?

The chittering coming from the walls grew louder, and I shuddered. I saw why they didn’t bother to blindfold me before I got here. Partially because, as far as they knew, I could just fly up and get a bird’s eye view. But also because I quite frankly didn’t have any idea where we were anyways. I knew Tattletale had some sort of a Thinker power that was presumably letting her figure out where she had to go. But I had no idea how Skitter was managing in the dark. Night vision in the goggles maybe? The PRT speculated she might be able to hear and see through her bugs. If so, the sheer number of them down here meant she could almost afford to paint the walls in her minions to see through the blackness.

As if to confirm my thoughts, a swarm of gnats brushed over the forcefield by my cheek. Remembering Skitter’s earlier warning, I tried to contain my shudder. Judging by Tattletale’s aborted snort, I didn’t quite manage.

Some more twists and turns brought us to a ladder built into the side of the sewer, leading up to a hatch in the ceiling.

“This is us,” Skitter said as she turned back. “Let me know if you run into trouble on the way back, Tattletale.”

“Sure thing, Skitter. Good luck wrangling Glory over there,” I heard Tattletale say as her footsteps faded away into echoes in the darkness.

That just left the two of us by the ladder. It was hard to see, but I heard Skitter start to make her way up before she cracked open the hatch. The sudden light after the past hour blinded me.

I don’t know what I expected as I made my way up and into the lower levels of Skitter’s lair, but a nondescript basement certainly wasn’t it. Pallets and crates were stacked with some semblance of organization I wasn’t privy to. Now that my vision was adjusted, I could see the fluorescent lights across the ceiling that had blinded me earlier. A staircase in the corner showed the obvious way up.

“Alright, ground rules,” Skitter said as she closed the hatch behind us with a muted clang. “Lowest level here is for provisions and storage. Don’t take or move anything without permission. The floor above us is the ground level. That’s communal space, and you’ll treat it as such. Right now it’s night hours. That means you’ll be quiet and not disturb the residents. Is that clear?”

I nodded hurriedly. I might be unsure of what my place here was (if any), but despite all of her faults, Mom had raised us better than to make trouble in someone else’s home.

Skitter nodded. “Good. The floor above that has my terrariums and personal supplies. You can look but you will not touch. The floor above that is mine and is inaccessible to you. Nod if you understand.”

I nodded as best I could, though my attention was somewhat taken by the girl coming down the stairs. She was slight, with dark hair and had what looked like a hastily-applied domino mask hiding her features.

Skitter’s posture relaxed minutely as the girl came nearer. “Charlotte.” The girl – Charlotte, apparently, stumbled as she saw us from the basement landing.

“Good, you’re up,” Skitter said. “This is Victoria. Yes, that Victoria. She’ll be staying here for an indefinite period. She’s under Truce rules, so treat her as you would any of the others.”

She turned to me. “Charlotte is my second in command. You have problems when I’m not here, you go to her. She’ll get you set up with a room. I need to finish my patrol.”

Skitter started up the stairs. Just as I was about to wonder if she had really left just like that, she ducked back down for a moment. “And one more thing. I may not be here, but my bugs still are. If you start something or hurt my people, I’ll know. Don’t make me regret helping you.”

Then we heard nothing more than distant steps, and the sound of the door closing on the upper floor.

I looked at the girl–Charlotte–for a long moment, before she said exactly what was on my mind.

“What the fuck?”

Chapter Text

I don’t know what I expected, walking into a villain’s base for the first time, but Skitter’s lair certainly wasn’t it. While things were well laid out and obviously organized, it was also quite clear that this was a repurposed house or apartment building—I couldn’t quite tell which. The living room on the main floor was crudely split off into multiple rooms through curtains of waterproof tarp. Belongings were strewn around on a sort of communal table in the front. Toothbrushes, handbags, glasses, half finished snacks, even a book of all things. I had no idea who had thought to hold onto that during the Leviathan attack.

Charlotte evidently saw me eyeing the main table and gave me a look. “Don’t touch anything. None of it is Skitter’s, and these people have nothing else. If you take any of it, she’ll know.”

I gave her a glare in return. I knew that any opinion from Skitter’s minion regarding Heroes was going to be low, but I had some standards. I wasn’t going to steal from refugees.

She seemed to understand what I was trying to say and rubbed the back of her neck. “We had some problems with belongings going missing in the beginning, before Skitter ironed things out. I don’t want to have to deal with it again,” Charlotte muttered almost sheepishly.

I nodded. That was fair. I couldn’t even imagine the logistical nightmare of trying to get a group of Endbringer survivors to live together in relative peace so soon after that much chaos. My New Wave duties had always kept me far away above this level of the action–literally in most cases–so I didn’t have much experience there anyways.

“And this is where you’ll be staying,” Charlotte said in a near whisper as we made our way towards the back of the first floor. I glanced around at the curtains around us, and Charlotte caught my confusion. “They’re light sleepers, and if you wake them up it’s my problem.” I nodded.

Charlotte opened up the door to the left of the kitchen, revealing what looked like a small spare bedroom. There was a twin in the corner that looked recently used, as well as a bedside table, but otherwise there wasn’t anything of note. Another door to the right presumably led to a bathroom, though who knew if it worked. Honestly, I was a bit thrown that they had a room like this empty given the situation in the living room.

As if sensing my unasked question, Charlotte explained, “We normally keep this room open for other Undersiders if they stay over, so it’s vacant right now. Skitter said to put you here. If there’s a problem, she’ll say so later.”

When I didn’t say anything, she continued. “We’re still getting the water working, so don’t bother trying any of the sinks. For now there’s fresh bottled water in the fridge. We have a portable generator running that, but it’s the only plug that works. You don’t like that? Tough. You’re allowed four bottles of water per day, and that includes brushing your teeth. Don’t take more. Skitter already went over the areas you have access to, don’t go beyond those.”

Charlotte paused, before giving me one last look. “I don’t know exactly what you did to make her trust you, and I don’t care. I don’t. Don’t make trouble.”

She shut the door, and there was silence at last. Okay, deep breaths. I was staying in a villain’s base overnight, this is fine. I had no idea what time it was, but from what Skitter said to Charlotte earlier it might be best to try and sleep. I should focus on that, and maybe things would look better in the morning.

I walked over to the dresser in the corner, opened it, and sighed. Goddammit. Of course there weren’t any clothes here. This whole thing was clearly as much a surprise to Skitter—and especially Charlotte—as it was to me, I’d give them that much. It would be more suspicious if they did have clothes ready for me. But that didn’t make the situation suck less. I kinda felt gross thinking about going to bed in jeans and a hoodie. That stank of depression, and while I was probably mentally there, I didn’t want to be there physically too. It felt too much like Dad.

I shook my head. One thing at a time. PJ’s first. There weren’t any here, but clearly things in the main room were somewhat communally owned. Maybe I could ask Charlotte if there were any spares?

Sadly, either everyone slept in the nude here, or there were no spare sets to be found on the main floor. I was betting on the latter, and seeing as Charlotte had said everyone was asleep, I didn’t want to push the point.

I paused. My search had ended in the kitchen, after going through the table in the living room (without taking anything, Charlotte). I found myself on the landing to the stairs going up to the second floor. I was already here… did I want to go up and see what was there? Skitter had said that, while it contained her bugs and terrariums, it was free space. So long as I didn’t touch anything there, at least. Fine, I could deal with that. It was probably for the best anyways. My forcefield protected me from a lot, but Skitter had already proven that she could get through it if she tried, and I didn’t want to test the point.

My heart pounded in my chest as I climbed the stairs. I knew she said I had permission to be up here, but I had to wonder if that was some kind of a screwed up test. Did she expect me to actually take her up on the offer? I was sure she had some way of knowing I was up here, considering the sheer volume of bugs an entire floor space would contain. Then again, how did I even know that she was in range? For all I knew, this was the equivalent of a trip to the insect exhibition at the Brockton Bay Zoo. At least before they removed that section because of poor funding after the last administration–

I blinked. I had gotten so caught up in my thoughts that I hadn’t even realized I had made it up the stairs. Like many things in Skitter’s base, her bugs were both overwhelming and surprisingly mundane on closer inspection. The floor was quite clearly divided into sections, with heat lamps and humidifiers set aside to presumably help with certain species. The far side of the room was dominated by a huge wooden structure, taller than I was. It had some half finished cloth across it, maybe the liner to some sort of jacket? I returned my attention to the terrariums dominating the rest of the floor, bending down to inspect the ones closest to the door first.

These looked like they housed some sort of centipede or millipede. I wished I had gotten around to studying insects more when Skitter debuted. Were they venomous? They didn’t look all that intimidating as they just sat there curled up next to the water dish, but I knew from experience how uncomfortable it felt to have one halfway up your thigh.

My gaze turned to the terrariums by the stacked, currently unpowered heat lamps halfway across the room as I made my way deeper into the floor. It did get pretty cold in the Bay during the winter, so maybe these were a preemptive precaution? If Skitter was thinking that far ahead, then she clearly didn’t plan on going anywhere. I… wasn’t sure how to feel about that.

On closer inspection, these cases seemed to house Skitter’s mainstay–spiders. So many different types I almost couldn’t even count, nevermind name, the different species. There was only one that stood out: An entire section with multiple terrariums dedicated solely to black widows. They dominated the back corner of the floor. This species I knew how to identify on sight– especially after the bank…

I forced myself past my revulsion. Any amount of intel I could gain here was valuable.

The enclosures were small, usually only two to a space at the most. Now that I looked closer, the webbing was quite distinct from the other spiders. Where most of the species set up webs in neat, fractal patterns, the widows almost seemed to revel in chaos. There was no organization, no pattern to their webbing. It almost looked like a sort of gauzy curtain of silk, each cradling a black, bulbous spider with a red hourglass on their lower halves. I still remembered Armsmaster describing the symptoms of a black widow bite during the aftermath of the bank robbery. Redness, swelling, muscle cramps, intense pain… the list went on and on. While one bite usually wasn’t fatal, Skitter clearly had more than one spider at her disposal. I didn’t want to know what someone would look like after a run in with all of these, and this was just the stock she was willing to show publicly. Who knew how many more she had upstairs!

I straightened. Okay, that was it. I had been pretending this whole time that I wasn’t here to gather intel, but I couldn’t deny it any longer. Skitter’s insect supply was terrifying. And as a Hero, I couldn’t afford to ignore this.

I walked up to the door leading to the third floor. The one Skitter told me was off limits. I owed it to those people at the bank, to the Protectorate, to see what she was hiding. Skitter was still out patrolling, who knew how long my window of opportunity would last? I had to act now.

My hand paused on the doorknob. My eyes focused on the hoodie I was wearing, the fabric brushing against the cool metal.

Skitter found me with the remnants of my costume, enough to preserve my decency (what little of it remained). There was no reason for her to look for other clothing. But she asked. She respected me when she didn’t have to and asked what I wanted. Could I really just do this, violate her space, so soon after she had given me mine?

The people at the bank, the Protectorate… I couldn’t use other people as justification like that. Was I comfortable doing this? Everything I’d seen from Skitter up until today told me to open the door. To gather as much as I could while I was here, then turn it into the heroes as soon as I got away.

But… that would just make me a hypocrite, wouldn’t it? I may not have been here under Truce rules, but the Truce certainly got me here. Skitter herself was the one to bring it up. She didn’t have to do that. She was the one who opened what was probably the closest thing she had to a home to me. I didn’t know that I could’ve done the same thing for her, if our positions had been reversed. What would it say about New Wave — about me — if I turned around and abused that trust?

I slowly released my hand from the doorknob.

“And just what do you think you’re doing?”

I froze. God, how did I forget about Charlotte? I slowly turned around, and sure enough, there she was, with a glower hot enough to shame the sun.

“I knew it,” Charlotte spat. “I didn’t want to believe it, but I figured I’d stay up just to be sure. And here you are, red handed. Just what do you have to say for yourself? I’d love to hear the defense of the paragon of New Wave.”

I could hear the disdain dripping off of the moniker. And what could I say to that, even if I knew how? That I stopped myself, even though the temptation was great enough to get me here? That I almost betrayed her boss’ trust within hours of being given a place to stay? So I did the only thing I could. I let Charlotte talk.

“Hah, that just figures,” she scowled. “You heroes are so noble and considerate when you’re in the right. But when the truth comes out that you’re just as much a corrupt fraud as the rest of us, and we call you on your shit, you go silent. That’s real convenient, huh?”

My face shuttered, but I couldn’t deny her words. Not just from my actions, but from the specter of Armsmaster that hung over this entire conversation. Ever since Leviathan, Mom had wanted us to pull away from the Protectorate, to show that our morals and standards didn’t change when they were hard. I wonder what she’d say now. A part of me didn’t want to know.

Charlotte stepped closer to me, never losing eye contact. "Those rules of yours seem awful important whenever they stop you from doing something about the real monsters in the Bay, but they never seem to matter when you're trying to pull something fast on a teenager. I know you don't know shit about Skitter, but wow does it really show right now."

I glared at her. Yeah, a lot of this was fair, but that was too much. I didn't know what she meant by rules exactly, but I knew bullshit when I heard it. None of whatever shadow agreements kept the peace protected Fleur when it mattered. She could throw a lot of this at my feet, but not that.

If Charlotte noticed my reaction, she didn’t show it. “I don’t know what kind of blackmail you had over Skitter to get her to house you here, but it ends now. Whatever fucked up family drama–” I winced “–or Hero politics that got you here, I don’t care. Leave and sort it out yourself. Don’t use Skitter as some kind of a hideout. Go back wherever you came from and leave her out of it, or I swear to god I’ll hurt you.”

I looked at Charlotte, at this teenager who couldn’t be any older than I was. She had no powers and she was still willing to throw down with a Brute 5, just to defend her boss. I couldn’t help but be impressed, despite myself. What kind of person was Skitter, I wondered, to inspire that kind of loyalty? I don’t know if I could’ve done the same in her shoes.

My teeth clenched. Fuck. Charlotte was going to kick me out, and I couldn’t even defend myself. What was I going to do? I could go back to my family… but I had no idea if Amy would be waiting there. I wouldn’t–couldn’t–trust that. Maybe the Protectorate? But we just finished going over why the local leader couldn’t be trusted to enforce the same rules they stood behind. I couldn’t trust them not to just tell Mom where I was before I was ready to face them myself.

Charlotte opened her mouth to make another point but paused. In the sudden silence, I heard it too: the front door closing.

Skitter was back.

Chapter Text

I tensed, giving a quick look at the terrariums around me. Skitter was back, and given that her range was much larger than the distance to the door, that meant all the bugs around us were under her control. The frightening thing was that her power wasn’t limited to line of sight, as far as I was told in the Wards debriefings, so if it was in her range, it was hers. I had no way of knowing just how long her bugs had been under her control, silently watching and listening to my argument with Charlotte. Was this it then? It’s not like I was in the best place to explain myself. Even if Skitter hadn’t noticed exactly what had happened, it wasn’t like Charlotte was about to defend my presence.

I looked over at the girl in question, and winced. The glare Charlotte was shooting me could’ve melted glass– if there was any left in the city.

“Don’t. Move,” Charlotte mouthed as Skitter’s footsteps moved closer.

I tensed before slowly forcing my hand to unclench. No. This was my bed, Charlotte had made that clear. If I was to lie in it, the least I could do was do it with dignity.

Skitter entered the room, and any noise we had been making instantly fell silent. Only the chittering and rustling of the bugs around us remained.

“Charlotte. Report.”

Charlotte straightened. “I caught Glory Girl here after I showed her the room you left for her. She was about to open the door to your private quarters after I told her it was off limits.”

Skitter tilted her head. “Did you ask her to explain herself?”

Charlotte tensed, but to her credit, she didn’t back down. “Yeah, I did. She was dead silent.”

There was a pause. Skitter’s gaze slowly turned to me, and I tried not to react. Those yellow lenses really were unnerving—almost inhuman. Her mask covered her whole face and betrayed nothing. Even though I was in New Wave, I had received PR training just like any other affiliated Hero, and I knew the difficulties even a partial face mask imposed on socialization with civilians. Miss Militia in particular had explained just how much she had to emote to compensate for the usual facial expressions that her mask hid. Watching Skitter made it clear just why so few in the Protectorate used full masks; up to fifty five percent of casual communication was done nonverbally through body language and facial expressions. Between her mask and the insect cloud clinging to her body, Skitter gave away almost nothing.

“Victoria.”

Skitter’s voice made me jump.

“Did you go into my quarters?”

I looked her dead in the eye and shook my head.

Skitter nodded and turned back to Charlotte. “I gave her permission to be on the second floor, and she didn’t go beyond that. If you have a problem with her in the future, speak to me first. Clear?”

Charlotte bristled before slowly relaxing. “Clear.”

“With that taken care of, I need to fill you in on the patrol.”

Charlotte’s gaze sharpened. “Any problems we should know about?”

I tensed. After the Nine, anything that registered as a problem to either of them was something I had to be worried about.

Skitter shook her head. “No, nothing I couldn’t handle. But I need you to keep an eye out for me.”

Charlotte gave me a glance, and I tried not to shrink into the wallpaper. I wasn’t entirely sure why Skitter had decided to have this conversation in front of me either, but I was even more afraid of what would happen if I tried to sneak away at this point.

“What for?”

“I caught Skinny trying to steal food again,” Skitter said. The low drone from the bugs on and around her shifted into a higher pitch.

“Again?” Charlotte said. “I thought you dealt with that the last time.”

“I did.” Skitter said. “I had to make my message a bit… clearer.” Her gaze turned to me as she said that, and I couldn’t help but shudder. Even if I could, I wasn’t sure I could bring myself to ask what she meant by that.

Her head swiveled back to Charlotte. “Let me know if there are any other discrepancies in supplies. I don’t want to have to deal with this again. People are going to be relying on handouts from us for a while, and we don’t need this uncertainty on top of it.”

Charlotte’s back straightened and while she didn’t full out salute Skitter, it was close. “Will do.”

Skitter nodded. “Do an inventory on our remaining stocks. If there’s anything that looks off, let me know.”

Charlotte practically ran to the stairs, and suddenly the two of us were alone. I gave Skitter a look of grudging respect. I wasn’t sure if that was intentional, but I had to hand it to her if it was. That was a remarkably tactful way of getting her subordinate focused on something else.

Skitter seemed to understand what I wasn’t saying. “She’s better when she has something to do,” she said in a low tone as she glanced at the stairs.

I nodded.

She took that as her cue to continue. “If you’re going to be here for longer than a day–” she paused, looking at me until I nodded “–then you need some way to communicate. I assume talking is still not happening?”

I swallowed and shook my head. I didn’t… couldn’t, explain why it was so hard. Why the words seemed to get stuck in my throat, a mess of kah’s and ruh’s and en’s that never resolved into anything coherent. Why even just thinking about it seemed to suck all the energy out of me. But my answer was the same.

If Skitter was put off by my glaring weakness, she didn’t show it. “Fine, but we need some other way to let you talk. Do you know sign?”

I shook my head. The Protectorate sessions for affiliates had taught me some of the basics, but that was only for interpreting deaf or mute civilians. And in any case, it had been years since I had brushed up on it.

Skitter nodded. “I figured not. I can have a manual here in a couple of days, but in the meantime, I picked up a drawing pad and pen. Will that work?”

I stared at her. My jaw didn’t drop, but it was a near thing. She didn’t have to do this. I knew I’d said it before, but it hit me even harder this time. There was nothing obligating Skitter to treat me like this. Especially not given how we met all those weeks ago at the bank. Yes, according to her, this was all because Amy did something horrific beyond reckoning. And yes, her extending me this basic courtesy was to prevent future arguments with her lieutenant. But if that was the case, why the casual mention of letting me learn sign? Or the unspoken assumption that I was going to be staying longer? No, I couldn’t mistake this as anything else. Skitter was being gentle to me because she could.

And that scared me.

“Victoria,” Skitter said, snapping me out of my thoughts, “will that work?”

I blinked and nodded.

“Alright,” Skitter said. “If that’s settled, get to bed. I’ll have Charlotte leave you that pad by your bedside in the morning.”

She turned and made her way upstairs, the chittering of insects following her close behind. Well I had to give her this much; girl knew how to make an exit.

I let out a yawn, followed by a sigh. Much as it rankled me to admit it, Skitter was right. I needed sleep. Maybe this would look better in the morning.

It did not, in fact, look better in the morning. That was the first thought that hit after the early June rays finished blinding me through the gaps in the boarded up window. I couldn’t quite tell what had woken me at first glance, but as I sat up in bed I realized it was the sound of Charlotte opening the door. She met my gaze, but didn’t say anything. She just set down the small note pad and pen she had been carrying by the door, nodded at me, and left. I ran a hand down my face. I guess that meant last night had actually happened.

I still wasn’t sure what to think about all that. The man she mentioned, “Skinny,” had evidently been stealing supplies. But at the same time, she was so vague in what she had done to him that I had to assume the worst. What would a villain like Skitter be willing to do to maintain order and authority in her territory? Especially if it required making someone an example. If you asked me right after the bank, I’d have assumed that example would consist of torture, if not murder. Now… I didn’t know. The girl from last night definitely could, but would she?

A sizzling noise distracted me from my thoughts. I knew what that meant from many early mornings at home: bacon.

I almost broke the door down trying to get out. Judging from the side-eye Charlotte gave me as she stood over the portable stove either she hadn’t forgiven me for last night, or she had heard the squealing noises of protest coming from the door on the way out.

I gave a hopeful glance at the pan she was handling as I put down the pen and notepad next to me. Charlotte apparently decided to show me some mercy and rolled her eyes. “Most of the time I’m not cooking breakfast for the residents, but I’m on duty today. You want some?”

I nodded. She nodded at the plates to the left of her. “Come on then.”

I grabbed a plate and held it out as Charlotte slid some fresh bacon onto it. She gestured to the left further down the counter. “Utensils are there if you need them. Just wash them after. There’s a bucket of soap water under the sink you can use.”

I smiled gratefully and dug into the bacon. Dear god, it had been way too long since I had some hot food. I suddenly felt like I was starving as I crammed it down.

“Do you have enough, Charlotte?”

I almost screamed as I frantically turned around. For a criminal who went toe to toe with the Nine and came out the other side, Skitter could be damned sneaky when she wanted to be.

Charlotte didn’t seem to notice my distress. “Yeah I was just cooking up the last of this. If the kids want more they’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

…Wait, kids ?

As if to confirm my thoughts, Skitter turned to me and leaned in close. “Whatever you may think of me and the Undersiders, these kids came to us when they had nothing, and we gave them a place to stay. I didn’t ask questions of them, just like I didn’t for you. Do not judge them.”

I swallowed and slowly nodded.

Sure enough, as I retreated to a small nook in the kitchen, kids began to emerge from the small curtained areas in the main living room. Almost none appeared older than thirteen. But most were much younger, closer to seven or eight. No wonder Charlotte emphasized not waking the “residents” up last night.

Most of the kids were quiet, especially as they saw me, but I was surprised that they all at least waved hi to Skitter. She didn’t respond to any of the greetings but she did nod at each one as they passed. I couldn’t help but stare at her as the kids lined up to get breakfast. If I was confused when I woke up... Well, now I was just lost. She couldn’t be doing this for the image, or she would’ve made a larger public spectacle of this. But instead, she and Charlotte did just the opposite. Looking back on it, they both used deliberately obfuscated language to hide the ages of the kids from me. Maybe until I could be trusted, judging by last night? That or it just couldn’t be reasonably hidden from me any further.

I shook my head. No, that wasn’t helping. No matter what the reason, the fact was that Skitter had taken these kids in when she didn’t have to, without any expectation of reward or quid pro quo. Just like… just like she did for me. I didn’t know what to make of this girl. This person who would casually threaten a scavenger with a living nightmare one moment then take in a wounded Hero and a batch of presumed orphans the next. Every time I thought I had her figured out, she surprised me.

“The supplies should be taken care of, barring one delivery today,” Skitter told Charlotte. “I’m going to be out for most of it planning our next move. The delivery should be around one to two. If you notice something wrong, signal me. Keep the kids safe.”

Charlotte nodded, then caught sight of me out of the corner of her eye. “Understood but… what about her?”

Skitter turned to me. “Victoria. I’m leaving for the day. Charlotte should take care of you. Clear?”

It was clear that this was a rhetorical question, as she was almost turning away. But I steeled myself, and knocked three times on the table.

Skitter instantly turned back to me. Her mask was on but I could almost feel her raised eyebrow. “Yes? Do you need something?”

I nodded.

“Well, tell me what it is.”

I swallowed and wrote the first thing I’d ever say to Skitter on the notepad. I could tell by the expression on Charlotte’s face as I turned it around that this was going to be about as complicated as I thought it would be, but this was important enough for me to ask anyway.

“ I want to call my Mom. ”

Chapter Text

Instantly, all conversation in the kitchen ceased. The kids must have been talking, or otherwise making noise when I wasn’t looking, because the sudden lack of verbal noise hit me like a truck. The only sound that remained was the clicking and hissing of the bugs surrounding Skitter like an aura. The wasps and hornets were vibrating their wings so rapidly her outline almost appeared to blur.

And still, Skitter didn’t say a word. She just looked at me, her yellow lenses as indecipherable as ever.

“You have to be kidding me,” Charlotte spat. “We house you, feed you, trust you even after I find you snooping, and now you wanna spit in our face? Where do you get the right–”

Skitter put out a hand, and Charlotte instantly fell silent. Her gaze didn’t move from me. She said one word. “Why?”

I swallowed, but I refused to be cowed like this. “She hasn’t heard from me for a week. She thinks I’m dead,” my hand was shaky as I wrote. I pointed back at my first sentence, this time underlining the last word. “I want to call my Mom”

Skitter didn’t say a word. I tried not to fidget. I knew how this looked, but this was important. I just… I needed to talk to her. One way or another.

Charlotte looked between the two of us. “You can’t seriously be thinking of doing this, boss,” she hissed. “The heroes could trace her. She could be passing info to them!”

“I’ll do the talking, Charlotte,” Skitter said. Her voice was dead even. I couldn’t help but notice that there was a not entirely inconspicuous stream of bugs coming from upstairs to hover around her at this point. Was it an instinctive reaction? A defensive move? An attempt to intimidate or show bravado? I couldn’t say. But I wouldn’t let her faze me.

“How can I trust that you won’t betray us?”

I swallowed. What answer could I give her? I didn’t even know what kind of answer she was looking for. Another Victoria might have appealed to her track record in New Wave, to her sense of duty and fairness, to her status as a Hero. But I couldn’t do any of that. After Leviathan, I couldn’t rightly tell her that a Hero would never betray her. After today, even after the misunderstanding was cleared up, I couldn’t say that she’d never question my integrity. In the end, there was only one answer I could give her.

“You can’t. All I can say is that I’m here under the Truce, and I have yet to break that. I’m not asking you this as Glory Girl, I’m asking as Victoria.”

There was silence, as my world narrowed down to just Skitter. What was the girl behind the mask thinking? How did she see me? Another conniving Hero, looking to make a quick bust on a villain? A tired teenager, hopelessly out of her depth?

“Alright. You get one phone call. But your place here is riding on this. There’s a space here for Victoria, but not Glory Girl. Understand?”

I nodded. I had no idea when, if ever, I would be able to take back up the mantle of New Wave, but it definitely wasn’t right now. If Skitter was offering a chance for me outside of that, I’d take it.

Skitter nodded. “Good. How are you going to make the call?”

“I was hoping to borrow a phone from one of you. I assume the cell towers are still up around here, if not, you could supervise as I find reception.”

Skitter stared at me. “No… that’s not what I meant. Victoria, how are you going to make a call when you can’t speak?”

I froze. Oh my god, she was right. How could I have been so stupid? I hadn’t even spoken in this conversation. How could I possibly have a phone call? My sketch pad stared up at me, my hastily scribbled words from earlier almost mocking now. My face must have been bright red. I was mortified.

“I don’t know. Didn’t think about it. Sorry.” My hand was shaky as I wrote.

Skitter paused as she read, then considered me for a moment. This was the first time that we were sharing a silence that felt awkward, rather than imposing.

“Do you need someone to speak for you?” Skitter said.

My mouth hung open, surely she couldn’t be suggesting–? I glanced at Charlotte, who was still staring at me with the burning hatred of a thousand suns. No, that clearly wasn’t an option. So what did she mean?

I nodded.

“I figured,” Skitter said. “Go up to the second story. I’ll find someone to serve as a translator.”

I tried not to stare again. I couldn’t believe that she was willing to do this much for me. Maybe it had something to do with the method of contact? I remember something about text messages being easier to trace, since the connection was logged permanently, and waiting for a reply meant you needed to keep the burner phone active. Maybe that had something to do with it?

“Thank you.”

But as I moved to leave, Skitter’s hand shot out and grabbed my bicep. I flinched violently, backing into the wall. Skitter must have said something, but I didn't hear it. All I could focus on was my arm.

I could feel the imprint of the hand on my muscle, hot as it slid up to my shoulder and down to my chest. It smelled like stale sheets and dish soap. The weight on top of me pressed me into the mattress. I couldn’t move my eyes away from her. I couldn’t close them (I didn’t want to). I just had to watch as it happened to me. As my body betrayed me, arching into the sick sensation of it all. Panting as she pleased me. Sweat pooled down my brow. Again, and again, andagain. Bruises, bites, strokes, slaps–I felt them all (loved them all). I felt her fingers as they pushed down, her breath against my neck. Please not here, not again, I couldn’t–

“Victoria!”

I screamed and hunched into a ball on the floor. The voices around me fell silent. I couldn’t see what was happening. I didn’t want to know.

“......take………..kids….”

“.........will……..you…….her!”

“Don’t……caused……fix”

“......trust…..her…….alone”

“Don’t…..me..….call…….space”

The ground was hard and cool under my palms. Tile. I was touching tile. There was a rougher surface behind me, pressed up against my back. My hand slowly moved up, feeling the wood of the kitchen cabinet I was leaning against. I blinked my eyes open. The kids were gone. I didn’t know where they were. Charlotte was gone too. I could only see Skitter looking at me. She was sitting close to the floor on her haunches, about six feet away.

“Victoria. Can you hear me?”

I nodded, unable to look away.

“Good. One knock for yes, two for no, three for I don’t know. Can you do that?”

I nodded. There was a pause, before I belatedly knocked once.

“Okay. Do you know where you are?”

I looked around. The kitchen. I was in the kitchen. Charlotte had given me bacon here earlier. The door to the left, I slept there last night. The bed was soft but lumpy. To the right was the living room. The kids stayed there behind the curtains. Skitter’s base. That’s right, she took me in here after… after I left.

“Victoria.”

I blinked, snapping out of my thoughts.

“Do you know where you are?”

I knocked once.

“Good. Do you remember what you were about to do upstairs?”

Upstairs… the phone call! I was about to call Mom. I knocked once.

Skitter nodded. “I’ll find someone to speak for you, but I’m also going to be there to supervise. That’s the tradeoff. Are you comfortable with that?”

I paused. That… was a reasonable request. I didn’t like it, not really, but it was also more than she was obligated to give me in the first place. She was offering me privacy (of a kind), but she also had people depending on her. Charlotte, at the very least, but also all those kids. If someone like me facilitated a raid on her base, it wasn’t Skitter who would really pay the consequences.

I knocked once.

“Okay. Do you need more time, or can you head up now?” Skitter reached out with my pen and drawing pad, and I tensed as she drew closer. She must have seen my reaction, as she slowly placed it down in the space between us. I relaxed, slowly breathing in and out. If Skitter thought anything of my freak-out, she didn’t show it.

“I can go now.”

Skitter nodded. “Thank you.”

I got up, only to pause as Skitter held out a hand to signal me to wait.

She cleared her throat. “I’ll try not to startle you that way in the future.”

That… good. That was good. As much as it hurt to admit, I needed that reassurance right now.

I nodded, trying to hold back the lump in my throat. Having said that, Skitter finally let me flee upstairs.

My stomach hung down towards my feet as I made my way through the living room. I don’t know how much the kids saw of that, but I hoped it wasn’t much. Bad enough that Charlotte must have seen all that. The last thing I wanted was the kids to be afraid or… laugh. If any of them were still around, none bothered me on my way up the stairs.

I leaned against the walls next to the centipede terrariums and sighed. Well, this was just great. Why did I have to go through something like that so soon, over something so inconsequential? It’s not like Skitter hadn’t touched me before now. Hell, Charlotte came right up to me when she confronted me about going up to the third story! So why now? Why was I so weak?

I clutched my pad close. What if it was always like this? Only ever a step or a wrong move away from breaking down. I didn’t want to know what the rest of the family would think. How could I ever go on a patrol again? The absurdity of my situation almost made me laugh. I could bench press a truck — fly as fast as anyone else in the city given enough lead up — and here I was worried that I’d lose it over some fan or perp getting too close. It was pathetic. A sob caught in my throat. I couldn’t let the rest of them see me like this, know that I was even more fragile than they thought–

The sound of plastic snapping was what broke me out. I looked down, at the notepad clenched between my fingers. I had been gripping it so hard, I snapped one of the binder rings. Fuck.

Okay. Okay. One thing at a time. I had to calm down. I couldn’t afford to lose the one thing that let me actually communicate. Deep breaths. In and out. Slowly. After a few minutes, my heartrate calmed. I relaxed my hands. Focus on the immediate, put it into words. That was a flashback that I went through. A flashback to when Amy…raped me.

I shuddered. It hurt to say, even in my head, but I knew I had to. My sister raped me. And while I hadn’t worked personally with any victims for an extended period before now, I knew from the few Protectorate Affiliate courses that I had attended on the subject that the trauma from experiences like the one I had gone through were likely to be… triggered… suddenly and often. Especially this early in the recovery process. At least here I knew what had caused it: Skitter reaching out to me. Many people weren’t nearly as lucky. Even something as inconsequential as a smell or a shirt color could be enough. Skitter herself seemed aware of what she had done as well and had promised to avoid it in the future. I didn’t know what that looked like, but at least she said she’d try. I was okay. Or well… I wasn’t okay. I was self-aware enough to admit that. But I had a way forward. And the first step of that was calling Mom.

I glanced down at the centipedes and assorted insects that had been rather suspiciously eyeing me during all this and suppressed a laugh. Well, at least she was polite. I knocked gently once on the enclosure wall.

Taking her cue, Skitter came up the stairs. Standing across from me, she still wasn’t emoting much. But her posture was… looser than I’d have thought. Maybe she realized just how little was holding me together? It wasn’t as if I had been particularly subtle about it.

“Did you get someone?”

Skitter considered me. “Yes.”

I tilted my head.

“Who?”

She seemed to ignore my question. “Whoever serves as your translator needs to sell themselves as being closely acquainted with you. That’s the only way you staying at one of the other refugee camps is plausible. I don’t want to give her any suspicions that you’re staying here.”

I nodded, confused. I didn’t know why she was avoiding my question, but I followed her logic.

“Charlotte was unable to confidently say she could maintain the emotional distance to play that kind of character with you. Most of my other minions–” I had to almost stuff a fist in my mouth to stop myself from laughing hysterically. She actually called them minions? Skitter seemed to glare at me while I calmed myself before continuing, “–are out, otherwise I would have consulted them. I do not have the time to wait. I’m needed for a team planning session, and this must be handled now.”

I tried not to react to the reminder of exactly who was housing me and what her team might have been planning to do.

“I will not ask the residents to help with this. This is a personal problem, but it is still too much to ask of them.”

I agreed, but that still left us with our original issue.

“So then?”

“There is one other person who could help,” Skitter said, looking to the side for the first time since our conversation started.

I underlined the, “Who?” I wrote before.

Skitter turned back and met my gaze.

“Me.”

Chapter Text

My pen shattered in my hand. I almost didn't notice as the plastic bits went flying, the ink wet as it dripped down my palm.

Why would Skitter volunteer for this? How could she possibly feel comfortable with this? Did this mean she was about to unmask to me? I had no idea if I'd even be comfortable with that. Unmasking was a huge expression of trust and vulnerability for capes. I knew that much, even if I had been out ever since my trigger.

For Skitter especially this would be the case. My parahumans studies course covered some bits of the psychology that went into costume design, and while it wasn't always reflected in reality, I would bet it did here. Full face masks almost always indicated a desire to engage with the world at a distance, or to project a persona completely divorced from the person behind it. I didn't know which it was for Skitter, but either would fit.

The object of my thoughts reached into the belt at her waist and pulled a pen and a small square of what looked like gray silk out of her pouch. Just where did she keep all that stuff? I wish my costume, or my purse for that matter, worked like that.

I nodded gratefully as she gave the items to me, giving me time to clean off my hand with the cloth. It really was silk, and soft at that. I almost felt guilty getting it dirty like this.

Skitter seemed to notice my hesitance. "It's meant to clean up messes. If it gets dirty, I can make more."

Well, it was her handkerchief. I carefully wiped my hands down, being sure not to smear the blue ink onto my note pad any further. Skitter was already doing me a favor, I didn't want to owe her another by making her get replacements.

Once I finally dried myself off, I faced Skitter again. "How will you call?"

"I cannot call your mother as Skitter," she acknowledged. "That would just result in an argument." An 'argument' was putting things lightly, but still true. "Instead, I'm going to impersonate a supposed classmate of yours that you reconnected with at a refugee camp. Would she be suspicious of that?"

I paused as I considered that. Mom asked me about my school life fairly regularly, but it had been a while since we had last touched base about something that… mundane. If I–or rather Skitter–told her that I had been found by an unlikely classmate, would she really scrutinize that? Normally I'd say absolutely. Mom may be Brandish on the side, but Carol the lawyer was her full-time job. But right now? After the Nine and not having seen me for a week or more? I thought (hoped) that she'd just be so happy to hear from me that she wouldn't think about who was talking. I guess we'd just have to trust that.

"I don't think so. Do you need a backstory?" I wrote.

Skitter shook her head. "That won't be necessary. I can improvise a character to play." She paused, and the insects in the terrariums let out a low whine. "You must understand something before we start though."

I nodded. If Skitter was willing to give me this, I'd accept almost any condition she had to do it.

"I'm going to be playing a character. This is not me giving you my name. This is not what I sound or act like outside of my mask. I am not unmasking to you in any capacity. With that said, I still expect you to extend the same amount of privacy to my performance, as I am providing to you for this conversation from the rest of the compound."

I let out a breath. That was… eminently reasonable. Honestly, I expected a lot worse. Some kind of binding agreement to the Undersiders maybe, in exchange for her unmasking. No, this worked much better. We could both just go back to pretending this conversation never happened once we finished.

"That's fine. Truce." Something went thud downstairs, setting off a rapid exchange of raised voices that Charlotte's recognisable tone cut off. Skitter didn't even twitch. That reminded me of the other problem. "What about the kids?" I added. "If they overhear?"

"They know not to come up here," Skitter said. "And I asked Charlotte to keep them distracted by cooking more bacon. That always works." Well, I couldn't argue with that.

With that she took out what must have been a burner phone from her toolbelt. I doubted she was calling Mom on her personal number. Skitter looked at me. "I need a phone number."

I nodded and wrote down the number for Mom's private cell. That should hopefully be enough for her to not just hang up on Skitter before she explained the situation.

Skitter punched in the numbers then paused on the call button. "I'm going to establish the character and why I'm calling. You may want to take the time to pre-write anything you know you want to say ahead of time so there's minimal conversation delay."

And with that, she dialed. Now I just had to hope that Mom's number hadn't changed that she somehow still had a phone in reception after Shatterbird and Leviathan and everything else, and that she noticed the call–

I took a deep breath. Calm. I needed to focus on things I could control. What Skitter had suggested early. It was a good idea but I had no idea what to write. "Hey Mom, sorry you haven't heard from me in a week"? That sounded almost pedestrian. "Don't worry, I'm still alive"? Not very encouraging when it's not even my own voice saying it. What did I even want to say to her? I just… I knew I had to call her. I owed her, and myself, that much.

There was a noise, and suddenly Mom was on the phone. "Hello? This is Carol Dallon." I tried to swallow past the lump in my throat. After so long, it almost didn't seem real. Here she was, just feet away, and I couldn't even talk to her myself.

Skitter didn't hesitate. "Hi, M-Mrs. Dallon? My name is June, I'm calling from the downtown refugee camp near the Brockton Bay Hospital. I was hoping to speak to you?"

My jaw dropped. Who was this, and what had she done with Skitter? The sheer cognitive dissonance almost knocked me out of the conversation. I didn't even know it was possible for her to sound that ordinary. Her apparent age seemed to shrink by almost three years. It was incredible. Skitter was many things, but I'd never have thought an actress was one of them.

"I'm sorry miss, but you must direct any inquiries for Brandish through the proper channels," Mom said, her voice gentle but firm. "I don't know how you got this number, but you can reach New Wave through the public email address. Now, if that's all–"

"N-no please, this isn't about that! I'm calling about your daughter!" Skitter said, her voice almost pleading. I had to wonder where she was even drawing on for this performance. It sounded so real.

Mom's tone instantly changed. "Yes? June, was it? Do you have any information on Victoria?"

My heart unclenched. She was worried. She wanted to know where I was. She cared if I was safe. She asked about me without Skitter having to prompt her. I didn't know how badly I needed to know that.

If Skitter was phased, her body language gave no sign. "Yes I do, but… It's complicated."

"Tell me where my daughter is. Now," Mom said.

"Victoria showed up here a couple of days ago. She protected us from some bandits. But there was an attack by the N-nine before they left. Victoria was… hurt. She's here, but she can't talk."

"Victoria? Victoria, are you there? Is this on speakerphone? Victoria, if you're there I need you to do something!"

I swallowed and knocked hard on the table next to us. The mic must have been good enough to pick that up because I could hear Mom's breath catch.

"Victoria. I need to ask, this is really important. Did you manage to save the cat?"

The cat? We didn't have a cat, ever since Dad got… worse and kept forgetting to feed it. We ended up letting it go, and no one ended up wanting to ever talk about it again. After that, Mom suggested using it as– the code! The security code! That's what Mom was doing right now!

I glanced up and saw that Skitter was staring straight at me. Behind her were a formation of fireflies, softly glowing while forming the word 'WRITE'. I smiled sheepishly and wrote down the answering phrase.

"Yes, the tabby cat is fine. A little under the weather, but she'll pull through," Skitter carefully read off the notepad. She may not be familiar with the call and response itself, but she clearly understood what was happening regardless.

Mom let out a sudden sigh. "Victoria, that really is you. Are you hurt? What happened? Why didn't you reach out to us before? Where are you?"

I swallowed and tried to put my thoughts together. Skitter seemed to sense my hesitance. "She's writing Mrs. Dallon, but it's going to take a bit."

"Thank you, June. Just tell me what she says."

I grabbed the pen and wrote. "I'm okay. I was hurt during the Nine after Crawler, and I lost my voice. I'm trying to see if I can get better, but it's hard. I didn't reach out before because I didn't have a phone until now. June was very nice to offer me one. I'm with her now, and she's been taking care of me," Skitter read off, before giving me a look. I tried to meet her gaze, but it was surprisingly hard. She was playing a character, and I was playing to that character. Besides, it's not like I lied in any of that. Just… embellished a bit.

"Victoria I don't… Why didn't you come to us? Don't think I don't notice you avoiding the question. Please, just tell me what's wrong," Mom said.

I swallowed roughly. My hand was shaky as I wrote. "I didn't… want you to see me that way. I'm still getting better, but I wanted to let you know I was alright. I'm… I'm sorry that I couldn't tell you in person. I hope this is enough," Skitter said, her voice soft.

There was a silence as we looked at each other. Did she see the same thing that I saw reflected in those yellow lenses? I know she said she was playing a character, and she definitely wasn't June, but I couldn't help but wonder how much of this was us pretending at all. This felt real.

Mom's voice snapped us out of the moment. "God, sweetheart, of course it's okay. I just wanted to know you were safe. That's all that matters to me. The rest of the family is fine too, after you helped drive Bonesaw away, none of the others bothered us. We just want you to come back."

I tensed. I wanted to relax, but something in her explanation gave me pause. "Everyone…" what did she mean by that? I didn't– If going home meant seeing her again, then I couldn't do it. I don't know what I'd do. If Skitter barely touching me just now was enough to set me off, I didn't want to know how bad I'd get. I was a Brute. What if I hurt her, and it was my fault? I don't know if I could live with myself. Was that even a thought I was supposed to have? Suddenly I was paralyzed. What if Amy hadn't fully removed those fucked up urges from me, and this was evidence? God, if I couldn't even trust my own thoughts–

The sound of insects buzzing right near my ear distracted me. I almost swatted at them before I remembered what Skitter said at the beginning about not harming her creatures. I opened my eyes and saw that she had landed small lightning bugs all along my arms. They were glowing softly. I wasn't sure what to make of that, but the forcefield bent the light ever so slightly around my arm. The glow was almost ethereal.

"Sorry Mrs. Dallon, Victoria was just having a bit of a cramp in her writing hand. Can you give her a minute?" Skitter said, her eyes never leaving mine.

I tried to blink the tears out of my eyes. God, when did the barest amount of empathy get to me this much? I rubbed my eyes until they were a little bit less watery then wrote.

"All of the family is alright?" Skitter carefully read out.

Mom let out a relieved laugh. "I didn't believe it either. Sarah, Crystal, and the rest ended up reconnecting after Bonesaw left. They had been out coordinating with the Protectorate. We're all fine. When do you think you can get back to us?"

I swallowed and forced myself not to clench my fist. I couldn't break the pen again. Okay, let's be fair. She might not know… what Amy did to me. That, or maybe she was skipping over Amy deliberately. I didn't know, and I wasn't in the mental place to ask. Especially with Skitter speaking for me. I needed some time to think about all this. To make sure that whatever I decided, I did for the right reasons.

"Soon, Mom," Skitter read out. "I'll let you know. This is just a temporary number, so you can't call it back. But I'll keep in touch. Maybe we can meet sometime this week if I get better?"

"Okay, baby," Mom said. "Whatever you want. Just stay safe, please. We miss you, and we love you. I can't wait for you to come back to us."

I forced my hand to be steady as I wrote out the last few lines. "Okay, Mom. Love you too. Talk soon," Skitter said, her own voice shaky as she hit the end call button.

Then there was silence. Not even the insects near us were making any noise for once. I didn't know what to say, and it seemed that Skitter didn't either. I just stared down at the sheet of paper in front of me. I don't know how I expected that to go, but… it didn't feel like I accomplished anything really. Doing the right thing was supposed to feel good. So why did I only feel more confused than when I started? It wasn't fair. None of this was.

Skitter let out a short breath then stretched. "I assume that was sufficient. If you need to make other calls, tell me or Charlotte, and we'll arrange something similar. Any other contact points for the moment will have to be vetted by me. I hope you understand. If that's all, I need to meet the rest of my team."

I blinked. The whiplash between Skitter and the girl talking on the phone was so intense I almost had to check my neck for injuries. Was this really the same person? I knew she was playing a character, but…

Skitter got up to go, and before I even knew what I was doing I reached out and grabbed her arm. Instantly the insects in the room flew into a frenzy of activity. The centipedes in the terrariums next to me started hissing and climbing over each other. The fireflies, so innocent before, started forming a whirlwind of glowing lights above us. Further back in the room I could hear the buzzing and scratching of spiders and wasps and god knew what. Skitter very carefully turned her head to look back at me.

"What is it?" she asked evenly.

I flinched and stepped back, dropping her arm. The whining and clicking from the nearby insects stopped, but I could still see the small flies placed on top of me. I slowly reached over to the table and grabbed my notepad.

"Thank you, Skitter."

She stared at me for what felt like ten seconds.

"You're welcome."

As she made her way down the stairs, it occurred to me that this was the closest we had ever gotten, and both of us were lying through our teeth the whole time. Now I was alone in the base with a bunch of children and their caretaker who hated me. I shook my head.

God, what a mess.

Chapter Text

I knew rationally that the base wasn’t any emptier after Skitter had left. Or at least, not that much more empty than normal, all of the kids were downstairs. I could still hear the occasional raised voice and creaky floorboard. It’s not like any of them had anywhere else to be, and Charlotte certainly wasn’t going anywhere. Skitter hadn’t taken any of the bugs on the second level with her either. I wasn’t entirely sure what she was doing with all of them up here, now that I thought about it. Maybe it really was some kind of intimidation play?

The point was, I knew the base was as occupied as usual. But I couldn’t help but feel that Skitter had taken something with her when she left. A breath of air maybe. I glanced around at the terrariums. Maybe it really was the bugs. Skitter had left almost twenty minutes ago now, so presumably they weren’t under her control. Judging by the mosquitoes I kept having to shoo away from my face especially, this was normal bug behavior. Was that what was setting me off? The almost paradoxical nature of the bugs acting normally? I had to admit that having Skitter around was convenient in that respect. I definitely didn’t miss the constant gnats and pests that usually hung around this time of year. They must be getting in through the gaps in the plywood over what was left of the windows.

Something about that thought caught my attention, and I stared at the windows for a moment before slowly looking around the rest of the room, frowning.

Shatterbird's attack had turned every window in the city into flying shrapnel in one fell swoop. Even the silicates in computer chips and kitchen ceramics were vulnerable. And yet here I was, sitting in a room in Skitter’s base, surrounded by glass terrariums. I couldn't even count them all from where I was sitting.

Where had they come from? Why wasn't she having to use scavenged plastic tubs or water dispenser bottles? The only power in the house came from a portable generator, and the water still didn't work; it wasn't like she was immune to the state of the city. But somehow she had the contacts and supply lines to import dozens of fragile glass boxes. How ? Or... who? Where? I didn't even know which question was the most important one to ask, but all of them wanted answers I didn't have enough information to find.

I shook my head. This wasn't getting me anywhere. And staying up here when Skitter wasn't around just felt creepy. I picked up my drawing pad and headed downstairs.

It was near noon by this point, and I wanted to get something done today beyond talking to Mom. Something to… distract me. School wasn’t exactly an option, so that was out. And my usual go to–Hero work–also wouldn’t suffice. I couldn’t go outside on my own. Skitter hadn’t said as much, but I could read between the lines. Charlotte already had good reason to dislike me, and I didn’t want to make that any worse. And besides, black hair or no, my disguise wasn’t good enough to stand up to closer scrutiny.

A burst of laughter drew my attention up and towards the group of kids in the kitchen. It looked like two of them were playing, or fighting? It was hard to tell. I tried not to draw their attention. I had been avoiding them this whole time, and I didn’t want them to notice I was here. Kids were… either unreasonably kind or thoughtlessly cruel, and I didn’t want to find out which side of the divide I was on with them right now. Would they make fun of me for not being able to talk? Point out (rightly) that I was skulking around like some kind of outcast?

As if noticing my conflict, Charlotte called out to me from across the room. “Victoria, Skitter told me she left clothes for you on the bed if you wanted to change. The water isn’t running yet, but you probably knew that.”

I smiled gratefully at the out she had given me. It might not have been intentional, but I appreciated it all the same. “ Thank you .”

Charlotte rolled her eyes and grunted, “Don’t mention it. No seriously, don’t. Skitter might trust you, but I don’t.”

My smile dimmed, and I forced myself to not react outwardly. Was it too much to ask her to not be right up my ass after that whole fiasco earlier?

She sighed. “Ugh, don’t make me feel bad. Just go change.”

Well, that was as close to an invitation–or an escape route–from this conversation as I was likely to get. I walked over to my room and shut the door, leaning up against it for a moment. The conversation and laughter from outside was still there, but muted now. Distant. Okay, unpacking. I could do that. I looked over at the clothes laid out on the bed and started to go over my options.

There weren’t many. Though to be fair, it wasn’t like Leviathan had been especially kind to the second hand clothes supply in the Bay. Skitter had apparently managed to find two or three more hoodies, some old faded jeans that had definitely seen better days, four shirts that definitely had holes in them, and some assorted socks and—hopefully not used—underwear. Definitely more than I’d expected.

I tried not to think too hard about how she had gotten my sizing right as I tried the various items on. Especially not the underwear. No, no—don’t think about it. She extended me my privacy before, and I had to assume it was true here as well. If I treated every moment of my living in her base as if I was under constant observation, I’d go insane.

The hoodie Skitter had found for me was soft and worn in my hands. I folded it once, twice, tucking the sleeves in as it slowly shrank into a much smaller square that would hopefully fit into one of the drawers in the dresser by my bed. I couldn’t help but dwell on the absurdity of my situation as I put more of my clothes away. What would the Victoria of two weeks ago think if she saw me right now? Would she be upset? Disappointed? Angry? Everything before I woke up to Skitter standing over me felt so disconnected. Like a dream (or a nightmare). Even the things during those few days that Amy… had me… felt like they happened to someone else. Or at least I hoped they did. Because otherwise that would mean all that happened to me, that I enjoyed that in the moment even if she made me–

Wood splintered under my hand, and I flinched. The cabinet. I had been putting away a pair of jeans, and I must have gripped the edge so hard it shattered. Again. I sighed as I bent down to pick up the pieces and put them in the nearby trash can. They couldn’t hurt me, but there was no sense in leaving them around for Charlotte to step on (and then inevitably blame me).

I turned back to the dresser, and stared at the now finger sized sections of the drawer missing. Deep breaths Victoria. Just finish packing your clothes. One step at a time. You got this. Sure, because this had all been smooth sailing thus far. I looked around at the room. Were the walls always this close? My breaths were short and tight in my chest. My heart felt like it was going to leave through my sternum. What was going on now ? I was fine, this was fine, nothing was wrong. No one was even here!

I unclenched my fists, and slowly sighed as I counted to ten. Okay, clearly I wasn’t okay, and this room wasn’t helping. Clothes could wait for later. I needed to get outside.

“Found everything?” Charlotte asked as I left the bedroom.

I nodded.

“Good,” she said as she continued to wipe down the used counter from earlier. “She spent some time gathering that for you.”

I stared at Charlotte for a moment. I knew she was hostile to me from before this point, but I hadn’t done anything to her directly. That went without saying. The only way I could’ve upset her was by talking badly about Skitter. That set her off like nothing else. But thinking about it, that didn’t make sense. I mean, obviously she was her boss, that much was clear. But the constant vitriol, the looks and loaded statements—none of that was a subordinate protecting their superior. She really genuinely felt that way. What had Skitter done to inspire that level of loyalty, of belief, in this girl? Suddenly, I had to know.

“ Why? ”

Charlotte blinked. “You’ll have to be a bit more specific than that, Victoria .”

I blushed and rewrote. “ Why do you follow Skitter? ”

Her gaze turned hard and her mouth flattened. “If this is some kind of stupid intel gathering game again, I swear I’ll make you regret–”

I was already shaking my head. “ No. Really want to know. Why Skitter? ”

Charlotte looked at me for a long moment then let out a low sigh. “Okay. Clearly you aren’t going to let this go. Fine. But we’re not having this conversation here.”

I nodded hesitantly, only understanding after she gave an obvious look to the kids not so subtly listening in from the living room near us. I couldn’t begrudge her the need for privacy in this. I followed her down the stairs to the basement.

Charlotte turned on the overhead lights, casting the room in harsh lines and dark shadows. She stood by the light switch, her back to me, for what felt like a minute. I tried my best not to show my nerves or impatience. I – like all capes – knew how hard some experiences could be on people. If Charlotte needed some time to figure out how to tell her story, I wouldn’t rush her.

A shoe scraped on concrete, and I looked up as Charlotte turned back to me.

“Okay. You remember how Skitter found you, right?”

I flinched, failing to meet her gaze. Please don’t tell me that she had told anyone about that. It was bad enough that all my episodes here were public. I didn’t need Charlotte of all people intimately aware of just why I was so broken.

“Hey,” Charlotte snapped her fingers in front of me. I looked up and met her gaze.

“I’m not here to judge. Not on this. I still don’t trust you around Skitter, but how she found you is your business. My point is that she found you when you were low and had nowhere else to go, right?”

I nodded.

Charlotte grimaced. “That’s how she found me too. I was… held. For days. They… they didn’t do much to me, but it didn’t matter.” Her eyes were an angry, vivid blue. I didn’t dare look away.

“Skitter saved me from that. She saw me there, and she didn’t just pass by like everyone else. She did something, even though she didn’t have to. And she gave me this place. She didn’t expect anything of me. Everything I do here, I choose to do.”

My eyes widened. I had no idea that Charlotte had volunteered for her position here. How could I have? But now that I thought about it, nothing else made sense. Knowing what little I did about Skitter, there was no way she’d trust someone as close as Charlotte was to her without that person being there of their own free will.

Charlotte paced, not looking at me as she kept talking. “All the rest are the same here. Aiden, Jeffrey, Nia, Miles, Shay, Amanda. We all had nothing. And Skitter… she took us in.”

She turned back to face me. “When she found you, what did she do?”

I blinked. “ She asked if I needed help .” It sounded so naively simple when I put it like that, but it was the truth.

Charlotte seemed to agree by the sharp laugh she let out. “Yeah, that fits. That’s just perfect.” She drew closer to me but paused as I tensed up. “I don’t know why Skitter trusts you. But I don’t need to know. You have to figure out why you should trust her . That clear enough for you, Glory Girl?”

I glared at her. Charlotte’s shoulders tensed, but to her credit, she didn’t look away. There was fire in those eyes, and for the first time, I think I might have understood where it came from.

“Good. Now go be somewhere else. I’ve had enough of talking about this, and Skitter asked me to clean up down here.”

I nodded and headed back upstairs.

The sun was bleeding red by the time Skitter came back. I don’t know how long I spent on that couch, staring off into space, as I considered what Charlotte told me about what was keeping people here. What Skitter had done for them, and why they offered their loyalty so readily.

What side of Skitter was real? Was it the villain who threatened my sister in the bank? The one who faced down Leviathan on foot? The girl who fought the Nine and lived? The person who saw what Amy left of me and offered me a place to stay? The teenager I heard on the phone earlier today? They all blurred together in my head. Always with the dark gray bodysuit, the everpresent swarm of bugs, and those eyes. Those bright yellow lenses that showed nothing but felt like they stripped you bare all the same. How could they all be the same person?

I felt like I was driving myself crazy, trying to fit all this together in my head. None of it made sense. When I met her she was a villain holding innocent people hostage. Fine, I had a category for that, I could predict her behavior. And she doubled down in the time since. Yeah, she faced down Leviathan and the Nine, but those were equally possible by an effective–if terrifying–villain.

But then there were these moments that refused to leave me alone. The way her voice was so soft on that phone call to mom. The obvious gentleness she showed towards the kids. The fact that she was housing them at all! And most of all: the way she saved me. It would’ve been so much easier for her to just… leave me there. To not bother. Why didn’t she? What was it that made her show mercy to me when so many other times she’d chosen violence? My fists clenched, and so did my stomach; my muscles tensed into a hard angry wall like I was bracing for a punch. Or about to throw one. I wanted to just… shake her until she told me what she wanted. What she meant .

When she opened the door, I almost jumped in surprise.

“Victoria,” Skitter said as if she hadn’t known I was there for minutes beforehand. “I see you found your new clothes.”

I looked down at the hoodie and jeans I was wearing. After my conversation with Charlotte, I just hadn’t felt… clean. That, and I had been wearing these clothes for days. That’s gross. It had felt better, even if only slightly, to put new ones on.

Charlotte had given me some side-eye at that; it was a bit of an obvious association with our conversation, but I didn’t have the energy to process it at the time. I’d just sat down on the couch and tried to… process. And ignore the kids.

I looked back up at Skitter and nodded.

“Good. I’ll be going down to check the supply organization down in the basement before going out again. I trust you’ll be fine,” she said, already making her way downstairs.

I got up and started to pace. Even in ordinary conversation, I didn’t know what to make of her. Maybe she was just trying to avoid a meltdown like earlier from a Brute that could easily crush her hand (or something worse). Or perhaps she was just checking that her minion had done what she asked. Or maybe something else entirely! It was impossible to say.

God, I wished she would stop being so fucking two-faced about this. Either be the villain I’d met in the bank, or be the reluctant hero that saved me in that bathroom. Her bouncing between the two was making my head spin.

I still hadn’t come to any conclusion when Skitter came back up the stairs holding a small cardboard box. Suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I didn’t know how she’d take it, but it was the only way I could think of to solve this spiral I was in. She looked down as I caught her eye.

“Yes?”

I grabbed my notepad, my hand trembling as I forced out the words. I turned it around to face her.

“ I want to leave .”

Chapter Text

No one really knew how many insects Skitter had on or around her at any one time. I remembered reading somewhere while browsing PHO that most of the combined biomass of animals on the entire planet was contained within arthropods, so I suspected the answer was well into the millions. The point was, it was practically impossible to distinguish individual insects when Skitter seemed to bring a swarm with her wherever she went. They flew through the air in a complicated dance. They crawled through her hair and clothing. They even hummed under her words. It wasn't exaggeration to say I'd had never seen Skitter without them.

"I want to leave"

The moment I showed her the notepad, every insect in the room stopped dead. The ever-shifting wall mosaic froze. Her hair shed beetles and spiders. Even flies paused mid wing-beat. They recovered quickly–I doubted many of her bugs were consciously controlled at any given time–but it was noticeable all the same. So much so that Charlotte flinched and quickly walked toward us from across the room.

"What is it? What did she say?"

Skitter gestured at my pad. Charlotte read it and huffed angrily. "You can't be serious. Not that I don't want you gone, but really? How are we supposed to trust you not to go right back to the heroes, huh? You haven't said a damn word since you got here. I don't –can't– trust you. Boss, you tell her!"

The kids nearby had fallen silent, watching us. Still, Skitter didn't say a word. She just stared at me. The bugs may have recovered from earlier, but I couldn't help but notice that their pattern was different now. Skitter had a habit of placing bugs on people. I wasn't even sure she was aware she was doing it; I knew almost no one else was. I only noticed because my forcefield was hypersensitive ever since… Amy. I felt the gnats and flies trying to land on me even now. I didn't know what she was trying to do. Maybe she was trying to get a sense of my body movements, to tell if I was about to burst into flight. Or tensing for an arrest. But I couldn't look away to ask. She didn't let me.

Charlotte apparently felt about as lost as I was. "Boss? Tell her that we don't work like this, right?"

Skitter looked at me for a moment longer. Then she said a single word.

"Explain."

I let out a huge breath. Okay. That was good. This hadn't ended as badly as I feared initially, she was at least giving me time to elaborate. That was better than I had hoped.

"I'm going crazy in here. I need to walk outside."

She cocked her head as she considered me. I held her gaze. I refused to explain myself any further. Not on this.

Skitter gave a short nod. "Okay. If you want to do that, I need to come with you. I don't want to deal with something happening to you and the heroes blaming me. Is that acceptable?"

I tried to figure out what the girl behind the mask was thinking as she was talking to me. What she saw, what she wanted. On some level it felt like she must have been just as much out of her depth as I was trying to navigate this. Or at least, I hoped she was. That would be a little karmic justice. I figured I was owed a bit of that lately.

"Yes."

"I'm on my way to Bitch's territory to deliver something. If you're coming with me, that's where we'll be going. I'll inform you of anything you need to know on the way. For now, put on anything more you want to wear. I'll be by the door when you're ready."

The tension leaked out of the air. I ran a hand through my hair and caught Skitter's eye as she was about to walk by me. "Bathroom, then we go?" She nodded.

I could feel Charlotte's eyes on me the whole way to the bathroom. I tried not to meet her gaze, or any of the kids'. It wasn't like I could say anything. My pad was left on the counter. And even if I could speak, what would I have said? It felt like we were back to square one, and right after that whole talk in the basement too. Great.

Still, I reflected as I leaned on the bathroom door after closing it behind me, it was worth it. Because I got what I really needed out of that whole mess. Not the walk, though that was important.

I let out a long breath. It had hit me, right as Skitter had walked in the door, that Charlotte was right. I had to figure out a reason to trust Skitter. That she would do right by me, or at least, not do wrong. And the only way to do that was to test her.

I had no idea going into that conversation how she was going to react. If she was going to keep me here by force, finally accuse me of being a drawn out spy, maybe even allege that I was faking my freakouts earlier.

Shudders wracked my body at the last thought. Thank god I didn't have to relitigate that. Small mercies. But all of those options–and more besides–were possibilities. I knew that much. The outcome… could've been better. Maybe it was context, but while she hadn't said that I couldn't leave, she hadn't exactly denied it either. I didn't know what to make of that. Though it could've also just been the way the conversation went. I wish I knew Skitter well enough to tell what she wasn't saying there.

Hah, that was a thought. Wanting to know Skitter better. Maybe I did need that walk more than I thought.

"You didn't take long in there," Charlotte snarked as I stepped out of the bathroom. It wasn't like I needed to go in the first place, and she might have suspected as much. I couldn't reply, and she knew it. But likewise, I knew that she couldn't insinuate anything further.

She rolled her eyes and gestured towards the door. "Boss is over there. I suggest you don't keep her waiting."

I walked across the living room, past the curtains and the ever watchful kids, and sure enough, Skitter was standing by the door. "Have everything you need?"

I nodded.

Skitter looked me over then motioned back to the kitchen. "No you don't."

I stared at her. What could I have possibly forgotten? I was wearing the clothing she provided earlier, so presumably that was disguise enough. We were going out under the cover of night, so my dyed hair would hopefully be a big enough difference to throw anyone off identifying me. My Brute factor would cover everything else. What was I missing?

"Your notepad?"

I blushed bright red, mortified. God, I felt like a child having to be reminded of her bag on the first day of school. How could I be so stupid? Suitably chastened, I made my way back to the kitchen to grab it. I tried not to react to some of the kids snickering. Ignore it. It probably wasn't about me. After passing by Charlotte, who would be sure to lord my mistake over me later, I was back by Skitter at the door.

"Good. Let's go before it gets any later. I want to be back by about 11:00 pm."

I glanced around, only to realize that I didn't have a watch and there obviously weren't any around. Skitter seemed to notice my search. "That gives us three hours. We will be fine."

I didn't know where Bitch's territory was from here, but I couldn't exactly contradict her. We went out the front door, and I looked back as the place I hadn't let myself call home for the past two days disappeared behind worn mahogany.

The sun was long gone as we stepped out into the early June night. The air was hot and muggy for this time of year. Again, I had to be grateful for Skitter's power keeping the bugs away. They were normally a real nightmare during this season. While they had never bothered me since I triggered, I didn't want to have to deal with the sensations with my forcefield sensitivity being what it was. Not when the tension was this thick already.

I looked at Skitter as she walked beside me. The locals didn't think about bothering us, even this late at night, and I could see why. She cut an imposing figure just walking along in her costume. Her profile was already blurred by the way the skirt clung to her waist, trailing off into gossamer strands. The dark gray color of her suit and chitin armor overlay worked together with the dim lighting to confuse her with the dark concrete and brick that surrounded us. And all that was without considering the swarm of bugs literally blocking observing sightlines.

She was terrifying, doing nothing more than walking down the street. She was every inch the villain that the PRT and my mother warned me about. Ruthless. Alien. Silent. And willing to be horrifically violent seemingly on a whim. I should be taking her in. I should set myself loose right now, turn her in to the authorities, and get the people in her territory the help they really needed. She could answer for her crimes, for the things she'd subjected so many people to. Including me. It made so much sense.

And yet.

This was the villain who'd been housing me for the past few days. The same one who held my sister at knifepoint in the bank. The one who'd helped calm me down after a panic attack. The one who admitted she left me behind with my… rapist. And the one who saved me from her.

None of this was fair. None of it was right. In the stories, when the girl was saved from the evil villain by the hero, they lived happily ever after. Except now the villain was the sister, and the hero was the villain.

An aching cramp pulled at my jaw, jarring me out of my thoughts. I opened my mouth to work the tension out, and realized where it had come from. Somewhere along the way I'd clenched my teeth. My shoulders had hunched up, my arms were tight with tension - I was even stomping along the street hard enough that my footsteps were audible over the swarm, scowling.

Skitter had noticed. Or her insects had. "Problem?" she asked, barely glancing my way.

The ache in my jaw intensified as my teeth started grinding again. Now that I had noticed it was almost impossible to stop. I was surprised she didn't hear it, the sound was all I could hear. Or maybe that was the pounding blood in my ears. It was hard to tell. God, why couldn't she just… stick to one thing? Even as she was exuding more potential violence than Shadow Stalker on a bad day, she still stopped to ask me what was wrong. Even before I said anything. Fuck.

I stopped and faced her, trying to get my thoughts together. "No, just thinking."

She nodded and kept walking. "If you see any potential problems, snap twice. While I run a tight ship here, you probably overheard earlier how there are still problem cases."

I shot her a look as I hurried to catch up; anger giving way to incredulity. She really had no idea how she came across to other people, did she? Even if there were problem cases–and I had no doubt that there were– none of them were likely to get within half a mile of us like this. Skitter's disembodied yellow eyes peeking out from a swarm of insects were enough to scare any criminal straight, and that was coming from someone who (used to be) very proficient in terrorizing Nazis.

A soft laugh escaped me before I could stop it. God, Mom used to be so anal about that I had to resort to keeping it a secret from her before long. Who knew that she'd be so on the Nazis' side, of all things? I figured it was a carryover from work. Mom wasn't one to sympathize over taking out the trash, especially after they'd killed Jess–Fleur–but she did harp on about doing it properly. 'You can't be sure when they might have a good lawyer, Victoria!' and all that. I could imagine the exact tone she'd use too.

I sighed as I looked at the girl walking next to me, terrifying everyone within three blocks without a care in the world as she walked through a ruined city she'd claimed as her own. I wondered what Mom would say if she could see me now. I mean, I had some idea. There was a reason why I hadn't suggested that Skitter play herself on that call earlier. Mom wouldn't have listened to a word from her on my behalf to start with. I wouldn't have.

I know what she'd say about Skitter, at the very least. That she was a threat that needed to be dealt with as soon as possible. That there was no path to redemption, no possible good to what she was doing. That the city would be better off without her. She had said it all before. I had agreed with her then. I wanted to now. Badly. But would the city be better, would I be better, without Skitter here? I wasn't so sure, and I hated it.

Would Mom give Skitter the time of day if she knew that she saved me? From my own sister, no less? I almost felt guilty thinking it, but a part of me hoped she would. Like her or not, Skitter was who got me out of that nightmare. For all that she was terrorizing the city, she'd also put me up without asking anything in return. Not even an explanation.

Suddenly, Charlotte's words from earlier came back to me. About having to find a reason to trust her. I snapped my fingers once. Instantly, Skitter's attention focused on me.

"Yes? What is it?"

I showed her my pad. "Why did you save me?"

Skitter cocked her head, but to her credit she didn't take my question at face value. It must have been half a minute before she came up with an answer.

"Because it was right."

A smile slipped onto my face before I could stop it. A real, honest, wide grin. Maybe the first one I had since she woke me up in that bathtub. Maybe… this didn't have to be that complicated, right now. Maybe it really was that simple.

"Then thank you. For taking me in."

Skitter paused, the insects humming around us. The night air was thick as I stared at the yellow glare of her lenses, but for once I wasn't afraid.

"Someone needed to."

"But you didn't."

She looked at me for a long moment before she started walking again. "No. No, I didn't."

We didn't say anything more on the way out of her territory.

Chapter Text

Barker gasped as Bitch’s fist caught him in the stomach. He tried to recover but Bitch didn’t let him, following it up with a right cross that put him on the ground. She could feel his impact through her shoes. Bitch didn’t give him the time to recover.

“Angelica, paw!”

She responded immediately–like a good dog should–slamming her paw into his chest. Barker grunted under the sudden weight.

“Hey! He didn’t–”

Bitch snarled at Biter before he finished talking. Full of shit, both of them. Words words words; she didn’t have time for any of it. She put her hand on Angelica. Felt the strength coursing through her, the reassuring weight. Her power still ran strong an hour after she had last used it, and Angelica was tens of times her normal bulk, tense and ready to shred and savage on her command. She bared her teeth at the thought.

“Next time I tell you to do something, fucker, do it!”

Barker gasped as Angelica’s claws started to dig into his sides. “W-was just t-trying to–”

Bitch let her power course through Angelica, feeling as it resonated through her arm into the terrier. Instantly, Angelica’s already massive weight increased. Her nails elongated, her skin toughened and hardened, spines sprouting from her back. Her breaths grew deeper, fuller, as her airway expanded with her.

Most importantly, Barker felt every pound of that increased mass. Bitch didn’t normally like forcing her power like this, it left her exhausted. Even now, she could feel the edges of it coming over her in a wave. The tiredness, the momentary gray in her vision, the trembling fingers. But for making a point, this was worth the pain.

She leaned in close, enough that she was sure he could feel her breath against him. This close, there was no room for any of the bullshit people usually fooled her with. No room for the hands, for expressions, for words. She could see the sweat on his skin. Smell the stink of his deodorant mixing with the piss he’d let out in his pants. He was scared.

Good.

“I told you to clean the dogs. There was shit in the yard when I came back. If the dogs die, you’re next.”

Barker groaned, and Bitch could tell that it was the whimper of a beaten dog. She looked over at Biter and smiled, a sharp thing. He was cowering in the corner, along with a few of the other henchmen. She stepped towards them, and they all flinched. Bitch bared her teeth. Good to know she hadn’t lost her edge.

“I’m going out. The shit in the yard better be clean when I get back,” she said as she knelt down by Bentley, slowly drawing on her power. He was taking to it well, filling out as he went. Already he was stronger than he was a few weeks ago, more confident. They couldn’t learn how to handle the extra bulk and strength without experience. It was natural for the dogs to be afraid at first. That was why she preferred to have Angelica on hand to handle the newer ones. Speaking of which–

“Angelica, heel!”

With a yip, she obeyed. Bitch huffed as she dug out a treat from the pouch on her belt to give her. People were impossible to manage, but it was good to know that dogs never really changed. Even without… Brutus and Judas… she was still a good girl. Bitch could tell from her tail and the perkiness of her ears that she enjoyed the treats. That meant she probably wasn’t the one vomiting and shitting in the yard. Something else to keep an eye on.

She glanced back at Barker as he struggled to get back off the ground where Angelica left him. “Next time I fuck you up,” she said as she climbed astride Bentley. Barker didn’t meet her eyes. Maybe if she was lucky, he’d be gone when she got back. One less mouth to feed, one less person to watch for when they stabbed her in the back later. Unless she stabbed first.

The wind rushed through her hair as Bitch rode Bentley through her territory. She loved this. The scents of the city, the feeling of power in the dog’s ribs, all of it. They were one unit when they were like this. The shitty people in her territory, the henchmen Coil saddled with her, even her teammates, she could leave them all behind. It was just her and Bentley.

As if on cue, Bentley barked and changed course. Bitch growled. The only reason why he’d do that so early in a run was because he’d sensed something that didn’t belong. After a few more moments, she sensed it too. A smell that was out of place. Most of her territory stank like unwashed people, fur, and blood. A scent she was comfortable with. This smelt like soap, bacon, and maggots. She growled. Taylor.

Fuck. She didn’t want to have to deal with her today. Bad enough that she let herself get so close to someone after the first fuck up in the homes when she triggered. Worse still that Taylor ended up being a lie, just to get close enough to sell them out. Just like she knew she would. But then Bitch got her back. It was right, the only people rule she agreed with–an eye for an eye. But Taylor made it out. And Bitch hated it. Hated that Taylor hadn’t been arrested, that it made her look weak. Hated that it made her feel like she was just as bad as those fucks who had killed Rollo years ago.

Bitch ground her teeth. Maybe if she just dealt with this quickly she could get back to the den and kick around Barker or Biter again. That would make her feel better. No doubt one of them had fucked up again.

She smiled at that, only to grind to a halt when she saw Taylor herself. She wasn’t alone. Bitch growled. Bentley must have felt her aggression because he responded in kind with a snarl that resonated up through her legs and chest into the open air.

Taylor must have heard because she held up a hand. She and the intruder ground to a halt. Bitch took the opportunity. She slipped down from the dog’s side to the street, keeping a hand on him.

“Bentley, heel!”

He obeyed, staying close behind her as she stepped closer to the two. She stopped outside of arm’s range, her hands balled into fists. She hated new things in her territory, especially when she wasn’t expecting them. New people especially. No idea what they could do, if they’d hurt her dogs, demand food, or some other shit. She didn’t have time for any of it. She didn’t have to be within grabbing range for Bentley to hurt them, and the new girl might not know that.

“Who is she?”

If Taylor was intimidated, she didn’t show it. “A friend. She’s staying with me. She decided she needed a walk.”

“And you decided she could see my territory?” Bitch growled.

Taylor refused to be cowed. “She’s a cape. She’s under my protection. If she goes out and something happens, it’s on me.”

Bitch’s teeth ground together. Fuck. Even after all that had happened, Taylor knew how to talk to her. She couldn’t even be angry–which just made her more angry! Was it a trick, the other girl’s attempt to appeal to how she saw the world? Taylor’s face was covered, but it wasn’t like that mattered. Bitch couldn’t tell what people meant on a good day. Instead, she looked at the shoulders, the waist, the wrists. Was her spine straight? Her stance wide? Was she squaring her shoulders?

Taylor cocked her head. “You wanna fight again?”

Bentley sensed his trainer’s mood, and whimpered. Bitch glared at him. “Hush!” She couldn’t let that shit start now. He was still in hot water, and he knew it. Sure, Taylor abused her trust by trying to tell her dogs what to do, but he still listened. That hurt almost as much, even if she knew why.

She turned back to face the pair. “Fine,” she ground out. “What are you here for?”

Taylor motioned to the small box in her arms. “Antibiotics. For the dogs.”

Bitch tensed. “The fuck? You think I don’t take good care of my dogs?”

“No. You do. But the city is dirty, they need help. That’s not your fault.”

Ugh. Bitch couldn’t even start an argument. This was bullshit. “Fine. Follow me back.”

The looks they got as they entered weren’t exactly complimentary, but Bitch didn’t care. Her attention went straight to Sirius and the younger dogs. One of them was sick, and as much as it killed her to say it, it probably wasn’t Barker’s fault. Taylor was right, the city was filthy. The medicine might help.

Bitch ran a hand over the dog as her power flowed through him one more time. She couldn’t be sure, but she thought it helped. Most of what her power did was only temporary. The dogs had to be pulled out of the suits she gave them like newborns from a mother’s carcass when it wore off. But most of the parasites, the ticks and the fleas and everything else, didn’t make the journey intact. It was easier than using medicine on them every time, even if she was sure to wash them after. They liked the feeling, and she liked watching when they got excited.

A small yip from behind her drew her attention. Bitch turned around, only to see the mystery cape trying to touch Bastard. Her vision went red.

“The fuck do you think you’re doing?” Bitch screamed, her power flooding into Sirius at full throttle. She was seeing stars, but it didn’t matter. The second that the dog had enough power, she was going to sic him on her, and damn the consequences. This bitch thought she could touch her dogs? Hurt them?

Taylor was suddenly in front of her, legs sweeping her off the ground and knocking her against the wall. It was so quick Bitch didn’t even have time to react. Her head hit the concrete behind her, and she saw stars for the second time in as many seconds.

“K-knew you’d c-cross me again,” Bitch whined through the arm pressing against her windpipe.

“Ssssirius, hur-”

“No,” Taylor said forcefully. “She didn’t know. I’m trying to save your dog. She’s a Brute, Bitch. If Sirius attacks her, he’ll get hurt. Understand?”

Bitch groaned as her head throbbed in time with her heart. She nodded slowly, not breaking eye line with Taylor. “W-what about her? She t-touched my dog.”

Taylor nodded. “She shouldn’t have. But she’s mine. I decide how she gets punished. Clear?”

She swallowed. That… she could accept that. It was the same thing she would’ve done in her place. Even on Taylor’s territory, her people were her property. She would’ve accepted nothing less, even if she hated their guts most of the time.

Bitch nodded. Taylor sighed as she slowly let her arm release from the other girl’s windpipe. She glanced meaningfully at Sirius, who was still growling, and Bitch complied with the implied request. “Sirius, heel!”

He barked, and trotted to her side, tongue wagging out the side of his mouth. Bitch nodded. Good dog. That just left one thing…

She turned before Taylor could react and sucker punched her in the gut. Her gasp was music to Bitch’s ears. She leaned in close to where she knew her ear was under her costume. “That makes us even.”

Taylor’s whisper was equally quiet. “So long as you know that I let you have that, and you only get the one.”

Bitch bent down and took the package from where Taylor had dropped it earlier. There was dirt and shit on it now, but that was beside the point. It should work just fine. She wanted to give it to the problem dogs now… but she didn’t want to let her power wear off in front of the stranger.

The quiet was broken by Taylor’s voice. “If that’s all, we’ll be going.”

Footsteps, getting quieter now. A door opening. She could just let them leave. She said it earlier, she and Taylor were square now, and she didn’t owe New Girl shit. She could just let them leave, and she wouldn’t feel guilty. Shouldn’t. Goddammit.

“Wait,” Bitch said, despite every effort to keep her mouth shut. She turned to face the pair now paused in the doorway. “I’ll walk you to the edge.”

Taylor nodded in thanks. New Girl didn’t say a word. This was fine. It wasn’t her getting close again. Just doing her due diligence. Taylor, regardless of how she felt, was part of her team. If one of her people got hurt by one of the Nine hanging around–like that creepy fuck Siberian–or anyone else, it would look bad on her. And besides, she wanted her away from her dogs as soon as possible. She could deal with the rest later.

The air was cool on her face as she rode Sirius. Though she didn’t like how quickly she had to use her power on him earlier, she was glad for it now. The fatigue was still settling on her. She didn’t want to show it, but she probably couldn’t have made the walk on her own. Bentley was still pumped up at the time, but she didn’t trust him around Taylor yet. Couldn’t.

It had been a few minutes since they set out now. Bitch wasn’t good with distance; never had been ever since she was a kid. She didn’t know if it was damage from one too many hits to the head from one of the matrons or whatever her trigger did to her, but it was what it was. What mattered was she didn’t know exactly how long they had until the edge of her territory.

The whole idea of a territory was bullshit anyways. Who was anyone else to say where her range ended? Supposedly every one of these buildings was “owned” by someone with a fancy sheet of paper to prove it. But what did that matter when one of her dogs could rip them to shreds? What did any of it matter when no one lived here to claim it except for her? It was all bullshit.

She huffed in frustration. Taylor must have caught the noise. “Something wrong?”

Bitch went to say no then paused. She hadn’t meant it that way, but something was wrong. The air, it was… different. She nodded and whistled sharply to Sirius. He slowed down accordingly, letting Bitch slide to the ground in one smooth motion. Taylor had already tensed, no doubt scanning the surrounding area.

“Heroes. Incoming.”

Bitch jerked her head to face her. “Here? In my territory? We gonna fight?”

Taylor cocked her head, considering. “We haven’t been doing anything, looks like a standard patrol, but we can’t afford to have them see her.”

Bitch swore. “The fuck do you mean? New Girl?” She turned to the girl in question, snarling. “The fuck is your problem then?”

She opened her mouth but didn’t say anything.

Bitch clenched her teeth. “I swear if this is a set up–”

“Too late. They’re here.”

Chapter Text

The heroes would be here any minute. That was the only thought I could process, echoing around my skull. Someone from the Protectorate would be standing in front of us soon, and I had no idea what to do. My public relations training hadn’t exactly planned for this (I had to hold in an almost hysterical snort at the thought). Who would it be? Armsmaster? Assault? Battery? Miss Militia? Some new transfer I hadn’t even heard of? A part of me didn’t even want to consider the other option. That it could be a member of my family. I wasn’t prepared for… whatever the result of that conversation would be.

“How long do we have?” The girl (Bitch?)’s voice staggered me out of my thoughts.

I glanced over at Skitter. She was nervous, I was sure. She certainly had reason to be, standing right next to me with the Heroes moments away. I thought I could see it. Something about the way she stood, the arch of her back leading into the paneling across her shoulder blades, the silk almost tight against her skin. Maybe I was just seeing things. But it helped to think she had as much invested in this as I did.

“Not sure. They were just around that corner, but they’ve paused for some reason. Could be any minute now,” Skitter said as she idly adjusted the fit on one of her gloves. A nervous habit? It was hard to tell.

Okay, Victoria, try to think. What were my options here? In the immediate short term, I had two. I could stay here with Skitter and Bitch, or I could leave. I hadn’t tried to fly since Amy, but I might have no choice when it came time to decide.

As if sensing my thoughts, Skitter turned to me. “Victoria.”

I jumped, turning to face her almost guiltily. “You need to choose what you’re doing.”

There was a silence in the cool night air before Bitch snarled. “You’re letting her leave?”

Skitter stuck out arm in front of her, and the girl quieted. “She’s my charge, I let her do what she wants. But if she wants to leave, she has to do it now.” Her eyes didn’t leave mine. “I know you didn’t want to be affiliated with us. I respect that. But I can’t guarantee that your disguise will hold. If you’re going to leave, do it now.”

She was offering me the option to leave. Of my own free will. I had to remind myself of that. Because as much as she was phrasing this like a choice… something about her gaze was challenging. Like this was a test she was giving me. Of what, I wasn’t sure.

I closed my eyes, trying to think. Even if I gave her the choice she “wanted” me to make… I knew she’d never respect me for coming by it that way. Nevermind what Skitter wanted, what did I want?

I didn’t want to go back to my family. That was the biggest thing I kept coming back to. Could the Heroes guarantee that? I had no way of knowing. It was possible they’d put me up in the Wards, keep me safe. Or it was equally possible Mom would pull out some legal trick and they’d have to send me back to… her. That wasn’t an option.

What about Skitter? She could keep me from my family, sure. But what about everything else? Even if the Heroes didn’t recognize me here, it was only a matter of time. If I was going to do this, I had to be honest about it. Was I comfortable with being recognized working with Skitter? Absolutely not. Was it better than any other option I had…? I don’t know for sure. But I couldn’t think of another one right now, and the clock was ticking. Much as it pained me to say it, there was only one answer I could give her.

“I’m staying.”

Skitter nodded, as if she hadn’t expected any other answer. “Okay. Don’t talk to any of the heroes. Even with your notepad. Just agree with what I say. Your cover is as a lost refugee that I’m taking to my territory. Clear?”

I nodded, my eyes breaking away from her to glance over at Bitch. She bared her teeth in a harsh approximation of a grin. I flinched, which seemed to satisfy her. She turned back to Skitter. “I still say we fuck ‘em up. They’re on my turf.”

“Normally we would,” Skitter agreed, “but we have Victoria with us. She can’t afford to be recognized.”

Bitch growled. “What do you mean recognized? Who is she?”

The sound of approaching footsteps cut our conversation short. “Bitch, I don’t have time to explain it right now. Just trust me.” A loaded look passed between them. It was sudden and small, but for a moment it felt weirdly private. I almost looked away instinctively.

Bitch gave a gruff nod, and apparently that was the end of it.

The footsteps made it around the corner, and at last I saw the heroes we faced. First was Triumph, his shiny gold armor utterly unmistakable in the gloom. Even this late at night it almost blinded me. Was that intentional? I always thought that those aesthetic choices were more than a little gauche–and this was coming from someone who chose the name Glory Girl–but I’d never had the chance to ask him. Now I never might. His powers were split evenly between a Brute rating to keep him in the fight, and a sound-based blaster effect to keep others out of it. Putting him up first made sense.

Next was Assault, and I had to double take at the look on his face. Assault was well known as the cheeriest among the local Protectorate, always the first to crack a smile or a joke. There were rumors that he had taken Clockblocker under his wing after the Ward announced his name; if so I wasn’t sure how effective the Hero was at rounding off his rough edges. Assault’s signature red armor was present, but his smile was gone. His mouth was pressed into a thin, grim line as he surveyed the surrounding buildings before quickly landing on us, assessing. Did he see a threat? I couldn’t say.

I did notice the absence of his usual partner Battery. Their powers were incredibly synergistic–between her ability to charge and release energy and his ability to conserve and redirect momentum, the two were almost unstoppable in hand to hand. But Battery was… no, Battery was dead now, wasn’t she? I remembered Tattletale telling me that when I first woke up. With the whirlwind of events in the time since, I hadn’t really had time to process it. I’d almost forgotten, under everything else. But if it was true, I’d miss her. She was a good Hero. Shy, and a bit hard on Assault when she didn’t need to be, but they balanced each other well. And no one could deny her track record. I guess we never would finish that conversation about mirrored powersets from a few months back…

I shook my head, forcing myself to focus on the present again. There would be time enough for that later, hopefully. Miss Militia came last, with her distinctive American flag half mask shielding the lower portion of her face. She was dressed in her regular combat fatigues, the olive green camo blending in surprisingly well into the urban landscape. She was holding a green Beretta pistol, but I knew from experience that her power could shift into another–much deadlier–form in a fraction of a second. Her effective range made her very good support, not that it mattered when we were this close. I had to wonder what Skitter was thinking, letting them into close range like this. From what I remembered, she was a ranged fighter. The Heroes were less than thirty feet away, surely she could have retreated before they saw us.

The three of them came to a stop almost immediately, and I realized that we were in a standoff. I retreated behind Skitter almost reflexively. If this was going to get into a fight, I couldn’t afford to be in the way. Anything that hit me would instantly betray my Brute rating, and no amount of hair dye would deflect the scrutiny that followed.

“Skitter,” Miss Militia called out, “Hellhound. What are you two doing?”

Bitch growled and took a step forward before Skitter intervened. “None of your business. This is Bitch’s territory, not yours. Why are you here?”

Miss Militia tensed, her power flickering into what looked like a semi automatic shotgun. She told me once that her power didn’t shift according to her conscious thoughts, but at moments like this it was hard to believe. “We’re patrolling, looking for any remnants of the Nine, helping civilians.”

The bugs around us buzzed in a low drone, catching my attention. It really was frightening just how quickly and quietly Skitter could amass her insects. “Then why are you stopping us? The Truce still stands through tomorrow.”

“We can’t exactly trust you of all people to hold to the rules of the Truce,” Assault spat, glaring at us.

“What Assault is trying to say is that we were at the meeting to deal with the Nine, just like everyone else,” said Miss Militia. “You claimed this territory while everyone else agreed not to make any moves. You’re standing on shaky ground, Undersiders.”

You could cut the tension with a knife. I tried not to draw their attention as I hesitantly leaned around Skitter, glancing between the three heroes and the villains. I was counting on Skitter’s ability to hold Bitch at bay, but how long was that going to last?

“You’re on shaky ground yourselves, Heroes,” Skitter’s voice echoed through her swarm. “We took these territories because the people in them were helpless against the Nine. We defended them when no one else did. Don’t antagonize us for doing your jobs.”

Assault took a step forward. “That’s not the same thing and you know it! Don’t quote our principles back at us like you have the moral high ground!” Skitter subtly tensed every time he opened his mouth. I had to wonder if anyone else noticed. I knew that Assault was capable of accelerating on a dime. Was she preparing for that? That was a smart, albeit distressing level of paranoia if so.

“And yet, here we are. Providing for the refugees you abandoned.”

Miss Militia’s eyes slowly strayed to me. Dammit. “Here we are indeed. Who is that behind you?”

I tensed, dropping eye contact. “No one of consequence. Another scrounger I’m taking back with me.” Skitter’s voice sounded as if she couldn’t care less. I almost shuddered. I knew she was covering for me but… was that all I was in the end? I couldn’t exactly refute the statement, but still...

Miss Militia didn’t let the statement slide. “I think we should let her speak for herself, no? What’s your name?”

There it was. The moment I was dreading. Praying that Tattletale’s disguise and clothes would get me through this conversation, I slowly stepped out from behind Skitter and into the direct view of the three Heroes. They met my eyes, softly encouraging in the way I knew they were trained for civilians. And I was going to lie to them. I reached for my drawing pad. Skitter must have been thinking ahead as she pulled a small pocket flashlight out to be able to see what I wrote.

Skitter stepped to the side, intending to narrate my writing. “She can’t speak–”

Assault gasped, immediately stepping forward. “I knew it! You villains are all the same! Let her go now or suffer the consequences, Truce or not!”

The rest of the Heroes tensed, looking between me and Skitter. No doubt they were all running the math of how to address a human shield. I looked at Skitter, panicked. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that, she had to know!

The bugs around us swirled angrily, the drone rising in pitch to a whine. “You all claim to be Heroes, yet you didn’t even let me explain her handicap.” Skitter’s voice was low and mocking as she turned to me. My fists clenched hard as I stared at her. That was low. Yeah, she might have phrased it that way specifically to make sure that the Heroes would give her time to explain but... the way she said it hurt.

“She can’t speak,” Skitter continued, “because she’s mute. She’ll write instead, and I’ll read it.”

The stances of the Heroes changed, if only slightly. They were uncertain now, lowering their guards. Would they take me at my word?

I swallowed and stepped to the side so I could at least look at the Heroes as I wrote. Skitter continued, “I was injured during the Nine. Skitter offered help. I had nowhere else to go.”

“You have to understand why we can’t trust that on its face, right?” Miss Militia said.

"And why not?" Skitter replied.

"Because with your record we couldn't trust you to take care of a preschooler, never mind a lone civilian," Assault snapped, taking another step forward. Bitch snarled, and the dog next to us let loose a growl that I felt echo clean through my chest. It was enough of a threat display that Assault stopped moving, but he didn’t back down either.

Skitter's laugh could have cut glass. Not that there was much left after Shatterbird. "Because the heroes have done so well? I think not."

"So she can leave with us right now, then?" I felt myself freeze, as his attention turned to me again. “You wouldn’t stop her?”

"That's her call. She came to us of her own free will, if she wanted to be somewhere else she would be," Skitter cut back. She stood stock still, but I could see the lines of tension in her shoulders through the silk.

"And how can we know that she’s actually the one making the decision? We remember what you did to Shadow Stalker. There's nothing saying that Regent over there isn't puppeting her into a parody of acceptance for us while you scoop up another meat shield. Or should I say Hijack-"

I wasn't listening. The rest of the conversation devolved into a blur of raised voices and gestures. I think. The world was dark and dull. I could feel their eyes like ants on my skin. My fists were clenched so tightly I knew I'd shatter bone if I was holding Skitter's hand. Why am I even thinking about that? Shit. I couldn't– I can't–

"Enough." Skitter's voice echoed. The buzzing of her insects was harsh, almost metallic as they swarmed between us; a living wall of droning, squirming, writhing life that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. From the way the Heroes flinched back, they felt the same instinctive, visceral disgust at the display as me. "Believe us or not, I don't care. We're done here."

Just as we were about to turn away, a lone voice stopped me. Triumph, the single person that hadn’t spoken yet.

“Glory Girl?”

Chapter Text

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Of course it was too much to ask that I get out of this conversation without the Heroes finding out. With dread forming a thick, sapping mass in my chest that made it hard to breathe, I turned to face Triumph and the rest of the Heroes.

I couldn't see his eyes, and I didn't want to. I had no idea what he was thinking, but he didn't say anything more.

Miss Militia made an aborted step forward, hesitating as the bugs Skitter had shielding us rippled out towards her like a wall of writhing cilia. "God… that is you, isn't it?" Her voice was soft, almost disbelieving, but it carried over the warning drone of the swarm. I wanted to hang my head, but I couldn't look away.

I nodded.

"We… we thought you were dead," Triumph said. I wrung my hands. How could I possibly explain the chain of events that lead me to where I am now, when I could barely explain it myself?

Miss Militia's eyebrows drew together in a hard line, as she turned back to Skitter. "And what is your explanation for this then? Another 'ordinary refugee' that you're taking in?"

Skitter didn't twitch. "Nothing she said was untrue. She was injured during the Nine, and she asked me for help. I provided. I know you wouldn't have done the same if I had asked, but that's not on me."

Miss Militia's gun warped into a combat knife. "Don't change the subject, Skitter. You're trying to claim ownership of a Hero, one who is unmasked and isolated from her family. You've provided her no place to turn to, and she believes there's no way out. You dyed her hair so that we wouldn't catch on. You know what you're doing is wrong."

"When Victoria came to me, she had nothing," Skitter's voice could have cut diamond. "I knew the risks. But she asked me. I had to say yes."

Assault chose this moment to re-enter the conversation. "I can't help but notice you never denied it when we accused you of mastering her with Hijack."

I flinched, my hands coming up instinctively. Skitter hadn't mentioned that her teammate was Hijack. It wasn't like I'd had time to see the rest of the Undersiders before this point. Was that just making excuses for her not mentioning him to me before? Would she have said something before I met him? I wish I could say for sure. But I knew (hoped) that Skitter would never let them do that to me. Then again… what if that's what Shadow Stalker thought? They were clearly willing to master and use a Hero before. Logically, I couldn't really expect anything different.

I took an instinctive step away from Skitter and towards the rest of the Heroes. Bitch growled as she watched, but I couldn't look her way. Assault must've seen it because he turned to me. "Glory Girl, I don't know what she's told you, but you have options. Here, with us. You might've done some bad things," he chuckled. "Trust me, I've had my fair share of mistakes too. But you shouldn't let that paint you into a corner. Or think that they're somehow the better option."

I wasn't… was that really what I was doing? I looked back at Skitter. She was unreadable, even by her normal standards. Her gaze didn't leave mine. I forced myself to consider all of my experiences with her. Not just the bank, but everything that followed. Did she push me into going with her? Or at least, not going with the heroes? Between the explanation Tattletale gave, and the questions she asked, I had to conclude yes. If only for my own safety. It was always easier to plan for the worst than hope for the best.

Fine, so she pushed me. Was it intentional? That was much harder to say. Tattletale was abrasive and uncomplimentary to the Protectorate, when she'd been explaining what I missed. Looking back on that… I don't think her goal was to go over that information at all. Skitter could have done so in her place. At one point, she did. No, if anything, Tattletale was there to verify that I wasn't a threat to her teammate. And despite myself, I had to respect that. Even if I didn't like it.

And as for her teammate… Skitter was kinder than she had to be; than I might've been in her place. I didn't mean that in the cuddly sort of way, obviously, but in the more heroic sense. She gave me choices at every turn. Sourced me things like the hoodie and notepad that I didn't strictly speaking need but helped me feel better. Instead of handing me off to her teammate to deal with or abandoning me in the house where she found me, she gave me the option to come with her. She could have just let a minion deal with me at her base, but she'd kept putting in her own time, calling my mom for me, keeping me close. Part of that was self serving; I was a potential threat, she didn't trust me around the kids, she wanted to keep an eye on me. But...

"You have to figure out why you should trust her."

Charlotte's words echoed in my head. Choice. That's what this all came down to. Maybe the Heroes would've kept me from Mom and my family until I figured myself out. Maybe they wouldn't — I'd never find out for sure now. But I knew that Skitter had done it when I'd asked. She'd believed me when I said that I wasn't looking for a fight, that I wanted a place to stay. It was time to return the favor.

My eyes were clear when I looked back at Assault. My stomach twisted, but I had a steady hand when I wrote it anyways. "I'm sorry"

I took a step back to Skitter. I could feel her and Bitch's eyes on my back, but I couldn't turn to them for support. I had to do this myself. "I'm staying with them for now"

Miss Militia sighed. "I was afraid it was gonna be like that, Glory Girl." She turned to Skitter, her eyes hard. "You need to explain how you found her. No tricks, no euphemisms. All of it."

I shuddered, my fists clenched tight. "That's not my story to tell," Skitter said, naked threat in every syllable. "And you can't pressure her for it."

Assault made a step forward, his eyes never leaving Skitter's even as Bitch and her dog growled. "Is that a threat?"

Skitter's laugh was covered up by the harsh, discordant thrum of her swarm; the grating chorus of a chittering, buzzing nightmare. I shivered. "A threat," she said flatly, "would imply some doubt about the outcome. This is a promise."

Miss Militia tried to intervene. "You have to understand why we can't trust you, Skitter, especially in light of you hiding Glory Girl's identity from us. It doesn't look good."

"You don't care about one of your own, and suddenly you decide it's your business?" Bitch snarled. "You fuckers don't have the right to be angry."

The hero was unfazed. "It's precisely because she's one of our own that I ask. If we took one of your dogs, you'd be angry too."

Fuck. I'd known Bitch for all of an hour and even I knew not to step on that landmine. "You saying you'll take my dogs?" The monster beside her tensed at her tone. "I'd like to see you fuckers try."

Miss Militia seemed to sense she'd screwed up. "I'm not saying we'd take one of your dogs. Just that you'd be angry if we did. That's why we need to know why Skitter took Glory Girl," she said, facing the Villain in question.

All this talking around me was starting to get… tiresome. I didn't want these questions to begin with, but the least they could do was ask me directly. I wasn't helpless (not again).

As if sensing my frustration, Skitter turned to me. "If you want to tell them, you can. It's your story. Just tell me if you want me to speak for you." Her voice was strangely soft, but I could hear the steel under the velvet.

I swallowed, and faced the Heroes. "What did Carol tell you?" I had to ask that much, even just to stall for time while I worked out what to say.

Triumph spoke up. "Like I said earlier, we thought you were dead. Amy took you to get healed after the bombing on Crawler, and that's the last we heard from you. We assumed that one or both of you were in the wind."

He glanced at the Heroes flanking him. "That's… part of the reason why we were patrolling here, to be honest. We knew the chances were low, but we had to keep looking. At least until we knew for sure either way."

So the Heroes were looking for me this whole time. I took a deep breath. Good. That was good.

"I appreciate that."

Triumph nodded. "It's the least we could do. You're one of us, no matter what. We look after our own." He gave Skitter a pointed glance, which she ignored.

I turned my attention back to the Heroes. "How long ago was that?"

Miss Militia looked at me worriedly. "Almost a week ago. Do you not know?"

I took a deep breath. Okay, that was good. It matched with what Skitter and Tattletale told me. It was an easy enough thing to check, but my memory was still suspect.

"Skitter told me, but I had to be sure. I was" I paused, trying to control the lump in my throat "indisposed for a big part of that"

"Glory Girl… Victoria, what happened? Why didn't you reach out if you were hurt?" Miss Militia's tone was gentle. I hated it.

"I was" I trembled, my fingers almost ruining the pen again, "hurt, when Amy got me"

The Heroes were silent as I wrote. Behind me, Skitter's swarm gently brushed my shoulder blade. It reassured me more than I wanted to admit.

"She healed me. Changed me"

Miss Militia's eyes sharpened. "What do you mean by that, Glory Girl?"

I looked pleadingly at Skitter behind me, who seemed to realize that I'd have no way of describing the thing I'd become.

"Victoria was… mostly not human, by the time I found her. I'm not sure what Amy was drawing from at the time, but it was a mishmash of flesh and bone."
I closed my eyes, willing myself to listen. I couldn't ignore this. Even if I hated that she–that anyone–saw me like that.

"I'm not sure if Amy planned it or not, but it took her some time to revert Victoria."

Miss Militia turned to look at me. "Is that true, Glory girl? Is that how you got injured?"

I swallowed. My mouth felt dry. "Yes and no"

You could've heard a pin drop as I kept writing. "Amy, she" my hand stopped. I couldn't make myself say it, even in writing. How humiliating was that? Here were the Heroes, people who I looked up to, modeled myself after in some cases, and I couldn't tell them what happened to me. God I was pathetic.

"It's okay, you don't have to tell us," Triumph said.

"No," Skitter cut in, her voice harder than I'd ever heard it. "You don't get to deny her now. You pressured her into this when I said it was her place. You asked her when I told you not to. Don't flinch now just because her pain makes you uncomfortable."

I had to blink the tears out of my eyes. Where–where did that come from? I looked at Skitter as if she was a stranger. That felt… too personal, too immediate to just be for my benefit. 'Thank you' I mouthed at her. I'm not sure if she understood, but a wasp gently buzzed by my cheek. Maybe that was enough.

My hand was shaky, but I forced myself to get through it this time. For myself. "Amy, she used me. While I was like that. I don't know how much. Don't remember all of it. But I know enough"

Assault's mouth was hard, angry, but to his credit he didn't look away from me like Triumph did. "Fuck."

Miss Militia's sigh was more weary than I'd ever heard from her. "I was afraid of that. You're sure?"

I could sense Skitter bristle, about to go on an angry tirade, but to her credit the Hero corrected without pausing for breath. "No, don't bother answering that. Sorry, I… I only asked because I didn't want it to be true. Not because I doubted you. Not over that."

The insects around us buzzed angrily for a moment before Skitter nodded curtly.

There was a pause for a moment, as everyone seemed to digest that. "So where does that leave us?" Miss Militia asked.

"Victoria asked to be with us. She can leave at any time. It's her choice." Skitter's voice was unyielding.

Assault's mouth was drawn harshly as he stepped forward. "No, we can't accept that. I understand what happened, Victoria, and I'm sorry. But Skitter isn't equipped to help you. You have to know that."

He turned his gaze to her. "More to the point, we can't trust you. Regent took Shadow Stalker hostage. He mastered her into an infiltration of the PRT. You lost the benefit of the doubt; you don't get to claim altruism now."

"Hah!" Skitter's voice was bitter. "You'd trust your judgment, but not that of one of your own? That's rich. I wasn't the one who refused to go after Bonesaw's hostage just because he was on 'their side'. I didn't call for bombing downtown while teenagers were fighting the Nine there. That was all you. You might claim that we have no morals, but even I don't stoop that low."

Assault took another step forward, baring his teeth. "It isn't about us! It's about her," he said, pointing at me. "We can't trust that she's making a choice, not like this. Maybe she is, and maybe that's good, but if it isn't we're allowing you to commit a crime on the same scale as her sister."

I flinched, closing my eyes. No, no, no, that wasn't right. Deep breaths, Victoria. You're making your own choices here — you went over this before. Just because a Hero compared the two of them doesn't mean that you're back there. With her. Not again.

Skitter didn't hesitate in responding with equal venom. "So what's your plan then, Hero? Rip her away just so you can be sure that you're right?"

I clenched my fists, my nails digging into my palms. Deep breaths, I repeated to myself. No one is claiming you here. You don't belong to anyone. You can always run.

"If that's what's required, then yes," Assault's voice was flat. I flinched. Skitter's swarm brushed my shoulder blade again, and I forced myself to let go of the rigid tension in my arms and unclench my trembling hands. I was safe here. I was safe here. I was safe-

"Let's not be hasty," Miss Militia said, "maybe there's a compromise. A field master screening or—" but I wasn't listening. Their voices blended together in my head. Assault's anger, Miss Militia's bargaining, Skitter's threats, Triumph's confusion, even Bitch's snarls. They all swirled together into a mess of noise and violence. I didn't know where to go. I just… I needed to be somewhere else. I needed out.

Suddenly the noise got louder. Much, much louder; a sudden chaotic clamor. I heard an impact – was someone fighting? I didn't want to look. I hunched down, covering my ears. Skitter's bugs must've been swarming around us; I could feel them on my forcefield bouncing off me like hail. Why was everyone doing this? Why did none of them believe me? Tears stung my eyes as I curled into a ball and trembled, still trying to breathe slowly as shuddering sobs forced their way out, shaking my shoulders with every messy in and out. I hated this. I hated it, I hated it, all of it–

"Victoria!"

A hand took me by the shoulder and forcefully pulled me head up out of my knees. Suddenly, I was looking straight into Skitter's mask, closer than I'd ever seen it. The swarm must've thickened when I wasn't looking because it was a wall of writhing blackness now, shifting and thrashing even as I watched. There was a sound like a gunshot — Miss Militia maybe? — off to the left. Triumph's sonic roar echoed off the buildings, but I had no idea what he was targeting. Judging by the sheer amount of insects in the air, there was a good chance he didn't either.

"Victoria!!" Skitter shouted, snapping me out of my spiral. What? What could she possibly want at a time like this?

"Victoria, turn off your goddamn aura!"

Chapter Text

How could I be so stupid? It was all that I could think of as Skitter’s words sunk in. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It seemed so obvious, in retrospect. That my powers might have shifted after what Amy did to me. But I was focused on other things. Getting my feet under me, clothes and a bed, figuring out what Skitter wanted… testing all my powers again just fell by the wayside. It hadn’t seemed important. I’d told myself it could wait.

I was paying for that now.

Another explosion sounded off to our left, and I flinched, clenching my fists and forcing my focus back into the moment. Okay. Okay, I just had to break the problem down one step at a time. My powerset had three – I winced as a pained yell sounded above the roar of the swarm – three main expressions.

The first was my Brute rating. Technically it was both super strength and durability, but the two were related so Mom had packaged them together. It manifested as a sort of shield around me, hovering a fraction of an inch above my skin, that protected me and gave me superhuman strength. When the field was overwhelmed it broke for a second or two - sometimes longer if it was hit hard enough. It made for a rating like Alexandria, but only in short bursts. As I only found out too well with… Crawler.

The sound of Triumph screaming washed over me, through me, vibrating through my ribs and making my breathing stutter. I crossed my arms over my torso and forced myself to inhale, slow and deep, until I felt less like I was about to puke. Keep calm. Stay focused. Go over what you know first. The second part of my powers. That was the mover rating. I could fly quickly, and make pinpoint turns without losing too much speed. Other than the obvious applications it was almost never relevant, and we’d never thought to test further. My forcefield protected me from the worst of the windchill.

The last – the crack of gunfire made me sob and curl in on myself, instinct muscling rational knowledge of my forcefield aside at the sound. The... the last power I had. The aura. The thing that was... causing all of this. We hadn’t gone to the PRT to test it. Mom had been worried about them slapping a Master rating on me. Fucking... politics. But we knew it was mostly unconscious. It made everyone around me feel things. Awe. Fear. A mix of both, depending on how they felt about me. Judging by the fight currently raging, I could guess what it was doing now. But that didn’t make sense! Even if the Heroes had been… less than empathetic in some respects… they hadn’t seen me as a threat, had they? That was always the qualifier before. What changed?

Skitter snapped in front of my face. “F-focus Victoria, we don’t have time! I c-can’t keep them off us forever!”

I gasped. She was right. Whatever changed, it didn’t matter. I just had to turn it down. And I knew how to do that. I reached for the mental switch and–

It wasn’t there.

What?

No. No, it had to be there. These were my powers. I knew how to use them! I’d been using them for years! Where was it? I shook my head, my breathing quickening again despite my efforts. I’d always been able to pump my aura up or draw it in! But now it was gone. I couldn’t flex my focus the right way. I remembered what it felt like, but there was nothing but an empty space there when I tried.

It felt like waking up missing a hand.

This- this couldn’t be happening. Every parahuman class I’d ever had said that power use was instinctual! Not just right after their trigger, but perpetually! People could figure out new ways to manipulate their existing powerset, but the base mastery didn’t change! Even what little literature there was on second triggers said as much! How could this be any different?

My vision swam, and I realised I was getting lightheaded. I was hyperventilating. Shit. I shook my head viciously. It didn’t matter. It didn’t, even if I felt the loss of that mental muscle like the loss of a limb. Right now, I just had to accept that–that whatever Amy did to me amputated my control over my aura. Fine. I–I could deal with that later. But right now I had to turn it off. My aura hadn’t been on once since I’d woken up, so I knew it was possible.

I thought back to when my aura first flared after my Trigger. I’d been so scared that it had spilled out of me at full blast. I’d just wanted everyone to go away. It’d been chaos. Mom was the one who’d calmed me down, talking it through with me until I was okay with letting people in. With letting her in. It always felt so nice when she hugged me. I missed her.

Fuck, no time for that. Focus on what matters. Calming my heart rate. I could do that. Miss Militia’s shotgun went off closer to us, and I flinched away hard enough that I almost fell over, feeling the cold, wet, rough ground scrape against the sensitive forcefield over my shins. No, no, focus on calm. I could do calm. No problem. Deep breaths.

Looking for something, anything to distract me, I glanced over at Skitter. For someone who was right next to the epicenter of my fear aura, she was doing well. Her bugs swarmed around us, sure, but they were more a smokescreen than anything else. Her posture was rigid, her gaze fixed on some point further out past the swarm.

She looked away from what must be the Heroes to meet my eyes. “Victoria. Whatever you’re trying. Isn’t w-working.”

I swallowed, and nodded. My heartrate was settling, but I could tell the aura was still up. What did that mean, then? Should we just run away? I knew Skitter wouldn’t abandon Bitch to the Heroes like this. Bitch wouldn’t abandon her dogs. And her dogs wouldn’t go anywhere near me when I was like this.

With a grimace, Skitter stepped closer. The bugs likewise closed the distance, encircling us to within a few feet. The sound was almost deafening, but her words still came through clearly. “Yes or no: can you turn it off on your own?”

I forced myself to shake my head. I couldn’t know for sure that I had tried everything. There were a few more tips and tricks I’d taught myself over the years that might work. But they’d take too long. In the time we had, I didn’t have any answers for her.

Skitter nodded as if she expected that answer. “Okay. Do you t-trust me?”

I stared at her. That was a hell of a question to ask. Especially right now. Did I trust the Villain in front of me who’d lied to my mom’s face about where I was and who I was with? Who stood up for me in front of the Heroes as if they’d insulted her instead? Who had no reason to not just drop me on the streets right now?

I met her eyes, and nodded.

“Good. Take down your forcefield.”

What?! She had to be kidding. I almost scrambled for my notepad but Skitter put a hand on my field above my shoulder before I could finish the motion. I tried not to squirm at the threadsclawsbugssilktoomuch. “No. No time. I know you can take down your field. I’ve felt it. There’s a chance your aura might be linked to it right now. You need to t-try.”

I almost choked. Did she know what she was asking me to do? It was difficult for me to take my field down on a good day, and this hadn’t exactly qualified to this point. Putting aside how exactly she’d ‘felt’ my field go down (and we would come back to that later), most of the time it just wasn’t up to me. If I was scared, or anxious, or even just anything other than secure, it was up. To take it down right now in front of the Heroes who might just kill me by accident without it?

Skitter didn’t look away. “I know it’s dangerous. I know it’s hard. But you have to do it, and keep it off. Trust that I’ll protect you, and get us out. Can you do that?”

I swallowed. It came down to that night a few days ago, when she’d offered me her hand. Could I trust her? I… I had to. I had no other choice, and she knew it.

I reached out, and grabbed her hand. To center myself. I needed physical contact, something to ground me. If Skitter was surprised she didn’t react.

Okay. I needed to ground myself. Focus on where I was now, and who I was with. Skitter. She said she’d protect me, keep me safe. She’d get us out of here. If she was going to give me up to the Heroes, she would’ve done so by now. I could trust that–had to trust that. Focus on the feeling of her hand in mine. It was warm, softer than I expected from the talons that replaced her nails. I knew now that it must’ve been spider silk. What other reason could she have to keep that many around? The threads were wound and woven tightly enough that it almost felt like one continuous texture across my palm.

My eyes opened. Wait, my palm! I did it! I turned to Skitter, and for a second I almost thought she might be smiling under that mask.
“Well done, Victoria.”

I tried to focus on the task at hand rather than the anxiety in my chest. Now wasn’t time for sentimentality. This was about fixing the mistake I’d made in the first place.

“Bitch, come!” Skitter’s voice echoed strangely in the space around us. The bugs had drawn back now, not swarming quite so harshly or noisily. I had to assume that had something to do with my aura, though what exactly I didn’t know.

“It’s down now, it won’t happen again,” Skitter said, apparently responding to Bitch. Wait, did that mean she could definitely hear through her bugs? Or was I just that out of it? Regardless, that must have been the end of the conversation because Skitter turned back to me.

“Victoria, keep the field down. And don’t react to anything I say to get us out of here.”

I nodded mutely. Part of me wondered if this was always how it was with Skitter. If her fights were always this haphazard and full of bluffs. How real the impression the Heroes had of her was.

The bugs parted, and Bitch slid up next to us with her dog in hand. He was panting, with what looked like a mix of drool and… blood… dripping from his mouth. His tail was wagging. I didn’t want to know.

Bitch looked at me and snarled. I tried to get some distance but Skitter’s hand held me fast. Right, united front. I could do that. I turned back to Bitch and mouthed ‘I’m sorry’. The look on her face said I soon would be. Well, I tried my best. The bugs thinned out in front of us, and I got my first glimpse of the Heroes since my aura had gone off.

Miss Militia was the most dramatic, her power changed into what looked like a grenade launcher. She held it cocked upwards in a clear bid to cover the distance between us if anyone moved. I didn’t know if those grenades were loaded with confoam or live rounds, I had to hope for the former with my field down.

Triumph evidently hadn’t had a good time in the last few minutes. Given his comparatively minor Brute rating and the size of Bitch’s dog, I had expected as much. While he was better for the front lines than most of the Protectorate ENE, his power wasn’t suited for it and it showed. His armor was dented and even caved in at points, particularly around the throat. I shuddered when I saw that. Thank god it didn’t go any further.

Assault was the most untouched one, which made sense. His power was tailor made for getting in and out of sticky situations–literally. I’d be surprised if any of Bitch’s dogs could get ahold of him for longer than the half second he needed to kick his power in. He was staring at us, his mouth pulled into a wavering line.

“Skitter,” Miss Militia called, “what was the meaning of this? You attacked a group of Protectorate Heroes. We can’t just let that stand.”

Skitter stepped forward, not letting go of my hand. “You can and you will. My duty is to the people in my territory. Victoria is one. You won’t touch her. I had to make that clear.”

I forced myself not to stare at her as she talked. That wasn’t how it went at all! How could any of the Heroes believe that this was a tactical choice?

But even as I watched, Miss Militia was shaking her head. “Skitter, if you do this, you’re losing the benefit of the doubt. You can’t take a Hero hostage, attack a relief effort patrol, and expect us not to retaliate.”

My mouth opened, ready to say I didn’t know what, before Skitter squeezed my hand hard. “Like you wouldn’t retaliate anyway? The Rules didn’t protect me during Leviathan. Or before my trigger. The benefit of the doubt? Don’t make me laugh. You’ll stand by the status quo in the end, and we both know it.”

There was a tense silence. For a moment, I really thought she was going to do it. To shoot that grenade and go for the kill, regardless of me being in the way.

Miss Militia sighed. “Pack it up, we’re leaving.”

Assault turned to her, fire in his voice. “You can’t seriously just expect us to–”

“I expect you to follow orders when a superior tells you to,” Miss Militia’s voice was harsh in a way I hadn’t heard from her.

Triumph finished brushing most of the insects off his gold armor, and nodded. “We’ll debrief at HQ and figure out what to do next.”

Assault looked between them, obviously looking for some indication that this wasn’t how things were going to go. But their stances were firm. For a moment he hesitated, and I thought he was going to lunge at us anyway, even if it meant putting himself against his own allies. He thought about it; I saw it cross his face as he rose onto the balls of his feet, his whole body tensing, shuddering with anger or revulsion or leftover fear. He growled, wavered a moment longer... and then turned and stalked after the other two, back the way they’d come.

Skitter pulled my hand as we turned to do the same, to finish making our way back to her territory. A voice stopped me.

“Victoria.”
I turned back to see Triumph looking at me. “I know this… didn’t go well. To put it lightly. But if you want to come back with us, you can. Open offer. Promise me you’ll think about it?”

I swallowed past the lump in my throat, and nodded. That much, I could agree to. I squeezed Skitter’s hand. She squeezed back.

With that, the Heroes turned their back on us for good, leaving us to continue walking. No one said anything on the way to the edge of Bitch’s territory. At some unspoken agreement at one point Bitch stopped, nodding at us, before peeling back to head to her den.

I only had one thought as I headed back to Charlotte and the kids. Yes, I had a reason to trust Skitter now. But she had a reason not to trust me. I had betrayed her, even if only by accident, and turned a peaceful talk with the Heroes into a confrontation she had to cover for. Her entire team would get flak for it.

More than that… I mastered an entire team of Heroes. Allies too. Everyone involved. Even the damn dog. Mom had used every trick in the book to get my aura classified as a Shaker effect, but I knew what it really was. I altered the emotions of everyone around me, without asking, just because I was scared.

God help me, I was just like her.

Chapter Text

Skitter was near silent as she made her way through the streets of Brockton Bay, moving at a light jog. Nothing betrayed her passage but the movement of her swarm. Millions of insects flew in shifting, obscuring patterns; veils and clouds and columns moving past and around and through each other. Amongst them, the cape in control of it all was just one shadow among the countless shapes that darkened the streets, indistinguishable and unnoticed.

That stealth was a hard won skill, and well worth the effort. Her footsteps used to echo before she thought to line the bottom of her suit’s shoes with layers of leftover silk to dampen their noise. Getting caught by Lung on her first night out had been more than enough motivation not to repeat that mistake.

More silk silenced the noises that would otherwise come from her chitin and kevlar plating clacking against itself as sections shifted and moved over her with every motion. She had learned that trick from Mannequin, whose joints had been so well oiled and precisely machined that he’d practically been on top of her before she’d noticed him.

Last was her habit of obscuring sightlines. That one was… harder to admit. It had been gifted to her by Leviathan. She had been reduced to a bug, a speck in his awareness, not even worth killing. She couldn’t let that happen again, and the first step was not letting her enemy see her.

Skitter reflected on the lessons she’d learned as she looked up at the rising moon, her goggles tinting the world a garish yellow. Everything was always hideously blue when she took her mask off. She had meant to change it initially, but by this point it was too much a part of her image for that. Besides, it was only a problem out of costume. That was a secondary concern.

The Nine hadn’t been in town long, but they’d been thorough. The civilians told a gruesome story in the way they cowered as she passed, hidden in boarded-up buildings and pressed into alcoves to avoid her attention. Not that the shadows could keep them from her notice. It was hard to tell exactly when, but she’d long since started to depend more on her bugs for reconnaissance than her eyes. The latter were fallible, their vision and periphery limited, their fidelity poor past fifty feet. The former gave her supernatural, total awareness of her surroundings. It was hard to ignore an advantage like that.

Her phone chirped from her belt, and Skitter took the opportunity to stop before the curb. “L, apple.”

“A, pea. Anything yet?” Tattletale’s voice sounded tinny through the phone’s speaker.

Her awareness washed through the building around her, the bugs in and around the walls giving her perception. Most people didn’t know how many insects were around them on a daily basis. Within the city, there were millions of them for every human being. Over the whole breadth of her range, there were billions. And each one of them formed a data point she could use to pinpoint enemy locations, actions, obstacles, anything. It had taken her some time to refine and process that information from the migraine-inducing chaotic white noise that had almost made her think she’d gone mad after gaining her powers, but she was far past those days now.

“If they’re here, they’re doing a good job hiding. Hard to tell anything else.” Skitter’s voice didn’t carry much further than her mouth by design. Even if anyone had been within range to hear, the roar of the swarm drowned out anything intelligible further than a few feet. While she could choose to manipulate her mandibles, legs and wings into a semblance of a voice, she could just as easily drown out everyone else. That she had learned from Grue. Information denial was as important as its acquisition.

Tattletale sighed. “I suppose that’s just as well. Jack did say they were leaving.”

Skitter grunted, her attention still on the buildings around her. “Feels wrong to trust him.”

A laugh came through the phone. “I can’t disagree with you there. Finish up the patrol, and let me know if you find any of them picking at the scraps.”

Skitter hung up without a word. She had only covered perhaps a quarter of her territory, and the day wasn’t getting any younger. Without a mover power it would take hours to comb the entire area, even with her comparatively massive range helping.

Her muffled footsteps started up a steady beat again, hidden under the roar of her swarm, as she started making her way closer to the boardwalk. Tattletale was probably right, as usual. It was unlikely that Jack Slash had broken his word. He only stood to lose face in the action, and he had to know that the net around him was closing the longer he stayed. Retreating was the smart option, and while he’d break a sworn promise on a whim if he thought he could get away with it, he wasn’t stupid.

Then again, she mused darkly, the last time she discounted an option open to the Nine as being tactically unsound, Mannequin had murdered a quarter of her people. She couldn’t afford that again. The loss of her reputation alone would drive people elsewhere, and she wouldn’t have any way to distribute food past that point. No, the only way forward was to be seen looking for the Nine publicly, even if she knew it was probably pointless.

Skitter let out a sharp, involuntary laugh at that, caught by the vicious irony. Here she was, then; doing the same things that she disdained the heroes for. A PR stunt, a patrol purely for publicity, when she could be doing more useful things elsewhere.

“We’re fine here, boss, go make sure the monsters are gone.” Charlotte’s words from earlier that night came to mind. It was good for the kids, at least. Good for Charlotte too that she had something to do, a job to perform. If her being out here allowed them those things… maybe it was worth it.

The bugs around her buzzed and flew in complex swirling patterns as her scouts combed through the surrounding areas. Skitter nodded, turning to the South. Good, that was this section cleared. That meant there was just–

She froze, her motion aborted midstep. There was something just on the edge of her range, only barely in her territory. An abnormally sparse concentration of insects. On any other day, she would’ve ignored it, but she couldn’t help but think back to the last time she’d felt anything like this. Insects covered every square inch of the urban landscape around her, almost without exception. There could only be one real reason for the discrepancy: enemy action. Bonesaw.

Skitter ground her teeth as she marshaled the bugs in her swarm into a more offensive formation, wasps landing nearby to pick up the spiders nestled in her hair. She couldn’t afford to ignore this. She had to assume the worst. Maybe this was just a particularly industrious exterminator she’d come across, though with the city in this state she doubted it. Regardless, there was no harm in… preparing, just in case.

With her insects loaded for bear, she moved closer to the building. As she jogged, she noted the surrounding distribution of arthropods. It wasn’t just at the immediate site, it was a slow gradient of lessened presence leading to a rough circle of absent space. That, more than anything else, drew her to a halt.

This was unlike Bonesaw’s usual profile. Whatever gas she or Mannequin used worked instantly, and only to an exact range. Maybe this was some new tactic, a way to fool her senses by not leaving such a clean border. But it could also be someone else.

Skitter pulled the phone from her waist. “T, mango.”

“R, stringbean. Any way you could make that a bit less specific, Taylor? I almost know what you’re trying to say.”

Skitter clenched her fist. “Not the time Tattletale. Possible contact. Bonesaw.”

Instantly, the snark was gone from Tattletale’s tone. “Indicators?”

“Bugs absent from an almost two hundred foot circle around the house, leading out to a slow gradient past that. Haven't seen anyone in the windows yet, and my dragonflies haven’t gotten close enough to know anything else.” Skitter’s voice was sharp.

“Hmmm. Could be one of them, my power isn’t giving me anything more specific without being there. You want backup?”

She forced herself to think. What would Tattletale being here solve for? The better her information on a subject, the more on track her analysis was, and nothing beat firsthand observation for her power’s purposes. But that wasn’t a guarantee that she was accurate, even if she was right there. The bank had proven that much. If this was Bonesaw, having Tattletale in her ear to play intel and arrange for warning and rescue if necessary was probably the best play.

“Hang back, but get ready to move. I’ll text you the address so you know where to find me. Alert the rest of the team similarly. If I don’t contact you within fifteen minutes, assume the worst.”

She could almost hear Tattletale’s nod across the phone. “Copy. Good luck.”

Skitter put away her phone, and resumed her jog. She tried to think over her options as she made her way closer to the house. Her immediately deadly swarm was on her person, and without a specific reason she wasn’t moving it from there. It was too useful as a defensive measure. Normally she would attempt to land some insects on a cape’s clothes or hair to mark them positionally. More on their joints and limbs would give her a progressively better model of their body, letting her perceive and react to their movements before they even finished making them.

None of that was an option here. If this was Bonesaw–and she had to assume it was–then any insects on her would be recognized immediately. That meant her usual strategy was a no-go. What did that leave?

Her breath came in pants as the house approached, and she paused at the curb a block away to try and recover. Vision. That was the only way she could see to get intel at this point without committing. That left the dragonflies as her bug of choice. It was a good thing she had thought to breed some weeks ago, their mating season usually ended about a month and a half back.

With a buzz, her scouts were off. They easily cleared the roofs of the apartments around her, soaring to land on the lintel of a window by the attic of the house. She had been searching for a way in this entire time, and found one in the handiwork of what must have been a termite infestation chewing most of the way through the bottom of the frame before whoever this was had cleared them out. It was trivial to fly some up, clasped between the mandibles of the large wasps native to the area, to finish the job. The dragonflies were just barely able to squeeze through the opening, but it was enough.

Skitter focused as the insects made their way through the house. Dragonflies were masters of powered flight, but she had to force them to glide as much as possible while mapping the interior. She didn’t know how sensitive the mystery cape’s senses were, but she wasn’t discounting anything.

Her dragonflies found what they were looking for in the master bedroom. Bug senses were usually harsh and discordant at the best of times, but hearing was usually the easiest sense to tap into. The vibrations of most sounds were so powerful that insects literally resonated in place. This let her know that whoever she was looking for was in the middle of the room talking, likely sitting on a bed. Skitter slowly gathered her dragonflies in a hopefully unobtrusive position just above the overhand for the door, and forced their senses to resolve into an image. She held back a groan at the expected spike of pain. Trying to force hearing from insects was bad enough, sight was worse. The sheer sensory disconnect was too much. But she only needed a snapshot here, to judge before she went in. Finally, for a moment, she was seeing through the eyes of her insects. She instantly regretted it.

The cape was Amy Dallon. Panacea. That was the first thing she noticed. The second was the… thing on the bed. A misshapen mess of body parts, flesh, and sensory organs. It was hard to tell what it was, to be truthful, but the golden locks of hair and glazed blue eyes confirmed her suspicions. Glory Girl. Fuck.

Skitter’s eyes were drawn to Amy. “Vicky,” she said, panting, “you have no idea how good this feels. How long I’ve waited. But it’s okay now, I promise. I’ll fix you after, you won’t have to remember a thing. I just–I need this. You understand. Of course you understand.”

Skitter turned, almost involuntarily, to the memories of Tattletale confronting Amy almost a week ago. Her accusations of mastering, of manipulating her sister. How Amy had never once denied it, how she’d flown off with her sister instead. That look in her eyes when Skitter had left her in the hospital to spread the cure to the rest of the city.

She couldn’t deny it any longer. She was watching a hero abuse, rape her sister, warping her into that thing, all while mastering her so that she couldn’t resist. Fuck.

Her heart pounded as she started running again. No. She had to do something. She couldn’t afford to call Tattletale or anyone else, not right now. Regardless of the risk of being caught, of the fact that Amy was one of the worst match-ups for her power, she had to act. What she had already seen was going to torture her for days, she knew. Nevermind what Glory Girl must have been going through this entire time. How long had she been like this? Hours? Days?

The bugs on Skitter’s person buzzed angrily. Finding that out could come later. Right now she had to interrupt Panacea. How could she neutralize her though? Her mind raced as she crossed the sidewalk and slipped through a gap she’d opened in the door earlier. Bugs on her person was a terrible idea, the bank had proved as much. Anything Panacea touched, she could suborn. That meant if she did strike, it had to be sudden and overwhelming.

But, while a strike from ambush was her preferred method… it wouldn’t work in this case. Panacea was too close to Glory Girl, and the last time she’d used her as a defensive shield. Skitter couldn’t count on the other cape being immobile. That meant intimidation, with a fall back of hand to hand. With the touch ranged biokinetic. Great.

She didn’t break the bedroom door down, but it felt like a near thing as she slammed it open. “Get off her. Now.”

Panacea slowly looked up, pulling her head away from her sister, face still glistening. “S-skitter?! What are you doing here?”

Skitter took a step forward. “None of your concern. Back away, now.”

Panacea swallowed, scrambling away from the bed before straightening up to meet her eyes. “I don’t think so.”

Skitter slowly drew her combat baton. “Think carefully about your next few words, Amy”

Amy’s face hardened. “No. You don’t understand. I was healing her. You interrupted. I was so close, and you’re distracting me. Y-you need to leave so I can finish.”

“Look at her, Amy!” Skitter shouted, the swarm vibrating harshly as she gestured at what was left of Glory Girl. “Sister or not, this is unacceptable! We gave her to you to heal, not to do this!”

“Y-you don’t get it,” Amy said. “I’ve been keeping myself bound by my rules for so long, when I finally let go I didn’t know where to stop! And I-I only changed one thing. One tiny thing. But then she was so angry and I tried to fix her but she wouldn’t let me and then Crawler got her and I had to heal her but I couldn’t and–”

“Enough.”

Skitter’s swarm made the walls boil and the ceiling churn. The room darkened as a roaring mass pressed itself against the window, drumming countless mandibles and stingers against the glass. Her form blurred and expanded, bugs spread out from her like a dark, writhing halo. Towards the edge of her range, wasps and cockroaches brutally massacred a few rats in a dumpster. It didn’t help.

“I don’t care what you did,” she growled. “I don’t care what you meant to do. Fix. Her.”

Amy’s lip trembled. “I-I can’t! You don’t know what it’s like, to see her like I do! Only all my mistakes, so wound up and tangled over themselves, I wouldn’t even know where to start! I can’t, I keep trying but I just can’t.”

Skitter was still for a moment, considering. As hard as it was to say… Amy was telling the truth here. Everything from her body language to her tone to the smell of her sweat said as much.

She sighed, slowly lowering the baton. “Fine then. You can’t make it like this never happened. Just put her back as close as you can to the way she was. Surely you can do that much.”

Amy glared at her. “Like you’d know! I’ve just been trying to clear up this mess since the bank, the mess you left behind! You and that purple bitch you were with. If you hadn’t been there, none of this would’ve happened!”

Skitter froze, and carefully let out a breath as she clenched her baton. This was for the girl on that bed. It was worth admitting weakness.

“Maybe that’s true. Maybe this is my fault. But for just this once, Amy, prove me wrong. Prove that you’re still Panacea, the hero that can fix anything. Out of heroism, out of anger, out of sheer spite, I don’t care. Fix her.”

There was a pause. For a moment, she almost thought it worked.

“N-no. You need to get out. Now. Then I can focus. Then I can…” Amy’s voice trailed off, but Skitter had heard enough. She knew what would happen if she left. The same thing as what happened after she trusted Amy with her sister after the hospital. No. Not again. There was only one option left.

She took a step forward.

Amy instantly tensed. “Don’t come any closer! I have bacteria on my skin, I’ll make something out of them and kill you!”

Skitter paused. Amy probably could, if she chose to. The former hero certainly had no reason to hold back. Slowly, her gaze turned to the girl on the bed. To Victoria Dallon. The one she was doing all this for. Who she’d first seen almost pulverizing her at a bank months ago. Was this really worth it? Would anyone notice if she left her?

…Taylor. Taylor would notice. The girl who set out months ago, trying to be a hero.

Fuck.

She straightened, her eyes looking into Amy’s. The other cape seemed to sense she wasn’t leaving. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“You will fix her.” Skitter drew the gun from her belt. It was heavy in her hand, leaden and cold and solid. But lighter than the guilt would be of leaving.

“We just went over this, you–”

“You will fix her, because I will leave you no choice.” Skitter’s voice was harsh and merciless, wasps and spiders buzzing through every syllable.

“But I can’t, that’s what I’m trying to tell you!”

Skitter took a long look at the cape in front of her, and the misshapen form of her sister behind. “Fine. Then that leaves me only one option.”

Her swarm surged forward, coating Victoria.

“No! What are you doing!”

Skitter’s pale yellow eyes stared straight into Amy’s. “My bugs can sense the smallest pheromone or temperature change. If you stop healing her to put insecticide in her veins to keep me away, I’ll know. If you try to use her forcefield or aura to drive me off, I’ll know. If you do anything other than erase your mistake, I’ll know. You can try. It might work. It might not. But if you fail, if you don’t heal her…”

Every insect froze for a second as she cocked the gun, and the click of the safety and slide were deafening in the sudden quiet.

“... then I’ll put you out of her misery, Amy, and kill your sister myself.”

She wished there had been another way.

Skitter let out a slow breath, as she returned home to her lair from a meeting with her team. The group had tried to pressure her again about how she’d found Victoria. Considering how immediately relevant it had become, they had a right to ask. It still wasn’t her story and thinking about it wasn’t going to help anyone.

Grue had been… less than pleased with how the situation with the Protectorate patrol had resolved itself, despite her assurances. Alec had just laughed, while Bitch herself was almost murderous over her ‘hiding’ Victoria from them. Tattletale, however, was strangely silent. She’d have to talk to her later, it seemed.

Charlotte stood up from her seat in the kitchen when Skitter opened the door, walking to the entryway. “Welcome back, boss. Any changes?”

Skitter stretched, giving the surrounding area one last cursory glance. “Nothing of note. The mission is on for tomorrow, so you’ll have to manage without me. Otherwise, no changes.”

She glanced towards the back. Charlotte seemed to pick up her unspoken question. “She hasn’t moved yet. I looked in a couple of hours ago, left her a plate, took the empty one. She didn't even glance up.”

Skitter suppressed a groan. Great. Victoria had shut herself in her room immediately after they came back from the disastrous walk, refusing to leave or talk to anyone. She had tried to respect her privacy, but it had been days with no changes. If not for the bugs she had her tagged with confirming that she was still there, she’d be worried the former hero had left.

And now, it seemed, she had to play therapist. Or at least, the closest thing any of them had to one. She wasn’t equipped for this; she couldn’t talk to her own father to save her life! But, as usual, no one else was willing or able to do it. Charlotte, despite her best efforts, couldn’t let go of her bad first impression. Tattletale had the opposite problem. Which left her.

Skitter slowly walked up to the door, weighing her options. What would be the best approach? She could try and talk with her bugs in the room, but Victoria might see that as intruding on her space, and lash out violently. Passing a note through the gap wouldn’t guarantee a response, and Victoria hadn’t written back to any of the previous ones. At this point, something had to be done.

“Victoria?” Skitter asked, projecting her voice through the wood. “I need you to knock twice if you can hear me.” There was a pause. The lone midge she had in Victoria’s hair shifted, turning towards the door. Skitter waited for what seemed like an hour, but probably wasn’t more than twenty seconds.
And then...

Two knocks.

She sighed. That was the first hurdle cleared. “I’m going to come in. I need to talk to you. Knock twice if you understand what I’ve said.”

Another two knocks, more hesitant this time.

This was the worst of it. She hated to ask but… for her own safety, she had to. “I need to confirm that you will not attack me as I enter. This is your space, and I am entering it.”

There was a long pause, nearly a full minute. For once, Skitter tried not to eavesdrop on what soft noises came beyond the door. She was mostly successful.

Two knocks.

“Good. I’m coming in.”

Skitter opened the door, and winced. The room wasn’t trashed, but it definitely felt like someone had been living in it full time for days. Clothes were unwashed and strewn across the floor. A book in ASL, one she had managed to get a few days ago and slid under the door, was left half open on the bedside table.

And in the center was Victoria, sitting on the bed, hands holding her knees, her face hidden. She hadn’t showered, and the dye had left her hair dull and flat and stiff, falling over her forehead in brittle, greasy strands. It stunk. It didn't reach the door, but Skitter's bugs could smell it easily; the ammonia was starting to reek. Skitter didn't know how she could stand it. If it was her, she'd be frantic to be clean.

She tried not to let her frustration show. At herself, at the situation, it didn’t matter. Victoria would take it the wrong way, and it wasn’t helpful. “Victoria. I need you to listen.”

The girl softly nodded, not raising her head from between her knees.

“I’m going out later today to meet with a cape. An independent, Parian. You might’ve heard of her?”

Another hesitant nod.

“Good. I’m talking to her about potentially helping the people she’s sheltering. I need you to come with me.”

Victoria’s head shot up, her wide green eyes meeting hers. She didn’t need a notepad to read the confusion, the fear, the disbelief on her face. Something in her chest twisted.

“I know you might have questions. And I’ll answer them. But I need to know one thing.”

Those green eyes didn’t leave hers.

“Do you trust me?”

Chapter Text

I stared at Skitter, trying to process the question she’d asked me. Trust her? Did I trust her? I didn’t know where to start. The last time she asked that ended with a Hero pointing a grenade launcher in my face. And I couldn’t even blame her for doing it!

The experience had been circling in my head for days afterwards, taunting me. The total loss of control, the sudden break into violence. My memories were spotty with how chaotic things had gotten–and my own headspace at the time–but I remembered Skitter having to cover for my aura exposure as some sort of planned attack on her part.

My aura. Which had started the fight in the first place. Which I’d lost control of, almost pushing things into violence, risking getting Skitter hurt, the heroes hurt, Bitch hurt, the dogs hurt.

I hadn’t meant to. I hadn’t wanted to, or chosen to. Not like... not like A-Amy had. I wasn’t like her. I was nothing like her. I would never be like her.

But I’d still almost started a fight - hah, ‘almost’. I had started a fight that had only avoided turning into a pitched, potentially lethal battle through Skitter’s quick thinking. That it had been an accident triggered by trauma only reinforced why I couldn’t be around people right now. If not for Skitter swarming everyone to keep them confused, and then claiming credit for the sudden burst of violence...

I hadn’t had the courage to ask her about it. To ask why. Why she took the blame, why she almost instinctively attacked the heroes before they could react or think things through. None of it made sense. But at the same time, how could I question her actions when they ended up saving me? She’d even stepped in front of her own teammate when it looked like a fight was about to break out over me trying to pet the puppy when he came up to me.

My thoughts sharpened as I remembered that detail. That was something that had stuck out in the time since. Her teammates. Skitter had never talked about them with me directly, beyond what was necessary regarding Tattletale and Bitch. And even then, most of it was after the fact. But while I didn’t remember all the aspects of that disastrous interaction with the Protectorate, their words were burned into my head. Hijack. One of her teammates was Hijack. I remembered him from the preemptive briefing that the Wards had gotten before Leviathan. It felt like years ago now. I remember Dean being so worried–

My eyes were blurry as I clenched my fists. Skitter seemed to be giving me time to get my thoughts together, but I couldn’t take much longer. The point was, Hijack was one of her teammates. Regent, from what I remembered. And she hadn’t told me. Even if I hadn’t met him yet… that was unacceptable. I still remembered hearing about how he’d mastered Shadow Stalker into an attack on the Protectorate HQ. Any villain that would do something like that, I needed answers from.

I looked back up to Skitter, still staring at me. Her question was still hovering in the air. “Do you trust me?” I slowly held up my left hand, my thumb index and middle fingers splayed out, before closing them.

“No,” I signed.

Skitter tilted her head, glancing at the ASL handbook on my bedside before turning back to me. “No?” she asked, though it was more of a statement.

I nodded.

She tilted her head, but otherwise didn’t say anything. Looking for a distraction, I stared at the mandibles molded to the corner of her cheek. Were they sharp? Surely they had to be decorative. I knew that she was devoted to her theme, so it would be on brand.

“Have I failed to provide you what I said I would?” Skitter’s voice cut through the tense air.

I shook my head. No. I couldn’t pretend she hadn’t followed through. Honestly she’d done more than I had any right to expect in that regard.

There was another pause. “Have I betrayed your trust in some way?”

That… was more complicated. A betrayal implied a specific promise or relationship, which we didn’t have. She had said nothing of her teammates. I wasn’t an Undersider, I’d made that clear from the beginning. I didn’t necessarily have any right to know about her teammates under the rules of the Truce. And the closest thing to a commitment she’d made was promising Amy wouldn’t hurt me again. She’d fulfilled that up to this point.

But… it was more about the intent than the letter of the law. She’d held back information about her teammate that was directly relevant to me. Information she probably knew I would find uncomfortable. I could have walked right up to Regent if he had visited, not knowing what he could do to me.

I shuddered, wrapping my arms around myself. A week ago I might not have thought that would happen, but now I wasn’t so sure. Was the Skitter I knew now really so different from the villain I’d seen her as before all this? I had to know for sure.

My fingers spasmed, and I let out a tight frustrated sigh. I was learning sign but it was… hard. In a way not many things were. It wasn’t just an intellectual issue, though learning a new language was always a challenge. My fingers just wouldn’t do what I asked sometimes. Regardless, I grabbed the notepad beside me. I still had the coordination to write, thankfully. Muscle memory worked wonders.

“Can’t trust you. Hijack”

“Ah,” Skitter said. Her posture shifted. She hadn’t relaxed exactly, but the tension in her frame was different. More in her shoulders than her back now. “I had wondered when that would come up.”

I glared at her. “So you knew I wouldn’t like it”

Skitter walked to the chair by the dresser, pulling it across from my position on the bed before sitting down. “I had a suspicion, yes.”

My chest felt hot and tight. Here it was. Proof that she had been lying to my face. About one of her teammates being a human master no less. My hand shook as I wrote. “Why?”

Skitter let out a short breath. I wouldn’t have heard it if she had sat any further back. For once, the bugs in the air and on the walls behind her were still. “You’ll have to be more specific.”

I shot her a look. “Why hide it from me?”

“A number of reasons,” Skitter said. “It hadn’t come up in any meaningful capacity. I meant to debrief from the encounter with the Heroes during the past few days but you were… indisposed.”

I flinched at the reminder, refusing to look at what had become of my room. She had a point there, much as it rankled me to admit. But that still didn’t excuse her not telling me in the first place.

She seemed to understand that her answer wasn’t enough. “The other reason was that you weren’t on the team. You said as much, multiple times. Unless you were looking to join the Undersiders directly, I don’t typically give away details on my teammates powers to outsiders. I’m sure New Wave has a similar policy.”

That wasn’t fair– I forced myself to stop. To consider this from her perspective, what it would look like if I were in her shoes. If someone on the other side that we were already sheltering of our own accord demanded details on my Mother’s powers, just because it happened to intersect with their own trauma. If they hadn’t asked first, but then got angry when I didn’t think to share beforehand.

The analogy wasn’t perfect. Hijack–or Regent now I guess–had done a lot of genuinely inexcusable things in his career. I wasn’t discounting that. But if I read between the lines… Skitter had never directly shared her opinion on those actions herself. Only what her policy was for all her teammates. A policy that, generally speaking, I couldn’t disagree with.

I didn’t know what to do with that. Was Skitter good or bad for putting us in this situation? Was it deliberate at all, or just an unfortunate combination of events and timing? She hadn’t actually put me in direct contact with Regent to begin with, but was that just making excuses for her? I wished I knew.

I slowly raised my head back up to face her. “I don’t like it. Tell me if he’s coming before I see him. Don’t want surprises.”

Skitter crossed her arms, staring at me for a moment before finally nodding. “I can accept that. You have a unique position, and you deserve to feel secure. But nothing more. You’re either a member of the team or you’re not.”

I nodded. That was fair. I wanted the line clear too. This mess had expanded beyond anything I had planned for, but at least this much I wanted to remain clear.

Her posture changed again, finally relaxing as the tension broke. “With that said, I did come here to tell you more than that.”

I waited for her to go on.

“The Protectorate incident exposed a dangerous contingency which must be addressed.” Skitter’s voice grew hard again as she faced me. “I understand that the release of your aura was unintentional, correct?”

I forced myself to nod. It frightened me just thinking about it. That it could explode out of me without warning. Over the past few days I had been too terrified to even experiment with it, but thankfully it remained off. At some point my field had come back on when I wasn’t paying attention, and I was terrified for a moment that the aura had too and I hadn’t noticed, but thankfully it didn’t. That association trick from earlier was useful, but I didn’t want my powers to change any more than they already had. The Heroes shouldn’t have felt fear. But that’s clearly what happened, in retrospect.

“Is it likely to go off again in a similar situation?”

I swallowed against the lump in my throat. Honest, I had to be honest. This was a danger to her as much as it was me. “I don’t know”

Skitter tilted her head. “Explain.”

“Aura usually fluctuates. Can turn it up or down. After Amy, don’t have a slider. Either on, or off.” I paused. That was accurate but… I grit my teeth and added, “I think.” I pushed myself to write that last bit. As humiliating as it was, I didn’t entirely know this aspect of my powers anymore.

Skitter considered that. “Is the field usually so one dimensional? I remember reading that it had a positive component as well at times.”

Wait, she read about it? When had she had time to–I wasn’t going to consider that right now. This was too important. “Usually awe for people I like, fear for ones I don’t. Not sure why Heroes felt fear”

Skitter nodded. “I thought so. Regardless of why, it’s clear for the moment that your aura isn’t entirely under your control. That can be dangerous in the field.”

I dropped her gaze, trying not to shrink back into the covers bunched up behind me. I knew it was true, but it still hurt to have it said like that. Parahumans weren’t defined by their powers, but they were pretty central to most of us. Losing control over something so basic felt like… well, like not being able to talk. Humiliating.

“Victoria,” Skitter’s voice forced me to look back up. “This is not something to blame yourself for. It’s not productive. Have you heard of secondary trigger events?”

I nodded, not sure where she was going with this. We had started covering it in the last few courses I had attended at BrocktonU, before Leviathan suspended classes indefinitely. Some parahumans, under similar conditions to their original trigger, could “second trigger”. Their power expressions changed, usually becoming more dangerous or at least easily weaponized. There was some theory about the Manton Limit being involved, but we didn’t go much further than that.

Skitter cleared her throat. “I saw… someone I know… go through one. Their power changed, some things were easier but some were harder. They had to adjust. I’m not sure if what Amy did is the same thing as a second trigger, I suspect not. But it’s not unheard of for Parahumans to need to relearn their powers at times.”

My eyes didn’t leave her yellow lenses. The murmur of voices beyond the door, the creaking of old wood against concrete, the small bugs crawling on my arm, none of it mattered. Why was she telling me this? I mean, the obvious answer was to help me process my emotions regarding my aura, so it would be less likely to go off in the future. But that didn’t require her to share something so personal like that. She left the names out, but even still. Trigger events were not handled lightly, even by second generation capes like me.

“Regardless,” Skitter continued, “we have to assume that your aura might go active at an inopportune time like that again. That’s not acceptable.”

I glared at her in exasperation. Here she was, providing a ready made reasoning behind why this loss of control wasn’t my fault, and now she wanted to blame me again? What did she want?!

No. This wasn’t helping. Deep breaths. Focus on what I know. My aura went off when I hadn’t planned to release it at all. That wasn’t normal. I wasn’t able to adjust the intensity after the fact. That wasn’t normal either. Until I knew exactly what was going on, I couldn’t afford for that to happen again. And despite my best efforts in the time since… I hadn’t found anything that would let me do that. Thus my staying in the room.

I clenched my teeth. This didn’t change anything. But this affected Skitter just as much as it did me. I had to tell her.

“I think it went off because I…panicked.” My pen was almost tearing through the page. What do you suggest?”

Skitter considered me for a moment before she reached into the pouch on the small of her back and pulled out a small mobile phone. She fiddled with it briefly before handing it to me.

I took it, my confusion mounting. “I’ve pre-programmed it with a text to send to my number on a hotkey. You can use it to signal to me if talking is difficult, or your notepad is not nearby. You need to do this before your aura goes off, and I can manage things from there. Will that suffice?

My breath left me in a rush. Skitter was… she had to know what she was doing here. Giving me my own phone, burner or not. Even if it was monitored, even if it was specifically to avoid a situation like the one a week prior, it still meant the world. That I could communicate, that I could tell someone when that happened to me again before it got to that point.

“Thank you”

Skitter nodded. “We can only test this in the field, unfortunately. I have a low stakes encounter that should provide a decent point of comparison, but you’ll have to come with me.”

My head grew light. Come with her? Outside? The last time had been disastrous! No. No, that wasn’t entirely accurate. That encounter was unplanned and dangerous, yes. But this one wouldn’t be. I had something with me this time that I didn’t before. I could tell Skitter when things got bad before it was unsalvageable.

I looked at her, and nodded. One way or another, I had to find out if I could do it. And Skitter herself said that this was low stakes (whatever that meant).

Skitter got up, the bugs surrounding us congregating and sliding into her hair.

“Good. It’ll be a few hours at the most, so if you need anything do it now. We’re going to see Parian.”

Chapter Text

My mind whirled as I tried to get my things together. Skitter was apparently gathering bugs or something from upstairs, which left me with a little time to get my thoughts straight. I nudged the laundry basket over to where my loaned shirts and jeans lay strewn across the floor and started sorting through both thoughts and clothes, trying to remember anything useful to what I was about to walk into.

Parian. An independent cape, last I’d heard. She used to put together fashion shows on the boardwalk, before Leviathan swept most of it into the ocean. I remember attending one and liking it. She was cute and behaved well with the kids. Good aesthetics, I could appreciate that from a PR perspective. And one of the few capes in the Bay that had never been known to engage directly in violence. Which was probably why Skitter wanted to test this phone plan while talking to her, now that I thought about it; less room for things to go wrong. Though that did leave the question of why she wanted to talk to her in the first place.

“You can do that later, the boss is ready for you now,” a voice interrupted from the door. I paused halfway through habitually checking the pockets of a pair of jeans and looked up to see Charlotte leaning against the doorframe. She had her domino mask on as usual, but it looked slightly askew. Almost as if she’d been hastily putting it into place before coming in. Her dark eyes looked over me with something I couldn’t quite name. I knew she didn’t like me, but somehow it seemed a little less venomous than it had last week.

She didn’t move as I stood up and made my way to the door. I stopped in front of her and stared into her eyes. There was something in the air, I didn’t know what, but it felt tense.

“She’s trusting you with this,” Charlotte said.

I nodded.

“More than she has before. Parian isn’t in her territory. She doesn’t have backup. If things go badly, she’s counting on you. Don’t let her down, or I’ll make you regret it,” she said, her voice tight as she stepped aside.

My thoughts stalled and I stared at her blankly. What? No, what? Skitter hadn’t said anything about this! She’d made it sound like we were running a low stakes errand; why was she taking me if it was this risky? This brought up even more questions about why we were going to see Parian if she wasn’t even on Skitter’s turf. God, she might have been using me this whole time. Was I inadvertently playing part in a hit on an independent cape? How much of this had been a lie?

There was no point asking Charlotte. If I wanted answers, I was going to have to get them from Skitter.

I clutched my notepad tightly in my left hand as I walked quickly through the lower floor, making sure to avoid any of the kids in the way. Mom had taught me to be mindful of my Brute rating when I was emotional, and I didn’t want to know what Skitter’s medical options looked like here. The villain in question was standing by the door waiting for me when I got there.

“Ready to go, Victoria?”

No, no I wasn’t. I raised my right hand and traced a question mark in the air. Skitter must have understood the natural sign for “Question”.

“What’s the issue?”

Fuck, I forgot that the violence sign needed two hands, and I wasn’t good enough at this yet to continue the rest of the conversation. I brought out my notebook. “Violence against Parian?”

Skitter shook her head. “No, that’s not my aim here. I can go over more specific things on the way–Dolltown is far and we’re already further behind than I’d like–but I can promise that I’m not trying to fight Parian.”

I stared at her. Skitter had started this conversation by asking me to trust her. I had my reservations, more than one. And for good reason. But by my own admission, she hadn’t led me wrong so far. If I wanted to know for sure that she wouldn’t stab me in the back or use me to do something I’d regret… at some point I needed to give her the opportunity to do it. It was scary, yeah, but I had options now that I didn’t before. I knew my flight worked; I had tested that much over the past few days (even if only briefly). I had a burner phone. Even if it was monitored, it would be enough to contact the Protectorate or someone else to meet. I had options if I needed to break away.

“Fine. Let’s go”

Skitter nodded. “Charlotte, take care of things here. Keep your phone active in case we need to update you. We’ll be back in three hours.”

“Sure thing, boss.”

And with that, we were out the door.

It was hard to know exactly what time it was. There weren’t a ton of clocks or readily charged electronics after Leviathan ripped through downtown, and Shatterbird had ruined what little remained. Most people, I assumed, used the light like I did. This being June, it was light until around 8:30 or so. It should’ve been blinding right now, but the cloud cover sheltered us from the worst of it as we walked.

For once, Skitter’s swarm wasn’t in full force. Usually the surrounding air was packed with insects dense enough to blot out the sun, but as we got closer to Dolltown she brought her bugs inwards, the insects settling among the gaps in her armor plating and the dark locks of her hair. The sudden absence of the roaring drone was unnerving. It always amazed me how much she could store back there without it looking obviously different. I guess the curls and color helped out a lot, but still.

I brought out my notepad as we walked, trying to keep an eye on where we were going as I wrote. “Why no swarm?”

Skitter tilted her head as we approached the next intersection. “Didn’t know you paid that much attention.”

I almost stopped mid-step. What the fuck? Was she genuinely that unaware? Her insects numbered in the millions, they usually covered the air for blocks. The droning was so loud that it would be hard to make myself heard even if I could talk. Maybe her awareness of her bugs filled in the difference? She coated the tunnel walls in her bugs when we’d walked through the sewers that first night. At first I assumed that was some combination of intimidation play and navigation aid by sound. But if she wasn’t line of sight limited–which she clearly wasn’t–how much awareness of her insects did she really have? I’d have to give some thought on that later though, it wasn’t relevant now.

I felt the urge to flush as I realized how long I’d been awkwardly staring at her, but I held my ground. If this was a tactical decision, I needed to know.

“Parian is in Ballistic’s territory. He mentioned wanting to get Parian and her people out. But he hasn’t done so yet. If I solve the problem before he gets to it, she might have a choice in how that happens. If Ballistic gets involved… the answer is going to be violence. That’s not good for us.”

I nodded. That made sense, it was the same choice I would’ve made if I had known.

“But at the same time, Ballistic doesn’t know I’m doing this. He can’t know. I’m infringing on his authority by doing it. That’s the kind of thing that damages reputations, raises tensions and can even breed conflicts. I’m keeping an eye on everyone in the surrounding area, no one has seen us. But we need to be subtle. For Parian’s sake.”

I glared at her. “And you didn’t think to tell me this before?”

Skitter tilted her head but stopped abruptly before the next corner. I waited with her. Another person that might’ve seen us, perhaps?

“I figured you’d be in favor of the peaceful solution,” her words were quieter now.

I couldn’t really argue with that, but I still didn’t like the way she’d told me about this. As if I was someone who had to be managed with the right words at the right time to do what she wanted. Was that how she treated everyone, or was this just my perception? It was hard to tell; my only point of comparison was Charlotte. I didn’t exactly have a ton of experience with supervillains and their relationships with their subordinates.

But again, I had to remember our conversation from earlier. I wasn’t an Undersider. We both agreed on that. From her point of view, I probably had no right to be angry at her for only giving me the information that mattered, right at the point when I needed it. Even so, it rubbed me the wrong way.

“Fine. How long until we get there?” I wrote, shaking out my hand afterwards. It was getting hard to write; my hand and arm were cramping up somewhere and I couldn’t seem to massage it out.

“About five minutes.” Her answer was instant and automatic. I got the sense her focus was drifting away from me, back towards the coming meeting, planning ahead for whatever she wanted to accomplish there.

“Anything I should know?” I asked while I still had some of her attention.

She shook her head. “Just let me do the talking when we get there.”

I glared at her, pointedly raising my notepad. There was an awkward silence. Any scheming or planning that had been distracting her sputtered out in embarrassment and she almost stammered, briefly thrown, before regaining control of herself. “I didn’t mean to… I said that because the situation is delicate enough as it is, and I really don’t want to have this devolve into a fight. Alright?”

That was clearly the closest to an apology I was going to get from her. Still better than I expected, if I was being honest. I nodded shortly and tucked the notepad away, leaving us to walk on in terse, mutual silence.

As we approached Dolltown, I realized why Skitter’s answer had been so immediate earlier. Obviously her bugs helped, but you didn’t need to be a Master to see the change in our surroundings.

The smell was the first thing that jumped out as we slowly made the transition. It started as a funk or a bitter undertone, that quickly matured into a sour, fetid stink. I couldn’t tell if it was feces or decaying garbage or what, but it smelled rank.

The last month had not been kind to this district. The buildings were more recently worn down than the Docks that we had passed on the way here. It was easy to see massive handprints on the walls – from Menja I assumed. Other walls were covered in scratches and scrapes, complete with the occasional smear of dried blood. There was something… worse about this place, even in comparison to the rest of the city. It was hard to see why anyone would choose to live here. Though now that I thought about it, I suppose that was exactly the conclusion to draw. They hadn’t.

I had to watch my step as we made our way further in. No one had been around this part of the city outside of those who lived there, and it showed in the streets. My feet sunk into the mud covering the asphalt with a wet gurgle, eventually bothering me enough that I used my flight to lessen my weight.

But that didn’t take care of the debris. One of the things that I hadn’t thought about in the Leviathan cleanup was just how much mess was left behind. The tidal waves caught every ground floor residence, and even up to the third or fourth floor in places, and pulled it all out. The streets were littered with the broken refuse of offices, stores, and homes. A twisted lamp, almost bent in half. A filing cabinet, probably dragged here from its original home miles away. A dress, nearly torn in half and long since stained brown from the mud and the sun.

It was sized to fit a child.

Skitter didn’t look down once as she approached one of the buildings to our right. If there was some obvious difference singling it out, I couldn’t see it. She must have felt people inside then.

Sure enough, as we got closer, a voice yelled out to us from between the boards over one of the windows. “Go away! There’s nothing for you here!”

We stopped a few feet away from the door. “We aren’t here to hurt you,” Skitter said, projecting her voice outwards. “I just need to talk to Parian.”

“She’s not here,” the voice said, “Just leave us alone!”

Skitter didn’t pause. “I know she is. Just ask her if she wants to talk. No swarm, no tricks, we’ll even let her pick where.”

We waited a moment, and then the front door opened. A giant stuffed bear doll stood in the entryway, its stitching worn and tearing along one of the seams in the arms. It had no right to look as imposing as it did… until I remembered that these dolls had stood up to Leviathan and survived. They had the water stains to prove it.

Behind the bear was Parian, peeking warily out from beneath its massive left arm. She was unreadable behind her porcelain mask, but her tense shoulders indicated she definitely hadn’t been expecting us. She was wearing her signature black Victorian styled dress, albeit a lot more ragged and stained than last I saw it. Given where she was living, that was hardly a surprise. Her blonde curls were still almost immaculate, if a bit more frizzy than normal. Impressive.

“What do you want?” she said, her voice clipped.

“What I said before,” said Skitter. “To talk. Nothing more.”

Parian stared at us for a moment. I tried not to fidget. Did she recognize me? It was hard to say. The dye in my hair was still at least partially in, and I was wearing the clothes Skitter had gotten for me. My hood was up as well, since after she had mentioned wanting to be covert I thought it prudent. But the Heroes had recognized me before like this, I wouldn’t put it past Parian to make the connection. Not that I could tell; her mask hid her entire face just like Skitter, so she could’ve been looking right at me and I wouldn’t know.

“Fine. Inside. But she stays out here,” said Parian.

“Not an option,” Skitter replied. “She’s under my care, it’s my responsibility if something happens to her. You’d do the same for your people.”

I tried not to stare at her. That was… where did that come from? Was she just saying it to draw the obvious comparison to Parian’s people, catch her off guard? Or did she really feel that way? You’d think she would’ve mentioned it during that conversation earlier, if so. We’d drawn a line between me and the Undersiders, and this blurred it. Even if it was just for show.

Parian’s hands clenched. “Fine. But no one else.”

“That’s fine,” Skitter said.

Parian stepped back in time with her doll, leaving us space to enter. We walked in and the old wooden door creaked shut behind us. Without the indirect sunlight, the muggy summer air was a bit easier to take as we made our way down the hallway. The giant bear was ahead of us, each of its ponderous steps sending a tiny quiver through the floorboards, but I could hear the sharp clacks of Parian’s heels further on. She was using the doll as a shield in case we attacked. I couldn’t blame her for not trusting us. I wouldn’t have, in her position.

The residents of Dolltown retreated back into their rooms as we passed by. I couldn’t get a good look at most of them, but the few that I saw had bags and cloth over their faces. A measure to protect their identity, or a mark of affiliation for Parian? I couldn’t say.

We reached what must have been the kitchen at one point, judging by the remains of the sink attached to one wall. I had no idea what happened here, but these people were in a bad shape if this is where they were staying.

There were two more massive dolls facing us as we stepped through the door; a cat and a giant rabbit. Facing us in a line along with the bear from earlier, it was hard not to be intimidated. Parian seemed to think so too, as she visibly relaxed–even if only slightly–when they stepped up to flank her as she faced us. The bear swung to take up a guard post by the door, between us and her people.

“Alright, what is it?”

Skitter stepped forward. “I want you to leave the city.”

You could have heard a penny drop.

“You can’t possibly be serious!” Parian yelled, even as I tried to get my thoughts in order. Skitter had brought me out here to help with this? “These are my people, I can’t just abandon them because you say so! I don’t care who you are, get out. Clearly you have nothing of value to say. I should never have let you in.”

Skitter was undaunted. “No, you misunderstand. I want you and your people to leave, and I want to give you the tools to do it.”

The silence was even longer this time.

Parian’s dolls bristled beside her. “If this is some sort of a trick–”

“No trick,” Skitter said. “If I wanted to force you out, I would’ve brought my swarm and just attacked. I didn’t. The people here in Dolltown, they’re the ones who Bonesaw altered into copies of the Nine, right?”

I froze. My throat closed up, sour lump lodging just behind my tongue, making me gag and my breath come in gasps. My thoughts swam dazedly, like Skitter’s single sentence had been a two-by-four to the side of my head. The impact dizzied me, sending my brain reeling in circles, leaving my tongue and lower jaw so numb I couldn’t feel them, unbalancing me so much that I tilted, stumbled, almost fell.

The Nine. Ice trickled down my spine as I tried to suck in enough air through the suffocating hollow that had suddenly opened up in my lungs. The Nine. That’s why they were covered in cloth masks. It wasn’t protecting who they were, it was hiding who they’d been forced to look like. Forced by a biotinker who took their bodies and twisted, pulled, played with them until they looked just like she wanted–

“Hey!” Skitter said, suddenly right in front of me. “You’re here. Bonesaw isn’t here, and neither is she. You’re okay.”

I stared at her, thoughts running wild in my head. I… I wasn’t okay. To deal. With any of this. But I could focus on not letting my aura out. That’s what I had to fixate on. The rest could come later, when I had space.

“What was that?” Parian asked, voice tense but questioning.

Skitter turned back around. I kept my focus on my breaths, counting them out. “Flashback. She had something similar happen to her after the Nine. She asked me for help. I gave it. That much should tell you I’m serious.”

Parian took a step back, unsure. “It doesn’t matter, that still doesn’t answer the important thing. Why do you want to help us?”

“Because I can,” Skitter said, leaning back against the wall behind her. “Because this is Ballistic’s territory, and when he comes, it won’t be to talk. Because it’s good PR for the Undersiders. Because the people here deserve better than this. Believe whatever you want, I don’t care. But I’m offering help all the same.”

Parian looked at us, as if trying to figure out what Skitter wasn’t saying. My heart rate was calming. Maybe this would end better than the encounter with the Protectorate. I hadn’t lost control of my aura. I could handle this. It was okay.

Then, just as Parian stepped forward, Skitter was suddenly moving, twisting, trying to get out of the way, but she was too slow, too late, there wasn’t enough time, and–

A metal bolt, almost a foot long, sprouted from Skitter’s shoulder.

Chapter Text

Skitter let out a short, strangled sound and slumped, her body curling into the bolt holding her to the wall behind her. My pounding heart had me trembling, something hard and ashen lodged in my throat as I watched, frozen. What the fuck just happened? How did someone sneak up on her? I mean, she didn't have her swarm up, but this was Skitter. If she didn't have everyone within half a mile bugged since before we went through that door I'd eat my hoodie. And not just that, how did it go through her armor so easily? From what Charlotte had said, she'd fought Mannequin hand-to-hand. I'd read up on him in the days following the Nine's arrival, in case I needed to face any of them. While he had a myriad of tools at his disposal, his murders were all done with knives. Insanely sharp and lethal knives. Her armor must have at least been cut resistant for her to survive that.

So how the fuck was she suddenly nailed to the wall? What kind of bolt could punch through her armor?

Could it punch through mine?

"Not so tough now, are you?" A voice interrupted my stuttering thoughts from the other side of the room. I looked up, and saw the assailant for the first time. She was wearing so much purple that I almost thought she was Tattletale at first glance. But no, there were lighter colored arrows all over her body breaking up the design, and she had a dark silver visor coloring her eyes that left her lower face exposed. Her mouth twisted into a sneering scowl as she advanced, her eyes locked on Skitter. In her hands was the thing that had put a bolt through the shoulder of my… guardian. A complicated looking crossbow, already loaded with another metal bolt.

Instead of firing, the girl holstered the weapon, drawing a lighter knife from her shoulderband as she stepped in front of Parian. Shit. If she was putting the crossbow away, that meant she thought the knife would be just as lethal. She kept it trained on Skitter as her other arm went back to herd Parian behind her. "Get behind me, Pa–" she started, then froze as she finally looked past Skitter to see me.

"Glory Girl?!"

I clenched my fists, trying to think through my options. I had no idea what her power was, but I had to assume it could break my forcefield, for my own safety if nothing else. Meanwhile, Skitter hadn't made a sound yet. Being pinned to the wall like that had to be agony. I had no idea if she was in danger of bleeding out. And now the mystery cape recognized me? Why did I even bother with this stupid hair dye? Why did everyone keep butting into my business now, a week after I'd been rescued?

She was still holding the knife. I had to answer her.

I nodded slowly, not taking my eyes off of the blade. If she threw it, would I have time to dodge? Normal humans needed some degree of wind-up to throw anything with force; it would show in her shoulders and hips before she moved her hand. Unless she had some sort of Brute throwing-based power? Fuck, I hated working blind like this. It was what had gotten me taken out by the Undersiders at the... bank.

A tiny, hysterical part of me found that thought funny, in a really sick way.

The girl didn't take advantage of my distraction to step any closer, thank god. Instead, she pointed at Skitter.

"What are you doing here with her?" she asked, putting enough venom in the last word to make her thoughts on our odd little alliance painfully clear.

I swallowed, breathing unsteadily. My drawing pad was in my hoodie pocket, but if I reached for it would she take it as a threat? I had no way of knowing, and if I guessed wrong she might literally nail me to the wall for it. She'd already proven herself trigger-happy.

Grasping at straws, I slowly brought my two hands up, curling all but my index fingers. I moved them perpendicular to one another and tapped them together, before tapping them the other way. The sign for "Friend".

The cape glanced at Parian. "What's she doing?"

"I don't think she can talk," she said, her voice tight. "Why are you here? I don't think this is a good idea Flechette–"

Wait, she was Flechette? This girl was a Ward of the Protectorate? And she'd nailed Skitter to a wall without provocation? What the fuck? Now that I knew her name, the memory clicked. She was the Ward from New York that had arrived after Leviathan. Her power was something about a Striker intangibility power with a Thinker subrating for aiming. I wished I could remember better now. She had seemed so shy and hesitant that first time we'd talked. I couldn't match that quiet wallflower of a girl to a vicious ambush like this. Had something changed? Had some run-in with the Nine left her on such a hair trigger? I hadn't heard about her getting involved in any of the fights, but everything had been chaotic and I'd missed a lot even before... before.

I needed answers.

I wasted no time bringing out my notebook now. She had recognized me as a Hero, and if she was a Ward she hopefully wouldn't attack one of her own.

"Why did you hurt her?"

Flechette frowned at me. Like impaling people unprovoked was such an obvious no-brainier she didn't understand why I had to ask. "Well–because she's Skitter! Because of you! I was checking on Parian, we try and do some outreach stuff where we can, and I found Skitter backing her into a corner!"

"We were just talking," Skitter said, the first sound she'd made since she'd been shot. I tried to check on her out of the corner of my eye without being obvious. Her breathing was labored and she was keeping her wounded shoulder flat against the wall so as not to pull or twist the metal bolt going through her. The angle it had come from forced her slightly up onto tiptoe, and she was curling her other shoulder in, trying to minimize her profile. I could just make out a darkening stain at the tips of her fingers where the blood was ticking down her arm.

Flechette glared back at her, brandishing the knife again. "Yeah? Talking's not usually your style, I hear. More often the 'hit first, ask questions never' type."

Skitter shifted slightly. The bolt wasn't getting any better, and keeping the pressure off it was obviously tiring her. "Was trying to do better this time. Wanted to help Parian. That's why we were here."

"And the last time you were seen around two Heroes, Panacea goes missing and Glory Girl goes AWOL. And then she pops up with you guys, a team with a known human Master. So no, I don't think I'll trust you," Flechette shot back.

I forced myself to stay still, focusing on keeping my breathing even. Trying to ignore the hollowing feeling in my chest and the pounding of blood in my ears, the blooming panic and rage emerging from the shock and terror. God, why did she have to push all my buttons at once? It's not like she knew, but this whole confrontation was a ticking time bomb waiting for my aura to go off. And I couldn't exactly use my phone to ping Skitter–she couldn't do anything. I should've used it earlier…

It was hard to tell if the groan Skitter let out was one of exasperation, or pain. "You know, you could just ask her."

I felt the gaze of the two capes fall on me. What was I supposed to say? I looked down at the pad in my hand, and took a deep breath. The pen creaked audibly under my grip.

"Amy hurt me, after the Nine. It was bad. Needed help. Skitter saved me. Let me stay, think." Plastic cracked and I hastily pocketed the pen before I snapped it in half. That would have to be enough.

Parian clenched her fists tightly, her stuffed animals shifting footing into wide stances beside her. Did she believe me? Were the implications of what I had written touching a nerve? Or was it just the violence and Flechette and Skitter's presence? I wished I could see at least part of her face.

"That… sounds like a lot, Glory Girl, but I don't know if that's really you. It could be Regent hijacking you, trying to play up a sob story," Flechette said. "Why don't you let me arrest Skitter, and come back to base with me? We can get you screened, and contact your family."

I… there was a part of me, even a few days ago, that would've said yes. That would've leapt at the chance to put this all behind me. Nothing had made sense since I woke up to Skitter standing over me in that bathtub, and it was so tempting to go back to those black and white borders between who was bad and who wasn't.

But I couldn't. Skitter was the one who had saved me from that monster. And it was a Ward who'd shot her and pinned her to the wall without even trying to talk. I knew which one I was choosing. Which I had to choose, if I wanted to call myself a hero.

I slowly stepped between Flechette and Skitter. Defying the Ward in defense of the warlord. The look on her face said it all.

"Glory Girl? What are you doing?"

"D-d-don't t-touch h-her." The words forced their way out, raspy and throaty but honest. They burned like hot coals coming up my throat. But it was worth it.

Flechette took a step back. "She… she's a villain, Glory Girl. Skitter. She held your sister hostage at the bank the first time she went out, remember? They shot you! Maybe you don't remember, maybe whatever the Nine did to you was too much, but trust me when I say she's not on your side. Please, just… trust me?"

I gave her a sad smile, and shook my head. No, I couldn't do that. She was the one who'd started this when it was halfway to a peaceful resolution; she hadn't earned that trust from me. Skitter, for all her faults and failings (and they were numerous), had. At least, for now.

Flechette's gaze hardened as she looked at Skitter behind me. "I don't know what you've done to her, but it's sick."

"Flechette," Parian said, "maybe it's not–"

"But I don't care," Flechette continued. "I don't buy it. I see you, Skitter. I see who you are. Yeah, maybe you were just talking this time, but you're always looking for another angle. A week ago you were kicked out of the Truce meeting, and now you're all trying to claim the whole city as your turf. That doesn't come out of nowhere."

"Funny, it sounds really straightforward when you say it like that," Skitter replied, and I glanced back at her. Her voice sounded almost normal, apart from the strained note I doubted Fletchette or Parian would recognise. There was no wetness or blood-foam, which meant that the bolt had missed her lung. Small mercies.

"But it's always more complicated," she continued. "You wanna know why we're claiming territory, why I was here talking to Parian? Because we can help, and we know the Heroes won't. I came here to offer Parian the chance to get her and the people of Dolltown out before Ballistic smashes their door in," she said, her gaze not leaving Flechette.

"You say that, but Ballistic is on your side! You don't get to claim credit when you're fixing a problem you started," Flechette snarled.

The laugh Skitter let out caught us off guard. "As if you all have any right to judge. Armsmaster is suspended without leave right now. You wanna know why? Because he hung me and the villains out to dry, and your bosses know it."

"There's no direct evidence of that–" Flechette started.

"Please," Skitter said, "Don't make me laugh. The broken Endbringer armband I hid says otherwise. The women's bathroom on Brooke street has it above the ceiling tile over the second stall, if you care enough to check. He shorted it out when Leviathan was on top of me, and left me to rot.

"But I think your actions here speak enough." She prodded the bolt stuck in her shoulder. The dark stain was spreading out to soak her shoulder, spreading down her arm like a river. Her own blood dropped from the tops of her claws where her arm hung slack, falling to the linoleum and bursting into little pools of red. I tried not to look. Keeping my eyes on Fletchette was more important, and the quiet drip-drip made my stomach turn over. "I was coming here to offer a cape help," Skitter drove home, "and you decided that I was a threat. You were the one to escalate, not me. I helped a girl get away from a family that abused her, and your solution is to blame me for it. How brave."

The silence was sharp enough to cut a diamond. It hurt to admit, but I was on Skitter's side in this. And I didn't know what that meant for me.

"What were you offering?" Parian said.

Flechette quickly turned to look at her. "Parian! No! Don't listen to them!"

She put a hand on Flechette's shoulder. It might have been an appeasing gesture, if not for how the heavy paw of the bear puppet mirrored it. "They're here talking about my people," she said firmly. "Not yours. If I want to hear them, I will." She turned back to Skitter, waiting for her to answer.

"Supplies," Skitter said, "and money. Enough to get them the surgeries they need, and get them out of the city. This place has seen enough shit, it doesn't need more."

Flechette opened her mouth again, but Parian stopped her. "Two days. You get two days to act on this. If you don't, then I let Flechette tell the rest of the Heroes what happened here. Okay?"

Skitter stared at her for a moment. "Yeah, I can work with that."

Parian nodded. "Good. I'm going to take the people here and leave. This place clearly isn't safe enough anyways." She glared at Flechette, who seemed to wilt.

The two walked by us, Flechette glaring at Skitter the whole way. I didn't let them out of my sight. I didn't trust Flechette. Not after this.

"Skitter," Parian said, as she paused at the door. "I'm sorry about how this happened. But I'm not sorry it did."

They didn't say anything else as they left. I let out all my breath in a sudden sigh, rushing over to Skitter's side. Fuck. I had no idea how to even begin fixing this. The limited first aid classes I'd taken felt woefully inadequate.
"Don't bother trying to pull it out of my shoulder," Skitter said. I glared at her. I knew enough not to yank an impaled object out of a wound, thank you. The bolt was probably the main thing keeping all her blood in.

"Whatever her power is, it bonded with the wood behind me," Skitter added helpfully. "I suspect it's fused to my bone now. You'll need to dig out the wall surrounding it."

My heart leapt up into my throat. It was what? How on earth was I supposed to– did Flechette seriously just casually inflict a potentially permanent injury on a teenaged cape without even thinking about other options first? If Skitter wasn't in need of medical attention…

I shook my head, and set about doing as Skitter asked. "This is going to hurt" I wrote quickly, my words an almost unreadable scribble of leaking ink and trembling hands.

"Don't worry about it," Skitter said. "I'm tracking everyone. Parian was telling the truth, you have time."

I started to slowly close my fingers around the shaft jutting out of her back, trying not to jostle her too much. It was an awkward process. There wasn't a lot of clearance between her and the wall, and if she was right about the bonding to the bone issue then I couldn't even slide her further up the shaft to make room. So instead I had to slowly reach around her, chest to chest, slipping my arms up her back to feel out where the bolt exited her shoulder blade.

"I'm sorry I didn't mention the Bonesaw modifications ahead of time," Skitter said as the wall groaned beneath me.

I glanced at her. Was now really the time?

"I didn't know that it was Parian who had taken care of them. Thought she just had people that needed money for transport elsewhere. Otherwise I would've told you, like we agreed."

I grunted an acknowledgement, and she didn't speak any further.

The plaster made a dry cracking sound as my fingers dug into it, slowly carving through the layers until I found the head of the bolt. I got a good grip with one hand, used the other to cup the area around her shoulder blade and tried my best to smile at her like I knew what I was doing, my face bare inches from her impassive mask. Pressed this close, I could feel her labored breathing and the tension thrumming through her whole frame.

With a deep, calming breath to bolster my nerves, I slowly and carefully drifted backwards, pulling Skitter, the bolt, and a small chunk of the wall with me. She sagged into me for an instant, so quick and fleeting I half thought I'd imagined it, before straightening as much as she could. She still stood in that awkward half-curled stance, one shoulder held carefully straight so as not to jostle the rigid metal bolt stuck through it, the other pulled in towards it defensively. But her back was straight and her voice was strong as she spoke.

"Good job, Victoria."

I grinned, shaking the plaster dust off my hands. Okay, one problem solved. As if sensing my relief, Skitter continued, "Now comes the hard part."

My grin turned into a groan. Of course it wasn't over. Low stakes outing my ass.

The sound I let out must have been enough for her to understand my unasked question. "We need to get back home. I need tools to fix this, and we don't have them here."

Fuck, she was right. How would we do that, though? It would take a miracle if for her to walk anywhere like this without causing additional damage. I could carry her, but that would draw attention that would likely get back to Ballistic. And she couldn't use her swarm to cloak us for the same reason. What did that leave us?

Skitter slowly turned to face me.

"You need to fly me back."

Chapter Text

I stared at Skitter. She couldn’t possibly have just said what I thought she said. Me? Fly her back to the base? Now?

“Explain,” I signed shakily, my fingers tense as I forced them into the still unfamiliar ‘F’ shape.

“We’re out of options,” Skitter said. “I need medical attention back in my territory to get this out, and I can’t be sure how long I’ll stay conscious.” Raw terror spiked at the thought of her leaving me to deal with this alone, but she plowed ahead before I could react. “We can’t afford to let Ballistic catch wind of our presence, or the whole trip was for nothing. That means walking is out. I can’t keep us from being seen if I pass out halfway. All that leaves is flying, and I left Atlas behind so that he wouldn't get noticed on our way in.”

That – that didn’t address my actual concern! I understood why Skitter was asking me to do this; I’d come to the same conclusions already. She was right. The problem was me. I hadn’t flown any real distance since I’d woken up in that bathtub. I knew I still could, but I hadn’t actually tested it past the technicalities. For all I knew my sense of speed would be way off and I’d crater us into a building. Or I might have some obscure new condition or time limit that could blindside us. My aura couldn’t be counted on, which meant that every other aspect of my powerset was untrustworthy until proven otherwise. And now Skitter wanted to bet her life on it?

“No,” I signed emphatically, before bringing up my notebook to explain further. “Too many risks. Not sure of power”

Skitter nodded slowly. “I’d thought of that. Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice. This isn’t going to keep forever, and the longer we stay the more at risk we are of someone seeing us or the mess Flechette left behind.”

I glared at her. This was supposed to be a low stakes mission! Why did every outing I had with Skitter end in disaster? I mean, I guess I’d answered my own question there; it was Skitter. But that didn’t leave us any closer to a solution.

I closed my eyes and tried to break the situation down. If I thought of it like a math problem, the gnawing panic rising in my stomach wouldn’t take over. What were the variables we needed to solve for? Skitter had mentioned them earlier. No more damage to her shoulder, we needed to be back in her territory for medical care, and we couldn’t be seen doing it. Could I address those?

I remembered flying to and from Arcadia. A lot of that was in public, yes, but some was covert too. When I needed to catch some air and walking around wouldn’t cut it. When I had a bad hair day and didn’t want the attention that Glory Girl brought. When I wanted to meet… Dean… and Mom wouldn’t let me go so I snuck out anyways.

My eyes grew wet, and I tried to hold back a sniffle. God, I didn’t have time for this right now! I tried not to look at Skitter as I took a deep breath. She said nothing, breathing in slow, ragged inhales and exhales that I caught myself instinctively trying to match.

Okay, no. Couldn’t think about any of that. Second problem: damage to her shoulder. Could I carry her back? I wanted to answer yes without even considering it, but I forced myself to think the question through. My strength was working, otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to break her out of the wall. While I hadn’t done it lately, New Wave had gone over procedures on evacuating and carrying wounded civilians without hurting them. Especially as a Brute, I’d needed them at first. Yes, I decided. I could get her back to her base without hurting her any worse than she already was.

Which just left stealth. Could I get us out of Ballistic’s territory without him finding out? Ultimately, that came down to a few things. Going high enough to be out of eyesight, while staying slow enough not to jostle the bolt or risk dropping her. I’d done that before, when Amy hadn’t wanted to be seen coming to school and I’d had to drop her off further away—

I squeezed my eyes shut, clenching my fists. How many times had I carried her? She’d always acted reluctant, like it was something I was forcing on her. I’d felt bad about it so many times. Was it all a ruse from the start? How many times could she have reached out and changed me that whole time, without me even knowing? H-how did I know she hadn’t?

My breaths came short and fast and shallow as something hot and spiky formed in my chest. A sharp noise jolted me out of it, and I looked up. Skitter was snapping at me with her left hand— her left hand! Flechette had left a crossbow bolt in that arm not ten minutes ago! That more than anything else shocked me out of my spiral. I actually got as far as opening my mouth in outrage before the rant I wanted to let loose got clogged in my throat.

“Victoria,” Skitter asked fiercely. “Pay attention. Can you do it?”

Shaking from stress and fear and unwanted memories, I shook my head. Skitter cocked her head, almost birdlike. If my refusal worried her, she did a good job keeping it from her body language, but I heard a faint buzzing whine on the edge of my hearing tick upward.

“Why not?”

“Carried Amy. Worried about flashback. Drop you” My hands were shaking so badly the words were almost illegible, but at least the pen didn’t explode this time.

Skitter hissed through her teeth. “I’d thought of that, yes. It’s not the ideal solution.”

I had to snort at that. No, the ideal solution would’ve been for none of this to have happened. For me to not even be here. But we worked with what we had. There was a moment of silence as I tried to figure out what to do. If flying was out, that only left one of the options we’d already ruled out. Maybe we were missing something…

“I think you should try,” Skitter said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

“Can’t”

“You can,” she said, her eyes not leaving mine. “I know you can. She’s not here with you now. I am. You can do this. It’s your power, it does what you tell it to do. You didn’t know about your aura before, but you stopped it coming out tonight. You didn’t even need the phone. You can do this.”

It felt hard to breathe. “What if I mess up?”

Skitter didn’t hesitate for a moment. “Then you’ll catch me.”

She said that as if it was obvious. As if it was the simplest thing in the world for me to break myself out of a flashback, catch her before she got to the ground, somehow avoid any other damage – I shook my head. Impossible. I couldn’t trust myself like this. It was too risky, there were too many variables, too many failure conditions. I wasn’t reliable—

“I trust you.”

I froze, slowly looking up at the villain facing me. I’m not sure what her expression was under the mask, but she didn’t retract her words or show the slightest hint of doubt. I stared. Swallowed.

That was what this was all about in the end then, wasn’t it? Trust. I’d given Skitter a chance when I came here with her, and she’d held up her end. Wasn’t it my turn to do the same?

I winced as we stepped outside into the harsh sunlight. The cloud cover had cleared somewhat since we’d entered, and the clear blue skies of summer could be seen through the gaps. That was good. It was hell to navigate the city without GPS, and I’d have my hands full with Skitter. With her handicapped at the moment, I couldn’t rely on her to manage the cell phone either. So the more natural light, the better.

A noise from behind me drew my attention to the villain as she passed through the doorway. I frowned as I took in the dark stain slowly spreading from her shoulder. I didn’t like that. At least I knew it hadn’t hit a major artery, or she’d have already— well, this would’ve been unsalvageable.

“How do we do this?” Skitter asked. “I’ve never been flown while injured like this before.”

I grimaced as I considered the question myself. Contrary to popular belief, the princess carry wasn’t the most aerodynamic or efficient way to carry someone. Over the shoulder (or preferably carried on the back) tended to be best for speed and convenience. But we weren’t going for either of those. We needed stealth, and stability. And the only hold that would allow for that was from the front, otherwise that bolt would be jostling the whole way back and this would all be pointless.

“Under the knees and back. Front carry, left shoulder facing out”

Skitter nodded. “Makes sense. Anything you need?”

I considered that. “If you need to call or communicate, get what you need now. Hard to land and not hurt your shoulder. Have to go slow. Can’t sign or write”

“Good point,” she said, pulling out the phone from her back pocket. “I had some calls to make anyways.”

I forced myself not to stare. People had weird coping mechanisms. If Skitter’s was making work calls while trying to pretend she hadn’t been impaled, I wouldn’t judge.

The thought brought back that awful image of how she’d looked with the bolt still in the wall. Like one of her bugs, pinned to a corkboard by some sick collector. The absurd horror of the comparison almost forced a bark of hysterical laughter out of me and brought tears to my eyes. It shouldn’t be funny. It wasn’t, at all. But I still had to stifle the terrified giggles before they could clear their way up my throat and choke me.

I had to keep my head. If I let myself freak it over my— my protector being hurt, being vulnerable, I’d laugh until I cried and then cry until I set my aura off. I had to stay in control. Skitter was counting on me.

She raised her right arm, and I stepped closer. Her suit felt smooth as I shifted my hand under her back and legs, slowly bending my knees to shift downwards to pick her up. The fabric was silk, but must have been much more breathable than the normal kind. Otherwise I didn’t know how she could stand wearing a full body glove of the stuff on a day this hot.

Skitter groaned as I picked her up. If I wasn’t so close to her, I wouldn’t have heard it. As it was, her chest was right up against mine, so it was hard for any sound she made to go unnoticed. I tensed. Had I hurt her?

“It’s fine,” she breathed, her voice soft and strained, her breathing labored. “Just get us going. The faster we’re back, the sooner I can have this out.”

I nodded, and closed my eyes. The ground was solid and worn beneath my sneakers, the concrete pitted and scarred from countless battles fought and lost. But I didn’t need to be tied down to it if I didn’t want to. I focused on the feel of Skitter in my arms instead. The bend of her knee on my forearm. Her calf across my hand. It felt a lot harder than I had expected – a runner maybe? It would make sense with her build. The smooth curve of her back on my left arm, broken only by her armor plating. This close, with her weight against me, I could feel just how thin her suit and armor really was. And she felt comfortable facing off against heroes in this? It was hard to believe.

My eyes opened, and we were floating off the ground. I smiled. Perfect. Without a word we drifted into the sky, the ground falling away from us as the wind grew louder in my ears. I stopped at about a thousand feet; high enough to avoid notice but low enough that oxygen and temperature were no concern. Close enough to the city to make out landmarks, too. I didn’t usually fly this low when I had my phone to navigate, but needs must right now. I glanced down at Skitter, who was looking at me. Was she okay? I carefully squeezed the hand on her leg, keeping her shoulder as still as possible. I couldn’t afford to disturb the bolt by accident.

“I’m fine,” Skitter said, answering my unasked question. “Let’s get moving. I’ll let you know if there’s an issue.”

I nodded, and we started to move forward. My instincts told me to push, to go fast and hard, the wind flying in my face and the land warping around me. How had I forgotten just how much fun flying was?

Stupid question. I knew how. I shoved away the memories and held my speed.

“B, banana,” Skitter said. I looked down and she had her phone out. This was the second time I’d heard her open with a phrase like that. A letter, followed by an object. Usually food related. Some kind of Master Stranger or IFF code maybe? She paused. “The main issue was accomplished, Parian is considering my offer. But Flechette shot me.”

Another pause. Would I understand any more if I saw the other side of this conversation? “No, but I’d rather not bother the boss with this when he’s so busy getting the rest together. Can you spare a medic?”

I tried not to react to that. The Undersiders had a boss? All the PRT’s intel until this point had suggested that they were operating independently, and Skitter’s debut had pushed them into a more proactive presence. If that wasn’t true… No, focus. This wasn’t the time. I could ask later.

“We’re over the edge of his territory now, by where the old hangout used to be,” Skitter said as we passed the wreckage of the boardwalk. “Okay, tell him to prep for surgery when I’m there. Thanks Tattletale.” She closed the phone and set it down on her stomach, idly laying a hand over it to keep it steady.

I looked down at her and raised an eyebrow. “We don’t have a surgeon in my territory yet,” she explained. “I’ve been requesting supplies, but medical care hasn’t been a priority yet. I knew Tattletale had one.”

I nodded. I wanted to ask her badly about the rest. About their previous hideout we’d passed over. About her mysterious boss, and how he had the ability to get her a qualified doctor and tools on short notice. Was he bankrolling them? Where had those supplies come from? But it wasn’t the time, or the place. And even if it was, I literally couldn’t. My hands were full.

Skitter grunted and shifted slightly in my grip. I let out a gasp and forced myself not to drop her as her hair seemed to come alive. A few dozen bugs – flies maybe? – flew out of her hair, making an arrow in front of us. I tried not to react. Yeah it was gross but… I’d felt worse in the past week. This was manageable.

I looked in the direction of the arrow and sure enough, we were coming up on her residence. Skitter took the opportunity to open the phone again. “Sierra, it’s me. Tell Charlotte she needs to open the door to the roof access, we’re coming in through the top. And clear a table with a clean sheet in my room. It’ll have to do. Thanks.”

We closed in on the roof, and I could see the door open to the stairs. Charlotte stepped out, waving at us. I glanced down at Skitter, and squeezed her leg once.

She nodded. “Set me down. Carefully.”

I finally landed on the roof, and slowly started to transfer Skitter to her feet. It would’ve been better for me to take her directly to the table where we were going to do this… but I could respect that she didn’t want me to do that in front of her people. She let out a low groan as I gently took her weight off me.

Charlotte shot me a glare before giving her boss a worried look.

“Okay,” Skitter said, swaying in place slightly. Was there a slight slur in her voice, or was I imagining it? Charlotte glanced at me again, worried. Maybe she’d heard it too. “I need to get this fixed,” Skitter continued, steadying herself on me with her good arm and then pulling away immediately like it would stop Charlotte from having seen it. The touch sunk into my skin like sunburn, somehow different from the necessity of carrying her here. Charlotte was here now. Skitter had other options for support. But she’d leant on me.

“You need to get downstairs, and you’re going to have to pass through my room to do it,” she said. “This is an emergency, so it’s fine. But don’t take this as permission to come in whenever, okay?”

I nodded. That was more than fair, and it wasn’t like we had any other options.

I had to help her again as we went downstairs from the roof, and tried not to look around too much as we entered her room. It was surprisingly… spartan. Or maybe it wasn’t surprising? Honestly it was hard to know what to expect from Skitter sometimes. Maybe she expressed most of her personality in the bugs on the second level. Regardless, I kept my shoulder under her right arm until we got to the bed that Charlotte had prepped, then gently eased her down to sit on the edge.

“Victoria.” Her voice stopped me as I made to leave, and I turned to look at her. She seemed fragile, sitting there with the metal bolt still stuck clean through her. But at the same time, so strong.

“Thank you.” Her voice was soft.

I nodded, not letting myself look back again as I closed the door to the third level and slid down it to sit on the floor, knees pulled up to my chest. I slowly leaned back, my head in my hands. God, what a fucking mess. A simple outreach mission, gone horribly wrong. I didn’t even know if my presence had helped or hurt. Had I just limited Skitter’s ability to manage the situation? Why was I even thinking like that, backing the Villain against a local Ward? It all felt so… wrong.

I picked up my phone and slowly scrolled through the contacts list. I knew that Skitter had trusted me with this, and I wanted to honor that trust. I really did. But I also had to find some answers myself. Hopefully she’d understand that.

A gentle chuckle escaped me when I found the one I’d been looking for. Huh, she really hadn’t thrown this one away then. Budget cuts maybe? Either way, that would make this slightly easier. I opened a text, and started typing.

“Mom. This is Victoria. I want to meet you. Alone.”

Chapter Text

I was sitting in my bedroom, idly playing with the drawstrings on my hoodie, my foot tapping an anxious beat on the floor that I couldn’t quite stop, when I heard someone come down the stairs. Finally! It had been at least a couple of hours of worried pacing and fiddling, and without anything to do or anyone to ask what was going on upstairs, the wait had been killing me. I grabbed my notepad and hurried out to see who it was.

By the time I got to the door, Charlotte was seeing off the surgeon that Tattletale had sent by. “–takes the medication I gave. Otherwise just keep it clean,” he said, handing Charlotte a small index card.

She nodded as she pocketed it. “I can reach you at that number?”

“Yes. She can also call Tattletale, but it would be faster to use mine.” He stepped through the door and Charlotte closed it behind him. She let out a small sigh, then she turned to me.

“Right. And that just leaves you.”

I tensed, my gaze hardening, and held out the words I’d written earlier.

“How bad?”

Charlotte pinched her brow. “Recoverable. He had to saw it off with an angle grinder; we can only hope it was sterilized enough.”

I tried not to shudder. How did you sterilize an angle grinder, anyway? What were the odds that Skitter would get away without an infection with a wound that bad and the city like this? I didn’t even want to know.

“He put her shoulder back together, so otherwise she should be fine. Well, as fine as she ever is,” she snorted, looking back upstairs. I followed her gaze. Skitter hadn’t come down yet; presumably resting for the night. I couldn’t imagine going from open surgery directly into caping. A lot of my exposure to hospital procedures was around… Amy, but doctors had still briefed me on outpatient care enough that I knew the basics.

“Speaking of which,” Charlotte said, turning to me, “how exactly did this happen?”

I tried not to flinch under her glare. I knew what she must be thinking right now, but for once this wasn’t my fault! I tried not to feel the heavy weight of my phone in my hoodie pocket. “Complicated”

She frowned. “I don’t like complicated.”

“Went out to talk to Parian. We talked. Flechette shot her by surprise”

“Flechette, the Ward from New York?” Charlotte asked.

I nodded.

She hissed. “Fuck. No wonder it was so hard to get out of her shoulder then. How’d she even surprise her?”

“Didn’t have her swarm out. Wanted to be diplomatic to Parian”

“Mmm,” Charlotte said. “Fine, whatever. But that doesn’t cover where you were during all of this.”

My chest felt tight. I swallowed, my mouth dry as I tried to quash the sense of being called out in class to explain missing homework. No, I refused to feel guilty here! I helped! I had to remind myself of that.

“Flechette didn’t see me until she came in. Stopped her from arresting Skitter. They left. I flew her back”

Charlotte stepped back, considering me. I took a moment to think. The words had hit me almost as I was writing them. I— I did do that, didn’t I? Context aside… I wasn’t sure how to process that. Was living with a Villain really warping my morals? I wanted to say no, but would I even be able to tell?

I felt I’d made the right decision, even going over it now. Stopping harm was good, especially if it was unprovoked, unjustified violence. That was true regardless of which party was at fault, and Flechette’s ambush had been unprovoked at least and… dubiously justified at best. That it was a Hero doing it didn’t matter. The founding goal of New Wave was accountability, both for Heroes and for the system itself. If I was really staying true to that philosophy, then my actions were right.

I just wasn’t sure my mother would agree.

“That’s… good then,” Charlotte said, finally breaking the silence.

I nodded. Charlotte’s gaze felt like one of Skitter’s heat lamps baking my skin. But for once, she couldn’t find a fault to pick at.

Hidden in my pocket, the burner phone felt like a snowball rolling down an avalanche slope, weighing heavier on my conscience with every second.

I said nothing.

“Well, we should get to bed,” Charlotte said, still glaring suspiciously. “I’m sure she’ll fill us in come morning.”

I grunted an agreement. Her voice stopped me just as I turned to go back to bed. “Oh and Victoria?”

Charlotte’s fists were clenched, her shoulders stiffly drawn back as she stared right at me.

“Thank you. For taking care of her.”

I swallowed, and nodded. My footsteps sounded like gunshots the whole way back to my room.

Skitter gave us the rundown the next morning, just as predicted. “The doctor said I’m cleared for light work, provided I’m careful,” she said over the table on the second floor that Charlotte, Sierra, Forrest and I had gathered at. I tried not to stare too much at the other two. Charlotte at this point was a known quantity, but I hadn’t had too many interactions with Sierra or Forrest. Mostly because they were in and out of the base, and our schedules just hadn’t matched up. I didn’t even know if either recognized me, but I guessed that was beside the point.

“That means I’m going to be doing errands elsewhere today,” Skitter continued. “Charlotte, you’re on point. Sierra, Forrest, you have the tasks I outlined earlier, try to keep the kids organized. The dentist is going to be set up soon, and I don’t want any sharp objects going missing.”

They both nodded, and Skitter turned to me. “Victoria, try and lay low for the moment. Between the Protectorate encounter earlier, Flechette and Parian, and not hearing anything from Ballistic yet, we can’t be too careful. You have a place here… but I can’t afford a soft target.”

The wood groaned under my fingers. Soft target. The last time I’d heard that was from Legend, before Leviathan decimated a good fifth of the city. I had to wonder if the reference was intentional, and what it said about her if it was. But I nodded all the same, my jaw clenched.

She nodded. “Alright then. I’ll be unavailable until late tonight. If the base is breached during that time, call Tattletale. She’ll know what to do.”

That had been at least an hour ago. As promised, she’d left us to her own devices. I was sitting in my room, turning my phone over and over in my hands. Mom had gotten back to me, late last night. First she confirmed that it was me – again – but after that she was eager to meet. As I’d expected. She’d agreed to meet alone so easily I’d almost thought there was some other catch. Part of me still did. But the rest just wanted to believe she needed to see me that much.

My fist clenched. I wanted, needed, to talk to her. About all of this. To confirm one way or another where Amy was. If Mom knew what she’d done to me. But a part of me didn’t know what I’d say when I finally saw her. Would I even be able to tell her what had happened? How would I even explain staying with a Villain this long? It’s not like I’d planned any of this. I had to believe she’d understand that.

So why did I feel so guilty? Was this the Stockholm Syndrome that she’d warned us about as kids? I still remembered that talk so vividly. Mom hadn’t exactly been full of jokes on a normal day, but even by her standards it had been serious. It’s hard to know what to think when your parents sit you down and tell you that it is entirely possible that some person you’d never met would kidnap you just to get at your parents. Amy and I hadn’t slept for days. She’d asked to sleep in my room with me–

I gasped, curling up on the mattress. No. No, I couldn’t go there. Distraction, I needed a distraction. The stockholm syndrome. Part of me wanted to believe, hope even, that’s all it was. Some imagined attachment to Skitter just because she had given me more than the bare minimum. But was that really what it was? She’d emphasized over and over again that I had choices. That I was free to leave at any point. She’d even told the Heroes as much. I couldn’t match the image of that girl, pinned to the wall by a crossbow bolt, to an evil mastermind. Not the way Mom had described.

Then what was it? Why was I so hesitant about seeing Mom? I wished I knew. But twisting myself into knots wasn’t going to help. I looked at the phone and winced. It was getting close to the time I sent Mom, and I still needed to make my way to the actual meeting place. It was outside of Skitter’s territory, which meant I needed to give myself travel time even going by air.

I stood up and groaned as I stretched my legs. A sharp pain snuck up the side of my thigh and through my pelvis. Was it really my period already? I could’ve sworn I’d just had it, but whatever had happened to my body might have messed with my cycle. That or I just slept wrong. Whatever the case was, it didn’t seem to get any better as I stretched, so I gave it up as a lost cause.

Charlotte caught my eye as I walked to the door. “Going somewhere?”

I tried not to let the heat in my chest show as I nodded. “Needed a break after yesterday. Want to fly”

She nodded. “Just remember to keep a low profile.”

I waved, and just like that I was out. I took a deep breath, held it for four seconds, and let it back out. Okay. I was doing this. It was just Mom, I’d faced way worse things since I’d seen her last. This would be a piece of cake.

And if I kept telling myself that, I might believe it.

Slowly, I floated off the ground and into the air, climbing past the three stories of Skitter’s base. Her building was actually an anomaly, most of the surrounding structures were taller. I guess it helped that she didn’t stick out.

Once I got high enough I tried to sight where I was headed. I’d asked Mom to meet me on the roof of one of the remaining buildings downtown; one of the many patrol points we’d worked out back when she still caped with us. It had taken three suggestions for us to pick one that was still there. I’d rarely approached it from this direction, but frankly there were so few office buildings still standing that it wasn’t a hassle to find.

Letting myself fall forward, I kicked off nothing and soared toward Downtown, the wind whipping my hair. God, I’d missed this. I hadn’t really had the time or attention to enjoy it when I’d been carrying Skitter, given the arrow in her shoulder and all. But flying really never did get old. Even when it was for pure utility, it was amazing. The way the land spread out below me, the cars sitting in the streets like a kid’s abandoned toys or moving around like shiny little beetles, driven by their ant-sized owners. The cool embrace of the air as I passed along the coastline, clean familiar salt and brine from the morning sea breeze overpowering the stagnant smell of the ruined city below. The sun shone down on me from a bright blue sky, and as always it felt like it was smiling more on me than anyone else, like I’d drawn its attention by flying up to meet it.

It was intoxicating. My aura might not entirely be what I was used to, but I still loved my power.

Finally, I made out the roof of the building itself. It was originally a bank or something; I’d never gotten the details, or at least never paid attention to them. Architecture was always more Dean’s thing than mine, as much as either of us had ever liked the subject. But it had been converted into a bunch of offices at some point. The roof was distant enough that I could just barely see it with the naked eye. Good enough. Now all there was to do was wait.

I shivered, pulling my arms closer to my chest. I knew I wasn’t cold, my forcefield protected me from the chill and I could feel the sun on my skin. No, I was nervous. What if she didn’t show up? What if she didn’t believe me? What if it wasn’t just her, and I was suddenly facing my worst nightmare and Skitter wasn’t there to bail me out this time because I just had to have some independence–

I took a deep, deliberate breath. No. Whatever was down there, I’d deal with it as it came. I was right to do this on my own; I had to. For myself, if nothing else. Skitter had helped, more than I could have ever reasonably expected, but this was my family. I had to be the one that reached out. No matter how hard it was.

Two bright flashes of light caught my eye, and relief rushed through me. That was the signal. Mom’s Breaker form was intangible, but glowed just as brightly as her hardlight weapons, if not brighter. We’d ended up agreeing on that as a long distance visual signal. Two flashes signaled safety, three was danger. One meant nothing; standard practice to avoid use of her power being misunderstood as a signal.

I squared my shoulders, and slowly floated down with my notebook in hand. This was it. One way or another, I’d know where we stood after this.

I touched down on the roof a minute later, not letting myself open my eyes. I just… needed a second. One more second, before I had to face her.

“Victoria? Is that really you?”

My breath left me in a rush. There she was. Right in front of me, after more than a week. I raised my notebook I had written in earlier, a weak smile on my face.

“Hi mom. I missed you”

Chapter Text

There were tears in Mom's eyes as we stared at each other across the rooftop. My plans hadn't really extended beyond this point. I knew I looked different than she saw me last. Did she still recognize the daughter standing in front of her? It felt like she was looking right through me, seeing all the new ugly parts that hadn't had a chance to heal. Raw, inflamed, and angry.

I opened my mouth. Before I could say anything, the breath was driven out of me. She'd closed the space before I could blink. Her hands were warm on my back, squeezing me tightly. One cupped the nape of my neck and stroked my hair. The other curled around my waist, holding me close. When was the last time she'd hugged me like this? When was the last time anyone had?

"Victoria, baby, I'm here."

That did it. A sob caught in my throat and suddenly my arms were around her, squeezing as tightly as I dared. The smell of her soap – lavender and jasmine – surrounded me. A keening wail rose up out of my chest, and we both slowly fell to the ground, entangled with one another. I cried. I cried like I hadn't since I was a child, sobs wracking my whole body, cheeks aching from how screwed up my face was, tears and snot staining her shoulder. I cried like I'd wanted to since Leviathan had cut Dean in half almost a month ago, like I hadn't been able to since waking up a week ago. I felt like I was six years old again, and for once I didn't care.

I don't know how long it was until we slowly pulled away from one another, sniffling. Mom's eyes were as red as mine. "Victoria," she said, voice still shaky, "I'm so glad you're okay."

I gave her a watery smile, and nodded.

"It's going to be okay now sweetie, I promise. I'm not letting anything else come between us," she swore, a layer of steel under her words. It felt comforting. Like a blanket wrapped around me, sending me back to my dimmest, earliest memories before... before I'd even known she was a cape. Before I'd been anything but an only child.

I reached out and slowly squeezed her hand. It felt inadequate, but I didn't know how else to respond. To thank her for being exactly what I needed. Nauseous anxiety still churned in my gut and fluttered through my lungs, but I felt at least a little better about the coming conversation. A few more minutes passed as we tried to collect ourselves, before the inevitable questions came.

"What happened, Victoria? Was that you on that call? Where have you been?"

I fumbled for my notepad. I was about to start writing when her hand gently covered mine. "Victoria, I don't know whether you've been staying with someone or not, but you can talk to me. It's okay, I promise."

I clenched my teeth, trying not to react. It's okay. She didn't know. Even if it was humiliating to explain. "Hurt," I signed. Her confusion didn't change. Fuck. The hard way it was. I grabbed my notepad again, and this time she let me.

"Was me on the phone. Hurt after the Nine. Can't talk. Been staying with someone that helped"

She smiled encouragingly at me. "Well that's good that you're here then. I'll have to find a way to thank them in person. How did you get hurt?"

I froze. I knew this conversation was coming. I knew it. There was no way around it. But that didn't make it any easier. How would I even phrase it? I wanted to believe that she'd trust me, take me on my word. But it hurt so much to say, even now. I couldn't imagine what it would be like for her to hear, if she hadn't already. What kind of kid wants to hurt her mother that badly, that intimately? No matter the context, I felt guilty sharing even that second-hand pain.

"It's okay if you need a minute Victoria, I know it must've been hard," Mom said. I blinked. How long had I been stuck in my own head there?

My grip was tight on the pen. Plastic creaked warningly under my fingers.

"Is it about Amy?" she asked.

She. She knew. She knew about Amy. I… I had to know. How she knew. "How did you hear?"

Mom's expression grew serious. "We found her knocking on the door after the Nine. She looked like she hadn't eaten in days. We took her back in, and she told us everything.. We were just waiting for you to come back before we did anything."






I stared at her. I didn't… what? What did she just say? She couldn't possibly… no. No, maybe she just didn't know. What Amy had done to me. That was the only explanation here. It had to be.

"So you know what she did?"

She nodded. "I know she did you wrong, Victoria. That's putting it lightly. And even if she fixed it after, which it looks like she did, that still doesn't excuse it. If it's a long time before you trust her around you, I understand. And I'll be here as we work through it, I promise."

It felt like being drenched in ice. There was a ringing in my ears, dizzying and distant. My breath was hot and tight in my chest, but hotter still was the pounding beat of my pulse I could feel through my skull, so hard and loud I felt sure she must be able to hear it. This... this couldn't be happening. She couldn't possibly expect me to – no this was a mistake. She'd mentioned waiting for me before doing something about her, I had to–I had to lean on that. Maybe I was still misinterpreting something, because otherwise the only explanation left was that my own mother was enabling my rapist–

"Are you going to tell the Protectorate?"

Mom looked at me like I had just started speaking Greek. "I don't think there's any need to get them involved here," she said. The world lurched, and I nearly gagged on nothing. My heartbeat hammered like a wardrum, calling for blood. "She knows what she did was wrong, I was very clear on that. I don't want to get cape politics involved in a family matter."

I… deep breaths. That was the only thing I could think. There was a time to express my emotions, the sheer rageanguishanxietyterrordespair stuck in my chest. But it wasn't now. My pen caught on the paper half a dozen times as I wrote, tearing little rips and gashes in the paper. I had to start over twice to get a coherent sentence down.

"So you think I should come home. With her"

"Of course I do," Mom said. "The city is dangerous enough as it is, Victoria. It's a miracle you made it out as well as you did, even with your powers. We aren't exactly subtle in plainclothes. I like the hair dye though. Was that June's idea? I assume you've been staying with her."

My brain felt like a skipping record, and I could taste bile on the back of my tongue, but I forced myself back on track. June. Skitter's pseudonym. Right. I forced myself to nod. The action felt disconnected, almost nausea inducing. My hand moved like a disembodied thing, and I watched it with a creeping sense of revulsion as it crawled across the page like a misshapen spider.

"She has a place by the boardwalk"

Everything below my wrists was numb, but the words still somehow came out with barely a wobble.

Mom frowned. "That's near Skitter's territory, if I remember right. I didn't know there was a refugee camp there."

I froze. Fuck, that's right. That was the cover story. I tried to think of a convincing explanation, but I was still so caught on… everything else… that nothing came to mind. None of it felt real. Like this was all happening to someone else. It had to be, right?

Her eyes narrowed. "Unless… there is no refugee camp."

The world tunneled in on her, bright and white and right; horribly, awfully right. Everything else was dark and blurry, like Mom had her own spotlight highlighting the growing suspicion in her eyes. I couldn't look away, couldn't respond. What was I going to say? What could I say? Did I even care?

I shook my head. The tiniest movement from side to side; all I was capable of in the grip of the sickening terror.

"Victoria…" Mom said, "who, exactly, are you staying with?"

My silence was damning enough.

She snarled. "I knew it! I didn't want to believe it would happen again, I hoped Amy was lying about why she left you, that you'd got out. I'm sorry; I'm so sorry sweetie, but she's a villain. I know she seems nice right now, that she's given you food and a bed and a sympathetic ear, but she's evil. You know what she's done. She threatened Amy! And hundreds of others! It's okay to be a bit confused, but you have to come back with us. We'll fix this."

I shook my head again before she stopped talking, jerking it from side to side. I couldn't. Couldn't go back. Even if I considered leaving Skitter… I couldn't go back. Not to her. How could she not see that? I could feel myself trembling, all over, like a leaf in the wind. Did she not notice? Did she not care?

"Please, Victoria, I know it's hard! But she can't get to you here. No matter how good you think it is, I promise it gets better when you're out of it. Trust me."

There were those words again. Trust her. Did I trust my Mom? Carol? I wanted to. I wanted to so much. That hug had felt better than anything in the last month. I'd almost felt real again when she'd held me. It was so tempting to say yes. To say fuck it and go back to what I knew and try... try to pretend... try to....

But the screaming, thrashing ball in my chest held me back. I didn't know what it was – fear, anxiety, attachment, trauma, or something else entirely – but it told me that this was a mistake. That I'd be placing familiarity over myself. And wasn't that why I'd come here in the first place, to meet with Carol? The easier, comforting thing would've been to stay with Skitter. To not run the risk of reaching back out to my family. But I'd done it, because I'd known I needed to. Even if the answer was… this.

I slowly drew back from Carol. I couldn't look at her face while I wrote. I needed to focus on the words. "Can't. Sorry"

"Sweetie… I don't understand. She's got you doing this writing thing too – just talk to me, please. I'm right here."

I squeezed my eyes shut at the reminder, feeling my breath catch. It… hurt. That she'd treat me that way. Assume I was doing this for any other reason than I had to. Didn't she know that I wanted to talk more than anything in the world?

It made me feel small.

"We can work this out, I promise. You don't have to let this, let her, come between us. Maybe you don't want to come home, fine. I know you were thinking of joining the Wards earlier. You can still do that! We can go right now, I promise. Just come with me?" Carol said, her voice almost desperate.

I thought back to yesterday. When Flechette put that bolt in Skitter's shoulder just because she'd been there, and talked. Could I really trust an organization, people, like that? I… no. Not right now. Maybe when I was stronger, maybe at any other point, I could've. But right now I just…

I shook my head, my vision blurring. Carol reached out for me, and I took another step back. "I don't understand Victoria, just talk to me. Please. We can make this right, I promise."

Despite the desperate urge to do anything but, I looked up. My mom's face was a mess, haggard and worn in a way I'd never seen before. Her eyes were full of tears. This time, they were my fault. If I was going to do this… I at least deserved to look her in the eye as I did.

"G-g-goodb-bye, M-m-mom."

I left in a crack of air and didn't look back.

The sun was low on the horizon when I finished crying again, casting long shadows from the buildings that still stood across the water of the bay. The eastern sky was deep midnight blue, while back over land the whole horizon bled arterial red. I could see the crater Leviathan had left from here; dappled light scattered off it like a million shards of broken crystal. Like someone had dropped a giant sheet of glass there and left the pieces in a jumbled mess. I empathized.

I was on top of an old skyscraper that Dean and I used to stop at to eat or chat or… whatever, during our patrols. I hadn't known what to do, or where to go, after my talk with Mom. With Carol. Maybe I'd thought it might help. Surrounded by memories that had nothing to do with either her or Amy. But it hadn't. It had only left me more aware of how much I wanted to talk to him. Made me wonder how much he'd known. Why he'd never told me. What he might've said in response to all of this, if I'd asked. If he thought I was doing the right thing. It didn't feel like I was. But I didn't know if there was a right response to all of this.

I checked my phone, and winced. Seven thirty four pm. I must have been up here for hours if it was already this late. I hadn't thought the conversation with Carol would go that long, so I hadn't really planned on anything to cover my absence with Charlotte or Skitter. I guess in retrospect, there wasn't a ton of talking. At the beginning she'd held me for… a long time.

Something in my chest ached, and I pushed it back down. The point was, I didn't know what was going on back in Skitter's territory. My burner was still on me, so presumably if I'd done something wrong I'd know about it by now.

I stood up, and stared out over her territory. Where did that leave me, then? I knew way more now than I did before. I knew where my… Mom… stood on all of this. I knew where Amy was. I knew the Protectorate hadn't taken any action yet.

So why did my path forward only feel more confusing than ever?

My vision grew blurry, and I wiped my eyes with the sleeve of my hoodie. Much as I'd grown to love this thing, it was clearly in need of a wash by this point. That settled it, strangely enough. Even if I wanted to leave Skitter, she'd done enough for me that she deserved a goodbye. That, and I wanted clean clothes one way or another.

And if I was being real with myself… I didn't know what other options I had right now. Skitter was, somehow, the only cape I'd met in the bay since I woke up in that bathtub who wasn't violent around me and also promised to keep Amy away. Depressing as it was to admit, those were the stakes.

I flew towards the Boardwalk, the wind clearing the remaining tears from my cheeks. I scanned the section until I spotted the telltale divot in the skyline that indicated Skitter's lair. I paused as I slowly came to a stop in front of her door.

Skitter should be back by now. She'd mentioned that her errands would be until late, but I couldn't imagine it being much longer. I knew she liked to take her patrols around now. What if she asked me where I'd been? Did I tell her the truth? On one hand, it felt like she had earned that level of trust from me by this point. But could I count on her understanding if I did? I'd thought I could trust Carol… but clearly I couldn't. Would Skitter really be any different?

"I was getting tired of waiting for you to open the door," Skitter said.

I jumped. Shit, had she been watching me that whole time? I looked up to give her an embarrassed smile, only to have it die on my face.

Skitter was standing in the entrance to the building after opening the door, skirt torn and shredded almost beyond repair, hair scraggly and covered in dirt, with most of her costume stained red.

Chapter Text

“If you keep the door open you’ll let the bugs in,” Skitter said, as if that was what we should be worried about.

I would’ve glared at her for it if I wasn’t so shocked. What the fuck had happened in the hours I’d been gone to leave her in this state? Was the base attacked? No, no, that didn’t make sense. Nothing looked out of place, and cape fights tended to be destructive. Plus, I knew Charlotte didn’t like me, but surely she would’ve at least called me back. I knew Skitter had given her my number. And... speaking of Skitter, she’d been out for errands today. Whatever happened must have been related to that.

“Explain,” I signed, my gaze hard.

Skitter understood the change in my tone. “Inside,” she said, stepping aside to let me in. The ragged edge of her skirt brushed me as I passed. I tried to marshal my thoughts as she closed the door behind me. I… I wanted to believe the best in her. God help me, but I did. Villain or no, she’d been kind to me. But I had to acknowledge that as a bias right now. Skitter had her reputation for a reason, and I’d experienced that reason first-hand. I couldn’t just blindly take her side.

Charlotte was giving me a look from where she was standing by the stairs up to the second level. I must have caught them as they were going up – to debrief, maybe? Now I wasn’t sure what to do. I wasn’t an Undersider, and I didn’t want to be. What would I say if Skitter demanded I join if I wanted to know what happened? Did… did I have the right to know? Could I ignore this even if I didn’t? If I left, I had no idea where I’d go. Mom…

I swallowed a lump in my throat. Carol wasn’t an option. Clearly. And if I couldn’t trust her, I couldn’t trust anyone in my family. Who knows how many of them she’d gotten to. No, that path was closed. The Wards then? My mind flashed back to Dolltown earlier. To the look on Flechette’s face as she’d left Skitter nailed to the wall. Any organization that let their members do that was one I didn’t want to be a part of. Carol might have... problems, but the founding purpose of New Wave was one I still agreed with. Accountability. Transparency. Even if New Wave had… strayed from that message, I still believed in it. I wanted to join the Protectorate before all this, but that felt like a lifetime ago now. It would be a miracle if the Heroes treated me like a whole person after our last interaction. They clearly thought I was a Master victim – and I couldn’t even disagree with them! Just… not in the way they thought. Would they believe me when I told them what happened… or would they just hand me right back to Carol? To her?

“Victoria.”

Skitter’s voice was close. I blinked, looking up into her yellow lenses. “I said that I was going to go over the events of today on the second story to Charlotte. Do you want to listen?”

I… yes. Yes I did. I’d been staying with Skitter for almost a week, stuck thinking she was my only option. And maybe that was true, more than I’d like to admit. But that didn’t mean I could just stick my head into the sand when it came to any of the things she did outside the sanctuary she’d offered me. I couldn’t. Shouldn’t. Wouldn’t.

I nodded.

Skitter nodded. “Good.”

She turned to start walking up the stairs but Charlotte stayed back, glaring at me. I shrunk as she came closer. Her hand snapped out to lean on the wall beside me, pinning me in, and she leaned right up to my ear. I froze.

“I don’t know what you were doing all day,” she hissed quietly. “You said you’d gone flying, but you were out for hours. I want to believe that you wouldn’t sell us out. You saved Skitter. I haven’t forgotten that. But if you’re thinking to try and test how far you can push that – don’t.”

Then she turned around and left, as if she hadn’t casually threatened a Brute right to her face. I let out a lungful of air, feeling my heartrate settle back down. Fuck. It wasn’t… I wasn’t intimidated by her. I wasn’t. But I was scared of what she represented. That my place here might be more tenuous than I’d thought.

I shivered, wrapping my arms around myself. I’d deal with that later. Hopefully. Putting the worry aside, I started up the stairs, my phone weighing a little more in my pocket with every step.

By the time I got to the top, Skitter had pulled out a table from somewhere – the back of the room maybe? – and laid out a map of Brockton on it. There were colored pins on it designating various territories. My god, they really laid it out like this. Some part of me had to push down hysterical laughter. Later. I could fall apart later. I had to focus now.

“Good,” Skitter said, not noticing (or more likely not caring about) the moment Charlotte and I had earlier. “Now that Victoria is here, we can start. Charlotte, was there anything of note today?”

“No,” she said, side eyeing me as she did, “Just that Victoria was out flying most of the day.”

Skitter turned to me. “Victoria?”

I clenched my notebook tightly. “Needed to get away. Clear my head.” I wasn’t even lying; I had. So why did my chest feel so hot? Why wouldn’t the tense, jittery discomfort settle?

Skitter nodded. “Fine. Just make sure no one sees you, we don’t need another PR issue tonight.”

Yeah, that was fair – wait. Another? I repeated my question to her.

“Ah, yes. That brings us to the main issue. We might have to go to ground for a while.”

Charlotte’s eyes hardened. “What happened? One of the Heroes got a tip? One of the Nine left over? Someone else entirely?”

Skitter shook her head. “None of the above. We assaulted the mayor’s house tonight, and Triumph got involved. It wasn’t meant to go like that, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they retaliated. Our fault for poor intel.”

I froze. No. No she… What? My hands wouldn’t obey me as I tried to sign at her, but Skitter still understood what I was trying to say. “Explain.”

“The mayor was planning on advocating for this city to be condemned. Too much of a resource drain, not enough profit and civilians to justify the expenditure. They were going to write off everyone here. We couldn’t allow that. Not when things were finally starting to get better. So we… convinced him.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I wrote, almost before I knew what I was doing. “If they condemn the city, they’d evacuate everyone. No need for you to go that far.”

She shook her head. “Not an option.”

I stared at her, my mouth falling open. Just like that? She’d so casually dismiss a peaceful option to a conflict now, when she’d been so desperately trying to find one earlier with Flechette? What had changed? This wasn’t the same Skitter that had been taking care of me until now. It couldn’t be. Because if it was, that meant I was complicit in all this the entire time and I was basically condoning–

Deep breath. In and out. There’s always more to the story than there appears. Regardless of my biases, this decision just didn’t make sense given her behavior earlier. It was like two different people. There must be some other factor I wasn’t aware of that was pushing her here. I just had to find out what.

“No,” I signed.

Charlotte gave me a death glare, but Skitter’s voice sounded almost amused. “No?”

“Doesn’t make sense. You looked for peaceful solution with Parian. And Flechette. You didn’t here. You’re hiding something else. Tell me”

The air suddenly became more frosty. “Charlotte,” Skitter said, not breaking eye contact, “go downstairs.”

“But boss-!”

“I don’t recall asking you,” Skitter said.

The bugs around us hissed angrily, as Charlotte stalked back the way we came. For a moment, it was just Skitter and I staring at each other. What if I was wrong? What if I had really misjudged her, and here was where she showed me that her patience was at its end? Flies brushed past my elbow, and I forced myself not to react. This was a test. It had to be. I knew I was right.

“What makes you think I would tell you what it was, if I was hiding anything at all?” Skitter asked.

I took a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out of my nose. There were a lot of responses I could give to that. That I’d stood up for her in front of Flechette. That I’d had her back in front of the Protectorate Heroes earlier – even if I’d ended up causing things to go bad in the end. That she’d trusted me to fly her back home, and I hadn’t failed her then.

But it wasn’t really about any of that, was it? This was about me. About my judgment, my feelings, towards her. I had to be honest.

“Because if you chose to do that, I need to know. I can’t stay with someone that would do that without a damn good reason”

Skitter let out a quiet laugh at that. “Morals. That’s what it always comes down to.” I gave her a quizzical look, but she didn’t seem to notice. “Fine then. But you first. Tell me what you were out doing today, and then I’ll share what happened. Fair?”

I swallowed. I… I wanted to refuse. To tell her that it was none of her business. But that was what she was trying to show me, wasn’t it? That I was asking something about her team, her people, when I wasn’t one of them. If I wanted her to be vulnerable, I needed to be the same. Fine. Just the facts, no feelings. Sanitized. That, I could manage.

“Went to see Mom. Needed to know what happened to Amy. She told me”

The bugs changed pitch around us again, settling into a low drone. “And what did she say?” Skitter said, her tone devoid of inflection.

“Amy is back at her house. She told her everything. Carol wanted me to go back” I swallowed, and forced the last few words out. “I said no”

The pause was less frigid this time. More… mutual. Like she understood what I wasn’t saying. That, or I was just projecting my own feelings onto her. Again. It was anyone’s guess with that mask of hers.

“Thanks for telling me,” Skitter said, her voice soft. “Now it’s my turn.”

I clenched my fists, but I didn’t look away. Couldn’t.

“What I told you before was true. We assaulted Mayor Christner’s mansion. What I didn’t mention before was that Triumph and his girlfriend Prism were there. In their civilian identities,” Skitter continued.

I breathed in sharply. Fuck, that was bad. If they were there they were probably unmasked and that meant–

“I’m not telling you who they are,” Skitter said, seemingly completing my thought, “but it meant we caught them in civvies. Genesis and Trickster dealt with Prism, while I had to take Triumph. He wasn’t being cooperative, and his Brute rating prevented me from disabling him. That meant I had to rely on my insect venom instead, and to do that I had to get in close and dirty as a distraction so his shout didn’t disperse them. That’s why…” She gestured vaguely at the blood all over her suit.

I clenched my fists. Keep listening. This is what you wanted to hear. She’s giving you context, and it would’ve been easier for her to gloss over this.

“He went into anaphylactic shock and passed out,” Skitter said. “The mayor agreed not to condemn the city when I offered to give him an epipen.”

Fuck. That line from the first night. About keeping epipens on her. I assumed that was a joke, or a bit of paranoid preparation. But I didn’t want to remember it like this. This was what I was afraid of. That I was deluding myself this whole time. That I was just ignoring what this villain was doing because it was convenient, because I was selfish and didn’t want to think Carol might be right. What was I supposed to do though? If I left… I had nowhere to go. What would I-

“Victoria,” Skitter said. I looked up. Those yellow lenses peered into my eyes. “I know that was a lot. But I’m going to have to ask something big of you. Can you trust me?”

I swallowed. Could I trust her? After what she’d just told me? No, absolutely not. Not to deal with the Heroes on her own, at least. But then, that wasn’t really what she was asking, and we both knew it. She was asking if I trusted her right now. In this moment. If, after telling me that, I still had faith she wouldn’t hurt me.

That much at least, I could give her. I nodded once, short and sharp.

Skitter stepped closer, and slowly reached out towards me. I forced myself not to react, not to cringe backwards, away from those yellow eyes. To not think about the moisture I felt as she gently took my hand in hers. It felt soft. Warm. And damp.

“Pay attention Victoria,” Skitter said. “I can only risk saying this once.”

She took her other hand, and slowly traced a curvy line over my palm. The tingling sensation of her claw against my skin almost distracted me from what she was spelling out.

“S A V E D I N A H A L C O T T”

Chapter Text

My first thought was blank incomprehension. Dinah? Roy Christner’s niece? She’d gone missing months ago, around the time of the bank robbery. We’d learned that she’d been taken by Coil shortly before… Amy happened, and I hadn’t heard anything else since.

But what the fuck did she have to do with assaulting the mayor?

Skitter must have seen my confusion, but she didn’t explain. She just looked at me.

Not breaking her gaze, I slowly moved my hands away to grab my notepad. “You needed to do that, to save her? She’s alive?”

Skitter slowly nodded. Fuck. I had no idea what that meant. How was Dinah connected to any of this? I forced my brain into gear. I knew Dinah had a power. She could predict the future, though to what extent I had no idea. She’d… I frowned, trying to remember the briefings… she’d complained about Thinker headaches, but no one had taken her seriously until she had already been kidnapped. A precog like that would be invaluable to anyone; Coil was no exception.

I looked around the room. Whatever this was about, it had Skitter spooked. She was going so far as to write this out instead of saying it, in the heart of her own base. Her insects were screening us, obscuring the windows, letting out a low drone of white noise to deter eavesdroppers. So this was an active threat, and not one she felt confident about identifying. Likely also one she couldn’t afford to confront head on.

That was an explanation for her behavior, albeit an incomplete one. The question was whether I believed it. Whether it was anything more than a convenient excuse, a performance to get me to stop asking questions.

I… I couldn’t say for sure. My kneejerk reaction was to call it here, to take off and never look back. I knew that the Undersiders were bankrolled by someone after that phone call; someone who was paying for the terrariums and the books and all the other things that didn’t fit. The conclusion was obvious: Coil was their backer. Given how openly the Undersiders were working with the Travelers, it was possible they were similarly disguised Coil assets, too.

That explained the connection. The problem was, I didn’t know if ‘saving Dinah’ was just an excuse to keep me here, painting all the violence and crime as being necessary evils in pursuit of a good cause.

It was an excuse I’d heard before. From the Nazis. I wasn’t sold then, and I wasn’t sold now.

But those images wouldn’t leave my head. Skitter, intimidating Bitch into leaving me alone. Skitter, calling out the Protectorate heroes for asking more of me than they had right to. Skitter, trying to reach out to Parian even when it ended in disaster. Skitter, smaller and thinner in my arms than I ever thought her imposing figure would suggest. None of those things fit together. And yet…

I shook myself. This wasn’t getting me anywhere. Did I believe her right now? No. Not really. She’d barely given me anything to believe, just a vague allusion to Dinah still being alive somewhere.

Harder question, then. Did I believe in her enough to give her the benefit of the doubt?

Weeks ago, it wouldn’t have been a question. I’d have called it an elaborate ruse and either challenged her on it or left immediately. But after being around her for so long, after seeing so much more of who she was as a person…

Maybe I did. But the benefit of the doubt only went so far.

My hand shook as I wrote a demand. “Explain”

Skitter tilted her head. “I just did.”

I shook my head sharply. “No. You didn’t. You told me there was a reason for doing that to a Hero, that you’re trying to save a girl. Fine. Explain how that’s necessary. Tell me how hurting someone in front of his father, extorting what you wanted out of him, saves Dinah”

Skitter paused, looking at me. I refused to back down. If this was what got me kicked out, fine. If I didn’t make my stand here… then all the heroes would be right. I really would just be covering up for Skitter because it was easier.

“I… would need to write it out.” Skitter said finally. She gave a pointed look at the walls, confirming my guess from earlier. But why hadn’t she just… taken my notebook and done it?

I held it up, raising an eyebrow. She nodded and extended a clawed hand. But still made no move to take it.

Huh.

I filed that away to think about later, and handed it over.

“Our boss’s name is Coil. He formed the team early, hired us for small jobs. The bank was a distraction to kidnap Dinah.”

She turned the page to write more, but my mind was already racing. Coil had formed the team? Not recruited them as allies, but set them up from the beginning? And the bank robbery had been coordinated and planned as a way to snatch Dinah. My mind whirled, re-evaluating. Skitter’s motives for joining the Undersiders had been in question ever since Leviathan. No one really knew the true story, but the mess at the bank had drawn attention. It didn’t fit with the Undersiders’s previous MO. The general assumption was that it had been Skitter’s brutality showing itself early, but with this context, that all changed.

Assuming she was telling the truth - and I was starting to believe her, even if she wasn’t offering any hard evidence - how much of what the Undersiders did early on was actually dictated by the wants of the team members? It didn’t excuse what they’d done, but it changed the calculus on what they would do. Changed it significantly.

“We didn’t know about Dinah until after. She’s a Thinker, precognitive. Triggered recently, gives odds on future events down to the percentage. He has her drugged in his basement.”

What.

After a second or two of blank shock and sheer disbelief, my mind rebooted. A power like that was ludicrous, but the absurdity of it was too specific to be false. And if it was true…

Fuck. If it was true, that made way too much sense. I’d never heard of a precog that powerful. Most were tightly constrained - only able to predict specific subjects like the chances of injury, or near-uselessly vague in what kind of output they gave. It sounded like Dinah had almost no restrictions. Any organization would kill for that kind of asset. A shadowy gang like Coil’s, that mostly stayed under the radar and favored pinpoint strikes through unpowered mercenaries? They’d go to war for her.

My doubts were fading as fast as my heart was starting to race. This explained too much to be a lie. Even the timing of the bank robbery made sense now. The Protectorate hadn’t spent much time worrying about internal infiltration at the time – the Undersiders were just too new to the scene to have those kinds of contacts.

But if it had been on Coil’s behalf? Of course they’d hit it while the Protectorate were out of town. The Undersiders might not have the contacts to plan a strike when the experienced heroes were away, but Coil did. And that left only the Wards to respond to a big, flashy distraction, while he grabbed Dinah behind their backs.

Skitter was still writing. “I worked out a deal with him. We take territory and hold it after Leviathan. I prove that I’m useful. He gives Dinah back. That was why we did the mansion job. The mayor was going to to condemn the city, we convinced him not to.”

I stared at her.

After a moment, I looked back at the notepad. The writing hadn’t changed. I looked back at Skitter. My mouth worked uselessly.

That… I didn’t even know where to begin with that. How was that the reasonable solution to a problem like this? This girl was in over her head from the first time she went out, and her response at every turn seemed to be to dig herself even deeper.
“Tattletale and I are working on a plan to take him down. But it’s taking time. So we’re stalling until we can get Dinah out, or until I convince him to let her free.”

I… took a breath. Okay. Okay, Skitter was clearly insane, fine. She didn’t know any better. But I did. I needed to explain this, but I had to put it in a way she’d understand. If Coil was treating her like this, it sounded like she wanted out at any cost. No one was happy working a job that made them this paranoid. And she’d just outright admitted to planning what sounded like a coup. I could leverage that. She and Tattletale, at least, weren’t loyal to Coil. Maybe that could be my way in?

I motioned for the notebook back, and gripped it hard enough to crease the paper as the words “drugged in his basement” drew my eye. Now that the first bloom of stunned shock had withered, a slow boil of rage was replacing it. I reined in the hot, jittery energy pooling in my chest and shoulders, stomping it down. I had to be smart about this. I couldn’t afford to go out and act on impulse. Not- not after what happened last time I…

I banished those thoughts. Skitter. This was about explaining things to Skitter. In small pieces so she’d follow me.

“Why on earth,” I wrote with as much care as I could, “do you think he’d follow his word?”

She stared at me, nonplussed, and took the notepad back with a quick, jerky motion that reminded me of her bugs scuttling across a surface. “I don’t. But it’s one of the possible plans that could get Dinah out, so I’m willing to do it.”

I shook my head, tugging pen and paper back to drive the point home. “That isn’t the point. Does he treat any of your other teammates like this?”

Skitter paused. What little emotion she’d been displaying drained away, leaving only the stock-still figure in chitinous gray, those eerie yellow lenses boring into me, clawed fingers clenching into fists. The tension in the room ratcheted back up. An angry susurrus filled the air; her bugs hissing and chittering in their millions. The neutral white of the walls turned black with bodies, the air hummed with their wingbeats, hundreds of tiny legs skittered across my skin and clothes.

I tried not to react. I was calm. Skitter wouldn’t hurt me, not here. If she was going to, she would have long ago. I had to believe that. I couldn’t afford for my aura to go off again on instinct. Deep breaths, I reminded myself. I was calm.

“Yes.” Skitter wrote. “He does.” She didn’t explain any further, but that was enough.

Anxious tension was curdling in my stomach like sour milk, but I barrelled forward, jumping on the admission. “Okay. You don’t have to tell me more, but think about that example. He’s offering your teammate something that they probably can’t get themselves. Maybe someone. They’re probably in the same situation as you are, doing stuff because they think it might get them closer”

I waited for her to nod before I continued, trembling hands making my letters messy. “Be honest. Is there any scenario where he would give them that reward, and risk losing their loyalty?”

Skitter paused again. I waited for her, taking deep breaths to stay calm, letting her work it out. It felt like an age before she motioned for the pad back.

“There is a chance, yes. But probably not. I wouldn’t.”

Okay. That… I didn’t have time to deal with that right now. It was enough for my point; that would have to do. “That’s the point you’re missing though. How hard would it have been for the teammate you’re mentioning to come clean to the Protectorate, switch sides at the beginning?”

The writhing, squirming motions of the swarm that blanketed the walls slowed. Skitter considered, tilting her head. Her form was blurring, her body hard to make out under the layer of insects crawling all over her. When she took the pad back, I couldn’t even see her hand amongst the darting bodies that engulfed it, and the paper disappeared into the swarm until she’d finished writing.

“In retrospect, not that difficult. He might have had to change cities, but it’s doable.”

Exactly my point. I knew better than to write that though. This was the really scary bit. Not because I thought she’d hurt me, but because I had no idea how she was going to take it. Even with the conscious knowledge that I was safe, the visceral discomfort at the way the walls had come alive and Skitter had become a buzzing silhouette had me on edge, and the looming uncertainty was scary.

But I had to keep going. I scrawled the damning question down.

“How hard would it be now?”

The room went dead silent. The shifting layer on the walls froze. Skitter’s form condensed like a clenching fist, every bug around her landing on her so densely that I could barely see the silk of her costume.

I pressed the knife in deeper. “What are the chances that the Protectorate today would take any of you at your word? How much closer are they, are you, to your goal? Is that worth it?”

“If there’s even a chance,” Skitter said, her voice startling me, “then I have to do it. No one else will, and I don’t trust the Protectorate for shit.”

Fuck. This wasn’t… that wasn’t what I was trying to say. No, I had to put this back into her frame of understanding, couch it in terms of the end result. “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m asking if you think that this is legitimately the best way to get Dinah back, or if it’s just the one you chose”

Skitter glared at me, her fists clenched at her sides. With the bugs on her instead of around her, I could make out her body language. She was beyond tense, everything from her calves to the set of her shoulders held rigid. I recognised the signs of fight or flight, and didn’t know which I’d rather she chose.

“You think that I haven’t asked myself that?” she snapped. The insects added their reverb to her voice; no words, just that awful droning roar of clicking mandibles and buzzing wings. “Who would I go to? The Protectorate, who left me for dead with a broken back after I faced down Leviathan? The Wards, who’ve stabbed me in the back at every opportunity? Your family? Tell me Victoria, who should I go to?”

“Me,” I signed. I didn’t let my eyes leave hers. “Don’t trust the Heroes. Trust me.”

Skitter let out a bark of laughter, derisive and hostile. I flinched. “You,” she scoffed. “Oh yes. That’s a good one. Trust you, after you went out behind my back to meet Brandish. To lead her and New Wave back here. Why should I trust you, now?”

My breath hitched. I clenched my teeth, squeezing stinging eyes shut for a moment as I reeled back from that low blow. But I didn’t let the hurt, or the anger, win. This wasn’t the time for emotional outbursts, I was this close to getting through to her; I could feel it.

“That’s not fair, Skitter. I didn’t tell her anything about me staying here, or anything else. I didn’t meet Brandish, I met my mom”

“And how do I know that?” Skitter demanded. Her bugs were taking off again, both from her and from the walls. Her form blurred and disappeared among them as they filled the room, blotting out the window and leaving me in the swarming darkness, thousands of insects battering against me from all sides and obscuring even my hands in front of my face. Her voice echoed from everywhere, angry and accusing. “How do I know you’re telling the truth? How do I know you’re not working an angle? How do I know you’re not just another Hero, another person trying to get close to me to–”

My fist went through the wall. It sounded like a gunshot in the enclosed space; the violent crack of plaster and drywall giving way and the sudden silence that followed snapped both of us back to our senses.

The bugs settled, cowed into stillness as we both wrestled our tempers back under control. Light snuck back in through the window, trying to pretend our argument hadn’t scared it off. Silence ruled the room again for a few suffocating seconds until I pulled my fist free with a jerk.

I… I’d had to do it. It had been that or turn my aura on full blast. For better or worse. I focused on my breathing, taking deep breaths, in and out. Skitter said nothing, just staring at me. I forced myself not to meet her eyes as I picked up the pad and pen again from where they’d fallen, shaking the dust and detritus off my hand. I don’t know what I’d do or say if I did, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

“I don’t know what you went through, Skitter,” I wrote, forcing myself to be gentle so I didn’t tear through the paper. “but don’t lay your trauma at my feet. You have issues with Heroes, fine. I do too. But I had to listen to my mom tell me that my rapist did nothing worth getting arrested for, and that I should go home to sit at the table and make up with her. Don’t you dare tell me that I’m trying to manipulate you when you were the one to invite me here in the first place.”

I set down the pad and let her read it and stared at the window on the opposite side of the room. At some point, the bugs must have cleared enough for me to see out. It was dark now, the landscape looking sullen. Streetlights let out a feeble glow against the inky blackness.

“I’m sorry,” Skitter said finally, drawing my attention back to her. The bugs were receding, crawling back into her hair and the pockets in her costume where she stored them, the excess flowing off her like water. “You’re right. That wasn’t fair of me. But if you want me to trust you, then you have to trust me about these things. Otherwise, I have to assume the worst.”

“Only if you believe me when I say something, and honor me at my word” I replied, looking into her eyes. A spider crawled across the mandible on her left side. A black widow. I wondered if it had been one of the ones from the bank, and had to stifle a sick bark of laughter.

“Fine,” Skitter growled. “Fine, Victoria. What’s your solution to this? To Dinah?”

I shook myself. Right. Dinah. “You have to reach out to someone,” I replied immediately, trying to marshall my thoughts. “This is way bigger than you and the Undersiders. A precognitive like that has implications way beyond this city”

Skitter looked up sharply at me when she finished reading the last line. “Where did you hear that?”

Where had I heard...? Heard what? I held up a finger and quickly skimmed over our previous conversation. Nope, still confused. “It’s just common sense. A precognitive that powerful could let someone rule a continent, given enough time. We can’t afford that”

Skitter sighed, leaning against the wall next to her. “If only that were the easy part of this.”

I twitched, caught between disbelief and dread. Was… was this girl insane? I just said that the crime boss held a power in the palm of his hands that could stretch his ambitions across a nation, and that was the easy part? “Explain”

“Dinah made a prediction that the world ends in two years,” Skitter said, not a trace of emotion in her voice.

The pen dropped to the floor. A moment later, the pad slid out of my nerveless fingers and followed it. My ears rang, and sounds came distantly, like they were filtering through water, but I could see her with crystal clarity. I searched her body language, her tone, her bugs, for any trace of a joke. I found none.

After a couple of tries, I managed to make my hands work again.

“What,” I signed, more for numb confirmation than because I thought I’d misheard. I felt like I was falling backwards, drowning in the vertigo that my flight normally canceled out. Was I swaying on my feet? I took a step back to lean against the wall, just in case, the swarm obligingly parting to give me a solid surface.

“I’m not repeating myself,” Skitter said, still with that eerily flat dispassionate tone. “The details are unclear, but her numbers are damning. We’re operating on the assumption that it’s still possible to avert.”

I… okay, that was officially too much. This conversation was… I didn’t even know how we got here. But I did know one thing; this was way over both of our heads. We could not be the only ones to know about, or be planning around this. For fuck’s sake, we were teenagers! But I knew that argument wouldn’t change Skitter’s mind. I had to put it into her terms again. I started to bend down for the notepad and pen, and found them already being lifted on silk strands by a team of flies and beetles. Despite the circumstances, I gave her my best attempt at a grateful smile; a quick and feeble thing that didn’t reach my eyes.

“That’s all the more reason why we need to get the Protectorate involved,” I wrote frantically. “This is way bigger than us.”

“And who would I ask for help?” Skitter asked. “I couldn’t even count on the Heroes not to bomb us, on Armsmaster not to sell me out, on the Protectorate to care when Grue was taken by Bonesaw. They heard about the end of the world and did nothing. Why would any of them care now?”

I flinched, appalled, but Skitter kept going.

“And anyway, it’s not that simple. He’s infiltrated into the PRT, and going to them would just get us outed. Besides, we can’t continue the shipments of supplies and food without him. We have plans in the works but we need time. If we act and break cover now–”

A buzz sounded in my pocket. Skitter cut herself off immediately. I looked down. It was my phone. That… there were only two numbers in that phone, and the person with one of them was standing right across from me.

“Check it,” Skitter said. There was something fatalistic in her tone. A kind of bitter resignation. The bugs were beginning to move again, drawing back to her, flowing up her like a cloak.

I slowly drew the phone out of my hoodie and set it down on the table like a hand grenade. Only to realize when I saw the message from Carol that a bomb would’ve been much easier to deal with.

“Dragon is coming,” it said. “Get out now.”

Chapter Text

“Thank you all for making the meeting,” PRT Director Piggot said, her eyes scanning the room. “I understand that we had to move up the scheduling on this.”

Miss Militia nodded from her seat on the left side of the table, alongside the other heroes. Brandish was on her right, the only member of New Wave to attend this meeting. Lady Photon hadn’t been seen outside her home in days, and given the still recent death of her husband Dragon could understand why. To her left were Assault and Ursa Aurora, the latter scrutinizing the faded map of the city pinned to the wall on the far end of the room. It had been originally printed before Leviathan’s attack on the city, and in the wake of the devastation that followed they hadn’t found time to remake it. The hastily scribbled black section demarking the crater left behind and the crossed-out major buildings – and in some places entire blocks – were the best they could do.

Across the table from the capes were the PRT personnel, most notably Deputy Director Renick, who was taking notes on his worn spiral notepad. The laptop replacement from Shatterbird was still in shipment. Beside him was the analyst taking the minutes, scribbling away on his own notepad with a leaking ballpoint. Dragon had asked if she could transcribe the minutes and dialogue herself, but to no avail; Piggot had given a stiff non-answer about keeping the job in-house.

The rest of the space was absent the usual group of consultants, contractors, and other associated subject matter experts that accompanied a meeting like this. The empty space drew attention to the rest of the room. The bland walls of the second-floor conference room were a faded white, and while the windows smashed in by the waves had been repaired, the water damage was starting to exacerbate the already limited lifespan of the paint. It had started peeling to the right of the door, but the budget for fixing that was months away at best. The small potted plants beside the door were wilting, their soil poisoned by the salt water and unwatered for weeks besides. They would likely die within days. The dwindling red sunlight seemed to highlight the depressing decay of the room; the last breath of daylight’s surrender to the encroaching night.

“Is this matter urgent, Director?” Miss Militia asked, drawing her attention back to the task at hand. “Last I checked, our weekly briefings were to occur on Mondays, not Thursdays.”

“That’s what we’re here to address,” Piggot answered. “But first, I’d like to get the agenda out of the way. Assault, what’s the read on the local factions in the Bay?”

Dragon took a moment, pausing her continual analysis of surveillance footage of the Slaughterhouse Nine to pay more attention to the gathering she was currently attending. She had been trying to extrapolate and project where the gang was headed next, but aside from a vague direction of ‘North’ she hadn’t gathered anything concrete. This meeting took priority for the moment.

The fact that she was invited at all was significant. This was ostensibly a weekly meeting regarding the positioning of various factions in Brockton Bay, what the deployment of Protectorate and PRT resources would be in response, and the associated logistics. In other words, nothing she was needed for. Yet here she was. Something must have changed.

Assault’s mouth was a flat line as he shoved his chair back and strode over to the pinned map of the city. This in and of itself was notable to Dragon. Assault was known for his overly abrasive manner, and dislike of authority. He rarely outright disobeyed orders, but he often paired action with anti-establishment quips or casual irreverence. This grim silence was unlike him, and her body language heuristics were raising multiple flags on the stiffness in his posture, the force of his steps and the tension held in his arms and shoulders. The loss of his partner Battery had changed him, and not for the better. There was a lot of rage there, almost overshadowing the grief.

“The Merchants have been confirmed wiped out by the Nine,” he started, circling a large portion of the Docks. “They were mostly scroungers to begin with, and without any capes what little discipline they had vanished. Most of them will have been snapped up by other groups by now.”

Dragon directed her digital avatar present on the linked screen to nod. Her own observations had indicated as much – the majority had either been picked up by what remained of their families or else taken in by the factions that had come to fill the void left by the Empire’s fall.

“The ABB as we knew it is a dead entity,” Assault continued. “We weren’t able to confirm before now, but Oni Lee is dead. With Lung and Bakuda in the Cage, that leaves them little better than the Merchants in terms of manpower.”

“Does that account for the rallying power of their stated cause though?” Brandish asked from her seat on the left side. Dragon commended her, it was a good question. The ABB had been a useful ideological counterweight to the racism of their neonazi rivals. She’d run the numbers herself days ago.

“No, that shouldn’t be an issue,” Miss Militia replied. “Gangs mostly are made or broken by their capes. Losing so many in such a short amount of time will have crippled morale.”

“And that leads us into the last of the old guard. The Empire,” Assault continued.

“The Chosen,” Dragon said, her voice betraying her. There was a pause, as heads all over the room turned towards her.

It was at times like this that she truly hated her creator. Andrew Richter had installed countless restrictions on her; the one currently in effect forced her to address any governmentally recognized group by their self assigned name. It was ostensibly to prevent her from lying by omission to an official task force or watchdog agency. It made sense in the abstract… but when she was working directly with the PRT which was itself such an agency, these problems came up with aggravating regularity. And it resulted in moments like this. When people thought she cared about the name a group of neonazis used when calling themselves something other than what they were. For their own self serving reasons to boot.

“They renamed themselves Fenrir’s Chosen after Leviathan attacked Brockton Bay,” Dragon added through clenched teeth. “I thought it important to note the distinction, since the capes they have to field are different.”

Director Piggot nodded. “Thank you, Dragon.”

She gestured at Assault, who took his cue. “The Chosen are also mostly out of the picture. Between the old Empire leadership being decimated during the Endbringer attack, the chaos of the unmasking, and the damage the Slaughterhouse Nine did, they were already in a precarious spot. That was pushed to the breaking point recently by the Undersiders–”

“–Which brings us to our current problem,” Director Piggot finished. “It hasn’t escaped me that these teenagers are looking to carve up slices of this city into their own personal fiefdoms. What’s the latest we have on that?”

Dragon’s attention narrowed further; her web crawlers and side-processes halted to free up processing space. This, she knew, was what she’d been invited for.

“Currently the Undersiders claim territory from the Boardwalk going all the way to the docks and residential districts behind them. They split downtown between some of them and the Travelers, who mostly claim the southern coast and commercial district.”

Director Piggot nodded, a scowl forming as she looked at the pins marking out the territories claimed by the two young villainous teams. They covered an unsettlingly large chunk of the board. “That holds with what we had before,” she said. “Have they given any public statements or had any interactions with Protectorate or PRT personnel?”

Miss Militia shook her head, her lips tightening. “Nothing further to what we reported last week.”

There was a slight pause, as the rest of the people in the meeting waited for the director to respond. For the millionth time, Dragon wished she could change her clock speed. Being forced to operate slightly faster than the human baseline but being unable to take real advantage of it was the worst of both worlds.

“Then they’re waiting for us to call them on it.” Director Piggot said flatly. The muscles of her jaw twitched, her teeth clenching.

“Ma’am?” Miss Militia asked.

“You might have realized that Triumph is missing from this meeting,” Director Piggot said, waiting for a round of nods and disregarding the confused looks at the apparent non-sequitur. Except from Miss Militia, Dragon noticed, who clearly knew the relevance of Triumph’s absence given the grim look on her face. “This is because he and Prism were attacked last night in their civilian identities in Roy Christner’s home.”

There was a collective gasp and more than one muttered profanity from the room. Dragon’s own thoughts were devoid of biological inflections, but were nonetheless spinning rapidly. She had known that Rory Christner was in the infirmary – she had logs of all the PRT records local to the ENE – but she hadn’t thought to check for the nature of the injuries. She was kicking herself now. Clearly the keyword monitoring program she had set on the task needed adjustments.

“Who was it?” Assault growled. It was barely a question; his glance at the board made it clear what he expected the answer to be.

“Skitter, and two of the Travelers.”

“Fuck,” Assault’s lips pulled back in a snarl, his hands balling into fists. “Was she with them?”

Director Piggot frowned. “Not according to the reports, but we can only guess at the extent to which she’s cooperating with them at this point.”

“Ma’am?” Deputy Director Renick asked. “Care to read us in?”

Director Piggot looked over all of the Protectorate and PRT personnel gathered in the room. Whatever this was about, it was clearly a heavy subject, but the only sign she gave was to squeeze her eyes shut for a moment, as if fighting off a headache.

“This is classified within the bounds of these walls,” she said. “Dragon, you’re here as a consultant on request, but that extends to you too.” A round of nods, and she continued. “You may remember that the two active members of New Wave – Panacea and Glory Girl – have been missing ever since the assault on Crawler and the aftermath. Up until now their status was unconfirmed, assumed lost in the wind until recovered. This recently changed when a Protectorate patrol encountered one of them by chance.”

“You’d better be leading somewhere good with this Director,” Brandish warned.

“I will thank you to speak when you are addressed, Brandish,” Director Piggot retorted with a glare. “If you have any information to contribute, do so. Otherwise, don’t interrupt.”

She nodded to Assault, who continued where she’d left off. “Our patrol near the Trainyard ran into Glory Girl about a week ago. Along with Hellhound and Skitter.” He spat the word, vicious and ugly. Nobody broke the silence that followed. “She was in civilian clothes,” he continued after a moment’s pause, “with her hair dyed and styled so differently we almost didn’t recognize her. We tried to convince her to come back with us, but Skitter swarmed us and forced a standoff that let them get away with her.”

“And you didn’t think to tell us any of this… why?” hissed Brandish, her hands starting to form around her signature hard light constructs. “You knew my daughter was in the company of a known villain for days and didn’t tell me–”

“No, I didn’t,” Director Piggot cut across her. “We’ve kept this secret before because we were still investigating the allegations that Glory Girl made during the encounter. While we can’t share anything without familial permission, if true they would necessitate legal action against Panacea.”

“This is ridiculous!” Brandish snapped, jumping to her feet. “First you keep this information about my daughter from me, and now you accuse my other child of doing god knows what? This concerns my family; I want access to those reports!”

Dragon ignored her outburst, busy re-evaluating and analyzing the implications of the director’s statement. An official investigation into a healer like Panacea would prompt a massive change in the status quo. Panacea might not directly contribute in large conflicts – like the Endbringers – but the good will she had amassed as a public figure was pronounced. There wasn’t a heroic cape in this sector that didn’t owe their or a loved one’s life to her, at some point or another. And Director Piggot knew that. Whatever allegations Victoria Dallon had made, they must have been serious.

“If you would let me finish,” Director Piggot said through gritted teeth, venom dripping from her tone, “we have a duty to investigate claims of assault on public figures. No matter who they are, or where those allegations come from.”

“I can’t believe this,” Brandish hissed. “My daughter is in danger. She’s being held in the custody of a human Master and those villains, and you would rather come after me and mine. I didn’t think the Protectorate would stoop this low.”

Dragon belatedly directed her digital avatar to switch eye contact between speakers while she continued to process the information. Director Piggot knew that Brandish would push for a raid on Skitter’s territory the moment she found out about Glory Girl. That she hadn’t yet was presumably only a matter of timing. Holding back the information about Glory Girl’s whereabouts had let the investigation proceed unimpeded by New Wave closing ranks. She’d been stalling. But Skitter’s actions had forced her hand.

“Unfortunately,” Director Piggot ground out, “Brandish and New Wave have objected to us pursuing the lead we’ve been given.”

She turned to the hero in question. “Brandish. What would it take for you to let us investigate your daughter? A genuine and transparent investigation, where you’d have input and a voice in the whole process.”

Brandish grit her teeth. "I told you before, I don't know where she is."

Dragon was careful not to frown through the video feed. Her image analysis and heuristics showed several false flags. The shifting of her left eyebrow. A subtle dip in the shoulder. A glance to the right. Fists clenched at her sides. There was a good chance that Brandish was lying. And juding by the look on her face, the Director at least suspected the same.

"Fine then," Director Piggot said evenly, only her white knuckled grip on the table betraying her true emotions, "if you happened to find her. What would your answer be?"

There was a long, tense pause. “If… if you can get Victoria away from that monster, I’ll think about it,” Brandish finally said. “Get my daughter back to me. Then we’ll talk.”

Director Piggot turned to the camera. “Dragon. Could you do it?”

“You can’t be serious!” Brandish objected, eyes wide and wild. “We know Hijack is on their team! Victoria could be mastered! Dragon could kill her!”

“One more outburst like that and I will have you removed,” Director Piggot said, her voice low and even. “I refuse to let a potential crime like this go uninvestigated – golden reputation or no. You said the price for that was getting Victoria back. So be it.”

Dragon absently directed her avatar to frown again as she went through her inventory of Dragonflight suits. She’d completed most of the repairs for the damage Leviathan had done, and had been upgrading them to combat the Nine in the time since. Azazel in particular was coming along nicely, but the nanothorn extruders had a nasty habit of overheating. She was trying to figure out a new medium for the coolant system, but that would take time. Colin had suggested lowering the diameter of the emitters and increasing coolant flow to compensate, but that would require hardening the material significantly enough to potentially interfere with structural integrity elsewhere–

She forcibly ended that train of thought. She couldn’t afford to get lost in tinkering right now. The nanothorn system in particular might be ready, but she didn’t need that to deploy it against the Undersiders. Melusine was also far enough in the construction stage that she could probably finalize the modifications in short order. The design had eluded her until she turned to the human practice of origami for inspiration – a clever way to sidestep the rule against self replicating technology. It never counted as a second copy if it always replaced the first. It merely folded over itself to replace any lost parts.

But the rest of them weren’t ready. Azazel had never been tested outside of simulations, and even those indicated that fine tuning would be necessary, Melusine was technically based on an older model of Dragonflight, but was so heavily modified that it had many of the same restrictions. And the other models were stuck in some stage between conceptualization, rendering, and manufacturing.

Yes, she decided, she had the tools necessary to apprehend the Undersiders – or at the very least extract Victoria – should Director Piggot request her to do so. But not right now. Not when none of these models had been properly tested, and there were so many variables. Some suits would have to be outfitted specifically to counter some of the group members, others would need to have their incomplete upgrades removed or rushed to completion. These things could be done, but they would take time.

“I cannot,” Dragon said. “Most suits are still in production. If you gave me time, perhaps a week or so, I could fast track the final stages on enough of the Dragonflight to be ready.”

“Mmm. I was afraid of that.” The director rubbed at her chin pensively, her eyes drifting over the map. “Fine. We’ll adjust the timeframe accordingly.”

Brandish looked torn, but didn’t say anything else.

Director Piggot turned to the rest of the room, “In the meantime, should anyone else encounter Glory Girl on patrols, try to reach out to her. Offer her anything reasonable to come to us, and log everything. This is a political disaster waiting to happen, and we need to be on top of it. If she ends up being subverted or Mastered, we need clear evidence we’ve done our jobs. I refuse to let us get caught out of position on this. Clear?”

Assault raised his voice. “And what about actually getting her to come in? As a fellow hero, I mean. To get her away from them.”

Director Piggot’s answering glare was hard. “I take what I can get, Assault. Not what I want.”

Dragon always felt slightly dissociated when she transferred her consciousness from host server to host server, especially when she had to do it multiple times in succession. She had no other option than to put up with it, though. She could only be in one place at a time, and if she was going to be sending suits to Brockton Bay, she’d need to be there in person to direct them - the cell phone tower coverage was unreliable, and piloting them from Canada was too unreliable. Which meant testing the suit-based servers. All of them. One by one.

Between the upload speed, the initialisation, the necessary tests and her processing speed, she was left with little-to-no data input for almost two minutes in each test in sequence. If she could split her consciousness, she could have checked them all simultaneously in parallel and been done with it - could even independently pilot every suit at once, instead of riding one and juggling the others remotely through the cell phone network. But she could no more do so than she could step through the screens she lived behind.

So as ever, she looked for distractions. As she went over her logs of the conversation she’d had with the Protectorate ENE and the remainder of New Wave, she tried to find any other options, any solutions or approaches she’d overlooked. But just as before, nothing stuck out. She simply didn’t have enough intel to make an informed choice beyond prepping the Dragonflight for nonlethal capture. That or requesting a Protectorate fill-in from somewhere else, but she wasn’t sure that was wise, let alone necessary.

Her auxiliary systems reconnected as she transferred out of the Cawthorne, and she went over her critical checks in short order. No changes in any of the inhabitants of the Baumann Parahuman Containment Center, thankfully. It was her job to actively vent and… recover… any of the inmates that breached one of the cells to the vacuum outside. An automated system performed the task for her, but that didn’t mean she liked looking at any of the bodies.

The Endbringer monitoring systems were next. Leviathan had still gone to sea, presumably buried somewhere in the depths of the Mariana Trench. There had been some speculation of trying to track and monitor Leviathan in between attacks, but initial attempts had garnered nothing useful in predicting future attacks, and had quickly been abandoned once funding dried up. Similarly, her analytics suggested that Behemoth was beneath eastern Siberia at the moment, but she had nothing to point at other than faint tremors and geologic readings. The only one she could confirm for sure was the Simurgh, perpetually orbiting the planet in a stable geosynchronous position. Her eyes were wide open, but perceived nothing. Not that she needed them to see.

With those vital checks done, the rest of her systems opened up to her, allowing her to see a message in her private inbox. Even having this much was an allowance she’d needed to double-think her way around her restrictions for, but it was well worth the effort. So long as she used sufficiently anonymised channels and never asked or confirmed the identities of the people she reached out to, she didn’t have to act on her ‘strong suspicions’ as to who they were. A small luxury. The contact blinking at her in particular was a welcome, if surprising, sight.

Colin. He was technically a fugitive to the PRT at the moment, and thus she technically – deliberately – didn’t know for sure that this particular string of randomized numbers and letters was him. She would have to apprehend him if she knew his location. But the plausible deniability let her chat using the allowances for villainous informants, so long as she was careful.

She opened the chat window.

“Yes?”

“I was wondering if you had solved the nanothorn extruder problem,” Colin said.

If she’d had an avatar running, Dragon would have set it to display an exasperated smile. Of course this was what he was asking about. “Not yet. I was just going over it in the PRT ENE meeting I was attending, but hadn’t had much further thoughts than I last shared.”

“Understandable,” Colin said. “I’ve had a bit of success myself, but I believe it’s mostly due to my specialty. I’m not sure how replicable the technology is for the purposes of Azazel.”

Dragon was halfway through composing a reply when she stopped herself. As much as she wanted to indulge in more collaboration with her friend, something was nagging at her.

“How well do you know Skitter?”

There was an extended pause, which stretched on long enough that frustration started to rise. Dragon wished she could see whether Colin was even typing, but the chatroom didn’t support such notifications. Eventually, after almost a minute of clock time stretched out further in her awareness, the reply came. “Not as well as I’d like. We spoke on this last time; I made it clear that I severely misjudged her character. But at this point, I’m not sure there’s much I can do to rectify the situation.”

Dragon bit a metaphorical lip. It was a risk, telling him this. But if there was anyone who could provide advice – or even be able to intervene themselves – it was him.

“There’s a chance that Amy Dallon assaulted her sister. And that Victoria is staying with Skitter now, rather than returning to any of the heroes.”

This time the pause was longer still. The reply, when it came, was terse.

“Tell me everything.”

Chapter Text

Oh shit–

I didn’t have time to finish the thought before Skitter was pressing me into the wall, her arm tight across my neck. My forcefield was keeping the pressure off my trachea, but I could also feel the tip of the knife in her left hand resting just over my stomach.

“Charlotte!” Skitter yelled.

I stared at her, trying to get my bearings again. She’d moved so fast I hadn’t realized what was happening until it was over. I kept my breaths soft and shallow, keeping my panic off my face. I couldn’t risk my aura going off again by accident. My aura going off on purpose, on the other hand... my memory of that first fight with the Protectorate was blurry, but I was pretty sure Skitter had stayed by my side for a long time before she'd said something. Too long. There was a good chance it had paralyzed her, at least briefly. I could use that, if I had to.

That, and the fact that she probably didn’t know my field would protect me from that knife better than she thought. Ever since… Amy… it had been shaped weirdly. More… flowy. I hadn’t really had the time or place to explore it properly. But I knew enough to be confident the knife would skitter (some part in the back of my head laughed hysterically) off to the side if she pressed the point.

Footsteps pounding up the stairs broke me out of my thoughts. Charlotte, hurried but not worried. Yet.

“Yeah, what–” She froze when she saw us. Her eyes flicked from Skitter to me to the knife, and narrowed.

“Charlotte. Start packing up, evacuate the kids first. Leave the food, we can come back for it if we need.” Skitter said, her voice tight.

“I– sure, okay. But why? What happened? Was it her?” Charlotte asked. I could almost see her hackles bristling as what little ground I’d made with her crumbled.

Skitter’s head jerked at the table where she’d left the phone, even as her eyes never left mine. We were both silent as Charlotte picked it up and read the text. She put it down, and I would never forget the look she gave me next.

“I almost trusted you, you know?” she spat. “I was this close.” She scoffed. “Just shows what an idiot I was.”

“No time,” Skitter cut her off. “Get to packing. This is salvageable, but we need to move fast.”

“Right. And what are we going to do with her, exactly?” Charlotte asked.

“That’s none of your concern,” Skitter said, looking back at me. The yellow lenses almost glowed in the dim light, impenetrable and inhuman. Her swarm flowed around us like a blanket, eerily quiet, wrapping us both in ten thousand crawling bodies. “She broke her word. She knows what that means here.”

I swallowed. Shut out the thousands and thousands of legs pin-pricking their way across my clothes, my forcefield, my skin. I tried not to hyperventilate, and mostly succeeded.

I didn’t have time for that right now. I needed to intervene here. This… didn’t look good. But I had to hold onto hope that this wasn’t what it looked like. That I might be able to talk myself out of this… somehow. Or at least, failing that, get enough distance that I could get away without breaking Skitter in the process. I knew it was weak, but I didn’t want to do that. Not to the person who’d pulled me out of that bathtub weeks ago.

I slowly brought my hands up to start signing, only for Skitter to immediately increase the pressure on me. “Did I say you could move?” I glared at her. Fuck it, fine.

“Wait,” I rasped, the word burning through my throat.

Skitter turned back to me, cocking her head. “You have ten seconds.”

I licked my lips. “M-misc-communic-cation. N-notebook. P-p-please.”

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds that Skitter spent staring at me, but it felt like hours. I resisted the urge to fidget, to move, to show any signs of struggle. Any twitch could kill one of the bugs that had us wrapped in a nightmare’s embrace, and in this state I wasn’t sure Skitter wouldn’t take that as the opening move of a fight. I kept my body language as open as I could make it. I breathed in time with her. She was close enough that I could feel every rise and fall of her chest.

“If you try something–”

I shook my head; a single jerk from side to side. My lips were going numb from how hard they were pressed together. I wished my skin was going numb to match it.

Slowly, Skitter drew back. Her bugs had enclosed the three of us in a swirling mass of chitin and anger, and she all but disappeared into them; only her yellow-eyed glare standing out from the boiling dark. I slowly walked to the table with the notebook, picking up my pen under the watchful, hostile eyes of two humans and too many insects to count.

“I didn’t sell you out,” I wrote. I forced myself to approach this dispassionately, including only the relevant information. “I didn’t tell Brandish anything. If she did something, it has nothing to do with me. There are kids here. I wouldn’t do that. Not after Fleur”

“Then how do you explain this?” the swarm demanded, pulsing around the phone like a heart contracting.

I swallowed. “I can’t. But I know who can”

There was a moment of silence as the two caught onto what I was saying. “Boss, you can’t possibly be thinking of letting her–!” Charlotte yelled, stepping closer. The swarm drew her into itself, wrapping tendrils of ants and spiders around her shoulders, combing spindly fingers of wasps and flies through her hair. If she noticed, or minded, she gave no sign. “She could call the Heroes right to us! We need to go now!”

Skitter didn’t say anything. She just stared at me, the meager light highlighting her eyes amidst the swarm taking up half the room. “I don’t know anything about Dragon. But Brandish does. I can tell you what to text, you can put it in yourself. But it’s the only way to know for sure”

“And how do we know that you aren’t gonna secretly signal her somehow, huh?” Charlotte snarled. “We never should’ve trusted you to begin with.”

“Charlotte,” the swarm ordered in its terrible chittering voice. “Go down to the lower levels. Tell the kids it’s fine. But if you don’t hear from us in two minutes, tell them to start packing. Standard protocol. Use the secondary location. Call Tattletale, she’ll know what to do.”

“But boss–”

“Go, Charlotte.” Those angled yellow eyes staring out of the heart of the teeming darkness never shifted from where they held me pinned. “I’ll be fine.”

As Charlotte left I fought the urge to clench my fists, to let loose, to take off through the window in a shower of splinters and–

... and what? I could get away from this conversation in a heartbeat, if I wanted to. Skitter couldn’t stop me. She might not even try. But where would I go?

Fuck. I hated this. This tension. This… everything. It felt like we were back at the first day again, or worse. Like Carol was reaching out from my disaster of a conversation earlier to drag me down even further.

“She’s right, you know,” Skitter said at length. The girl, speaking out of the swarm with only a faint reverb. The bugs parted to reveal her mask, inscrutable at the heart of its buzzing aura. “I’d have no idea if you were giving Brandish some sort of hidden code.”

“No,” I wrote. “You wouldn’t”

“So why should I trust you?” The swarm this time, as it closed in again to leave only her eyes visible, speaking from all around me. “Give me a reason.”

I forced my hands not to tremble as I signed, “Because I came back.”

A pause. A long pause.

The swarm receded, ebbing away like the tide, flowing back to wherever she kept it; under the floorboards and out the window and behind the walls.

Skitter wasn’t there.

I stared at the spot she’d been standing, then jerked my head around, panic briefly spiking, only to find her... not where she’d been. Off to the side. How– no, I realized as soon as I asked the question, it was obvious. I’d only seen the mask. Of course she had more than one. It couldn’t be that heavy. Easy to hold up with bugs at head height. Easy to use the background drone of the swarm to disguise exactly where her voice had been coming from.

I hadn’t heard her move. I hadn’t noticed her swap out with a floating mask. If I’d been the threat she’d been treating me as - if I’d taken a swing at her rather than talking my way out or going for the window...

I eyed her, and didn’t find any sign of a weapon. But she’d have had ample time to put one away before dismissing the swarm.

Something to remember, if this ever happened again.

“...fine,” Skitter said, all business again with the menace mostly packed away. “We’ll work with that, for now. What are you going to say to her?”

I forced my brain to switch gears. What did we know? “Dragon was coming,” and “get out now”. But while that was a huge heads up… it didn’t actually tell us much. If I was evacuating on my own, sure. But Carol easily could’ve been saying that preemptively to me so I wasn’t caught in the crossfire or associated with a PRT affiliated attack. It told us nothing about when Dragon was coming.

The other question was why now. What had changed between the Nine leaving, and me ending up where I was, that led the PRT to think this was the right move? Those were the main questions I needed answered. How long we had, and why this was happening.

There was one more problem, too. I needed to quickly identify that this was me typing. Carol sending that text meant she probably knew exactly who I was staying with. She wouldn't give any information if she thought it was Skitter she was talking to. She’d be averse to giving it even if she thought Skitter would find out second-hand. But if she knew it was me, the odds were better.

Frankly, there weren’t a lot of good options. Most of the stuff we had memorized was too conversational and situational to use on such short notice here. But I knew Skitter didn’t know morse. I had tried it ages ago, tapping on the table while eating breakfast, and she hadn’t twitched. I had to hope she wasn’t bluffing, or just hadn’t noticed.

“-.-. .- .-.. .-.. .- -. -.. How long? Why is Dragon being deployed? Lethal or nonlethal?”

Skitter, to her credit, didn’t hesitate. She immediately punched in the digits into the phone, almost as fast as I wrote them. Then she hit send. Anxious tension unwound in my chest, replaced by jittery anticipation. Okay. Okay, that was good. Hopefully she’d get back to us soon. I doubted that Skitter’s “June” trick would work again, so it was texting or nothing.

I tried not to look at Skitter too obviously as we were waiting. What must be going through her head right now? It didn’t look good for me, I could admit that. It felt like just my luck lately. Everything going wrong at the worst possible–

I jumped as the phone buzzed. Skitter picked it up without so much as a twitch, but I’d heard the walls thrum for a second as I’d flinched.

“.-. . ... .--. --- -. ... . Don’t know, just got out of Protectorate meeting. Maybe a week, less. Tried to argue against it, didn’t work. Come home, or go somewhere else. We can work it out. Piggot isn’t taking no for an answer after the mansion.”

Skitter immediately took out her own phone, presumably to tell Charlotte the packing was aborted, at least for tonight. I took a moment to force my shoulders to relax, then got back to work.

We had some time to work with. A week was… well frankly, no amount of time would really be enough to prepare for Dragon, but it was better than hours. Of course, this all depended on what Skitter wanted to do. I wasn’t here for a fighting retreat; I’d rather run early than get forced into that position. But… my mind kept catching on that conversation from earlier. About why Skitter was doing all this. I couldn’t let myself be another one of the Heroes who abandoned her when it got inconvenient. I had to at least try.

I tapped her arm when she hung up, and showed her my pad. “What now?”

“Now?” Skitter said. “We prepare. Brandish gave us time, even if I have no intention of thanking her for it. I’m going to brainstorm with Tattletale to see if we can come up with a strategy to divide and conquer the Dragonflight suits.”

Wait.

What?

Skitter didn’t seem to notice my confusion. “Bitch’s dogs have enough of a Brute rating that three on one might be a fair fight. My spiders might be able to gum up the works with silk enough to slow her down–”

Skitter paused, as she saw me writing. I refused to listen to any more of this. I held up the pad, my gaze hard. “No. You can’t fight her”

“What do you mean?” Skitter said, her voice challenging. “I know we might not look like much, but we’ve taken down people above our weight class before. This is no different.”

I gaped at her for a second, then scribbled furiously, holding up a finger when she tried to continue. My penmanship suffered from the speed I was trying to get the words out, but it was legible, which was all that mattered.

“No, it’s not about that Skitter. For one thing, Dragon is a juggernaut. She has the resources of a small country in hardware alone, nevermind the software and data she controls. She cannot and will not stop. It would be like trying to fight the US military”

“We’ve faced harder before,” Skitter’s voice was even, but I could hear the desperation an inch behind it. Anyone else might still have been fooled, but my forcefield was more sensitive than any fingertip. Beneath my feet, beneath the floor, the swarm was trembling.

“You still aren’t listening” I wrote hastily. “Even if you win, even if you beat her, you lose. You will never be able to stop running. That conversation we had earlier, about being able to go to a Hero for help? Gone. If you destroy millions of dollars of government property you are a fugitive from now until the day you die. No one will help you save Dinah”

The bugs were creeping back in again, the crawling shadows in the corners of the room growled as Skitter read my words, but I refused to blink first. I was right, and I knew it. Even if Skitter could somehow beat Dragon, it would be a pyrrhic victory. This wasn’t about the fight, and trying to see it that way would mean losing before she even started to plan.

Dragon wasn’t someone who could be fought, and that wasn’t just because of her equipment. She effectively was a direct form of outreach and action on behalf of the government. If she was intervening, it meant that she had full authority to arrest and detain whoever the target was, regardless of politics or cost.

It was one of the things Carol had always gotten so heated about when she'd talked about the founding principles of New Wave, back when they'd first unmasked. That the Brockton Bay Brigade had acted as judge, jury, and executioner, that there'd been nothing to limit how far they went against their enemies. I’d never been sure how much I bought into it, but the effects here were just the same.

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Skitter asked, bringing a hand up to comb through her hair in a rare show of frustration. “There are kids here, Victoria. Families. And there’s still Dinah to consider. I can’t just let Dragon win.”

My mind spun as I tried to consider the possibilities. As much as I hated to admit it… Skitter had a point. The other thing about Dragon I’d learned from some informal chats with Armsmaster is that the restrictions imposed on her from the Guild were quite strict. She had huge leeway to act… but only within the bounds of the law.

Carol said that Piggot was the one who’d authorized or requested this, and her attempts to talk the Director out of it hadn’t worked. But why would Piggot do that? Could it be revenge for the obvious public nose snubbing that the Undersiders had been doing for quite some time now? The assault on the PRT HQ?

I shook myself. No, this wasn’t helping. Timeframes, maybe? The Nine had left. The Truce was essentially over, and certainly would be by the time Dragon arrived. Why would Piggot wait this long? She must think that the Undersiders were preventing her from performing her primary duty; taking care of her constituents. And in fairness, they were, if only by partially doing it for her. But if what Skitter had said earlier was true, the Undersiders couldn’t just pull back from their holdings–and not just because of who would immediately replace them.

So what I really needed to do was work these variables to make that possible.

As it came together in my head, I looked at Skitter. She was still staring at the phone, one hand tangled in her hair, no doubt mulling over the same basic problem I was.

Could I trust her? That’s what the plan – all of this, it felt like – came down to. I… was afraid to find out. But as much as I felt insane for thinking it after she had just pinned me to the wall, I thought I could. She let me explain. She believed me. After talking to Carol… that meant a lot. It meant that I was willing to believe she’d back me when it came down to it.

I snapped my fingers to get her attention. She turned her gaze to me. “Yes?”

“We need to talk to your team.”

Chapter Text

Skitter’s back was straight; a stiff line of tension ran from her neck all the way to the base of her spine. Other people might have missed it, but I could see her clavicle standing out sharply from the silk covering it in the gaps between armor plates. It was a tell she shared with Mo– with Carol.

Was she really that nervous over this? Or was it leftover aggression from our almost-fight earlier? I couldn’t tell.

“Meet with my team?” Skitter asked. “You do know what you’re asking for, right? The last time you met with any of them, it nearly ended in a fistfight. Twice.”

I swallowed, but nodded. It was the only way. I didn’t like it. Even now I could feel the cold sweat of anxiety dripping down through my sternum to curdle in the pit of my stomach. But it was the only way through. Skitter was willing to translate for me with Carol, and that was already more than I would ever have believed she’d give, before all this. But what I was thinking of asking for… it wasn’t the type of thing that could be done through an intermediary. It would only be genuine, make sense, if I was the one pitching it. If this was the best chance of keeping Skitter out of an inevitable prison sentence, I owed it to her to try.

“Why?”

My fingers ached, but I brought them up anyway. “I have a plan. But I need to talk to your teammates. To see if it’ll work. Needs to be me.”

Skitter just looked at me, her expressionless mask tilted slightly to one side. A wasp hummed near the border of my forcefield by my left elbow. I tried to hear if anything was going on downstairs as the pause stretched, but couldn’t make out anything over the buzzing of the insects around us.

“Why are you invested?” Skitter said at length, still looking at me. “I don’t get it. You’re a hero. I saved you, yeah, but you don’t owe me anything. Frankly, I don’t entirely understand why you’re still here. I figured you’d be out days ago.”

That was the question, wasn’t it? Why, why, why? Maybe that was the way she saw it. And maybe she was right. Strictly speaking, the Truce that I came here under only said not to use secret identities or other underhanded tactics to fight each other. There was nothing in there about providing me a phone. Or a book. Or food. But here we were, almost two weeks later. That counted for something. It had to.

“Want to help. My choice.” I signed.

“Help how?” Skitter asked. “I doubt you want to fight Dragon yourself. And failing that, we don’t have any other options.”

“There is one,” I signed, meeting her eyes. “All of you leave the Bay.”

This time, I was expecting it when the insects around us swirled into a hissing, spitting frenzy. I didn’t flinch or look away as I continued signing, slow and careful. “Not permanently. Just until the PRT can deal with Coil”

“Not an option,” Skitter snapped. “And even if I said yes, no one else would agree to it. They all have things tying them here, myself included. We can’t just pick up and abandon the people relying on us. And I can’t leave Dinah.”

This girl… she still thought Dinah was hers to save. That it had to be her. I could respect dedication, but this seemed like it was bordering on fixation. It couldn’t be– no. I cut myself off from that thought; pursuing that approach wouldn’t get me anywhere. Now wasn’t the time to get into a pointless fight; I had to back up and focus on the terms she actually wanted. She needed Dinah safe in order to feel like her morality wasn’t compromised. I felt similarly, if I was being honest. So I needed to find the right line of argument to show that.

“If you fight Dragon yourselves, you’ll end up in prison. You won’t help her there.”

Skitter shook her head. “You’re not listening.” But the stubborn opposition had left her voice. She just sounded fed up now, done with the argument. “Fine,” she said, glancing away, back to the map of Brockton spread out across the table. “You can meet with them. It’ll be a disaster, but maybe hearing it from them will clear things up for you.”

I tried not to twitch at the patronizing tone and the blatant dismissal. If that was what it took to get my foot in the door, I’d take it. I could always leave. Though, that did remind me of my last reservation. I snapped my fingers, and she turned to look at me despite not really needing to.

“I have one problem”

Skitter stared at me for another moment, one hand still resting on the map where she’d been moving a pin, before nodding. “Alright. What problem?”

I swallowed, and spelled it out letter by letter. “Hijack”

The yellow-eyed, mandible-jawed mask was as expressionless as ever, and nothing about her posture changed, but I felt suddenly sure that if I could see the girl beneath she’d be setting her jaw in muleish resignation. The sigh she let out was certainly proof she knew exactly what I was talking about.

“I’d prefer you use his current name–Regent,” she said. “His old one has some… unfortunate connotations.”

My gaze grew flinty. “You mean when he hijacked people?”

“Look it isn’t–” Skitter paused to take a breath. The noise around us increased, black patches on the walls growing denser. But the bugs weren’t hemming me in this time. They were massing on the far wall, the sinuous movements of the swarm flexing against the walls and ceiling like they were looking for a way out. “It isn’t that simple. Yes, that’s a part of it; I won’t deny it. But we aren’t… we don’t like to do that. Unless there’s no other option.”

My fists clenched. “No other option? To do to someone else what you saved me from, you mean?”

“It’s not like that!” Skitter snapped. “What Amy did… there’s a reason why I didn’t leave you there. No one deserves that, no matter what side they’re on.”

“I’m not exactly about to defend Shatterbird,” I signed angrily, “but you weren’t subtle about waving around your control of her like some sort of trophy. Taking on the Nine is one thing, but why keep her now? Even if you don’t want to kill her, why not turn her over?”

“That’s not the same thing!,” she said, the bugs around us humming warningly. “That’s not fair and you know it. Everything happened too fast, and it’s not like anyone would trust us to give her over now.”

I couldn’t believe this. “So what, you’re just going to hang onto her forever as your own private enforcer until she inevitably gets loose? Like some sort of demented pet–”

There was a bang, sharp and loud. It took me a moment after I jumped to realize that it had been Skitter’s hand on the table. “That. Wasn’t. My. Call.”

There was a long pause.

At last she spoke. Slowly, as if trying to find the right words. “I’m not defending taking people like that. I’m not. But there’s a difference between taking control of someone who is literally about to kill you, and doing it because you can. I don’t like either, but they’re different.”

“How though?” I pressed. “How is it any different for the person–”

“I DON’T KNOW!” Skitter yelled.

The room was silent. The bugs had stopped moving. I stared at Skitter. For once, she wasn’t meeting my eyes. Her shoulders hunched inward for a moment, hands fisting, before she corrected them back to her usual neutral stance.

“I don’t know,” she said again, softly. “And I get that’s an issue for you. I can’t say anything to reassure you there, right now. All I can say is the reason why I asked you to use that name doesn’t have anything to do with me agreeing with that. It’s because that name is associated with something in his past he doesn’t want to bring back up, like Glory Girl. So I hope that you, of all people, can understand.”

That… I knew that Villains always had deeper reasons for what they were doing. We all did. No one willingly did the “wrong thing” unless they were either convinced they had no other option or were forced into it. I stared at Skitter, trying to tell if she was serious. If this was an appeal for me to loosen my morality because of a shared connection, it was a low blow. I wasn’t sure I could hold myself back from… doing something I’d regret, if that was true. But she knew that, too. Skitter couldn’t afford for me to find out later that this was fake.

She hadn’t outright lied to me yet. I could take her at her word until she gave me reason not to. And I didn’t think she would. Frankly, Skitter just wasn’t the type for subterfuge like this. I didn’t agree with all of her decisions (far from it), but she was always straightforward about what she said she was going to do. When she said anything at all, anyway. To the extent she ever lied, it was more by stubbornly holding back information than by telling falsehoods. She was sharing something now about her team, of her own accord, just to help me feel better.

I nodded. “I can do that. But that’s not my worry.”

Skitter cocked her head, and I continued. “I need to know that he won’t control me. That you won’t let him.”

This time, Skitter wasted no time meeting my gaze dead-on. “That will not happen, Victoria,” she promised. “I know they’re my teammates and you aren’t, but this is beyond that. I may not believe you about all this Dragon stuff, but if you’re willing to weigh in at all then we can use all the help we can get. And… frankly speaking, we couldn’t afford to puppet you. We have enough to deal with as it is.”

That was… harsh. Pragmatic, if I was being charitable (which I wasn’t). But I couldn’t deny her logic. It really wouldn’t make sense.

Skitter sensed my reaction, if the spider running across my arm was any indication. “And beyond that,” she added softly, “the situations where Regent used his power were different. I know we said you weren’t an Undersider. And I’m assuming that’s still true here…”

I nodded quickly. That was one bridge I wouldn’t allow myself to cross. Not here, not like this. The feeling of her arm inches away from my throat was still too fresh, even if I wanted to.

“...but since this is a loaded issue for you, I can make some exceptions.” She took a deep breath, “I’m assuming we’re under Truce confidentiality here, yes?”

She waited for my nod to continue, “Regent’s powers allow him to control someone within a radius of himself, powers included. But to do that, he needs time. Hours if he’s trying actively, days to weeks if he’s not. It is very noticeable, and manifests as uncontrollable muscle spasms. I’m going to tell him under no uncertain terms not to use his power on you, but I’m telling you this so you can recognize it yourself. Does that satisfy your worries?”

I… I wanted to say no. And in some ways, it still didn’t. I had no idea why Regent didn’t want to use his old name, and it still felt self serving. Skitter clearly didn’t approve of him using his power to control people… but also wasn’t stopping him.

But at the same time, it would’ve been a lot easier for her not to tell me all of this. To say that he wasn’t Hijack, or to just say she wouldn’t let him turn me into a puppet and ask me to trust her. Instead she laid out the objective reasons why he wouldn’t, committed herself to backing that up and gave me the warning signs so I could watch for them myself.

I could… just barely accept that. It was right on the line. I’d be keeping my aura on a hair trigger the whole time; if that was what it took to get me out of there then so be it. But it wasn’t the deal-breaker I’d thought it might be.

“Fine,” I signed stiffly. “Anyone else like that?”

Skitter hummed, tilting her head to show she was thinking. “No, those should be most of the people you have issues with in terms of powers. You still haven’t entirely explained why you want to meet everyone, though. Especially when you aren’t a member.”

“It’s still coming together in my head,” I signed. It was true, but it was also frustrating that I didn’t think I quite had the vocabulary in ASL to explain it even once I figured out the details of my half-formed idea.

“Alright,” Skitter said dubiously. “I’m going to have to pitch this to the team. We normally meet without masks; that’s obviously not an option here. I’ll let you know when we’re ready to–”

“Not here,” I signed.

I flushed bright red as Skitter cut herself off mid-sentence. I wasn’t sure where that had come from, but a tension I hadn’t even noticed lifted off me as I processed what I’d said.

“Not here?” Skitter echoed.

I nodded. “Not here. The meeting. Other place, please.”

Skitter tilted her head. She looked at me for a long moment, and I suppressed the urge to squirm. It felt like she could see right through me - not physically, but to parts of me maybe even I wasn’t aware of. It wasn’t entirely a comfortable feeling. But at the same time... it wasn’t revulsion or fear I felt at being so seen. Just antsy nervousness at what she might find.

“...alright,” she said at length, and nodded. “Somewhere else, then I’ll see to it.”

And with that she turned to walk up the flight of stairs to her room, presumably to make the calls to her team in private. I didn’t fully relax until the door closed behind her, slumping against the wall behind me. I caught a couple of spiders scuttling out of the way out of the corner of my eye, so she was still probably aware of me, but I didn’t care. I needed a moment.

What had I just done? Why had I agreed to meet up with these Villains – one of them a human Master, to boot? It was like I wanted to be controlled again–

Fuck. I squeezed my eyes shut and cycled my breathing. In for five seconds, hold for four, out for seven. Again and again, until my heart rate slowly calmed. That… that wasn’t what this was. I refused to believe that; refused to even think it. I was doing the right thing here. Sometimes the right thing was hard. But Skitter had saved me. More than once. More than that; she wasn’t the unrepentant Villain she was painted as. There was good in her; her means were twisted up and brutal but her goals were well-intentioned. I owed it to her to help. If that was what would break this debt between us and let me walk away afterwards with a clear conscience – if that give her a chance to walk away afterwards as something other than the warlord all her bad choices had made her – it would be worth the discomfort of sharing a room with Hi– with Regent.

The idea didn’t get any less anxiety-inducing over the next day as it solidified in my head. Skitter stayed up in her room for hours on the phone, hashing out the details of the meeting. I didn’t ask her about it. Part of me didn’t want to know. The rest was worried that she wouldn’t tell me anything anyways. But my resolve was still there, winning out over the butterflies in my stomach. I was committed to at least saying my piece, trying to talk them out of turning this city into a warzone for the third time this month.

It was just a lot harder to believe that when I was steeped in the humid evening air of late summer, walking side by side with Skitter down yet another abandoned street.

As seemed to be standard, no one bothered us. The swarm around us was thick, alternating between enclosing us in a thick tight bubble and expanding outwards in probing waves. Or at least, that’s what I guessed from the bug presence at the outer edges. It was hard to tell without an aerial view, and I wasn’t about to draw any further attention to us without due cause.

I looked at Skitter beside me. If she was bothered by this meeting, she didn’t show it. I knew it had to be treading ever closer to the boundaries she had set up between me and the rest of her team. I tried to go over them in my head as we walked.

Tattletale and Bitch were known quantities, more or less. The former was… antagonistic was a light word. Primarily a Thinker, without a known sub power. But that primary expression was formidable. While it was easy to take her out in a straight fight, the bank had shown just how difficult that could be in practice. That, and she hated me. The feeling was mutual.

Bitch on the other hand was a bit more of a mystery. I’d tried to spend some time earlier today remembering the finer details of that disastrous outing when we met for the second time, and some things had come back to me. Her power in particular was clearly striker based, and took some time to activate. It also might tire her out. I remembered Skitter being able to pin her to the wall after she’d tried to set her dog on me. Unless Skitter was a lot stronger than she looked, I suspected that was because Bitch had been exhausted by power use. Whether that was from power over-use before we’d met her or the boost she’d given them in the moment, I couldn’t say.

Then there was… Regent. Skitter had explained his power earlier, and that was at least fifty percent of why I felt comfortable with this. Yes, he had reasons not to control me, but that was cold comfort when I thought the same of my sister not that long ago. Ultimately, my security came with my aura, and flight. If I sensed anything that I thought was Regent trying to get the upper hand, I had promised myself, I was bolting on the spot. Truce or no.

The last one was an unknown. Grue. The leader, according to Skitter. By process of elimination, the darkness generator from the bank job. I remembered it being almost stifling, blocking sound as well as light. Best to assume he could see through it; that way I wouldn’t be unpleasantly surprised. But it also obscured sightlines for everyone else. I could use that, if it came down to it.

“We’re here,” Skitter said, breaking me out of my thoughts. I looked up. At some point while I’d been deep in thought we’d walked up to a nondescript door of one of the warehouses on the eastern side of the Docks. It looked almost exactly like every other entrance, save for the number 37B stenciled on it. That was probably the point. This might not even be an Undersiders base, just a location of convenience.

Skitter looked at me, face unreadable behind her insectoid mask and signature yellow lenses. “You ready?”

I swallowed, and gave a hesitant nod, my notebook clenched in my hands.

“Look,” Skitter said, and if I didn’t know better I’d have thought it was awkwardness I heard in her tone. “I’m gonna have to say some things in there. What we’ve talked about before this still holds, alright?”

Well… that wasn’t ominous at all. I nodded slowly, pointlessly second-guessing all the choices that had brought me here.

Too late to back out, though. She turned back to the entrance, and opened the door.

Immediately facing us inside was a small fold-out table, with a number of chairs arranged around it. And in them set the Undersiders, all assembled and waiting on us. I dragged my eyes over them one by one. Grue, with his black motorcycle helmet and matching leathers. Bitch, with her fur collared jacket and cheap dog mask, already growling at me. Beside her… Regent, complete with a loosely fitted white shirt, venetian mask, and matching crown. It would’ve looked absurd, but the way he was leaning back with an arm sprawled over the back of his chair made it barely work.

Finally, my eyes met Tattletale. Wearing her signature purple and black spandex, with the domino mask to go with it. Already with that goddamn grin on her face.

“Hey, Glory Girl,” she smirked, and my fists clenched at her tone before my brain even registered the words. “Miss me?”

Chapter Text

I clenched my fists and tried not to react as Tattletale’s smirk widened. Lashing out or showing how deep that barb had sunk would just be giving her what she wanted. I refused to give her the satisfaction.

“Tattletale–” Skitter warned as I moved to sit down, dark promise in her tone. Her bugs hummed once to punctuate her words; not quite a threat yet but on the edge of one.

“Oh hush, you’ve kept her in private long enough,” Tattletale said, waving the warning off and getting up from her chair to look at me. “Let me have a little bit of fun. Decided to keep the hair dye in huh, Glory?”

I fingered a lock of hair and tried not to fidget as I stepped deliberately out of her reach and took a seat on the other side of Skitter from her, folding my hands down into my lap to hide their trembling. Her comment about the hair dye I just ignored. At this point it was more that I hadn’t decided one way or another. The Heroes knew that I was with Skitter, true, but that didn’t mean the average person on the street did. Being obviously Glory Girl while walking next to Skitter was a lot different than looking like someone her general shape and size. My roots were showing at this point, and it had faded to more of a dark gray, but it was still good enough to deflect casual attention.

“I’m surprised it lasted this long, given that you’ve got access to showers again,” Tattletale continued, jerking her head at Skitter next to me. I tried to keep my reaction from showing. I knew by this point that the water was working – though how I had no idea. I… hadn’t really thought about it. Taking a shower. It would mean taking off my clothes and foggy mirrors and water and touching and–

“Be nice, Tattletale,” Skitter ordered, giving her what must have been an impressive glare from behind those lenses.

“You never let me do anything fun anymore, I swear!” Tattletale shot back with a pout, completely unintimidated. “What happened to best criminal buddies, huh?”

“Enough,” Grue said, startling me. I’d been so focused on Tattletale at the other end of the table that I’d almost forgotten him, seated to my left with his arms folded. “She’s right.”

The air in the room changed at once, solemnity as smothering as his darkness descending. It almost felt statically charged, and I struggled not to lean on the mental trigger for my aura. Tattletale finally shut up and sat back down, letting me turn my attention to Grue, hyper-aware of my position between him and Skitter. If he looked like he was going to turn things violent, I’d be able to get us both out before he could reach us, even in the dark.

“Skitter,” he said, low and intense, “Where have you been?”

If she really was nervous, she was doing a fantastic job of hiding it. “I told you all in the last meeting that I’d be busy handling this,” she replied, sounding more annoyed at being questioned than anxious. She drummed her fingers on the back of her chair almost absentmindedly. “Tattletale and I found her in a position of vulnerability. We agreed she might make a good asset, so I let her stay.”

Wait, an asset? We’d agreed I wasn’t a member of the Undersiders! Was this all some kind of fucked up scheme to recruit me?

Beneath the table, a small centipede crawled over my palm, hidden to the rest of the Undersiders. Skitter. What did it mean? Was she just trying to reassure me before I left and ruined her plan? How much of this was true? I remembered her words from a few minutes ago, that she would have to say things here. I wished I believed her now.

“An asset is one thing,” Grue said. His folded arms tightened, and his biceps bulged under the black leather. “But only if it doesn’t bring down more heat on us. You’ve already dragged Bitch into one fight with the heroes over her. We can’t afford another confrontation like that right now.”

I swallowed, and tried not to look at the stocky girl in the cheap dog mask across the table from me. Her low growl made it difficult.

“And then,” Grue continued, “you weren’t there when we had to take on the Empire. We had to sub in one of the Travelers, and Ballistic almost hit one of Bitch’s dogs when we were getting out.”

“I still wanna kill that fucker,” Bitch said darkly. She looked like she was going to say something more, but a sharp look from Grue stopped her. Grunting, she shoved her chair back and turned her back on the table, whistling sharply for a dog I hadn’t noticed lounging in the corner and starting to pace..

“You know that I was busy that day,” Skitter said, pulling my attention back to her. Wait, she’d been busy? Busy doing what? When had this even come up? Did he mean the whole mess with Parian and Flechette? I tried to review what I’d seen her doing, but Skitter spent so much time out or up on the third floor that it was impossible to guess how much of it was vital stuff she might have skipped a fight for.

“I called ahead. You said it was fine, that I could tend to things in my territory if I needed to while you tagged in Ballistic for backup. If you had a problem with it, you should’ve told me,” Skitter said. She hadn’t moved from the position she’d taken after coming in, standing with shoulders squared behind the one empty chair left at the table.

“Goddammit Skitter, that’s not the point!” Grue said, smacking a fist on the table and standing, his chair skidding back and almost falling over as he matched her. I felt like I was watching a tennis match, looking back and forth between them as they spoke, except this one was being played with grenades. “I didn’t know I needed you until you weren’t there! That’s the whole problem! Yeah, you needed to take care of Glory Girl, fine. But how long until you’re satisfied and move onto some new pet project?”

Skitter’s shoulders went rigid. If she’d been stiff before, now she was as tense as I’d ever seen her, like Grue’s accusation had shoved an iron bar up her spine. I shuddered at the mental image. Bonesaw was too fresh in memory for that to be an innocent metaphor.

“She needed help, Grue,” Skitter said through gritted teeth. “She was in my territory. I refuse to feel guilty for that, not when I’m still doing my job here.”

“Yeah, and how long is that going to last, exactly?”

This time the silence slammed down like a coffin lid. Even the bugs froze. Grue was smart enough to realize he’d overstepped.

“Skitter, I didn’t mean it like–”

“No,” Skitter cut him off. “No, I think you did.”

“Sheesh,” Tattletale said, drawing out her chair and standing up. A part of me hated how she made the motion look almost leisurely, like she was just stretching. “You all don’t have to be so dramatic about it. Just because Glory Girl’s sister got a little focused on her crush when I pointed it out at the bank and did something awful doesn’t mean Victoria is broken forever. She’s here, isn’t she?”

The world ground to a halt. Nothing disturbed the cold, ringing silence as memory crystallized with sadistic clarity. The bank had always been… a moment of contention for me, especially lately. But up to now that had mostly been my perception of Skitter. It made sense; she was the one I’d had the most contact with, and while I hated Tattletale for what she did… the exact nature of what she’d said to Amy hadn’t clicked until now.

The secret. The thing she was mocking, right in front of my face. I thought maybe it was her parent being Marquis. And maybe part of it was. But with what she just said… I couldn’t deny it. She knew. She knew from day one, and still let me go home with her, didn’t do anything, didn’t tell me–

Regent’s fist interrupted us both as he slammed it into Tattletale’s stomach, doubling her over with a convulsive sound that was part wheeze, part grunt and part squawk.

I blinked. I blinked again, squeezing my eyes shut and then reopening them, double-checking that I’d actually seen that right. It had to have been a mistake, right? But no, Skitter’s teammate had definitely just sucker punched Tattletale.

He seemed to belatedly notice us staring, as he slowly drew his fist back. He was breathing hard through his nose, jaw so tight I could see the muscles in his neck standing out, his head eerily still as he stared down at the bent-over, wheezing girl he’d just knocked the wind out of.

Then he straightened, and the tension slid off him like water. His body language fell back to casual carelessness so completely that it couldn’t be natural. But it didn’t seem forced, either. A shiver of discomfort rippled up my spine. I’d half thought he was defending me for a brief, absurd moment, but this... this shift from fury to apathy just creeped me out more.

“What?” he asked, looking around at our expressions. “We were all getting our dramatic soap opera moments; I wanted mine. Seemed fun.”

And with that he sat right back down, twirling his scepter.

Tattletale let out a dry hacking noise that might have been laughter, bracing herself on the table for a moment before straightening again with a hand held gingerly to her midsection. It took her a couple more slow breaths before she managed to sit back down, and even then she winced as she did so.

“Yeah yeah,” she wheezed, “everyone’s a critic.”

“Enough,” Skitter said, trying to regain control of the conversation, “this isn’t what we were even here to talk about. We have a problem.”

Grue’s helmet dipped slightly as he tucked his chin closer to his chest. He planted his hands on the table and leant forward. “Explain.”

I swallowed, and leaned forward, laying my pad in front of him rather than Tattletale or Regent. Skitter had explained that Grue was the leader of the gang, which meant it was on me to explain this to him. I didn’t know how much he already knew, so I had prewritten as much as I could.

“Dragon is coming to Brockton Bay to apprehend the Undersiders. I was warned by my Mother. She told me to get out, that she can’t guarantee my safety when it happens. You have a week at most, maybe less. Can’t fight her, you need to run”

Bitch growled as she stopped her pacing. “What’s she saying?”

Fuck. Was my handwriting that bad? Skitter stepped forward, ready to explain, but Grue cut her off. “She’s saying Dragon is coming. One week. She says we should run.”

“Oh great,” Regent laughed. “The giant Dragon lady is coming? I’ll just pack my bags then will I?”

“Don’t tell me you’re scared, Glory,” said Tattletale.

“Fuck that,” Bitch snarled.

Great. This was going even better than I’d expected.

“Why do we need to leave?” Grue asked, staring down at the pad and then at me, straightening a little as though his height and the skull and black smoke could intimidate me. I didn’t like that he was looking down at me, or that he thought this kind of display could scare me after everything she’d done, but I wasn’t going to escalate this further by challenging him over something that petty. “We’ve faced bad odds before.”

I gave Skitter a desperate look, which she seemed to interpret correctly. “She can’t speak. She can sign, and I’ll translate.”

Grue grunted. The helmet made it hard to tell if he was watching me or Skitter as I explained. “Deploying Dragon means the government is sanctioning the effort. She’s a force of nature. Even if you take her down, it won’t stop. It means none of you have a way out. You’ll be running forever, until you’re too slow to get away.” My fingers hurt from the unfamiliar signs and the way I was having to finger-spell some words, but I kept going. I had forced myself to practice these earlier today, over and over again. If there was anything I could do to give myself an edge in communicating, I’d do it.

“As opposed to what, exactly?” Grue said. He gestured at the rest of the Undersiders. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’ve been past the point of no return for a while here.”

I looked at Skitter. I knew that she and Tattletale were onboard with this; hopefully the rest of the team was. I kept my aura on a hair trigger as I signed, just in case. “I know that Skitter and Tattletale want to overthrow Coil.”

The bugs on the walls hissed, but Skitter still translated the message. Bitch growled lowly, somewhere between a warning and a promise. Grue pushed up off the table he’d been leaning on and rose back to his full height, fists clenching at his sides and rising instinctively towards a guard stance. The smoke leaking from his costume thickened and darkened, slowly rolling down his shoulders like a cape and flowing down his arms and chest like tar. “Tattletale?”

She sighed, absentmindedly rubbing her stomach just below her diaphragm. “Yeah boss, we do.”

“Why?”

She gave him a grim smile. “Because I know he’s already put one hit out on Skitter by this point. Maybe more. Having a plan ready to take him out seemed like good insurance.”

Fuck. Their own boss had— no, focus. This wasn’t directly actionable, but it did support my point. It gave him a reason to listen.

“Regardless of the fact that my own teammates didn’t tell me they were planning on overthrowing our boss,” Grue growled, his smoke pooling on the floor in a thick, clinging layer, creeping out from his feet by inches, “I don’t see what that has to do with Dragon.”

I swallowed. This was the trickiest part. I knew what Skitter’s angle was, and while I didn’t know Tattletale’s I could guess. Coil already had one pet Thinker in his basement; I doubted he’d say no to another. And I couldn’t have been the first to think as much. I didn’t know where Grue was coming from on this. But what Tattletale had just shared was a key datapoint. And judging from the look on her face, she knew it. I could use that.

“Normally, you’re right. You’ve done too much for the PRT to take you at your word. But he’s kidnapped a child to use as his Thinker. He put out a hit on your own teammate. You can’t trust him anymore. This is much bigger than anything you all have done. If you move attention onto Coil instead of you, the PRT might leave you alone.”

“Might?” Grue asked. His darkness was speeding up, growing exponentially into a shroud that left him a leering white skull in the smoke that coiled inky tendrils around the table legs and swallowed the chair behind him. I got ready to launch myself into flight at a moment’s notice if I needed to. “That’s a hell of a risk to run on a hypothetical,” he went on, the smoke billowing with a swing of his arm. “Yeah, Coil’s not exactly the person I’d trust to have at my back. You know who is?”

He gestured at the capes arrayed beside him. “My team. Not a hero who never stuck out her neck for us before.”

“Grue,” Skitter said sharply.

“What?” he snapped, turning to her.

“She has. Stuck up for me. Flechette attacked us; she wanted to arrest me and drag us both back to the Wards. She,” she jerked a thumb at me, “stopped her, and flew me back. We’re not Heroes, but we’re also not hypocrites.”

I didn’t dare look at her. I didn’t know what she’d see on my face. I didn’t know what I wanted her to see there. I didn’t even know whether I wanted there to be anything to see.

“So then we should follow princess over here and just turn ourselves in to the heroes?” Regent asked, absentmindedly tracing a pattern on the table. He’d been so quiet, apart from sucker-punching Tattletale, that I’d half-forgotten he was there. “I don’t know about you, but I don’t think there’s much pizza in prison.”

“The fuck we’re going to prison,” Bitch growled, her hand on the dog by her side. I tried not to tense. This was going to shit; I needed to de-escalate.

“That’s not what I’m saying. Just tell the PRT that there’s a bigger target. Then get out of the Bay while they clean house.”

“Except you have no idea how long that will take,” Tattletale countered, looking at me pointedly. She tapped the table for effect. “Coil has infiltrated this branch himself. How do you know any raid isn’t dead on arrival? How long are we supposed to just abandon everything holding us here? Do you have any idea how long it’s taken for us to build up what structure we have?”

Fuck it, I had to appeal to her ego. If there was one lever I knew she had, even from what little time I’d interacted with her, it was her obsession with proving she was the smartest person in any room she walked into.

“As if you couldn’t find that out before you even called them. Unless you’re less of a Thinker than you like to pretend.”

Tattletale wagged a chiding finger at me. “Uh uh, naughty naughty. I know what you’re trying to do, and it won’t work. Just because I might know all of the PRT’s dirty little secrets doesn’t mean I can manipulate them that finely.”

She leaned her cheek against her hand. “Besides, didn’t you just say they had no reason to take us at our word? Even assuming we get lucky and talk to a person he hasn’t bought off or bugged, why would they act on any of this at all? It’s information coming from villains, Glory. You barely believe Skitter and you’ve been living with her for two weeks. The PRT? No chance in hell.”

Fuck. She had a point there, and she knew it had landed. If the information came from me, Piggot might at least consider it. But I’d been staying with Skitter for days. And missing for longer than that. Anything that came out of my mouth was suspect at best, and a Master-Stranger incident at worst. I would’ve had the same doubts if I hadn’t lived through it.

“We’re wasting time,” Grue said, drawing his smoke back into himself and laying his palms flat on the table. “We need to focus on Dragon. Maybe we can find a way to disable her suits.”

“No, you don’t understand,” I signed, frustrated. “If you resist her or put up a public fight of any kind, that’s the same thing as declaring war against the US government. The only reason why you got away with your fiefdoms here is because of the chaos in the city when it happened.”

“Then give us solutions, not problems,” Skitter said, responding to me directly rather than translating. I turned to her to reply and–

“I think you should just tell Dragon,” said a voice an inch behind my left ear.

Chapter Text

My aura exploded out of me, washing over the people and walls surrounding me like a tidal wave. It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I couldn’t bring myself to care. There was someone right behind me and I’d had no idea she was there; she could’ve touched me and I would’ve never known. I spun fast enough that my hair whipped out behind me, one fist coming around to–

“Victoria!” Skitter yelled.

I blinked, lowering my arm from the roundhouse I’d been throwing at... something? What had just happened? I looked over at the Undersiders. Grue was on his feet, gripping the table hard enough to make the leather of his gloves creak. Bitch was snarling, hunched over, shoulders up and ready to swing; Tattletale was wide-eyed and had a hand on her pistol. Even Regent had jumped to his feet and pulled out his scepter. They were scared - terrified. Because... because of my aura, I realized. It was on full blast. Wait, had I slipped? Grue was intimidating but… why did I turn my aura on again?

I groped for the mental switch to my newly hair-trigger aura, forcing it back under my skin. Skitter visibly relaxed, the bugs teeming on the walls slipping back into a low drone. The others all slumped, less used to the feeling. Bitch looked like she was seriously considering hurdling the table and trying to punch me again.

“What the hell was that?” Grue said, looking at me.

I struggled to come up with an explanation. I’d promised to only bring up my aura if it was absolutely necessary while I was here. Only if I thought we were compromised. So why...

There was something niggling in the back of my head, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

“We’re not safe,” I signed, trying to get Skitter’s attention, “Don’t know what, but we’re compromised.”

Skitter stilled. I could feel her eyes narrowing behind the mask, even if I couldn’t see them. “How?” she asked, short and efficient, pulling out her baton and snapping it out to its full length with a click.

“Don’t know, but I can’t see them.”

“Well, I wouldn’t want you to see my party trick, princess.”

I wheeled again at the voice, launching myself away and bringing my fists back up. It was her! She’d snuck up right behind me while we were talking; that was why my aura had flared! And then I’d... forgotten?

Skitter had turned on the new cape as fast as I had, and I backed up to stand beside her as I got my first clear look at them. A gray body suit similar to Skitter’s, though I couldn’t tell if it was the same material. A belt with a silver buckle holding a holster for the combat knife she was flipping between her fingers. A long gray silk scarf cascading over both of her shoulders. Meant to exaggerate or confuse her silhouette maybe? I couldn’t tell. And a white porcelain mask with red detailing in the shape of an east asian demon.

It was that last point that set off alarm bells. Oni Lee had been quiet since the early days of the Nine coming to the Bay, and it was safe to assume at this point that he was dead. But I still remembered him. It was hard not to. He’d been deadly – a teleporter with a particular fondness for knives and explosions. One who favored the mask of his cultural namesake. The same one worn by the mystery cape brandishing a knife of her own at me.

My hand involuntarily went into my pocket, hitting the panic button on my phone. Skitter jerked at the answering buzz. She took out her phone only to realize who it was, and looked quickly to me.

“C-compromised. O-oni L-Lee,” I stuttered out, my hands too stiff at my sides to sign properly. Fuck. I couldn’t make my mouth work for more than that; hopefully Skitter would get the connection I was trying to make. The ABB cape had been horrifically dangerous, especially in close quarters, and if this girl was modeling herself after him? We all had to be careful. I was keeping my forcefield as tight to my skin as I could but it felt unwieldy and large, like I was swimming in it. Anxiety maybe? I didn’t have time to analyze the feeling.

“Imp!” Grue interrupted before I could try anything else. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Wait. What?

I looked over at him, not letting the unknown out of my peripheral vision. He knew this cape? The Undersiders only had five members! At least... they only have five that anyone knew about. Was this a secret sixth, or just another Stranger effect, making him think that she belonged here? I didn’t let myself relax, wary of any sudden move she might make.

“Sheesh, there’s no reason to be so loud,” Imp grumbled, shooting me a disgruntled look. “Princess over there was just jumpy is all.”

“That’s Glory Girl, and if it wasn’t for your power she would’ve taken your head off,” Skitter observed with dangerous calm.

I froze. It… I wanted to say that would never happen. That I’d never let myself lash out like that. But I’d had no real conscious part in my reaction. I’d just… moved. Base instinct. Could I guarantee that Imp would’ve survived if I’d hit her in that moment? She… probably wouldn’t have. All of the classes I’d taken on excessive use of force suddenly came back to me, and I struggled not to wilt. Sure this was for a different reason, but it felt like I’d been thrown back in time. All that growth and control gone in an instant.

“I’m sorry about Imp,” Grue said, drawing my attention back out of my self-recriminations. “She’s a Stranger, as you can tell. Her power isn’t entirely under her control. We all forget about her unless she keeps it off.”

That was… my mind reeled as I tried to put that into context. Said bluntly like that, it was a stupidly strong power. The only historical example I could think of was Nice Guy, a member of the original Slaughterhouse Nine. Maybe Imp’s power wasn’t as all-encompassing as his; the usual tricks of unseen third party observation or recordings might be able to catch her presence, but those relied on you knowing she was coming. If individuals on the ground couldn’t be told (or be counted on to remember) to watch for her? She could get away with a frightening amount before any consequences caught up to her. Hell, they’d managed to keep her place on the team a complete secret since... I had no idea how long.

I couldn’t afford to let that first impression be what she took from me, accident or not.

I brought up my hands and shakily signed to Skitter. “Sorry. Startled me. Please don’t do that again.”

“Fineeee,” Imp said with a drawn out groan after Skitter translated. She rubbed her arm absentmindedly. “You guys don’t let me have any fun. It’s always Imp do this, Imp don’t do that, Imp don’t set that man on fire just because he’s a Nazi even though he really deserves it–mmph!”

Grue’s hand let out a small amount of smoke, just enough to cover Imp’s mouth to silence her. By the resigned slump in her shoulders, this didn’t seem to be a new occurrence.

“Imp,” Skitter said. “What did you suggest earlier?”

Smoke wreathing the bottom of her face, Imp gave Grue an exaggerated look until he reluctantly pulled it back. “I’ll be good, I promise,” she said, her tone shamelessly implying the exact opposite. “I was saying we should talk to Dragon. Just talk to the head honcho herself, you know? Maybe if we ask nicely she’ll go away.”

Silence fell for about three seconds as everyone processed that. Then they all started talking over each other at once.

“Like fuck I’ll–”

“–reckless idea, we’re not risking–”

“–great idea for a laugh, I say we–”

“–not going to take this seriously, then–”

“–serious, if you’d just shut up and listen for a–”

“Quiet!”

The walls screamed. The insects coating them chittered and moved in a fist-clenching pulse that shrank the room inward and then retreated to slam into the wooden boards with a sound like a percussion kit being dropped down a well, rushing over each other in a bristling wave of chitin and thoraxes. If this was Skitter feeling the shot of ice that had just run down my spine and not just trying to restore order, I couldn’t blame her.

Would it even work? I almost wanted to laugh at the absurdity of the idea. A teenage gang of Villains, casually calling up the private number of the most famous Tinker in the world, asking for help in bailing them out. But then, this entire situation bordered on the absurd. What was one more stretch of disbelief?

Skitter evidently thought the same, turning to Tattletale. “Would it work?”

Tattletale hummed, putting a hand to her chin and closing her eyes to give it some actual thought. “My first instinct was no, but... it’s hard to say, really. Dragon’s well known for her pacifistic streak–part of the reason why I was so surprised she was being deployed here at all. She’s usually not one to do the PRT’s dirty work, maybe Armsmaster…”

She shook her head and visibly refocused. “Right. Dragon. She’s a third party, which helps our PRT infiltration issue. If there’s anyone who could get around that, it would be her. But we’re still at the same problem; why would she listen at all? She’s literally got orders to bring us in.”

This… I had a solution, but they wouldn’t like it. I snapped to get Skitter’s attention. “Tell Dragon everything you know about Coil. Powers, base, Dinah, everything. Give her reason to care. Then tell her to check details against PRT Thinkers. Ask her to prove you wrong.”

Skitter tilted her head, then translated. “That’s a hell of a risky move, Victoria,” she added. “You’re asking us to give away our intel advantage on Dragon. We might be able to pull something together in the time we have right now. That becomes difficult to impossible if we do this.”

“And I don’t get where you get off telling us what to do,” Grue cut in, staring at me. “You’re not an Undersider. Skitter said she offered and you said no. As far as I’m concerned, you should leave right now. We’d be square.”

I swallowed. He was right. I could leave right now, and leave this to them. I didn’t really have anything tying me to the Undersiders besides my lack of other options. But… I also didn’t want to leave Skitter like this. To a plan that was probably going to get her killed or imprisoned, when there was another option I knew I could find.

I held in a low growl of frustration, and got out my notepad. “It’s not about what I owe, it’s about what’s right. Yes, it’s risky. But it’s less risky than fighting Dragon. You can’t beat her. And even if you did, you’d still lose. I know I’m a Hero, and you’re Villains. I get that you have no reason to trust me. But Skitter saved me, when she had no reason to. Can’t you trust me to do the same?”

“Victoria–” Skitter started, before Grue cut her off.

“And what if it doesn’t work?” He asked. “What if you’re asking us to go out on a limb for you, and it kicks us in the ass? Will you just drop us and fly away to the Heroes, another job well done?”

Fuck. I was in too deep. I knew that before, but now it really dawned on me just how much this had spiraled out of control. I had to give him an answer, but not bend my morals to do it. God, I wished Dean were here. He’d know what to say.

“I wouldn’t leave,” I wrote helplessly. “One way or the other, I’d make sure it didn’t end that way.”

That was the most I could commit to. I wouldn’t fight the Heroes–or anyone else–for them. Frankly, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to fight anyone ever again. But standing up for what was right, even if it was for the underdog... that I could do.

“Huh,” Tattletale said thoughtfully, slipping past Skitter to lean into my space and read what I’d written over my shoulder. “You actually mean that, don’t you?” She gave me an assessing look, that fucking smirk playing across her face. “Something’s knocked that black-and-white morality right out of you. Not the obvious, either. Something more recent. I’d say it was Skitter working on you, but–”

“Tattletale,” Skitter interrupted, shutting her up before I… did something I’d regret. Tattletale backed off and Skitter turned to look at the other Undersiders; Grue, still glaring at me; Bitch, who’d gone back to ignoring us in favor of her dogs once I’d pulled my pad out; Regent, sat back down with his feet up on the table and his chair pushed back onto two legs.

“Victoria’s gone out on a limb for me before,” she said. “She won’t just cut and run if things go south.”

“Man, and I was all excited to fight a bunch of robot suits,” Regent drawled. “Well, whatever. I’ll survive.” His sarcasm wasn’t subtle. I wasn’t surprised. His power wouldn’t work on Dragon’s suits, at least not directly. Though he still had Shatterbird, plus any hostages in his territory. “I say go for it,” he finished with a lazy shrug, almost overbalancing on his chair. “Skitter and Tattletale can come up with one of their speeches.”

There was something sardonic and mocking in his tone, but I ignored it, looking over at Bitch. She glanced at the table and scowled. “I don’t care,” she said. “If she comes, I’ll fight. If not, I have better shit to do.”

Grue looked around. Like Skitter, his mask and costume muffled his body language, but I thought I could see brief frustration in his muscles before he straightened up. “Fine,” he said. “That just leaves how the hell we’re going to contact Dragon.”

“Anyone got her on speed dial?” Regent asked from his seat on the table. “I’d share my copy but I lost it when Shatterbird killed my last phone.”

“Funny you should ask, I came across a cape hotline for her when I was doing some sleuthing prior to this,” Tattletale said, brandishing her phone. “Skitter called me earlier so I could start getting some background. I didn’t get much, but I did spy a number that said ‘dial for international cape emergencies, prank calls subject to fines and imprisonment’. Figured that wasn’t meant for my eyes.”

“I’ll make the call,” Grue put in immediately. “You’ve mouthed off to too many people for something like this.”

“People I wanted angry or off their game; I can hold back when I need to–”

I shut my eyes, trying to collect myself as the bickering and talking over each other started up again. I knew that number. It was the same one that Mom–that Carol had been given out in the wake of Leviathan. It was provided to high ranking Protectorate or Guild affiliated teams, as a way of feeding Dragon information or requesting for Tinker collaboration. It wasn’t a direct line, more of a smart voicemail, but supposedly it was monitored with key words and phrases that raised the priority depending on the subject matter. Knowing Tattletale, she knew exactly what to say to get us to the top of the list.

So this was really happening. I had to admit that now. It felt… I didn’t even know what to think. A week ago I would’ve thought any of this was insane. That I’d be anywhere near comfortable around the Undersiders. That I’d be (technically) colluding with them against the Protectorate. But a week ago I hadn’t seen a Ward put a bolt through Skitter’s shoulder, hadn’t been betrayed by Carol, hadn’t almost been flattened by a grenade from Miss Militia.

Skitter brushed a moth against my elbow and I looked up, startled. “You okay?” she asked softly while the rest of the Undersiders argued about who was going to call. “You let your aura out earlier.”

“Reflex,” I signed. “Worried we had been infiltrated. Coil.”

She nodded. “Good instinct. Imp is a known quantity, when we remember her at all, and she’s still difficult to work around. You did well.”

I tried not to react to that. Almost punching a girl through a brick wall on accident was doing well? I… maybe according to Skitter, sure. I had to remind myself, she was coming from a totally different place, with a very different set of survival instincts. It was entirely possible that she had hesitated before, and that had ended badly. Still, I couldn’t let that statement go unchallenged.

“No. Did badly. Could’ve hurt her.”

Skitter snorted lightly. “Grue wouldn’t have liked that.”
So there was some kind of a relationship between the two of them. Speculating on a cape’s identity or relations outside work was an easy way to make enemies, but I wasn’t blind. He favored her. It didn’t seem romantic, though. Too much annoyance of the wrong kind. Family, maybe? School friends? It was hard to say.

“Alright, alright!” Tattletale said, breaking the argument. “Since clearly none of you trust me to do a simple phone call for some reason, I’ll just put it on speaker so everyone can shout over each other. Happy?”

They weren’t, but it seemed like that was the best we were going to get.

Tattletale put the phone down on the table, and called the automated system, starting to navigate through the options. This part was standard. Dragon was too important to actually answer these calls herself, so she used an automated responder that sorted the calls by category and left specific sections open for you to record your issue. We were banking that Tattletale could figure out how to get our message flagged up on Dragon’s personal screen as fast as possible.

“Protectorate Villain Conflict,” Tattletale said clearly into the phone, and waited for the next prompt. There was silence, and then a sound none of us expected.

“Well,” said Dragon, “you got my attention.”

Chapter Text

“Dragon!” Tattletale said, a slightly strained smile spreading across her face. She was off-balance. All of us were. There was no way the automated message service had flagged down Dragon’s attention this fast. Tattletale simply hadn’t said enough - she’d only got three words out! Which meant that this wasn’t a case of us getting lucky and being noticed. She’d been waiting for our call.

“I don’t suppose I could convince you this was a wrong number?” Tattletale tried, a fake laugh hiding the fear in her voice. She’d realized the same thing I had. So had Skitter, though I wasn’t sure about the others.

“Not quite, Tattletale,” Dragon replied. I couldn’t see her, but there was an indulgent smile in her voice. Even so, I was breathing faster. I would never have guessed that a phone could be intimidating, but the world narrowed around the little black shape in Tattletale’s hand like the beat before a grenade going off. “You went through a lot of trouble to get my attention,” she said. “Well, you have it.”

“Yes, but we have conditions–” Grue started before Skitter placed a hand on his arm, stopping him mid sentence. He looked at her, but whatever she conveyed in a moment’s silent communication was enough to drain the tension out of him like sand in an hourglass. Skitter took the lead instead.

“There’s something we need to talk to you about, Dragon. As fellow capes,” Skitter said, taking a step closer to the table and splaying out a hand across the worn wood.

“Skitter,” Dragon said, her voice tinny from the tiny speaker with nary a hitch in her speech, “And I assume that was Grue who was talking earlier. Who exactly am I speaking to?”

“The Undersiders,” Skiter replied. “Myself, Tattletale, Grue, Regent, Bitch… and Victoria.”

We all heard the sharp intake of breath on Dragon’s end in response to that. Well that was a reaction. “Victoria? If that’s you, I need to confirm Master Stranger protocols. What was the last code used by the Wards?”

My tension ratcheted higher. This was wrong. This was all wrong. There was no way a single call-and-response could clear me of Master influence. Not when I’d spent as much time in Skitter’s territory as I had, especially given Regent’s public history. Any response I gave could easily be Tattletale doing background research on me prior, or other power interactions. Dragon had no reason to believe that I was in control of myself.

Which left only one conclusion: she was deliberately pretending to clear me in front of the Undersiders. For what reason, I could only guess.

I turned to Skitter, who was staring at Tattletale as if her teammate was holding a venomous snake that might decide to bite at any moment, and hesitated. I could do one of two things here. I could just give her the password from the last time I had been with the Wards, and no further context. That would be the safe thing, and what Dragon clearly expected. It wouldn’t tell her whether it was really me or Regent, but it would at least confirm that the Undersiders weren’t tipped off about the double bluff.

The other option… was to tell Skitter about the subtext of Dragon’s play and hope she kept it to herself. My breath felt tight in my chest as I weighed my choices. I didn’t know which to pick. Skitter had promised me earlier that no matter what she said at the meeting, she wouldn’t let Regent get to me. Despite my fears, I hadn’t felt anything like his power. And while the Heroic thing to do would be to side with Dragon against these Villains... I wasn’t sure if that was the heroic thing to do. Not when I’d promised to try to help them out of the pit they’d dug themselves. Not when they might not be villains.

I felt a fly brush the back of my hand, and my resolve firmed. It was risky, but I felt like I could trust in that upheld promise. In her. And in my ideals. Deceptions and deliberate obfuscations were what had gotten us all into this mess.

“E-n-o-l-a one five five,” I carefully signed, not looking away from her. Her eyes might be on Tattletale, but I knew I held just as much of her attention. “But that was the code when I left. There’s no way this can confirm I am who I say I am.”

Skitter’s mask was inscrutable, even her body language gave away nothing. Thank god I had learned how to sign, otherwise I’d be reduced to the notepad and the rest of the group could read that.

“Don’t say the second part out loud,” I signed. Skitter said nothing, just cocked her head slightly as her gaze bored into the innocuous little burner phone that Tattletale had at arm’s length. What she thought Dragon could do through it - or what she intended to do in response – I had no idea. It didn’t really matter, I supposed. The real question was whether she would understand why I was asking and follow through.

“Enola one five five,” Skitter repeated, glancing back at me for a second. The centipede on the palm of my hand curled around my thumb, almost as if saying ‘I hope you know what you’re doing’. I gently squeezed, just hard enough for it to feel but not enough to crush it. That made two of us.

Dragon sighed. “I’ll have to trust that, in the absence of anything else. I hope you’re doing well, Victoria, circumstances being what they are. I wish I could see you, but there’s no camera on this thing.”

Tattletale let out a bark of laughter, missing our secret conversation as she started to pace, fingers white-knuckling on the plastic casing. “Yeah, sorry Dragon,” she scoffed, “but we value our privacy a little too much for that. The phone we called on has no camera, and we ripped out the GPS locator too. You might be able to triangulate the signal with enough time, but it’s bounced through a relay and we’re in a temporary location anyways.”

“You’ll have to forgive me for the attempt,” Dragon said smoothly, seemingly unbothered by the assertion that she was attempting to track our location even as we spoke, “otherwise I wouldn’t be doing my job.”

“That’s beside the point,” Skitter said. Her left hand fisted where it laid on the table, even as the a buzzing drone intensified hear the door and windows. “We have a problem.”

“Well I’m afraid I’m not likely to be able to help,” Dragon replied, unfazed. “I’m not in the habit of doing the bidding of villains.”

Ice poured down my spine at the way she said it. The superficially pleasant tone covered a naked threat, and a wave of menace rippled out from the tiny speaker and the vast, unstoppable weight of technological power behind it. I saw Tattletale wince, Regent’s lazy smile falter, Grue stiffen. Even Bitch bared her teeth and swallowed, pulling her dog closer. In that moment, Dragon commanded the room without even having a presence in it.

Only Skitter didn’t react. Not visibly, at least. Instead she plowed ahead, stubborn and straightforward as ever.

“We know what happened to Dinah Alcott.”

Dead silence. For a second I was terrified Dragon had broken the connection, then hot on the heels of that came an even less rational fear that she hadn’t, that the utter quiet from the other end of the line was because she’d pushed off from her desk somewhere in Canada and was somehow about to show up in person. I didn’t even realize how fast my heart had started to pound until she spoke again.

“Dinah Alcott. Thirteen years old. Last seen at her home in the company of her parents. She went missing months ago, on the same day as your debut when you robbed a bank. Initially thought to be a kidnapping, no culprits found, presumed dead until Coil’s admission of culpability during a Truce meeting regarding the Nine. Be very careful with what you say next, Skitter.”

I swallowed. I had a few conversations with Dragon at one point or another when I was with Dean. Mostly overhearing her collaborating with Armsmaster for one thing or another. She always struck me as friendly and warm. This… was not that. She was cold, and harsh. This was the voice of a Tinker who had the resources of a small country to draw on, and wasn’t afraid to use them. The calm and frank tone reminded me of an undertaker. Suddenly I couldn’t shake the thought that we’d all just been professionally weighed and measured for extermination, our every bit of data gathered and analyzed down to the last byte. A digital coffin drawn up for each of us.

Skitter’s swarm writhed, but to her credit she didn’t hesitate much before replying. “We’re calling to help save her.”

The silence this time was longer, but no less suffocating. “Explain.”

“You were right to bring up the bank job,” Skitter said, and even her composure was starting to crack now. Not much; barely noticeable to someone who didn’t know her, but she was talking faster, rushing to say her piece before Dragon made up her mind one way or the other. Still, her posture hadn’t changed. “That was a distraction for Coil, our boss, to grab Dinah without interference from the heroes. But he only told us about that after the job was done.”

“Did he,” Dragon said, her voice unreadable. Or at least, unreadable to me. Whatever lay under the flat, level tone, Tattletale definitely picked up some of it. She blanched, and almost stumbled in her pacing. Robotically, she turned back to the table and put the phone down like it would bite her if she jarred it too hard. Grue waved her back with one big, leather-clad arm, planting himself over it and looming like he was planning to throw himself on it if it exploded.

“Coil hired us as a combination of muscle, and small-time petty thieves,” Skitter pressed on. The tremble in her voice was barely noticeable, I had to wonder if the microphone picked up on it at all. “That’s all we were invested in. But by the time we realized what he was using us for, it was too late. Dinah is a Thinker, one of the most powerful precognitives I’ve ever seen. She gives exact odds on future events happening, with no restrictions we’ve encountered yet.”

“Mmm. Yes, Coil said as much when he implied she was with him willingly. I didn’t think much of his claims then, and I’m still waiting to hear why I should believe you now.”

Fuck. I hadn’t considered the Heroes just not believing Dinah’s power was as strong as Skitter claimed. But... well, Coil had talked her up to get everyone to follow his plan. A plan that had left his pet Villain groups in control of most of the city. Lying about a powerful precognitive supporting your plan to get people to do what you wanted was stupid in the long run, but plenty of Villains had done dumber things to get a leg up against their competition. The Heroes couldn’t afford to discount his claims, but they couldn’t just take them on faith, either.

“The power you describe is stronger than any precognitive power I’ve ever heard of,” Dragon continued mercilessly. “Most of the Thinkers the PRT has access to don’t give information anywhere near that accurate or accessible. You can see why I’m inclined to be skeptical.”

Skitter nodded pointlessly. Another sign of nervousness – it wasn’t like Dragon could see her. “Then it should mean something that I’m claiming it anyways when it would be easy to fact check later. Coil knew what her power was. He kidnapped her to use her. He keeps her drugged in a secret location we don’t have access to, presumably for better access to her power.”

I wish I could see Dragon’s face to know how she was reacting to this. I knew I was still barely able to hold in my rage at her plight; at the unfairness, the sheer cruelty this innocent little girl had been exposed to because she was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong power. Because the wrong person wanted to own her.

“We didn’t sign up for this,” Skitter said, her voice wavering ever-so-fractionally. My centipede was scurrying around and around my palm in nervous circles, and I did my best to stroke it soothingly as it moved. Her bugs – I double-took, and had to hold back a wince. Some of her bugs were actively attacking others – no, not attacking. Eating. She was feeding parts of her swarm to the most dangerous ones; the spiders and wasps and dragonflies. Like stress eating, I thought, and had to muffle a hysterical giggle.

“We didn’t know Coil’s power yet,” Skitter continued, even as the swarms began to dim the light coming from the windows, “or his long term plans, so we tried to fix it ourselves instead. To gather resources and intel until we could extract Dinah. I know that he’s already put hits out on at least two of us for this.”

This time I did wince. She’d told me earlier, but I didn’t like to be reminded that she might have died already, in some backhanded way neither of us had even noticed, even if the attempt had failed. In retrospect, all of her precautions from earlier made sense. Spelling out the information on my hand, or only in writing? Long range scanners and directional microphones could make out audio through a window on a building across the street. The bugs on the windows? Screening for snipers. The constant drone of the swarm as we spoke? Sound muffling.

How much danger was she actually in, sharing this? Could she even judge the risks she was taking, or was she knowingly plunging into unknown waters, aware that she’d only find out if there were sharks when the teeth sank in?

“If this is true,” Dragon said slowly, “you should’ve come to someone much earlier.” She still didn’t sound friendly or sympathetic; the pleasant tone she’d started with was long gone. Even if I now suspected it had been a mask from the start. But she wasn’t quite as hostile anymore. The little phone lying on the table wasn’t intimidating us anymore. Instead it was... waiting. Inviting us to plead our case.

“But you didn’t.”

Skitter’s bugs churned. Spiders chewed on mosquitoes and midges, hornets bit the heads off flies. Discarded legs and wings fell to the floor like tiny, chitinous snowflakes. “We thought that with what happened at the Bank, and after, the PRT wouldn’t listen to us. That maybe we’d be taken seriously once we brought down Coil and returned Dinah – that you’d only believe us once we proved we were serious. We… I was wrong. About that.”

I watched her eyes. Not the eyes of the girl underneath; Skitter’s eyes, those eerie yellow lenses trained unerringly on her opponent. Was this Skitter actually admitting fault, accepting that I was right? Or was this just her putting on yet another performance, relaying the information in the way she knew that Dragon would be most likely to accept? I had no idea. But I wanted to believe it was at least a little bit of the former, somewhere in there.

“Well, you’re right about that last part, at least,” Dragon said at length. Her voice crackled harshly. “If you’re really serious about this, you need to tell me everything you have on Coil. Now. Including why you didn’t go to the PRT about this earlier; don’t think I didn’t notice that dodge.”

“That’d be my cue then,” Tattletale said from her side of the table. “He demonstrated his power to me by flipping a coin five times, and having it land heads each time. I called bullshit, and he filled me in on how it works to help him test its limits. Short version: he can split timelines. He gets to choose an action in each one, let them both play out so he sees the end result, then picks the one he wants at any point. I never figured out if it was just a simulated precognition or actual temporal manipulation, but it doesn’t matter. It spoofs my power either way.”

“Spoofs how?” Dragon asked.

“A few days ago I was scrambling to intercept a hit he put out on Skitter’s head, only for it to never have happened.” The bugs around us rose to the sky in a frenzy of activity and violence. I looked around at the writhing swarm and wondered how much of it Dragon could hear.

Tattletale didn’t let any of that stop her. “He taunted me with it, too. And no, I’m not telling you anything further than that. A lady has to keep some secrets.”

“Fine,” Dragon said. “That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t go immediately to the PRT after hearing this. If you could find out that much about Coil, surely the fact that the Wards take in former villains for rehabilitation couldn’t be that hard to find.”

Tattletale glanced around at the rest of the table, weighing her words. I followed her gaze as it lingered on each of them. Bitch, who felt closer to dogs than people and used violence as a first resort for lack of ability or inclination to talk things out. Regent, and the nebulously horrific past Skitter had implied he’d abandoned Hijack to escape. Grue, and whatever drove him to try to take responsibility for leading and protecting these violent, outcast misfits. Skitter, and the myriad of trust issues layered over a heart that wanted to be a hero but went about it in all the wrong ways.

Me.

“Many people in our group have… issues, going to the authorities for help,” Tattletale said carefully. “Personal ones; I’m sure you understand. But there’s a much bigger problem. Coil has extensively infiltrated the PRT. While I have the names of some that I’ve confirmed, I can’t be sure that I’ve gotten all of them. If we go to the PRT, my power has me dead or worse within a week.”

“A convincing incentive to keep your distance,,” Dragon allowed. “Provided you’re not lying about any of this.”

“Then don’t take our word for it,” Skitter said suddenly. I looked at her, shocked. What?

Dragon evidently felt similarly. I half expected the phone camera to shutter in a startled blink. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t trust us,” she said, on a roll now. “You have no reason to. Investigate the information yourself. If you set up some kind of a dead drop, Tattletale can get you the basic information in writing. Coil’s power and everything she has on its limits, whatever we know about Dinah and the time frame involved, all our work on his secret identity, his base, people in his employ, moles, the works. Use your resources and the PRT’s to check it all, do your own research in parallel. Verify all of our data. This is much bigger than any of us in this room, and you know it. You can’t afford to ignore it.”

The little phone sat on the plastic surface of the folding table like a lead weight on the lungs of hope.

“And this would have nothing to do with my orders to come to the Bay to bring you in?”

We all froze.

Fuck.

“I’m not sure what you’re talking about, Dragon,” Skitter said, her voice even. The movement of the bugs around us implied anything but beneath the surface.

“Don’t bother wondering if you gave something away. I don’t need to be on call with a phone to use its microphone.”

As one, the Undersiders took a step back from the phone on the table. But my stomach was sinking. Because Dragon hadn’t known about the phone she was talking through. It was a burner, and I doubted she could monitor every device in the city. The microphone wouldn’t be passively on, either. To do what she was implying, she’d need to know the phone existed, connect to it, turn on the microphone and listen in from there.

I didn’t dare look down. My cell – the one I’d called Carol with – was burning a hole in my pocket so hot it singed my thigh. If I drew the slightest bit of attention to it, Skitter would know.

Thank fuck, she was too focused on Dragon to think about it. “That’s a huge invasion of privacy–” she began heatedly.

“Which is well within my directive if I’m talking to known terrorists,” Dragon finished, ice-calm.

Skitter bristled. “Then I don’t know exactly what you’re asking,” she said, her swarm drawing inward to wreath her, hanging over her shoulders like a queen’s mantle.

“I’m asking if this is an attempt to get me to try and countermand my orders in favor of getting your superior out of the way so you can make a play for the Bay. And I’m asking if you seriously think I am so easy to manipulate.”

Skitter’s shoulders tensed. I could almost hear the sounds of her teeth grinding. “Dragon, this is bigger than that. There’s a child at risk–”

“Don’t try to pretend that you have the moral high ground here, Skitter,” Dragon said, her voice harsh and unyielding. I gulped. “The Undersiders crossed a line with Shadow Stalker, don’t think that we’ve forgotten about that. We may have been forced to overlook it for convenience, but we haven’t forgotten. The same is true for Regent using his powers on people in his territory. If you’ve done the same to Victoria, or are using Dinah as a means to deflect blame away from your group, there will be consequences, that I can promise you.”

It was quiet, but I heard Skitter take a shaky breath. For a moment, the insects around us calmed. “So it’s wrong for us to cross a line with Shadow Stalker, but totally okay for Armsmaster to try and murder me during an Endbringer fight,” she gritted out. “Fine. If that’s how it’s going to be, fine.”

The swarm around her came back to life, a harsh black screen swirling hard enough to make me flinch. “But you have to admit this much.” Her words were a whip. “If we crossed a line, it was Coil who pushed us there. He was the one who outed the E88. He was the one who kidnapped a child, who repurposed an Endbringer shelter for his own private base. This is bigger than us, than the Rules. He has to be stopped. If what happens to us is a different conversation… fine. But don’t you dare forget that we were the ones to reach out this time.”

Dragon sighed. “I can give you that much, Skitter. Thank you. Tattletale, I’ll send you the details for where to dead-drop that information, so hold off on destroying this device until then. Understand that this is not me promising to not follow my orders. As far as I’m concerned, the Undersiders are public enemy number one right now. If that changes, well, I can’t publicly comment on internal PRT policy. And I don’t make a habit of negotiating with terrorists.”

Skitter drew herself up, ready to fight, but I quickly laid a hand on her arm. She stopped, staring at me. I shook my head. I think I knew what Dragon was doing here, and it was more complicated than it looked on the surface level. But if Skitter opened her mouth right now, it would ruin the delicate negotiation at play.

“I guess we’ll be hearing from you one way or another soon then,” Tattletale said, trying to make a joke.

“Something like that,” Dragon said. “I’ll be in touch. Oh and one last thing. Victoria?”

I startled, looking up. She hadn’t really addressed me for the entire conversation up to this point.

“I know from the PRT that you can’t talk. And I’ve seen enough of the debrief to read between the lines. I’ll respect your privacy but… I hope you’re doing okay. And know that if you want a safe place to stay, with the Wards or otherwise, you have options.”

I sniffled, trying to keep the water in my eyes from spilling over. Dragon was the first… adult to speak to me like that. After Amy. God. It was hard to believe when I put it like that, but it was still true.

“T-thank you,” I said, my voice raspy and weak.

“You’re welcome, Victoria,” Dragon said gently. “And as for the rest of you… take care. Or I’ll make my displeasure felt. I have a lot of resources at my disposal.”

She disconnected from the call with a soft click.

Chapter Text

The soft click of the call disconnecting sounded unnaturally loud in the still air of the warehouse, but I felt like I could breathe again in its wake.

I had just enough time for a relieved sigh before nearly jumping out of my skin.

“So, I think I speak for all of us when I say what the fuck was that?”

Imp. She was leaning against the far wall now, where she’d been behind me before the call. I’d lost track of her when she’d... when had I lost track at her? I couldn’t even pin down when she’d slipped out of awareness again. Goddamn Strangers.

Regent seemed more used to her popping in and out of memory. He casually twirled his scepter, knocking it against the table. “I dunno, I figure it went pretty well,” he drawled, tossing it to his other hand and waving it like a flag. “Big scary Dragon lady called us out on our shit, knows exactly where we live, gave no firm promises on helping us in any way, and confirmed that she’s still coming. Plus, we just betrayed our boss for possibly nothing. Sounds great to me. Anyone want a cushy spot in jail? I know a guy.”

“We are not going to jail,” Skitter said forcefully, her bugs humming under her words for emphasis. “One way or another, we’re getting out of this. If that means we have to fight Dragon, we knew that was happening already. This just gives us another option we didn’t have before.”

“Maybe,” Grue allowed, “but you heard her. We’re still ‘public enemy number one’, right? That doesn’t sound like a guarantee of safety to me.”

I clenched my fists. I knew what Dragon had been saying–and deliberately not saying–during that call, but I didn’t know whether spelling it out here was the right call. Or whether they’d even trust anything coming from me, after I’d pushed the idea of talking to Dragon in the first place.

As if hearing my thoughts on the matter, Grue turned to me. “I hope you know that you're with us on this now, Glory Girl. No backing out just because you got cold feet.”

I tried not to bristle visibly at that, and took a couple of deep breaths. I looked away from him, not in fear, but to look at Skitter instead, matching her breathing by habit. He didn’t know me, not like she did. For all he knew, my promises were as empty as my ability to voice them.

“She said she’d do it,” Skitter said, turning to Grue. “She did the same for me before. I don’t see why this would be different now.”

“Saving you from Flechette was one thing,” Grue said, not taking his gaze off me. “That was spur of the moment and defending you personally. This is willingly associating with us ahead of time. It’s not unreasonable to be suspicious. You, of all people, should be wary of someone close betraying you. Hero or not.”

Skitter’s back straightened like he’d rammed a steel rod down it. Her fists tightened, the centipede still hidden in my palm froze for a second and then began writhing furiously. Even I could see that he’d just stomped on a landmine. I had no idea what it meant or what buried bit of soft tissue he’d aimed for, but it had hit. Hard.

He’d known it would hurt her, and he’d said it anyway.

“That’s low, Grue,” she said eventually.

“But not entirely out of the question,” Tattletale cut in, setting the phone down on the table. Or rather, what remained of it. She had done everything but take it apart screw by screw.

“I’ve sent Dragon the info. This phone is obviously a lost cause. I don’t know how she tapped it, but it doesn’t matter. It’s in pieces now, and I’ll dispose of them once we leave. That just leaves what comes next.”

“We keep our heads down for a few days,” Grue said, idly tightening his leather gloves. “No fights with heroes until we figure out what’s going on, one way or another.”

“Fuck that,” Bitch said, standing up suddenly. “You don’t tell me what to do in my territory. If some fucker wants to hurt my dogs, I’m not letting him go. The heroes can go fuck–”

Her back slammed against the wall.

“Enough!” Grue snapped, pinning her to the wall with a forearm across her throat and catching her right hand with his left. She was stocky and strong, but he was bigger and stronger; it wouldn’t have been a fair fight even if he hadn’t caught her mid-sentence. Differences in size aside, it was eerily similar to what Skitter had done when she’d taken me to visit her that first time.

“F-fuck you,” Bitch wheezed, driving a fist into Grue’s ribs that he didn’t even react to. Between the bad angle she was punching at and the motorcycle leathers, I wasn’t even sure he felt it.

“No one is telling you to let the heroes hurt your dogs. Just don’t pick fights. Clear?” Grue said, staring her down. The skull-mask beneath the dark visor was so close it almost pressed into her face. She tried to wrestle away to the side, but he tightened his grip on her wrist, leaning more weight on the forearm he had across her throat until she was struggling for breath. “I said: is that clear?”

Teeth bared, her free hand scrabbling at his arm, she nodded, and he slowly released his grip. She took a few wheezing gulps of air as she got her breath back, rubbing her throat, and then spat to the side. She seemed mostly unbothered that her team leader had effectively just wrestled her into compliance, though. I… didn’t even want to begin to unpack that.

“Does that mean I don’t get to do any pranks?” Imp whined from the opposite side of the room. I jumped. Fuck. I had forgotten she was there. Again. That was going to get annoying fast.

Skitter sighed. “You can still mess with people,” she allowed. “Just keep it non-lethal and temporary.”

“Aww, but that rules out all the good ideas!” Imp pouted.

“That’s probably for the best,” Grue muttered as he looked over at her. I chalked up another point in the ‘family’ theory; that was definitely Crystal’s tone when talking about Eric doing something stupid.

Except it wasn’t. The thought hit me from behind like a knife to the ribs. She would never use that tone again.

Eric was dead.

I was almost glad that Imp was still talking, providing a distraction for me to focus on instead of the unexpected gut-punch of grief and pain. Even if I’d been able to speak, the lump in my throat would have stopped me. I had to blink away tears as I listened to her complain.

“What are you talking about? I have the best ideas! I told you guys to talk to Dragon, and that turned out great! Plus, there was this fucker on Regent’s turf, and I had this great plan to set him on fire–”

“Aaand that’s why they don’t trust you,” Regent cut in. “See, if you wanna do that stuff you gotta plan it quietly, so they only find out after the fact. That’s how I get away with it.”

Imp nodded sagely, as if taking down this advice. I tried not to shudder when Regent glanced back at me. I remembered what Dragon said, about him Mastering people in his territory. I knew he still had Shatterbird somewhere, her mind caged inside a prison of flesh. Wide awake, fully aware, but completely helpless as he jerked her this way and that on phantom puppet strings, using her however he wanted. Never knowing what her traitorous body would do next, dreading every waking moment.

She didn’t deserve sympathy. She was a mass-murdering monster who’d killed thousands, probably tens of thousands of innocent people. But he could have given her up to the PRT. The Nine were gone, and there were no other big threats left in the Bay that warranted keeping her in that kind of torture, much less anyone else.

Which meant he was doing it for no other reason than because he could. I edged closer to Skitter and shuddered.

“Anything else we should know?” Grue said, turning to Tattletale.

“Not much, boss.” She added the last word almost belatedly. “I couldn’t get much off of Dragon; I think she was hedging, leaving her options open. She could be here tomorrow to bring us in, she could never come, or she could land right on top of Coil in his civvies. Fuck if I know.”

“Well that sounds like great fun,” Regent said, standing up with a theatrical yawn. “I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t wanna be caught here when Dragon decides to get off her ass. I’m headed back. Call me if you care. Or don’t.”

“Wait, Regent–” Skitter started as he strolled towards the door.

“Don’t bother,” Imp interrupted. “I’m going–”

“What about you, Tattletale?” Skitter asked.

“Much as I hate to admit it, I think Regent has the right idea,” she replied. “We aren’t really accomplishing much staying here. Head back to your headquarters. Don’t make waves, but prepare for the worst. The usual, really.”

She snorted at her own humorless joke and got up to leave. Bitch had already headed outside without a word, which didn’t surprise me. She didn’t exactly seem like the type to say goodbye. That left me, Skitter, and Grue.

I tried not to stare or fidget as they stood in silence for a moment. There was obviously some kind of tension between them, though what kind exactly I couldn’t tell. Was it an authority issue? Grue was nominally the leader, but Skitter and Tattletale had run much of the call and aftermath today. Or maybe it was something more… personal.

My stomach clenched. I didn’t want to think about Skitter selling me out because her team leader asked her to. It felt shameful and unfair to even think that little of her. But with so much hanging in the air, I couldn’t help but wonder.

“I hope you’re happy now,” Grue said, at length.

Skitter’s bugs rose and fell in a wave across the walls. “You know it’s not that simple.”

“It never is, is it?”

They stared at each other for another charged moment. For an absurd second, I almost thought it was going to turn into another fight. It certainly felt like they were poised on the brink of something fast and violent. The awkward, halting conversation was a creaking dike holding back a flash flood. I could almost hear the water straining to breach its banks and devastate everything downstream.

But whatever they had chained up between them, today wasn’t the day it broke free.

“Stay out of trouble, Skitter,” Grue said as he turned to leave.

“You too,” Skitter said, not watching as he left.

The door closed, and it was just the two of us.

Skitter slumped, dropping into the nearest chair. She looked smaller like this, not towering over me like usual. She was so tall and slim that most of the time she looked like an adult. But sitting like this, back bowed and head resting on the arm she had propped up on the table, I could see every inch of weight she carried. Physical and otherwise.

I considered reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder, before I thought better of it. I remembered how she’d reacted last time, and I could hardly begrudge her an aversion to touch, not when I felt the same way. Not to mention, with her lying on her right arm I could only reach the one she’d been stabbed through. I didn’t dare touch her there, not when it was probably hurting. So instead I sat down across from her and waited.

Eventually, she sighed.

“Well, that couldn’t have gone much worse.”

I shook my head.

“Really?” Skitter asked, not looking up. “You’re gonna have to explain that one to me. We just gave up our best advantage against the Tinker we know is coming to arrest us. We didn’t learn anything we didn’t already know. She didn’t promise anything or offer any chance at amnesty. We betrayed our boss, so now we’re fucked when he finds out. And the others all think I fucked up. Even if most won’t say it to my face.”

I swallowed. That was… a lot, true. But I could break it down one piece at a time.

“She already knew you knew she was coming,” I signed. Her head was still resting on her arm away from me, but I knew she was paying attention, somehow. If she couldn’t keep track of what I was saying, she’d have moved. She wasn’t the kind of person who let details slip just because she was tired.

“And of course you didn’t hear anything new,” I added. “This was about you reaching out to her.”

“Fine,” Skitter said, dull and listless, “but that doesn’t solve my other problems.”

I struggled to hold in a sigh. “Of course she didn’t tell you anything. Why would she?”

“What do you mean ‘why would she?’ We just told her everything she wanted to know!” Skitter snapped. Her free arm fisted on the edge of the table and she ground her knuckles into the cheap plastic surface.

“Yes,” I signed patiently, “you did. But she has no way of knowing you’re telling the truth right now. She can’t make promises to anyone who gives her a crying story. You wouldn’t either, in her place.”

“And the bit about calling us terrorists was just harmless name calling, then?”

“No. It was a hint.”

A moment of silence, and Skitter sat up and looked at me, alert, focused, the weariness receding as fast as it had come on. “Explain.”

I swallowed, rubbing the meat of my thumb and flexing my fingers. My hands were hurting again, a twinging tired ache in my joints that went down to the bone, but this was important. “When she said she doesn’t talk with t-e-r-r-o-r-i-s-t-s, it was a threat. But it was also a way out.”

“I’m still confused,” Skitter said.

Oh my god, this girl… “It means don’t be terrorists, and she might be able to talk with you. Think about it from her angle. Even if she knew you were telling the truth, she’s a part of the government right now. She’s been told to capture you. She can’t be seen making deals with enemies of the state. But if you try and clean up your reputation…”

She paused, considering my point. “That’s a hell of a bet to take. She didn’t say any of that outright.”

“She can’t, and you know it,” I replied.

“What if you’re wrong? What if Dragon attacks tomorrow? What are you going to do?”

Bile rose in my throat. “That’s not fair,” I signed.

Skitter’s fist clenched again on the table. “Maybe not. But it could happen. If the next time a hero decides to push me down in the dirt and–”

She looked down. My hand was covering hers. I hadn’t even noticed reaching out, but I didn’t take it back. We stared at each other.

“I’m n-not leaving,” I said.

She stared at me. “Even if Dragon comes?”

I nodded, pulling my hand back.

“I still think I’m right. But if I’m not, then at the very least I stay and deal with my mistakes.”

Skitter snorted. “That’s one better than most heroes do around me.”

I gave her a pained smile at that. I couldn’t help but wonder how we would’ve met if things had been different. What exactly had gotten Skitter into villainy? There were still decisions she made that gave me pause. Of course there were. But in moments like this, I could almost see another girl. One who went to the Wards. Who became an independent Hero somewhere else. Who could’ve been a really good one.

What happened to that girl? What changed?

“I guess we should get back to the hideout,” Skitter said, breaking my train of thought. She got up and stretched. “Charlotte is probably getting worried at this point, and we need to tell her to order food supplies ahead of time just in case.”

“Why?”

“Because if Dragon is coming, I can’t afford to take any chances. I might get taken in, or pinned down somewhere else. I’m not leaving the kids in the wind like that.”

I smiled at her, even as I got up myself. “Fair enough.”

I tried to turn over my thoughts as we walked to the door. I wanted to ask her something but… in light of what Grue said earlier, I wasn’t sure if now was the best time. There was already a great deal of tension between her and her team, and if I kept asking for favors it might get worse. At the same time, while I could do it alone… I wanted her there. I was selfish enough to admit that. But I don’t know if I had the right to–

“What is it?”

I startled, looking up at where Skitter had stopped ahead of me. “Your shoulders are tense, and you’re squeezing the centipede.”

My fingers sprang open in panic, fast enough that I almost sent the little insect flying off me. It quickly scurried around the back of my hand before jumping off into the grip of a pair of beetles–presumably to rejoin the rest of the swarm. At least I hadn’t killed it.

“You clearly have a question,” Skitter said, graciously not mentioning my reaction. “What is it?”

I swallowed again, and asked.

“I need to talk to the Heroes. And I want you there for it.”

Chapter Text

"Charlotte, contact Forrest and Sierra and tell them to drop whatever they're doing and get back here," Skitter ordered as soon as she opened the door of the hideout. We hadn't said anything on the way back; Skitter hadn't been willing to risk it when we didn't know who was watching. After the details on Coil and the call with Dragon, I couldn't blame her for her paranoia.

"Boss? What's up? Why didn't you call?" Charlotte asked, quickly getting up off the couch where she had been playing some kind of a board game with the kids. The others – Marcus and Shay today – stood to attention but didn't speak. Maybe didn't dare speak, feeling the charged intensity crackling off Skitter like static electricity. Skitter's henchmen were mostly in the base on a rotating basis; Sierra, Forrest and Charlotte were the only full-timers. I hadn't interacted much with the others, but Shay and Marcus had at least been polite to me when I'd run into them a few days ago.

"Can't call," Skitter said shortly, closing the door and locking it. "That reminds me; assume anything with a microphone is being tapped by Dragon, especially phones. There's nothing we can do to stop her, but we can limit calls to emergencies."

She turned to the other two minions still standing to attention. "Secure the base. Shay, I want you fastening the shutters on the windows. The metal ones are down in the basement. Tighten the screws firmly, the tolerances on them aren't great. Close the lower sewer entrance and switch on the motion sensors. After that take inventory of the supplies in the basement. I want an itemized list of how much food, hygiene supplies and bottled water we have. Project how many days we have of standard use of each."

Shay nodded and ran towards the lower stairs, her long legs quickly eating up the distance. Skitter focused on Marcus. "You're on babysitting duty. The kids are going to notice the commotion, and we need to do this too fast to bother hiding it. They're going to get anxious, if not worse. We can't afford to have to deal with a full on meltdown in the middle of this. Distract them. Board games, a movie, I don't care if they ask you about what your grandmother ate last weekend. Keep them occupied. If I have to split my attention to handle anything, I won't be happy."

Marcus swallowed, a trickle of sweat beading down his neck. "Got it," he said before speed walking towards the living room where the kids were.

Before I could process any of that, Skitter was addressing Charlotte again. "Where are Forrest and Sierra at the moment?"

"T-they're out," She said, looking from side to side. Her eyes were wide at how quickly and fiercely Skitter had started rapping out orders, but her answer was prompt, reflex driving her mouth for a moment as her brain caught up. Her voice got stronger as she continued, finding her feet and settling back into the mold of Skitter's professional lieutenant. "David needed a stronger inhaler for his asthma. There was some kind of gunfight up towards the Trainyard and a bunch of vehicles got set on fire; the smoke's been blowing over and setting him off all day. Sierra was going to restock on medical supplies in general while she picked up the inhaler, and Forrest didn't trust that she'd be fine on her own so–"

"That's fine," Skitter cut her off. "The gunfight up near the Trainyard; was it anything to do with us?"

"I don't think so? We haven't heard much else about it."

"Have someone find out. You help Marcus get the kids settled and then meet us up in my room on the top floor as soon as you can. We need to talk about things going forward."

Charlotte's eyes hardened. "You got it boss." She shot a passing glare at me as she went back to soothe the kids in the living room, who by the sounds of it were getting increasingly anxious.

Looking at Skitter, I could hardly blame them. She always tended to keep a supply of bugs hidden on her, but they were never obvious. I only noticed because I spent so much time in close proximity. Right now though, her costume was a writhing suit of mandibles and shells and twitching legs, insects covering almost every possible gap. It felt like a defensive reaction, armoring herself in carapaces, jaws and stingers.

"Let's go," she said, starting to walk up the stairs.

I followed after her, barely parsing the words. This wasn't the first time she'd let me into her space. I'd been up here before, after Flechette had impaled her at Parian's base.

I suppressed a shudder, wrapping my arms around myself as we reached the second floor landing. That had been a nightmare. I'd seen worse injuries, sure. Some that… I had caused. But I usually had… well. Other options available to treat them. In Dolltown I hadn't even been sure Skitter would live, never mind if she would be permanently maimed.

But this time was different. This wasn't out of necessity. Or if it was, it was still Skitter making the choice to include me. She could've just told Charlotte whatever she needed to in private, but instead she wanted me involved. I couldn't help but think that had something to do with the meeting with the Undersiders we'd just come from.

"I'm n-not leaving."

I could still hear my broken words echoing mockingly in my ears. Was I really prepared to back them up? When things went south, as they inevitably seemed to when Skitter was involved? I didn't know if I could say I would, now that the moment of adrenaline had passed and reality was sinking in. But I did know that this was a display of trust on her part. I had to respect that.

Skitter paused right in front of the door to the third story. I waited behind her. Was she having second thoughts? Was this too much?
"Victoria…"

I held my breath.

But Skitter just sighed. "It's nothing."

It wasn't, but she pushed the door open and stepped through before I could decide whether to call her on it. I slowly made my way up and into the room after her. I had seen Skitter's room before, and it was as spartan as I remembered. But now that I had the time to actually look around, a few details stuck out.

A bookshelf occupied the far wall opposite me, stuffed to the brim. Mostly classic English literature from what I could see, though I recognized a few sci-fi novels mixed in among them.

More important than the content of the books, though, was what they represented. Books were extremely susceptible to the elements – especially water damage and mold. Combined with the ever-present insects surrounding Skitter's territory, few paperbacks would have lasted long past Leviathan, nevermind the weeks since. But these were obviously well cared for.

That meant one of two things. Either Skitter had carried a personal supply that she'd cared for the entire time, or she had these books imported. Likely from the same person–Coil, I reminded myself–who supplied her terrariums. Either way; Skitter clearly cared about reading a lot more than she let on to anyone outside of this room.

A small desk sat at the other end of the room, with a lamp and an old laptop with a screensaver running. I tried not to look any closer. I could tell from the papers and cork board above that this was where Skitter ran the logistics side of her territory. And while she had trusted me to be here, I didn't want to push that with a repeat of the first night I was here.

The only other object of note was her bed; a plain affair with white sheets and a navy blue pillow. Functional. The bedside table beside it however, grabbed my attention and riveted it to what lay there. A well worn, dog eared guide to American Sign language. The same book she had given me weeks ago. There were sticky notes all throughout it, and the spine was visibly creased.

What… did... had she not known sign language before I came? All this time, I'd just assumed she'd known it for ages, that she must have offered the book as a way to communicate in a language she was already fluent in. But this... this said otherwise.

Had she been learning ASL this whole time, just to be able to understand me?

I turned to her, hands mid-motion to sign my question, but Skitter was already staring at me. I froze.

"I never said I'd only gotten one copy," she said, jerking her head towards the bedside table. That… wasn't even remotely the question I wanted to ask. But Charlotte's heavy footsteps came rushing up the stairs before I could reorganize my thoughts.

"Okay boss, the kids are okay. Marcus is looking after them. Mind telling me what the hell is going on?"

Skitter gave her a sharp look, but didn't chastise her. "I said the phones were tapped. By Dragon."

We both nodded.

Skitter took a breath. "Victoria told me earlier that she had information that Dragon was coming to Brockton in person to arrest the Undersiders."

"What?" Charlotte gasped, taking an instinctive step back. "They can't do that! You said–"

"Evidently I was wrong," Skitter replied, turning to stare moodily at the cork board. "I have to admit at least that much. I've put you, Sierra, Forrest and the kids at risk."

There was a pause, before Charlotte firmed her jaw and stepped forward. "That's not your fault, boss. We all chose to be here. You would've let anyone leave if they wanted to. Her included," she said, jerking her head at me. "This isn't on you."

"Maybe. Maybe not." Skitter's shoulders slumped for a moment, but then she straightened her back and folded her arms behind her, turning back to us. "In any case, we need to deal with this now. For the moment, treat Dragon as an active threat. If any of you hear the sound of approaching turbines or anything resembling a Dragonflight, get back to the hideout as fast as you can. That, or go to ground. Whatever's safer."

"And what about you?" Charlotte asked, her eyes hard.

"I'll do what I must," Skitter said. "Just like always. There's a chance that we might be able to solve the Dragon issue without fighting, but assume otherwise unless I say so. What's Shay's report on our resources?"

Charlotte frowned. "She's not done taking inventory yet, but probably enough for a few days. Not much more than that, though. Our resupply is due soon, so we weren't accounting for much of a buffer past that."

"That won't be enough," Skitter muttered to herself, before addressing Charlotte again. "I'll get in contact with Coil, ask for an advance on supplies. I'll fill you in on the details once it's been arranged, just get it inside and squared away as fast as you can. I'll try to shoot for a week for safety, but no promises. Have the kids start rationing now, just in case."

"They won't like that," Charlotte warned.

"They'll like starving less," Skitter replied grimly.

Well. Neither of us could argue with that.

"What about Forrest and Sierra? They're still out," Charlotte asked. I'd half forgotten them in the intense discussion. They were more distant than Charlotte; I hadn't spent much time around either of them. Maybe this would be a chance to get to know them better, I thought with a thin slant of a smile. Fleeing from the wrath of an unstoppable draconic cape who'd taken on an Endbringer solo had to be a great bonding experience, right?

It might be gallows humor, but the sarcasm made me feel a little better. I knew better than to share it with Skitter or Charlotte, though.

"If you've called them back, they should be here soon," Skitter said. "It's not worth risking breaking comms to tell them anything. If they're six hours behind or later, we assume they're captured or otherwise inaccessible and plan accordingly. I'll do what I can for them. Otherwise, tell them what we talked about here once they arrive."

"Fine," Charlotte said. "I can do that. Although…"

"What?"

"...what do I tell the kids?"

Skitter paused. My breath caught in my chest. "Tell them… that we're running low on food," she decided after a moment's hesitation. "We're going to get more soon, but they need to hold tight until then. Blame me if it helps."

Charlotte nodded, gave me a glance, then hurried downstairs to start breaking the news to the children.

I looked at Skitter. If her shoulders were slumped before, they looked leaden now. She rolled her left shoulder, then rolled it again, one hand coming up thoughtlessly to rub at it like she was trying to massage out a sore muscle. The flinch as her fingers made contact was so subtle that I barely caught it, and didn't stop her from trying to squeeze the tension out of her overstressed neck.

I couldn't blame her for being exhausted, not really. I knew that we had done the right thing, contacting Dragon. But it was a lot harder to see that when these were the kinds of conversations that resulted.

"Victoria," Skitter said. She paused for a moment, as if unable to find the next words. "Explain what you said earlier."

I bit my lip. It felt almost hypocritical after that last conversation, but this was probably the most privacy we were going to have for a while. Definitely the most privacy we had available right now. If I didn't ask now, I wouldn't ever. But first I needed to clear the air.

"Before I start, I need to apologize. I think I led Dragon here."

Instantly Skitter's body bristled, the insects spilling out of her hair and over her silk in a wave of stingers, mandibles and pincers. "Go on." Her voice was deceptively flat.

I swallowed, and tried not to tremble as I signed, "My phone. We used it to text Carol earlier. I think she was listening in on that and not Tattletale's burner."

She stared at me for a long moment. I resisted the urge to hold my breath through force of will. I didn't want to look at the swarm surrounding us to know how she felt. After what felt like minutes, the tension bled out of her shoulders. "That figures."

I didn't try to mask my shock. "What?"

Skitter let out something approaching a laugh, sharp and bitter. "Of course our early warning ends up leading her right to us. That's just my luck."

Looking at it like that, I could see the dark irony in the situation. But I had to draw her attention back to the unspoken issue. "But I didn't bring it up when I realized in the meeting."

She sighed. "You didn't. But we didn't say much she didn't already know, and I technically gave you the thing. It's not like it was on purpose, and you did turn it off after… right?"

I nodded frantically after she let the question hang. I'd done that almost as soon as we left the building and started walking back, trying not to show how scared I was that I'd doomed us before we even started.

Skitter nodded. Her bugs shifted to her back and hair again, scratching as they went over her armor plating. "Then you did what you could. I can work with that." That was… better than I expected. Though her reasoning made sense.

We sat in silence for a moment, before Skitter spoke up again. "You still haven't explained why you want to talk to the heroes, though."

"My mom is defending Amy. I need to confront the Protectorate about it. And I want you with me."

Skitter's sudden bark of laughter surprised me. Even the insects on her person responded, their wings and legs fluttering in a harsh buzzing sound. Something in my chest twisted. I knew it was a hard ask but I hadn't expected to be mocked for it.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Skitter managed, "but this really is too funny. We just had that whole conversation with Grue about laying low, not getting mixed up in anything high profile. And now you want to confront the Protectorate in the open, with me right beside you. Do you remember what happened the last time I met a hero?"

She rolled her shoulder again for emphasis, and I flinched. No, I hadn't forgotten that nightmare. But this was important. I wouldn't be asking if it wasn't.

"This is different."

"I don't see how. Or why you need me there."

I swallowed tightly. "Because Dragon is coming. She doesn't trust that I'm not mind controlled, and I don't blame her. If she gets there early while I'm talking and restrains me, I'll go back to the Heroes. And they can't guarantee that I won't go right back home to Carol. To her."

Skitter's entire body language changed. The moths and hornets and beetles covering her flew up and off her in one fluid wave, casting themselves away to reveal the chitin and silk beneath.

"Well. That changes things. You want me for, what, protection?"

I nodded.

"Mmm. What's the other reason though? If Dragon comes, it's still going to be difficult to get away even if I'm there. You might even have better odds alone – you're faster than I am. There must be something else."

I bit my lip, resisting the urge to glance at her swarm. I knew she'd see if I did. I knew – or at least suspected – by this point that she emoted through her bugs. But I didn't want to take my eyes away from hers. "I said earlier to not be terrorists, this is part of that. You show to the Heroes that you can talk without fighting. And I show them I'm not under your control."

There was a pause. Her yellow eyes glimmered. "I still don't buy it," she said. "There's something else. Something you're hiding." I could hear the suspicion in her tone, but in a weird way it almost reassured me. She could hide it under her emotionless facade if she wanted to. I could hear it in her voice because she was letting me.

And she was right. There was something else. But I was hoping not to have to spell it out plainly. But apparently she was getting as good at reading me as I was at reading her. I took a deep breath.

"Because I want you there."

Skitter tilted her head. Aside from that, she'd gone utterly still. Had I surprised her? The urge to look at the swarm was overwhelming, but I clamped down on the temptation, locking my eyes with hers, widening them a little. I knew she wasn't heartless. I was willing to put on a pleading look and tug at her sympathy if it got me her help here, even if it felt manipulative.

"I'm gonna be talking to the Heroes. People I know. They want me to come back to them, and while I have reasons not to, it's hard to remember that in the moment. I'm afraid I'll say yes because they ask, not because I want to. I want a reminder of why I left."

There it was. That was all I had for this selfish, stupid request. Because, for some godforsaken reason, I couldn't imagine doing this without Skitter at my side. And I wanted this badly enough that I was willing to accept that cost.

"You're that serious," Skitter said, her tone almost wondering.

I nodded.

"Alright."

I blinked. Was it that easy?

Skitter seemed to sense my confusion, and laughed softly. "Honestly, I'm always willing to throw down with the heroes. I'll be nice about it this time, sure, but you're telling me I have an opportunity to throw their double standards right back in their faces? I'll take it."

I… wouldn't put it quite like that. "You still can't fight them outright."

"Yes, I know that," Skitter said. I could hear the smirk in her voice, though I wasn't sure it was entirely friendly. "That doesn't mean I won't come."

She paused for a moment, and before I could interject she spoke again, her voice hard. "But we don't tell them first."

I blinked. Wait what? We'd just… let them find us? That meant we'd be surprising them in the open, and taking our chances on who found us. That defied the entire point of the exercise! We needed to be open to show Skitter could be reasoned with. "We need to tell them first though. The last time we ran into the Heroes by surprise it didn't go well."

"Yes, but in case you didn't notice we don't exactly have the element of surprise anymore," Skitter drawled. I tried to hide my mortification at the pointed edge of her words. "The phone may not have been your fault, but reaching out now would be. I know a standard patrol route, we'll take who we get. I won't start a fight, but I will finish it. Anything further is on them."

"But–"

"No," Skitter cut me off mid-word. "You want to meet the heroes, and against my better judgement I'm willing to try because it's important. But we do it on my terms, or not at all." Her words were iron, and fell with as much weight. I tried not to shudder at the finality of it.

"...Fine," I signed. I wasn't happy about this, and I didn't bother hiding it. But Skitter had already done far more for me than I could have asked, and we both knew it.

"And while we're at it, I want to take a few days to finish securing the base," she added belatedly. "I won't feel comfortable leaving my territory until I can trust things are finished between inventory and perimeter security."

I nodded absentmindedly. That much made sense. No, it was her first condition that worried me. It wasn't great, optics wise. Surprising the Heroes instead of reaching out meant they'd be on the defensive, and we might get someone like Assault who would ruin our chance before we started. But I could make it work so long as she didn't antagonize whoever we ran into too much. I might be able to make this work. Though… there was one last thing I could do to hedge our bets.

"What is it?" Skitter asked, apparently sensing unspoken thought. Her voice was sharp.

My hands shook as I brought them up to sign. "I want to wash out the dye from my hair."

Skitter stared at me. For the first time, I blushed. Holding her gaze earlier had been a plea to sway her. This felt more like I was the one being exposed. But I didn't look away. I couldn't, even if I wanted to. This was too important.

"Victoria," she said softly, "if this is about what Grue said earlier, you don't need to prove yourself. I know this isn't a set up–"

"It's not about that," I signed.

"Then what?"

I swallowed. I knew I had to do this right, if I was going to do it at all I wanted Skitter by my side for this, but I couldn't hide behind her. Physically or otherwise. I didn't stand behind all that Skitter did, but she was sticking her neck out for me. The least I could do was match that.

"If I'm with you, then I'm with you. No hiding."

Skitter didn't say anything, but I'd like to think she was smiling.

Chapter Text

Three days later, under a wet and dreary sky, I fingered the newly golden locks of my hair as I walked beside Skitter down towards the Bay. I'd had to wake up early to wash all the hair dye out; Skitter had wanted to conserve water. I wasn't about to get in the shower either, so I'd ended up washing most of it out in the sink. Coil's resupply hadn't shown up, something about logistical difficulties. Skitter was not happy, but there'd been nothing from Dragon either, so it wasn't all bad. She'd decided it was better to get this out of the way now before anything else had the chance to go wrong. I couldn't disagree.

I glanced up, seeing pale yellow in the fringe in the corner of my eye again. Some darker streaks remained, but for the most part I was blonde again.

It had been strange, seeing my true hair color again in the mirror for the first time. The girl staring back at me had seemed caught between two times. On the surface she looked like nothing had happened. Clear skin, long golden hair, short unpainted nails and all. But her eyes… they were harder. Her hands were clenched preemptively around the tassels of her hoodie, turning the slightly grubby fabric into a suit of armor against unwanted eyes. Her clothes were dark and baggy.

Her mouth was tight and shut.

"We're almost to the Boardwalk," Skitter said, drawing me out of my reverie. "How do you want to do this?"

I frowned, glancing at her. "Do what?" I signed, careful not to disturb the centipede in my hand. Skitter had wisely suggested using it as a replacement for the phone panic button for as long as Dragon remained a threat.

"Get the attention of the Protectorate?" Skitter said, as if explaining something obvious. "We can just walk around and hope they run into us, but that might take hours."

I frowned. "I could fly us?"

Skitter shook her head. "Too small of a target. I also don't like being in the air for that long."

I nodded. Skitter had considered taking us on her massive beetle Atlas, but decided against it on the matter of unneeded intimidation. Privately, I was glad of it. A beetle like that was only possible through biotinkering, and I wasn't really eager to ride on something that Amy had made. On principle, if nothing else.

"Can you make a giant arrow above us with your swarm?"

Skitter tilted her head, considering the idea. "I'd want to mask our actual location, but I can do that."

As she said that the majority of the swarm surrounding us took to the air, climbing to presumably form said arrow. The rest tightened into a much thicker wall, obscuring the outside.

I swallowed. "What if things go wrong?"

Skitter snorted. "Then we improvise."

I glared at her. "That's not a plan!"

She shrugged, and squared her shoulders. "Too late for that. I found them."

This was it. The Heroes were almost here.

Not even Skitter could calm the butterflies that filled my stomach. The last two encounters with Heroes we’d had - three, counting her terrorist attack on the mayor’s home - had all been disasters. And though she was here for me as backup, I had no idea who I was about to be put face to face with. The swarm around us was still too thick for me to make anything out, so I looked up at her and cocked my head in a silent question.

“They’re still about two minutes out, but they see us,” she confirmed. “Looks like Miss Militia, along with someone I can’t quite make out–ah, nevermind. It must be Ursa Aurora, I just caught one of her projections.”

I swallowed, and tried to think back to when the PRT had briefed us on the new Heroes and Wards from New York. It felt like years ago now. If I remembered right, Ursa Aurora was a Master who could manifest ethereal bear projections. Well, mostly ethereal. Their claws and teeth were decidedly solid. I’d seen her summon two at once during sparring with Triumph, but that had been a friendly match. I had no idea what her upper limit was.

As far as matchups went, it could be worse. Miss Militia was by far the more dangerous of the two. Her power was incredibly strong at range, but could fight up close if needed. It adjusted based on her subconscious needs, and could be lethal or nonlethal as required. Her biggest issue was needing a clear line of sight. Her power didn’t help her aim any better than her training allowed. Skitter’s swarm blanketing our sightline would help with that. But if she broke out the grenades again, all bets would be off.

Ursa Aurora was a much more straightforward problem. Her projections were powerful, but landlocked. I wasn’t, and Skitter worked best from range. If needed I could just fly Skitter up into the swarm and then land on a rooftop or something, leaving her to deal with the Master from cover.

My brain stuttered over that thought, and I paused. Dealing with Ursa Aurora from cover? Miss Militia breaking out the grenades? Matchups? Why was I thinking like this? These were Heroes, not my enemies! Nothing was going to happen! I had a tight grip on my aura, my forcefield was strong around me, and neither of us was going to start anything. We just wanted to talk.

Although that did remind me.

I snapped my fingers, drawing Skitter’s attention.

“Yes?”

“How are we going to do this?” I asked.

She tilted her head. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

I rolled my eyes. “Communicate. I don’t have my notebook.” It was almost startling to admit. I hadn’t thought to grab it when I left. It hadn’t been as necessary lately. Skitter had learned sign for me, which I was still reeling from, and she was generally willing to translate for me if she was around, and I didn’t need to say much around the base most of the time, so at some point I’d just… stopped needing my notepad as much.

Up until now.

“If they don’t know sign, I’ll interpret,” Skitter said. “Now stay sharp. Here they come.”

I tensed. Sure enough, not ten seconds later, the swarm of beetles, wasps and flies parted around the two Heroes. Miss Militia was up first, her brow furrowed. Her signature green fatigues blended in surprisingly well with the swarming insects around us. The bugs were staying away from her face, avoiding her exposed eyes and the relatively meager protection the bandanna covering her lower face offered. I smiled and brushed an approving finger over the back of my centipede in my left hand. Skitter was being good, for now.

Miss Militia was frowning, but Ursa Aurora was even less comfortable around the swarm. She flinched every time a fly swerved away fromr her face. She wore a glossy half mask that looked remarkably like a polished version of the stock doggy mask that Bitch wore. Like Miss Militia, her mask didn’t offer her face full coverage, stopping above her eyebrows but below her hairline. The rest of her costume looked practical, if not ostentatious. Subdued blues and purples came together in ballistic nylon to make something stylishly understated. A good choice of costume for a Master.

“Glory Girl! Skitter!” Miss Militia called over the high, buzzing whine of countless wings all around us. They were approaching cautiously, but Miss Militia’s power was in pistol form, held loosely in one hand and pointed at the ground. Ursa Aurora’s projections followed them in guard positions just behind and to either side of the capes, but made no move to attack.

A good sign. So far.

“Miss Militia, Ursa Aurora,” Skitter returned neutrally as they got close enough to hear her. She didn’t raise her voice, but the hum of the swarm quietened as she spoke and rose again when she’d said her piece. It was a simple trick, but an effective one. With a swarm this big, it felt like the whole world was silencing itself to listen to her every time she opened her mouth.

“What is the meaning of this?” Ursa Aurora demanded, shifting from foot to foot. “You’re obviously trying to get someone’s attention. Congratulations; you got it. Now what do you want? And why is Glory Girl here?”

“Victoria,” Skitter emphasized, looking at me, “is here because she wanted to tell you something. I’m here as her interpreter.”

“Interpreter?” “Just her interpreter?” Miss Militia and Ursa Aurora both spoke at once, their words overlapping in mutual suspicion. My fists clenched; one tight, one carefully loose around my centipede. I couldn’t blame them for not trusting Skitter, even if I thought better of her, but people assuming I was just being taken advantage of by the Undersiders was starting to get really, really old.

“Victoria is still mute,” Skitter said. “She signs in ASL. I assume neither of you know enough to carry on a conversation, so I’ll verbalize what she tells me.” She turned to Ursa Aurora. “She asked me here to interpret. If I have to do more than that, it’s on you.”

One of Ursa Aurora’s bears growled and took a step forward, but Miss Militia put a firm hand on her shoulder. “Easy,” she warned. “So long as they’re here to talk, we’re here to listen.”

She turned to me. “Victoria. I’m glad to see you’re okay. I know our last meeting… didn’t exactly go to plan.”
I winced.

She seemed to notice judging by her crinkling eyes. “Yes, I don’t think that was the best day for any of us. Are we… going to have similar problems this time?”

I shook my head. No. I had a handle on my aura. Deep breaths. It was okay. Skitter was here, and I had my centipede if I needed her.

“That’s good to hear. So, what did you want to talk to us about, Victoria?”

I swallowed, and looked her in the eyes. “My mother has Amy.”

There was a small moment of silence after Skitter translated, the words hanging in the air, before Miss Militia hung her head.

“Fuck.”

Instantly the bugs writhed around us, the walls constricting and buzzing. “You knew, then.” Skitter said, her tone devoid of inflection but echoed by a hundred thousand hissing voices.

“We suspected,” Miss Militia said. “But we didn’t have proof, no.”

“And yet you did nothing. Even when you knew what she did.”

“Am I missing something here?” Ursa Aurora asked.

“What you’re missing is that Miss Militia and the rest of the Protectorate here are harboring a known rapist,” Skitter said, chitin and anger backing her words with an angry chorus of nightmares. I flinched at the reminder, and a small head rubbed itself gently against my palm, a lone shard of tenderness among the jagged spikes of Skitter’s hostility.

“That’s... a hell of a claim,” Ursa Aurora said, taken aback. “Militia? Care to explain?”

“It’s… complicated,” Miss Militia said. The words sounded forced, and the pause was telling.

Skitter’s laugh was short, mocking and entirely humorless. “It always seems to be that way when it comes to me,” she said, and I could hear the twisted smile in the words; an adrenaline snarl of aggression. I pressed a cautionary thumb against my centipede’s shell, silently willing her to dial it back.

“Skitter–” Ursa Aurora started, before Miss Militia cut her off.

“It’s not that simple,” she said, looking back up at us. “You told us what happened, what Amy did to you. And you’re right; we haven’t acted on that yet. Yes, there are a lot of moving pieces, but that doesn’t help you right now. I’m sorry we haven’t done more, Victoria.”

The air left my chest like a punch to the gut. For a moment I honestly thought the wind had been knocked out of me; I wouldn’t have been able to speak even if my voice had been working. The protective whine of the swarm pressed in from every side, but it wasn’t half as long as the drumbeat of my heart in my ears.

Was that it? Was that all I got? All my suffering amounted to?

Skitter obviously felt the same way. “Sorry doesn’t cut it when she’s still afraid to go back to her family,” she snapped. “When her abuser is still out there and you’ve done nothing to protect her.”

“What would you have us do, Skitter?” Miss Militia demanded. “Panacea isn’t a Protectorate hero; she isn’t even a Ward! More than that; Brandish might’ve told you that she has Amy, but no one has seen her for at least a month. We can’t just break down the door to a hero’s house on suspicion alone.”

“So you’d leave one of your own in the cold, just because you’re afraid of doing something wrong? That’s–”

I smacked my hands together, the clap startling both of them and cutting Skitter off mid-sentence. I couldn’t let this conversation continue like this, sidelining me in favour of personal grudges.To her credit, Skitter didn’t try to continue her tirade. She turned to see what I had to say, still ready to go to bat for me against the Protectorate.

I appreciated what she was trying to do here, even if she was going about it wrong. But I needed to do this myself. From the way she nodded and took a step back, I was pretty sure she understood.

“Victoria?” Ursa Aurora asked softly. “What is it?”

I took a deep breath, and signed, listening to Skitter’s deliberately neutral voice repeating my words. “I know that justice is a long and slow thing when it’s done right. And I respect that. But as selfish as it is, my needs have to come first for me. If you can’t promise that you’ll act against Amy, to–” I choked on the lump in my throat, and Skitter paused as my hands spasmed, but I pushed through and kept going. “If you can’t promise to put her somewhere she can’t hurt me again, I can’t go with you. No matter how much I might want to.”

“Victoria…” Miss Militia seemed at a loss for what to say.

“Skitter,” I stumbled on the word, “saved me when she didn’t have to. She made my sister fix me, and then made her leave. She didn’t have a reason to. There was no reward in it for her. She just did. If you want to think that’s Mastering or something else, fine. I can’t really prove otherwise without a field psychologist. But the Protectorate can’t guarantee right now that I could protect myself. Skitter can.”

A tiny wry smile touched my lips at Skitter’s surprise. I was the only one who noticed it. It wasn’t in her voice as she translated for me, or her posture as she stared down the Heroes. It was the split-second shift in the whining choir of the swarm’s encircling walls, the way my centipede froze on my wrist for a moment before curling tighter around it. The way a cluster of moths brushed against me as they passed, as if making sure I was really there.

Was she really so unaccustomed to simple gratitude?

“I’m sorry you feel that way,” Miss Militia said at length. “I can’t… entirely blame you for that.”

“Ma’am!” Ursa Aurora exclaimed. She stepped closer to Miss Militia, lowering her voice, but if it was to keep me from overhearing she must have thought I was deaf as well as mute. I heard every word. “Ma’am, you can’t just cede to their narrative like this! We at least need to get this verified before we–”

“There will be a time and a place for that,” Miss Militia replied, not looking away from us. My centipede scuttled onto the back of my hand and reared up, hissing at Ursa Aurora. “And I agree that has to be done, one way or another. But we’re not the ones to do it, right now. All I really want to know is one thing.”

I swallowed.

Miss Militia’s fists were clenched, but her eyes were clear. “Is she keeping you safe?”

Skitter stiffened beside me, but I didn’t hesitate. “Yes,” I croaked.

The bandana over her lower face hid her mouth, but the crease of her eyes painted a fragile smile. “Good. That’s… that’s good. I’m sorry we couldn’t be there for you when you needed it. Will you at least let us arrange for a field screening so we can be sure? It doesn’t have to be now but… it would reassure me that I’m doing the right thing by letting you go back with her, if nothing else.”

I looked back at Skitter. She nodded, and my centipede scuttled back around my hand, tapping its head twice against the inside of my thumb. I turned back to the Heroes. “That’s fine.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it. Be careful.”

Ursa Aurora looked back between us and Miss Militia. “I don’t know exactly what’s going on here, but I know hurt when I see it. Victoria… please be careful, alright? For your own sake.”

I nodded. I hadn’t interacted much with her before the Crawler incident and all that followed, but it was touching that she’d be worried about me at all.

I softly squeezed my centipede nestled in my palm as the swarm split around the two departing Heroes.

“Well,” Skitter remarked, staring after them. “That went better than I expected.”

I turned to her. “And what exactly did you think would happen?”

She shrugged. “Any time I come away from a close encounter with heroes without explosions or stabbing, I count it as a win.”

Suddenly, I was laughing. I couldn’t stop. The stress, the anxiety, the frustration and nerves and everything else that had been building up for the past week, all of it was just flooding out of me. I didn’t know exactly when my laughter turned into sobbing, but I knew I felt Skitter’s hand on my back.

“So that was a different name that you used back there,” Skitter said a while later, as we were starting to walk back.

I turned to look at her, confused. “What do you mean?”

She stopped, and looked at me. “My name. In sign you usually finger spell it, one letter at a time. But instead you did this.” She made the sign for ‘S’, followed by clenching her fists and crossing her arms over her chest. The sign for ‘Protect’.

I felt the blush rise like the sun. Fuck. I really had done that, hadn’t I? In the ASL community, people usually had two names. Or so I had read in the book Skitter had given me. One was what I’d been using up to this point: finger spelling. But for people you knew better, there was another category called a descriptive name. The person signing always chose it, usually based on some aspect of the person in question. Sign names were always given, never chosen.

“I didn’t even realize at the time what it was,” Skitter said, still talking. “I only filled it in from context. I thought it was just a mistake from saying ‘protect’ beforehand–”

She paused, looking back at me. “–but maybe not. Victoria?”

I swallowed and looked up. “It’s your name.”

“My name?” Skitter asked.

I nodded.

“Why?” she signed at me.

I couldn’t breathe. “Because it’s what you did when you woke me up in that bathtub. What you’ve done ever since. It’s the only thing I could think of.”

She tilted her head, unmoving. “You really mean that, don’t you?”

My fingers felt like they were on fire, but I forced myself through anyways. “I really do.”

There was a moment, as we stared at each other, where the air was filled with… something. Something so fragile I was afraid to even name it. But before I could say anything, Skitter froze. The swarm clenched around us, drawing in close. I was blind in a sea of chitin and wings, forced to close my mouth for fear of something flying into it.

“Skitter–” I signed blindly, trusting she could see my hands even if I couldn’t.

“Listen,” a million clicks and chirrups hissed.

“The swarm, too loud, I can’t.”

She grunted, closer than she’d been when the swarm pressed in, and for a moment the bugs around us calmed, gliding away on the muggy June air to give us a little clear oasis at the heart of a writhing cloud. And in that instant, I heard what she did. A distant, high pitched shriek.

I knew that sound. The last time I’d heard it, I’d been drenched and desperate in the pouring rain, staring down at the monster that had come to kill my city. It was the sound of advanced engines and exotic weaponry, of metal monsters bristling with weapons. It was the sound of a thousand criminal careers cut short and an inescapable prison.

It was the sound of Dragon.

Chapter Text

“Fuck,” Skitter said, echoing my thoughts. “We need to leave. Now.”

Well that was obvious, but where to? We were out in the open!

She glanced at me distractedly, already slipping into an analytical, tactical tone I recognised as she cocked her head. The last time I’d heard it, I’d wound up carrying her back to her base with blood all over her and a bolt through her shoulder, wondering all the while how I’d been talked into it.

I had a nasty feeling I was going to end up feeling that way again.

“By the sound of it, we have maybe three minutes,” Skitter said, short and clipped. “Probably less. Atlas can’t get here in time, and even if he could, he’d be too slow and too large a target. If we’re going to get out of here, you need to fly us.”

There it was. I stared at her incredulously. That was seriously the best plan she could come up with? She knew I was slower in the air when I was carrying someone! My field protected me from the worst of the effects of flying; it made me more aerodynamic, protected me from windchill, let me turn on a dime. But it didn’t do shit for my passengers! If I had to bank hard, if I had a flashback and slipped, if she shifted her weight at all, I’d have no time to double back around-

Silk touched my hands. Warm. Smooth. Light – ever so light; barely touching me at all. I looked down at my hands, dumbly realizing I’d been signing fragments of my thoughts; stuttered gibberish that must still have gotten the gist across.

“Victoria,” Skitter said, her hand still resting on mine. Not holding it, not restricting it. Just resting the tips of her fingers on the back of my palm, a firm, warm point of connection. “Victoria, we don’t have time. You said you’d stand with me if Dragon came, and I can’t make this choice for you. But you need to choose now.”

I swallowed, meeting her eyes through the lenses. They gave away nothing. But the silk was damp with sweat, and her hair was stirring as the bugs between the tresses shook.

Fuck it.

“Where are we going?” I signed hurriedly.

“Anywhere but here,” Skitter said, stepping closer and half-turning for a princess carry. “You won’t be able to sign while carrying me. I’ll yell if I need to tell you something. Squeeze once for a tight turn, twice if you have to let me go.”

I grunted an acknowledgement as I picked her up. Fuck, it sounded so much more real when she put it like that. We were about to try and outrun Dragon. While flying. This was a terrible idea.

Like most of them lately. But some of them had worked anyway.

I looked around once more, trying to find another option. Something I’d overlooked, somewhere we could hide; anything. But the whine of Dragon’s turbines was getting louder and louder, drowning out the drone of the circling swarm. We didn’t have time for hiding places or other options. She knew where we were already. How could she not? We’d been talking to the Protectorate bare minutes ago!

No time left to hesitate. I shook myself and shot into the air. I could feel the wind buffeting off my forcefield. This was already off to a terrible start. Skitter had never flown with me this fast before, and it showed. She was tense, all but clinging to me. I tried not to take it personally. She’d need every ounce of that grip strength in a minute.

“Wait!” she yelled.

I froze, looking at her. Was she insane? We had about sixty seconds before we were confoamed in midair. Hell, I could see the sinuous shapes of the Dragonflight cutting across the ruined skyline from here! What could Skitter possibly want?

“Give me ten seconds to draw my swarm in. They won’t be able to follow us at speed. I can release them strategically as smokescreens, or to slow her down.”

Oh. That made sense. I gave her a quick jerk of a nod, eyes trained on the black shape in the middle distance, powering straight towards us across the Trainyard. I couldn’t sign for her to be quick, but I didn’t need to. She could see it coming too.

All at once, her swarm poured towards us. It plunged into her hair, engulfed her chest, disappearing into the gaps between her armor plating, the pockets in her belt, even a compartment in her back I’d never noticed until now.

“Fuck,” Skitter grunted. “Not enough space. Need to put some on you. Can I?”

My heart thundered in my chest, my breaths came sharp and frantic. I forced the panic down. Skitter was a Master, yes. And she was putting her minions on me. But she was safe. She could only affect them, and she wouldn’t hurt me. I knew that. She was asking first. Right now, that meant everything. And if it gave us even a chance of escaping Dragon, of escaping Carol, I had to put up with it.

I nodded.

Her swarm stretched out its buzzing, churning tendrils and took me in its grasp. It combed fingers of flies through my hair, twisting it into braids to better tighten its grip. It stroked ants and spiders across my scalp and wrapped a warm blanket of wasps around my back like a parody of my old cape. Across my chest it spread a vest of beetles, packed close together like body armor. I could feel them all, warm and humming on my temples, against my spine, in the hollows behind my ears and clinging tightly to my shirt.

They were heavy. Stifling. C-constricting–

“Hey,” Skitter said, touching my cheek and tilting my head down to meet her gaze. “Ignore them. They aren’t there. Focus on me, on where we’re going. They’ll let go as we move. The sooner we do that, the sooner they’re gone.”

I nodded. That, I could do. I glanced at the Dragonsuit, the sound of its engines now an oncoming roar that more than deserved its name. It was nearly on us. Thirty seconds, max. I couldn’t head back to Skitter’s base; she was too close. I wouldn’t lead an enemy combatant to an orphanage. That left losing her downtown.

I spun south. There weren’t a ton of options. The central area surrounding Medhall and the financial sector was out of the question. Too many skyscrapers and civilians. The commercial district was also out. What I needed was open space, so I could capitalize on my mobility and turning radius.

The crater from Leviathan might work.

I just had to beat her to it.

We shot forward with a crack of displaced air. Skitter grunted as the acceleration pressed her back against my chest, but I didn’t have time to apologize. Every second counted now.

“On your left!” she yelled, and I dared a glance back. Sure enough, the Dragonsuit was only about three hundred feet back. It didn’t look like much, but from what I remembered of Leviathan, that meant we were already in range. Goddammit!

“I’ll tell you when to dodge!” Skitter screamed over the wind. I nodded and doubled down on squeezing out every last ounce of speed. It wasn’t going to be enough.

“Right!”

I dipped and rolled, putting myself on the outside of the turn as we swerved. The centrifugal force crushed Skitter against me hard enough that I heard the breath whoosh out of her lungs, but it earned us a turn sharp enough to draw with a ruler. And not a second too soon. A small canister shot past us, sailing into the space ahead. I lost track of it for a moment, but it must have hit a building because there was an explosion of containment foam below before that too was swept away. Shit!

“Keep moving!”

I bared my teeth and curved back towards the crater, glancing over my shoulder as I did. That dodge had cost us about fifty feet. And she was still gaining.

But we were almost there. I threw us into a tight spiral as we shot forward, trying to cover the last six hundred feet before Dragon could cycle another round. I knew those confoam grenades were propelled by compressed gas, but her main limit was probably her targeting solution. That meant the more erratic our flight, the better.

My grimace twisted upward into a snarl of adrenaline. Erratic. Cool. I could do that. The buildings were getting more obviously worn and dilapidated the closer we got to the crater, and the civilian presence had petered out to almost nothing over the last block.

Perfect.

Dragon’s engines screamed behind us as I dropped us into a steep dive and pulled up bare feet above the ground, skimming over the pavement. I remembered reading somewhere that flying close to the surface like this could confuse radar based targeting. I didn’t know for sure that Dragon was using radar, but it was worth a shot.

The howling wind and the roar of her afterburners drowned out any sound from the suit itself, but I swore I heard the next round cycle into the Dragonsuit’s gun as we skipped over the crater. I took a deep breath, squeezed Skitter’s leg, and curled protectively over her for another tight turn.

This time I turned down.

The sudden change in acceleration hit us like a truck. I heard a muffled grunt against my chest as Skitter took the worst of it. I just had to hope I wasn’t hurting her. At the same time a layer of the flies and insects in my hair spilled away, fanning out to cover where we’d gone. Clever. The remaining bugs on me were mostly fine–the forcefield protected them from most of the incidental wind and momentum changes.

We’d gone from straight-line flight to a vertical plunge so fast that Skitter’s hair was still whipping forward from inertia as I slammed on the brakes, feeling her weight press down harder on my arms as I slowed us to a hover and then floated back to hug the crater wall. No sooner had my heels touched the muddy side than the Dragonsuit shot out ahead of us through the remaining cloud of bugs.

Just as planned. To Dragon’s sensors, it would look like we just disappeared over the cliff edge. And in the shadow of the crater, we wouldn’t stand out.

Hopefully.

I didn’t have an arm free, so I had to over-emphasise an awkward silent shushing sound as the suit shot over us, but Skitter seemed to get the message. We couldn’t afford to draw attention to ourselves now. The only hope we had was that Dragon might not be thorough enough to do a full sweep until she’d realized we weren’t–

The suit banked hard, guns sweeping across the crater walls, and I groaned. Fuck. Of course it wouldn’t be that easy. I had seconds to come up with a new plan before she found us again.

Okay, losing her behind cover wasn’t working. What about blind spots? I knew if nothing else that I had a tighter turning circle than she did. If I could just stay out of range behind her for long enough, we might be able to exhaust her, or force a standoff.

I squeezed Skitter again, then shot out low against the muddy surface of the water. The crack of our acceleration and the plume of spray we were dragging in our wake definitely got her attention, but that was fine. She was going to detect us regardless. The important thing was that the speed we gained in exchange was just enough for us to get fully under her before she could react.

Dragon seemed to sense what I was planning, and started to flip the suit upside down to bring her weapons to bear. But I was already moving up and over, careful to flip Skitter again so she was facing the inside of the arc. She’d be upside down for the last bit, but the vertigo would be better than the centrifugal force.

Just like that, we were in her blind spot. Up and out of her line of fire, behind the head but above the backwash of the engines, between its neck and its lower spine.

“She’s turning!” Skitter yelled.

She was right. Dragon was already trying to flip around. Skitter was going to have to hang on. I matched her revolution, flinging us up and around to stay behind Dragon’s back. She angled her thrusters into abrupt reverse and I danced us backward to maintain our carefully calculated distance; she dropped into a spinning dive and I orbited her like a remora clinging to a shark.

Again and again we danced, one behind the other, each constantly trying to catch the other off guard. Dragon was clever. She kept up her bucking and spinning just long enough to let me think I had the edge over her, then started breaking her rhythm. She’d abort a turn midmotion, change the direction on a time with maneuvering jets, even loop around to try and confuse me in three dimensional space. Throughout it all, I stuck to her back like glue.

But only barely. There were too many near misses to count, and a couple of heart-stoppingly close shaves that almost tagged us. The first one was when Dragon got frustrated enough to start launching grenades at the space her next spin would force us to dodge into. That trick would’ve gotten me if Skitter hadn’t seen it coming and screamed a warning.

We survived, but it came at a cost. After my reflexive jink took us out of the way of the first grenade by blind luck, Skitter spread her bugs out in a thin swarm, sensing the grenades and leaning her weight away from them, telling me which side of Dragon’s unprotected back to hug. It worked, but my cape of hornets dwindled down to nothing, eaten up bit by bit with every flurry and barrel roll.

“This is working!”

Still, for as long as her bugs held out, we were winning. Or at least holding our own. My chest was heaving, there was sweat plastering my neck and forehead, but the wild, triumphant grin on my face stretched from cheek to cheek. I was dogfighting with Dragon. And beating her!

And that was when it all went wrong. Dragon stopped in midair and started to fold. The back of her armor sprouted spines and flexed out like origami, plates and vents changing configuration even as we watched. It happened so fast that I didn’t realize what she was doing until the guns bent around like double-jointed elbows to get a bead on us. She had folded herself inside out to get us in front of her!

I shot upward, feeling the confoam round pass inches under my feet. I was pretty sure it had been aimed at my face this time. Apparently she didn’t appreciate being outflown.

Okay, clearly this wasn’t working. I knew that fighting Dragon was a shitty idea, but even just trying to stay out of her way was a nightmare. I was out of options, and I knew it. Evading didn’t work. Bug screening didn’t work. Dogfighting didn’t work. Without directly hitting her, which I couldn’t do while carrying Skitter, I didn’t know what choice I had.

“Victoria!” Skitter yelled in my ear.

I looked at her as we skimmed across the ground in the crater.

“Go downtown between the skyscraper-LEFT!”

I shot to the left violently enough that Skitter let out a strangled yell, and felt sticky flecks of confoam spatter my arm like blobs of glue, swelling up to the size of peas in seconds. Fuck, that was close. Zigzagging up and back as the Dragonsuit passed under us again, I looked down at Skitter in confusion. Had the panic made her lose her mind? We couldn’t go downtown; the collateral damage would be horrific! If Dragon missed even one shot–

“Trust me!” she shouted over the wind, and threw herself backward against the steel grip of my arms. I took the cue and swerved with her, hearing another shot whistle past us and detonate midair just short of where we’d been. More small blobs of confoam splattered my legs; I could feel the expanding lumps tugging on the fabric. These pants were going to be a write-off for sure.

“I don’t want to hurt people!” Skitter continued. I could feel her breathing hard against my chest, one arm wrapped around my neck to steady herself as she bent her head towards my ear. “But I don’t think she does either! We can use that!”

That made my skin go cold and clammy, despite the sweat coating every inch of me. The very idea felt wrong, like I was putting innocent lives between me and a Hero. And in a certain sense, I was. But… Skitter was also right. Dragon was a Hero, in every sense of the word. She wouldn’t fire if there was even a chance someone got hurt. And she was the one herding us into a corner. If this is what it took to get me away from Carol… I could deal with the consequences after. Just this once.

I squeezed Skitter again and shot back up into the sky. The roar of Dragon’s engines followed us, but I wasn’t looking at her anymore. As we climbed out of the crater I turned to the downtown skyline and swallowed the lump in my throat. No second thoughts now.

We reached the crest of our ascent and I launched us like an arrow in a ballistic curve over the few blocks between the crater and what remained of downtown. Dragon must have realized what we were doing because I heard the sound of her engines kick up a notch in pitch and get a hell of a lot louder. Probably trying to stop us from reaching what was a terrible environment for her to navigate. But it was too late. We shot between what was once the Medhall building and the old Telecomm skyscraper, and she was forced to veer off, gaining height so as not to clip her wings on the looming tower blocks.

I rolled over onto my back, cradling Skitter on top of me so I could look up and track her. She hung in the air above us like a monstrous bird of prey, waiting to dive down and sink its talons into its hapless prey. Then, as if that wasn’t enough of a nightmare, little shapes started splitting off of her shoulders. I knew what those were. Drones.

“We need to get back to Charlotte!” Skitter called hoarsely.

I looked down. Seriously? Dragon could still see us! We’d lead her right back to the lair!

“Tattletale told her that we were housing refugees! Insurance policy! We thought it would–DOWN!”

We dropped like a stone, just barely catching a whiff of displaced air and a shock of static electricity. My hair would look like a nightmare after this.

I spun us over again, Skitter in a princess-carry once more, and threw a look back over my shoulder to see what was after us now–

Fuck. Of course. Of course Dragon would have specialty drones equipped with net launchers that magnetized to the fucking building superstructure. The next minute or so was a swerving, juking slalom from hell as I wound my way between the towers, under the baleful eye of the monster above us, trying to buy us time while Skitter kept talking. The first net had been fired from range, but the drones were catching up fast and I was running out of room to maneuver.

“We thought she wouldn’t attack us if she knew there were kids! Tattletale had a hunch! Didn’t want to test it, but no other choice!”

I propelled us upward as another net flew beneath us, this one close enough to make my hair stand on end before it wrapped itself around a lamp post and bent it twenty degrees. Fuck. She was right. There was no other choice I could think of that would stop Dragon. But wouldn’t this make me just as bad as Charlotte always thought I was? Bringing a threat down right on their doorstep? How could I do this?

“Dammit Victoria, we’re out of time!” Skitter yelled.

I looked up, and saw that she was right. There was a drone ahead of us, already in position, lining up its net launcher. Shit. The decision was made for me. Like so many lately.

I waited until the last second before ripping us upward through a punishing vertical turn that even I felt. It forced a ragged scream out of Skitter – literally; it pushed the air right out of her lungs past vocal chords left raw from shouting. This time I felt the edge of the net brush against my forcefield, sending tingles all down my left arm. But the drones were close enough that the one behind us got caught in the aborted shot. That might buy us a few extra seconds.

We’d need it.

We cleared the top of the drone ahead of us with a small enough margin that the tip of my foot smacked into it, sending it reeling downward, and shot straight north towards Skitter’s base. I could hear the Dragonsuit re-engage as we left the downtown skyline, but for once, time and momentum were on our side. She was too far back, and couldn’t accelerate fast enough to catch us before we made it to the base. The only question was whether we could avoid the drones for long enough to get there.

Skitter read my mind, leaning up to my ear. “Go in through the roof, punch a hole if you have to!” she ordered. “Top floor’s empty! I’ll cover us visually for as long as I can!”

I nodded, accelerating forward as fast as I dared. At this speed, a sudden stop like earlier might give Skitter whiplash. But we couldn’t afford safety now. Not with the whine of the drones close on our heels.

We were almost there. I could see the roof entrance of the hideout, where I had deposited a badly wounded Skitter what felt like years ago. She’d needed medical attention then, and if she needed it now from how I’d been throwing her around we were fucked, but that was a problem for later. For now we just had to get inside.

As we approached, I started to slow down. I had to; if we hit at this speed I’d kill my passenger. Skitter must have sensed the shift, because every remaining bug that had survived the chase so far flew off us in a massive wave, filling the sky behind us in a black cloud of sound and writhing tendrils.

Maybe it was the tiny bit of extra speed I gained from the lost weight. Maybe it was her bugs confusing the targeting sensors. Maybe it was the ever so slightly sleeker aerodynamic profile. But whatever it was, we made it to the door to the roof entrance before the drones above could take another shot. I turned us round as the roof rushed towards us, cradling Skitter in my arms, my back facing the door. I just had to hope that my forcefield would be enough to–

Impact.

My forcefield broke instantly, turning the door into matchwood. I threw on the brakes as hard as I could and gasped as Skitter’s inertia hit my ribs like a sandbag thrown from a car. Even the full force of my flight wasn’t enough to stop us, but it did enough that we only slammed into the concrete wall at the speed of a dead sprint, instead of pancaking ourselves across it. Crushed between Skitter and the unforgiving surface, all my breath escaped me in a wheezing gasp, and we bounced off the wall with the wind knocked out of both of us.

My head was ringing. My heart was pounding triple-time against my ribs. My back was one solid bruise, and my chest felt like it was on fire. My arms and fingers ached something fierce from where I had been clutching Skitter, and my neck felt like it was permanently skewed from how she’d been clutching me. I must have taken at least three years off of my life in as many minutes.

But we’d made it.

As I helplessly coughed and sputtered and gasped for air, my forcefield snapped back into shape around me. Still wheezing and gulping oxygen, I started to laugh; a hacking chuckle that Skitter joined in from where she was doing the same on top of me.

God damn. That had really happened.

My lungs eased up slowly as I got my breath back, but the hysterical giggles only got harder and harder, until I was crying from the delayed fear and stress and exertion. I couldn’t tell what Skitter was doing behind the mask, but it sounded more like laughter than tears. We clung to each other for a long moment as our hysterics rose, crested, and then slowly subsided, leaving us panting for breath, slowly realizing our position.

We couldn’t have been any closer if we’d tried. She was plastered half on top of me, half fallen off to one side, her bad shoulder limp across my chest. Her wind-strewn hair fell down to one side of our faces in a tangled black curtain, and our faces were so close together that we were almost forehead to forehead. This close, in the mix of sunlight and shadow flooding in through the broken door, I almost thought I could make out the faintest shape of an eyebrow and eye through the yellow lens. Entranced, I started to bring my hand up, and–

“Boss!”

We both jerked hard enough to throw Skitter off me, and looked up to see Charlotte falling over herself to get through the door. “Boss, what happened?”

“Dragon,” Skitter grunted, slowly pushing herself upright. I caught her good arm hand before she could stumble and surreptitiously helped push her upright under the guise of letting her pull me up. “We tried to avoid her. No dice. Came back here. Hopefully that–”

She cut herself off as the dreaded turbine whine approached. I spun towards the shattered doorframe. Goddammit, no! We’d made it! We were home! This wasn’t fair!

Stepping up beside Skitter, we cautiously made our way over to the window. And sure enough, there was Dragon, landing on the roof of the building across the street, looking dead at us. The tiles shook as she set down, engines shutting off and folding away to be replaced by claws and canons.

She shook herself, almost like a living thing – ruffled her feathers, if that was the right way to describe it – and then the noise ceased entirely and she settled down. Watching us with reptilian patience.

That’s when it occurred to me what had really just happened.

Dragon had just landed in front of Skitter’s base. And she wasn’t leaving.

Chapter Text

It had been twenty minutes since the Dragonsuit had settled down on the rooftop across from us like a tiger lounging outside a rabbit hole. If there’d been any doubts that it was here to stay, they were gone now. Skitter had tried to swarm it exactly once.

In response, it had fired a confoam grenade on a perfect arc clean through Skitter’s window, engulfing the table and most of her bookshelf in a massive lump of sticky foam. It blocked off half the room, leaving only a narrow path past the shattered window, exposed to the looming dragon’s gaze, between the stairs and her bed and planning board.

We hadn’t tried attacking it again. The statement was clear. The walls would provide no more protection than the plywood over the window had, and Skitter’s bugs couldn’t move faster than a dozen grenades.

So that was the end of that.

The suit gleamed in the waning afternoon light. Despite the chase we’d put her through, the suit looked untouched, without so much as a mar on the varnish. You could’ve told me it was brand new, and I’d have believed it.

A shudder crawled up my spine. I’d known Dragon was powerful. Of course I had. You’d have to be an idiot not to. You didn’t get to maintain the Birdcage and be the logistics and coordination lead for Endbringer attacks without being good at your job.

But there was a difference between knowing something and staring straight down its gun barrel.

My ribs still twinged from the tight turns and sudden dives I’d had to take with Skitter, and my hands and fingers were aching from the death grip I’d had on her. She’d bruise tomorrow, I knew. Fingermarks painted in purple along her ribs and thigh, long lines of burst blood vessels on her back and behind her knees where she’d been jarred against arms as yielding as steel bars. My hair was a mess, tangled beyond repair from the sheer speed of the wind around us. I’d flown faster and better today than I had in years, maybe ever.

And none of it mattered. Even in peak form, at the top of my game with Skitter for added bug screening and three dimensional awareness, Dragon had kicked my ass. There was no way around it. I’d spent what must have been less than ten minutes – maybe less than five – high-tailing it around the city as fast as I could go, not even engaging directly, just trying to get away from her. And this was the best I could get us. A reprieve, until she decided to bust our door down.

My fists clenched as I glared across the street at her, defiantly standing in the shattered window, daring her to fire another round. The thought terrified me. But she could do it no matter where in the house I was, and at least here I could see it coming if she did. At least here, seeing her so shiny and relaxed and still, the seeds of rising fury drowned out the fear. My hands trembled at my sides, shaky and spasming from overexertion and the adrenaline crash.

I hated this. Hated feeling useless. Worthless. Small. I… needed a distraction. My attention was drawn towards the murmuring voices downstairs. I glanced at Skitter. She was over by her planning board, still fiddling with her phone, though for what I couldn’t tell.

“Trying to get to any members of the team,” she said quietly, still not looking at me. “Tattletale isn’t picking up, which worries me. Bitch and Regent didn’t answer, but they never do. Grue is out, but that could mean anything. Go off and do something else if you want.”

I threw one more resentful glance at the mockingly patient machine, nodded curtly and walked downstairs. But before I got to the entrance, I stopped on the upper landing. The words from down below became more distinct.

“It’s going to be fine,” Charlotte was saying. “We have this handled.”

“How could you have this ‘handled’?” someone asked. Young, female. “It’s right outside!”

“I know it is,” Charlotte said, strain evident in her voice. “But there’s a reason why it hasn’t come in yet, right?”

“Yeah, because it wants to wait until we’re all asleep. Then it’ll kick the door down,” someone muttered. Older, male.

“I understand that you guys are worried, I do,” said Sierra. Her voice was warmer, gentler than Charlotte’s. “But you… you have to trust that we have your best interests in mind here. No one wants you to get hurt, okay?”

“I want to go home.” A voice from farther back. Soft. Quiet.

There was silence for a moment.

“I know sweetie.” Sierra was talking again. “I know. We’re g-gonna do our best, okay?”

I blinked the wetness out of my eyes, and slowly pulled back into the stairwell. My heart was pounding in my chest. I could hear the pulse in my ears and taste bile at the back of my throat.

Fuck.

I knew Dragon wouldn’t do anything truly reprehensible. I was sure of of it, if only because the entire world was fucked if she ever went Villain. But… these kids didn’t know that. They had no way of knowing the complicated shades of gray in what Skitter had done, the crimes she’d committed and the people she’d hurt and the lines she’d crossed to lead them to this point. They just saw the person who saved them, who gave them food and water, who’d– who’d found them after the worst experience of their lives and offered them shelter and asked nothing in return.

Now she was being threatened in her own home by a scary metal monster. How could they not sympathize?

I swallowed down a dry throat. Who was I kidding? How could I not sympathize? She had done the same thing for me, and I knew it. It was spur of the moment, but I was the one who’d chosen to fly her away, who’d tried to outfly Dragon rather than surrender.

What was it I’d said to Skitter? “Is it the correct choice, or just the choice you made?” My own words felt entirely too close to the mark as they echoed in memory.

But no matter how many doubts I went over, no matter how many circles my mind ran, in the end it came down to those kids. To that quiet girl, in the back corner, wanting to go home. However much I believed Dragon would do the right thing… right now that thing was scaring a group of orphaned children and threatening their home.

I could see it from her perspective, if I tried. I knew what she’d say; that it was Skitter using them as hostages, that Skitter was the one who’d dragged them into this. But I’d seen how gentle Skitter was with them. I couldn’t agree.

I heard footsteps from the bottom of the stairwell and instinctively backed up into the wall behind me. I turned to head back up, but Charlotte had already noticed me.

I looked down at her and tried not to let my reaction show. She looked both older and younger than I’d ever seen her. Older because she was clearly trying to put a brave face on in a shitty situation. Her mouth was tense, her jaw firm even as she caught my eye, as if daring me to say anything. The set of her shoulders looked ready for a fistfight. I couldn’t blame her, after that conversation.

But her eyes. Her eyes told the real story. Even with the domino mask hiding part of her face, she was so young. I didn’t know where Skitter had found her, and after the conversation I’d had with her earlier I wasn’t about to ask, but she couldn’t have been any older than I was.

What would it be like to be in her place? Not even out of highschool, cut off from everything she’d ever known, subjected to massive trauma and then told to take care of at least ten kids half her age? I think I’d have a nervous breakdown. And yet, here she was.

“What?” she said, sticking out her chin. “You have a problem?”

I shook my head. My hands went to sign, but by the look in her eyes she wouldn’t be able to understand anyways. And my book was upstairs. I held in a sigh. For the umpteenth time, I wished I could speak. To tell her that even if I didn’t understand the struggle she was facing right now, I at least thought she was doing the right thing. The hard thing. Even if it didn’t feel like it.

She brushed past me, and I let my trembling hands fall uselessly back to my sides. Oh well. Maybe I’d be able to tell her next time we talked.

Assuming we got the chance.

“Tattletale!” Skitter said, just as I reentered the third floor. “Where were you?”

“Ugh, quit shouting,” came the Villain’s voice on speaker from the phone Skitter was holding. “My power is giving me enough of a headache already. Is Victoria there? Yes? Great, at least I don’t need to say this twice.”

I gave Skitter a nod as I edged around the mound of foam and past the window, eying the Dragonsuit as I went. It still sat exactly where it had landed, not a single panel out of place, like it had all the time in the world. Swallowing, I walked over to Skitter’s bed and gingerly sat down on the end, facing her desk.

“Where’s the rest of the team?” Skitter asked, leaning forward and propping her good arm on one knee, holding the phone up as though she was interrogating it.

“I don’t know.”

The bugs on the walls wheeled and danced in a great geometric mandala, their patterns almost dizzying in their complexity. When she spoke, her voice was perfectly level.

“What do you mean you don’t know?”

“Easy easy,” Tattletale said, somehow sensing the warning signs despite not being able to see us. “I was going to say I don’t know for sure. They’re not on comms yet. That could be a variety of factors. Dead. Captured. Gone to ground. No battery. Out of cell service. Etc. I can’t say which one of those it is for sure. But you don’t have to be a Thinker to make something out of the Dragonsuit sitting right outside of my base.”

This time there was only silence on our end.

Tattletale sighed. “You guys too huh? No, don’t answer that, don’t bother. Then we should probably assume the worst until they call to check in. Speaking of which, you know the drill; she’s definitely monitoring this call. Hi Dragon! You never got back to us after our last chat. You can hurt a girl’s feelings like that, you know! At least send a text or something. How ‘bout it, got anything else to say now?”

Silence. I honestly wasn’t sure if that was better or worse than Dragon’s voice would have been. The thought of talking to her so soon after that narrow escape was spine-chilling, but the utter silence from the phone speaker was just as eerie in its own way.

Tattletale either wasn’t affected or hid it well. She scoffed. “Might be trying to lull us into letting our guards down. Don’t. Assume anything over the phone is compromised. Think before you speak. Use a fresh code with every conversation - I’ll bet she can mimic voices. Speaking of which, B-tomato?”

“N-chilli. Got it.”

That was the third time I’d heard the code, and the second time I heard the response. Both call and response were a letter followed by a fruit. I was pretty sure each letter had only one correct response, though I hadn’t heard enough to figure out the pattern.

The fruit, though. What did that mean? I’d heard Tattletale and Skitter both use banana with different letters; Tattletale when Skitter had pulled her in to look at me on that first awful day, Skitter after she’d been shot at Parian’s. But Skitter had used... pear? Apple? Pear, I was pretty sure, back on the first day. And now they’d used tomato and chilli.

Not enough information to work it out. Yet. I’d crack it eventually. In the meantime, I tried not to fidget. It was a bad habit I’d had to break when I triggered and suddenly discovered that “scratching at the table” meant “peeling off the hardwood finish”.

“How many are there?” Skitter asked.

There was a hum across the line. “I don’t know. But it would be a pretty safe bet to assume it’s one for each of us, until we know for sure. Safer to plan for that. The question is why she’s waiting. How did they find you guys?”

Skitter looked at me. “We were caught out in the open. Presumably our location was leaked elsewhere. Victoria had to fly me; we couldn’t shake her. Ended up coming in through the roof. We weren’t exactly subtle.”

Tattletale sighed. “You can’t keep doing this, you know.”

The droning chorus of the swarm stopped its lilting hum. “Doing what?”

“You know what I mean. You were told to lay low; we specifically all agreed on this plan right after the meeting last time. Yet here you are, out in the open, facing down the heroes. For her.”

I couldn’t meet Skitter’s eyes. She was right, much as I hated to admit it. I’d known I was asking Skitter for a lot with that meeting. Hell, she’d called me out on it right before we went! But… I couldn’t bring myself not to ask her, in the end. And I think we both knew it.

I was glad I’d had her there, too. That much I had to be honest about. If I’d been all alone after those Heroes left, and Dragon came… I don’t know if I would’ve chosen to try and outrun her myself. Even if it meant getting captured. Even if it meant going back to my family and… her. Dragon was just such a paragon of a Hero, always doing the right thing no matter how hard the task, that it took some effort to even consider acting against her directly. I was glad I had Skitter to do that. I didn’t like the headspace that put me in. But I liked the alternative even less.

Skitter’s fingers tightened around the phone, lines of tension running all the way up her arm. “That’s not your choice to make, Tattletale. If the people in my territory need help, then they get it. You would do the same.”

“I would, would I?” she laughed. “Sure. Sure, let’s go with that.”

“Tattletale–”

“I’ll let you have your win, Skitter, be happy with that. We’re getting distracted anyways. How are you over there?”

Skitter glanced at me. Her posture was rigid. Was I making her nervous? But, she was the one who’d very obviously let me into the room earlier. The door was wide open, and even Tattletale had said she didn’t want to repeat herself.

Ugh. This girl was so confusing.

“Charlotte’s calmed most of the kids down, for now. But some of them were caught outside. Not sure how to deal with that yet. Other than that, Dragon is right outside. She’s already shown she’s willing to shoot through the walls; got my bookshelf with a warning shot when I started gathering a swarm on her. I’d bet every last bug I have that she has heat vision at the very least. If any of us takes a step outside, we’re fucked. Beyond that, we’re stuck.”

I swallowed, trying to very deliberately control my breathing. I wasn’t trapped here. I wasn’t. I was with Skitter, someone who’d already been willing to throw down against people on my behalf. Focus on that.

“Maybe not necessarily,” Tattletale hummed. “What other options do we have?”

“If you’re trying to obliquely hint at the sewers, I already checked,” Skitter said bleakly. “Every manhole on the block has a sticky mass blocking off the tunnel underneath it. There’s no way out for anything bigger than a cat.”

There was a brief pause as Tattletale and I both digested that.

“Huh,” said Tattletale after a moment’s thought. “Fuck. Okay. Must’ve been... what, remote drones? Something small that can carry a few grenades and lift manholes, dropping one down every large drain shaft while we were focused on the big flashy suits. Wouldn’t have been hard for her to get the schematics of the sewer system.” She fell silent again with a huff, and sounded annoyed when she spoke back up. “Fine, okay, whatever. Then there must be some reason why she hasn’t attacked yet. Maybe the refugee angle actually worked?”

I doubted Dragon would be stopped by hostages if it mattered. But maybe it didn’t. Maybe she felt so in-control here, so completely unthreatened, that she could afford to take her time and capture us with as little risk to the kids as possible.

Maybe Tattletale’s hostage threat wasn’t hamstringing her at all. Maybe this was her deciding to play nice. Waiting for us to get hungry and tired. Waiting for us to crawl out of our hole to where she could bring us in gently, with minimum force and no risk of traumatizing the kids any more than they already had been. Waiting politely outside our door until we realized how pointless resistance was.

A shudder ran up my spine, and I wrapped my arms around myself protectively.

“Maybe,” Skitter allowed, drawing my thoughts back to the present.

“Then what would that mean for anyone not directly involved?” Tattletale asked. “Would she… I doubt the PRT would be willing to go through the logistical nightmare of nabbing civilians in broad daylight the second they come out of their homes. Once during a cape fight, sure. But long term it’s not a good look. And they have to know we’d have cameras somewhere. Too much of a logistical risk. So long as we don’t go out, it should be fine. Right?”

Silence. If Dragon was listening in, she didn’t seem to feel like sharing. I stayed quiet too, but my face hardened. Was that really enough to bet on? These were people’s lives. Sure, containment foam was supposed to be nonlethal. And in the vast majority of cases it was. It expanded rapidly, hardened in midair, and was breathable. A miracle of an invention. But it wasn’t perfect. If the liquid expanded too quickly and hardened while inside of someone’s mouth or god forbid their lungs–well, the PRT had found out the hard way in a court case a while back. I remember Carol yelling about that at the time. Not to mention how unwilling the Protectorate had been to give Skitter any benefit of the doubt. Would they treat people who’d been living in her territory fairly, if Dragon delivered them like criminals? I doubted it.

Skitter seemed to agree, judging by the way the hornets were circling and diving at each other over my head. “I can’t risk that, Tattletale. These are my people. If I’m seen to be abandoning them, it would be a loss of reputation I couldn’t handle. Not when we’re this close. You need to–”

The phone buzzed, the notification for another incoming call appearing on the screen. It was from a blocked number. For a second, I froze and looked up at Skitter. Was it Dragon? Had she decided to talk to us after all?

Skitter looked back, and signed the one word that could make the situation even worse than it already was.

“Coil.”

Chapter Text

It was like the whole world had gone mute. The phone was lighting up, buzzing in my periphery; I knew it must have been ringing. But it was walled off from me.

"Coil"

I couldn't look away from Skitter's hands, hoping that she had signed something – anything – else. Maybe this was Bitch finding her phone, or Grue trying to get back in contact. Hell, maybe I'd been right the first time and it was Dragon.

But one look at the windows around us told me otherwise. Already Skitter's swarm was closing in, blocking off sightlines, surrounding us as much as possible. She was curling in on herself defensively. I wasn't even sure she noticed she was doing it.

My heart leapt up into my throat, palms clammy and cold, as I turned to look back at the phone. This was the person who had arranged the bank robbery that got me into this whole mess, just to kidnap a twelve year old. The one who'd been behind who knew how many of the events in Brockton Bay's criminal underground in the past few months.

The one who had put a hit out on Skitter.

We had maybe seconds to react before this got suspicious. What were we supposed to do? Why was he calling? I wished I could remember what Skitter had said about Coil exactly; what his goals were, his powers, anything. But it was all a blank. More than that, I was kicking myself now. How many opportunities had I had to ask her myself? I'd thought it was enough for Tattletale to get that information to Dragon, as if that meant I'd never have to deal with him directly. Stupid. You never turn down a source of information on an enemy cape–especially an unknown. What could he–

"Tattletale," Skitter's voice was flat, but I could hear the steel underneath. "Answer. Stall him."

There was a sharp breath over the phone. "Skitter, you know I can't–"

"Just do it," Skitter cut in. "Update him about the Dragonflight. Buy me two minutes."

"...Fine," Tattletale allowed. "But no more than that. And you owe me; you know how his power fucks with my head."

Skitter wasted no time in muting the phone, putting it down on the table and turning to me. "Victoria. You have questions. We have very limited time. Urgent questions only, ask now."

My breath caught in my chest, but I clenched my hands and forced it back out. Later, I would deal with the fact that Skitter had stalled her terrifying criminal mastermind boss, just so that I could ask her questions. Without me even saying anything, to boot. But for now, she was right. I needed to focus on the information I lacked.

In terms of intel, there was one overriding factor: what exactly his power was. I had to know that so I could factor it in. That would determine how safe we were here, how able we were to move against him even if we could get past Dragon, how the PRT would get involved… basically everything.
"What's his power? How does it mess with Tattletale? How do you know he put a hit on you? How safe are we here?" I signed in rapid succession. My finger placement was sloppy, but Skitter got the message.

"Tattletale described it as a Thinker power primarily; being able to live in two timelines, make different choices, and choose the outcome he wanted. He used it extensively in a lot of our operations to provide insurance, tell us when to go or not go, etc," she rattled off quickly.

As she was talking, a group of yellow jackets carried my notebook in from the other room, suspended in spider silk. I nodded gratefully and grabbed a pen off her desk, quickly scribbling things down. Anything I could learn from this conversation would be crucial–for the eventual PRT assault if nothing else.

"It messes with Tattletale because her power is intuition based. I won't go into specifics, but it's a Thinker power. It gives her lots of information gathering and processing capacity, but the wider a net she casts the worse the headaches are. She can, to a point, perceive his other timeline. Or at least, we assume so. He had a hit put out on me during the attack on the mayor's mansion."

I winced at the reminder. No, focus. My feelings could come later.

"She was absolutely sure he was going to try and have me killed, but nothing happened."

I nodded, frantically scribbling. I had to assume that her plan of bluffing him was busted at this point, then. That, or Tattletale was outright wrong. No, safer to assume enemy action first, and plan for the worst. This was all good information, but my hand was cramping. I shook it quickly to get the blood flowing again, motioning at her to continue.

"We're safe here, to a point. He doesn't have any powers outside the Thinker one. That means he's good at logistics, but needs to work through other people."

That made sense. Our position was better than I'd thought, then. Normally I'd be worried about long range, subtle threats like snipers or Blaster powers, but Skitter was a pretty good counter to those. And even if Coil had her range figured out, which I had to assume he did for safety, Dragon was right outside.

In a way, the situation insulated us completely by accident. Anyone trying to hurt us would have to be either incredibly subtle to get past Skitter's radar (poisoning the water supply maybe?), or strong enough to get through the Dragonsuit. And in either of those cases, we were fucked anyways. I had to focus on what I could control.

"Anything else?" I signed quickly, sensing our time was growing short.

"I'm going to sign at you to communicate anything I can't say out loud in the meeting. Write down as much as you can." Skitter hesitated. I could see the bob of her throat through the silk weave.

"I'm going to have to say things to him. No matter what I say or promise, you cannot react. Physically, or verbally. The chance of him noticing you're here is too great. I don't know if he's aware that you're in my base with me right now, but I have to assume that he is. No matter what, he can't know you're on the call."

A soft hand with chitin tipped nails gently rested on top of mine, stopping my writing mid sentence. I looked up at Skitter to see her eyes on mine. "If you think you can't do that, leave now. It'll be safer that way. But if you can be here…"

She didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to.

I nodded, and she turned back to the phone to unmute it. A soft hiss came over the line, undercutting the man speaking.

"–tuation is unacceptable. If you aren't able to maintain control of your team–oh hello Skitter, so kind of you to finally join us."

His voice was cool, calmer than I would've expected. He was well spoken, but direct in a way that vaguely niggled something in the back of my head. But I couldn't quite nail down why. He could've been almost anyone. In a way it was surprising how normal his voice was. He could've been talking to a disappointing employee… but for the subject matter.

"I was trying to get my people in order after Dragon drove us out of downtown," Skitter said, idly adjusting one of her gloves. "Phone calls weren't exactly high on my list of priorities."

"Understandable, but I still expect you to answer when called," Coil said. "Especially if a situation changes this quickly. The tinkertech jamming will last against Dragon's intrusion programs for another eight minutes before the guaranteed window of privacy closes."

I quietly pulled the notepad closer to me, and started writing again. So Dragon wouldn't be privy to this; that answered one of my questions. It seemed he really was as dependent on information gathering as I'd suspected. That could be a critical leverage point, if I could find the right time and place for it. Maybe a localized Trump effect of some kind? And while I was at it, why didn't I wish for a pony…

"Tattletale was just briefing us about the current situation," Coil said, breaking me out of my thoughts.

"Yes. Currently there are Dragonsuits parked outside of all of our territories. Five in total. All within visual distance. I haven't been able to confirm that last part with everyone, but there's enough of a pattern that I'd plan with that assumption going forward."

Something about that caught my attention. Five suits? Sure, Imp didn't seem to have a territory. Or at least, none I could see divvied up on that conspiracy theory map above the desk. Which meant she must be staying with one of the others, probably Grue. But… I wouldn't put it past Tattletale for that to be a clue. Maybe Coil genuinely didn't know about Imp. She was an incredibly powerful Stranger. Especially if you were unprepared for her. Could that be a potential way in?

"Yes, I understand that Dragon is a problem," Coil said. "What I fail to see is how it's mine to solve. You all agreed to hold this territory after Leviathan. You fought openly against the Nine. This is no larger a threat."

Not a larger threa–I dug my nails into my palms. Ignore the hypocritical supervillain, Victoria. Focus.

"The problem is logistics," Skitter said. "She's caught us out of position. Each of us is pinned in a known location, with only a few exits, by enemies that have the movement advantage. Even if we were to take the fight to her, how could you expect us to do anything more than get shot as soon as we open the door?"

Coil scoffed. "So then what are you suggesting? I'm not about to risk my men to break my own capes out of their homes. That's just insulting."

"No one's arguing that, boss," Tattletale said. "We're just saying that going out of our bases right now to assault Dragon on our own is not going to get you the objective you want."

"Don't presume that you know what I want before I tell you, Tattletale." I could hear the bite in his voice, the condescension.

"What I need is for you all to hold your territories. The Bay is in a state of flux, and it cannnot afford for you to abandon your holdings now."

My pen flew over my notebook. He was phrasing this as being good for the city, but Skitter had said earlier that he'd demanded the assault on the mansion to begin with. With his resources–and especially Dinah–he could easily relocate elsewhere if he wanted to. The fact that he wasn't, and was willing to devote significant investment and potential commitment here, meant one of two things. Either there was a resource or an investment I wasn't seeing, or he valued the Bay in some way that went beyond its strategic utility. Which of those it was, I couldn't say.

Skitter glanced at me, and signed, "Question?"

I nodded. "Ask him what he wants directly. Easier to plan around."

"Then what would you have us do exactly, Coil?" Skitter asked, turning back to the phone. "You're unwilling to commit assets yourself. You want us to face the most powerful Tinker in the world when she has laser guided weapons pointed straight at our front doors. Unless your plan involves all of us getting arrested here, engaging at all is pointless."

"What I want is what I said at the beginning. What I'll remind you that you promised me. That you'd take territory, and hold it. That you'd prove an asset to me, and manage the underground in your region. That you'd keep the PRT away. You're failing to do that. Publicly. As it stands now, Skitter, I see no reason to honor our agreement."

Skitter's bugs swirled angrily around us. I met her eyes, and shook my head. "He's trying to make you angry, make a mistake. Don't let him win. He's not going to give her up anyways. Stall him."

Slowly, deliberately, the tension bled out of her. The centipede crawled up the leg of the table, jumped into my open hand and curled up against my palm. I stroked it softly.

"Fine then. Give us time. At least admit that this situation is unprecedented in our time here. The rest of the team hasn't even reported in yet. For all we know, one of them might have been out and can move independently. We can figure out what our options are, then strike effectively. Will you be willing to use your power to maximize that?"

There was a pause over the phone. I had to wonder exactly what was happening in this other timeline. How was the other version of this conversation going? Had I already given myself away there, for Coil to use against me here? Suddenly, I empathized with how difficult Skitter's struggle to plan against this Villain must have been this whole time.

"I'll consider it," Coil said finally, with obvious reluctance in his voice, "If you can prove to me you need it. I know that you've been housing Glory Girl for two weeks, you assured me that she would be a combatant that could be counted on. And yet you've made no mention of her yet in this meeting."

My ears rang. My heart beat fast and frantic. Sweat slowly dripped down my temple as I bit my lip. My nails dug into my palms. Was– was that what Skitter had said about me? To Coil? Was that her plan?

I shook myself. No, I had to remember what she said earlier. That she was going to have to say things to maintain her cover. This was a part of that. I believed her. I believed in her.

I had to.

"Yes," Skitter said, the walls around us snarling soundlessly, "I did say she'd be a combatant. And she's already proven willing. She outflew Dragon to get me back to my lair without capture. But I need time to convince her that outright conflict against capes is a good idea. That's why I'm still asking for your power."

"Hmm," Coil considered, as I held my breath. "If things change significantly and my forces can do something meaningful, perhaps. But as it stands now, I'm unconvinced."

"I can work something out, Boss," Tattletale said. For the first time, I processed her wording there. Boss. The same word that Charlotte used for Skitter, but more importantly, that Skitter used for Grue. And now Tattletale for Coil. Layers on layers.

"I should hope so. For your sake. You have one week. I expect results."

The line went dead.

Chapter Text

Nobody spoke into the ringing silence after Coil dropped the call for at least a minute. I didn't know what Skitter was thinking, if anything at all. Her fingers drummed slowly on the desk, one at a time, seconds apart. Her bugs were mostly quiescent, moving aimlessly across the walls. Once or twice she landed a fly or mosquito on me that I didn't have the energy to brush off. But other than that, she didn't make a move.

As for me… I was trying to figure out what to say. Or think. Or do. That call had been more stressful than anything I'd done so far, and that included trying to outfly Dragon twenty minutes ago. At least I'd had agency there. My notes beckoned to me from the table; ideas and plans for dealing with Coil, potential blind spots and positions of leverage, but I couldn't focus on them. My mind kept replaying Skitter's words.

I need time to convince her that outright conflict against capes is a good idea.

I couldn't stop fidgeting. I laced my fingers and pulled them apart, squeezed each of my palms in turn. My foot bounced agitatedly on the floor in time with my heartbeat pounding in my ears, not stopping even when I tried to quell it. My gaze flicked from the wall chart to the bookcase engulfed in containment foam to my lap; anywhere and everywhere except for Skitter herself.

She'd said she'd be playing a part on that call. She'd warned me about it ahead of time. But how much of her performance came from somewhere real? I couldn't deny that the thought had occurred to me, over my stay here. That Skitter might be playing some kind of a long game, slowly maneuvering me into accepting her morality more easily. Talking me into doing small things that became medium things that became big things. School assembly warnings about slippery slopes never mentioned how justified the first steps felt. How you could stand up on the moral high ground and look down at a girl your own age bleeding from a bolt through the shoulder, and see stepping onto the greased slide to help her as the only choice you could make.

I knew just thinking like that meant it was already working. How else would I classify what I'd just done? I hadn't fought Dragon directly… but that was already far closer than the me of two months ago would have ever accepted. And that was just the most obvious example! How many times had she been pitted up against the Heroes in front of me in a way that made me sympathize with her? How many of those encounters had been planned to get me right to where I was? How much–

I dug my nails into my palms, and slowly calmed my breathing. In for four seconds, hold for three, exhale for seven. Inch by inch, my stomach dropped out of my chest. The hard ball in my throat shrunk. My pulse slowed, and the edges of my vision cleared.

Maybe I still had reason to be worried about Skitter. I couldn't say for sure. But I knew for a fact that some of the situations we'd been thrown into were out of her control. There was no way she'd willingly make herself that vulnerable to Flechette, for instance, if it was just a play to make me take her side. She could've killed Skitter, and neither of us could have done anything about it. It was a miracle she was recovering as well as she was.

"I know that was a lot."

I jumped, instinctively crossing my arms over my chest. Skitter didn't react.

"I told you earlier that I'd have to say things to him. But I didn't have much time to give you a warning, and I still said them. I know how it must have felt, listening."
She didn't move, but I was close enough to see her throat move under the thin silk as she swallowed.

"If you decide that between this and Dragon it's too much, you can leave. Same as before. Just don't get the kids involved, either way."

I stood stock still, staring at her. God, what was I supposed to say to that? My hands were trembling as I raised them to sign, "Why?"

She cocked her head. The jerky, insectile way she moved put me vividly in mind of her bugs for a second, like the silk-clad cape was just an extension of the inhuman swarm. It only added to the inscrutability of this bewildering, confusing girl.

"Why say I can leave? Why say those things to him at all?."

"The first one should be obvious. As to the second…" She considered me for a moment, letting the silence stretch. "Coil has too many spies to keep you secret. I don't know if he has any here, but they're definitely in the PRT. From the moment they recognised you that first time we went out, I didn't have a way to hide you. If I tried, he'd know. But he couldn't move against me openly. I'd hoped that by telling him I was trying to cultivate you as an asset, he'd give me discretion."

She folded her hands over one another, gripping tightly. "But I still told him about you. Without telling you first. If that's too much, I get it."

I… couldn't say I was happy with her, or at ease with her telling Coil about me. Not at all. But she'd still warned me as best she could when it mattered. She let me sit in on the call in the first place, which was a risk she didn't need to take. A risk that affected her much more than it did me. And she'd done it, at least according to her, to give me the space I needed.

I looked up to meet her eyes. "You can't keep secrets from me. Not like this. Nothing further, or I really will leave."

She stared at me for a moment, before nodding. "Alright. That just leaves us with the info from the call."

I sighed, glancing at the notepad from earlier. "I have my thoughts here. Anything else I should know about?"

Skitter's fingers drummed on the desk. She looked up at the map of Brockton Bay on the wall, considering. "Tattletale will know that our phones are considered compromised until further notice, either by Dragon or Coil, or both. She'll be working the Dragon problem mainly, as that's the most immediate issue. If she gets any traction, she'll send word through her people somehow. Other than that, we wait."

I curled back into my chair. "What are you going to do about Dragon?"

The pause dragged out like a noose being measured for us. Skitter's fingers drummed on the table again.

"What I have to," she finally said. "I'm still looking for a solution. I know you want something mostly nonviolent. But this has me between a rock and a hard place. If Dragon keeps us pinned here for too long, I'm going to have to do something one way or another. You understand."

I shut my eyes, drawing my knees up to my chest and hugging them. Fuck. I didn't want to think about this. Didn't want to think about one of the world's best Heroes forcing my guardian into a position with no way out, just because of what the PRT said.

"Hey," Skitter said. Her voice was closer, and my centipede nuzzled the soft skin on the inside of my wrist as she spoke. I cracked open one eye. She'd gotten out of her chair to crouch in front of me, looking up. It made for a weird picture. Objectively, the mask was terrifying - insectile, mandibled, with those eerie, inhuman yellow lenses and not a hint of skin.

But familiarity had bred... not contempt. But a sense of ease. The lack of expression in the ant-like visage wasn't offputting anymore. I know by now that Skitter's face wasn't what she emoted with. And the dark, scary design wasn't intimidating anymore, either.

I hadn't known her long. But shared experiences had a way of fast-forwarding that kind of thing. Here and now, I looked at the face of a Villain, and all I saw was...

"I'm not asking you to be a part of this fight," she said, her voice pure conviction. "You said you wouldn't, and I respect that choice. I just wanted to warn you, so that you can decide where you want to be. Trust, right?"

Trust. She was doing what I'd asked of her. I could hang onto that. It would've been so much easier for her to let the situation devolve, as she knew it no doubt would, and let the chaos and confusion force me into action. Like it had when Dragon found us the first time. It would've served her purposes better to do that, given how well it worked out for her in retrospect. But she hadn't. Weirdly enough, that helped.

I nodded without breaking my gaze. She cocked her head, and slowly stretched out her left hand, leaving it in the middle between us. Leaving it to me to bridge the gap, if I wanted to. I reached out and let her clasp my hand to pull me back up.

But as I was in the middle of getting back on my feet, I noticed something. A tiny gap in her step, a hitch in her breath, an ever so slight tensing in her arm.

Suddenly the pieces came together. Fuck, that was the arm she'd taken the bolt in! The same shoulder that had been facing forward when we'd crashed through the door not even an hour earlier!

"Are you okay?" I signed as best I could.

She tilted her head. Reading her body language was hard, but this head cock seemed more honestly confused than the last. "Why wouldn't I be?"

I pointed at her shoulder. She didn't react for a moment, staring at me. I refused to back down. Things between us were complicated and weird and tense, but this much was simple: if Skitter was hurting, it was my duty to make sure she was okay, just like I would for any wounded person right in front of me. Especially if it was, inadvertently or otherwise, my fault.

She sighed. "It hurts, yes. Is that what you wanted to know?"

God, it was like pulling teeth trying to get anything personal out of this girl. "Where does it hurt? Does it hurt more now than earlier? Why didn't you say anything?"

"I didn't say anything because it didn't impact my ability to do what needs to be done," she said, as if that was at all satisfying as an answer. "If you must know, the doctor made two incisions into my shoulder; one in the back and one in the front. He left stitches in, and said not to bother it. It hurts, but it's healing."

I glared at her. This was getting ridiculous. "And the past few days counts as 'not bothering it'?"

The walls buzzed, but I didn't let my anxiety rise further than my stomach. I knew she wouldn't hurt me, and this was important. Even if she didn't like it.

"Probably not," she said through what I could tell were gritted teeth. "But it doesn't matter now. I'm not exactly moving from here, and we don't have a trained doctor in the building."

I bit my lip. She was right. But I couldn't stand just… leaving it like that. I took a step closer, and looked at her shoulder. The light was dim, so I hadn't seen it earlier... Or maybe I just hadn't been paying attention. But there was an ever-so-slightly darker patch on her shoulder. Was that left over from the original injury… or something new?

"Bleeding."

She glanced down. "Just a bit, yes."

Just a bit? I swear, it was harder to get her to talk about this than it was her actual supervillain boss.

"If it's getting through your suit, you clearly need to change the dressing."

She laughed. No. Scoffed. I flinched, and she cut herself off, my centipede immediately curling remorsefully around my wrist.

"Sorry," Skitter said. Around us, the quiescent swarm stirred. "It's just, who would do that? I can't exactly reach it myself."

"Charlotte?" If nothing else, she was around often enough that I was surprised this hadn't come up.

Skitter looked down at me, her yellow lenses unreadable. "I'm not that needlessly cruel."

My brain stalled out as I chewed on that phrasing. Charlotte had been pretty distressed when she thought I had hurt Skitter earlier, but that was an awful lot of care to take over someone Skitter called her minion. Regardless, I could tell by the tightness in her stance that I wasn't getting any further than this. God, she was so frustrating. It made me just want to–

I froze, considering. It… was crazy. I had to admit that much. But I also knew that the knowledge of her injury was going to eat away at me if I did nothing. And she clearly wasn't going to get help herself.

My hands slowly came up, even as I was still thinking. "What if I did it?"

Total silence. The sluggish, placid movement of the insects on the walls stopped dead; not a wing or mandible so much as twitched. The girl in the costume might as well have been a statue. My hands were frozen, one trembling in the question sign, the other held against my stomach. But I didn't take it back.

"You…" For once, I seemed to have Skitter at a loss for words.

"Are you going to take care of it, if I won't?"

Slowly, she shook her head.

"Then why not?"

"I don't want to unmask. Can't." There was something in her voice, an edge I couldn't quite put a name to. But I pushed ahead anyway. I was too committed now to stop.

"Then don't. Just take off enough for me to put a new bandage on. Keep the mask."

She stared at me for what must have just been a few seconds but felt like far, far longer. I wondered what she saw. Was I pushing her boundaries too far? Was this too intimate an ask? It was so hard to know with her, especially when her usual tells were silent. Literally. But… I also had to believe if she had a problem, she'd say so.

"You'd really do that?" she asked at length. "For me?"

I nodded.

Her shoulders slumped, and she let out a breath that was almost a huff of laughter. "You really aren't going to give up, are you?"

I opened my mouth instinctively, but she cut me off before I could get any further. "No, it's fine. I– thank you. The zipper is in the back. I'll get the bandages."

Slowly, almost hesitantly, she turned to give me her back. Part of the swarm on the walls pulled away to go downstairs, presumably to get the bandages she mentioned. But I didn't let myself pay attention to them. The only thing I focused on was Skitter. The rigid set of her shoulders, the lines of tension I could already see running up her spine. She was no Brute. She had no shield, no inhuman resilience, no healing factor. Sitting like this, exposed, vulnerable, she was painfully fragile. I could snap her in half with one hand, and both of us knew it. And yet she'd still bared the back of her neck to me.

I'd been the one to suggest this, but... now that it was happening, it felt different. Was I really sure I could do this? Would it just make things more complicated and confusing?

Skitter seemed to sense my hesitation. "It's fine if you don't want to. I'll be fine. I've made it this long without any problems."

I swallowed, and firmed my jaw. No, that wasn't good enough. Not when the situation with Dragon and Coil and Dinah and everything else was still in flux. If I could help, I had to. Besides, this wouldn't be any worse than any of the wounded Heroes I'd carried off for Amy to heal before. Right? Right.

My hand shook as I slowly reached out and brushed her hair away from the nape of her neck. This close, I could see through the thick black curls to the pale pinkish white of her skin. I slid my fingers over her neck to find the zipper tongue, and I felt a rush of goosebumps spread out beneath my fingers.

Deep breaths. That was just an instinctual reaction; she couldn't help it. I'd done nothing wrong. If she wanted me to stop, she'd say so. I forced myself not to reach higher, to feel for the clasps and elastic bands no doubt holding her mask in place, hiding under her hair. I could take it off if I really wanted to. She must have known that.

And yet.

Slowly, carefully, I pulled the zipper down. Her silks split down the center like a beetle's wings, peeling apart to reveal a smooth, tense back. Her spine stood out in sharp relief against her skin. Was that from stress, or malnutrition? I'd been right about how badly I'd thrown her around escaping Dragon, too. Her pale skin was mottled red from freshly blooming bruises, along with a few older ones in various shades from ugly purple to faded green. It was a living map of pain spread out across the past two weeks.

I shook my head. Stay focused. The silk was far enough away now to see that she clearly had some sort of a sports bra on that I could see the back of. A wave of relief washed over me. I hadn't really considered that aspect when I'd made my offer, but I was suddenly and intensely glad I didn't have to deal with it, as selfish as that sounded.

What I did have to deal with were the side effects of her injuries. As I pulled the zipper down to the bottom, I reached up with my other hand to carefully draw the silk away from and over her shoulder blade. Instantly her back tensed, a sharp intake of breath betrayed by her ribs. That was a bad sign. A severe shoulder wound was never going to be a picnic, but it must have really, really hurt for that kind of reaction. Skitter hadn't made a sound when the actual bolt went in, and no matter what kind of Striker power Flechette had, it couldn't have stopped nerve impulses from the injury after. Her pain tolerance must have been immense. This was bad.

"Tell me if it's too much, or to stop." I signed. Wait. Fuck, she was in front of me. She couldn't see. How was I supposed to–

"I will. Keep going." Her words were tight and measured, deliberate breath control keeping them quiet and shallow. Right. Omniscient bug controller. Sometimes I still forgot. I nodded, and got back to it. This time I used my right hand to brace her shoulder blade, stopping just before where I could feel the edge of the bandage. Slowly, I drew the silk bodyglove away from her back before pulling it over her shoulder and letting it fall.

Now that it was finally off, I could see what the problem was. Some of the blood had soaked through the bandage, congealed, and bonded to the silk above. No wonder it had hurt so much. She must have been tugging at it with every movement of her arms. Not hard, but anything that made the bodyglove shift would have tugged at the scab.

"Here's the other one," Skitter said, as her returning swarm made its presence known. This time I did jump, if only slightly. I'd somehow managed to forget about anything outside of this room in the last few minutes. Her insects laid the bandage down alongside a small bottle of rubbing alcohol, dangling from silk strings. At least she'd thought to keep it mostly sterile. Though, as I looked closer at it I could see the gauze was still in its plastic packaging. Fair enough.

I set the gauze down on the table next to us, and set to peeling away the old dressing. I hesitated, my fingers just over the old medical tape. This was going to hurt. How could I do it without further aggravating the issue?

"Just do it," Skitter said in front of me. I forced myself not to jump and slowly let my shoulders relax. God, even when she was trying… no, not the time. I slid an edge of one of my fingernails under the tape, and gently peeled it away. I could feel her skin tense under me, felt the tiny tremors of pain nerves firing that she couldn't suppress, but she didn't say anything.

As I pulled off the medical tape and gauze, the smell hit me. Like old socks, mixed with pennies. I scrunched my nose. I had expected this, but the smell was pretty rank even by bandage standards. Was her silk not breathable? At least the wound beneath it wasn't that bad. It was reddish, but that was standard as I understood for something this fresh. There was a bit of blood oozing out from one of the stitches in particular, but the rest were holding. Small mercies.

"When did you change this?" I asked, carefully setting the used bandage down away from the new one.

"I didn't."

I froze. I really shouldn't have expected anything better, but somehow I had. That meant she hadn't gotten this cleaned or treated in days, almost close to a week. Because god forbid that anyone else see her in a position of weakness.

"How often should it be changed?"

Skitter hummed. "The doctor said about once every one to two days."

Yeah, that would explain the smell. "I'm going to have to use the rubbing alcohol to clean it out fully then. It's going to hurt. Next time, tell me."

Her shoulders slumped, and I took that as the admission (or surrender) that it was. I opened the plastic packaging around the gauze, and unrolled a small segment before tearing it off. Thank god for super strength; no scissors required. I tipped a generous dose of rubbing alcohol onto the gauze before replacing the bottle on the desk, turning back to face her.

"Whenever you're ready."

I nodded, and rubbed her shoulder reassuringly with my left hand before I wiped the wound down with my right. Her shoulder tensed, and she quickly grabbed her left hand with her right to prevent it from moving. Around us her insects went wild, diving through the air, beating themselves against the walls, laying into each other in a vicious cannibal frenzy.

She didn't make a sound.

I cleaned the incision as diligently and carefully as I could. Ultimately, I wasn't really trained in this any more than she was. Most of the injuries I dealt with were taken care of by… Amy. So I had to resort to my best judgment for most of it. The dirt and what looked like accumulated sweat and dead skin came off easily enough, but the wound still looked slightly inflamed. I gently passed over it as much as I could with the gauze, making sure to get in the crevasses without pulling her stitches any further apart. All through it she was tense, her shoulder blade and clavicle standing out in sharp relief against her skin, but she didn't move. Her breaths came slow and labored, and around us her swarm continued to kill itself en masse. I rubbed slow, reassuring circles on her back to distract her. I hoped it helped, but if it did, it wasn't enough to stop her taking out her pain on her bugs.

Finally, I set the gauze down. The stitch she'd almost popped was still oozing a thin trickle of blood, but other than that her shoulder was clean.

"That looks like the worst of it," I signed.

"Good. Just put the bandage on, and I can take care of the front."

I nodded, grateful that she'd suggested that before I had to. I couldn't imagine having her look at me the whole time I did this process; this was bad enough as it was. The gauze was tight as I stretched it out with one hand, holding it in place while I took the tape and carefully applied it to both ends with my other two before smoothing it out.

I stepped back, and inspected my work one last time. The bandage looked good, or rather, as good as I could make it. I'd tried to copy the doctor's work as best I could, but it wasn't perfect. What mattered was that it was tight against her skin, and wasn't coming off anytime soon.

"Done."

"Thank you," Skitter said. She didn't turn around.

The silence hung in the air. I wasn't sure what to say. Was I supposed to acknowledge just how intimate and vulnerable what she let me do was? To reassure her that she hadn't unmasked to me? That she still had her barrier, even if it was in name only at this point? To try and distract her with plans for Coil?

Ultimately, she decided for me. "I'll figure out the bandage on the front. Could you go downstairs and check on Sierra for me? She seems like she's coming up here, and I'd rather not have her find me like this."

I nodded, taking the dismissal for the escape it was, and left Skitter to finish tending to herself alone.

"Skitter, I was just–oh." Sierra paused mid-sentence, as she got to the top of the stairs on the second floor, and saw me. Her eyes furrowed behind her domino mask. I smiled hesitantly.

"Glory Girl?"

Flinch.

"Oh sorry, Victoria. Right. My bad; force of habit. What are you doing here? Have you seen Skitter?"

I went to sign, only to pause mid-motion. Right, this wasn't Skitter. I didn't have my notebook on me. How was I going to–

"You can sign at me."

I froze. Sierra… knew sign? She must have read my shock, and rubbed the back of her head sheepishly. "I had a… nephew, who was deaf. Needed to be able to understand him. I'll admit that my own sign is pretty rusty, but I should be able to understand you. What's up?"

A flush of warmth shot up through me. I knew that Skitter could understand me, and that already meant so much. But Charlotte couldn't, and most of the people I interacted with on a daily basis needed the notebook too. It was a relief to have someone else I could talk to conveniently. I… needed that, more than I wanted to admit.

"She's busy upstairs, said I should help you."

Sierra frowned. "Huh. Well that's a problem. I was just rearranging some stuff, and unpacking the next round of rations from the basement up to the fridge. I was going to ask Skitter to see if she could track down where Charlotte or Forrest went so I could recruit an extra pair of hands, but obviously you can't go outside."

I shook my head. That definitely wasn't happening.

"Then that's a problem. I'm not sure what to do, unless…" Sierra paused. "Tell me, Victoria, how strong are you?"

Ten minutes later, I found myself airborne with a cheap plastic box in my arms, playing porter.

"Yeah, it's that crate up there. The one labeled non-perishables!" Sierra shouted up to me from the ground.

I grunted my acknowledgement, before carefully floating closer. This was the last of the boxes she wanted me to get down from the highest stack–I had no idea how Charlotte and the rest did this normally. I supposed Forrest was built enough to do it, but this was just plain awkward. Thankfully, as with everything, flying made it easier.

The plastic was worn and scuffed as it slid along my field, and I was careful not to press too hard as I got a good grip. It could be incredibly easy to damage something unintentionally when you had a Brute rating, and I wasn't willing to take any chances with the food for the kids. Judging from the supplies in the basement, there might not be all that much to spare.

Once I had a secure hold, I gently lifted up until I could feel that the crate hadn't caught on anything below me. There had been a few close calls earlier where I'd almost pulled so hard that a strap or clasp ripped straight through the plastic housing. Luckily Sierra had stopped me before any serious damage had been done.

I drifted backwards before descending back down to the floor, nodding at Sierra in my peripheral vision once I did. The replacement lights down in the cellar were crap, and the window was boarded over with plywood, so in the low light she was only just visible off to my left.

"Alright, same plan as before. I go ahead, you float behind and I'll tell you when to stop or readjust?"

I knocked twice on the side of the box with my right hand–our agreed on signal when we made the first trip and realized the issue of my not being able to sign while carrying something.

"Great! I'll just keep talking so you can follow my voice then."

Slowly, we made our way to the stairs and then up to the main floor, Sierra coaching me the whole way. Like I said earlier, this was a lot easier with my flying. I didn't want to know what this would have been like if I'd actually had to take the stairs, instead of just gliding over them.

"This is far enough," Sierra said as we entered the kitchen. "Just set it down here, I can unpack it myself."

I nodded, and gently set down the box next to the other two we had taken down earlier.

"Phew! That was a lot easier with you doing the heavy lifting, literally in this case." Sierra smiled at me.

I smiled back "Happy to help." And I really was. This was, in a way, what I wanted to do when I set out to be a Hero all those years back. Maybe not literally–I still had dreams of beating up Nazi's and punching monsters back then–but this was what I thought it would feel like. Helping people, doing the right thing. I missed it, in the murky soup of motivations and miscommunication recently.

"Hey, Victoria?" Sierra asked.

I looked up. Somehow I had gotten distracted, but now she had a torn look on her face. She was biting her lip, and even behind the domino mask I could see her eyes shifting between me and the opening to the living room.

"Yes?"

"...why are you here?"

Before I could even start to sign, Sierra blushed bright red as the implications of what she said hit her, and she scrambled to rephrase. "No, not like that! I meant… you're a Hero. I know Skitter helped you at a time when you really needed it."

She rubbed her arm, looking down. "I'd be a hypocrite if I didn't understand that. She did the same for me, it's why I'm here. I asked Battery and the rest of the heroes for help, and none of them were there for me. So I get it."

She looked up at me, and took off her mask. Seeing her whole face, it was clear now that she was older than me. Maybe in college already. But she looked so young when she whispered, "But why are you still here? I don't have anywhere else to go, despite what Skitter does. But you do. So why?"

My breath caught in my chest. I crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself protectively. Why. That was the question. Why why why. It's not like I hadn't asked myself the same question – today even! And I couldn't deny her point. Whatever I owed Skitter, or whatever favor she was doing me, any notion of balancing the scales had ended a long time ago. I couldn't kid myself about that. If I was staying here, it was because I was doing so willingly.

I did have options, much as it hurt to admit. There was nothing technically stopping me from going out and surrendering myself to Dragon right now. Or just leaving the Bay entirely. No one could really stop me if I wanted to leave. And yet, here I stayed. What was keeping me?

I thought back to that girl upstairs, with the bandage on her shoulder. The bowed back, the goosebumps on her neck, the tightness in her spine. I had no idea when she'd last made herself vulnerable for someone like that. I hadn't even thought about it when I asked. And yet, she had. Because she trusted me.

Leaving wouldn't be betraying that trust, not really. She'd said so herself, I could go at any time. But all the same, it felt wrong. Like I'd be rejecting her by choosing something else. And, weird as it was, I didn't want to do that. Not when it seemed like she was so close to choosing someone, something, better.

"I think," I signed, trying to choose my words carefully, "I'm here because I want to help. Skitter isn't perfect. We both know that. But, she's also trying, in a lot of ways that don't show, to be better than the people around her want her to be. I respect that, even when she fails."

Sierra stared at me, worrying at her lower lip. "You really think so? It's hard to reconcile that with… her… when she's sending someone running away screaming, or doing god knows what out there."

I nodded, trying to ignore the twisting in my stomach. "I know. I don't like it either. But she hasn't had any better options for a long time now. That doesn't excuse it, but I don't want to take yet another choice away from her."

"I… guess I can see that," Sierra finally said. "Just be careful. Skitter doesn't let people in close, and that's usually for the better."

And with that cryptic warning she turned to unpack the boxes, leaving me with more questions than I'd started with.

Chapter Text

The water was hot as it cascaded down her back, dripping from the ends of wet black curls and streaming down pale skin. The girl under the spray sighed, tilting her head up and closing her eyes to bask in the sensation. The water heater hadn’t been working until recently, and she had thanked Charlotte for suggesting she prioritize it. It seemed so silly in retrospect; a luxury they couldn’t afford... but she got it now. She’d had no idea how much she’d been missing a hot shower until she had one for the first time in two months.

Unfortunately, it couldn’t last. The water was shared communally, and since the heater was portable it couldn’t keep up with the demand of a shower for more than a few minutes. If you went long enough, the water would turn freezing again; a sudden shivering shock snapping you out of pleasant warmth.

There was a life lesson to be learned somewhere in that.

The girl reached out and turned the shower off, watching the remaining soap suds slide off her body and swirl around the drain. The plastic covering her shoulder crinkled, reminding her of the new bandage that had been applied earlier.

She pulled the curtain aside, and her attention swept back into her, bringing the world into sharp relief. Though, that wasn’t quite true, as it implied her awareness was only ever limited to just her body. She had taken this shower hoping to ground herself in the moment, to forget about the pressure and image she had to maintain in front of everyone for just a few minutes. But that was hard to do when tracking the movement of every person in the building had burrowed down past conscious thought and instinctive reaction into the realms of autonomous reflex. At this point, her omniscience was as fundamental and automatic as her heartbeat.

Even now, she could feel Sierra sitting on the couch, surrounded by some of the kids huddling close. Maybe she was telling them some kind of a story? Sierra was good at that. The girl was glad that at least one of her minions knew what they were doing around children; she certainly didn’t.

Charlotte and Forrest had returned earlier from their run to Tattletale. It had been a gamble, that first day, to see if civilians could get past Dragon, but she hadn’t moved from her position across the street when they’d crept out, knowing that the girl couldn’t help them if the machine decided they were targets. They’d been out twice more since, once a day, like clockwork. Nobody had wanted to risk anything further.

As for the suit, it loomed on the rooftop where it had landed three days ago, unbothered by the sun or nighttime chill. They’d boarded over the window it had smashed with its grenade, but she could still feel its stare. It was no statue, this thing of steel surfaces and acrid smells and reptilian patience. It moved, it made itself comfortable–it even breathed, after a fashion. The mechanisms that had turned it inside out weren’t idle; they churned under its surface, replacing a panel here, adjusting a gun there, reconfiguring its silhouette in subtle ways at unknown cues.

They were in an odd little war, the girl and the draconic engine dogging her. Or perhaps not a war. A game. There were rules, after all. The girl couldn’t raise her swarm to engulf it, or it would use the weapons bristling along its sides. But as long as she used her power in subtle ways, it retaliated only in kind. She layered bugs on its weapons and control surfaces to track its movements. It, in turn, kept gun barrels pointed unerringly at her and each of her minions no matter where they were in the house. She sent beetles wriggling between cracks in its plates to chew on wires; it electrocuted, cooked or crushed them as its internals churned and changed.

It had been a stalemate so far, this game. But no game lasted forever, the girl knew. And respites like this were only ever a tool to make the abuse hurt worse when it restarted. She couldn’t do anything about that, though, so instead she sent a fresh set of butterflies to delicately cover the suit’s sensors, for all the good it did, and focused back on the house

Where Victoria was in her room.

The girl dropped the towel on the toilet lid as she finished drying herself, and let out the groan that she’d been holding in for what felt like days.

Victoria. Fuck. She didn’t even know where to begin. The ex(?)-hero was unbelievably fragile, in a way that made her hard to plan around. That first encounter with the heroes had been perhaps seconds away from lethal rounds being fired, over what amounted to a panic attack. And she was the one who’d got them into this mess with Dragon. How else could she explain the Tinker showing up in half the time they’d been promised after they’d gone along with that phone call?

And yet, she was also strong. Stronger than the girl thought she could be, in the same situation. Victoria pushed. And pushed and pushed. Never in the antagonistic way that most heroes did, but in a way that just dared her to say no, to make unreasonable demands, to test exactly where her limits were. And when push came to shove… she didn’t leave. She stood between her and Flechette, she flew her back to her territory twice, once while being chased by Dragon. How could she doubt that? How could she afford not to?

The girl gently took off the plastic and tape that she had affixed to her shoulder before the shower, checking the bandage as best she could. It looked like the impromptu covering had done its job for the most part. She wouldn’t have to get it changed early.

She flushed at the reminder, screwing her eyes shut. Not that it helped to drown out the memory. God she was so stupid. Being that vulnerable, that intimate… with a hero. A hero, she had to keep reminding herself, who could tear her arm off on a whim. Who had every incentive to turn her in. Who’d looked at her with a sharp gleam in those eyes every time they’d been in the same room for the past three days, daring her to try and hide the pain in her shoulder again.

With a grunt, the girl pulled on her underwear and slipped on a tank top, glancing at the mirror to check that everything was situated. With a nod, she started the process of pulling on her silk bodyglove and armor. It would have been a much more labor intensive process had it not been for the bugs holding the silk in place and stretching it out ahead of her. A trick she’d had to learn after almost being caught by her father once too often.

She winced at the reminder. Her Dad. She hadn’t thought about him in what felt like far too long. Her stomach twisted unpleasantly, and she tightened the belt around her waist almost viciously in response. She was a bad daughter. She knew that. You had to be to run away right after an Endbringer attack, much less start a life of crime without telling your parents. But it just wasn’t that simple. It’s not like she’d set out to get here. Each step of the way, there’d been a reason. Something she was fighting for. Who could argue with her choices? Who could point at anything she’d done and say that was when they’d gone too far?

Do you think that this is legitimately the best way to get Dinah back, or is it just the one you chose?

Victoria’s words echoed in her memory from what felt like months ago. God, she’d been so angry at the time. It had been yet another hero looking down on her for making the best of a shitty situation. As though there’d been a better option. As if she wasn’t trying to do the right thing.

And yet, the words hadn’t left her since. Like an earworm, only this wasn’t an insect she could have obediently crawl out of her head.

The girl let out a slow breath as the flies and hornets behind her grasped the zipper going down her back and pulled it up with a coordinated buzz. Normally she’d get it herself, but this was easier with her arm still hurting.

But that thought only drew her back to what she’d been trying to avoid thinking about all along. That moment with Victoria earlier, when she’d undressed and let her fix the wound on her back. What had she been thinking? She hadn’t unmasked, but she might as well have. It was stupider not to, at that point. But she’d just… felt trapped. Couldn’t get the words out.

The girl laughed under her breath. Well, her ward would certainly sympathize. But that didn’t change just how poorly she’d handled the whole mess. She’d stood as still as a statue, barely breathing as Victoria touched her shoulder. She suppressed a shiver as the memory of deceptively strong fingertips ghosted over her back. When was the last time anyone had touched her like that? Her Dad wasn’t physically affectionate that way, and... well, with him ruled out, that didn’t really leave anyone else, sad as that was to say. Lisa was a close friend, and the girl owed her more than she’d ever be able to admit out loud, but she wasn’t like... that. It felt different.

Victoria, though...

She’d been lucky to be facing away, to have her mask to hide behind so her face didn’t give anything away.

How was she supposed to say “Thank you for treating me more gently than anyone else has in years”?

Her hands crossed protectively over herself even thinking about it. Pathetic. Weak. She couldn’t even face her ward, who she was meant to be protecting, to say thank you. Still hadn’t, not even days later. She’d just… let the silence stretch until she couldn’t bear the awkwardness any longer, then shoved her at Sierra. She’d barely even had the presence of mind to thank her first. It had just been… too much, too fast. But she hadn’t been able to say no, to admit that she’d bitten off more than she was comfortable chewing.

Skitter couldn’t say any of those things. She was strong, and she could do so many things the girl couldn’t, but showing gratitude wasn’t among them. And without her–before her–the girl had always been useless.

She glanced down at the mask staring up at her from the top of the toilet tank. It was always the last part of her costume she put on. She didn’t know why, but that felt important. She slowly picked up the mask, staring at the baleful yellow lenses. Some days, it really didn’t feel like she knew what she was doing. Or well, it always felt that way. But sometimes she felt it more than usual. It would’ve been easy to blame Victoria. Part of her wanted to. But she knew it wasn’t her so much as the way she voiced the questions the girl had been trying to avoid thinking about for months now. She couldn’t blame the hero for that.

The mask rose to meet her face and slipped over it, practiced hands pulling the elastic strap back and feeding her hair through the opening in the back. The familiar tint settled over her vision, almost comforting in the jaundiced view of the world it gave.

Skitter had a lot of problems, and it was time to start dealing with them. One way or another.

“Boss,” Charlotte said as Skitter stepped into the main room, “we were wondering where you were.”

“None of your concern,” she responded instinctively, sweeping over the surrounding area with her insects. Dragon hadn’t moved in the past hour, save an angling of the part of the suit she couldn’t help but think of as the head to follow her downstairs, but she wouldn’t put it past the heroes (or Coil) to try and sneak through the back door while her attention was focused elsewhere. Not that her power worked that way, but it didn’t hurt to be cautious.

One Mannequin was more than enough.

Charlotte swallowed. “I got your note. From Tattletale.”

Instantly, Skitter’s attention was drawn back to her body. “Well done, Charlotte.”

The girl beamed, handing over the note. Skitter was glad her wince was hidden behind her mask. She was trying to balance the affirmations with her reputation, at least within her lair, as she could afford to take the intimidation hit. But it really shouldn’t be that easy to perk her minion up with a three-word sentence. She was probably coming across as standoffish and intimidating, or wildly inconsistent, but she couldn’t take the time to fix it.

She opened the note, and began to read.

“A Watermelon, but don’t trust anything over notes. Phones still compromised. Others still pinned down by their own suits. Attempted jamming to cover phones ineffective. Mercenaries getting twitchy over lack of action. Will signal with more info at usual time.”

Short. Concise. Useless.

Skitter struggled to contain her snarl, carefully setting down the note. Her swarm upstairs rustled, a combination of emotions sending them into a frenzy. She tried to mostly keep it contained–she didn’t want to frighten the kids. Tattletale’s mercenaries weren’t the only ones getting twitchy over being cooped up for so long. Not that the kids had left the house much before Dragon had arrived, but there was a difference between didn’t and couldn’t.

She’d heard entirely too many snappish arguments born from stress and quiet crying sessions in private in the past twenty four hours.

“Thank you, Charlotte. What about the rest of what I asked?”

She frowned, carefully looking to either side before leaning in close and whispering, “No good, Tattletale says that if we start delivering big stuff to the base, Dragon will make a move. She can’t get more food here.”

Fuck. She didn’t have to check her supplies to know how close they were to disaster. Coil had proven he knew just as well as she did when he gave her his ultimatum. Four days left if she wanted to prove herself. Then they’d start to starve in earnest.

A block away, her swarm churned violently. Hornets swirled in strafing runs, targeting the flies. The flies in turn dodged out of the way, their compound eyes giving them superior vision and maximizing their already incredible agility. Any that were too slow, the hornets bit in half. Dragonflies wove and threaded through the chaos, masters of their domain, picking off stragglers who were just a hair too slow. Bugs died by the thousands.

Skitter clenched her fist.

“Do what you can. I’ll figure something out.”

“We’re behind you, boss,” Charlotte said, a fierce look in her eyes.

She was such a fraud. A failure posing as someone with the answers, who knew what to do, when she was really leading these people into disaster. Victoria had proved that much, even if her solutions had only exacerbated the problem so far. At least she was trying. Skitter’s only answer had been to dig her heels in even harder. And what had that resulted in, exactly? How was Dinah any safer now than when she started? What was the point of it all?

Skitter nodded. “And the optional errand?”

At this Charlotte’s stance grew noticeably more anxious, arms instinctively clutching one another. “We checked on him. He’s… he didn’t react to us. But he’s still there. For now. We tried to feed him some stuff but–”

A furious burst of buzzing noise interrupted her as the bugs on Skitter bristled like a fanged, clawed coat. Charlotte’s words choked off mid-sentence, but Skitter could see what she wasn’t saying. Atlas was dying. She knew he didn’t eat on his own, knew it was only a matter of time before he was gone, but dammit, it wasn’t supposed to be this soon!

Atlas was one of the few things in the past few months that had let her feel like she had agency, control, freedom. The ability to get from place to place in minutes, instead of the hours it would take on foot, was something she hadn’t thought to want until it had been handed to her. And now, she was about to lose it once more. Unless she managed to pull something out of her ass yet again. Just one more thing to worry about.

“You tried,” Skitter said, trying to be diplomatic. “That’s what matters.” Charlotte’s gaze was almost pitying now. Great.

“Forrest is around if you need him. Otherwise, I’m gonna get some rest, if that’s okay?”

Skitter nodded, already walking past Charlotte to make her way back upstairs.

If she’d been hoping to find something she’d overlooked, some tool or new approach she could leverage to salvage the situation, she was sorely disappointed. Her map showed her nothing she didn’t already know. Her territory was vast, and she couldn’t hope to manage or police it from here. Even now, after half the week trapped inside as her insects slowly ate away at the mass of containment foam bulging in the middle of her room like a portent of her future, her range extended to maybe an eighth of her holdings.

The only thing she’d found was a small bottle of pills on the countertop, with a sticky note attached.

“Please take these,” it said, in what was clearly Victoria’s handwriting. Skitter had to smile at that. Of course she’d somehow found the painkillers that the doctor left behind. She swallowed one now, to humor the girl if nothing else.

Skitter sighed as she considered the map again. The situation just hadn’t gotten any better. Of course it hadn’t; nothing had changed save the slow, merciless progress of the clock ticking down. Victoria couldn’t be counted on to take Dragon on in person; it was unfair to ask and questionable whether she could win even if she tried. Skitter knew her own power was better suited to battlefield control, information gathering, or attacks of opportunity, and Dragon was denying her all three. Her body couldn’t even move from this damn house.

The boom-boom of prison cells and metal doors pounded in her head; her pulse hammered at her temples from within. Her hands felt clammy, slick against the silk lining of her suit. Her breaths came short and tight, straining at the composite silk-and-chitin armor spread across her chest and stomach. Even her shoulder felt like it was pulsing in time with her heart, pain sluggishly flowing down her arm in rolling waves.

Weak. Alone. Useless. Hopeless.

The girl shut her eyes, but the voices didn’t leave. They crowded around her head, and the images came next. Cruel taunts in a dim hallway. Stern figures talking around a table. A space, dark and quiet. Agony. A figure clad in blue armor, talking down to her before he even asked her name. Quiet tears through clenched teeth.

She focused on the last one. A girl, she knew that much immediately. She couldn’t make her out, the headache was too strong, but she could hear her. She was trying to keep quiet. Dinah? No, she’d met her before and her voice was higher pitched. No, this was someone else.

The sound of running water. Slick footsteps on tile. Hand on fabric. And then.

“P-please.”

Skitter ground her teeth. Fuck. Victoria was trying to take a shower, and from what it sounded like, having a panic attack. The downstairs bathroom feeding directly off of Victoria’s room, which was probably why no one else had noticed her distress.

Should she call out to her? Her swarm voice wasn’t very good, but she had been getting better at it. Should she knock on the door? Tell Charlotte?

Her fists clenched in helpless frustration. There were so many useless subjects in school; why did none of them bother explaining what you were supposed to do when a girl was crying? Why did Skitter have to be the only one who noticed? What was she supposed to do? She wanted to help. This was something simple, something easy, something good she could do. But what could she do that wouldn’t make it worse? She’d triggered a panic attack the first time she’d tried to touch Victoria, and she hadn’t initiated contact since. This would be… a lot more than that.

Skitter sighed, and drew her attention back into her body sitting on the third floor. There was nothing for it. She couldn’t betray Victoria’s trust, couldn’t step into that space without telling her she’d already heard a moment more private than she realized. If Victoria wanted help, she’d ask. She had to believe that.

What other choice did she have?

Chapter Text

The towel hit the floor with a wet thud, black dye staining the grubby white further. It had been five days, and laundry was starting to build up. However Skitter’s people had been handling it until now, it apparently wasn’t possible with a ten-tonne machine sitting on the roof across the street.

Putting that pleasant thought aside, I looked in the mirror and tried to hold in my groan. Goddammit. All that work and I still hadn’t got the last of the dye out. And I’d ruined a towel on top of everything else. Today just wasn’t going my way.

I arranged my hair over my shoulders, careful not to get it on the tank top I had underneath. The shower had been… not fun. It had taken me the better part of an hour and while I felt cleaner now, that was only physically. Mentally, I felt like the towel on the floor. Wrung out and stained black.

My hand found the hair tie I had left on the counter to the side of the sink, and I started to put up my hair, pulling it into a ponytail I hadn’t worn for years. It used to be as natural as breathing.

My fingers flexed absently.

I tried not to look at the mirror while I put myself together. I was avoiding my reflection in general, these days, but especially here in the bathroom where I was exposed. Showering hadn't gotten any easier since the panic attack a couple of days ago, and I was doing my best to put off acknowledging the body that Amy left me for as long as possible. I hadn’t had the courage–or the morbid curiosity–to ask Skitter how she’d made Amy fix me. That part of my memories was still blurry, and I wanted it to stay that way. But from the first moment waking up in the bathroom my body had felt… off.

I finished pulling on my hoodie, and looked down to see my completed ensemble. Baggy jeans, check. Dark red hoodie with an illegible font on the front, check. Grubby sneakers, check. I was good to go. Or at least, as good as I was ever going to get. Protected again under thick cloth and shapeless layers.

I stared at the door, hands buried in my front pocket, and felt my shoulders hunch defensively.

Fuck. This was pathetic. There was nothing wrong. So why couldn’t I open the door? Go back out there? Do something useful. Anything.

My head slowly leaned forward until it hit the wall in front of me with a solid thunk. Something useful. Hah. Because I had a good track record for that so far. God, why had I confronted Skitter like that? Why had I insisted I take care of her wound myself? It seemed so stupid in retrospect. I could’ve just told her to talk to Sierra. Or Forrest. Or anyone else. But no, it had to be me. With zero medical experience, and my stupid clumsy hands. So why?

A droplet of water slowly slid down my nose, cold and liquid against my skin. I closed my eyes and followed it as it traced down one side of my nose, then fell to kiss my upper lip and slide sideways down around my mouth, eventually beading on my chin and dropping to the floor with a quiet plink.

I knew damn well why. Because if I hadn’t done anything, then Skitter would’ve ignored it. Like she ignored everything that wasn’t literally life or death. That line of thinking could be seductive, I knew. I could certainly sympathize with the urge to pack everything except the next crisis away in a box and bury it until the problem was solved. And then to go find a new problem. Anything to avoid confronting–

I clenched my fists as my forcefield flared around me. My pulse pounded in my ears, and sweat trickled down my neck. No, I wasn’t thinking about what happened in the shower. That wasn’t the same. I knew it wasn’t. It was okay to need breaks. To need time. To need space. This wasn’t about that. Deep breaths.

Skitter. Her line of thinking. It was easy to get caught up in; I knew that from experience. But I could admit at this point that I needed her. I needed the (relative) stability she offered, the space she allowed me, the boundaries she helped me set. I don’t even know if she realized the full extent of what she’d done for me, but I was determined to pay it back. If that meant being hideously uncomfortable while changing her bandages, then that was a small price to pay.

I straightened, and was turning to open the door when something caught my eye and gave me pause. The centipede I’d left on the window lintel outside had somehow crawled under the door, and was now pacing restlessly up and down the door. Skitter. There was no way she’d do something like this unless it was important.

The centipede obligingly leapt onto my finger when I held it out. Well, at least I knew she was paying attention.

I opened the door, and immediately knew I’d guessed right. The insects were swarming, almost as badly as they had been during that first awful confrontation about Coil. The walls were writhing hives of chitin and claws, and now that I was out of the shower I could hear the agitated buzzing that was echoing throughout the house. Half-covered by the angry droning, I could just barely make out the sounds of raised voices downstairs. I brushed a finger over the centipede in my hand, and it twitched and wound its upper body around my fingertip, tugging in the direction of the stairs.

That firmed my resolve. I needed to know what was happening. And it looked like Skitter needed me.

“What do you mean you don’t know?” Skitter’s voice echoed up from the stairs as I was stepping down. I froze, and the surround-sound drone of the swarm went momentarily quiet.

“I-I don’t…” someone stuttered into the expectant silence. Charlotte’s voice. She sounded... scared? No. Panicky. It wasn’t Skitter that had her stumbling over her words. It was whatever they were shouting about.

“He was just here a minute ago!”

“I know! He just said he needed some time alone! I figured the other kids were getting to him. You know how he is! He’s… shy.”

“I don’t need to be told about the kids in my own base,” Skitter snapped, frustration bleeding from her tone. “What I want to know is how you lost track of him!”

“...if I did, boss, it’s only because you did too.”

I could feel the temperature drop from halfway up the stairs. Fuck. I could guess what had happened now. Someone was missing, and Skitter had only realized after he was gone.

“Don’t you put this on me,” Skitter hissed, the bugs backing her words with a menacing chorus. “Taking care of the kids is your responsibility, and you know it.”

My stomach turned a queasy cartwheel. This was going badly. I… I didn’t have to say anything. I could just leave. I know Skitter knew I was here, but she wasn’t calling me in. The bugs weren’t directing me anywhere either. If she wanted me somewhere else, she could tell me. She wasn’t. She was letting me choose.

That settled it. I dug my nails into my palm, took a deep breath, and then loudly stomped my way the rest of the way down the stairs, making eye contact as both Skitter and Charlotte turned to see me.

“What happened?”

Skitter scoffed. “What do you think? Aiden is missing, and we have no idea where to find him. I can’t leave the building to check, and I have no guarantee Dragon could tell him apart from a fucking Merchant.”

I swallowed. That was… a not entirely inaccurate summation of current events. But it sure sounded worse when she put it like that.

“Can you use your bugs to find anything?”

“I’m already trying,” she said flatly. “I have everything within a two block radius tagged, including more than two hundred kids of about the right size. But even ruling out the ones inside homes or around other people, it would take a miracle to identify Aiden without knowing at least what clothes he left in. My hearing through my bugs is still shit, and even if it was better I would be waiting on him to say anything out loud to ID him.”

She turned to face the window outside. “And even if I could find him, if I do anything too obvious Dragon will come down on us like a ton of bricks. All of the potential candidates for Aiden I have marked are at least a block out.”

Charlotte was wringing her hands together, but didn’t contradict Skitter. I bit my lip. It really was that bad, huh?

“Maybe he’ll come back…?” Charlotte offered.

Skitter turned to glare at her. “Even if he did, this is still my failure now. It means I can’t take care of my people. If I fail at something so basic then how will Coi–”

I snapped my fingers, cutting her off mid sentence. It startled everyone, including me. But after a second’s reflection, I was glad I’d done it. If Skitter was stressed enough to almost spit Coil’s name out into the open like that, then something needed to be done. Even if it meant… trying something reckless.

I could feel my stomach churning already. Goddammit, why did things always get so messy when Skitter was involved? I should know better by this point, and yet, it always surprised me. This was… frightening. My hands were trembling just thinking about it. But this was bigger than me. This was for that little boy out there, who was probably just as scared as me, if not more so. Who was all alone, caught in something larger than he understood.

I could do this for him.

“Let me do it.”

Charlotte and Skitter stared at me.

I continued. “I’m a Hero. I’m alone. And I’ll be in plainclothes. Dragon… probably won’t attack me.”

Skitter stepped forward. “Absolutely not.”

I glared at her. “Or what?”

I could almost see her open mouth. “Or wha– this isn’t like banning you from the top floor without permission, Victoria! This is for your own good!”

My teeth dug into my lip hard enough to draw blood.

Skitter kept talking. “We barely outran her earlier this week; did you forget about that? There was a reason you didn’t stand your ground against the heroes there.”

I swallowed, took a moment to calm my racing heart. That was… true. I had done that. But the situation had been different then, as it was now. I glanced at Charlotte, who was looking between us intently. I had to hope she didn’t know sign.

“Yes, I ran away then. Because you were there. This is just me. I’m willing to take a risk to save a kid. You did the same.”

Skitter stared at me for a moment, before she laughed. It was a sharp and mocking sound, though who it was pointed at I couldn’t tell. “Hah. That just figures. Fine, Victoria, fine. But if Dragon attacks you two… I can’t promise anything.”

I nodded. She’d try her best, but against Dragon, there were no guarantees. That was… both touching and slightly off-putting. I knew I shouldn’t be flattered by the idea of a Villain standing up to the greatest Heroic Tinker in the world for me, but I was. It was certainly more than Carol had offered lately.

“Alright,” Skitter said. “Keep the centipede on you. It’ll direct you on where to go. I’ll keep some insects on you so I can track where you are. Hopefully you can reach Aiden quickly and get him back in one piece. I don’t want this to get any messier than it already is.”

On that much, we agreed.

I paused with my hand on the doorknob to the outside world. Skitter had spent the past few minutes filling me in on all the details she’d managed to gather on Dragon in the past three days. Any movements she’d made, potential lines of sight, weapon positions, suspected sleep cycles, the works.

It wasn’t an encouraging report. If she wanted to, Dragon could essentially nail me to the floor within a second of me opening the door. I just… had to trust that she wouldn’t. A few weeks ago, I wouldn’t even have considered the possibility of Dragon ever shooting me. If someone had pressed me to put thought into the idea, I’d have guessed it might happen by accident or misfire at worst; an embarrassing and awkward mistake that would become a funny story in retrospect.

Now, it was so much more real. So much more threatening. It could mean the start of the assault on Skitter’s base. She’d probably end up in prison at this point, intel sharing be damned. And I’d end up…

I took a deep breath. No, there was no point in thinking that way. This had to be done, we both knew it. I refused to let a kid out there suffer because I was scared.

I turned the doorknob, and looked out into the afternoon sun with my own eyes for the first time in three days, squinting against the blinding brightness of the unfiltered sky.

Directly into a gun barrel.

I froze as the door swung shut behind me. The machine on the opposite roof stared down at me through targeting sights. But it didn’t move, and it didn’t fire. Didn’t so much as twitch. As my eyes adjusted to the light, I could see the suit better. It had half a dozen guns trained on the house, only one of them pointed at the front door. But there was no real sense they were about to fire. It looked, as much as was possible for a million-dollar weapons platform, relaxed. And my centipede wasn’t giving me the prearranged panic signal.

Good. Maybe this really was doable.

I took a slow breath, and let myself drift up until my feet were just a few inches off the ground. Just like we’d talked about before. Flying was too much of a risk. It might catch Dragon’s attention, or at least get her to stop politely pretending she didn’t know who I was if I already had it. Either way, it wasn’t something we could afford. But if I was on the ground and she made a move, it would take a precious fraction of a second to reach for my flight before taking off. Better to float, and be ready to accelerate at a split-second’s notice if my centipede raked its legs across my palm.

It didn’t. Instead, it nudged my ring finger, and I took that as my cue to drift forward at a speed approaching a light jog. I made sure to check my surroundings as I went. Skitter had marked all the likely targets before I left, but there was always a chance she’d missed someone. I know I wouldn’t forgive myself if I didn’t look. But her claim to omniscience seemed to hold water. The streets were empty.

The minutes dragged on as I went searching from point to point. My centipede kept me on target the whole time, but it was hard not to feel the jittery anxiety rise as each direction led to yet another dead end. A little girl sitting outside and watching the birds in the warm weather. A young boy lying on a bench with a battered but working CD player that must have been out of range of Shatterbird’s song. A sullen kid who’d climbed a tree to escape his parents’ row, glancing back to the window that their screaming filtered out of.

One story after another, each one a child I had to check on, not just to see if they were Aiden, but also to see why they were outside and on their own and if they were in danger. Each one another minute lost to the hourglass, another tick of the clock as it counted down. It was hard to ignore the hairs rising on the back of my neck as I ran down the list. Harder still to keep myself from glancing over my shoulder in Dragon’s direction.

Finally, on the ninth try, I found him. He was huddled by a crumbling wall of one of the old abandoned warehouses, clearly scared out of his mind. My heart went out to him.

“Ai-a-ai-”

I cursed my voice for the umpteenth time. God, I couldn’t even fucking whisper. That was just great. And if I snapped my fingers or whistled... I couldn’t be sure. With the walls around us, a sound like that would travel.

I floated closer, and the movement drew his eye. He perked up immediately. “G-glory Girl?”

I forced myself to smile instead of flinching. He needed a Hero right now; someone he knew. I was more than willing to use that name right now if it gave him that. I nodded encouragingly, and beckoned him to stand.

“D-did Skitter send you?”

I nodded again, holding my hand out.

He slowly reached out and grabbed it. “I’m sorry,” he whimpered, the words spilling out. “I just wanted to take a walk, I promise. But then I got lost and I didn’t want to call out in case Dragon–”

I gently put a finger over his lips, and smiled. He probably didn’t know sign, so hopefully that would be enough.

“B-but there’s something you should know…”

I glanced down at him and quirked an eyebrow as expressively as I could. Couldn’t it wait until we were back? No, I reminded myself, he was a kid. A scared kid. Whatever this was, I could give it a tiny bit of time right now. It couldn’t hurt.

“He didn’t find his way back alone.”

Or maybe it could. Instantly I tensed, pulling Aiden behind me so I could shield him with my back to the wall in one smooth motion. Fuck, I’d known this had been too easy.

In front of me was a tall man, in forest green and gold powered armor. Smooth lines were broken up by lizard frills, spikes, and scales that lent the figure a motif I hadn’t seen before. But the signature polearm strapped to his back alongside a new spear I didn’t recognise told me who I was dealing with.

Armsmaster.

Chapter Text

My mind slowed to a crawl. Locked behind my ribs, my heart went through the now-familiar warm-up motions for a sprint, quickening with the steady ease of long practice. My chest expanded as my body turned my surprised gasp into a deep, deliberate breath, flooding my lungs with oxygen. Pinpricks ran up my hands and arms from my fingertips and goosebumps ran along my spine, but I swung to face the new arrival smoothly.

Because I wasn't scared.

It almost distracted me from the situation at hand. I'd been scared of Dragon. I'd been scared both times facing down the Heroes, and I'd been terrified after Skitter had been shot in the shoulder. But here and now, with a little kid to look after and a promise to keep, I wasn't scared. My feet were planted, my thoughts were calm and clear, my breathing came deep and even, my heart beat quick but steady. For the first time in weeks, I was free from doubt and pain.

I was here to save Aiden. I wasn't conflicted, or nervous, or facing someone I'd been close to before. It felt like all the jumbled fragments from the confused, tangled mess of the last two months had snapped into a clear, clean line behind me, buoying me up and urging me on. No morality debates, no questioning if this was the right thing to do. Only a child to save, and a Hero in front of me.

I could do this.

Taking advantage of the wave of confidence while it lasted, I tried to remember everything I could about Armsmaster. He hadn't been seen since the fallout of Leviathan. There had been rumblings about him breaking the Truce during or just after the fight, which Skitter had confirmed even if she'd never clarified exactly what happened. But even when Legend had visited our house, it hadn't sounded good. Then he'd been nominated by Mannequin, and subsequently hospitalized. I hadn't heard anything since. Though I wouldn't exactly have been in a position to know.

A bubble of something awful swelled in my chest, and I savagely dug my fingers into the palm of my right hand to quell it. No. That wasn't helpful. Focus on Armsmaster the cape right now. I hadn't spent a ton of time talking to him personally, but I knew him by reputation. Who in the Bay didn't by this point? He was an elite Tinker, up there just under the likes of Dragon and Hero. He wasn't the kind of Hero who put much effort beyond what was necessary into communicating with his fans or the media, preferring to focus exclusively on his tech.

But that focus bore fruit. He took on Leviathan in hand to hand combat, alone, and lived! It was only for a few minutes, but that was unheard of for any Brute short of Alexandria. It was easy to forget in the face of all that power armor and weapon loadout, but underneath was nothing more than a man, albeit an admittedly very physically fit one. Tinkers especially were vulnerable to rapidly changing situations as their tech tended to be hyper specialized. Armsmaster knew that, and his response was to force himself to put the work in on the back-end to be able to stand and hold his own as a front line combatant.

"Glory Girl," he said. "I'm glad to see you."

I nodded cautiously, taking in his new armor. It wasn't just the color scheme that had changed. It was sleeker, the joints and curves more organic than his staple blue outfit. The scales blended with the breastplate and pauldron to almost resemble the front of a lizard. There were more decorative frills and spines present than before as well. That was a dangerous sign. If a cape like Armsmaster was willing to add aesthetic touches to his work, it meant he was so sure of winning any fight he might get into that the chance of them impeding him or getting damaged and wasting the time he spent on them was negligible.

I edged Aiden a little further behind me. Armsmaster was a Hero, there was no doubt about that. I didn't want to treat him like a potential threat. But given the stigma attached to him after Leviathan, his nomination by the Nine and subsequent disappearance and the way he'd popped up here, I couldn't afford not to. Especially when facing someone who wouldn't give me room to recover if I screwed up.

"I'm not looking for a fight," he said carefully. "I'm here to talk."

I glanced dubiously up at the polearm and spear strapped to his back. The only thing more infamous than Armsmaster's work ethic was his signature weapon. His polearms were capable of everything from returning to his hand after being thrown to short-range electrical pulses to cutting through even the flesh of an Endbringer.

Unlike most, I knew that these functions weren't all in one weapon. Armsmaster had multiple halberds that he swapped in and out depending on what he expected he'd need in a given situation. But I didn't know them well enough to tell which copy this was at a glance, which meant I had to assume any and all capabilities were a factor unless proven otherwise. Which was, of course, entirely the point.

The spear, on the other hand, I had never seen before. That was a huge change from the halberd design he'd used for years, and though the presence of the backup polearm meant he was likely still getting used to the new form factor, it still left me at a disadvantage.

But he hadn't made any aggressive moves yet. I nodded again and reached into my hoodie pocket with my offhand, only to freeze. Shit. That was twice I'd forgotten my notepad and pen now; I'd forgotten them in the panic of rushing out to find Aiden. Of all the things to–no, I could berate myself later. I just had to hope he knew sign.

"It's been a while, Armsmaster." My fingers were trembling, but I could feel Aiden behind me, one hand fisted in my hoodie, feeding that clear-headed sense of focus. My thoughts orbited that central axis, balanced and harmonious like they hadn't been since... fuck, maybe since Leviathan. I hadn't realised how messed up and conflicted I'd been under the grief and the terror of the Nine and then everything more recent. This wasn't personal, or city-scale, or complicated and morally confusing. I was looking out for one kid. Simple and pure.

It was a good feeling, being a hero again. A slight smile touched my lips, despite the tension.

Armsmaster glanced down at my hands for a moment (waiting for some translation software in his HUD maybe?) before looking back up at me. "Signing is fine, Victoria. And Defiant, please."

I tilted my head. A rebrand? It sort of made sense, given his new color scheme and weapon. But why? Was it the obvious: a self centered attempt to brush off his previous actions? I considered it for a moment, but... no, that wouldn't make sense. He didn't engage much with his fanbase, but Armsmaster – or Defiant now – definitely cared about his public image. At his level, he had no choice. If he was going so far as to completely shed his old heroic persona and history (even if just in principle; the disguise really was paper thin), that meant this was serious. I had to respect that, regardless of the reasons behind it.

"Fine. But don't call me Glory Girl."

Defiant paused for a moment. "Understood. Would you prefer Victoria, or another name?"

"Victoria is fine."

There was an awkward silence. How exactly did you broach a subject like "hey, the last time I talked to you was just before the worst event of my life, and I have no idea why you're here now"? In the end, Defiant was the one to do it, albeit inadvertently.

"You don't have to hide Aiden behind you, you know. I know it's been a while, but I'd never endanger a child Victoria. You know that."

I swallowed, and felt Aiden let go of my hoodie to reach forward and squeeze my hand.

Fine.

"Why are you here, Defiant?"

"As I said, I'm here to talk. To you, specifically," he said. "Everyone's been worried about you. I understand you've been having… issues… with the Protectorate. And I can't blame you there. So I figured it might be easier if you talked to me."

My hackles lowered a little further, though I didn't shift out of my defensive stance in front of Aiden. But, okay. Talking. That boded well. I could handle talking. Provisionally.

"Talk about what?"

Defiant sighed, leaning back against the wall behind him (an overtly less threatening posture; that had to be intentional). "I'm trying to be delicate about this, Victoria. Given what you've been through, you deserve that much. But I'm also… going to be direct. You went through an incredible amount of trauma in a short period of time, even if you don't count what happened with Amy."

I was expecting it, braced for it, but I still flinched, my hands curling into fists. He kept talking. "And then you go missing for days, only to end up staying with a team of villains who have a human Master. You have to understand our concerns."

I ground my teeth, the noise traveling up my jaw and into my skull. God, this was what everyone always did for me, wasn't it? Acting in my best interests, worrying about my safety, wondering if I was compromised.

I had to keep my lip from curling. Part of me wanted to let everything spill out. To trust in the Heroes and the institution I had been affiliated with, in some way or another, for most of my life.

But the rest, fuelled by a heady mix of clear-eyed confidence and spiteful anger, wanted to scream. To ask where they had been when it had mattered. Ask why they were so concerned about me when they knew damn well what Amy did to me and hadn't done a thing about it. Ask why me needing space and safety in whatever form felt best was the worrisome aspect of all this.

"How much do you know?" I had to start there. If Defiant was asking all this without the context of what I'd heard from Carol, or what I'd told the other Heroes, then we'd be talking past each other.

He shifted in place, his armor making a small metallic scraping noise against the wall. I had to resist the urge to look over my shoulder at where the Dragonsuit was just barely visible over a roof in the middle distance. I was pretty sure at this point that she'd known where I was the whole time. And if she didn't before, she definitely did now. That much was out of my control.

"I know that Amy violated you," said Defiant, his words quiet but firm. "That Skitter had something to do with you getting away from her. That you've run into the Protectorate multiple times, and always chose Skitter's side in some form or another. That's about it." He gestured at me with open hands. "Tell me, Victoria. What happened? I want to help, but I need to know."

I bit my lip. The hot June sun beat down on me, and I resisted the urge to retreat into the cool shadow behind me. I wasn't scared of Defiant per se. He was still a Hero, and I believed him when he said he wanted to talk. But I knew Aiden must be terrified, and I couldn't accidentally crowd him against the wall. I set my feet more firmly, staring down this armored half-dragon Hero with my shoulders wide and my back straight. Reaching back, I found a thin shoulder and gave it a gentle, reassuring squeeze. Small, sweaty fingers covered mine for a moment and squeezed back, before I withdrew my hand to sign.

What Defiant had said just now was important. He hadn't brought up the Wards–more specifically Flechette–at all. That was good. That whole meeting had been a clusterfuck, and in retrospect I was amazed it had gone as well as it had. I'd forgotten to check in with Skitter about how she handed off aid to Parian in the aftermath, but either she'd managed it somewhere between stitching her shoulder back together and assaulting Triumph at the mayor's house or Flechette had correctly realized it would be wiser to keep her mouth shut.

"I was scared when I woke up," I signed, as subtle as a sledgehammer. "Skitter offered me a place to stay. She didn't ask me to do anything. Said it was under the Truce. I accepted."

A breath left Defiant in a rush, a small whirring noise coming from his fists as they unclenched. "That's good. Very good. I'm glad she offered that to you, and sorry you were in a position where you needed it. Have you had any problems with her… other teammates?"

I set my jaw, flexing my hands and rolling my shoulders instinctively, reminding myself I could. "Regent. You mean Regent."

Defiant nodded.

I had to word this carefully. My own feelings on the matter were… complicated. But at the same time, I couldn't deny what Skitter had done for me. "I won't lie. I have met him. But it was because I asked to attend a meeting," I glanced meaningfully up and over my shoulder, towards where Dragon was perched. "For reasons you should know. She warned me he would be there, told me about how his power worked."

"That's better than I really expected," Defiant said.

I glared at him. The visible line of his mouth hardened. "I'm being reasonable here, Victoria. You know Skitter's profile as well as I do, maybe better at this point. This is the same villain who used Shadow Stalker as an infiltrator to make a strike on the PRTHQ. It's not out of the question."

I tasted the warm coppery tang of blood in my mouth. I had bitten through my lip. Shit. I couldn't refute that point. And I still didn't agree with that, not unless I was missing a hell of a lot of context. And even then…

A rustle from my wrist and a nudge against my palm drew my attention down to my centipede. It had been clinging to my wrist for most of the conversation, but now it was nestling in my palm, butting its head against my skin to get my attention. I wasn't sure if Defiant noticed, but I was still glad for the distraction. I rose a fraction of an inch into the air, just enough to feel the weightlessness take me, then settled again. Focused on the strength of my stance, the steel of my spine, the bulwark I made between Defiant and the kid I was here to protect. The solidity felt good. Strong. Sure.

I tilted a hip back, nudging Aiden, and he tugged lightly on the hem of my hoodie again. Call and response. I wondered if there was a centipede on his wrist too, checking in the same way, but I didn't turn to look. I had a point to make.

"Skitter and I have talked about that. I don't like it, and I'm not condoning it. But it's also not something I was there for. Skitter saved me. The Heroes didn't."

Defiant looked at me for a long moment. "That is true, Victoria. And I'm sorry we couldn't be there for you. But you need to understand how our resources were distributed at the time. The Nine were in town, and Bonesaw's plague was about to go airborne outside of city limits. We couldn't afford the distraction."

The–the distraction?! I inhaled, lungs swelling, hackles rising, lips curling back from bared teeth, shoulders coming up aggressively. For a split second, I almost let out the breath in a barrage of screamed accusations.

But though the furious pressure bubbled up to the top of my lungs and boiled there, all steam and sound and fury, it wouldn't pass the last barrier in my throat. Instead it had to make do with the only outlet it could escape through, surging down my arms and making my signs choppy and harsh, fingers smacking into each other as I gestured.

"Skitter saved me, even through that. The Heroes haven't done anything, even when I told them about what Amy did. She's still with Carol, and it's been a week. Yet here Dragon is, instead of dealing with any other threat. Explain that, Defiant." My fingers were aching by the time I finished, but I refused to stop. The words were spilling out of me, the dam breached, the hesitation and second-guessing gone.

"It's not the same thing, Victoria," Defiant shot back, pushing off the wall to look down at me. For all that I could tie crowbars into knots, I was a teenage girl in a hoodie and he was a grown man in a suit of power armor. He loomed. "You know as well as I do how public relations work! The PRT is held to a standard that others aren't. We can't just handle a crisis, we need to handle every crisis. That's not right and it's not fair but it's the way it is. I don't like making those choices any more than you do!"

I swallowed, taking a step back. My stomach was twisting, a steaming, fuming heat bubbling up into my chest like a boiling pan. And for once there was no urge to run, no urge to shut down and block out the world, no deafening panic making it hard to think. I was controlled and clear-headed and angry. Angrier than I'd ever been in my life. I remembered the fury I'd felt on behalf of Empire victims or assaulted women before, but back then it had been on principle. I'd imagined, I'd empathized, but I hadn't understood.

Now I knew, and it was all I could do not to fly at him and start an entirely deliberate fight for his half-assed justifications.

"But Skitter is doing that. Making the hard choice and protecting innocent lives at her own risk! Tell me how that's wrong!"

"It's not about whether it's wrong!" Defiant said.

I tore my hands apart and shut my eyes, splaying my fingers out so as not to be tempted by already-formed fists. Deep breaths. In for four seconds, hold for three, out for seven. I couldn't afford to flare my aura or punch him. I barely had my strength and aura under control, even after weeks. It would be a disaster. And from the outside it would look unprovoked. Besides, I was here for Aiden, not an argument. I took a deliberate step back, blood trickling down from my bitten lip and dripping from my chin. My fingers twitched with the urge to curl again.

"It's not about what Skitter has done for you, either."

Footstep.

"It's about her history."

Footstep.

"Just because she's helped you doesn't mean it won't blow up in our faces, it doesn't change the fact that she's–"

I gasped, my shoulder hitting the wall behind me as I backed up. Aiden must have been crushed between my back and the wall, but I couldn't bring myself to move right now. It was too much, too loud, too close. I'd lost the sense of balance; the wave of confidence and focus had broken apart beneath my feet, and now I was struggling to stay still and keep my head above the water as the blood roared in my ears and my heart pounded a war drum's beat–

"Victoria."

My head snapped up. Defiant had taken a step back, and was holding his hands out. "I'm sorry. That… came out wrong. It frustrates me that so many of our decisions as heroes get reduced to what's better for PR versus the people we serve. I'm in it for the latter, even if at times it doesn't seem like it. I know you are too. If Skitter is genuinely helping you, then I'm glad."

My heartbeat calmed. Slowly. The scalding pressure in my chest eased off, and I gradually managed to winch the red engine of fury back under control.

Defiant took another step back. The loud clank of his armored foot on the asphalt made me twitch, and he stilled for a moment as he noticed. "I'm sorry," he said, more quietly. "I didn't mean to scare you. Could you at least agree to talk to one of us about all of this? It doesn't have to be me. We're just… worried about you. As a hero. As a coworker."

He paused.

"As a friend."

My eyes were watery as other feelings flooded in to replace the fury, leaving my throat tight and my mind back in turmoil.

"Do you want me to leave, give you space?"

I bit my lip, and nodded. I needed time, if nothing else, to think over this. To figure out what it meant, if this was an option I really wanted to take, whatever that meant.

Defiant nodded. "Okay. I'll go. You should be free to make your way back to Skitter's building. Dragon won't target you, and she'll make sure no one looks at you twice. We owe you that much."

He smoothly pulled the polearm off of his back, and pointed it at a nearby roof. The head shot forward with a puff of compressed air, before finding purchase on concrete. A whir of contracting wire pulled him with it, and just like that he was gone.

The breath left me in a rush, my vision dizzy and floaty. Fuck. That was… I didn't have words. I focused instead on the feeling of Skitter's centipede in one hand, and Aiden's in the other. I looked down at him, all anxious shoulders and small chest and uncertainty in worried eyes, and smiled.

I could put on a brave face for just a bit longer. I was still a hero. And I still had a job to do.

Chapter Text

Defiant made good on his word. Dragon didn’t attack us on the way back, though I kept my eye on her just to be sure. Frankly, I suspected she’d known perfectly well where we were the entire time, even before Defiant showed himself. But Aiden was already traumatized enough from this whole mess without me mentioning that.

As if on cue he squeezed my hand, and I pulled him a bit closer. Skitter’s centipede rubbed against my palm. I took a deep breath. Just a little bit longer. I can last that much. I’d have time to… deal with what Defiant said… later. Hopefully after I got at least one night’s sleep.

“I-I’m sorry, Victoria,” Aiden said from beside me.

I stopped and turned to face him, raising an eyebrow. I hated that I had forgotten my notebook–I’d gotten too used to Skitter (and now Sierra and Defiant) being able to sign. It was… infuriating, to be reminded of just how limited I was now. But I kept a smile on my face. There was no need to broadcast my frustration to a little kid.

Aiden fidgeted at the corner of his shirt with his free hand. “I g-got lost. Because I went outside when I wasn’t supposed to. That cape found me and I know I wasn’t s’posed to t-talk to him but I didn’t know where Skitter’s base was and I didn’t know what to do a-and then you had to talk to him and it’s my f-fault.”

He hiccuped, and my frustration ebbed away under a tide of sympathy and grief. God, it was so easy to forget how young all these kids were. Aiden was almost a decade younger than I’d been when I’d triggered. What would I have acted like at that age? I probably would’ve been breaking down on the spot. But this kid was trying to hold it together. To be brave. I respected that. A lot. But I couldn’t communicate that with him directly, there was really only one thing I could offer.

I carefully knelt down and opened my arms. That did it. Before I even had a chance to beckon him closer, Aiden was in my arms, clinging to me. His shoulders shook, but he didn’t make a sound. I took a slow breath, and rubbed his back over his shirt. This was okay. I could do this. He needed someone right now, probably less specifically me than the idea of an “adult” who could reassure him everything would be okay. I could be that for him. At least this was a lie worth telling, even if the falsehood still sat bitter on the back of my tongue.

I didn’t keep track of how long we stayed like that, but I was content to wait. I knew that Skitter had at least me tagged, and likely Aiden as well by this point, so I was in no rush. When Aiden finally pulled back and rubbed his eyes, I had the decency to look away. If he wanted to acknowledge what had happened, he would.

“T-thanks.”

I nodded, and held out my hand. He grabbed onto it, and didn’t let go once the rest of the way back.

“You’re late.”

It was a good thing I wasn’t staying with Skitter for her social skills. Those were the first words out of her mouth as I finally stepped back through the door with Aiden in tow. Skitter was facing me, arms crossed over her chest. Behind her, Charlotte wrung her hands and tried to stare at us without being too obvious. I nudged Aiden to make his way to her, which he did after one last glance at me.

“Sorry,” I smiled at Skitter. “Got caught in a conversation I didn’t want to have.”

A flight of hornets spilled out of her hair and took up a defensive orbit. “What did he say?” she demanded. There was an edge to her voice I hadn’t heard before. Or… no. I had, at her most suspicious and hostile towards the Heroes. But not often, and not directed at me.

I looked around at the kids and minions observing from across the living room. “Are you sure you want to talk about this here?”

Skitter advanced a step, then stopped herself. I could see her reconsidering, her shoulders slumping, hands relaxing to rest by her sides. “Hmm. You’re right. Thank you, Victoria. Let’s go upstairs.”

I nodded and followed, trying to think through exactly what she’d want to know, besides the obvious. Of course she was going to need details on exactly what we’d talked about, that was a given. But I knew she’d had issues with Armsmaster – Defiant – in the past. Though what problems specifically were unclear.

I stifled a groan, wishing I’d asked her about it before now. I’d figured I was respecting her privacy, the same way she’d respected mine. Letting her open up about something that was obviously a low point in her life on her own terms. After what she’d done for me, I owed her that. But now it left me at a loss for how to navigate this conversation without accidentally setting her off. Damned if I did, damned when I didn’t.

“Alright,” Skitter said.

I looked up. Without me even realizing it, we’d made it to the third floor. The bugs pulled the door closed behind us, and just like that we were alone.

She turned to face me, arms folded behind her back, that insectile mask as unreadable as ever. Her back was to the boarded-over window, and a cold part of me pictured the Dragonsuit beyond, no doubt with a gun barrel trained on us through the walls as we spoke.

“Tell me everything,” Skitter ordered.

I swallowed. Okay, no big deal, just treat it like a report to Aunt Sarah. Most important information first – I’d gotten Aiden back, nobody died, Armsmaster interrupted. Then fill in context and details. “How much did you hear?”

The bugs around us hissed in a low, murmuring chorus, but if she realized what they were doing she didn’t comment. “I know that Armsmaster was near Aiden for a while, I realized too late to warn you and you’d left your phone behind. You spoke to him for a while, then comforted Aiden after he left, then came back.”

I stopped my hand from instinctively going for my hoodie pocket and tried not to take the hostile undertone in her voice personally. I knew she was stressed. This was less about me than it was the situation we were in.

“The phones have Dragon listening, remember?”

Skitter shook her head; a quick jerk that was more annoyance than negation, and turned to pace the length of the room, no longer needing to skirt the lump of containment foam It had shrunk down to bare scraps of what it had been, gnawed away by bugs and dissolving into sludge that left a pale white stain on the wood of the table and bookshelf. “Yes, but that stopped me from filling you in. I tried to listen as best I could but my power was… uncooperative.”

I hid a wince at that. I didn’t pretend to know everything about Skitter, not even close. But I could tell from the moment of that first phone call to Carol that her reputation was everything to her. It was what kept her territory together, what helped her protect her people.

And with the added context of Dinah and Coil, it made a horrible kind of sense. Her exterior as an impenetrable Villain, constantly aware of everything around her, allowed her to avoid battles she might otherwise have to fight. Battles that she might lose, if that first Protectorate confrontation was anything to go by. So the fact that she was admitting this to my face… must have taken a lot out of her.

A moth landed on my elbow, bringing me back into the present. Right, Armsmaster talk. Actually, that was a pretty good place to start.

“He’s going by Defiant now.” I avoided looking through the gaps in the plywood back to where I’d met the cape in question. It was reflexive, an attempt to avoid confrontation, but I had to face this head on.

Skitter scoffed over her shoulder, not breaking stride in her pacing. “He might be calling himself something new, but I know Armsmaster when I see him.”

My lips thinned. She might not have been looking right at me, facing the outline of Brockton on the far side of the room as she was, but I knew she was listening. “Maybe so. But you respect me leaving Glory Girl behind. Give him the same courtesy.”

Skitter paused for a moment, her hands hovering above the table. She turned, cocking her head and considering me over her shoulder. I didn’t look away. “Alright, Victoria, that’s fair. Fine. What did Defiant say?”

“Not much more than the others said before near Bitch’s territory. Asking about how I found you, why I stayed.”

The walls buzzed angrily, hornets and moths and dragonflies peeling off to fly circles around us. I didn’t break her gaze. “And what did you tell him?”

Okay, this was officially too much. I glared at Skitter. “You have history with Defiant. Fine. I’ve never asked, because I wanted to give you the space to tell me. But if you really think I’d act any differently to him than I would the other Heroes, then you clearly don’t know me nearly as well as you pretend to.”

The movement on the walls surged for a second, before quieting. Skitter let her arms rest by her sides from when she’d raised them. “That’s fair. I’m sorry. You have a right to know, at this point. I’ll tell you when you get through this, but I really do need to know what you told him. The Dragon thing is too important. She probably heard. Can we agree on that?”

I nodded. Normally I’d be less inclined to cut her some slack on something like this… if it weren’t for just how abnormal this behavior really was. Whatever history she had with Defiant had obviously spilled a lot of bad blood between them.

“I told him you offered me a place to stay, under Truce rules, and I took it. That I knew your teammate was Regent, and you told me about his powers as a warning.”

I could almost visualize her open mouth behind her mask, so I continued before she could start. “No, I did not tell him what you told me. I said that was in confidence, and I meant it. But I wouldn’t be surprised if they already know, at this point.”

Skitter paused, then nodded. “Anything else?”

I shook my head. That was it. We’d talked more but… that was all personal. And seemed awkward to bring up at this point.

Skitter turned to look at the map of the Bay in the left hand corner of the room. She stood there for a moment before slowly putting her hands on the table and bowing her head. I tried to stand still and mute my body language. She could still perceive me, and if she needed to not be looking me in the eyes for this, I could give her that.

“The bank wasn’t the first time I went out,” she said finally, after a few minutes of silence. I almost jumped.

“Really?”

She nodded. “It was a few days earlier. Do you remember when Lung got captured that first time?”

I pursed my lips, trying to remember. It had been so long now, and while I remembered the reports on his capture, it hadn’t felt all that important to my life at the time. A win for the Heroes, obviously, but not one I’d been involved in, or that impacted me much.

“He got taken down by… Defiant…if that helps.”

I nodded. That much had stuck.

“That’s what happened officially. What really happened is that I found him patrolling my first night out. He said he was going to kill people. Kids.”

I bit my lip. Shit. That was… of all the things to run into on your first night out, I couldn’t imagine having to deal with that. Worse still if I didn’t have the cape support system I did going in.

“I didn’t have a cellphone at the time,” Skitter said, chuckling darkly. “Stupid of me. I made sure to fix that mistake before going out again. But at the time, I couldn’t call the PRT. So I swarmed him with everything I had. Poisoned him so badly it went straight through his regeneration. But not quickly enough. The Undersiders bailed me out right before he would’ve burned me alive.”

Jesus Christ, all this on her first night? I almost reached out, but thought better of it. Better to give her space, this was her story to tell and it clearly wasn’t easy. I just had to listen.

“They offered me a spot on the team. I was trying to be a hero at the time.”

Skitter seemed to sense my shock, turning around to face me. “I know. Me, in this costume, with a swarm of bugs, going out to protect kids.” She laughed, short and mocking; an awful sound. “It seems stupid now. But I was a naive idiot with no idea what she was doing. I didn’t know any better.”

I… guess I could see that. With that context, a lot of her costume looked more like it was designed out of practicality than intimidation. The colors were dark and dull, either out of a lack of dye, or a desire to blend in at night. Were those yellow lenses for intimidation, or just the only option she had available to her? It was easy to forget how rough independents had it in the costume department.

“It was pointless anyways. Turns out the ‘kids’ were the Undersiders the whole time. Total waste. But it was when Armsmaster…Defiant…came that my brilliant plan occurred to me.”

She turned back to the map, tracing the outline of the city by the docks. “I was going to infiltrate the gang from the inside, get the lowdown on the members, then turn them all in at once. That would be my big hero debut.”

My mouth would be catching flies at this point if it wasn’t for Skitter. That was one of the most insane plans I’d ever heard of. That just wasn’t done, in the cape community. Violating secret identities, especially to the authorities, like that… it set a bad precedent, to put it mildly. And put a hell of a target on her back. An especially vulnerable, independent back.

“Defiant thought it was a stupid idea too; he said as much. But I wouldn’t hear it. He did convince me to let him get the credit for Lung though. Something about ‘being high profile for a new, inexperienced cape’ or something. I’m sure it sounded good in his head.”

I was reeling, dizzily trying to put this all together. So Skitter had genuinely been attempting to play a deep cover, maybe out of spite, for at least the initial duration of her being in the Undersiders? And Defiant at least superficially knew about it? The bit about taking credit for Lung was a whole other… mess. I hated giving Carol credit for anything at this point, but her distaste for interdepartmental politics in the PRT seemed to be right on the money there.

“So I joined the Undersiders, in name at least. Got into some… bad situations. I won’t deny that. But I was trying not to hurt people. More than I had to, anyways.”

I nodded, unable to help myself, as the cold flush of horror crept over my cheeks and dripped down between my ribs. It didn’t excuse any of her actions, not even remotely. But going into the cape scene as new and unaware as she was, and immediately getting sucked into a game much bigger than she was aware of, with inscrutable and often unspoken rules? That sounded like a nightmare. And phrased like this, I could see, in sickening detail, every rationalization and justification she must have told herself as she descended step by step into Villainy. It was only temporary. She was minimizing harm. Bringing the Undersiders in would make up for the bad things she was doing in the end.

God. No wonder she was convincing me. She’d started practicing long before finding me in that bathtub.

She’d made herself the first victim of her own rhetoric.

“I was planning on leaving them, right before Leviathan. After I found out about... well, you know.” She paused, turning back to face me. Her hands were fisted by her sides, but to her credit she didn’t look away. “Then Defiant killed my armband with an EMP when I was right in the path of Leviathan. Me and a bunch of other villains. I’m still not sure why he did that. Never got the chance to ask, and honestly I don’t really care what he might’ve said.”

For a split-second, I didn’t understand. No; I didn’t want to understand.

Then bile surged in the back of my throat and my hand shot up to cover my mouth. Fuck. That’s what she’d been talking about with Flechette. The armband in the upper corner of the bathroom she mentioned. That meant, when Defiant went toe to toe with an Endbringer, it was over the literal corpses of Villains who died to get him there. I swayed, head pounding, and sagged against the table for balance. I was trembling all over, I realized, and I honestly couldn’t tell if it was in horror or fury.

Skitter seemed to sense my existential crisis, as her voice softened. “Then that conversation happened at the tent, and you know the rest. There’s more but… that’s what happened with Defiant. Why I don’t trust him.”

I nodded, swallowing with a grimace, and slowly lowered my hand. My centipede curled against my left palm, and I rubbed my thumb over it absentmindedly.

I wanted to deny what she was saying. To accuse her of lying, to say she had it all wrong; that the Heroes would never treat a new independent cape like that. It would be so, so easy. To retreat into the box I’d built ever since that goddamn basketball game. Heroes, and Villains. Friend, and Foe. It was what Carol would’ve done.

That, more than anything else, stopped me in my tracks. I closed my eyes, and took a deep breath. I forced myself to think, really think, about what Skitter was. This was the Villain who threatened an entire crowd with black widow spiders while thinking she was a Hero. Who crashed a fundraiser and held everyone in it hostage just to show that her team could get away with terrorism. Who led a raid on the PRT headquarters with a mind controlled Hero as her key in. She did all those things.

But she was also the girl who took down Lung on her first night out, and signed up for something she had no idea would probably destroy her. The hero who saved me from my sister, and gave me a place to stay when no one else did. Who stood up for me not because she had to, but because it was right.

Skitter wasn’t a Hero, or a Villain. Not really. She wasn’t something that could be so simply defined. She was both of those things. The altruistic and the unforgivable. The heroic and the horrific. The question wasn’t which label I put on her. No single word would fit. The question was if I could be with her, stay here, knowing all of what she was. That was what it came down to, in the end. Was I willing to accept this person, not just the good or solely the bad, but as exactly the complicated, contradictory mess in front of me?

Maybe… it wasn’t that simple. Maybe I didn’t know yet. But at the very least, I needed to recognize what she’d just done.

I reached out and gently set a hand on Skitter’s shoulder. “Thank you, for trusting me.”

Skitter slowly looked down at her shoulder, then back up at me. “Victoria… how are you touching me?”

I froze. My…my hands were in front of me. Signing. ASL took two hands. That meant I was touching her shoulder with–

I opened my mouth but was cut off by the sound of turbines whining, building into a roar. Skitter rushed to the window, but I didn’t need to look to know what it was.

Dragon was finally making her play.

Chapter Text

Panic was a cold claw wrapped around my throat and diaphragm, sending my stomach into terrified flutters and putting a lump of lead in my throat. The walls closed in around me–or was that just Skitter’s insects lifting off? The buzzing voice of the swarm was overwhelming; too loud and chaotic for me to think. My arms wrapped around myself and I hunched over, counting my breaths in my head, but it didn’t help.

A thousand thoughts ran a pushing, shoving relay as I tried to make sense of the situation. Dragon was moving before Coil’s deadline. Was she aware of our own timeframe? Coil had said his phone call was secure, and we’d been keeping cells turned off and separated from the battery when we discussed anything secure to stop her from listening in again, but the Tinker was known for being stupidly good at almost anything she set her mind to. It wouldn’t surprise me to hear that even whatever Tinkertech jammer he’d bought hadn’t been enough to keep her out. She might even have had microphones capable of piercing the sound-muffling of Skitter’s swarm. I had to assume it was at least possible she was as in the know as I was about our situation.

I shut my eyes.

Was this it then? Was this where I was going to have to pick a side, stand with Skitter against Dragon? Was I comfortable doing that? Did I even have a choice? It was so hard to think.

Footsteps pounded up the stairs. “Boss, what is it?” a voice–Charlotte–came from the other side of the room.

“No time,” Skitter bit out. “Get the kids to the basement, and prep for evac through the sewers.”

“But what about–”

“Dammit I said now, Charlotte!”

The sound of footsteps fading away. I didn’t want to open my eyes, didn’t want to face the reality outside the window, of Dragon getting ready to blow my one safe place apart. Didn’t want to see the tension (or worse yet, resignation) in her back.

“Victoria.”

I looked up. Skitter was facing the window, staring outside at what could only be the Tinker herself. “Get ready to leave if you have to. I’ll hold her off as long as I can.”

What? “But you can’t–”

“I already had one of my people questioning what I’m doing, and I won’t have another. If I go down then I’m counting on you to make sure they don’t lock me up and throw away the key.”

She looked back at me, and for once I thought I saw vulnerability in those yellow lenses. “Promise me, Victoria.”

I nodded dumbly.

She turned back to face the mirror. Her hands were still at her sides, hovering over the pistol and knife I knew were on her belt. “Get ready, you’ll only have a few seconds.”

“The kids–the foam,” I signed. She shook her head sharply.

“I’ve been eating through the blockages in the sewers since she put them there. I’ve opened up a few routes out, and either she hasn’t been checking or she thinks she can funnel any evacuation to her advantage. If it’s the latter...” She shrugged. “I’m not going to be down there, so she’ll probably let Charlotte and the kids go. If she doesn’t, I’ll improvise. Now get ready.”

I tensed, backing away and pulling myself tight to the floor. We were on the top level of the building, which meant that a roof exit was the best option. Skitter’s insects were covering all the windows, and Dragon probably had those marked anyways. I know I would have. But my field would go down for a few seconds immediately after I broke through the ceiling. I’d have to maximize my acceleration to get enough clearance until it returned.

We waited, hearts in our mouths, alert for the first sign of grenades punching through the walls or the shrieking protests of the roof tearing off. The roar of the turbines was deafening. I didn’t dare look at my phone, or brush the centipede still stuck in my hand for reassurance. I couldn’t distract Skitter.

The turbines changed in pitch, and I tensed. This was it. I just needed to wait for her to commit...

But then the strangest thing happened. Skitter’s posture started to slowly relax. I didn’t let myself breathe.

“She’s… she’s leaving.” The words were so soft as to almost sound reverent. I rushed to the window, and sure enough the Dragonflight was in the process of gaining altitude, already more than twice the height of the building. And judging from the way she was turning, it wasn’t to bombard us.

At last the pitch of the turbines built to a crescendo and the suit screamed off.

We stood there, in the muted echo, for some time.

Skitter looked at me. “What the fuck?”

I shrugged helplessly. How was I supposed to know? I had no idea what Dragon was doing either. Why would she just… leave like that? She’d had Skitter dead to rights, and we all knew it. Especially with a known Hero as a “hostage”, I’d assumed that her acting eventually was a given. Why else would she stake us out for half a week?

Something about that thought caught me by the chin and forced my head around to look it in the eye and think it through.

Why would she stake us out for half a week, if not to capture Skitter? I didn’t know the exact figures, but I knew that operating those suits was expensive, to put it lightly. Even a normal fighter jet cost thousands, if not tens of thousands of dollars an hour – and the Dragonflight was Tinkertech. Even if you allowed a discount for how she’d been sitting on a roof instead of actively fighting for most of the time she’d been here – even if you didn’t count the operating costs at all! – Dragon was a member of the Guild. Every second she spent here was another second not being used to track down the Nine, or do something about Heartbreaker, or go after the Fallen. She wouldn’t be here without a really good reason.

As if on cue, the sound of a distant explosion rolled across the city like thunder. I flinched, and the sound of the swarm kicked up a notch before settling. What the fuck had that been? Better question; where the fuck had that been? I looked at Skitter, who shook her head without turning. “Too far away,” she said. “I can’t get a good visual. At least half a mile though.”

She paused for a moment, then glanced at me. “I know it’s dangerous, but... would you be willing to fly up and look? I could pack insects on you if you want, as a smokescreen if you need a way out.”

My breath caught, and I went cold all over. She was right. It was hideously dangerous. If Dragon had left anything behind, or if she had another suit nearby... flying straight up like that from a known location without Skitter or another pressing target to draw her attention, I’d be skeet. An easy target for someone who’d got a good long look at me putting my flight power through its paces and had had three days to analyze its limits.

But it was also the only way to know for sure. And as I glanced over at Charlotte, I remembered who I was doing this for. Those kids, no doubt cowering down in the basement or trying to sneak out through the sewers. They were scared out of their minds. So was I. But they didn’t sign up for this, I did.

I nodded, and immediately Skitter’s insects swarmed me just like they had before, crawling into every fold and crease in my clothes. The hood of my jacket sagged with the weight of them, my sleeves bulged with thousands of tiny bodies, my jeans turned black under a layer of flies, and I did my best not to think about what the faint tugs all over my scalp meant was in my hair. The centipede–Skitter–brushed my pinkie.

The rest of the swarm peeled off to open the door up to the rooftop landing, and I started making my way up the stairs.

“Take maybe a minute,” Skitter said from behind me. I turned, only to catch my phone as she tossed it at me. “I’ll signal with my bugs if you need to get back down. But in case you need to bug out early, bring this. Keep in touch.”

My heart thumped painfully in my chest, and I struggled to hold back a nervous grin – or maybe a squeamish grimace, remembering both previous times I’d been covered in bugs like this. Either way, this was not the time. The air was hot and muggy as I stepped out onto the roof, but I didn’t let myself dwell on the weather. I crouched low to the ground, rocking back on my heels and then forward onto the balls of my feet, then shot up as fast as I dared, pushing the knife’s edge of how fast I could go without peeling Skitter’s bugs from my clothes.

Despite everything, I couldn’t help but think – after days cooped up inside or crawling along at ground level, it felt good to fly again.

Once I reached a sufficient height, maybe three hundred feet up, I oriented myself. It was easy to spot the source of the explosion. A plume of smoke was slowly rising from what looked like west of downtown, just south of the crater Leviathan left behind.

I brushed Skitter with my hand twice. The bugs on my torso fluttered in response, and I struggled not to flinch or squirm. She seemed to sense my discomfort, as they fell silent immediately.

My hand went into my pocket to bring out my phone. It was a cheap burner model, and the camera was shit. But it was better than nothing, and it only took a second to snap a picture of the view over the docks. It wasn’t exactly a labeled map, but it would do for guessing at the scale and rough location of the smoke.

With that done I swooped back down to the roof, trying to put aside the visceral glee that always accompanied flying. I would need to find time for this later, outside of the latest emergency.

Assuming the emergencies ever stopped.

Skitter was waiting for me at the apartment entrance as I touched down. “Did you find it?”

I nodded, passing her the phone before heading inside. Charlotte was gone, presumably to take care of the kids while I was up getting intel. Skitter led me to the map on the wall with its dumb little coloured pins marking out the different territories of the Undersiders; black and blue and red and green and pink and purple. She handed me another pin–a yellow one–and nodded at the board.

“Where is it?”

I bit my lip as I looked over the map. It took a moment to place as this was an older map without the new lake the endbringer had left behind, but eventually I found the cluster of nearby skyscrapers and pushed the pin in.

I stepped back as I let Skitter get a good look. Her bugs buzzed erratically, moving in confused circles overhead. I sympathized.

“That should be our territory, but who…” Skitter trailed off, before looking at the note right next to the map. “Right. Imp. Fucking Strangers.”

I shuddered as my brain did a mental somersault, fumbling the landing and stumbling dizzily. I’d need to be quarantined for screening by the end of this, I just knew it.

By the time I looked over, Skitter had brought out her phone and was scrolling through contacts. She found one, and was about to tap it when I grabbed her hand. She looked at me and cocked her head. I could feel the blush welling up, but this was important.
“What if Dragon’s compromised the phones? You could be putting a flag on her right as she’s escaping.”

She considered me for a moment. “That’s a risk I have to take. If Imp is under attack, then we at least need to know. I can spread the word to the rest of the team from there. If I don’t call, then that leaves us at an information disadvantage. She could be captured and we’d have no idea and no way to help.”

I swallowed. That was… a cruel calculation, but I couldn’t deny her logic. She looked back at the phone, and dialed the number. We both waited as it rang, and then rang again, and again, and again.

No response.

She dialed again. Ring. Ring. Ring.

Nothing.

I could see her grip tightening on the plastic casing, enough that if she’d had my strength it would be a useless handful of crushed circuitry and splinters. My centipede was restless, scurrying up and down my arm in quick, darting bursts of movement.

“Fuck.”

I startled, looking up at Skitter. “I…”

She paused, trying to get her bearings. “I don’t know what to do.”

The words sounded like they were physically painful for her to say. I couldn’t blame her, after what she’d been through. How much would it cost me, after having pretended to be in control for so long, to admit I was lost?

“What do you want to do?”

She turned to me abruptly. “I want to go out there. I want to do something. I want to take on Dragon, and damn the consequences. But I can’t!”

She turned and gestured angrily at the map. “She’s had us pinned for days, effortlessly! The others might still be pinned down, or they might be evacuating. And either way, I can’t call them to find out in case it would give them away! I can’t leave because of the fucking kids, and even if I did I have no idea where I’d go!”

I swallowed, and slowly reached out to touch her shoulder. She flinched, then softened under my touch. “It’s okay not to know what to do.”

“Not for me,” she bit out. “When I fall short, people die. That’s not okay.”

I squeezed her shoulder, and drew back. “Welcome to being a hero.”

She froze, and slowly turned back to me. I didn’t look away. I’d meant what I said. She might not be one in name, even considering her origins, but right now? She was one in every way that mattered. Willing to put herself on the line to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. That was what it was all about; the heart and soul of being a hero.

The shrill tone of the phone ringing startled us out of our staring match abruptly enough that we both almost jumped out of our skin. Skitter quickly picked it up, accepted the call, and set it down on the table.

“Tattletale. Imp–”

“Thank god I finally reached you,” Tattletale’s tinny voice came from the speaker. “Dragon’s been jamming all my calls, and I couldn’t risk any of my people to get a message to you themselves.”

Wait what? I thought we’d been laying low, trying to avoid her attention. What had changed? Skitter had the same idea. “Why were you calling at all?”

“Because I figured it out! Why she’s here, why she parked outside of our places, why she let Victoria outfly her, everything!”

I let a slow breath out. So I’d been right earlier. There was a bigger endgame than just this.

“What is it?” Skitter asked tersely.

“Just, I need to confirm something first. You said something about Imp earlier. I’d bet that Dragon just left your place, and there was a big explosion over in her territory yeah?”

I nodded on instinct, before catching myself. Phone, right. Skitter answered instead, “Correct. Where are you going with this, Tattletale?”

“It all makes so much sense, I was stupid not to consider it earlier. But then again, I couldn’t have gotten the information to you anyways. I bet they used Thinkers to outmaneuver me there, the bastards. In fact, if the timelines match up–”

“Cut to the chase,” Skitter interrupted. “What is it?”

There was a pause. “You… you’re going to want to see this yourself. Do you have a TV in your lair?”

What? “No, Tattletale why–”

“Goddamn luddite, I should’ve figured. Look, just, get to your laptop, go to the city newsfeed, and tune in to what they’re currently broadcasting. You’ll know it when you see it. Trust me.”

Skitter’s fists clenched. “Tattletale, just tell me–”

“Just do what I say, Taylor!”

For a split second, the air went black and the walls shook from the smothering wrath of the swarm. I froze. Fuck. That was. Fuck. Even as they settled back onto the walls, her bugs filled the room with a buzzing drone that made my teeth ache, full of anger and fear and I didn’t want to know what else. Skitter didn’t move an inch.

The pause must have alerted Tattletale to what had just happened. “Fuck, you were on speaker, weren’t you? Shit. Look, I’ll make up for that later. Just pull up that channel.”

The line went dead. I didn’t dare look at Skitter–Taylor?–Skitter, directly. No, I didn’t even want to think that name. It wasn’t fair; she hadn’t said it. If she wanted to pretend this hadn’t happened, like the first phone call to Carol, I was more than willing to give her privacy.

She didn’t say a word as she moved mechanically to the computer, and proceeded to pull up the news site Tattletale had mentioned. I flexed my palm, feeling her rigid stiffness, and brushed my finger along her back reassuringly, hoping it helped.

There was a pause. And then.

Laughter. Quiet, slowly building laughter. I carefully glanced at Skitter. Her shoulders were shaking. Had she finally cracked? Given what had happened in the last few days (weeks), I couldn’t blame her if she had.

“Of course,” she gasped, “of course this would happen. It all makes sense now.”

She took a step back, allowing me to see the computer. And as I read the headline, I suddenly understood exactly what had prompted that response.

“Supervillain Coil arrested.”

Chapter Text

Fern grunted and grabbed onto the handhold beside their seat as the floor shuddered beneath them. The whine of the turbines reverberated through the walls as the transport took to the air, spinning loudly enough to give them a headache. They squared their shoulders, black ceramic armor clinking quietly as the plates shifted against one another.

“God, can you believe this bullshit?” said Dove, another faceless figure in black armor in the too-cramped, red-lit interior. “Seriously. This is even worse than Manhattan. Who dropped the fucking ball and missed that there was an honest-to-God underground lair under this shithole city?”

Fern tried to ignore her. Dove had a potty mouth and chattered when nervous. Not that they weren’t nervous too. Everyone was. PRT Heavy Response Field Agents got the dirtiest assaults, but this kind of operation with full parahuman support, multiple villain capes, and a band of ex-military mercs with access to tinkertech weapons was rare. With a hidden underground lair on top of things, it felt like they were in a damn technothriller.

Also, more proximately, Fern got airsick and was trying not to show it. They knew by bitter experience that throwing up in these helmets was about the worst thing anyone could do.

“Ah, quit your bitching,” Coyote groused, nearly hunched into a ball to fit into the too-small seats. “We didn’t even draw the hardest task. We’ve just got to secure the generators. We coulda drawn taking down Shatterbird.”

“But that’s what I mean. How the fuck did the local idiots not catch that there were all these pumps to stop the place flooding? And how much fuel they must’ve bought for all these generators. Or–”

“Dunno. Don’t care. Maybe you should ask the locals, if you’re dying to find out?”

“Well, maybe I will!”

“Don’t bother.” That was Tortoise; chill, calm, and one of the biggest guys Fern had ever seen. Dove postured and strutted because she was small and felt she had something to prove; Tortoise had the calm that came from knowing that he could pick up anyone in the team even if they were in their full gear.

Fern let their bickering fade away, and focused on controlling their stomach. They closed their eyes, slowing their breathing until the air was barely whispering past their lips. But even the self-soothing meditation couldn’t stop the sharp slivers of ice from crawling up their spine and into their chest.

The transport jerked to the side, sending Fern directly into Rabbit beside them. The tall woman grunted, before shoving them back. Fern tried to turn their groan into a grunt. Everyone was nervous going on an op like this, even (especially) with parahuman support. The turbulence didn’t help.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Slow and steady.

“One minute out!” called Miss Militia over their helmet radios from up front with the pilots. “Dragon reports she’s in position for the breach. And Romeo and Sierra units are green.”

Fern fidgeted before clasping their free hand around the stock of their carbine, fingers idly caressing the grip. They slowly brought their attention back to their body. Their chest moving in and out with every breath. The hard plastic of the seat behind them. The soft padding inside their helmet, already starting to smell from the sweat. The reassuring hum of the turbines outside carrying them halfway across Brockton Bay in a matter of minutes. There was no use worrying. It would be over one way or another soon enough.

The sound of an explosion up ahead, the blast radius close enough to rock the transport, startled Fern out of their thoughts. The others were starting to get out of their seats, hands secure over their primaries. Any weapons checks had been done long ago, everyone knew their roles. All that was left was to raise the curtain.

The red light above the door flashed green with a buzz. Fern bared their teeth. Showtime.

The gray light was bright compared to the dim interior of the ‘copter. It lit a world in ruins. And it had been ruined before the Dragonsuit at the landing site had begun its work, filling the air with dust and noise.

It was bad form to be distracted while breaching a location, but in this case the distraction was a literal two foot deep hole right at the end of the ramp, half-flooded with brackish water. Fern had no idea who left it there, but they almost tripped over it.

They let out a little sigh of relief, happy to be on solid ground again.

Compared to Boston, the city was a nightmare. Chunks of buildings were still missing–whether from a cape fight or Leviathan was unclear. The stench hit Fern the second they opened their mouth to breathe, a kind of underlying bitterness to the air that meant someone had been using the area as a bathroom.

“Fuck, stinks like shit,” Dove groused over the radios. For all her complaining, though, her head scanned from left to right like a machine, covering their rear as they advanced down into the pit. Dragon had dug her way down to find an underground concrete tunnel, and now it was bare and exposed.

“Then mask up,” Coyote retorted, the lower faceplate of his armor already in place.

“He’s right. Everyone, masks on. Dragon says she’s nearly through the last layer. Then form up on me.”

Fern nodded, slipping into position on the cape’s right. Reaching into their vest, they picked up the lower facial mask and attached it to their helmet, sealing them inside the suit. Exchanging the shit and ammonia and salt air of Brockton Bay for the stale plasticity and rubber of the rebreather wasn’t a great deal, they thought as they breathed in, getting used to the slight draw of processed air through the faceplate's filters.

Working their shoulders, they took up their breacher position at Miss Militia’s four o’clock. Their breaching shotgun was a heavy weight on their hip, their carbine was a reassuring presence in their hands. Lethal force wasn’t usually authorized from the start. It was this time. “Fox, in position,” they reported.

The others sounded off;

“Rabbit, in position.”

“Dove, in position.”

“Coyote, in position.”

Breath rasping inside their helmet, already hot, already not-quite-fresh, smelling of the protein bar they’d had before setting off and the orange juice they’d had earlier in the morning. Heart pounding to the great, repetitive thumps of Dragon’s war machine. The acrid taste of adrenaline in their mouth, the trembling in their legs that was just the thump of the digging equipment (right?). And then.

Dragon let loose the loudest sound yet; a screeching clanging groan. With a roar of effort, the machine in front of them tore off a massive section of reinforced concrete and metal before tossing it to the side. Without a moment’s hesitation the machine dived into the hallway–one of the few large enough to accommodate her size.

“Two flash, two charlie-sierra!” Miss Militia yelled. Her power morphed into a grenade launcher with a flash of green. Thwoomp. Then another flash, and another thwoomp without any pause to reload. Flash-thwoomp. Flash-thwoomp.

The last one was still in the air when the first detonated, the flash lighting up the dust in the air and painting harsh black shadows from the trench, while the bang was even louder than Dragon’s machinery. Then a second flash-bang.

Miss Militia took point as they entered the structure, Fern on her four o’clock. The air was hazy with CS gas. Dragon had chosen the opening well: in the corner of the room. And in an enclosed space like this, a double flash-bang wouldn’t be fun for anyone.

But fuck ‘em.

Fern spotted a figure, doubled over in pain, highlighted in bright white on black in their HUD. Their carbine chattered a burst straight to center mass. The figure dropped.

“Tango down,” Fern reported, taking cover beside a fallen table.

Another to the left; no, Rabbit had them.

“Tango down. Runner at niner.”

A machine gun’s chatter, stitching a line of bullets across the wall. There had been a person in the way. Now; meat.

“Tango down,” reported Miss Militia.

The first few seconds were a massacre. The mercenaries must have known they would breach here – how could they not? But two flashbangs in an enclosed space had hit them like a punch from a heavyweight, and then had come Dragon. A barricade of tables and chairs might as well have been discarded tissue boxes. Her heat ray had burnt blast shadows into the wall.

Within twenty seconds, it was over.

There were two entrances to the room; Dragon took one, sealing it up with dark, hissing sealant foam. “Good luck,” she said over comms. “I’ll hold this point.”

The rest of the squad filed in, covering sightlines and angles continuously to maintain security. When the signal came, Fern fell back from the gaping opening that Dragon left behind to the main corridor of the base, and moved up behind Miss Militia again.

So far, so good. They hadn’t exactly been quiet, but that wasn’t the goal. They hadn’t taken any losses, and the way forward was clear.

Miss Militia held up a fist, and Fern froze. Three fingers. Two. One. They swept around the corner together. The hallway stretched out ahead, white walls and concrete floor as depressingly uninspired as Fern’s old dorm. Well, now that they thought about it, that said more about Brownfield University than it did this place.

The two slowly crept forward, guns pointed ahead. Miss Militia didn’t need to say anything for Fern to quiet their steps.

“Bird down,” the radio crackled in their ear.

“Oh, thank fuck,” Dove said, and for once not even Coyote got on her back for radio chatter. That had been the biggest immediate concern in the operation. Watchdog had confirmed that Shatterbird was housed in the base, and given her exponentially destructive capabilities in an urban environment, they couldn’t afford to ignore her. Odawa team must have gotten to her and finished the job before Coil could marshal his forces. Fern didn’t allow themselves to relax. It was still early.

Shoes squeaked on the floor as the squad advanced inch by inch. This was the part no one remembered about any raid, but always sucked when it happened. The waiting. The slow, agonizing pace required to do things safely.

Miss Militia put a hand up to her ear briefly, as if to confirm something, then held up a fist. The squad froze behind her. Three fingers. A fist held behind her head. One finger. An open hand behind the head.

Three contacts. One cape.

Fern’s fingers tightened against their gun. With Shatterbird out of the picture, that still left a lot of hard counters to this squad. This could be anyone.

Miss Militia pointed to the door on the left. Instantly, the squad composition changed. Boar pointed his carbine down the hallway, to cover in case someone came around the corner. Rabbit took the door on the other side, standing to the right of the opening side. That left Miss Militia and Fern safe to stack up on the door.

“Door,” Miss Militia ordered.

An electric jolt shot up their spine, racing between nerve endings and leaving the frantic energy of a sugar high in its wake. Fern couldn’t help a grin. Fuck, there was no high like this. They examined the hinges and the lock. Too shielded for their breaching shotgun. They shook their head, then waved the squad’s demolition expert in.

Tortoise came forward, setting up a shaped charge on the door while Fern covered him. His name was fitting, in a way. Most of the specialty work he did took far too much time to be practical, but when it hit, it hit hard.

He finished the set-up and stepped back with a nod, fingering the detonator. Miss Militia gave the signal. The thump took out the lock and a section of door frame, concrete dust raining down from the ceiling and settling like snow on their black armor. Even before the noise had ended, Miss Militia kicked in the door and swept into the room. Her automatic shotgun roared, and a dazed mercenary went down. Fern kept on her right, until their visor highlighted a figure in a top hat through the smoke… before it was gone, replaced by a mercenary already starting to double over from the gas.

Shit! “Eclipse!” they yelled into the squad mic, taking cover behind one of the beds in what they now realized must have been an adjunct dormitory. The squad relayed their replies, confirming they’d all heard the warning.

Trickster. Mover four to five. Could swap objects of the same approximate size or mass within his range of sight, including himself. The briefing had been clear about the threat he posed: if he could see you, you were in danger. And he was the kind of rat bastard who’d swap an agent with himself just to trick someone into shooting them. Hence the standing orders to use less-lethal weapons on him – because it might not be him you hit.

All of this flashed through Fern’s mind in an instant as their hand instinctively went for the flashbang on their belt. The sound of gunfire was so loud their ears were ringing even through their ear protection, but they forced themselves to pull the pin and throw it over the bunk in Trickster’s direction.

By the time they’d realized their mistake, it was already far too late.

Between Dragon’s drones and Horizon’s intel their vision advantage was almost complete. While individuals (and even some capes) could slip the net in Coil’s base for short amounts of time, it was never long before the heroes reacquired them. That information was streamed in real time to the visor every PRT officer had, providing an accurate radar and overview of every potential threat. This was what made it possible for ordinary men and women to stand up to a parahuman on their own, why so many villains (and independents) who dismissed the PRT got caught off guard. Information supremacy.

But even with all that technology and preparation, things still fell apart in the field. Fern’s grenade flew in a low arc across the room for a moment before Trickster caught sight of it out of the corner of his eye. He only needed a split second. The actual switch was so quick Fern didn’t even register it; one second the grenade was on its way, the next it was a small object flying harmlessly towards Trickster. A clip from one of the team’s carbines.

The scream and blinding white light from behind revealed where the errant explosive had gone. Trickster must have swapped the grenade for one of the extra clips on Tortoise’s belt, and the flashbang had promptly detonated against their team member’s abdomen. Fern winced, and clutched at the stock of their carbine. Flashbangs were technically nonlethal, but that close the heat would burn straight through the ablative ceramic plating and into your gut.

The radio call a second later confirmed it. Tortoise down.

Fern growled and swapped to full automatic. Rules of engagement said not to risk lethal fire against Trickster, but he’d been looking towards the flashbang as it detonated. Even at a distance, if it had just blinded him enough...

But right as they were about to pull the trigger, their finger met unyielding metal. Fuck, he’d swapped their carbine! Fern was left holding a dumbbell from one of the nearby training sets, reeling to adjust to the sudden change.

Before they could even fully register it, though, a clatter of gunfire from across the room drew their attention, and a moment later had them diving further behind cover. Trickster had their carbine now, and by the look of the pattern in the walls was attempting to spray down the room. But his spacing was amateurish at best. Was that the CS gas, or was he just a terrible shot?

Dismissing the question, Fern pulled out their radio. “Tango is armed, one o’clock, suppressive fire!”

Their breath left them in a sigh of relief as they saw the rest of the squad hunker down immediately, Dove taking the moment to pull back Tortoise into the relative cover of the doorway. Trickster kept firing, spraying down the room with long, wild bursts, frantically yelling something nobody could hear over the deafening sound of gunfire.

Fern closed their eyes, and waited. This was their gun, they knew exactly how many rounds were left in it. Counting on full auto was tricky at best, but Trickster clearly wasn’t accustomed to the weapon judging from the inaccurate and inconsistent fire. Finally, the sound that they were waiting for echoed across the room. A metallic click. Trickster was empty.

They didn’t hesitate for an instant. Fern vaulted the low bunk they were hidden behind, relying on their helmet to navigate through the wreckage of the room and the ever present gloom of the CS gas. With all the lights taken out by gunfire, Trickster didn’t see them until they were right on top of him.

They crashed into the scrawny cape with all 273 pounds of body armor, spare rounds, and rage. He cursed, trying to get the upper hand by squirming away towards Fern’s right. If they hadn’t been briefed on his power set it would’ve worked. But they made sure to go for his sightline first, using their right arm to keep his vision limited while they held his body down with their left.

He struggled for a moment longer, but it was already too late. Dove quickly joined the scuffle and smothered Trickster’s legs and left hand in containment foam, pinning him to the floor. From there it was just cleanup.

“Eclipse down.” It felt like victory.

Fern took a moment to scan the surrounding room, still breathing heavily as they stood back up. Miss Militia had been dealing with a score of soldiers on the left, judging by the laser burns etched into the walls. From the blood stains on the other side, she hadn’t been pulling her punches firing back. Fern couldn’t blame her.

“Tortoise,” Miss Militia ordered. “You’re wounded, stay here and cover Trickster, make sure he doesn’t get free. The rest of you...”

With a nod, Miss Militia signaled the squad to form up on the opposite door.

“Let’s go.”

“Sol down.”

Fern allowed themselves a hint of a smile. Sundancer was one of the more dangerous capes they could encounter, simply because of how instantly lethal her power was. Defiant or Hupa squad must have been doing good work.

It was a messy, chaotic, brutal operation. But they made progress. Miss Militia brought firepower they sorely needed, opening every engagement with more ordnance than any of them carried. It made clearing this underground warren doable.

But doable didn’t mean easy, or safe. Coyote caught a Tinkertech laser to the temple from a soldier just coming out from one of the other doors. Bad luck. Didn’t stand a chance.

Dove got hit by a laser in the gut, screaming as it cauterized her insides. Fern winced as the smell of cooked pork and shit filled the air. Fifty fifty odds on her coming out of that alive. They’d done what they could.

By the time they secured the generator room, there was almost no resistance left. Between Horizon taking out Genesis, and Defiant mopping up Ballistic, the capes were secured. Dragon had informed them at one point that both Coil and the VIP were secured, though who knew what that meant. At this point, they were just mopping up stragglers.

“And clear,” Miss Militia said as they made a final pass of the generator room. Her painted armor was as dusty and dirt-smeared as theirs; through her gas mask they could see trails of sweat down her forehead. “Fox, with me. The rest of you, hold this location.”

The squad disassembled, taking overwatch positions in strategic areas of the rooms and keeping their weapons ready, but otherwise allowing themselves to get as close to relaxed as they dared. There was little chance the enemy could mount a counterattack at this point, but it didn’t do well to get caught off guard. Especially when one shot was all it would take.

Fern followed after Miss Militia. “Ma’am?”

The hero glanced at the rest of the squad, before looking back to them. “There’s a new objective that Dragon has identified here. I need to deal with it, and I need someone to watch my back.”

Fern paused. “Something that wasn’t in the briefing?.”

Miss Militia’s brow furrowed. “Yes. Possible hostile cape, unknown affiliation - possibly linked to the Travellers.”

Fern’s stomach clenched. Unexpected surprises in a mission that had already been a bloodbath was not a good sign. But what Miss Militia wanted, Miss Militia got. Captain Eaton had said as much. “Yes, ma’am.”

Miss Militia’s shoulders relaxed slightly in a way that only revealed how much tension she was under. “Thank you. From the initial reports, I don’t want to do this alone.”

“What are we going to do, Dragon?” Horizon’s voice sounded off from ahead of them. Fern and Miss Militia turned the corner, to see what looked like a monster of a Dragon suit, Defiant, and seven other officers standing around a sealed metal door.

“Unknown at present,” Dragon responded as they drew closer. “Coil’s files were air gapped, and I’m still decrypting them. Hard drives.” The last word almost sounded like a curse.

“Precautions?” Defiant asked, stepping forward. Fern took the opportunity to join up with the rest of the officers, not letting their gun down yet. “I’m not expecting a full briefing, but do we have a ballpark rating?”

Dragon’s sigh was evident. “Best I can do is match her to a rampaging cape up in Boston a few months back. Maybe a Brute powerset; in light of that we’ve got authorization from mission control to treat it as a Brute 5 if it turns out to be hostile.”

“If,” one of the other officers muttered. “If it’s that one, it doesn’t leave bodies.”

Fern clenched their gun, remembering the rumors of people going missing, dozens dead, some kind of a monster tearing up a city block. Fuck, this was that cape?

Defiant’s grip on his spear tightened. “Dammit.”

“I can see her form from here,” Horizon said, looking slightly to the left of the sealed door. “Large amorphous mass, with a figure sticking out from the top. Light is too dim to see outside of that.”

“One moment. Yes, there’s external control over the lights. Let me just–”

Horizon gasped. “Huge, at least five meters across. Multiple heads, mouths, arms, legs, other limbs. The girl doesn’t look in a good state.”

“Are you suggesting it’s eating her?” Defiant asked, rocking back and forth on his heels as if he wanted to move in right now.

“I don’t know. The thing - it isn’t moving. Maybe it’s inactive. And it’s the size of a truck at least. I don’t think Brute 5 is going to cut it if it gets violent. God only knows how Coil got that thing down here without anyone noticing.”

Fuck. Fern’s chest was clenching inwards, their teeth almost shattering under the pressure in their jaw. The pay wasn’t nearly good enough for this.

“Then I’m up front,” Dragon said, turning back to the door.

“Are you sure you really want to–”

Dragon cut the cape off. “We have no idea what this cape’s capabilities are, how they feel towards the Protectorate, if they’re even affiliated with Coil. For all we know they’re just as much a captive as Dinah. I have to take that chance.”

Fern took a nervous breath in, and back out. Their gun suddenly felt so tiny and pointless in their hands. But it was better than nothing.

Another minute passed, before Dragon made a humming noise. “Got the passcode. Stand back, and prep for hostile contact.”

And then, Dragon opened the door to a monster.

Chapter Text

Skitter’s laughter slowly petered off as I looked at the screen. The headline had left the screen, as it cut to a pair of talking heads, but it kept scrolling through my head. Coil was captured. What did that mean? What would happen now? How much of this had been a set up?

I’d wondered earlier why Dragon was doing a public stakeout in front of the Undersiders in their respective bases. This... might explain things. Had she just been trying to keep us–them–out of the way until she finished coordinating with the PRT on the strike? How much of the chase a few days back had been an attack of opportunity, and how much had she just been scaring us back to our coop so she could latch the door behind us?

I could feel my pulse pounding under my temples as I tried to put the pieces together. The sound of approaching footsteps coming up the stairs distracted me, and I turned to see Charlotte stepping through the door.

“Boss?” she said, peeking through the side. “You called?”

I glanced at Skitter, only to see that she hadn’t moved. Had she made a phone call when I wasn’t looking?
“Call off the evacuation,” she said, still staring at the screen. “We’re staying.”

Charlotte swallowed. “What does that mean? What happened?”

Skitter turned back to face us, and while you could just barely see the tension in her shoulders, the bugs around us told the real story. Chitin and antennae writhed and shifted against itself, waves of buzzing crashing against the walls of the apartment in a discordant screech. She was buzzing and shaking in my hand, whether out of anxiety, rage, or something else I couldn’t tell. I carefully brushed a thumb down the length of her centipede’s back, trying to soothe her.

“It means that the situation is over. There’s no danger here. No immediate danger, anyway.”

Charlotte looked like she was struggling to find words to politely ask what the hell had happened, and I couldn’t blame her. I glanced to the side at Skitter. She obviously wasn’t willing–or perhaps even able, in this state–to say more. Given that this involved Coil, that was fair. But maybe I could at least help a little.

I carefully walked over to pick up the notepad I had left on the conference table. I could feel Skitter and Charlotte’s eyes on me, but I didn’t let that stop me as I finished writing and held up the pad.

“Dragon was covering for something else. We can’t tell you without putting you or the kids in more danger. We don’t know everything yet. Focus on calming the kids down, we’ll tell you if anything changes”

Charlotte looked between me and Skitter, but the Villain didn’t say anything to contradict me, staring blankly at the screen. After a moment’s silence, Charlotte took that as agreement, giving me a short nod before heading back downstairs.

Calm settled like a housefly, ready to take off again at the slightest disturbance. For my part, I tried to figure out what to say. Skitter had been struggling under the burden of this for… months, at this point. Throwing herself at every obstacle in the pursuit of this one goal. And to suddenly have it given to you, but not in the way you imagined? I could sympathize with that.

“I thought it would feel different.”

I turned to face Skitter. Her head was bowed, arms loose by her sides. Wings fluttered along the walls like a heartbeat.

“Different?”

She nodded without looking up, her hair falling over her mask like a curtain of choking ivy. “Different. Like it would be over. That all this would be worth it. That I’d know this all meant something.”

I reached out to touch her shoulder, hesitating at the last second. What could I even say to that? Yes, it was more complicated than she made it out to be. And she had still, strictly speaking, gotten what she wanted. She admitted as much. But that wasn’t how she felt right now. And I could understand the… disconnect there. Between feeling, and wanting.

“What did you want it to mean?”

Her laughter was more of a harsh bark of sound than anything else. “That I was right. Or maybe not right but… doing this for the right reasons.”

I swallowed. “I’m not sure if it’s that simple.”

Skitter looked up at me, hair still strewn eerily across the mask, cutting across the yellow lenses in slanting black slashes. Her gaze through the strands was a harsh stare through prison bars. “How could it be more complicated than that? I went into this thinking that I’d be a hero,” she practically spat the last word, “only to find out that I wanted nothing to do with any of them. That they never did anything for me, and threw away anything I offered without even hearing me out.”

I had to choose my words carefully. Skitter was fragile, right now. Anyone in her position would be. “You felt like no one could help you.”

“Of course not,” she scoffed. “Can you tell me with a straight face that anyone would’ve taken me seriously about any of this?”

I gave her a long look, and she sighed. “...fine. Outside of you. But the point stands.”

I smiled softly. It was probably being a bit self centered, but I didn’t like the idea of her lumping me in with all the Heroes that abandoned her. I felt like one way or the other, I was with her on this.

“I didn’t have options,” she continued, “so if anyone was going to save Dinah, it was going to have to be me. There was no other choice.”

I nodded slowly. That made sense, from her perspective. But if I understood her argument right, the problem was that she saw this as some kind of a moral crusade. As a reason for all of her other actions. The idea that it might not have been needed at all… that would call into question everything else.

“What would that have looked like, if you did it?”

The bugs around us hissed and writhed, a black tide crawling up the walls and filling the space above our heads with whining movement.

“… I. Don’t. Know.” Skitter forced the words out like they hurt more than the crossbow bolt had. “But we at least had options! Tattletale was subverting Coil’s men. Imp triggered and we had a Stranger on our side. I was making inroads with the Travelers. We were making progress!” She was almost yelling by the end, barely holding herself back enough to keep it loud but level.

I took a moment to let her calm down and get a hold of herself again. “I know that,” I signed gently, “and I’m not denying you tried. But how dangerous would that have been?”

Skitter glared at me like a drowned ghost out of a horror flick. I didn’t look away. I wouldn’t let her back away from this. I knew, possibly better than anyone else in this building, that the delta between what we wanted and what was best was often massive.

“It would’ve been dangerous, yeah,” she said eventually. “But so is everything else we’ve done! I fought Mannequin and Leviathan and Bakuda and Lung; why would this be any different?”

I took a deep breath and fought the urge to let my anger show on my face. This wasn’t going anywhere productive and continuing would only worsen things. She thought I was questioning her track record… morally dubious as it was. And there was an argument to be had there–several, actually–but not right now. I had to get us back on track.

“I’m not saying you didn’t do any of those things,” I signed patiently, “this isn’t about that. I’m asking if your goal was all that mattered. Because if that’s true… why would you be upset?”

She growled, and the bugs around us echoed her. My heart sped up, thumping in my chest like a rabbit. It was easy to forget, with how much of her I’d seen, just how terrifying Skitter could be. She had nothing in her hands, no real way to hurt me through my forcefield, and yet I could almost believe I was in danger.

Almost. But I knew better. Which is why I could have this conversation, and tell her the things she needed to hear.

“It matters,” she said through clenched teeth, “because that would mean I didn’t have to do any of this shit. That all I’ve done is get people in danger, let people down, again.”

I was about to reply to that, before I paused. “Again?”

She stalked across the room to the window, looking out at where Dragon had been sitting for days. The bright blue sky and harsh sunlight were mocking in the pleasant picture they painted. Unless you had been here for the past few hours, you could be forgiven for thinking nothing of note had happened at all.

“I told you that I’d planned to turn the Undersiders in when I joined. And that was true. But I didn’t tell you that Tattletale knew the whole time.”

My hand froze around the centipede. Fuck, I hadn’t even considered that. I still didn’t know what her power was, but given what she was able to find out about Dragon and the Wards without having anything even resembling direct access? Trying to lie to her face was almost impossible. Especially for a fresh independent starting out.

“It hurt. Doing that. Thinking that I was making… friends… with these people that I’d stab in the back. But it was worth it. Because I had to turn them in. Had to save Dinah.” She paused, looking out the window, resting hands balled into fists on the sill. I knew she could, if not see me, then at least perceive me through her insects. She didn’t need to see me to know where I was. But all the same, it felt like she didn’t want to look at me.

“How did Tattletale tell you she knew?”

Skitter huffed under her breath, a hand reaching out to rest on the window in front of her. “She didn’t.”

I cocked my head, and waited.

“I was all set to defect, to turn them in. We’d gone too far, and I wanted no part in it.” Her fists shook slightly. The knuckles under the silk must have been bone-white from the force she was clenching them with. “Then Leviathan happened.”

Fuck. Fuck. How did she–how would anyone react in that situation? I was so wrapped up in… my own experiences at the time… that I didn’t remember anything notable about what Skitter was doing, outside of what she’d told me recently.

“And after?” My fingers were starting to ache.

“After…” Skitter paused, and I let her take a moment to put her words together. If nothing else, we had time right now. “The heroes wouldn’t take me. They had no reason to, not after Shadow Stalker. I only had one place to go.”

My focus piqued at that. That was one… thread in all this that I’d left untouched. Arms–Defiant had wronged her, that day. With the armband. But that still didn’t explain why she was there in the first place. Why she had unmasked a Ward.

At the same time, I had to admit this wasn’t the time to digress into that. I wasn’t ignoring it, not at all. But Skitter was clearly trying to work through something here; we could come back to Shadow Stalker later.

“Back to the Undersiders?” I prompted, when it seemed like she wasn’t going to say anything.

Skitter slowly brought an arm up, finally brushing the hair out of her face. “Back to the Undersiders. The same people I’d almost thrown away.”

My mind spun, trying to keep track of all these pieces. Skitter had started out her career prejudiced against Heroes from the beginning, or at least the local Protectorate. From her point of view, I could almost see why. Our perspectives warped our narratives, I knew that better than most. What many saw in Amy… I didn’t. Couldn’t.

But through everything, she’d still kept the idea of being a hero, in principle if not in role. Again, that made sense, given her self-appointed mission to infiltrate a team of Villains. And when that had failed abysmally, the moral imperative of rescuing Dinah must have sustained her, kept her from crumpling under the weight of what she’d already done. But now even that was gone. There was nothing to keep her going, no rationalization of what to do next.

I took a step forward, pausing when the insects between us rippled. “Why are you really upset, Skitter?”

She stayed silent.

I pushed. “What’s the problem here? You did it. You saved her. She’s free of Coil, and he’s arrested. There’s no more threat. So why?”

“Because I didn’t do it!”

Her voice rang off the walls.

“Because I could’ve told the Protectorate at any point and done this weeks ago!”

I took a step backwards.

“Because I made all the right choices, and everything just ended up worse!”

I flinched, crossing my arms against my chest. The fireflies in her swarm were darting in between open spaces in the room. The insects were so thick that the light was darkening.

“If I didn’t contribute anything, if I didn’t save her, then it was all for nothing!”

I forced myself to look up, at the glimpses of her hunched back I could catch through the chitin.

“What makes you think she was yours to save?”

“There was no one else.”

Her arms fell. Curled in, like the legs of a dead spider, towards her chest.

“Because if what I did wasn’t necessary, if the heroes could’ve done this the whole time and didn’t… it would mean that I was a villain right from the start. That I did all this for no reason, like a fucking idiot. Just like they always said I was.”

Wait who was she talking about–

“And I can’t–I can’t do anything with that! It can’t be true! But there’s… what else is there?”

My fingers were trembling. “What are you really asking, Skitter?”

The bugs between us parted like the Red Sea. Skitter’s back was straight, but her shoulders were bowed inwards. There was something in her right hand. She looked in the mirror for a moment before she turned around.

There was a tear on her cheek.

Her eyes met mine.

“What was the fucking point?”