Taylor was humming as she walked down the hallway, travelling with the flow of the crowd toward the lunch room. She'd found herself humming a lot more since inheriting—making noise herself seemed to help keep her focused on her own mind rather than the continual conversations happening between the Butchers in her mind, and it often got some of the more musically inclined Butchers to hum along. Recently, she'd been working with Frenzy, Howitzer, and Mimic on four part harmonies, and they'd been helping her with converting their humming sounds into noises from her bugs. She had an idea of one day being able to play a whole concerto with just her insects, but that was a ways off.
Do you think that a large enough crowd of teenagers moving toward food works like a fluid, like sand? Basilisk mused idly, as Taylor approached the doors to the cafeteria, set in the center of the 'H' that made up Arcadia's structure.
I think it's closer to a gas, Mason said. They're in a state of high pressure in the classroom, and when the bell rings they all burst out and fill up every available space.
But that doesn't explain why they gather around the food, Mimic pointed out. For my money, it's more like a ferrofluid that flows toward a magnet.
Oh damn, that's exactly it, Basilisk said, and somehow made the sound of snapping fingers. Taylor wondered a bit about how the collective made those sounds without any bodies, and that probably had some deep implications about the way that Butcher's original power interfaced with linguistics, but she couldn't be bothered to think too deeply around it now.
She'd taken to using gnats to track the position of everyone around her. They were kind of perfect for the task—they were only 1/16th of an inch in length, which meant they were small enough to be practically invisible so long as they didn't land on actual skin, each female could lay up to 200 eggs, they fed on fungus in the soil as larvae and nectar from flowers as adults (which could be easily replaced with sugar water), and even though they were weak fliers they had more than enough mobility to get wherever she needed them to, and they were pretty much everywhere to begin with. With her range, it was easy enough to tag everyone with a gnat on their shirt, shoes, and backpack without anyone getting suspicious.
You have to know how ridiculous that is, Hazard said, conveying a mental pout. I thought my power was pretty good for predicting attacks, but you can monitor everything in a three block radius around you.
It doesn't help against any attacks coming from outside my range, Taylor countered. And rather than looking at the two abilities in a vacuum, I'd rather focus on how well they work together.
That's fair, Hazard replied, good naturedly. God knows I'm happy you're going the hero route, but girl, you would have been hell on wheels as a Butcher.
So you all keep telling me, Taylor replied, dryly. Personally, I'm hoping to be hell on wheels as a hero, too.
I'm sure you will, Howitzer cut in, with a surprising degree of affection in her voice. I doubt the villains in the city will be content to leave your hapless act alone. They will discover the steel beneath the velvet in due time, I imagine.
Thanks, Jenna, Taylor said, feeling genuinely touched, and received the mental equivalent of a warm smile back.
Her gnats were how she knew that there was someone new sitting with Vicky at the lunch table, well before she actually arrived. Taylor was confused for a moment, until she remembered Vicky mentioning that her sister had been traveling around the country and was supposed to be back today. Since Taylor had packed her lunch today (Absinthe had worked as a chef before he triggered, so she was more than capable of cooking for herself, and the collective always whined when she got cafeteria food) she skipped the line and made her way straight toward Vicky's group.
She sat down next to Angela, giving a quick greeting to Vicky, and then she saw Amy—and she froze. Unbidden, a surge of memories burst forward: a tall man with a noble brow and a crooked grin, with long wavy brown hair that fell over his back in waves. His voice, deep and masculine, rumbling in her ears after they had made love, and his beard brushing against her ear sending shivers down her spine. His hands on her arms, dancing in his mansion of a house, feeling loved even as she knew it was temporary, even as she was planning to go to his enemies. His dark eyes, peering through a mask of bone, when they met on the battlefield after she had joined the Teeth, hatred and love warring in his eyes.
Her own face, with her short curly hair and a nose that was absolutely covered in freckles, staring back in the cracked mirror in the middle of the Teeth hideout, a test with two damning lines in her hand. The swelling of her belly, throwing up in the morning, feeling like her moods had been seized by some emotional master and were being yanked around without her control. Giving birth in a shady clinic that looked the other way at her stolen money. Trying to raise her little Amelia alone, trying to be a good mother, even as she began to have trouble walking, as her speech started to slur and and her legs began to falter. Deciding to take the only chance at extending her life she could come up with. Meeting him one last time, watching as he saw Amelia for the first time and seeing the love for his daughter in those warm eyes, and knowing this was the right choice even as her own heart was breaking. Killing Hazard with a touch, inheriting the mantle and taking the Teeth to Boston, away from her daughter, and then a blur of madness and blood and bones until she fell to Mimic's traps. Then hiding the memory of her daughter, as much as she could hide anything from the Butcher—refusing to think about her, refusing to feel all her love and loss, because she would keep the Teeth away from her daughter.
It was all so sudden and vivid, a flood of memories it took her a few moments to realize they were coming from Sepsis. Several years of a life that the woman had been hiding away, but seeing Amy—seeing her Amelia, all grown up and almost an adult—undid every last barrier in a second. She was staring at Amelia, she knew that, but she also knew that the rest of the group was staring at her.
"Are you alright, Taylor?" Angela asked, sounding a little concerned. "You're crying."
Taylor reached up and touched her face, and yes, there were tears streaking down from her eyes. "Allergies," she said, after a moment, trying to get herself under control. Then Sepsis provided a phone number, pushing it to the front of the collective consciousness. "Left my medicine at home. I think I've got to make a call." She watched Vicky give her sister a pointed look, but Amelia ignored it—in fact, the girl seemed to be shrinking into herself, pointedly ignoring Taylor entirely.
Angela gave Taylor a questioning look, but didn't argue. "You'll have to go outside—there's a faraday cage around the whole school."
Taylor nodded, absently. She'd known that, at least in theory, but that was very far from her mind at the moment. She stood up abruptly, uncaring of how rude it might make her seem, and quickly walked out of the lunch room. Emotions were roiling inside of her—bleed over from Sepsis, her own shock, betrayal and anger and delight and bloodlust from all the other Butchers.
She barely paid attention to where she was going, but somehow she made it out one of Arcadia's back doors, stepping into the parking lot for the teachers. She kept walking until there was nobody around for a good forty feet, and then her phone was in her hand and a number was being dialed.
"Who's this?" a gruff voice picked up on the third ring. The voice was older and had more of a rasp than Sepsis remembered, but it was still unmistakable.
"McGuire," she said, her voice flat. Sepsis—Eloise Woodworth, right now, the woman behind the mask—was riding high in her mind. "This is Woodworth."
"Fuck you," he said without a moment of hesitation. "Woodworth kicked it in '97."
"And how did she die again, asshole?" Taylor shot back. There was a long pause.
"Oh shit," he said.
"Oh shit is right," she replied. "Don't worry, McGuire, I'm not coming for you or anything like that. I just want to know what happened to my daughter."
"Really? You're asking me now?" his voice crackled down the line, his own anger sharp even over the phone. "Where the fuck were you when Jacques was attacked in his home and hauled off by the Brigade?"
"I was trying not to let a group of murderous assholes that all hated each other decide to track down my daughter," she snapped back. Sepsis' mind was so close right now that she couldn't quite remember if she was Eloise or Taylor. "It happened before—Absinthe killed Devein's sister and her husband, and Basilisk killed Frenzy's ex-boyfriend."
Bastard deserved it, Basilisk muttered, in the back of her mind.
Maybe so, but it wasn't your fucking choice, Frenzy said, snarling. Taylor pushed both of them down, because she couldn't deal with that right now. For good measure, she also pushed down Devein and Absinthe, because their furious cursing was getting distracting.
"What's changed, then?" McGuire asked, a touch of fear entering his voice again at the reminder of who she was. That was fair—McGuire was a tough man, with balls of steel and a spine that would break long before it bent, but he wasn't stupid. The Butcher was one of the most feared capes on the East Coast for a damn good reason.
"I did," Taylor said, feeling a bit of separation finally reinforce itself between her mind and Sepsis. "I'm a swarm master with a multitasking focus, which kept me from going mad. Now stop fucking around and tell me what happened to Amelia after Jacques was taken."
He let out a long exhale, and she could easily picture the cigarette between his lips. "I'm guessing you already know, if you're calling me."
"I need to know for sure," she snapped back.
"Legally speaking, the girl disappeared," he hedged. "I looked into it, but I had heat on me too by that point and I couldn't dig as deep as I'd like."
"You know what actually happened. Don't yank me around, dickweed," she said, her voice sharp.
"Fine," he replied, letting out another huff of exasperation. "A couple months after Marquis goes down, the Brigade unmask and rebrand as New Wave, and the whole family is suddenly famous. And what do I see, but Carol Dallon's got a little girl with Jacques' hair and Eloise's eyes and freckles, who just so happens to be called Amy. Heat's died down enough at that point for me to do a little digging, and what do I find but a fresh set of adoption papers for a girl that seems to have appeared ex nihilo."
"I want the whole file you've got on Amelia," Taylor said, after a moment. "Birth certificate, adoption papers, news paper clippings. Everything."
"What do you want it for?" he said, his voice guarded.
Her anger flared. "What the fuck do you think, Evan? If I wanted her dead or hurt, I could have done that easily. She's my daughter, you ass, and one of the only pieces of family I might have left. I want to make sure she's alright."
"Yeah, yeah," he said, taking a drag on his cigarette, but she could already hear him beginning to type away on his computer. "This a good number to reach you?"
"It's fine," she said. "Thanks."
"I'm not doing this for you," he said, acerbically. "But Jacques asked me to take care of his kid, if anything happened, and I couldn't do much then. I'm only doing this to right the scales, a little."
"Sure you are," Taylor said, but she couldn't help the small smile on her face. "Thanks, McGuire. I'll buy you a drink next time we meet."
"Don't fuckin' mention it," he muttered, and then there was a click and the line went dead.
She laughed a little—yeah, seemed like he hadn't gotten any less fearless with age. It took serious cajones to hang up on the Butcher.
Then she let herself feel everything she needed to feel. It was strange, how much Amy really felt like her own daughter. She'd known abstractly that she had inherited the emotions and memories of the other Butchers, but most of them had relationships with family that started at complicated and only went down from there. The pure love that Eloise held for her daughter was unusual, and it had blindsided Taylor completely. Despite knowing that it came from the other woman, though, Taylor couldn't help but feel it like it was her own.
Amy had looked tired, she thought. Tired, and withdrawn, and now that she thought about it some of the things she'd heard about Panacea's work at the hospital were more than a little concerning. And she was being raised by Brandish, and the first four Butchers had a pretty good idea of just what that woman was like—admittedly, their perspective was somewhat biased, but still. Taylor could admit she was concerned. Still, she could be wrong—maybe Amy was fine, maybe she was perfectly happy and she just had a case of resting bitch face. There was no sense in getting involved in Amy's life, not until she was sure that her presence would actually help. She'd do her own research, and see what she could dig up.
~*~
Amy Dallon was in a bad mood, but that wasn't particularly unusual. She'd enjoyed the little PRT-sponsored tour around the country, for the most part, but that had largely just been because it got her away from Carol and the tedium of normal hospital work. Now that she'd gotten back, she was stuck with both of those again, which meant she was back to sneaking out to Brockton General again just to get away from her mom. Well, and to assuage the guilt she felt whenever she wasn't healing.
The big thing that seemed to have changed since she was gone was the addition of a new person to Vicky's friend group. Amy only kind of knew Taylor—Vicky had mentioned that she'd joined their lunch table, and Amy could tell that she made Dean uncomfortable so that was a plus in her book—but none of that explained her strange behavior in the cafeteria on that first day, the staring and crying before running off. The girl had been quiet for the past week, although Amy had occasionally caught Taylor staring intently at Amy when she thought the healer wasn't looking. It had set her on edge, but she figured that she had healed someone the girl knew, or maybe she'd lost someone because Amy hadn't been there or hadn't been fast enough. Or hell, maybe she was just a cape nerd. Well, Taylor didn't act the same way around Vicky, so that probably wasn't it, but whatever. She'd deal with it if Taylor brought it up, but otherwise she did what she did best and ignored the problem, because honestly Amy had way too much to deal with already.
They didn't share any classes, meaning she only really saw the other girl at lunch, and Amy was an expert at deflecting conversation away from herself and toward Vicky. That the two seemed more than capable of spending the whole lunch period talking about cape nerd shit was just a bonus in her book. Taylor had tried a few times to engage Amy in conversation, but frankly Amy just didn't have the juice in her social battery to make nice with one of Vicky's new friends.
So she'd mostly put Taylor Hebert out of her mind—at least until the girl to turned up outside of her last class, looking like she was waiting for her.
"Amy? Do you think we could talk?" the girl said, staring at her with uncomfortably piercing eyes. "Uh—in private?"
Amy's temper flared–there was usually only one reason somebody wanted to talk to her in private. "Listen, if you're here about healing, there's a waitlist at Brockton General that takes care of that–"
The girl held up her hands. "Woah, woah! No, I'm not here for that at all. I actually was hoping I could speak to you about your parents."
That was… unusual. Amy gave her a suspicious look. "If you wanted that, why don't you just speak to Vicky? You guys seem on pretty good terms."
"Not your adopted parents, your birth parents," the girl said, and Amy tensed up. She didn't know much about who her actual parents were, but she'd worked out that her dad was a villain. Anybody coming to talk to her about him was probably a bad sign. At the same time, though, she couldn't deny that she really was curious about it.
"What do you know about them? How do you know about them?" she asked, despite herself.
"That's… honestly, a bit complicated. And something we should really talk about in private." Taylor shot a look at the other students around them, several of which were clearly rubbernecking.
Amy glared at her, but it didn't seem to have any effect. "Yeah, sure," she said, after a moment.
"403 is open," Taylor said, leading the way without hesitation. Amy followed behind, a little reluctant, but she couldn't deny she was a little curious about her parents. Well, she was pretty sure that she didn't really want to know whatever it was, but she also knew that not knowing would almost certainly be worse. Still, Amy wasn't stupid—she pulled out her phone and sent a text to Vicky, saying she was meeting with Taylor and to come find her if she didn't respond within 15 minutes. Not that she really thought the lanky girl would do anything, but it was better to be safe than sorry.
Room 403 ended up being one of the extra chemistry lab rooms. Amy was pretty sure it was supposed to be locked, but Taylor just opened it and ushered her in. It was a little surreal to see the large space without any students or teachers. At least all the glassware and chemicals were locked up.
Taylor let the door swing shut, then turned to Amy and held out a hand. "Uh, I should probably formally introduce myself first. Taylor Hebert."
"Amy Dallon," Amy replied. She took Taylor's hand, mostly because it would tell her a lot. "You're a parahuman," she said right afterwards, not letting go.
The girl–the other cape–just nodded, with a kind of pained smile. "I am, yes. Bumble, from the Wards."
That wasn't the only thing she was picking up from the touch, though. Taylor's biology spread out in front of her, and it was really weird. There was the corona gemma and corona pollentia in the girl's brain, of course, but her skin was also stronger than it should be, and there was a knotted layer of subdermal tissue that her power somehow read as fungal, yet the girl's body wasn't rejecting it at all, and there was something strange going on with her bones and joints that reminded her a little of the hollow bones of a bird.
"What the hell," she muttered to herself, her power doing the metaphorical equivalent of gawking.
Taylor let out a rueful laugh, but she pulled her hand out of Amy's grip. "That's part of what I want to talk to you about. Can we sit down?" She gestured to one of the lab tables, where they'd be able to sit and talk with each other.
Amy nodded, still processing the girl's biology. It reminded her a little bit of Aegis' more extreme changes, but it seemed far more permanent–well, except for the thing with the bones, her power had read that as largely temporary. But it was weird, that was for sure, even for a parahuman–it was pretty rare for powers to modify the body like that, especially in such strangely disparate ways.
The girl took a deep breath, then crossed her fingers and fixed Amy with an unwavering look. "Okay, I should probably start with the beginning. Do you know who your birth parents were?"
"No," Amy admitted. "I mean, I have some theories, but I was too young to remember much. I never met my mom, and my Dad was just Dad to me."
Taylor nodded, as if she'd been expecting that. "You were born Amelia Claire Lavere to Jacques Lavere and Eloise Woodsworth, although those last two are better known as Marquis and Sepsis."
Amy jerked backwards, staring at Taylor with wide eyes. "What?"
The other girl grimaced a little. "I'm sorry, I'm sure that this can't be pleasant to hear, but I think you deserve to know the truth."
"What you say is the truth," Amy fired back, almost reflexively.
"That's fair. I have proof, but some of it won't make sense until I explain the whole story," the girl said. She slipped a phone out of her pocket and tapped a few times, before sliding it over to the girl. "That's a birth certificate for Amelia Claire Lavere, including the legal names of her parents. And that," she said, swiping the page to the side and showing a different form, "is documentation for the adoption of Amelia Dallon by Carol Dallon, dated to 2000—three days after Marquis was captured, signed by a judge that owed New Wave for saving his wife's life."
"How did you get access to these?" Amelia asked, looking over the pages. Certainly it seemed accurate, although she was sure somebody could fake them pretty easily. Then again, she could also probably get access to them herself, so there wasn't much point in doing that. It still didn't prove the claim about them being Marquis and Sepsis, though–not that she recognized the latter name, but it sounded pretty villainous. A part of her thought that it sounded strangely familiar, like she should recognize it, but she didn't.
Taylor shrugged. "They're all publicly available, technically. I reached out to the lawyer who used to represent Jacques Lavere in his civilian identity and got them from him. Somebody went to some effort to bury those documents–nothing illegal, though, and nothing that stopped a dedicated seeker."
Alarms were blaring in Amy's head, but she was too curious to do the sensible thing and signal the invisible alarm app on her phone. "Alright, I'm not saying I believe you, but I'll hear you out."
The other girl nodded, taking a deep breath as if to center herself. "Sepsis was a mercenary who mainly specialized in break ins and sabotage. Her power allowed her to rapidly decay anything she touched, spreading a field that would drastically age anything caught inside of it. Unlike Faultline, her power could easily effect both organics and inorganics, although it had a more limited range. When used on flesh, it would cause exiting bacteria to rapidly reproduce and create a spread of rot and necrosis, hence her name."
Amy flinched. "That sounds… horrifying."
Taylor shuddered a little, as if she had seen the power in person. "It really was, but it's worth noting that she didn't often use her power like that. At least, not then. Anyway, in late 1993, Eloise was hired for a job by a new villain who was rapidly rising in power, a man named Marquis. She did a few jobs for him, during that time, and they had something of a whirlwind relationship. It wasn't exactly a romance–I don't think that Eloise was really capable of that, and certainly not at that time in her life–but they slept together several times and unmasked to each other, before Eloise took a job that had her traveling out of state and the relationship fizzled out."
Amy could see where this was going, and she didn't like it. It was one thing to know that you were adopted, and another thing entirely to know that you were an accidental result of a wild fling between two notorious villains.
"A few months later, a new gang was forming in Brockton Bay, with an ethos of hedonism and wanton violence. Today, you'd recognize them as the Teeth. Sepsis was… dissatisfied with her lot in life, and had a degenerative neuromuscular condition–Lou Gehrig's disease–that meant she was unlikely to live longer than another five years, at best. The idea of living her last few years in that kind of unrestrained state was deeply appealing to her. She knew that she'd likely die earlier than that, living the way she did, but she was the kind of person who'd rather go out fighting, on her feet, than dealing with a slow and inevitable fall."
Amy blanched at that. "She joined the fucking Teeth? The Mad Max cosplaying assholes that go around murdering people?"
At the outburst, Taylor sighed and leaned back in her chair. "I wish I could tell you that they were better back then, but that would be a lie. Eloise was…not exactly suicidal, but she knew she was going to die soon anyways, and that changes priorities. I'm not going to sugarcoat it, Amy. Neither Sepsis nor Marquis were particularly good people. Then again, I might be biased, but I don't think they were particularly evil people either, as far as villains go. Neither of them delighted in killing, and they had people and things they cared about."
Taylor must have seen how Amy felt about that, because she changed the subject quickly. "Regardless, it wasn't long after she'd joined the Teeth that Eloise realized she was pregnant. The Teeth were the kind of 'ride or die' gang where she couldn't exactly leave, and she didn't want to either. At the same time, she didn't want to get an abortion either–a part of her had always wanted to make a mark on the world, and a daughter could be as much a legacy as anything else. She brought the baby to term, took care of her as best she could for a couple months–and she did love you, Amy, in her own way. But she knew that she couldn't take care of an infant long term and the Teeth were no place for a child to grow up–so she contacted Marquis. He was more than happy to take the child in, and even if he disagreed with some of Eloise's choices he was honorable enough to respect them."
Amy had picked up on something curious, and she asked about it because that was easier than trying to process everything else the girl was saying. "You sound like you're really familiar with Sepsis, but from everything you're saying it sounds like she died years ago," she said. "What gives?"
The other girl flinched a little. "That's, um, one of the things that's better explained after I finish the story. I think I should explain what happened with Marquis first, because that's the easier one. So. Jacques took you in, and from all accounts he did truly love you. This next part is a bit of speculation, but from the records I've found on the damages to the house and your sudden adoption, along with what Jacques shared with his lawyer before he was birdcaged, I'm almost certain it's what happened. Marquis never intended to give you up, but when you were about six years old the Brockton Bay Brigade found out who Marquis was and launched an assault at his home. He only gave in when Brandish threatened to destroy the closet that he was protecting–the closet where you were hiding–and he made her promise that she'd take care of you afterwards. In any event, Marquis went to the birdcage, and Amelia Lavere quietly came Amelia Dallon."
Amy wanted to deny it, but… she had memories, of darkness and screams and then the smell of burning wood as a brilliant sword sliced toward her head. She'd thought they were just a recurring nightmare, brought on by some horror movie she'd watched with Vicky when she was too young, but as Taylor talked it was like she was conjuring up the memories. Raised voices, and her muffled crying, and strangers in the house, and Daddy's face and he was also crying and that was wrong, Daddy shouldn't cry, and…
Amy blinked tears from her eyes, forcing her feelings down with long developed skills of emotional repression. "Okay. Okay. So that's what happened to me. Where was my mom during this?"
Taylor nodded, leaning back in the chair and interlacing her fingers. "Eloise was dead by then," she said bluntly, and Amy nodded–that was what she'd expected. But Taylor continued on. "As Sepsis' condition deteriorated, she began to get more and more reckless. At the same time, the current Butcher for the Teeth was a former hero named Hazard, who had been driven to madness by the two Butchers before him, and he was practically insensate. Sepsis decided that Hazard needed to be put down, before he caused any more damage."
At that, the healer's mouth dropped open. "No," she said, in a horrified whisper.
Taylor nodded, her face grim. "Yeah. Sepsis challenged the Butcher and killed him, taking on the mantle. She held it for around nine months, before her ALS weakened her to the point that Mimic was able to take her out by animating a whole host of bear traps into minions, and even Hazard's danger sense wasn't enough for her to make it out alive."
"My mom was the Butcher?" Amy asked, rhetorically.
"Um, I mean, not at the time she had you?" Taylor said, sounding almost sheepish.
"That's not the point!" Amy yelled. She was breathing hard, and at some point she had stood up from the table. Oh God, her Mom had been the Butcher. She knew about the Butcher and their Teeth, abstractly. She'd healed a few people in Boston on her recent tour around the country, people who had gotten on the wrong side of the Butcher before the latest incarnation was killed.
The idea of being related to that monster was just… horrifying. There was something that Taylor hadn't explained about all of this, though, and it nagged at her—in part because it was easier to focus on than that reveal. "How the hell do you even know all of this? Does the PRT have all this stuff on record, or something?"
Taylor shook her head. "No, not that I know of—certainly not in my clearance level. I have… let's call it a personal connection to Sepsis."
Amy blinked a few times. "What do you mean? Is she your Aunt or something? Are we related?"
"No, not really. Well, yes, in a way. Kind of?" Taylor bit her lip, and she looked to be hesitating. "I want to tell you the whole truth, but I also don't want you to freak out."
"Yeah, that's super reassuring," Amy said, falling back on snark because this whole thing was starting to freak her out.
Taylor laced her fingers together. "Sorry, I'm just trying to figure out how to tell this. I guess I'll start at the beginning. I triggered back in January, after some bullies at my old school did something… it was bad, that's all I want to say. I had a psychotic break as my brain adjusted to my powers, and when I got out of the hospital I didn't want to go back to school. My dad had a trip up in Boston for his work, and we agreed it would be good for me to get out of the Bay for a bit. And it was, until we got caught in the middle of a Teeth attack."
"Oh my god," Amy said, despite herself.
"Yeah, it was bad," Taylor said, with a grim smile that held no amusement at all. "I'd barely gotten a handle on my power at that point, but I had enough control to defend us. You might have seen that I control bugs, and I was too panicked to think clearly, especially when the Butcher appeared and went for my dad. I threw my whole swarm at her, and I ended up getting enough in her mouth to suffocate her."
Amy was emotionally and mentally exhausted, from everything that Taylor had been telling her, which is the only reason why it took her so long to put the pieces together. When she did, Amy felt herself freeze, blanch, and tense up all at the same time. "You killed the Butcher," she whispered.
Taylor–no, fucking Butcher–nodded, as if that was at all an appropriate response.
Amy felt her anger overpower her fear, loosing her tongue. "Why the fuck did you come here? Is this some kind of sicko initiation attempt? Are you trying to kidnap me? Because let me tell you, Butcher or not, if you hurt me you'll have the entire force of New Wave and the Protectorate and hell, the fucking Triumvirate coming down on you like a goddamn hammer, you understand?" At some point, Amy had stood up, the chair skittering back behind her.
At her words, Butcher's face fell, and she made to reach for Amy's hand, only to pause when Amy violently pulled her hand back. Then Amy thought better of it, because she was a Striker, and she reached over to grab Butcher's hand. She could read the girl's biology, and suddenly the weirdness made sense, because this was the result of a cobbled together amalgamation of fifteen different powers. She could also send a signal that would put the Butcher into a permanent coma, if she wanted to. She didn't know why she didn't, because that would definitely be the right thing to do. However, her grasp of biology also meant that she could read all the thousands of microexpressions and neural expressions and biochemical responses, which meant she'd know if the Butcher lied.
When Taylor spoke this time, her voice was sad. "No, it's not for anything like that. Amy, I promise you, I don't want you anywhere near the Teeth—hell, I don't want anything to do with them. But… being the Butcher, it's not just like having voices in my head. I have their memories, their thoughts, their emotions. I might be able to handle it better than my predecessors, since my power made me far better at multitasking, but in many ways I've become everyone who came before. And when I see you, I still feel Eloise's love for her child. And I'm worried about you, Amy."
She sounded sincere, but that didn't mean anything. But she also could read the responses of Butcher's body, and she knew that the cape was being completely sincere. She let out a disbelieving giggle that sounded insane even to her own ears. "You really expect me to believe that the Butcher is worried about me."
A flare of anger crossed over the girl– monster– Butcher's face, before she smoothed it over. "Yes, I do. Because a girl that I can't help but see as my daughter is self-destructing and nobody is doing a damn thing about it."
"You're younger than me!" Amy cried out, as if that was at all the point. "I don't need this patronizing bullshit from you!"
"You're burning yourself out at that fucking hospital and everyone's happy to let you!" Taylor shouted back, her fingers curling into claws–and that wasn't metaphorical, Amy's biosense could literally see claws emerging from the girl's fingertips before the Butcher seemed to force them away. She pulled her hand out of Amy's grip, standing up as well with her hands clenched to the side. "I looked into it—you're practically working a full time job on top of school, and from what I know of Carol I very much doubt you're getting any real emotional support!"
"I'm helping people! Does that disappoint you? Would you rather I be a monster like you, like my dad?"
"I'd rather you not be working thirty hours a week on top of school, at one of the most stressful jobs possible, while Carol fucking Dallon is content to let you destroy yourself for some good PR!"
"It's not your fucking choice! You abandoned me when I was a baby, you don't get to come back now and pretend you give a shit!" Amy yelled.
"I didn't want to do that, but there wasn't a better option! You think I didn't love you, from the moment that I first saw those two lines on the pregnancy test, and the whole time I felt you grow inside me? You think it didn't destroy me to give you up? But I knew you'd be better with him, and that I was too much of a fuck-up to give you what you needed! And I regret it, because I didn't get to see my baby grow up, and now the people calling themselves your parents are failing you as badly as I did!" There was a dull buzzing that echoed Butcher's yells, and faintly Amy remembered that the she had said she could control bugs.
"You don't get to come here and try to control my life, you fucking psychopath!" Amy screamed back at her.
"I don't want to control your life, Amelia! I just don't want to see you miserable, and I know you have been!"
"Get out," Amy said, tears of rage and terror filling her eyes. "Go the fuck away from me," she repeated, her voice cold.
Taylor stood up abruptly, her body tense, and then it seemed like her anger just slowly bled away, her shoulders falling and the claws retracting. Now she just looked vaguely sad. "The PRT already knows I'm Butcher," she said, quietly. "You can tell your sister, if you want to, but I'd ask you don't tell the rest of New Wave."
"And what are you going to do if I tell them?" Amy snapped. "Are you going to silence me?"
Taylor actively flinched away at that, and Amy almost felt bad. "No, Amy. I'd be upset, but I wouldn't hurt you. I'm trying to be a hero, too. I just don't trust Brandish or Lady Photon to act responsibly, given their track record."
After a long silence, as Amy just stood there and tried to process all of her emotions, Taylor sighed. "Here." One hand slipped into her pocket, and Amy tensed, but the girl only pulled out a slip of paper with some numbers on it—a phone number, Amy realized belatedly. "That's my personal cell. Feel free to contact me about anything, anytime."
Then Taylor was walking out of the room. Amy might have been able to grab her, to stop her from escaping, but she didn't. Taylor was a Ward, apparently. She was Bumble, and even if Amy had been on a tour around the country she hadn't missed the girl's debut, since Vicky wouldn't shut up about it in their texts. She was also Butcher, with a legacy of mass murder and memories of being Amy's biological mother. And part of her wanted to say that didn't count for shit, that family wasn't about blood but about love and shared connections, but it wasn't like Carol Dallon made a very compelling case for found family.
Eventually, an alarm went off on Amy's phone, letting her know that it was time to get to the hospital for her shift. On autopilot, she started to make her way toward the front of the school, where Vicky was probably waiting for her. She didn't know what the right thing to do about all of this was, or what the reasonable response to Taylor's confession would be. But the slip of paper with Taylor's number on it found its way to her pocket, not the trash can, and she supposed that counted for something.
a/n: the longest chapter, so far. I actually reused a good portion of a snippet I wrote before I started this piece, in a short story about Amy as the Butcher's child, which I finally found a place for with this story. I've tried to fix any errors, but I have dumb brain that doesn't do good with that kind of thing (as you could probably tell from me just forgetting Oni Lee existed last time), so please let me know if you spot any. I'm very grateful to have such a dedicated group of readers that can help me with that kind of thing. One day I'll probably get a beta to do some of that work, but I haven't gotten around to it yet.
Also, I really liked the suggestion from Robitz of Malady instead of Miasma (in part because I really want to see Clock do some M'lady jokes), so we're retconning that as Taylor's alternate name.
Also also, while I've got you here, I thought I might as well mention my other current project, Taylor and the Quest Board. It's pretty different from this story, but if you like random Gacha stories and light litrpgs, or if you think you'd like a story about technoninja Taylor and her skeleton big brass band minions, then feel free to check it out. Thanks!