Athwart History (Closed)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Lana watches the ground crumble beneath Vivienne's feet dispassionately. There was no satisfaction in watching the sprightly artist deflate, become pliable-but Lana finds she has nothing to say to her.

The situation is grim and the stakes immense. Better for the other woman to realize it.

Jenna does damage control. She slides closer and wraps her arms around what was to her a stranger's shoulders-and just holds her. Delivering this news had clearly upset her, made her miserable and guilty for Vivienne's reaction-Lana can see it. She shouldn't have left that on the kid. A mistake she won't make twice.

She uncrosses her arms and leaves the diminished artwork and the comforting speedster, approaches Elias and the mirror Tweedledee inhabited instead.

Her jaw is set. "I believe Vivienne is updated, now." She states resignedly.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias leans back against the mirror quietly. "Yeah," he says, eyes closed. "I guessed as much. Could hear her from over here."

There are drawn lines on his face, which is a hell of a statement; Elias can't wrinkle, so there has to be a mountain of tension to cause that effect. Tweedledee is a blurred, indistinct mass in the mirror behind him - a heavy, Eskimo-like overcoat can be made out, and great clublike hands that clutch at his own shoulders for warmth. The skin is grey and pebbly, but any more detail is impossible to make out, aside from the shivering.

Elias's fists clench up and he takes a deep, long breath. "Tweedledee told me that she's been - in denial, lately. She travels a lot and most the paintings she usually visits have been removed and put somewhere else, or destroyed. It's been encroaching for awhile, and Cid offered her shelter so long as she agreed to be a Ward. Vivienne refused - who wouldn't - but the lack of safety has been traumatizing."

Tweedledee stirs a little. His voice comes out, low and sullen. "She tried to get into a reflected painting. Come join me here. It didn't work. Stupid to try anyways."

Elias grimaces. "Yeah, I don't know that I'd recommend your digs for a vacation home. No offense, Dee."

The other man's shoulders move fractionally.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

A colorful world narrowing, it sounded like.

”-Cid offered her shelter so long as she agreed to be a Ward.”

Lana cuts a sharper glance to Elias, looking briefly indignant. She hears Tweedledee’s statement and finds it somehow telling-that Vivienne might have been lonely. Lonelier than the ‘artiste’ would have ever admitted, no doubt.

She’s stuck on the bit about Cid, however.

“Support or not, Vivienne is a veteran.” Lana says, a bit of heat. “She is not some trainee junior.” A Ward. How insulting. Just who did Cid think he was? Her cool blood almost feels hot just thinking about it.

Lana didn’t have the beef Protagonist had always seemed to have with the knight-but his actions after Immolation had certainly sickened her. Sarah deserved better. Everyone who’d been left had known it. Perhaps even Cid, with the speed he had conducted things. Things must have worked out alright between the pair...Daybreak was still with him, after all.

She shook her head. They’d have to all work together at some point-they can’t afford not to. Besides-there was precedence, tradition in having multiple hero teams. And surely shared goals…

Lana had a lot of news to read up on, she supposed. She’s sure Protagonist would provide a dossier. The vigilante probably had an ongoing document just for the purpose of catching people up- as prepared as ever.

“...perhaps we should see if we can move this to home base.” Lana finally says. “If we give Jenna the funds, I am sure she can race out and find us some interesting art for Vivienne for the Coulee.” Thrift stores, wherever. Her gaze moves to the mirror. “Maybe a few mirrors, too.”

Not that she’s sure Tweedledee was one for company. He only really ever spoke with Elias.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias shrugs, looking exhaustedly disgusted. "I'm not exactly - surprised. It's his kind of move. On one level, yes, it's completely offensive to tell Vivienne that she'd have to be under his supervision when they fought alongside each other. On another, she obviously would say no, and be massively offended about it, which frees him from having to offer proper sanctuary at all. Then if anyone calls him on it, he points to her growing erratic behavior - caused by him - as the reason he doesn't want her having free rein inside the Tower. This is precisely the sort of thing he'd use as an example."

He shrugs limply. The derision in his eyes, in comparison, is lethal. "Abusive, manipulative, and patently offensive all in one: the Cid special. Whoever decided to put him in charge of the Tower was a fucking idiot."

Tweedledee shuffles. "Senator Gillesby."

Elias's knuckles turn white, but he shakes his head and raises himself to his feet. "Another name for Marie to track down," he says heavily, "Because he approved the Tower's funding and position in the first place. Figuring out where Cid's powerbase is concentrated is probably going to be important very soon, if only so we don't get blindsided by some fucking stupid legislation or registration scheme."

The acid in his voice is tangible.

Instead, he ambles over to where Vivienne and Jenna are. Despite the younger heroine's best efforts, the artistic wonder has retreated inside herself quite literally; the sculpture is solid once more, unmoving and inanimate. The color hasn't drained from its eyes, which means she still inhabits it - Vivienne just no longer has the focus necessary to express herself into the outside world.

"Jenna," he says, soft, and flicks a card at her. It's some type of credit card, black and featureless and intimidating by sheer dint of simplicity - no serial codes or proof of identities necessary other than the glimmering chip embedded over the magnetic code. "Get a couple frames for the house. Something woodsy, and an indoor setting with closed doors. Set them up in the living room, if you would."

Behind him, Tweedledee looks up from his huddled ball at Lana. His face is blurred and impossible to focus upon - deep shadows and greyish streaks. His entire form oozes bitter resentment, though; of her, of the world, of everything.

"It won't get better," he says, and curls back up again.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Sarah cannot possibly know he did that.” Lana says with conviction, her perfect posture somehow becoming even straighter with the liquid steel now coating her spine. She’s likewise disgusted.

And then politics. Lana would like to dismiss the thought entirely, but Elias wasn’t wrong. And in an official capacity, she didn’t want to become some sort of legal pariah, an outcast. But they had Adamant, and the new Velocity seemed to be universally loved, supported. Protagonist was in a wheelchair and out of the public’s eye entirely, so her poor reputation wouldn’t affect them-and Deep Blue might still have some usable credit, somewhere.

But she remembers how the public turned on them. She had come back for Elias and their people, but the surface dwellers, the civilians...well, it might take time to forgive and trust them with much of anything.

~*~

Jenna had no idea if the heroine could even feel her touch anymore, but she stayed by her side regardless, quiet and present if nothing else. She feels like the worst sort of person despite not being responsible for the bad news she had just delivered-but maybe she could have done so...better? She’s not sure there was a ‘good way’ to tell anyone something so terrible.

She looks up as Elias comes over, turning the smooth card over in her hands. It’s a task, something to do and help with, and she accepts it immediately and with seriousness, coming to her feet and pulling her shucked silver glove back on over her small hand. “Woodsy and an indoor setting with closed doors. Got it.”

She offers up a small, regretful smile-and is gone with a light displacement of air in her wake. She’ll find something nice to look at-she’s can hit a lot of places and look at a lot of things when the world was effectively still or in slow motion in her perception.

~*~

"It won't get better,"

“It will. It has to.” Lana overrides firmly. “We will get exactly what we put into it.”

She casts a glance to Vivienne’s still form and Elias’ lined face.

And probably nothing more.

 

[Obuzeti]

INTERLUDES​

Speedster saves Neighborhood from California Wildfire!

With forest fires reaching an all-time high in the state of California, the budding heroine Velocity swooped by to pull a team of trapped firefighters out from an encircling arm of the blaze, and in the process evacuated an entire neighborhood and their pets! For those feeling the sting of nostalgia, the original Velocity . . .


Atlantis Princess Single-Handedly Holds Back River for Louisiana Dam Repair!

Princess Lana, after eight years spent back in her homeland of Atlantis, Kingdom-Under-The-Sea, has returned to the surface for another sojourn, apparently; with concerns growing that the recent rains could cause a critical failure in local levees, she informed workmen that the water would 'temporarily cease to be a problem' and then held the currents back while they put patches on the failing dams!


Adamant Brings Down Broodstar!

There's been a shadow in the sky lately; Broodstar, the gargoyle-like menace, showed up again after years in the shadows to bring devastation to Brooklyn, and almost immediately met the bad end of Adamant's fist, who put in a special traveling appearance to show the villain what's what!


Cid Announces New Community Outreach Program

In order to encourage engagement between the Wards, the ever more rarely seen next generation of superheroes, and the citizens they're going to protect, Cid announced "controlled outings" where they would run regular patrols through civilian areas.

~*~​

ADAMANT: Reeled in the wonder duo. Vivi is exactly as charming as I remember.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Protagonist: Better you than me.

~*~

The Coulee was bustling. Lana continued trying to push Jenna to better manipulate, be aware of her Speed Force aura. Another area was phasing through solid objects-but Jenna was very wary of even attempting such a thing. Lana was convinced it was more mental block and than physical, but hadn’t pushed the subject terribly hard.

Instead, she focused on some practical fighting techniques that focused more on stealing an opponent’s momentum than brute strength, given her size. They also practiced several moves Lana and Laura had made up and used in their teens on their first hero team.

The memories were good, and she felt she was properly taking care of the new Velocity in Laura’s absence.

~*~

“Oh, that’s very sad.”

“Hm?”

Jenna looked up from the embroidery threads she was braiding, turning into simple bracelets. Ellie made scores of them it turned out-and had been overly excited to teach Jenna how after an absent complement from the speedster. They were in a library, in New York, Ellie watching the news on Jenna’s phone. She turned the phone so the Filipina could read the subtitles over the newscaster’s torso. A minefield in Libya, some kids getting hurt. Jenna frowned.

“Oh...yeah. There are A LOT of mines in Northern Africa. I guess when Italy declared war on England and France during World War II they kinda...went ham on the colonies the English and French had in Africa, I think. Neither side has done much for clean up, I don’t think.”

Ellie blinked at her.

“Took mostly history courses as my extracurriculars at Uni.” Jenna explained with a shrug, continuing the bracelet. It was hard to be slow with it-but if she just whipped through a bunch, she’d use up all of Ellie’s thread and it’d kinda ruin the whole point of being out here.

“Oh.” Ellie was quiet again, thoughtful. After a moment her soft voice piped up again. “What was college like?”

~*~

Two days later Marie sent Elias a news article in Arabic with an accompanying English translation that was clearly automated, as imperfect as it was.

Something had cleared a minefield, turning a deceptively serene deathtrap into a blown to bits, tilled field. Triggered every single one of the deadly devices in one go early one morning. Speculation was wide and far flung, but several children claimed an older girl in silver goggles had spirited them back and closer to their village before vanishing shortly before the blasts were heard.

PROTAGONIST: Clever. Sent other such locations to her smart watch.

~*~

Jenna was on the couch, legs curled up under her and an elbow on the arm, fist to cheek as she watches a video of a very talented sculptor turn a shapeless lump of clay into a tall vase. She appeared to be watching intently-but really, she was trying to mentally slow the video down in her perception without actually moving at speed. She could vibrate for it, but doing that in place could actually be more draining than running, for some reason.

So far it wasn’t working. Oh well-it was kind of a lazy morning anyway, and since her arrival Vivienne kind of commanded the living room, it seemed like. Jenna didn’t seem to mind-the speedster slept on the couch pretty much every night, curled into one side of it under a colorful afghan. She’d never actually gone up to any of the guest rooms-her purple suitcase was still shoved under the side table, even.

Lana’s working theory was the girl just wanted to catch all the going ons in the house-bubbly excitable energy, always. She was very clearly psyched to be there with them. This, she had claimed, was what she always thought teaming up with heroes would be like.

 

[Obuzeti]

ADAMANT: I get the reasoning, but encouraging my juniors to disarm minefields by stepping on them feels very counterproductive.

~*~​

Vivienne's art spanned most of the walls in the living room - Elias's smorgasboard of old League art, in particular, she liked being in, animating herself in backgrounds and posing with heroes she remembered. There was a true-scale marble sculpture in a corner upon a chair, leaned back as if it was sleeping, but Vivienne only rarely animated it, vastly preferring her two-dimensional home.

"He's already ruined it," Vivienne comments dismissively, from where a portrait sits beside the main, enormous couch facing the television. "See how he's narrowed the base to a vas already? That won't be enough support for him to work out the rest of the pottery, the speed of rotation will force the material flat and weaken the base of his art early. Once it dries, the entire project will be lopsided and quite gauche."

Elias, eternally in the kitchen or nearby it, calls out, "Vivi, he's just a boy!"

Vivienne immediately looks irritated. "That is not my name. Also, that man is thirty-four years old, if you would care to look at the television."

"He's already dead!" Elias wails. Somewhere in the kitchen, the toaster pops. "Stop hitting him!"

Vivienne pauses, and then her expression goes very flat. "Are you making stupid references to television shows that I refuse to watch, on the grounds that they're cultural abominations?"

"You want S'mores?" Elias replies brightly, and comes out holding a pair.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

PROTAGONIST: Wasn't my idea. So long as she doesn't trip.

~*~

“Maybe he can paint it with funhouse mirror images.” Jenna says conversationally, already considering how a lopsided vase could be salvaged, ever the optimist. “It makes for a cool video...could fall asleep to it even! Maybe he’ll smoosh it back down after he’s done.”

She casts a glance into the kitchen at Elias’ outburst. “Is that the Simpsons?” She asks, amused-and then catches sight of Vivienne’s flat expression. She’s gotten used to talking to paintings in a rapidly short amount of time. “My dad used to watch that show, on weekends.” She explains with a sheepish shrug. “Not me so much, too busy studying.”

S’mores!?

“Dibs on one!” Jenna would eat anything, it was quickly becoming apparent. She made good on her original sworn oath not to eat him out of house and home, but anytime something was made and on offer, she was all about it. She never gained weight on that athletic, compact frame of hers either-metabolism always in overdrive.

Jenna eats the smooshed out bits of marshmellow first before taking a bite of the thing in earnest. She freakin’ loves S’mores. “Used to go camping all the time when I was a kid, in the summer.” She says after swallowing a mouthful of marshmellowy goodness, a nod of approval. "Thanks!" Being at Elias' house was reminiscent of visiting her grandmother, when she was alive. She liked to tease him with that sometimes, all the baking he did.

 

[Obuzeti]

ADAMANT: If Jenna ever trips she's going to have bigger worries; I'll be mopping her up over three states. Bought her some kneepads, that should help.

~*~​

"Don't you dare mock the Simpsons," Elias says, and wags a S'more at Vivienne. "They're a pillar of the American community. Want a S'more?"

"It's - you know what, I'm not doing this with you," Vivienne says, flat. "You do this. You always do this. You act ridiculous, and make food, and people love you for it. I can't stand either of these things. You need to change your approach, Elias, you can't just one-trick pony everyone you need to charm."

"Hon," Elias says, kindly. "It's not about you."

Vivienne sputters, feet taken out from under her. Meanwhile, Elias takes a bite of the other S'more and swallows it. "I've never gone camping," he says to Jenna instead. "I mean, I used to let Marie and Gideon do these weird-ass survivalist courses where we'd all go out in the country and be miserable for a day or two, but - closest besides that being homeless, I guess."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna blinks at Vivienne. Mostly, the thing that had stood out to her the most about Elias the person vs Elias the Legendary Adamant was seeing the big man dancing around in his kitchen that first time, making some punk newbie kid pancakes.

But has a mouth full of s'mores, so she can't remind that the impromptu art gallery was Elias' idea before Elias brushes it off. Also, homeless? Jenna's brow furrows.

Lana opens the front door just in time to hear mention of the survivalist pseudo missions, instantly interjecting, joining the conversation as naturally as breathing.

"Neptune, -those-. Do you remember how I became separated somehow on the one? I was wandering alone for -hours-."

Lana was impeccably dressed-a navy blue pinstipe blazer jacket and matching slacks- her blood red hair in it's familiar high ponytail, trailing long down her back. Back from a meeting in some other country, securing a blessing to operate freely there. It was a small, unnecessary bit of political manuevering-but it added to their legitimacy.

Lana leveled a look at Jenna.

"Protagonist had wanted to let me sleep out there until morning. Samantha got her to look before then. -Hours-, and Protagonist managed to find me within forty minutes. I had been going in circles, turns out." Lana shook her head, still miffed with herself. "She was suitably annoyed."

Thank God the vigilante had never taken on a protege-would have been a brutal series of sink or swim lessons, she's pretty sure.

"I do not know why Sam thought putting a 'team building' exercise under those two was a good idea. Did learn a bit about plants, I suppose."

"Camping to me was like...sleeping in a tent and cooking on a campfire, and swimming. Nothing quite that intense.".

But the homelessness-. "Ellie was too, before. blink in the tower?" Jenna feels bad. She knew things hadn't been great for her friend before the Tower-and maybe not even now-but she had no idea just how 'not great' until the Ward had asked her about college-and gone into a bit more detail about her early childhood in Samson.

Jenna has no idea what that was like-not really, not on the streets. She's always slept somewhere with some kind of roof over her head-this honestly was the closest she's been. Can't dismiss the support network she currently has, had always had.

"She wants to meet you, by the way." Jenna says casually, sneaking a piece of candy from its jar on the side table. "I told her to just come over, but she made me promise I'd actually ask. Promise like, twenty times."

Jenna frowns. "She can teleport pretty far distances, further than anyone at the Tower knows about, I guess. So she goes on 'unauthorized outings' with me sometimes. On the down low."

It suddenly occurs to Jenna she was a bad influence-but was she? The Draconian rules and guidelines were bullshit. Ellie was 19 years old, she shouldn't have to be afraid to go on a freaking walk or visit the library, criminy! Tamest illegal outings ever, goodness.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias snickers. "Yeah, you got lost, but Marie straight up stranded Cid. She did a roll call at the end of the exercise, and when he came up absent, checked his communicator. He caught a bus back into the nearest city! So she just said 'he's fine' and it took us over a day to figure out that our definitions of that don't match up. Caught up with him that night, found him trying to badger local police into giving him a ride to the Coulee."

He offers Jenna a shrug. "Well, you went camping with a civvie family. None of us here have got that, except Vi -"

"It hardly counts, dear," Vivienne says, dismissive.

"Fair enough," Elias allows. "Anyways, yeah, you got people that want to come here, bring 'em. No paparazzi is my only rule - this is our place. I don't do the photo op thing. That unauthorized outing thing is all kinds of fuck-shit anyways, Cid don't have any kind of call about what you lot should be doing in your free time."

The big man's mood abruptly darkens at the mention of that. "Always what bothered me most about that place, more like a prison than a team. You got people that want out, no matter how long, you bring 'em to me. If Cid's got complaints, he can come voice them to me. See how that works out."

~*~​

ADAMANT: Jenna mentioned girl at the Tower, Ellie alias Blink. No family known. Can you check current guardian for me?

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

The response was near immediate-Marie's recall was frightening enough in the first place, but her massively structured information spiderweb had enough compiled data to rival the big wig government agencies.

Most of which she also had fast access to.

PROTAGONIST: Kid had Cid as her legal guardian since she was 14. Aged out of the Samson Foster Care System year ago. On the official roster but no newstories-doesn't appear to be sent out often.

Birth parents in and out of prison. Long rap sheets. Kid ran away aged 12 and was a missing person for eight months before being recovered. Parental rights were later terminated due to abuse allegations.

Samson's corruption was worsened by how independent and cut off it was-the state didn't even want to touch it. Maritial law had been declared off and on through out the decades before the 2000's, and eventually it was just kind of cut loose.

-*-

Jenna nods. "I will." She says resolutely.

Lana is frowning. "People of age are restricted from leaving? Stable powers?"

"I don't know. I haven't been back yet-I don't want to go unless Miss Sarah is meeting me at the door.". Jenna looks uncomfortable. "I uh, I was kept there for like a week. It just-it had to be on purpose, and that was illegal as hell-I didn't sign half the paperwork Cid shoved under my nose-told him I wanted to look it over first."

"He locked -you- up?"

"Not exactly." Jenna shrugged. "But after he and Tectonic tore me a new one and told me I got a bunch of people killed, I couldn't dial out and my key card didn't work. This came on the heels of the dock blow up, and my mom legit thought I was dead or injured somewhere. Miss Sarah didn't know. Guess she thought I just wanted to blow off South Bend or something." A little dry, but not angry. "She let me out when I tried to quit. Gave me HER keycard."

Lana stares at Jenna, then looks to Elias-then back. This was news. She had thought the Tower as a League remnant rolled into a school of some kind-not a prison. Her and her friends had been -minors-, and they had operated mostly independently back in the day, a bit of mentoring.

"I'm still confused about it, to be honest-but I know people DO come and go. I just need to talk to more Wards and figure things out-but I don't want to get stuck again."

"If you went there and did not come back, -I- would go in and get you." Protagonist's voice is a low growl, malice apparent even through the small centralized speaker on the mantle.

"I need someone at these coords, now."

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias lasers in on the conversation. "Sarah gave you her key?" he said. "Why the fuck didn't she just say 'fuck this' and unlock the doors for you period? Why doesn't she have that authority?"

If he had been upset before, now he was rapidly approaching apoplexy. Red flushes down his face and neck, and he stands up and begins to pace. "The only reason I haven't torn that fucking place out of the ground is that I have some kind of faith that Sarah knows what she's doing, and has got a hand on the wheel. If she's not in charge, not even behind doors, and Cid's running the whole goddamn show - "

He shakes his head, shoulders rolling and eyes sharp. "Lana, you were out a lot, but now I want testimony. Get your friend Ellie down here ASAP. She's been there the whole time - I need to know how bad it is in there. Fucking ignored it for too long."

"A common problem of yours," Vivienne says lightly from her portrait, still watching the art show on the television. A curl of amusement has hooked the corner of her mouth at the commotion.

Adamant goes still. His eyes roll to focus on Vivienne. She stops smiling.

"I'll hit those coordinates if you don't mind, Marie," he says, conversational, as he heads to the hat rack and takes a teleporter belt off of it. "Lana, there's trout in the kitchen freezer if you want it."

Without even bothering to walk outside, he phases from existence right there in the living room, leaving a faint stink of phosphorus and ammonia.

~*~​

ADAMANT: Looks like a modem relay, just an antenna, router, and a small server bank hidden in a power station; it has a hidden sublevel and the antenna reaches up along a support pillar, really disguised. It's probably designed so that the power draw is separate from the main current. Means it can't be traced that way. Nothing here though, looks abandoned. No desk or chair. Remotely run, I'm guessing.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Elias’ pacing, his instant temper-Jenna suddenly feels like she’s said the wrong thing, but well-that’s what had happened. And...why didn’t Miss Sarah just reactivate her keycard? She had kind of just assumed she was getting her out as fast as possible but-

She thinks about the constantly tired, withdrawn woman she knows compared to what Elias had described, what he seemed to have expected-and things just don’t match up. Miss Sarah had probably just been avoiding conflict. She was involved but maybe not...involved?

Either way, Elias was right-he needed to know what was going on in there. The thought though...for some reason briefly makes her think of the hole in Maestro’s house and Elias jumping down without a second thought.

Jenna feels unsettled.

“What did Sarah say once she realized-”

“He’s trying, Vivienne.” Jenna said, accidentally interrupting and ignoring Lana. Her eyes had been on the portrait while she thought, her tone gentle and somehow confiding. That snipe had bothered her too. Everything was bad off and they’re trying to find purchase in the loose dirt that was the hero world’s current foundations, and they needed to support each other as best they could. The tension around here hadn’t been lost on her.

Most of all she remembers the way Elias had looked down in Miss Marie’s bunker when he had asked for help, when he realized how bad things had truly gotten for his family.

But while she doesn’t know what Vivienne’s deal is, she doesn’t want to gang up on her either. Jenna was too friendly for it, and given the awful news so recently delivered, how Vivienne had essentially been uprooted and moved out here for her own safety-well, Jenna’s wearing kid gloves with the artist.

Lana doesn’t want to talk to Vivienne, she wants to know about Daybreak-but fine, she’d go change and come back to get more details after Jenna finished...being Jenna, she guessed. With an impatient sigh, she turned to stride off into her guest room.

Jenna slid closer to the portrait. “I didn’t know how bad things really were until he started laying down some stuff, and meanwhile HE didn’t know some things either. Bad wake up calls all around, I’m sorry.” And the consensus in the Tower was that Adamant was crazy. Great.

This was heavy stuff though, and she’s not sure Vivienne would appreciate the attempt. So she shifts to something...harmless and almost in her interest.

“...I saw this guy painting landscapes on spoon bowls the other day.” Jenna suddenly remembers, sliding off the couch completely in order to flit to her silver boots discarded by the door-then return with one. It was just a cheap thin metal spoon, bent to sit up on a table top or something, a tiny mountain nighttime scene with stars and moonlit clouds in a forest somewhere painted on the inside of the bowl.

“I mean, it’s nothing like you do. Just some random street art, but uh-I figured it’d be cool to show you anyway, just a fun little present.” Jenna sets it down on the coffee table, looks at it a moment.

It was an attempt, anyway.

~*~

It was easier to use the text function-just more data on the screen in her endless compiling and ingestion of it, but Marie briefly considers keying a call instead.

Briefly. But that'd be choosing an inefficient method when they now had an efficient one. One with less noise.

...

PROTAGONIST: Figured, but damn. Haul it in if you can, see if I can do anything with it.

 

[Obuzeti]

Vivienne's eyes close and she takes a deep breath.

"You have to understand," she says, slowly, "what it was like. Adamant came back from the dead, Jenna. I was on water duty, dumping as much painted water as I could off skydropped flags and parachutes, trying to slow that - thing - down. I watched him get melted. He'd walk out of magma sprays nothing but a carbonized skeleton, limned in light, and keep going, holding its attention. It should have killed him a thousand times over, and when it finally went down, he stayed with it."

She shrugs. Her teeth are tight on her lip, gnawing on the red flesh. "Then the lawsuits, and the - the picking up of pieces, and the mess. You remember, Lana. It just fell apart. More than half of us, dead, the leading lights flickering or already out. And then he's back!"

Vivienne raises both hands, and then lets them down slowly, trickling with weight. "And he did nothing. Came in and picked a fight, instantly, screamed at everyone. Left, to go back here and hide. Let us all fly apart. He's trying, now, but why it'd take this long? What if he decides to just run off again?"

She looks uncomfortable, but unrepentant. "I have to be hard on him. I can't just let him forget how much of this - depends, on him. He can't just stand around and play house with all of you. He needs to get things done."

~*~​

The pop-hiss of the teleporter, muffled through the concrete, announces Elias's arrival. The elevator hums down a moment later, and he strolls in himself, pushing the entire computer arrangement in what is very likely a stolen grocery cart. There are actual groceries too, which are somewhat less likely to be stolen.

"Got it all," he says. "There was a Food Lion across the street, too, so I stopped off there. Hope you don't mind that I grabbed food and litter for the cat, plus some other stuff. Be asinine of me to not help out with it."

Business first: the modems come out first, set up on a side table carefully, with the dissembled antenna and relay beside them in their component pieces. The rest he wheels over to the little refrigerator he'd left behind at some point: looks like milk and orange juice, cheese, more fruit and vegetables, and a variety of fish that can be baked in the mini-oven he'd stashed earlier.

"I had forgotten," he says, putting the groceries away, "what a complete twat Vivienne is, once she's lost any kind of argument. My immunity's down or something. I'm going to have to invite her to a Monopoly night and spend three hours listening to her bitch to reacquire that immunity or something. God."

He's genuinely irritated, but not nearly as much as his words would suggest. His hands aren't tight and his body remains loose and easy as he moves.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"I have to be hard on him. I can't just let him forget how much of this - depends, on him. He can't just stand around and play house with all of you. He needs to get things done."

“How condescending of you.” Lana’s voice is tightly controlled, but there’s a predatory hardness to her gaze that was downright chilling, sharply at odds with her business attire. Her pupils are dilated and her sharp teeth show a little too much when she speaks.

“What makes the state of things Elias’ fault? Because he is so very strong? Unkillable? You think the rest of us should just hide behind his skirts?” She doesn’t even notice Jenna pulling her legs up onto the couch, hugging her knees and looking like she’d rather be anywhere but there, right then.

“You speak as if this is a burden only he should carry. The weight of the world is heavy, Vivienne, and that is why heroes once shouldered it together. People rallied to Elias because of his humanity, not his strength- and then we abandoned him. First to his supposed death, and then to his isolation.” She still remembered surfacing with Marie’s limp, bloodily mangled body in tow, the foam at the corners of the woman’s mouth, the slack in her face that was just wrong-despite having never seen it before. But she could have come back. Could have tried to look for him. He had regenerated from so much, why not this? Had it really been so very improbable? But she hadn’t. And then he was alive, a report she received leagues and leagues away and beneath the surface. She could have reached out even then. But she hadn’t. She had left and never looked back.

And like Protagonist had warned, let the bad guys grow more powerful.

“What were YOU doing to help? What was -I- doing to help? What was anyone doing?”

~*~

This was a very tense, uncomfortable place to be. Vivienne’s being incredibly unfair on Elias and there had to be a reason for that, something-and Lana in turn was being hard on Vivienne and...herself? And then she thinks about Miss Sarah in the tower, and how all the Wards thought Adamant was crazy for some reason, and Marie’s venomous hate for just everything.

She remembers working up the courage to come out to Gary and meet a childhood hero, and how he’d revealed a lot of things she simply hadn’t known, couldn’t have known.

In particular, she remembers the more personal bits of that conversation-where he’d talked to a complete stranger about things he had probably been mulling over, alone, for years.

"Sometimes I think - Rahab, that big beast, I think he did something besides throw fire and earth at us. I think he poisoned us somehow, turned us against each other…”

And as Lana launches into near accusations, Jenna loses cautious, cowardly desire to keep out of it. Veterans or not, old wounds or not, her place or not-she wasn’t going to just sit here while allies went after each other.

“Hurting.” Even to her her voice is small. The Filipina’s dark, evenly spaced almond eyes are troubled and empathetic, moist- her mouth hidden behind her hugged knees. Her lower lip trembles, but she finds strength somewhere, because tearing each other apart was just too awful. “All of you were hurting.”

“Which is why Protagonist and Cid didn’t slow down much.” Lana bites off, turning to face her now-but Jenna doesn’t rise to that. Marie might be...might be hard, but Elias had faith in her, and it seemed somehow insulting that Lana would breathe the two names in the same sentence, even with what little she knows about the woman. Marie had done more to extend her reach in the Good Fight than Cid ever had, if nothing else.

“Miss Laura isn’t here to fight the good fight, but I am.” Jenna continues, quiet but gathering resolution. “And that is what I am going to do. I am going to fight the good fight, and I’ll stand by the little guy and anybody trying to do the same. And on top of that, my friend asked for my help.” She thinks on how he had taken a killing blow in her stead, the shining corpse that had briefly been his entire front half. And then she thinks about him drawing her and Marie into that protective, treasuring hug, a sheen to his eyes as he asked…as he pleaded for help in protecting what was left of his family.

She unfolds, the very small Filipina rising to stand and look at each one of them in turn. She no longer feels like some kid. She feels like Velocity.

“You both are my friends now, too. And you deserve to be happy and safe, no matter what you decide to do.” Healing. They deserved to heal. There’s so much raw hurt everywhere in the veteran ranks.

Lana looks away. Jenna doesn’t think she’s entirely settled, but maybe they wouldn’t fight anymore.

“I’m going to suit up and head to the Tower.” She’s going to help there, too. She’d...she’d been ducking it, and that had been cowardly of her. Besides...she half believed Marie WOULD go in and get her, if Cid tried to pull another stunt like he had.

...she doesn’t intend on speaking with him either, if she could avoid it, but mostly-she doesn’t think things would go well if Elias DID go in there and try to tear it out by the roots. They don’t need enemies, they don’t need a war. This could be resolved, and the answer, Jenna was certain, lied in Daybreak, not Adamant.

“Catch you ladies later.” And with a ghost of her usually cheerful, jaunty smile and an absent salute-Jenna blurred out the front door, her silver boots swapped with haphazardly tossed slippers still falling from mid air.

~*~

"Your cat." Marie says flatly but without a growl-casting the creature in question a suspicious glance when it doesn't immediately hop down off the console to greet its owner.

It looked back at her solemnly, still perched there like it had been since she'd returned to the console.

Damned thing.

Marie rolls back and over to the table, the cat finally abandoning it's post to scamper and greet Elias-curiously sniffing at the cart.

She's pleased to tear into something again. It was a respite from the endlessly scrolling data streams, but still conducive to the war effort. An acceptable alternate use of time.

Unlike whatever the hell Elias is up to, again. At least now he had his own refrigerator. When the big man opened it, he'd find his previous groceries. What hadn't gone bad, of course. Hopefully he or Jenna ate the new stuff...some mostly forgotten, buried part of her didn't like the idea of wasting food.

Or did he continue to hope she'd eventually eat it? Possible. Maybe likely.

Marie is briefly tempted to point out the nutrition shakes had everything a body needed to remain functional-but that would be noise. If it made him feel better to stock food she wouldn't eat then fine. Maybe he'd think she was if the expired stuff kept disappearing.

Hn.

The vigilante withdrew an older model laptop from a shelf near the servers and made her way back in one handed half turns on her left wheel. It was an isolated offline device-she's treating the stolen tech as infected, wouldn't be compromising her systems unnecessarily.

"Large ego. Larger insecurities." She assesses as she removes the casing to the small server bank, gives the modem a glance. It's not cheap consumer ware, but not military grade either. Something in between, convenient.

It occurs to Marie that Vivienne had apparently been irritating enough he'd come -here- of all places for sanctuary.

Well, he was welcome to it, she'd even bothered to tell him so. Though...her company being preferable to anyone's was a strange and frankly ludicrous idea. Marie shook her head.

"Isolated our interloper for a moment. This was obviously just a proxy relay, but it's something." She hadn't gotten past it. It was less hitting a brick wall and more plunging into an ocean after one specific drop of saltwater. She's traced and dismissed a lot of signals so far, but pinging on this had been a break, however minute.

Marie plugged in a few cords and fired up the laptop. It lacked any sort of sensible operating system and looked to be ridiculously and heavily technical, lines and lines of white text on a black screen-but the vigilante just watches the data scroll a moment, quiet.

She doesn't have much more to say on her efforts, nothing that could be condensed enough to make a useful debriefing. She's working at it. That’s all she can say right now.

The hum of the servers compete with the whir of the air conditioner that was still on, mostly because she hadn’t bothered to unplug the damned thing. The mangy cat seemed to like it, anyway.

"...Yahtzee." She suddenly says, lacking gruffness or terseness, just a word hanging in the air. Marie blinks at the laptop, then looks mildly irritated, as of someone else had spoken the word.

"Dice game." She continues with that bit of irritation, as if she can't quite believe she's talking about something so damned mundane. She hadn't thought about in over a decade. Her right hand rests on the wheel, tightening and loosening, the woman vaguely uneasy.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias subtly smiles and carefully makes sure he's not looking at Marie while he wipes it off his face. The cat is one of his better gambits; accustoming her to living creatures, quiet and unintrusive, independent and intelligent. Jasper's a treasure, alright. "You get any hits, you let me or Jenna know - that's our priority target. Most of the villains aren't good at anything but muscle work, but whoever's doing the infowar has to know more about what's going on, and that's our best link."

The word blurt makes him hesitate for a moment, but he catches and runs with it before Marie can retreat again. No time to regret or hesitate. "Grace loved playing that," he said, conversationally. "Not so much the, y'know, yelling part, but the fact the game itself is random as shit amused her. She'd nick a die when you weren't looking all the damn time, hide it somewhere. Was real bad when she'd do it out of the jar while you're still rolling them."

Elias smiles enough to close his eyes. It's the first time he's talked about Grace to anyone since - she died, at Immolation. It fucking hurts.

"I think mostly she just liked being around so many other people having to yell their heads off and get competitive. She liked the enthusiasm. Not so much taking part, but that's just . . . the price you pay."

He shrugs a little.

"I'm guessing Sam was real into it. Seems her type of thing."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie listens to him talk, and despite it eating at the edges of her somewhere, it’s doesn’t strain her patience. She can hear the hurt mingled with the fondness of memory.

She’s not sure she has the strength for memories. It’s...something she doesn’t entirely have any defenses against. Better not to remember. Better to leave it all in some forgotten box buried in a coffin or beneath magma. The war is all she has, now.

She pulls back on the wheel and actually turns to face him. .

"I think mostly she just liked being around so many other people having to yell their heads off and get competitive. She liked the enthusiasm. Not so much taking part, but that's just . . . the price you pay."

Loss. Marie understands loss. And for a moment, as foreign and as out of place as possible, some barest scrap of humanity smouldered in that gaping jagged hole her heart used to be in, and she didn’t smother it out. He moves on, expecting nothing, but Marie lingers there a moment, speaking slowly, the words akin to cautiously moving out on a thin branch.

“Not Sam. She would have been, though." Invincibelle would have been into anything Marie bothered to show an interest in. Would have bent over backwards for any scrap of interest shown. Marie hadn’t, though. Protagonist hadn't.

Marie is quiet. “Married once. Before…”

“Before.” A vague gesture towards the wall of equipment, her costume. Her hand settles on the armrest of the chair, still. "Played every Sunday.”

Marie's face is gaunt and there are shadows under her eyes, but she didn't look all that old. She'd always worn the mask over her nose and lips, the grease paint-no one had really bothered making guesses at her age before.

She looked to be in her very early thirties. She must have been married young then, if it was before becoming a vigilante.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias offers a wry smile. He hadn't actually gotten to talk to Sam much; they had mutual respect for each other, but managing their respective bundles of heroes had left them without a lot of time to chat. He'd always been curious what she had seen in him - her empathic nature meant that she'd get a far better view than even he himself had.

He ambles over and seats himself beside Marie's wheelchair again - a familiar position, by now. Not even looking at her, just staring off in the same direction, head level with her shoulders just from his sheer size. "Husband played every Sunday. Had to be a tight community, not just an office. Something binding, physical, somewhere that community would save your life. Probably physical. Either miner, lumberjack, or first responder, I'd guess."

Elias doesn't know. He'd made a point to not ask about pasts. Reciprocal questions would have just been awkward.

" . . . I wish I'd had your certainty. Just married Grace," he says, abrupt, after a moment. "I should have. I - should have."

He'd thought he was past pain like this.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Cop. We were...both cops." It edges too close to what had happened, makes her mouth feel a little dry. So she keeps firmly to fact and doesn't let her mind stray too far into memory. It was...she's not sure what she's doing. "I was fresh out of the academy. He had just made sargeant." Silence.

Dry details to some other life, some other person. Marie's not sure why she's rewarding his speculation or talking about things not vital to the war effort. She's not sure what had put her on any of it in the first place. It makes her uncomfortable, uneasy. As if she needed to check if she might be coming down with something.

Was it because he had said he wanted to know her? Ridiculous, there's no one to get to know anymore. Was it because he brought up Grace and she thought she had something to offer? She doesn't. What comfort could she possibly fucking offer? None.

The anger and the hate were at her fingertips if she wanted them, familiar and tempting. It would be more comfortable. Easier. But there they sat...the big man swathed in things Marie lets herself recognize for what they are.

Loss. Regret.

Condolences were empty, useless words. Spoken so the speaker felt better, not to comfort those receiving them. She doesn't deserve to feel better, and he didn't deserve such selfishness.

She considers complimenting Grace. Quiet but efficient, oil to the gears of so many otherwise clashing egos. She had worked tirelessly in the background to keep her team running, and she had done so out of the spotlight for the sole purpose of it needing doing.

But that seemed wrong too. Another shining light snuffed out by a near unstoppable monster and a man grieving over it, and she was thinking of her function and purpose rather than whoever she had been.

Protagonist really was useless at anything but fighting. Marie Rivera, too.

She thinks about the recent dream and the regurgitated memory therein, Sam's primal, hysterical fear, the emotions packed into that final message.

And how she had said nothing.

She casts a glance to him. After a moment and still without speaking, she lifted and placed her hand on his shoulder, uncertain but...trying.

Regret...she understands regret, too. And...

"Whatever time there is." Quiet, very quiet, the embers of humanity still unsmothered for a moment more. "It's never enough."

Because once, she had known what it was to love, too. The person she used to be. The one she had buried a long time ago.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias takes a deep breath. His hand rises to cover Marie's, touch just as gentle as hers. His hand is huge over hers, rough and blocky, but there's never an instant of pressure; just hesitance, and acknowledgement.

"This is why I get along with you, Marie," he says, soft over the hum of the computer banks and greenscreen monitors. "You're a tremendous asset for us heroes, but also you're the only one left who understands what it's like to lose. I don't want to dump on the kids. Even Lana's a kid, doesn't really understand the - immensity - of grief. They haven't been hurt yet. They haven't had their life cut out from under them, and left behind in their pain. They can go home."

Elias takes a deep breath. "I don't begrudge them that," he says, eventually. "I want them to have that choice - I'd fight for it. But I don't have that, and I don't have anything when they're not here for me to mother and joke around with and lead into a fight. I'd say I gave up my life for this, but I never really had a choice. I give my all to the team, to the girls, because there is nowhere else for me to go."

He turns and gives Marie a wry smile. His hand squeezes hers lightly, just a moment of pressure, acknowledgement moving to acceptance. "We're what's left. We are orphans of pain. But God willing, and as Grace would have wished for me, I will find more family. If I am her last testament, it will be not just to her impact as a hero, but her courage as a person - the love in her heart, and her mercy, in having chosen me in sharing her life with."

He stops. He breathes for a moment. And for once, with Marie, he finds the right words.

"We are never enough," Elias says, soft. "Not when they are here, and not when they are gone. But they found something in us worth love; and for that, I will fill this world with it. I will overflow with everything that Grace saw fit to give to me, until I am empty once more. Her legacy will not be a cold man, but one that loves. No tribute greater can I give, and no challenge greater can I face."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Home. It’s such a foreign concept, had always been a foreign concept. In her long ago experience it had turned out not to be a place, but a person. Home, for a moment. She remembers, vaguely, she’d waited for that other shoe to drop for what felt like a long time. She doesn’t quite remember when that stopped. He’d been so patient. Unoffended, understanding.

And then he’d been taken away from her. She had buried him and the hot headed young cop right along with him. Burned the soft weakness that had been Marie Rivera and unleashed unholy and venomous hell on those that had made the grave, terrible mistake of killing Anthony Rivera and not what had been Marie Hernandez, never quite right in the first place and docile only in the arms of a saint. She had murdered his killer. Broken the others. Made them pay. Made them all pay-and continued on into the city that had taken everything from her.

Samson. The cesspit she’d been born in more than once.

But everything before Protagonist was just a half remembered, idle dream. Another life and the passing of two people, not just one. She'd reformed long since then, and the media had dubbed her with her new title she hadn't needed and that was that.

But he had loved her. Not even Protagonist could ever quite forget that.

Sam had, too.

But where had it gotten either of them?

The thought spikes through her. This had been a bad idea. She’d ventured out onto a precarious limb with this, moved away from the hate and the anger and the bitterness-and now she hears it cracking close at the trunk behind her, too far away to scrabble back to now. He speaks and again she sees him turning outward-not out of self defense but in tribute. His good had been amplified, heightened with the good another shining beacon had shone on him, and he intended to use it to illuminate the world with all the resolve and conviction and love a person could possess. That’s what these heroes were, had always been. Hope, love, truth, justice, unshakable will to do good. The best humanity had to offer. The only thing humanity had to offer.

And Elias had always exemplified the best of them through his mere existence and the sheer force of will in his actions.

It burns her to touch him, suddenly. That bright shining light next to all her ugliness, the antithesis to the blackness of her soul and tar that boils and clings to the monster she maybe always had been-and certainly was, now. How could he even stand to be in the same room as her? How could he stand to let her touch him?

How dire was the situation, how alone if this was where he had come to speak on such things, on that which had been and was most precious to him?

Loss ties them together, but what they did with it proved what they each were.

Nothing happens to venomously rebuff him. The strained pieces of humanity she hadn’t known where there wouldn’t allow it The rage is there, somewhere-but she doesn’t dare call on it, can’t call on it-but she also can’t handle him or his light any further than she has just now and before.

She just...she can’t.

Marie retracts her hand, slowly so as not to cut him-and finds her hands are trembling again. It’s his light and these damned dreams, fucking with her, distracting her. The crash wasn’t unusual, sometimes that happened-the split seconds of windshield shattering and gallons and gallons of water crushing her to her seat, the nose crumpling in on her already ravaged legs-that was not new. But Sam being in them, the comm messages with her and Gideon and Anhinga, the snapshot of her own headspace at the time-that was unwelcome and it was new, striking at her when she didn’t have her guard up, when she was forced to take the time for maintenance.

She has to sleep to remain effective, or she’d avoid the vulnerability and her subconscious torment of her altogether. Anthony had been dead for a long time, she’d buried his wife with him-but the regret and the belated realizations on the cusp of what should have been her physical death-

She can’t think about it. Won’t think about it. She’s avoided thinking about it since she first woke up in that damnable hospital, fighting off the drugs that had previously been numbing her mind and pain beyond all sensibilities.

She lowers her trembling hands to her wheels, hopefully before he would notice them.

“I-” The utterance cracks. Her eyes stare into nothing for a moment, widening a fraction as if the crack shocked and confused her. Her chest is tight, and she needs that hate, she needs the venom, she needs her rage or the shell that she was would shatter into a million splintered, jagged pieces and never be formed into anything usable again.

The war. That was what she has, that was where her attention needs to be, badly. No venom for Elias, but all of it for the scum, for herself, for the shithole of a world that kept on giving no matter how hard the good fought against it-but they fight. They have to fight, they’re compelled.

She, however, was only hateful. Angry.

Always, always so angry.

“Need to crack this.” She says, and yet makes no move to turn back around to the table or the laptop, the relay. There’s something wrong about her face-the impassive mask doesn’t seem to be a human cover to simmering, inhuman rage-it’s suddenly somehow flimsy, a vague fraying tightness to her that is wrong in the titanium willed vigilante.

She doesn’t move at all-her stillness is chilling and lacked heat-and Jasper has reappeared from somewhere, arriving on the soft, silent pads of her feet to watch its charge with a quizzically curled tail.

No meow, yet.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias hears the crack as much as feels it. Watches the shaking, and the pain start in before she can seal herself closed again. The wall starts leaking. The dam is coming down. He bites his lip, and understands exactly what is about to come down on her - years and years and years of misery, bound up and suffocated, compressed into ultradensity by her own focus and drive.

It's all about to hit her.

Elias comes up to a kneel besides Marie, and sets his hand on the arm of her wheelchair. Not enough to stop it from moving, just - there.

"I have always been proud of you, Marie," he says, without looking over, giving her what privacy and dignity he can. "And while I don't know the others that have helped make you who you are, I know they would want more from you, and for you, than a use. Otherwise you wouldn't have fought so hard for them, and in their memory."

His mouth moves soundlessly, and then he swallows and pushes forward. Courage.

"You've fought so hard," he says, soft. "Let me help you."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Of course she wouldn’t.” Marie states, but there was no comfort in it. The soft hearted heroine was too pure to wish it on anyone, let alone her. She had loved her. As Elias had said-she’d found something...somewhere, that she deemed worth loving in what little had been left beneath Protagonist to find. Love as plain and as obvious as the nose on her face, then sealed and delivered in an agonized final message sent with desperate, frantic urgency. Her panic and fear, her love and that last, final thought-God.

It’s all there, the sucker punch and the heartbreak and the terrible sense that everything was horribly, horribly wrong.

Her throat tightens, and the edges of her eyes burn and she still holds on, just barely. Protagonist does not cry. Protagonist was not vulnerable. Tears were for other people, not for monsters. But she feels that razor blade against her scraped dry, taut nerves and the cracks in her hard shield-he keeps swinging at it, immune to the spikes and venom and the rage she can no longer stand to spew at him.

She grips hard on her wheels and tries to recenter herself, find her strength. She needs to move. Needs to retreat if nothing else. She can’t hold it up, she can’t make it work-needed to focus, needed to recenter, needed to be alone. She tenses what’s left of her thighs and the agony is immediate-the effect a little sickening to see as the scars pull and distort themselves, as more color drains from her face. She stares at them, harsh evidence of her failure. Jasper meows.

"Let me help you."

“No.”

The cracks are spiraling out of control now, and she’s desperate to hold it together, confused why the anger wasn’t coming, why she can’t focus. If he’d just leave, it’d be there, she’s sure it would be. She doesn’t understand why he’s doing this, how he could -want- to help her. It’s because he doesn’t know. It’s always because they don’t know. Her hands have a death grip on her tires and her eyes snap to him, though her head still does not turn. She’s deathly still, coiled tight and clearly teetering on the edge of a breakdown. She looks awful. Like a predator caught dead in a trap, eyeing her tormentor before the trigger was finally pulled.