Athwart History (Closed)

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna’s dark eyes carry a flicker of doubt. Marie knew an awful lot of stuff, and seemed to be a stickler for facts and truths. The vigilante didn’t do ‘maybes’.

But then he gets into what happened, and Jenna starts to spin that smartwatch on her slender wrist again, a frown on that bow of a mouth.

”There's a law coming that will ban parahuman activity outside the Tower.”

Jenna’s eyebrows shoot up, lips parting slightly. “Congress knows about Marrane, and they want to ban heroes?” Well, except for the Tower’s heroes, apparently. But the Tower didn’t do anything-it hadn’t, it wouldn’t. That was her problem with it in the first place-she had joined up thinking it’d allow her to do bigger and better things, extend her reach-and found it to be a step backwards. They had even suggested she give up her city at one point-and then kept her from it at another.

So if she wants to fight the good fight, she has to be a criminal. How could they possibly ask anyone to join their cause now, with that sort of burden? This was why secret identities could be so important...and she no longer had one.

Thanks, Rachel.

“I told you before-” Tyler said, flat faced and disapproving. Would Paige even flaunt the law? Christ, she was out of control. “Things aren’t how they used to be.”

Jenna cast him a look, then back to Cid, then the locked doors on either end of the hallway-and then down at her silver gloved hands.

Pulling everyone into the Tower, and then what? Hide there? Hope Paul didn’t come for it? Watch him consume half of New York or some other place and just shake their heads sadly and go about their business? She doesn’t understand Cid. She doesn’t get why this place felt like a prison rather than a team, why he just-well, she doesn’t know. He’s doing his best, but it just...

Cid had finally given up on trying to control her, trying to limit her-and while she’s relieved-and kind of impressed-this other stuff-

“South Bend would never, but I suppose if some other place wants to write up and serve an arrest warrant after I evacuate a burning building or stop a runaway bus...I’ll just have to cross that bridge when I get there.” She shrugs, a little listless, slightly miserable. “See how well it goes for that D.A., come election time.”

But the others? Lana had diplomatic immunity, but Elias? Marie? And how could Ellie leave the Tower and lead any kind of life, hero or not, if the government was making it legal just to exist outside of it? This was some racist stuff. Jenna immediately begins to wonder if they could find enough human rights lawyers to take up the case-something. There has to be something they can do.

But in the end, it doesn’t matter. Jenna takes in a breath, exhales.

“I want everyone to be safe, too. But we have the power to do things the little guy can’t. A responsibility. Paul is evil. He’s evil, compelled to infest everything, make it his, make it-” She chokes on the word, “-putrid.”

The girl visibly shivers, briefly silent.

“And he’s not all that’s out there. Like Paul, they’re crawling around in the underground, doing awful, awful things the papers don’t print because-well I don’t know why because. But none of that is going to get any better if we don’t do anything about it.” She twists at her gloves some more, but she’s finding her footing.

“I get it’d take prepwork. Sarah needs help. Wards need more experience. People need to cooperate-I’m glad you and Lana are working to iron something out. But I can’t hide out in here and wait for things to happen.” Jenna finally looks up. She doesn’t look so nervous, anymore, and what the girl says next is all determination and hope, unshakable faith and optimism.

“I can’t not be Velocity. So I’m going to fight the Good Fight, laws or no laws, with anyone willing to fight it with me. I’m going to help those fighting it in any way I possibly can. I’m not pretending to be super qualified-but I’m willing, if nothing else.”

Cid would come around. The older Wards. They’d have to. They’re heroes.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid just shrugs. His lip curls. "Congress doesn't draw a distinction between Marrane and us, except that they can tell the Tower what to do. I know you think I and the Tower are synonymous, but I don't have nearly the power you think I do. The territory I can send Wards to is decided by the individual state, I have to log patrol times and outside visits with at least a week's forward notice, and I have to monitor and transmit vitals and identification of everyone under my remit. It's a lot closer to an Indian reservation than a fiefdom, and if I push everyone in front of a camera as often as I can, it's because I have to pay for all this somehow, and a casino isn't going to cut it. Publicity rights, merchandise, and licensing fees are how I do it, and you have no idea how narrow of a margin it is I ride to manage that."

He rubs at his eyes as the path he chooses crystallizes before him, coming clearer. "Not everyone has a home town to subsidize them, or a cheering public to make the laws more lenient, or a safe place to retreat to, and I am responsible for all of those people. So if you think you have the power and the privilege to go fight your Good Fight, then - go for it."

He sighs and gestures at Jenna with an almost dismissive flap of his hand. It's such an absentminded affectation that he may not even be aware of it. "What I ask is just that you make the others aware that I'm offering what shelter I can, and that shelter will consume the majority of my attention. I just can't send out the Wards into another fight like that, or run to it myself and leave them without anyone to depend on. You understand?"

Cid flicks at the wrist-mounted terminal and unlocks both the doors, and leans back against the wall behind his bench. "You're free to go. Stay alive, Jenna. I'd hate to get another call like this one for you."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Jenna had no idea just how down to the wire things were, keeping this place going. The picture he paints is a difficult one-and as she did, sometimes, when people were talking about things she had that they hadn’t or didn’t-she feels uncomfortable, and she feels sad.

It wasn’t that she took things for granted, entirely. She’s grateful for her parents, the life she had before Velocity-and she’s grateful for a lot of the life she has as Velocity-the people, mainly. She could do without a lot of this other stuff, but...she’d promised. And...she feels compelled to fight the Good Fight because she can, and then there was Elias had said, about being a hero. That it meant hurting. That it meant making things whole after they were broken.

Cid’s doing what he can. It’s another grim picture she hadn’t had the details on, and now she does-and it makes her feel bad. Bad that people did cheer for her, that she did have reasonable belief no one would really try to arrest her, not Velocity. That she had places to go and a city to patrol and mentors to help her on and off the field. These are things she can’t just give to someone else-things she wished everyone had.

She wished, badly, that Ashley and Barry had survived the brush with Paul Marrane as she had-three times, now.

“I understand.” She says, a mixture of worry and compassion to her expression, her tone. “And I’ll tell the others. And...if there’s anything I can do, anything at all you think will help-call me in on it, okay? I’ll try to think of ways to help in the meantime-but I’m pretty sure the answer lies in Daybreak. She needs help for her own sake, but she’s also probably our best shot as far as public support goes, I think.”

"You're free to go.”

The speedster nods as she moves to stand, a little distracted and lost in thought as she tries to think of ways to help and ways to proceed, how to fully process just what had happened today-

“Stay alive, Jenna. I'd hate to get another call like this one for you."

She goes still, somehow even quieter. “Yeah,” She says, thinking about the way Paul’s words had thrummed in her head, the oppressive, violating nature of his presence-and her own reflection in that spider’s luminous eye, dull and staring, something foul in her mouth.

And then she thinks about Laura’s echo, the place she seemed trapped in. She thinks about Rowan, a fly in amber. What she had just seen of Tectonic’s transformed hand. And then Ashley’s awful, awful immolation, the screaming. How Elias had sounded, with her. How Sarah had shattered, afterward.

And then she thinks about her dad, and what a call like that would do to him.

“Yeah, I guess you would.” She finishes distractedly.

She shakes it off but can’t even summon up a ghost of a smile, just looks between the two men. “You call me, you need me.” She says. “And I'll be right over.
Thank you for all that you both do.”

And with a final glance to the closed examination rooms before lowering her goggles-Jenna blurred, and was gone.

~*~

“She’s going to die.” Tyler says flatly, a note of irritation. “That or Catalyze.”

He’s frustrated with her leaving, her independence. That she thought it could be that damned easy shirking the law or arrest warrants or who knew what else. Paul, Mindmelt, Rush-whatever other fuck would be in the water, scenting blood-they’re all out there. He can understand her juvenile desire to fight ‘The Good Fight’(though what an idealistic over simplification)-but not the rose colored glasses, the optimism with it. The risks she was foolishly willing to take, courting disaster like she was. If she didn’t have enough self preservation instincts to listen to Cid, then she should at least give enough of a damn about Sarah not to put her through this again.

“I don’t know why she can’t just stay put.”

At least it mostly wasn’t their problem, anymore-Cid had effectively washed his hands of it. Safety if you’re smart enough to take it, but no consequence-from him, anyway-if you’re not.

 

[Obuzeti]

Cid shrugs. His mouth is a flat line, once more. "This is why I fight so hard to keep the Wards away from that man. He teaches them to be stupid, and no one else of us can afford to be. Power teaches sloppiness. Invincibility gives rise to imprudence. I don't have the room or the wherewithal for either, and in any case, I didn't win God's lottery in the first place."

He shakes his head and stands; strides over to Tyler, and offers him a hand up. His palms are marked with grease and ink beneath the gloves that so frequently encase him, in this moment his armor set aside. "It'll be rough," he says, quiet. "But we can survive. Come on. I need to let the kids know what's coming."

~*~

Elias takes a long breath as the teleporter drops him off outside Marie's underground bunker, out in Samson. Sarah had finally passed out after he managed to slip a sleeping agent into a cup of tea he'd given her; he'd finally come to that point after pulling her out of her third, dry-eyed sob session, where paroxysms of grief had rocked her in total silence. Having come fresh from her own depression to try to change things, she'd crashed even harder in the aftermath. It'd been hours and she hadn't so much as said a word.

He was considering hiding all the sharp objects in the Coulee, but that was if she'd come back to it. He'd have to send her off for medical care soon, and then she'd be at the Tower again in this state. It fucking eats under his skin, and he has a pretty good idea what that feels like at this point.

Marie he needs to check on, though. The rest can moderate their own problems, but she has no capacity for working through pain and dissolving it. She sits in it and lets it pick her apart.

He sighs and starts the elevator, then checks his communicator. "Still alive, Marie? I'm coming down."

God, that had been gruesome. The echoing, last shriek from Ashley's burning lungs is still ringing in his ears. He can still hear the crunch of stone and the hiss of fire scarring the earth.

It's all too familiar.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Marie's usual wheelchair was a sportier model, but this one could be used in races, and had her body in a more upright position, one she can properly punch in. Three wheels and a sling instead of a seat-her legs were folded into that beneath her, which was horrifically painful-but that only made her hit harder, even if it did make it hard to concentrate on anything but the physical activity. The brakes are better, too.

The impact of her fists, the reverberations through the bones and the flex of her arms, shoulders and back-she remembers this, lived for it. It was the only way she had stayed sane, some days. The only physical target she still gets to beat the shit out of.

And she had beaten the shit out of it. The two hundred pound bag bore several battle scars covered in duct tape, yet more wear marks visible in others. Years of use, absorbing that ever burning rage, hate, and venom in the place of all the scum she can't go out and punish anymore.

It was long past maintaining, and it wasn’t like Marie could replace it-the chain and bar were too high, and the bag heavy. It barely sways as she strikes it-it was meant for someone much larger, heavier, and stronger than she was, but it’d been good for kicking, back in the day. When footwork had been part of it, a good part. When the activity was only tiring rather than agonizing.

Her legs were fucked, but her upper body didn’t need to be, couldn’t be. Besides. It’s pain she deserves.

Marie hits again, and again, and again, just as she had for the last half hour, relentlessly angry, furious. The crying session had hit hard and from nowhere-the feelings. She can’t afford that. They can’t. She’s furious with herself for letting it happen. Once was bad enough-twice was sheer treachery. She’s not a child. Petting Jasper after, the blank minded daze that had lasted way too long in the wake of her own damnable crisp recollection-an inexcusable waste of time. Weakness.

There’s an alert that tells her Jenna’s back on the radar, out of the Tower- and Marie grounds out a voice command to playback whatever audio had been recorded on those goggles. They weren’t able to transmit in that place, and she hadn’t been positive they’d even be able to record-but there’s playback. Playback she half can’t really focus on, would have to either listen again or read a transcript-but she catches snippets, here and there, and they do nothing to improve her mood.

Her strikes become that much more hateful as she imagines punching Cid in the goddamned gut over and over. Ever the martyr, the egotistical son of a bitch.

~*~

Marie was just about maxed out on physical pain from her own weight on her ravaged legs. Tired, too. Jasper was still watching her as she had been for the past...she didn’t know how long.

Marie had lost track of time, and for once she didn’t entirely care. She had needed this. Release the pent up need for violence, sate some of the anger, the rage-and endure through the physical pain she deserves. It served a purpose, kept her fit-but was also admittedly a badly needed outlet. She gives it just a few more solid strikes, putting her back and shoulders into it, no longer imagining anything or anyone, just a bag to slam her fists into-when there was a ripping sound, a weird lean, and then-

KERCHINK

Marie yanked her arms back and darted a glance up as her hands flew to the wheels-and didn’t quite get her brakes undone before the sandbag came down with a noisy crash-taking her partially with it and knocking her, wheelchair and all, sideways and to the floor with a breathless curse. Jasper was on her in an instant, meowing, hopping up and over the torn bag spilling sand all over the fucking place.

“I’m fine.” She says to the cat, irritated-and then even more agitated at the realization that she was talking to the damned thing again. She’d hit her shoulder and the belt was cutting into her hips-but it was a relief just to have that weight off her legs, finally.

She’s switching chairs. This was enough for today-except now her bag was wrecked. Too many years, too much wear and tear she couldn’t get at. Her left hand caught at the mat, an awkward twist to get both hands firmly planted against it-but there’s no tipping back this way. She pulled herself a little closer to the downed bag for the extra bit of height, gives it a testing hard push-no dice.

“Still alive, Marie? I’m coming down.”

Well of fucking course-her arms are shaky from exertion, but she’d rather die than need help getting up. Jasper meowed again and Marie waved the cat off impatiently, another hard push, catching herself on her hands on the fall back, almost there-!

She righted herself just as the doors opened for the elevator and Elias stepped off, a hissed expletive as her weight came back down on her legs. There. Not so pathetic, after all.

Not entirely, anyway.

“Still alive.” Marie confirms dryly and with that growl again-not sounding entirely happy about about the fact.

She’s still catching her breath, skin slick with sweat from exertion-she’d been at it longer than she’d thought, she thinks, if Elias had come down. She glares at the punching bag for a moment, all the spilled sand-and then at the still hanging chain with the scalp of it still attached.

Damn.

She flips the brakes and wheels back, pivots to head towards her other chair. "Sarah?"

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias glances at the punching bag, shakes his head, and tromps over to Jasper's litterbox, where he abducts the scoop and brush used to clean up whatever litter spills over, and starts at the sand that had spilled from the bag. She'd just about torn herself to shreds on that thing, then had managed to flip herself on it somehow. It's typical, and frustrating, but he won't take the woman's dignity from her. It's how she functions. "Hysterical," he says finally. "Had to tranquilize her. If she's still like this in the morning, I'm taking her to a hospital, because I don't have what I need to take care of someone in this state. She's mostly just - lying there. Won't even get up."

He's swapped out for a pair of jeans and a cotton wifebeater, warm and comfy. In contrast to everyone else that went out after Cid's team, he doesn't have so much as a scrape or a cut. He never even gets bags under his eyes. The only sign of his own aggravation is a tightened jaw.

The shellshock of distance has set in, and that's mostly what's keeping Elias mobile. It's going to suck later. Worse, she needs medical help, and he can't give it, which means she's going to wind up in Cid's clutches again as her medical proxy. It nauseates him. Sarah needs help he can't give, though.

Instead, he glances over at Marie, finishes shoveling the sand at least aside, and then stands up and ambles over to the medicine cabinet, where he pulls out one of the miniature first aid kits there: bandages, antiseptic, and topical anagesics. He sits down beside her wheelchair - the shitty one, he notices - and jerks his head. "Let me see your hands. Be just our luck to have you split a knuckle somehow and not notice until it swells like a tomato."

He has no right to tell her not to be angry, and no right to help her manage it, because she won't ask and won't accept that. Practicality is the best appeal he can make, and a certain dry, ragged humor. It's all Marie'll give herself.

His people have lost so fucking much.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

He moves to clean up the sand but Marie refuses to acknowledge the damaged bag -or- the fall he'd walked in on her righting from-and he's smart enough not to comment.

She unbuckles the lap belt and reaches for one of the black straps that dangled from so many places of the rafters, grasped hold-and hauled herself up. Instant relief. From there it was a simple switch to the one she'd parked her usual chair under, dropping into it once she'd twisted around proper.

He tells her about Sarah, and it's pretty much what she expected. Marie frowns as she arranges herself onto the foot pedals, her expression going extra flat when she does so, eyes especially opaque.

She's not sure Sarah would recover from this. Probably not at all if Cid had her under his care in that damnable Tower. And with what she'd overheard and then confirmed with a few checks of government internal memos-it sounded like everything she'd worried about with Sarah joining the fight was coming to pass. Corrupt officials, as fucking always, making shit difficult. This incident had forced everyone's hands, it seemed like.

She'd disappear back into that impotent place. Cid would further consolidate his power, isolate her and the Wards further-and that was that.

For now. Maybe longer. And Elias had just gotten her back.

Marie rubs her forehead, allows a brief closing of her eyes. That shouldn't be as much of a consideration as it was.

"Let me see your hands. Be just our luck to have you split a knuckle somehow and not notice until it swells like a tomato."

Her eyes flick open, shoot him a glance before she lowers the hand at her forehead, frowns at the blood spots across the back of it visible though the hand wrap. He was right-she hadn't noticed. There he was again, turning outward and trying to coddle her, help her. He has to know she doesn't deserve it. In the very least, that she wouldn't accept it.

He shines so damned brightly, and she hates that he's here wasting his efforts on her. Hates that this is where he is instead of somewhere better, hates that Sarah's too abused and too traumatized to help him. Where was Jenna? Lana? He had to come to the shitty consolation prize that was her lair?

Marie doesn't offer up her hands, just lowers them ti her wheels.

"...and you?". The vigilante asks without the growl, less certain than when she'd inquired about Sarah but three times as watchful. That was straight business, and there was a lot more of it to discuss. This question was...not. Elias was her friend. She's not any good for it, but she should try to be one back...she just doesn't entirely know how.

Rusted, unfamiliar social skills that honestly had never quite been there in the first place.

"Saw everything Paige saw. The goggles." She states in further explanation, a hand tightening on her tires. He'd torn his chest to pieces, chunks ripped from him on those pins. Howled with the girl.

Watched her burn same as she had.

Marie's jaw clenches and she looks away, agitated enough it bled through her usual impassive mask.

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias's mouth purses. The urge to joke rises, and passes. Or some kind of grim, off the cuff thing about toughness, or survival, because that would be equally true. But here, the posturing feels profane, as if comparing wounds with Marie is in any way far. She'd lost more than him in any contest, because what she'd lost couldn't be replaced. Mortality put a higher price on things.

" . . . Grace passed out from heat stroke," he says eventually. He doesn't look up; just lifts one of Marie's hands and carefully starts unwinding the wrap. Her knuckles are bloody and scraped raw, but only on the middle and index knuckle - even in this situation, and so long crippled, her punching technique is flawless. He sprays some of the analgesic on it and lets it sit for a moment. "She didn't suffer."

He's still for a long moment. Swallows. "We had a private channel set up. I heard - what it was like, after the medcamp was hit, when she pulled evac. It was like that, everywhere."

He doesn't want to think about it. Not really. There had been maybe two dozen heroes, the best men and women he'd ever known, fighting for their lives against second and third degree burns, shrapnel, toxic gas inhalation, just as hard as they had against Rahab. Probably twice that many in Red Cross and healer metahumans, a couple with defensive powers. When the volcano went off underneath them, maybe three had lived. Grace managed to carry out five, all of them screaming and burning and dying, and passed out en route for the sixth. Two had died of their burns anyways from compound infections waiting for official medical response from the government.

All this he learned after the fact, anyways. It was during Grace's second evac relay that Rahab had incinerated everything above Elias's navel, and his memory cuts off at that point.

He lets out a long, controlled breath, and applies the disinfectant now to Marie's hands, now that it won't burn as much with the painkiller set in.

What gets him is the smell. He can still catch the scent of burnt hair and human flesh, even after he's changed clothes and showered. It won't get out of his head. With Nergal put down, he'd thought that would be the last time he'd have to deal with it.

So much for that.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Mistake. She’d just worked herself into not thinking about it, then turned around and walked right into it again. She teeters a moment, hands gripping and loosening on the wheel, staring a little too hard on a fixed point ahead.

Don’t think about it. She won’t think about it. She won’t remember, and they can talk about business instead. The War.

She twitches but doesn’t protest when he takes her hand anyway, unwraps it. Her eyes flick back, vaguely noting the size difference and then the rawness of those two knuckles. She’d been hitting that thing for hours, and the backs of them are a little numb from it. She can feel it in the soreness of her arms and back, that spot right between the shoulderblades. Hours, the pain a horrific, pushing agony at the base of her skull.

"She didn't suffer."

Marie nods, mutely. She’s watching him, and it’s not quite the usual predatory, analyzing glare.

"We had a private channel set up. I heard - what it was like, after the medcamp was hit, when she pulled evac. It was like that, everywhere."

“HQ was a mess, after. Arguments, crying.” Marie says slowly. She remembers standing there alone, listening to the bickering and the noise that wouldn’t let her think, trying to sort through radar and satellite images. Gideon radioing in, alive, having seen where Sam and Anhinga were, Lady Victory. “Noise. Climbed into the jet. Unauthorized take off.”

She’d stolen it for the League in the first place. After beating it’s previous owner, ‘Baron’ Joseph VonGard, into a coma that was. They hadn’t asked, and Marie hadn’t told them. Which summed up much of her contributions to the Front.

He’d been on the ground there from the beginning. Some of the Front, too. Then the rest of them, and finally-her. She had gone to get Sam. He knew that. She’d told him.

She doesn’t know what to say about Grace. She’s adrift in a strange place between anger and exhaustion, talking about things she didn’t, hadn’t thought about. Just the dreams. Just the two hysterical sobbing sessions, one of which he’d been there for.

“...Sam did.”

Suffer, and it’d been her fault. She had delayed the inevitable and still failed, failed her, and then hadn’t even had the decency to fucking die. The anger and self hate didn’t rise, just an empty feeling of…she doesn’t know what it is. She doesn’t even know why she’s telling him this. She doesn’t know why she tells him anything. It makes no sense. It has no purpose. It can only do him harm.

“Felt it...the Meld.” A vague, empty gesture to her own head by way of explanation and a thousand yard stare at nothing. The gauntness to Marie’s face, the dark circles under her eyes and the brief bit of empty, drifting gaze-it highlighted the shelled out emotions in a woman that had no idea how to cope or process them, shoving them down and aside so she could barrel into the scum and focus on The War with every scrap of hate and venom that she had, rage bridging over the gaping wounds that had been left to fester in all the years she’d spent ignoring them.

And it’s the anger that takes her out of this strange, uncomfortable quiet, lets her dismiss whatever it is trying to strangle her effectiveness. Strengthens her and while it brings her no solace-there’s focus and the familiar obstinance in a world so turned against her.

“And so did that girl.” Her eyes narrow, more familiar determination and rage glittering in the dark depths, a glare shot to the console and the many monitors. “What the fuck was Cid doing there? Modal’s been dead for six months at least, and probably closer to seventeen. Was this a trap the Interloper set up for him, a false distress call? Or was he just gallivanting around, decided to hit the field for Paul after years of impotency, just because his wife dared spend time outside of the place?”

She hates Cid. Everything was fucked. It’s always fucked, but just once she’d like something to be easy, and for him to be out of the goddamned way.

“He took five kids into that and walked out with three. There’s impotency, and then there’s just plain incompetence.” She’s disgusted with him, tension back in her arms and shoulders as she takes her hand back, wheels herself over to the console. “The only reason his entire team wasn’t wiped was because Reynolds was smart enough to call in Daybreak. I don’t know what the fuck he was thinking, and I wish he’d gotten himself killed instead, useless fuck.”

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias quietly puts the wraps around Marie's hands while she talks. How long has it been since she talked about feelings like this, without automatically just snapping back to self-derision and disgust? It's not in his memory, not even before everything had gone to shit. She gets angry, of course, but at least it's not angry at herself, and he lets her change the topic. He wants to say thanks, or at least acknowledge it in some way - but Marie has always regarded words as the most useless of all exchanges.

So, on some instinct even he doesn't fully understand, once the bandages are done he lifts one of her hands and brushes his lips across the back of it. Then he lets it go and draws back.

He had needed to do that. It was an intensity of feeling that shook him, a little. Elias retreated from it as he never had from pain.

"I don't think Cid expected me and Sarah to come," he says eventually. "He likes running dark, preventing radio calls out of a mission. He probably took a good smack that jolted his systems and Ashley called before he was back on his feet. I think he expected it to be bad. I do know he didn't count on anyone dying."

Elias shakes his head, faint disgust curling his lip. "Cid is defined by his envy. He probably saw all of us getting good work done and decided to up his own game, but he just doesn't have the firepower or the training for it."

Unsaid goes the quiet understanding: but for Jenna, none of the new heroes have powers that match the first generation, let alone him and Sarah. Nergal, Marrane, Rowan, Mechanist, Sam - all unmatched in the time since, and with how individual parahumans grew in power over time, it was unlikely they'd ever be matched.

Elias drops beside Marie's wheelchair, seating himself with a thump. "He's an idiot," he says, "And a dangerous one. Lana says he wants a meet tomorrow to talk about everything, and I have the feeling he pretty much just means her, but I'm still going. We'll see if he's changed. If not -"

He makes a helpless gesture. "I don't know. He's still in such a fucking untouchable position. I don't want to have to kill him. Not now. God, what would that do to Sarah?"

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“If he expected it to be bad-” Marie argues, paranoid and thinking the worst, as usual. “Then he was open to the possibility of it happening. He killed these kids. He did this to Sarah, not just Marrane. His intent is of no consequence, the results are.” Utterly, ruthlessly unforgiving.

She picked up her tablet and absently noted Jasper hopping up on the console in her usual spot, watching them both. She’s looking for the transcription of the conversation with Jenna-reads over it.

"Cid is defined by his envy. He probably saw all of us getting good work done and decided to up his own game, but he just doesn't have the firepower or the training for it."

“It’s always his ego.” Marie agrees. “I told you before-he talks like one of you, but he’s anything but.” Impotent. Abusive. Makes too much noise, always had an ulterior motive, attempts-and often succeeds- to manipulate. She’s always hated him.

Always.

Marie thinks of Sarah and how panicked she’d been, coming to the Coulee after all that time, looking for kids she had feared the absolute worst for. Everything she had seemed to fear had come to pass, Would she blame Cid? Would this finally be the wedge that would have her sideline him?

Marie had never counted on any help from the Tower. She had had no idea just how dire the situation was becoming, year by year as hero after hero fell to an inhuman predatory monster.

“What’s it doing to her that he’s alive?” Marie growls. She’s not even angry with the woman anymore. Something about the heroine’s protests, her denial of that abuse, her floundering-she doesn’t view it as compliance with Cid’s impotency anymore. It was sickness. Trauma.

Marie taps away from the transcription after sending it to Elias, a slight snarl when she reads Cid’s parting remark. Jenna hadn’t needed that. She also doubts he’d be at any sort of loss-Velocity had come out of nowhere and made her mark, then she’d shaken the hero world up further, going to meet Elias, wanting to help, compelled to help-and not turning away even as the insidious nature of what yet lay out there was peeled back.

A lot about Jenna annoyed the crap out of her, but her fortitude-well, there was a lot to be said for that.

And she believed in heroes.

“Don’t kill him.” She finally says, not that she’s entirely sure it was something he was actually considering. She casts him a side glance. Her expression was impassive as always, but her eyes are sharp, taking in the light and everything about him in a steady, unflinching gaze. “Pyrrhic victory. And it’d only ‘prove’ everything he’s ever lied or falsely claimed about you.”

Her eyes flick back to the tablet and her mind strays briefly to the teleportation buttons, and then what was left of her soul, however sullied. But a disappearance would be better than a straight and messy murder, and no one would be any wiser. No irreparable rift between the best humanity had to offer, individuals who had suffered enough.

It was enough. He was a hero. She wasn’t. If it came to it, she knows who’s doing what, no discussion required.

“Stay righteous.” She reminds quietly. “Despite my involvement, that’s what this venture needs to be.”

She exhales, moves on. “Lana will do what she can for us. In the end, it doesn’t much matter-Senator Gillesby and his lobbyists are no one I give a shit about pleasing, or anyone I intend to let stand in our way. Jenna’s too popular, you’re too popular, Lana’s untouchable-and I’ve been wanted for my entire vigilante career, not that I exist anymore.”

“What matters is Marrane, what limited resources we have, and what’s left. That giant...whatever the fuck it was-” It’d spotlighted the girl-and dimmed her flames, for a moment. That was significant, but she doesn’t follow the thread, not right now. She’s thinking about the logistics of these infestations, the troubling realization of just how Marrane was clearing the way for his armies.

“Moving like it did-have you seen it before? Possible Malachite might have some insight or knowledge of it?"

 

[Obuzeti]

Elias has heard Marie's opinion on Cid before, and it's never really changed his mind because he's already in a state of finality regarding the man; he's an obstacle at best and a body on his name at worst, interfering in the worst ways with all the people he loves. But then, he's only ever definitively ruined Sarah's life, and she seems resigned to it in a way that he can't argue with. When he fucking lays that bit on Jenna, though, that resigned I-told-you-so over the death of a student not even yet cold, he snarls. It's a noise deep and visceral starting below the diaphragm, and curls in the gut. It's the surrender inherent in it that offends him, the finger-pointing. Cid's already laying blame for the future and he starts it with, as always, grieving young women.

He starts to realize this meeting is going to end poorly, because Cid is incapable of shutting his mouth, and Elias is incapable of ignoring the wounds he inflicts on people just to save his own fucking ego.

"If he's still in that armor when we meet, he can survive me smacking him out of the goddamn Tower," Elias says, low. "Has he always said shit like this? He doesn't say anything to me, obviously, but - why the fuck does he think this doesn't matter? This goddamn navel-gazing and blaming he does? Does he think this is how you lead? How you teach others?"

He shakes his head in disgust. "We've batted it around before, but moving everything to Atlantis really might be the best option. I've tried to make the best of it I can, but Congress has never been a benefit to us, as heroes or as basic fucking human beings. I'm getting tired of working my ass off to comply with their bullshit."

He's still a long moment, then a sudden tremble goes through his shoulders and he whips around violently and strides to the other side of the room. "Cid says they got footage and they don't even investigate," he says, so furious now it chokes him. "No offer of help after our kids get murdered, no attempt to gather evidence, no funeral details like for a member of the military, nothing. Nothing! They watched us die and their response is to pass judgement on us, for surviving? Put us all in a can and hope we suffocate each other?"

There's a red flush working its way up his shoulders and to his neck, and Elias's jaw is held square with effort, barely not baring teeth. Instead, he rolls his shoulders and breathes, casting it off for the moment, and refocuses. "No, I've never seen anything like what he brought. I mean, obviously it looked like Rahab - but when it was leaving, it had a tail, a single one. So it's clearly not the same thing through and through. Also, Rahab didn't actually dig, it just melted shit in the direction it wanted to go and sort of oozed in that direction."

He grimaces. "So, the upshot is that Marrane's probably managed to graft some of his power onto it somehow so that it can slide through earth that easily - some kind of shock prow or, or, something - and clearly it can amplify what he does, if he could inflict that onto Ashley. He tried something like that with Jenna, I know, and she got out. Ashley - wasn't so lucky."

"On the other hand, he made it retreat, which means it's valuable to him in a way everything of his he's made to this point isn't, and we finally have a way to hurt him in a serious matter. And since it's stuck on the earth, I'd bet Malachite could tear it to pieces without blinking. That's his remit."

Elias shrugs. "Don't know where he is these days, though. He didn't answer his communicator, but it moves. Somewhere in South Dakota, weak and occasionally vanishing. Means he's underground somewhere, tunneling around. The signal fizzes when he goes too deep."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Noise.” Marie says flatly, doing something else on the tablet. “Manipulative noise.” He had found her unsettling. A lot of people had.

He says something about moving operations to Atlantis, and Marie’s eyes flick to the alternating camera feeds on the one lonely monitor, an old rotation she didn’t need and had no purpose for-but kept up anyway. Her city, her cesspit. Her eyes narrow on it before they return to her tablet, suddenly opaque.

Beside her, Elias is quiet-until he isn’t, bursting to his feet and stalking away from her, steps heavy on the metal walkway, his righteous anger spilling over.

”They watched us die and their response is to pass judgement on us, for surviving? Put us all in a can and hope we suffocate each other?”

“Metahumans, heroes-a minority they think they have no use for.” She says flatly. “That original betrayal is why Lana left, in the aftermath of Rahab.” A tap at the screen, tension in her shoulders. They had all left. The filthy world didn’t deserve them, but they had left.

And now as they were returning, forming a resurgence-petty men in power sought to screw them over a second time. Corruption. This is something Marie was intimately familiar with, and why she had no use for government or red tape. She never had. And these racist, ungrateful fucks-Elias had every right to be furious. It was an attack on him, his family, everything.

“They made their peace offering in the form of the Tower, and lacking anyone else and mostly due to his wife-Cid was given the keys. He spoke-and speaks- their language.”

She lowers the tablet and rubs at her eyes a minute, tired. “It’s the Japanese internment camps all over again, and Cid accepts it readily because it means he keeps his power and his prestige and doesn’t have to do anything to earn it.” She wouldn’t go so far as to call him a traitor-but he was a piece of shit.

"Clearly it can amplify what he does, if he could inflict that onto Ashley. He tried something like that with Jenna, I know, and she got out. Ashley - wasn't so lucky."

Amplify what he does...and what was that? What did he do, and how did he do it? She's always distrusted the hell out of magic. It had have laws like anything else, but it was so fluid and confusing...

Marie gives a wheel a half turn to face him, a frown. “Jenna did get out.” She repeats. There was a brief note in Jenna’s report, the legalise of ‘an alleged and suspected mental assault’-but no details beyond that. “Marrane, and Mindmelt. And as far as I know, she’s only the second person to retain her sanity after a brush with that bastard.” A mind touched by the speedforce? But more importantly-she knew what it was like, could provide more details. The phrase she’d mentioned, what Paul had said-become putrid...the hell.

“The husks, back in that apartment building-” He’d notice she didn’t say ‘my’. It hadn’t been any sort of home. It’d been a place to shelve Protagonist until she could go out again. “A physical infestation. But he was attempting control of Reynolds without that. A mental assault. And the only reason it wasn’t successful was because she lit up.”

Rather the pyre...

Marie shakes her head before she can think about it again, remember, snagging the tablet. “We need to question her on it. And then we’ll want seismic sensors...the Coulee, the Tower-” She’s considering the threat, and she’s considering the problem that was tracking Malachite down, and she’s thinking about the likelihood of tomorrow’s meeting going very, very poorly. She honestly can’t decide if she gives a damn or not. They have bigger issues to focus on.

“If we get can pinpoint a signal, even just enough to find one of Malachite's tunnels-we have a speedster that can cover a lot of ground, and take you with her.” There’s that damned inhibitor, too. She’s close. She thinks. Without Rush, there shouldn’t be a reason for her to be going that fast, channeling that much energy-but it has her on edge anyway. There’s time, and Art was still running algorithms-and then there’s that mold killing agent, and the net she’s tightening around the Interloper, she still hasn’t given Peter his kit yet, (a task she kept putting off, day by passing day) and Trork’s goddamned copies outside of that African refugee camp where Dr. Wangai was tirelessly tending to the displaced Sudanese-And she had spent how long punching an inanimate sandbag?

Marie just stares at the tablet a moment before her eyes focus past it and to the uglier of her two legs, the concave swathe of missing muscle. It's for the best she can't and won't be going to this meeting.

She looks back at Elias.

“...you should take your cat-” A pause and then a begrudging correction, “Jasper, with you.” It wasn't a rejection of the animal-but something softer, an awkward attempt at an offering.

Sarah had liked the cat, and it was his cat in the first place-one she'd been babysitting for a while now, in a place with no windows and just her shitty company. She figures Jasper would do some good over there...and that Jasper would prefer it, too. She doesn't know much about cats, but she's decently sure they like fireplaces.

 

[Obuzeti]

Whatever Elias's thoughts on that, he keeps silent, though his lips purse. He shakes it off and continues on with the topic he can actually tackle. "Jenna's developed - I don't want to say an immunity, but at least a resistance to direct mental contact. She was able to resist Mindmelt after he made direct contact with her, and Marrane established some kind of channel to her during the fight at the docks, but she shook that off too."

He's silent a moment. "Most of the people that have that, have Catalyzed. I'll keep an eye on her."

It's true that post-Catalysis parahumans - the few that exist - don't really respond in the same way as the minds of other humans do. Invincibelle had once told Elias that trying to look into his head was like staring into a spotlight, and Rowan had read as just an endless series of tree rings, or green-tinged black. Their thought processes are as permanently altered as their bodies, apparently.

What does that say about him?

"We've always known he can take bodies, but if he can reach past that - if he can even so much as scan for memories, or pull muscle memory from worn synapses - Marrane gets dramatically more dangerous," Elias says, grim. "The only blessing we've had so far in this is that he can't apparently use anyone else's powers, but he takes someone's mind, how long will that last? Imagine if he got ahold of Jenna's speed, or Peter's - whatever it is he does?"

He blows out a breath and leans against Marie's wheelchair. "I'd never be able to handle all this without you, hon. Thank you for being here with me. Even if it's all awful, it's better than being alone."

The cat herself mews and pads over, glancing between the two of them. Elias reaches out a hand to let her take in his scent - now, just soap and shampoo after a long shower. "She may help," he admits. "I'll take her back over for a bit. Will you be alright?"

It's not just the cat, of course. It's everything.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

“Still working on that inhibitor device with Art. Slow going, Speed Force is...complicated.” And Peter-even more so. She’s not even sure how to describe what the fuck he does. “Bordet’s ability is...complete and total obscurity at will. Major mind warp of...anything, anyone.” Marie’s expression remains impassive, but there’s a measure of...something there. Discomfort, a lack of understanding she works at in some corner of her mind and can’t quite figure out. For so brutal a control freak and as harsh her discipline, the undisputed master of her own mind-the nature of such abilities was infinitely disturbing to her.

No, that was nothing she wanted in the hands of the enemy, same as another speedster-one faster than Rush and Laura, channeling that sort of raw energy- Backdraft’s dimming flames comes to mind again, the vague thought of averted-or at least delayed- Catalysis.

But mostly-Paul can’t have anything that was theirs, nothing of this venture. Unlike Cid, she didn’t waste resources. Unlike Cid, she didn’t send kids to die or Catalyze.

Her left hand twitches. She’s not letting any of her operatives die. No Pyrrhic victories, no more failures.

Not again.

"I'd never be able to handle all this without you, hon. Thank you for being here with me. Even if it's all awful, it's better than being alone."

The first part of that was fact, to a degree. The rest of it...she doesn’t know. He’s projecting again, grateful for things she wasn’t actually doing anything for, and she feels vaguely guilty that he would thank her. The shitty consolation prize of this place and her own ineptitude at anything that wasn’t The War-she’s utterly useless at anything that wasn’t sheer obstinance and fighting, and he doesn’t seem to get that. How ugly she was, how dim the flickers of her own humanity within the gaping, tar filled hole where her heart used to be.

She doesn’t understand how he doesn’t see how awful she is. How Sam hadn’t.

She watches Jasper pad up to him, a delicate sniff at the big man’s patiently waiting hand before the sleek feline bumps her head against his fingers. He’s betrayed and he’s angry, powerless to help his best friend and forced to play nice with her petulant, impotent child of a husband, suffering for all the loss that had come and fretful of what more might follow. He had come back, he had come here of his own volition.

He had returned to fight The War, not out of the hate and rage that powered everything she is and everything she does in this second life-but out of love for a world that frankly, did not deserve him. Because he believed in better tomorrows, in his family, in fulfilling what he felt was Grace’s legacy to him.

He shines, brilliant and blinding and good. Elias is good, and there was no separating the man from that good. It’s inherent in him.

So when he tops off his inexplicable gratitude-comfort?-with a question about her, asking if she’ll be alright-well, she should have seen it coming.

She stares a little harder at the screen. She was functional, and that was all that really mattered to her-her purpose, her use. She has things to do and the capacity to do them. She very nearly says this.

“You, Elias-” It’s a short start and stop, her brow furrowing and her eyes remaining fixed to the tablet without actually seeing any of the cold, comforting data displayed on its screen. The usual irritation that happens when she blurts something out, the frustration as if someone else had spoken in her place or tricked her somehow-it’s absent. Clear and uncomfortable struggle takes its place, rusted gears and taut nerves beneath a blade edge, before she finishes with a slight frown, actually focusing on the device before her, pulling up a window to follow up with Art, and another to some bare bones equipment website, a government contractor of some kind.

“Are a good friend.”

~*~

Ellie was again not where she was supposed to be. Technically, if she was being honest with herself-she wasn’t anywhere at all.

In the black, endless void that was The Other, malignant, glowing red bolts of energy struck out of nowhere and into nothing, angry bolts of lightning that brought a rumbling clap in their wake, offshoots of sparking red energy trailing out in branches. The energy was constant and it was starting to zero more and more on the ginger haired ward that didn’t belong here, bolts of red striking for the girl-only to deflect off of brightly glowing, blue discs that formed out of nothing and without her involvement, a shield against the foul magics that reigned here.

She did her best to ignore the increasing frequency, already out of breath and hot enough she’d shed her hoodie and tied the sleeves around her hips-the baggy garment revealing a slightly better fitting (but still a size or two too large) dark blue t shirt with ‘Whiskers and Tails Animal Shelter’ emblazoned across the front in yellow and ‘VOLUNTEER’ across the back of her shoulders, the ‘o’ a pawprint-and the middle of the word covered up by that squaggly long hair.

She backed up a few steps, took in a deep breath-and then darted forward, hands flat at her sides, elbows tucked in, chin down-and leapt blindly into the inky blackness, the red lightning strikes following her descent-before she struck her shoulder against something impossibly solid right at the end of the leap-bouncing her off of it and-

-back into the real world, landing none too softly on her right side, hands and arms luckily already up to protect her head, body curled into a defensive ball. She’s in an empty guest room in the Coulee, one with a floor length mirror-which was much better than the puddle she had found last time. She'd been trying in the Tower, really, really, really hard, but didn't want to be caught popping around-so she'd taken to practicing in the general area of Elias' house instead. There were a lot of mirrors there, after all-though Ellie wasn't sure that actually helped much. She'd found the edge in places where the real world didn't have any mirrors, after all. Parts that, if she understood correctly-would be very, very dark.

She carried a flashlight for that reason, two of them, actually-one for her and one for Dee if she ever made it over there, both tucked into the pink fanny pack she usually wore around, under her hoodie.

She had found the edge again, she had touched it, but she still hadn’t managed to step past it, through it-around it?-Ellie’s not quite sure what she had to do to progress from finding that edge to getting into Dee’s mirror dimension, something she had been working at ever since discovering there was one.

The wall itself had taken her a long time to find, to run into-it should have been impossible in the endlessness that was The Other, but somehow, sometimes, when she worked really hard and really focused-she found it.

But boy did that scary red energy not like when she was getting close to an edge-or when she managed to change her vertical position, something that took a lot of effort all by itself.

 

[Obuzeti]

The mirror's edge flickers and Tweedledee slides into sight. With only Ellie to see him, he resolves clearer; the rough, blocky edges of his features is revealed as quartz shelves that break the smooth surface of his skin in uneven patches. There's no common color, each a slightly different hue, but none bright and none that contrast near each other. Only the skin of his face and neck over his heavy jumper is visible, but even there it runs from a pale white at what would be his hairline to a deep purple at his neck.

It's easier, when just one person is present. Clashing perspectives are difficult for him to resolve.

"Are you alright?" he asks, crouching at the edge of the mirror. Ellie has all the traits of an abused kid, which he recognizes very easily: absurd reflexes, self-effacing, and primarily provoked by curiosity thanks to a lack of stimuli in her environment. He doesn't particularly feel bad about it, but it defines a large chunk of her personality at this point. "Push too hard?"

His hand twitches, but rather than offer it - what good would that do? - he folds his arms under his armpits, huddling for warmth. It's a reflex habit of his, as even in the direct view of the mirror there's a chill to the air.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie lifts one elbow to see Dee crouched down on his side of the glass, the girl sitting up proper in a hurry, a little embarrassed but not terribly so-not like she would have been with someone else, or a stranger. Still, she feels lucky she hadn’t fallen too far in the real world, made a bunch of noise on the floorboards.

“Thanks Dee-I’m okay.” She catches one of the tied sleeves of her hoodie and runs it across her forehead, a pleasant, happy smile for her friend.

“Maybe a little, but nothing too bad-just messing around in The Other.” The longer she spends in there, the more tired she starts to get, and the more sick if she really spent too long wandering in the void. The red bolts of lightning that struck at her never managed to get through, couldn’t hurt her-but they got worse and worse with the more time spent, the more jumps-and immediately so whenever she was close to finding an edge.

It was less a physical, actual searching and more of a mental...she’s not sure what she’d call it. When she stepped, she did so naturally, didn’t have to think so hard-not the same at all when it came to finding those walls in what should have been unending space and blackness.

Sometimes she just had to imagine she was standing in a narrow, dark hallway rather than a void, and imagine really, really hard. One wall was back to this dimension, a flimsy curtain-and the other an actual wall, an edge to The Other that shouldn’t be there but was. She can pass between these two dimensions, why not a third?

But the edges stayed in the way.

“How are you today, Dee?” Ellie asks as she settles into a crisscrossed seat on the floor rather than a kneel, untying and pulling on the hoodie-seeing him look so cold always made her feel cold.

That was the first thing she’d do, after the flashlight-she’d bring him a big warm coat, the kind with feathers inside and stitched like a quilt.

 

[Obuzeti]

The Other - Ellie's dimension, her parlance for it. He's curious (because she's curious, but even without that he would still be, he thinks). Is it anything like his cold and still reflection? Does it have its own life, its own motion of energy? Anywhere he could be but where he is holds Dee's interest. He noses around in closed bookstores sometimes, poring over atlases of wide-open vistas he'll never see, deserts and oceans clear of reflections. Wistfulness is one of the few things he can genuinely feel, though he's found it unhealthy to some degree.

It's also not her fault that she asks the stupid question everyone does; she's trying, and only Elias and Sarah ever do that anymore. He welcomes the faint brush of compassion over his senses like the hot breath of a radiator. "It's the same."

Dee has no schedule. He owns no property and the number of humans he knows is sharply limited. Sleeping for eight hours straight risks hypothermia if the reflection he's sheltering in moves; he gets by on catnaps and an ubermensch sleep cycle. It's a low, constant grade of misery and asking him what the difference is between one day and the next is pointless because where he is, the sun never rises. All he sees out his windows is endless and cold night.

He knows, intellectually, that Sarah's been crying about something, and that most of the Lodge is upset about some new disaster. It's just hard for him to care about it at a distance, and impossible for him to not live through up close. He has enough tragedies already.

"Fresh from the shelter?" he says, voice soft, and gestures at her shoulders, where faint traces of hair are visible, stuck in the fabric like down. The light-colored threads stand out against the dark fabric.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Ellie’s smile lessons to a languid curve as she shifts to her knees instead, hesitating a moment-and then touching at the frame of the mirror.

“But same is better than worse.” She says, soft. It wasn’t really...optimism with Ellie. She didn’t have rose colored glasses. She was just grateful when things weren’t awful. Her baseline expectations, the bar for ‘acceptable’ were low.

“Yeah,” Ellie says as she glances to the shoulders of her hoodie, brightening up again. It’s the mundane that makes her happy. “There’s a big, funny dog named Buddy. We went for a walk a-and he got a bath and a brushing. He doesn’t mind baths-but he does splash, and he does get extra fluffy when he dries out.”

A shrug as she sat back on her calves, content. “I like it there. It was a good day, so I thought-” Everything had gone so well, she hadn’t messed anything up-so she’d lingered in The Other and looked for the edges of Dee’s dimension. “I thought I-I’d work, a little, at things over there. But-” A slightly rueful, embarrassed expression "I fell. It's hard to gain elevation, over there-but if you fall, I-I think you might fall forever-so I slipped back soon as it happened."

A nod.

 

[Obuzeti]

That's not how Dee sees it, but here Ellie's belief overrides whatever he thought, and it is enough for the moment. Her mundane story about her dog fills him with contentment, and he shares in that visceral, simple joy that a dog can bring, the unconditional love it offers anyone that takes care of it. The faded, cautious nature of Ellie's emotions is a welcome respite from the intensity that, for example, Elias feels everything, let alone Marie. "I couldn't see you with a cat," he offers. "Dogs seem more - you."

It's nothing against Jasper, but the feline is very exclusive on who it's devoted to.

On the other hand, he has no idea what she's talking about, with elevation. It sounds like the rules are rather different. "I don't think you can pass directly though," he says after a moment. Dee's never bothered to explain the rules of his realm, or the nature of his power and how they intertwine. Elias knows the general specifics, which is as much as anyone knows. "Most mirrors have significant - surface tension. It's better to slide along the surface until you fall in."

It's as close as words can get to explaining. He shakes his head and rests an arm against the mirror he rests in, pressing alongside the left edge. At the very fringe of that side, the glass begins to fog and frost over from the outside in, the gap between frame and glass growing tight and cold and impossibly thin. "Like this."

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Cats were independent, beautiful things-but dogs needed people. They just want to be loved, are happy for what little Ellie feels she can do for them.

As ever, she’s appreciative of Dee for letting her talk to him.

"I don't think you can pass directly though,"

Ellie goes still, innately curious-and slightly surprised. She hadn’t told him she’d been trying. But Dee was very smart, and he knew a lot of things, things she couldn’t guess at, not with the world or its people.

"Most mirrors have significant - surface tension. It's better to slide along the surface until you fall in."

“When I step-” Dee was the only one she’d ever really talked to about The Other other than Jenna-and she’d been a little...vague on what was over there even then. Not even Sarah knew about it, that her teleportions weren’t instant at all, that it was a dimension she was traveling through, hostile and scary and endlessly black. “It’s like a thin, billowing curtain. I lean into and through it, and I’m not here anymore. I stand on nothing, see nothing- there is nothing but the red energy.”

She watches the frost with interest, brow furrowing a little as she tries to understand, fingers fidgeting with her sleeves.

“It’s endless, has always been endless-but Dee-” Her eyes widen, still marveling at the discovery made not long after they had first talked. “Dee, I found an edge. If I think very, very, very hard, concentrate-there’s a wall where there shouldn’t be any walls, a-and something on the other side, I know there is, I can feel it.”

There’s caution, a reluctance to have any faith in her own abilities-and also a feeling of knowledge and hypothesis, a natural, intuitive use of scientific method. This information was new and exciting, different than what she had thought she had to do, had been trying to do. How hard she’d bounced off of it mere moments before.

If it’s not like the flimsy veil between here and The Other, if it’s not a matter of somehow being strong enough to break through...if it’s instead like surface tension on a bubble…

“If...if I could do it-would that...would that be okay?”

She pulls her arm into the baggy hoodie, there’s the sound of a zipper as she opens the fanny pack underneath-produces two small but powerful LED flashlights. “I could bring you one of these.” She's been carting around two for weeks now. “A-and maybe a warm coat. W-when I lived in Samson, it got very cold at night, even in the summer.”

She doesn’t want to talk about Samson very much, running away before, being homeless-her parents-but the coat idea, the coat makes her happy, and she

Getting into that dimension, one that housed a friend and an entire other place to explore and delve into-well, that made her head spin with possibilities, too. It's the first real goal she's had in...well, a long time. That and taking care of animals that needed taking care of, especially somewhere as hard as Samson.

 

[Obuzeti]

The description curves Dee's brow. That sounds like nothing he's familiar with. Whatever Ellie's Other is, matter isn't an important component of it, and without that there's nothing in the way of space-time to constrain it. It sounds plausible that she could connect to other realms. The idea of having a visitor - well, it's something he's never even considered. He hasn't seen another human in the flesh for over a decade.

It terrifies him, if he's honest. Everything does, all real contact. If looking at someone across a mirror already exerts such influence over him, what will seeing someone in the flesh do? Will her reflection overwrite him entirely, and leave two Ellies where once he and she stood?

No one knows.

Why not, though? What could be worse than an eternity of this, anyways?

Dee swallows. The crystalline fibers under his cheeks flex like piano strings, causing little geologic shifts across the facets of his features. A patina of light shimmers across the surface. "Go ahead," he says, hoarse. "Try. I'll see if I can - make it easier."

The things she are offering, the material things, are almost irrelevant, and it occurs to Dee that Ellie doesn't really understand the risks of what she's about to do - and in a moment of selfishness, decides that's fine. If it goes wrong for him, it's unlikely she'll ever know. He leans his head against the opposite side of the mirror and feels out the edge beyond the glass, the tenuous connection between all reflections, spanning the void like lily pads of heat and light across an ocean of black.

He doesn't know what he can do to help, but he tries.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

Try now?

Ellie’s glad for permission, but at the same time the invitation inspires a bit of performance anxiety. She had thought she’d just keep trying at it at her own pace, take this information and consider it, let the red energy settle down before looking for an edge again.

But...but if he was going to try to help her, then it was a joint experiment, and Ellie has never involved anyone else in her explorations or travels. It’s nice, and it’s exciting, and now she wonders if she really could just slip in over there, now that she knows it’s not brute force that’s needed to get through.

Ellie moved to stand, a little hesitant but hopeful.

Surface tension. Like a bubble.

“Thank you Dee. I-I’ll remember what you said, t-try it again.”

And with a step backwards, Ellie disappeared.

~*~

The lightning was angry. She’s seen it worse, lots of times-but for some reason it makes her extra nervous today. It puts a bit of a time constraint on what was otherwise near limitless amounts of it-she could spend a long time in here and Dee wouldn’t notice, things just didn’t really translate very well between The Other and the real world-and presumably Mirror world too.

She had been walking for a little while, hoping the malignant energy would settle at least a little, despite her being here-but it stayed just as agitated, and she gave it up for trying to find that edge again, imagining a hallway...thinking really, really, really hard about a narrow, tight space-until something brushed against her shoulder and nearly startled her into jerking away-but no, she twists in a flinch but catches herself just in time to press her hands to it, seeing past whatever it was and into the endless dark and red bolts of energy.

Here it is. It’s here.

Ellie carefully turned around and pressed her back into it, her heart beating faster as the edge remained. She sidled along, closing her eyes against the angry red lightning striking for her, deflecting off the swirls of blue-

Like a bubble. A bubble, the rainbow soap sheen on a perfect sphere…

Or maybe a cup over filled, water clinging together and not yet overflowing until…

The edge was suddenly no edge at all but a dry, chilled fog, no longer behind her but around her, a separation that...that…?

That the red crackling energy did not like.

Ellie’s eyes snapped open as a feeling of wrong rocked her to her core-and then something searingly struck her clean through her chest and sent her crashing into something hard and unforgiving, knocking it over with a clattering crash of metal and dropping her into a muscle spasming heap. The red bolt had briefly illuminated the outdoor patio as it struck the girl-but that was all it did, and Ellie barely registered where she was or what had happened through the intensity of the pain.

She breathed in short, shallow gasps twinged with pain, little dancing tendrils of blue bouncing around her person alongside the red, striking the ground and disappearing into sparks inches away from her form. And then it was over, leaving her shaky but largely unharmed.

It had never managed to harm her before. Ever. It’d always been bad, a scary, mean thing-but it had never managed to actually hurt her. For a moment, the girl very nearly just curls up and cries-but she can’t do that, she had made it.

She had made it!

There’s a last sniffle as the realization really hits her, that she had crossed over, she had made it, and while it’s cold, very cold-it’s not oppressive, it’s not draining, and other than that bolt that had seemingly followed her over here, there’s no red, hostile energy.

Ellie wipes at her eyes and sucks in a breath, excitement and triumph flushing out the negative feeling of fear and worry. She carefully, tentatively felt around-it’s pitch black and it’s cold, very cold-the bitter, still air of a winter chill on the air.

The ground beneath her feels like scratchy concrete and it feels real. There are no street lamps or porch lights anywhere in view, just a lit...something down the way, she thinks on a building-and when she looks up there’s only blackness, just like The Other. No stars, no moon. She’s briefly unsure if she was outside after all, were it not for that distant, brightly lit reflection.

She moves to stand and sways a moment before she steadies, the girl carefully rubbing at her elbow, and then the small of her back. The elbow smarts some, but other than a bit of shaky muscle weakness she’s okay.

She’s okay. And she’s here. She’s here, in a whole other world, an entire dimension she never even knew about! And Dee was here too, somewhere-she wants to go find him. She wants to tell him they had done it.

She fumbles with her fanny pack, catches the zipper-retrieves and clicks on the flashlight, the light trembling as she sweeps it across the tables and chairs, what looked like a little restaurant bistro place. She’s been here before, with Jenna. It’s in Gary, Indiana, and they served cheesecake-and it’s not super far from Adamant’s house.

‘Far’ was kind of a nonexistent term for a speedster and a teleporter though, all told.

Ellie carefully straightens the table back up, the cold much more noticable now-yes, Dee needed a warm coat. She still has her old one, she’ll bring it next time-for right now all she can do is pull the hood of her hoodie up before wrapping her arms around herself, flashlight caught in one sleeve encased hand. The bit of light seeping in proved to be a mirrored window on an office building-Ellie stood on one side and nervously peeked-but it didn’t look like the street was very busy. Still, she stayed just off the edge of it, turning her flashlight back towards where she had come, and then around the corner.

“Dee?”

Could he hear her? She’s not sure-he was in a mirror at the Coulee, and this place was a mirror of the real world, wasn’t it? She could walk there, she thinks? Or maybe that was a bad idea-it’s cold, and she’s not positive she knows the way. At the same time she’s reluctant to leave so soon after slipping through-and there had been that painful shock. She had better wait for all that red energy to calm down-that had hurt. It’s never hurt her before, but this time it had.

Maybe she was only protected from it while in The Other? That was...well, she’s not sure what that meant.

 

[Obuzeti]

There's a long silence, as Ellie works whatever her magic is. Dee doesn't agree with Elias on that - there are some powers, some people who step beyond the physically possible, himself being the capital example. There is no physical law or theory of physics that explains the realm Dee now inhabits. It is the realm of metaphor, not science.

He can feel the ripple as something slides through, a ways distant from where he is now, and then a rippling shock of heat and energy that chases after her. He's not sure what it is, but crossing the mirrors aggressively is always a poor idea. He can feel the backblast as the concentrated thrust of power tries to pull back across the empty void and finds - nothing. No bridge back, no space to occupy, no time to accomplish things in. Infinite entropy spreads the energy across the span of would could have been a universe and erases it.

Pity.

Dee skips across four reflections. It takes a moment, but he steps past the reflection of the bistro window with the beacon of the flashlight's beam to guide him, and glances Ellie over.

He feels nothing. No surge of emotion.

An almost sickening wave of relief shakes him, and Dee's leg jumps as it almost gives out under him. He shakes it off and looks her over closer instead, another human he can see. She's still the same, mousy-haired and shrinking, but there's visible scuff marks on her clothing where something had thrown her with a decent amount of force. That was probably the Other she had talked about.

~*~

In person, Tweedledee looks distinctly different. The roughness is artifacting from the mirror's medium, and his skin is polished and smooth like a cut gemstone's, with innumerable facts that mimic the soft curves of human skin. The hoodie and jeans he wears are old and ragged, but for the first time, around the edges of the hood hair can be seen, jagged and white like frost trails down a wintery window. His eyes change color and brightness depending on the angle, always changing and never the same when you go back for a second look.

"Are you alright?" he asks, and even the voice is different, no longer low and muffled, but a tenor that echoes slightly, as the noise vibrates somewhere in his chest. "I felt - something."

Dee looks at Ellie, and blinks, then glances at the flashlight and follows the beam of light to where it glitters against the glass behind him. It's spreading out, splashing out, seeping beneath the edges of the frame.

 

[CurtailedAmbrosia]

"Hello Dee!" Relief and happiness, the question of how to find him and where to go answered. Ellie's own relief was palpable, a strong measure of gratitude to her. And now they were face to face, truly face to face-and he's as clear as she's ever seen him, finer details she hadn't seen in the reflection.

Not that Ellie stares or studies-not when she's being observed anyway. She was a quiet, shy thing, even with her very few friends. "O-oh, that?" She's not sure what to say about it, entirely. She's told him about the hostile red energy in The Other, but she had also told him it couldn't hurt her. Which, until now-it hadn't.

She follows his multicolored gaze to the beam of light, and then immediately holds the flashlight out for him, a happy smile. It was a short, stubby thing, surprisingly heavy and with a ridged metal case and clip. Both in a metallic blue color.

"U-unless you'd rather have green? The other one is green." She offers, sincerely interested in his preference. It was always the mundane with Ellie. Setbacks and tragedies were her normal, but it's the good she sees and chooses to focus on. She had brought him a flashlight, was happy to finally be able to give it to him.

The girl gives a glance around and into the dark before her eyes shift back to the reflection, thinking over what to say. She doesn't want to...to complain. She'd nearly curled up and cried over that brief shock of muscle spasming pain, and she's glad she hadn't given into that, been a baby. She doesn't want Dee to think she's a baby. Or worry him? And maybe...maybe worry herself? She doesn't want to think about it.

But this was a joint experiment now, and this seemed too important a thing not to mention. What if she had crossed over right where he had been? That could have been bad, and then he could have been hurt too.

"The Other has...has that red crackling energy. Just...around, usually far away in the distance, cracking down into the nothing like lightning. It tries to get me sometimes. Y-you know, when I've been over there too long? O-or lately, finding those edges? It doesn't like that. It -really- doesn't l-like that."

She rocks on her heels a little, pulling her arm into the overly large hoodie in order to retrieve the other flashlight from her fanny pack. It's hard to talk about unpleasant things. She's so used to glossing over them.

"But it can't get me, n-not in The Other. Something repels it, somehow? But I...I guess it c-can, here. It must have struck just as I was crossing over."

She worries she's talking a lot again, and that maybe this wasn't as important or as relevant as she had first thought. Ellie just looks at him a moment, the interesting planes and colors of his face.

"...it hurt."

But that was complaining and being a baby, and Ellie's quick to correct it. "B-but I'm okay! J-Just going to let it...let it settle down, over there, before I try stepping again." A nod, and then she brightens up some. "But I'm here! We did it, it worked!"